The Cabala

This past Wednesday I had occasion to go to an old Bible of mine and thereI found two letters of my friend old Abdullah. I had long forgotten them, for they were given to me back in 1930 or ’31.They are now molding and falling apart. They were simply instructions on the Cabala. And the first portion of them would not interest you because it’s all very technical in Hebrew, but there are other portions of it that I know will interest you. And this is what he said in one: “Creatures are never guilty of the seeming wrongs they do. The Lord ordained all deeds, and he alone performs all that is performed.”

That’s what it starts with. He accuses no one of evil, for all have fulfilled his command and performed his service. If there is evil, I the Lord alone am evil (Is. 45:7).

When you first read it on a certain level of awareness you are startled. It’s in conflict with everything that you hold dear. But he doesn’t stop there. He takes a very small, little passage of the Book of John, the 4th chapter of John, it’s a conversation between Jesus and the woman of Samaria, and he said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem worship the Father. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews” (verse 21).

And then he stops there. When you read it you wonder what it is all about. Now listen to this grand old man’s interpretation of it.

Yehudah…he translates

Yehudah as Jew; we Anglicize the word Yehudah and call it Judah.

Judah is spelled just as you would spell the Lord’s name, Yod He Vau He, only you insert a Daleth, the letter “d” into the word. Judah was the fourth son of Jacob; in all lists of the sons of Jacob he is given the position of fourth. In the genealogy of Jesus, that is, the one given us in the Book of Matthew, he is the fourth: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Judah and his brothers.

He’s the fourth one mentioned and yet he’s the fourth of the twelve. In the New Testament, he is the first in rank of those who are sealed, as told us in the 7th chapter of Revelation (verse 5). Here he is sealed, the first one to be sealed among those who are forever the redeemed. And this is what the word Yehudah means: “Salvation is from the Jews.”

And you wonder, but what does it mean, a Jew born after the flesh of Abraham? No, the Jew born after the faith of Abraham that brings itself to the point where it is culminated in the promise fulfilled, the promise made to Abraham, the promise of the child (Gen. 17:15; 18:14).

And these are the old the promise made to Abraham, the promise of the child (Gen. 17:15; 18:14). And these are the old man’s words, he goes back and he quotes, “You worship what you do not know” and then he translates it in this manner: “You serve; you are blind to that which you serve. You do not know why you serve but you serve.

We know what we serve, we know what we worship. We are the beholders of the eternal principle; we are the knowers of the little child. Yehudah stands for ‘the presence of his praise.’ The center of his presence is the mouth, or king; the king is the little child.

All heaven obeys the little child; and all earth is compelled to manifest that which the heavens obey; and they obey only the voice of the little child. You must always forever think of the Christos as the little child.” These are Ab’s words. I’d long forgotten that letter. I’ve had it now, say, thirty-four years in an old Bible that I rarely have occasion to refer to.

Then you go back and you read the 8th chapter of the Book of Proverbs, and start at the 22nd verse and go through, say, to the 31st: “The Lord created me at the beginning of his way, the first of his acts of old. Ages ago I was set up, at the first, before he brought forth the earth. When he laid the foundations of the earth, I was beside him as a little child. I was daily his delight, rejoicing before him always, rejoicing in his inhabited world and delighting in the sons of men. He who finds me finds life; he who misses me injures himself; he who hates me loves death.” Now, here is the personification of wisdom. The Hebrews took all abstract ideas and principles and personified them.

So the first creation of God was wisdom, the first emanation. The verb “created” me can also be translated— and possibly has a far greater claim to the new definition of it rather than the old one “possessed” me. The King James Version said, “The Lord possessed me at the beginning of his way”; the Revised Standard Version said, “The Lord created me.” But both are correct from this Hebrew verb. You can’t separate God’s creative power and his wisdom from himself…but it’s personified as a little child.

Now he said, “He delights.” Well, he delights? If you read both the King James Version and the Revised Standard Version you would think that a little child was the source of delight. Not so in the Hebrew text. In the Hebrew text this “he delights” means that wisdom is the one who experiences the emotion of delight; the creative power is experiencing the emotion of delight. It’s all coming out of the Lord and the Lord is defined for us as “I AM.”

That’s the source. But his creative power and his wisdom is that which experiences the emotion of delight; it is the little child. So Ab said, Always think of the Christ as the little child. And we who are called Yehudah, we the Jews, said he, not by the accident of birth of the flesh but by the faith of Abraham; those who heard the promise, regardless of their racial background, those who heard it and remained faithful to it; and came forward in faith to all the horrors of the world, no condemnation, they were only doing God’s will; and came to the point where it was the little child which was promised. We are now the “knowers of the little child.” Everyone who is the knower of the little child every one is numbered among those called “salvation from the Jews.”

Everyone comes into that state because they know the little child. As Blake said, “The dead heard the voice of the child and began to awake from sleep. All things heard the voice of the child and began to awake to life.” The voice of the child? Yes, he is the very breath, as told us in Ecclesiastes (3:19), he is the breath of God and the breath of God makes man alive.

Let him remove his breath from man and man dies. But, what is this breath? It’s called breath…breath is the wind. And the wind and Spirit are the same word in Hebrew, but the primary meaning of the word ruwach is really wind.

So when they find the child, one said, “I didn’t hear a voice.” But you heard the wind, didn’t you?

Well, that was the voice of the child. That was the voice of the child calling the dead from that eternal sleep. So if you heard the wind, you began to awake, and you awoke from what really was the sleep of death. And eventually all will hear the wind, which is the voice of the child, and all will awake to life.

Every word I’ve told you is true. You’ve been promised a child. You’re going to get that child. After you get the child which is born to you, another one is coming that’s something entirely different… and “a son is given.” These are the words, “Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given” (Is. 9:6).

Not the same thing. The child is born and you hold the child in your own hands; that child is born, a sign of your birth… it’s all about a birth. But the next one isn’t born; that was begotten of God and given to you when God decided to give you himself It is God’s purpose to give man himself, as and given to you when God decided to give you himself It is God’s purpose to give man himself, as though there were no other in the world, just God and you.

And to prove that he succeeded in his purpose which was to give you himself, if God is a father then he has a child. If he gave you himself, then you are the father of that child. So the second part of this statement from the 9th chapter of Isaiah “unto us a son is given.” First a child is born, that comes first—because he can’t give you his son on this level, the son is Spirit. He can’t give it to flesh and blood, “for flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God” (1Cor. 15:50).

To inherit the kingdom of God as God, you must be God the Father; kingdom of God” (1Cor. 15:50). To inherit the kingdom of God as God, you must be God the Father; and there is no way of knowing that you are God the Father unless you are also the father of his son.

So, unto us a child is born to signify our birth in the land of Spirit, and to us is given a son. The child is born because it signifies our birth in heaven, in the world of Spirit; and then comes the gift, a son is given, and that son is David. “Thou art my Son, today I have begotten thee” (Ps. 2:7). This is the Lord speaking to a spiritual state called David.

Then David comes as a gift. He gives you himself, and in giving you himself David has to appear in your world and call you Father. If he doesn’t call you Father, and it’s any other relationship, God did not give you himself; for God is the father of David. “Thou art my Son, today I have begotten thee.”

So David comes into the world, your world individually and calls you Father. Every one in this world is going to have that experience; then you will know the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. For if you are the father of my son then you and I are one. If I am the father of your son and your son is the same son that is my son, then who could deny the oneness of the two of us? The only way in the world that you’d ever know the oneness of God is through his Son.

So when I found this old paper falling apart—undoubtedly it was written on a very cheap piece of paper, all typed, and all broken up like this…handled it very gently… it’s been eleven years— and here he analyzes this wonderful, simple thing. But now I can understand it better having experienced in the last thirty-odd years since he gave it to me.

So what is he saying, that the creatures are not blamed for any seeming wrong that they commit, what does he mean by it? When he gave it to me I didn’t have the experience, but now I know. If you came into a place like this, but now it’s more animated than it is now, suppose they were dining or dancing, walking around, and all animated; and while you came in invisible to them–for you came in Spirit, you are awake— as you come into the place, you know that this animated world is animated only because of you.

This whole vast moving world you are moving it. And to prove that you are moving it, you arrest an activity in yourself; and at that very moment that you arrest it in yourself everything freezes, but everything freezes. You observe them, you go over and you simply look at them closely, and they’re dead, all dead. Then you release it in yourself, and they become once more animated and continue to fulfill their intentions.

Suppose you could change the intention…for it comes from above, they’re only fulfilling your service; they’re all under compulsion. Now you know what the “mouth of God” is, for he spoke, and the mouth is the little child. The mouth or the king, and the king is the little child, the breath of God.

And you know exactly what you did, you arrested an activity in your own being, and that arrestment was the taking back of your breath… and they died. How could you condemn any man in this world for what he’s doing when you are animating it all? You set the whole thing in motion when you are in Spirit. While you are here in the flesh, you too are subjected to your own command from above.

So if you come into the world to tell the story of your eternal principle, you are subjected to the same thing that you, from above, subject the whole world. That’s the price you pay for the expansion of your own creative power. There is only God in the world, nothing but God. God is playing all the parts; there is nothing but God. He plays the wise man’s part and the fool, the lover and the one who hates.

Now let us go back, “He who finds me finds life”—how to stop it and start it. “He who misses me injures himself’ he continues in the wheel and he’s hungry, and he hasn’t quite satisfied the hunger to find him. “He who hates me loves death”— look at the whole vast world and you can’t condemn them, they don’t know of the little child, they don’t know of the creative power of God called Christ Jesus, and they are in love with the world. They want to extend this little thing—they’re in pain– another day, another month, another year. They have two homes; they want four to feel more secure.

They have a dozen suits; they want two to feel better dressed than the other. They go through life wanting more of death, for this world is dead and people don’t know it. I know it. I have seen it. I stopped it, I stopped it and started it, at sections, and I’ve done it more than once, so it was not a mistake the first time. So I know what he means by “He who finds me finds life.”

So the creative power of God is personified as a little child. Paul speaks of the creative power of God as Christ Jesus in the first chapter, the 24th verse of 1st Corinthians: “And to those who are called, both Jew and Greek, Jesus Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.” So, the power of God is personified as Jesus Christ.

But always think of Jesus Christ as the little child, always the little child who always delighted in the presence of his Father, and he was the one who always experienced the emotion of delight.

The creative power experiences that. He’s not the source of it; he’s the one who experiences the emotion of delight. When one comes to this realization and finds the little child signifying his own birth from above, thereafter he finds the son that is given. And then the son that is given reveals to him who he is, and he breaks the wheel of death. For this is the mystery of life through death: “Unless a seed falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it brings forth much” (John 12:24).

So, God became man in his creative power that man may become God (Phil. 2:7), so all the commands are by God to God. Man as we see him in this world is part of the eternal structure of the universe. This thing called Neville—and all of its phases from the time it appeared on the scene until that moment in time when it vanishes and ceases to be to those who are left at that moment in time has never passed away, and it was not really brought into being. It was always a part of the structure of the universe.

I am animating it, as we are animating with the creative power, animating all of this in this world. I will leave it forever… it will still be part of the eternal structure of the universe, and unless animated, it remains dead in its every little aspect. The babe that nursed the mother, the little one reluctantly on his way to school, the little boy trying to find his way in life, the man, all of that, are simply garments that you animate. And the day will come, you and I, having gone through all the furnaces, experiencing this creative power that is God, will awake, and we are the creative power of God and one with God. Then we can say we are Yehudah.

We’ve been saved, we’ve been salvaged from the world of death. Suddenly we all awaken, and God and his son, the creative power of himself, are one.

Then a new venture…a new play with the same characters, for they remain part of the eternal structure of the universe. We conceive an entirely different drama. Now, tonight if you went to a play and you saw the actors, would you condemn them for the parts they play?

If there’s any condemnation, is it not to be given to the author? Well, the author conceived the play. The author is God. And there was no one to animate the characters but God; and he had to actually pass through the experiences that he conceived. But all these things were dead. Believe me I have seen them dead, but everything.

And the day will come that everything we in our world have discovered concerning the great scientific discoveries of the world will not be so. Not a thing will be as we now see it. Gravity… well, every child who goes to school has been taught what we believe gravity to be…there isn’t a child in the world… and they prove how true it is by not jumping off the top of the building: We know we’re going to fall to the floor. And yet, having arrested an activity within myself which made everything stand still, things that should fall didn’t fall. A bird in flight didn’t fall; it remained there stationery in space because in me it was arrested.

So where is gravity? And tomorrow we’ll change all that today we’ve discovered, or think we’ve discovered, and rearrange the play so completely we can then take our creative power and with a rearrangement of the play, using the same characters, play a far greater play to expand beyond what we have expanded our creative power. And that is Jesus Christ.

So when he said, “We are Yehudah, the knowers of the little child. We are the beholders of the eternal principle, so we are Yehudah. And you worship what you do not know, because you do not know what you serve and why you serve, but you serve.” Man plays all these parts and he doesn’t know why he’s doing what he’s doing. He knows he started in the world by the actions of a power not his own. He was born physically certainly by the actions of powers not his own. And he finds himself in a family, he doesn’t know why. He finds himself moving through the world, he doesn’t know why.

And all are serving this compulsion from above, which is spoken into being by the little child who is delighting in these experiences. We are one day born above. We’ll hold the little child, the symbol of it, when we enter that creative world and start the whole thing; and we give the spoken word until every power can be exercised that is God and redeemed. For he’s only redeeming himself; leaving man just where he is as part of the eternal structure of the world.

So in the end nothing is condemned: “Forgive them, Father; for they know not what they do” (Luke 22:34). They don’t know. So the words at the end of the trial, “Do you not know that I have power to crucify you, and power to release you?” He said, “You have no power over me were it not given to you from above” (John 19:10). A man dares to say to Caesar’s representative that you have no power over me? He knew exactly what he was talking about, for this one said to the Samaritan, “We know what we worship; you do not know what you worship.” Caesar thought he knew, and Caesar’s arm, Pilate, thought he had the power either to release him or to crucify him; and he told him, “You have no power either to release me or to crucify me were it not given to you from above; therefore he who delivered me into your hands he has the greater sin”…if it be sin. Because no one (??) it, it’s all a play. We stepped upon the stage well rehearsed to play the part we’re playing, to exercise this creative power that is personified in scripture as Jesus Christ. We were told it all before we started.

In that lovely poem The New House: “Now first as I shut the door I was alone in the new house and the wind began to moan. Old at once was the house and I was old. My ears were teased with the dread of what was foretold: nights of storm, days of mist without end, sad days when the sun shown in vain, old griefs and griefs not yet begun. All was foretold me, naught could I foresee; but I learned how the wind would sound after these things should be” (Edward Thomas). After the whole thing is over you know the sound of that child…the wind…you hear it. So when the little child is found wrapped in swaddling clothes, and they hear the wind, they don’t suspect that the wind that they hear is the voice of God calling one from the grave.

So he called me from the grave. I was buried in the sepulcher of my skull, and the wind came; he breathed upon me. And what a wind! All was foretold me, but while I’m playing the part I’m so lost in the part I cannot foresee it. Yet it was foretold me. And the promise, the end, was foretold me: He would give me a child, and the child would signify my birth, though I am old. For Abraham was old, he was a hundred years old, and he was told, “You will be now exiled for four hundred years.”

Well, four hundred is the numerical value of the last letter of the Hebrew alphabet, and the symbol of that last letter is a cross; the letter is Tau. So while I wear the cross of flesh and travel through this world exiled from my true home to expand the power that is mine, at the very end he will keep his promise exiled from my true home to expand the power that is mine, at the very end he will keep his promise and give me the child. And that will be my exit from the world of death.

And so, I will come back having received his promise. And before he takes off the garment, the cross, he will give me himself, and that will be given to me in the form of his son. He will give me his son David as my son. Before he calls me back I will have full consciousness of the fact that I and my Father, whom men call God, are one, when it gives it to me here in the world of shadows by giving me David as my son. Then he rips the whole thing, so I will never occupy it again, tears it from top to bottom, this temple.

Then he lifts me up in the form of a fiery, fiery serpent. Then he seals the bargain which he made with himself by descending upon me in bodily form as a dove, and smothers me with kisses, that I will know he has kept his promise and is satisfied with the journey now that is at its end.

But although anyone who has it longs to depart to be one with that creative power from on high rather than below being worked on, the need keeps one here still in the flesh. So you can tell it and tell it to those he sent to hear it. For everything is ordered, there’s nothing out of order.

Not one person is here tonight that shouldn’t be here, and not one person is missing, not one. What is being said this night, this night had to be heard by those who heard it. He sent you as he sent me. Not a thing is out of order. As Blake said in his risen state today: “Do not be intimidated by the horrors of the world. Everything is ordered and correct and must fulfill its destiny in order to attain perfection.

Follow this course and you will receive from your own ego an even deeper perception of the eternal beauties of nature. You will also receive an ever increasing release from all that now seems to you so sad and terrible” (Modern Painting—said to Max Beckman in a vision). On this level it is. who would deny it? But believe me, it is ordered, everything is ordered, everything is correct.

Now when you hear it for the first time you resent it, you resist it.When I first met my old friend Ab …and Ab was adamant about it. And here, only last Wednesday, opening up an old Bible— I wanted to get that interpretation against my modern interpretation–and I went back to it, and here among the leaves were two letters from Ab.Undoubtedly, I have another two or three dozen letters buried somewhere in other books. Where they are I don’t know. But here, in rereading them, he takes the word itself “Cabala” and brings it down in its four wonderful states, and shows you what it really means. You and I have been taught that it really means “the unwritten mystery,” that which is the oral tradition, carried forward from generation to generation, orally–the father tells the son and the son tells his son, and so on, to keep this great mystery alive. For when he breaks it into its component parts in the Hebraic tongue, he shows you exactly how you arrive at the very name, and takes all of the characters of scripture, and they’re all personifications of eternal states. It was the habit of the Hebrew to take every abstract idea, every principle and personalize it. So he starts off with the great father Jacob, the father of the twelve,and shows these twelve as the grand twelve transparencies, the twelve crystals, the twelve stones that received the commandments— and all these he called the pneumana and this the phenomena.And no command is ever given to the phenomena; it’s under compulsion to do what it does. All commands are given to God in the pneumana and then that is expressed in this world of phenomena.

But here, you wouldn’t think thisorthodox rabbi…for that’s really what he was all of his life until the revelation came, the visions came.A strict Jew in all that you would consider the orthodox Jew to do concerning diets, dress, everything, all the habits, and he speaks today of the little child. He couldn’t have done it unless the same thing happened to him that happened to Paul, who was also a very strict orthodox Jew. But you can’t resist the revelation when it happens. No matter what you are before, you have to go along with the tide after the revelation. So he could come and say, “We are now Yehudah…the same because we are the knowers of the little child.” Prior to that, you are simply persecuting everyone; everyone does because he was commanded to. No blame; that was the order from above, the part he had to play as it was written, as the play was written. And while he’s on his way to persecute comes the revelation of the little child. And from then on, your entire course changes and you move in an entirely different direction. So tonight, to quote him again, “The creatures are not judged or condemned for the seeming wrongs they do, for the Lord himself ordained all deeds, and you move in an entirely different direction. So tonight, to quote him again, “The creatures are not judged or condemned for the seeming wrongs they do, for the Lord himself ordained all deeds, and judged or condemned for the seeming wrongs they do, for the Lord himself ordained all deeds, and the Lord himself performs all that is performed. And if there be evil, I the Lord alone am evil.”

Now let us go into the Silence and just set our hope fully upon the grace that is coming to us at this revelation of Jesus Christ, who must always be considered as the little child revelation of Jesus Christ, who must always be considered as the little child.

Q: (??) how would you feel on another level if some member of your family kidnapped and killed… if you don’t feel they are guilty in their heart?

A: Your question is perfectly marvelous. On this level make every effort to test his promise on this level: Whatever you desire and you believe that you received it, you will. So test your creative power on this level.

Q: (??) I won’t blame…

A: I’m telling you, what I said for the last three-quarters of an hour, almost fifty minutes now, that this is a play and God is playing all the parts. And you do not fully realize the being that you are until the end. The purpose of this play is simply to expand his creative power beyond what it was prior to the start of the play. There is no limit to translucency, there is no limit to transparency, no limit to expansion. There’s a limit only to contraction. He’s placed a limit on contraction which was man, a limit on opacity which is doubt— he calls it the devil or Satan in scripture. So there’s a limit to this opacity and to contraction; but no limit to translucency or to expansion and man expands beyond what he was before. For he then is the creative power of God and the play is over. There’s a rejoicing because of the greater expansion of the creative power.

Then comes a new play; not any end where you sit down and simply rock in a chair. It’s a creative God of whom I speak, and we go on forever expanding the power that is the creative power of God. There’s only God. And so, God and his creative power really are one. He said, “I and my Father are one…but my Father is greater than I” (John 14:28), so that his power to create great as it is could not be as great as the source of that creative power; yet they are one.

You can’t separate his creative power from himself So he said, “I and my Father are one, but my Father is greater than I.”

I’m not asking anyone to even envision some hurt, but as the great poet said, “I am involved in mankind; every man’s death is the death of me. Never send to ask for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for me.” So I can speak, yes, of my child, my daughter, my son, and not know that you are, in the real sense of the word, as much my child as the one I call my child. And so, if a mother had one child injure the other, and she was fully aware of the fact both were her children, she would ask the judge to be merciful when the one who injured the other is brought before him to judgment because they are both hers. That story of Solomon and the child, he found out the true mother when the other one who was not the mother said, Cut it in half But if you knew every one is as much yours as the one you think is yours, you’d be merciful with all.

Q: Neville, would you comment on the mystical meaning of Jews and Gentiles.

A: Jews and Gentiles. The Gentile in scripture—you take the New Testament, the part of it was simply the heathen, the pagan who had multiple gods. The Jew beginning with Abraham had the one God. It was always against any duality of gods; God and God only. “I am the Lord your God, the Holy one of Israel, your Savior… and besides me there is no God” (Is. 43:3,11). That they went astray, yes, and had Baal and multiple gods; but, basically, the Hebraic God is the one God.

Now, the pagan world into which this thing broke had multiple gods. They worshipped the stars, they worshipped everything–a god of health, a god of wealth, a god of power, a god of death, a god of life, and they prayed to their multiple gods. Today in our Christian world although we give lip service to one God, we have multiple saints, and we pray to this saint for this, and that saint for the other.

I am told that in Italy, or any great Catholic world, they’ll pray to this one and if they don’t get answer within a week, slap him in the face, go to another god. That was told me if they don’t get answer within a week, slap him in the face, go to another god. That was told me by an impresario in San Francisco two years ago. He said, “I actually saw it happen. I’m born a Catholic, I’m still a Catholic, I’m raised a Catholic, I’m a Catholic.” He said, “I’ve seen it.

They’ll go and pray before this one for awhile and if he doesn’t come through with what he’s asking for, they’ll spit on him, throw him out, ‘He’s no good!’ and go to another god.” Well, they still give lip service to one God, and call it by a name, they’ll call it Jesus Christ, but they don’t know who Jesus Christ is.

Jesus Christ is your own wonderful human Imagination, that creative know who Jesus Christ is. Jesus Christ is your own wonderful human Imagination, that creative power that is in man, and it’s one with the Divine Imagination. You don’t need any saints in this world, don’t need anything in this world to whom you pray, none. No intermediary between yourself and self that is God. God and his creative power are one.

So the gentile was the pagan of multiple gods. So he sends Paul to the gentiles, for Paul was equipped as the orthodox Jew and when he saw the real revelation, he was sent to the gentiles.

Peter went to the Jews. And then you get the story. But all these are simple…alright, I go to everyone. I don’t care whether you’re Catholic or a Christian Scientist or a Jew or anything else in this world, Mohammedan, I don’t care. I know what I’m telling you is true; it’s based upon experience. The whole thing is unveiled before me; I’ve experienced it. And so, I wasn’t always (??) because it’s true, this is everlastingly true. There’s only one God, one being playing all the parts.

There will be no conflict between gods when the drama is over but a rejoicing because the play came out just as predetermined. God planned everything as it has come out and as it will be consummated.

Q: (??) if everything is supposed to be planned and we are the actors and come in with a script, then the whole thing is a fatalistic type of thing…just sit back and …

A:On a certain level it seems that way. You cannot avoid the conclusion of predestination when you read the letters of Paul.In the 8th chapter of the Book of Romans, when he tells us: “Those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son. And those whom he predestined he also called; and those whom he called he also justified; and those whom he justified he also glorified” (verse 29). These five terms…I don’t see how anyone can take the five terms of foreknowledge, predestination, to be called, to be justified, and to be glorified and arrive at any other conclusion than predestination.

Yet within the framework of a predestined play, the actors are given much freedom; because whether you are rich or poor does not alter the play, whether you are known or unknown. But if you want to be known more than to know of the creative power of God, then you are denying him in this world and falling in love with death; for this is death, when you want more and more of this state as the world seems to want it.

Tonight they are praying for Churchill’s recovery. What Churchill’s recovery? Let the old gentleman go. Ninety years old and he’s lived such a full and wonderful life, they’re asking people on TV and radio, “Let us pray for his recovery” That’s the most stupid thing in the world! Let the old gentleman who has played such a full and wonderful life close his eyes as they close tonight.

He’s not in a coma. Well, let him be free after ninety years of this. But no, the average person thinks well that’s oblivion, so let him have another one year of miseries. The old boy has been miserable for the last two years, being helped around. I mean, I would be embarrassed if all my normal, natural functions had to be assisted. Let me go when no one has to help me with any natural function.

Q: The Bible speaks of (??)…now when Jesus went through the cross and resurrection, he was expanding his creative power. He also made the statement, “If a man keeps my word he shall never see death”…this trying to be translated “without going through the actual physical experience.” Do you feel that is possible with the birth of the Christ child and coming into this angelic presence?

A: That is a story you can put into another frame. I have entered worlds without going through the womb of woman, worlds just as real as this. That if anyone had held me tightly and did not allow me to return here to this world where I now stand and address you, and asked me for my credentials, they’d be no part of that world that I could ever point to and show I was ever born there. Would they believe it? Because to the world one has to go through the womb of woman to enter it. But I’ve entered these worlds as a man, and there’s no record that I ever should have ever left. Well, this is only to teach the mind of man to begin to think in terms of something greater than that which is confined to the cradle and the grave.

But Christ Jesus is the power… and don’t think of him on a wooden cross. As I look at you, that’s where he’s crucified. The creative power of God is actually crucified right there where you are now, and when you say “I am,” before you tell me who you are, you’ve called upon his name. That’s his name! And this body he has to carry it all through these four hundred years of real furnaces. Symbolical number, granted, it could only be ten years or seventy years, but while you bear this you’re bearing a cross. And that’s Jesus Christ, but Jesus Christ is only the power, the creative power and the wisdom of God, and he’s in you when you say “I am”. You begin to imagine, that’s God in action.

So forget the traditional concept of a man on a wooden cross, that isn’t true at all. As told us in that wonderful Book of Galatians, the 3rd chapter: “0 foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified? Let me ask you only this: Did you receive the Spirit by the working of the law, or by hearing with faith? Are you so foolish? Having begun in the Spirit, are you ending in the flesh (verse 1)?” For a thing to be portrayed you go to the theater…that’s a portrayal.

Or I can portray by telling you in verbal form. Or I can portray by going to the canvas and painting a picture. There are many ways of portraying an event. And he uses the word advisedly: “Before whose eyes Jesus Christ”— which is the power and the wisdom of God— “was portrayed as crucified.” And you heard the story.

For the new version, called the English Bible, or the New English Bible, they use an entirely different expression of it. But the Revised Standard uses the word “portrayed” and so does the King James Version. But they use the word “you heard”…”in faith you heard the gospel.” That New English Bible: “Did you receive the Spirit by the working of the law or by hearing the gospel in faith?”

So we’re told, one must hear the testimony of Jesus and respond to it, he hears it. Or you can go to the screen and see it portrayed on the screen, if portrayed correctly. But not a man on a wooden cross! This is the cross that the creative power of God wears. And if you destroy it, this is dead. But he’s not destroyed. And when I reach the end I awake, individualized, as a companion of God and yet one with God. (inaudible)

The Son is his creative power. The whole creation groans and waits longingly for the revealing of the sons of God. They always think of the Son as his creative power and his wisdom, but all things concerning God— God being man–is always personified. So you will never lose identity yet you are his creative power. Goodnight.