In this lecture, Neville Goddard explains that the core of divine power resides in the sacred name I AM, as revealed in Exodus 3:13–15. He emphasizes that calling in the name of God means assuming ‘I am’ what one desires, rather than petitioning an external deity. Using biblical references and metaphysical insight, Goddard shows how the Word made flesh and the believer’s imagination are one and the same creative force. He illustrates practical application through the law of assumption and personal examples of manifesting relationships and prosperity. Ultimately, he reveals that the full consummation of the divine name culminates in universal fatherhood, where the Son calls the believer ‘Father,’ completing the cycle of creation through conscious imagination.
The name of God is the key to the understanding of the doctrine of God. In the Bible the great question is not does God exist but who is our God? Today unnumbered so-called wise men question the existence of God. We do not question the existence of God; we only ask, “Who is our God?” And the whole secret is in his name. We’re told “My name is in him.” Now you listen carefully this night. It will take you from wherever you are to where you want to be. There is only God in this world; there is nothing but God. Really, God only is. And you listen to that carefully, God only is. “Let us to him who only is give decision”…he only is.
Now, we turn to the greatest book in the world, the Bible. “When you go to the people of Israel, you say unto them that the God of their fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob has sent you.” “And he said to him, But if I say to them that the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob sent me, and they ask me his name, what should I say?” He said, “Say unto them I AM has sent you.” That’s all, I AM has sent you. “That is my name forever, and thus shall I be known throughout all generations” (Ex. 3:13-15). That’s my name. I am in them. “Do not touch him, for my name is in him,” as we are told throughout scripture. The full significance of this name is apparent only in the light of its consummation when the name of God is manifested by him who is the Word made flesh. The Word made flesh…and it will come into this world clothed in a garment dipped in blood (Rev. 19:13)…and his name shall be called the Word of God, the Word of God.
The Bible is called the Word of God. You mean he’s called “The Bible”? Yes, he’s come to fulfill it. For we are told, My word shall not return unto me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and it shall succeed in that for which it is sent (Isaiah 55:11). It cannot return unto me empty. Are you dipped in a garment of blood? You certainly are. Are you not clothed in flesh and blood? Is this not a garment that you wear? This certainly is not the speaker—this is a garment that he wears. I’m not addressing you as I see you; you are, too, dipped in a garment that is dipped in blood, so you are flesh and blood. But you the wearer, you are not flesh and blood; for these things disappear, they disintegrate; they become seemingly nothing, returned to dust. But you, the being that I address, you are the Word of God, and the Word of God cannot return to God empty, and the Word and God are one. As we are told, the Word is the seed and seed is the Word. It’s himself he plants in these garments dipped in blood; and they must return unto him bearing that which he sent them to accomplish.
Now, what is the being in man? It is I AM. There is nothing but God, and God is I AM. Now when I am told to call upon his name—call upon his name and I will accomplish anything in this world—how can I call upon his name? Well, his name is I AM. And yet when the whole vast world calls upon the name, they say, In the name of God, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, in the name of this, that and the other. That’s not his name. His only name is I AM. Well, how would I call upon his name? I don’t call upon his name—I call in the name. If I would call this night and conjure wealth, I would say, “I am wealthy.” Though everything in this world denies it—my senses, my reason, everything denies it—if really I believe in the name of God and believe his name is I AM, and that with God all things are possible, I would call in the name of God by assuming that I am what I want to be. If I don’t do it, I can pray forever and nothing happens; only as I call in the name of God, and his name is I AM.
He said, “Those who know my name put their trust in me.” Read it carefully. If you do not know the Bible, it’s the 9th chapter of the Psalms, “Those who know my name put their trust in me,” if I really know this name is God’s name (verse 10). He has no other name, just I AM, and all things are possible to God. And if tonight I really believe that this is the name of God, and in scripture the name of God is synonymous with God himself, so I don’t say, that’s his name but he’s out there. It is himself. My name is in him; therefore, I am in him. God became man that man may become God. If I really believed it and put my trust in his name—I know I AM—well, then I put my trust in myself. And tonight, though I don’t have a nickel, though I have no one to support me, no one to come to my aid, I put my trust in him—those who know his name put their trust in him—then I dare to assume that I am and I name it, and fall asleep in the assumption that I am that which I’ve assumed that I am, I have put my trust in God. This is his name forever. If you dare to do it, may I tell you, it will prove itself in the testing.
But if you think that God is something out in space…it seems so vast, this whole vast world, and you a little tiny thing seated here tonight. And you look out, and then the scientists tell us that there are unnumbered light years between where we are and where the fastest telescope can take us. It seems so big, so vast and we’re so tiny. And that is the grand illusion. May I tell you, only the Imagination of man, who is God himself, is vast enough to contain the immensity of space. Is there any place in this universe that man could ever go where he has not gone first in Imagination? I tell you no.
Here, I think a year or two years ago, I read in the New York Times when we were there, that Russia is up in arms against China for drawing a map that is called the map of China, and they include in this map vast areas of Russia. Huge, enormous areas of Russia they have put into the present map of China. In 1938 Russia drew a Russian map and they included all the Balkan states, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, as part of the structure of Russia. In 1940 the Red army moved in and took over the whole vast area. Could they move in before they first went in Imagination? So they plotted the whole thing and now it’s part of Russia. China is following the same footsteps concerning Russia. You can predict what China will do for Russia. In spite of all the so-called nuclear bombs, they have marked out what they’re going to take and call it China.
You could start with nothing and mark out what you want in this world: this building, that building, the other building. We were at dinner the other night with two very dear friends of ours (we will not mention names)…and here, this fabulous building in which they operate—and this building is only one of numberless buildings across the country, possibly the world—and then she mentioned the name of the one who really…not the name of the one building of theirs…but the one behind it all who really owns it. And so, she mentioned the name—you’ll find it on the stock exchange; I will not mention it—then she said, “He, by the way, was Al Capone’s bookkeeper.” You and I reading the name and the billion dollars behind it, oh, we’re so carried away, so important…a billion, maybe several billion behind it. He started off in my generation, because Al Capone came in the 1920s in the day of Prohibition. He was the bookkeeper of Al Capone, but you read the name in the paper and all the social figures, my Lord, everything, all the glamour, all this…and the beginning was Al Capone’s bookkeeper.
Don’t go too far back to find out anything in this world…you’ll be disillusioned. You start with the name of God. No matter how you go back, it will all be disillusioning, no matter who you are. Take any person in this world, you take him back and you’re going to find something that would frighten you. So forget it!And start now with the name of God— it’s the only creative power in the world. That power is your own wonderful I-am-ness, that’s God. When you go to the people of Israel and they ask you for my name, you simply tell them I AM has sent you, that’s all that you say. I am who I am, I am what I am, I AM, and that’s all that you say.
Now the root of this word, which is Yod He Vau He—the verb is He Vau He—the primary meaning of this word, of this verb, is “to fall, or to blow; or causatively, to cause to fall or to cause the wind to blow.” So when we think in terms of this root, which is I AM, we should think in terms of the primary meanings of this verb, which is “to either fall or to cause to fall; or to blow or cause the wind to blow.” So that this world in which we live which is called the fallen world is not a mistake. It’s a deliberate act on the part of God to limit himself to these that we are; to contract to the limit of contraction, the limit of opacity, that he may then begin to expand beyond any limit of translucence; all limits broken into expansion, no limit to expansion, no limit to translucency. But we do it by a contraction, so he fell into what is called man, a deliberate act on the part of God. You and I didn’t do a thing as men.
But you think this thing over. Can you conceive of any greater affirmation in the world, “I AM sent you”? Can you conceive of any greater affirmation that would actually prove to us our unity with God and with each other? I can’t conceive of any greater affirmation. Before you say anything you must first be aware, and to be aware you say “I am.” Well, I can’t say anything before I first declare that I am. I can say a man, but man follows after I first declare that I am. I can say I’m a white man, a black man, a yellow man, a red man, but after I say “I am” then I put these limitations on it. But before anything, I first am. Well, can you conceive of any affirmation in this world that would actually reveal to us our unity with God and with each other? When these little limitations are taken off, as they all will be in the end, just I am. And in the end, “God is one and his name is one.” There is nothing but God.
So I tell you tonight, you can try it…try it and prove it on this level in anything in this world. Tonight you want to be…and you name it. You want to be happily married, alright, and you know no one who is interested in you or maybe you are not interested in anyone. And you dare to assume that you are blissfully and happily married, and you assume it, and carry on in your Imagination all the little imaginal acts that would imply such a union, such fulfillment. You feel the ring—in the Western world you would feel a ring on this finger—and sleep in that assumption. May I tell you, I’m speaking from experience, I am not theorizing. I told my niece in New York City, and on a blind date she met this chap, who graduated from his college, which was Duke. Then came her second sister and she heard on the wind that her sister sought advice from me, so she came, and I told her what I told her sister. She did the same thing, and she met a man on a blind date as her first sister did, and he graduated from Dartmouth. And so, in no time flat they were married…all on blind dates.
So I say to anyone, if you really believe in the name of God, you’ll put your trust in him. “Those who know my name put their trust in me.” If they don’t know my name, they’ll call me by everything in this world and I can’t respond. The only prayer that really goes outside of this room, as far as I’m concerned, is the prayer of what I am. So I assume that I am—though the room denies it, the world denies it, reason denies, everything denies it—but I dare to put my trust in the name of God, knowing that the name of God is God himself. It’s not just a name. You call me Neville and you think that Neville differs from the being? No, I respond to Neville; but the true name is I AM if I know God’s name, and those who know my name put their trust in me. “All things are possible to me” said he. So put your trust in the name and the name is God himself. So tonight, as you sleep in this world, you dare to assume I am…and you name it…and fall asleep in the assumption that you are that which you want to be.
I tell you, the time will come—and may it not be distant—when you will see this name unfold within you. And the final name is Father: “I have manifested thy name. I have given them the name thou gavest me. O Holy Father, keep them in thy name as the name that you gave to me, that they may be one as we are one” (John 17:6, 11). The final name of God is Father. It’s I AM to begin with, and you can put anything in the world upon that name: I am rich, I am poor, I am wanted, I am unwanted…put anything on it. It conjures everything you put upon it. In the final, in the very end, his name is Father; and there’s no power in the world that can reveal this fatherhood but the Son. The whole of humanity and all of its experiences, all that man has ever done or could ever do, fused together into a single being, and he stands before you, and you look at him, and he calls you Father. That’s the end of the name, when David stands before you and calls you Father. And then you know the fullness of the name of God.
So the full significance of the name is apparent only in the light of its consummation, when the whole vast name of God is manifested by him who is called “the Word of God”. “My word”—he sends it forward—“my word shall not return unto me void, it must accomplish that which I please, and prosper in the thing for which I sent it.” So, he sent his Word in you: “My word is in him. Do not touch him, my word is in him.” So you were sent out into this fabulous world, the world of death; and his name is in you, and it contains a plan. It cannot return void, it must accomplish that which I please, and brings back a reflection of himself and he’s Father. Well, how could you come back save you are the Father? And to be the Father there must be a Son, and that Son is David, and David calls you Father. So in the very end, the Word unfolds completely, like a flower. And then you stand in the presence of that which was in the very beginning, the fullness of all that man could ever accomplish, gathered together, personified as a single youth (eternity) called David. He looks at you and calls you Father, and you know this was forever. You come back as God himself. So God sends himself into the world of death, this great mystery of life through death, and brings himself back, the redeemed. Only God…there’s nothing in this world but God.
So I say to everyone tonight, you just try it on this level. Dare to believe…and you name it. I don’t say that you should want this, that or the other. What does it really matter if someone has a billion, someone has something less, someone has nothing? Doesn’t really matter. Maybe you don’t want such money, I don’t know. I know in my own life, I never really wanted it, I never really wanted money. Today I have been blessed with it…it’s been given to me by my father…and yet I don’t really care whether it is or not. I don’t receive it. It’s there for those who will come after me, my wife, my children, but I don’t really care. I don’t get the income from it, but it’s there in abundance judged by human standards, and yet I haven’t the slightest urge to touch it. I have never touched it. I have no desire to touch it. There it stands, growing like a forest. I do well in my world and live in my world on what I earn; but I have no desire for money. I’ve never had it; not since I was born had I any feeling towards money. I know today it’s because I’ve gone through the gamut. I know that I’ve had it in abundance, and having had it in abundance it has no taste for me, but none whatsoever. I have to use it to pay rent and do these things, but I have no desire for money. And so, although I have it, a considerable sum, I still have no desire for it. But if tonight you want it, may I tell you, assume in the name of God. God is the power of power. And so, you simply say “I am”…that’s his name. Those who know my name put their trust in me.
So if you can do what millions of Christians do and other members of other denominations do, pray to a God and call him by the name of Jehovah or God, or the Lord, or the Lord Jesus Christ, you don’t know God. If you completely forget all external gods, and when you sleep this night assume I am, and you simply assume that you are what you want to be. Completely forget all external powers and really believe in God and God is your own wonderful human Imagination. You must first assume it. No man can walk forth where he has not first gone in Imagination. “Man is all Imagination and God is man, and exists in us and we in him; the eternal body of man is the Imagination, and that is God himself” (Blake).
So what you imagine now, based upon your senses, based upon what reason dictates, well, that’s what you’re going to perpetuate in this world. Can you suspend what they dictate and dare to assume that you are the one that you want to be, putting all trust in him, and he is your own wonderful I-am-ness? If you dare to assume it and remain loyal to that assumption, no power in this world can stop you from becoming that man, that woman, or whatever you are or desire to be in this world, but no power. And in the end, the Word will return, and then the Word returns and unfolds in you; for the Word is planted in you. And bear in mind he is simply clad in a robe dipped in blood, and his name shall be called the Word of God. And the Word of God is called truth: “Thy word is truth,” and he said, “I am the truth” (John 14:6).
So, I am the Word, and the Word is clad in a robe dipped in blood. This is dipped in blood. When it comes back it comes bearing the name of the one who sent it, and the ultimate name is Father. “Holy Father, keep them in thy name which thou hast given unto me, that they may be one as we are one.” Well, the name he gave me is Father. He gave me the whole vast universe, the whole vast universe of men; and all of the experiences of men fused into a single being is the Son of God called David. And he gave me his Son; therefore, he gave me fatherhood. If he gave me the Son as my Son, then he gave me himself who is Father. So the whole thing comes back and here I stand God the Father—a little tiny being that daily decays, waiting, not impatiently but waiting, for the moment when it is taken off, this robe in which I am clad, a robe, clad in blood, flesh and blood.
But I tell you, everyone in this world is going to have this experience—but everyone in the world—because “My word shall not return unto me void; it must accomplish that which I purpose and it must fulfill that for which I sent it.” What did I send it to do? To unfold myself, God is expanding himself, and so he sends his Word which is his very self. My Word is in them; my name is in them and my Word is my name. So it can’t return void, and when it comes back it brings back the fulfillment of my purpose which is myself, the Father. Everyone has to look into the face of David and see David as his son which is the expansion of the fatherhood of God…and here is this wonderful lad, who is the summation of all that is created in this world.
So the name tonight on this level, try it. Forget all this thing on the outside where they tell you the Holy Father sits in a certain place in this world, and they call this one Father and that one Father. The only Father resides in you and he’s trying to awaken. The day will come he will awaken, and you will know the Father as yourself by reason of his only begotten Son that is David. But while he is awakening and struggling, use the name. In this name all things are possible, so you use the name. Tonight when you sleep, may I tell you, I don’t care what you want. When God reveals himself in the Exodus, it comes at the end of Genesis. “In the beginning God,” that’s the first word; the end of Genesis “…in a coffin in Egypt.” The coffin is this elongated place where God placed himself, this [body] is the coffin: In the beginning God…in a coffin in Egypt. Now the exit comes in the Book of Exodus, and when God begins to make his exit from this coffin, it is by his name. He reveals his name in the Book of Exodus, the 3rd chapter. And his name is in them…and by this name he comes out of Egypt. Those who will not put their trust in his name remain in Egypt. And so he said, I have chosen…choose this day whom you will serve. And they said, I have chosen to serve the Lord. He said unto them, “Then you are witnesses against yourself that you have chosen the Lord.” And they answered, “We are witnesses against ourselves; we have chosen to serve the Lord.” Alright, it’s entirely up to you now. The choice was yours, and you made the choice to serve the Lord. Well, the Lord’s only name is I AM; until it fulfills itself and the very end of that name is Father. But while you are moving out of Egypt you move out by the name of God.
So we come out of this world, this fabulous world of death. This is the world of death, this is the world of horrors, the conflicts one against the other. And we come out. As we come out, we come out and we are the Father. So you start by your choice. I offer you a choice, choose this day whom you will serve. Do not go around ___(??) all the time, choose one or the other. If the Lord is the Lord, choose the Lord, if Baal, choose Baal. Baal means all of the gods of the world. So you believe the stars are going to influence you tomorrow, so you wait for tomorrow morning’s paper, and you read what some nut is saying about the stars. So you will simply read it and say I’m Pisces. Did you see that cartoon recently? These two bums on the street, all patches and torn all over the place, and one says, “Oh, you’re Pisces…it’s good for you not to travel.”There they are, immobilized, completely immobilized, and one said, Yes, so you’re a Pisces, so it’s good you can’t travel, because so and so. And we all read this stupidity in the world. Then we read the numbers, and we read teacup leaves, and monkey bones, and all these things. So choose this day whom you will serve. You serve the Lord or you serve Baal. The word Baal means “all the beliefs in powers external to yourself,” that’s what the word Baal means. So they said, We choose the Lord. Now you are witnesses against yourself that you have chosen the Lord. They said, We are witnesses against ourselves. So they chose the Lord, only to serve him and no other God. If you believe in something other than I AM, alright, believe in it and suffer. Go on throughout the world suffering until you choose the one God, the only God, and that God is your own wonderful I-am-ness.
The day will come, he will take you through the furnaces and bring you out in the full consummation of his name, and the fullness of his name is Father. To be a father there must be a child, and then you look out and you see the only-begotten Son, and he’s David. He calls you Father, and you look and you see Father—Father, yourself—and here is his Son. This relationship was in the beginning, before he sent his Word into expression. So my word shall not return unto me void; it must accomplish that which I please, and it must prosper in the thing for which I sent it. I sent it to fulfill my own being and I’m Father. I want to expand fatherhood; and so he expands his fatherhood by getting all these, his own Word, and send them in, and all come back as Father. He’s infinitely greater at the end of the journey than he was in the beginning when he sent himself out buried in us as his Word.
Now let us go into the Silence.
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Q: (inaudible)A: Everything in this world…at the very end of the race when all awake as God the Father, the drama that allowed it will be as though it were not. The insane, the lame, the halt, the withered, everything will be forgotten. “Father, forgive them, they know not what they do”…the cry of the end. The whole thing is completely obliterated because he extracts himself, the Father. You are not the garment that you wear; I am not the garment. This thing here daily, not rapidly but daily, it gets weaker. I could run miles before; I was known to do it when I was a boy. These paper chases we had in Barbados…run around the whole island. I run a block now, I think myself marvelous, wonderful if I could run a whole block but really run it. And yet as a boy I never got tired, never got tired. We had paper chases. If you ever had a paper chase, where someone was given a ten-minute start dropping paper, and diverting you in this direction and that direction, and you kept on running trying to find out where he really is. He would divert you here and divert you there, but you didn’t care. You would go in this blind alley, that blind alley, and come back like a hound to find the real one. You’d run the whole island…come back so happy. How many miles you did, I wouldn’t know. You didn’t count miles, just getting to the end of the chase. Now today, if I could run one block with a real force…isn’t it wonderful…but I couldn’t, you see, I’d breathe like the lungs were coming through my ears. So the old body wears out, just wears out, you can’t stop it.
But something on the inside is awakening: It’s the Father. So he takes off the garment that he dipped in blood. So in the end no matter what you ever did it is all wiped out. You’re told that in scripture, it shall not be remembered or brought into mind any more; so that you see in Israel’s history this glorious story as told in the Old Testament, the story of Israel. There is no personality that is built up, because if God is the central figure, the hero of every event, there is no room for any personalities to be built up. So then, make no monument, make no graven image unto me (Deut. 4:8). Then make no monument! If today some Hebrew does it, he is violating the code. We make all kinds of monuments. We take our presidents and we carve their faces on the mountains, and we put all kinds of things up. All the dictators the world over, they build monuments to themselves costing hundreds of thousands of dollars. Well, tomorrow someone topples the whole thing over, like Hitler’s and Stalin’s they’re all thrown over. But they didn’t know that. They thought this was forever. And scripture tells you don’t build it. How would I describe I AM? And so man goes blindly on building all these silly little things to himself, and then someone comes and topples the whole thing over, as they should. So there is no monument in the story of Israel to God, the Second Commandment.
Any other questions, please?
Q: (inaudible)A: Well, in my little pamphlet called He Breaks the Shell, I have told the entire story. It’s a little, tiny pamphlet, just a matter of, what, seventeen, eighteen pages if that many, I don’t know. So I told it just as it happened to me, without any embellishment. I’ve tried to relate it to the eternal Word, which is God’s Word, which is the Bible. I have not embellished it; I have not added to it, I haven’t taken from it.
Q: What would be the eternal estate of the man who has had this birth? There are so many millions who live in ___(??) without even having an awareness of it.
A: Alright, doesn’t really matter, because no one dies. As I stated quite clearly in that little pamphlet, you’re restored automatically and inserted into a section of time best suited for the work still to be done on you by you. Because God is doing the whole work…and you are he. So he sent his Word into this world, and you’re still in the world. May I tell you, the world is just as real and solid as this. If anyone here dropped tonight, we don’t really die. They find themselves restored to life, and they’re solidly real—maybe not the same age, not the same race, not the same nation. You may drop this very night and find yourself blue-eyed and blond, in a world just as real as this, best suited for the work that is to be done.It hasn’t a thing to do with anything here. And one may drop this night who is blue-eyed and blond and find themselves with a skin that is black, black, black, dark eyes, in a world suited for the work to be done. God plays all the parts.
Let no one tell you that anyone is moving from what is called a Negro body through a this-body, a that-body, to a white body. Forget it! Evolution in the affairs of man I accept, but the bird builds its nest today as it did in the beginning of time. There is no proof whatsoever that a bird was anything other than a bird. It’s a lovely theory…I like fantasy, too. I like mysteries. I like to read a book that is really funny and mysterious, but don’t tell me that it is based upon a vision.Evolution is not based upon a vision. And so, I can see a man taking a hoe and digging the ground to plant; and then the evolution in the affairs of man where now he has a tractor. So he has a tractor…that’s the evolution in the affairs of man. I can see a man getting himself on a raft and moving across a body of water; and then all of a sudden he gets a little boat. In Barbados we call them Moses…where you row with the Moses. And then from that you move to something else, and all of a sudden you get a big, huge ocean liner. I can see a man taking a wheelbarrow to move something. First of all, he takes it on his body; then puts a wheelbarrow, and then from that he goes into something else, and finally finds a truck. And then he finds something fantastic to take the same load multiplied across the country.
Now he’s going to take a missile and go from here to there. We have on the drafting board something to take us from here to Europe in a half-hour. In a half-hour we’ll go to Europe…8,000 miles an hour. Well, Europe is only 4,000 miles away, 5,000 miles away, so in a half-hour you and I, and maybe 300 others, will get on a plane and go there in a half-hour. That is in the affairs of man. But man was always man, the bird was always the bird, the fish was always the fish—it never became something other than it is. “Eternity exists and all things in eternity, independent of Creation, which was an act of mercy” (Blake). Hasn’t a thing to do with these things, one thing moving into the other. Don’t believe it.
I’m giving you vision; I’m not speculating. I’m not a scientist…and so they think now you and I were once a little worm. Well, I’m not denying that out of my father’s loins came a seed if seen microscopically you would have seen it as a little worm. I’m not saying that that was not the beginning of the garment dipped in blood that I then assumed. But I wasn’t it; I am not it. But that little garment dipped in blood was always made that way, and I came in and took possession of it and wore it. Mother said, “His name is Neville,” so the garment is called Neville. I respond to it when I walk this earth. But I am not it! I am the Father. I have gone through the gamut. I have played it all and suffered it all, all of the sufferings of the world. God in his infinite mercy hides it from me until the very end. But I have suffered it all or I could not now be the father of his only begotten Son. So let no one tell you that you evolved from this to that to the other. Forget it! Evolution, yes, in the affairs of man; evolution in the creation of God, no. And there is yet to produce one little bit of evidence to support the theory of evolution. Bring me the evidence. If there’s evidence, I will bow before it, but bring me the evidence. There is no evidence to support the theory, yet it’s taught in all the universities of the world, all the high schools, all the colleges, everything teaches it. And there is no evidence to support it.
The Bible, on the other hand, is not taught any more, because it’s vision, pure vision, and they’re trying to make it conform to evolution, make it conform to history. It’s not history. It’s not secular history; it’s sacred history. They’re trying to make it conform to cosmology, to astrology, to astronomy. It isn’t that at all. Hasn’t a thing to do with that. It’s all the vision of God revealed through his appointed servants, his plan, his purpose. And the day will come that you and I, as I’m looking at you now, you and I will not be two, we’ll be one. Every garment you have played, may I tell you, I have played. And the garments that you will play I have already played, for I have reached the state of being Father. I have played every part in this world. Goodnight.
Neville Goddard begins by situating the name of God as the pivotal key to understanding divine doctrine, shifting the question from God’s existence to God’s identity. Rooting his teaching in the biblical account of Moses and the revelation of ‘I AM,’ he reframes scripture as a metaphysical blueprint for conscious creation rather than a historical record. By emphasizing the inseparability of the Word and the believer, Goddard dismantles the illusion of an external deity, asserting that human imagination is God’s own power expressing itself.
The lecture then turns to practical methods: assumption and imagination. Goddard instructs listeners to ‘call in the name’ by assuming the state they desire under the affirmation ‘I am,’ even if all sensory and rational evidence contradicts it. He supports this with personal anecdotes of manifesting marriages and wealth through blind-date experiments and mental discipline, demonstrating that faith in the divine name yields tangible results.
A deeper esoteric dimension emerges in the discussion of the Hebrew root Yod-He-Vau-He, linking the verb’s meaning of ‘to fall’ and ‘to blow’ with the divine contraction into form and subsequent expansion. Goddard presents the fallen world as a deliberate divine act, a necessary limitation through which God (human imagination) contracts into matter and then re-expands in limitless translucence. This cyclical dynamic culminates in the realization of universal fatherhood, where the Word returns bearing the fruit of itself.
Finally, Goddard frames the entire Christian drama as the unfolding of the divine name through the Word made flesh, clad in ‘a robe dipped in blood.’ The believer’s journey out of ‘Egypt’ mirrors the Exodus, relying solely on the name I AM. In the end, every Word sent must return accomplished, and the consummation of the divine name is the believer’s transformation into God the Father, witnessed by the Son. Through this lens, prayer and meditation become acts of assuming and carrying forward God’s own creative word until the final revelation of unity.
The Bible Through Neville
Neville Bible Sparks
Neville Lecture Series
