The Unknown Actor

Tonight’s subject is “The Unknown Actor.” We’re told that among you stands one whom you do not know” (John1:26). “One whom you do not know” is a reference to the unknown Christ. The one who made this announcement confessed that he did not know him…the one that he’d have to proclaim. He said, “I myself did not know him; but he who sent me said to me, ‘He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain, this is he.’” And then we are told, “You will see the Spirit descend in bodily form as a dove, and that is he.” So he confessed he did not know who this one was that he had to proclaim. I tell you, that Jesus Christ is the only actor in this world. It’s a play, a drama of descent and ascent; and the only one who plays the part is Jesus Christ, and Jesus Christ is your own wonderful human Imagination. Human Imagination is truly the true vine of eternity.

Now tonight, let us start with a story and show you how this works in our world. First of all, an actor is defined in your dictionary…the word hypocrite means “actor.” The word hypocrite is actor. A hypocrite is one that pretends to be other than he is to achieve his own personal end. That’s the hypocrite and that is an actor. I tell you, Jesus Christ is the only actor. Now is he a hypocrite? Yes, the Bible teaches that. “He was in the form of God…and he emptied himself, and took upon himself the form of a slave, and was born of woman and born in the likeness of man” (Phil.2:6-8). Here is God emptying himself and becoming man. A great actor emptying himself and playing ___(??) in Tobacco Road. You go to a picture, you go to a show, and here is a great actor, say a Burton, and he doesn’t play Burton, he steps upon the screen and he is Becket. But he doesn’t quite play it to the point of losing the sense of being Burton. When Jesus Christ empties himself and becomes you, he doesn’t pretend that he is you, he actually becomes you, and plays it one hundred percent.

So here is God in his fullness completely emptying himself and becoming you, 100%, no pretense. And yet, I can’t deny he is the hypocrite, because he is playing that he’s you and yet he is God. That is what the hypocrite is. It’s the actor who actually doesn’t pretend…he simply, well, disguises himself and plays the part to deceive you into believing that he is what he is not.That’s what the word would really imply. Now Blake, under inspiration, made the statement, “God only acts and is in existing beings or men.” That’s all that God does: “God only acts and is in existing beings or men. Let us to him who only is and who walks among us give decision.” If he will do that then, said he, bring on all your flames, bring on all your furnaces, it doesn’t matter. If I make the decision, then bring it on. I’ll play the part and I know I will bring it to its fulfillment if I remain faithful to the part to which I have committed myself.

Now, here is a story given me this past week; it happened a couple of weeks ago. This friend of mine found himself in dream. Now, if you’re here for the first night, may I tell you, God speaks to man through the medium of dream, as told us in scripture, the 12th chapter, if you want it, of the Book of Numbers. You’ll find it all through scripture, but you’ll find it in the 2nd chapter of Daniel, and you’ll find it, really, book after book. So when I say he had this in a dream, I am only referring to the greatest of books, the Bible. That’s how God speaks to a man. So he found himself, and it’s night, and he’s on a train arriving in a city. He knows he’s an actor, but he does not know his name, and he can’t remember the name of the city, can’t remember who he is. He knows that they refer to this city as the City of Lights, but he can’t remember what city refers to itself as the City of Lights. He can’t remember the name of the play that he’s to appear in. He only knows I am an actor; but who I am, where I am, what play I’m to play in, that he doesn’t know. He only knows I am an actor.

Then a man in the hotel, seeing his predicament, said to him, “Across the square there is a theatrical agency and I’ll take you across and maybe they can recognize you.” “So he took me across the square,” he said, “The passage across the square, which was like the size of Pershing Square, was the most magnificent experience. There were lights strung around in the square in clusters, like grapes of light. He went into the office of the agency and I remained out, praying that when I entered the receptionist would recognize me. I entered and she looked at me as though she had never seen me before, and said, ‘I’m going to lunch.’ Then a door flung open and two men burst upon the scene with outstretched arms to welcome me.” He said, “They were the most overwhelming men I had ever seen! Incredible beauty and power and intensity radiated from their faces. As they came towards me to greet me and welcome me, I woke. So they did not tell me who I am.” So he remained, at that moment two weeks ago, not knowing who he is. He knew he was an actor, he’s going to play in a play in a certain city, but he could not bring back to memory the name of the city or the play or who he was as identity.

That’s the story of every being in this world. We are the actor, and the only actor in the entire play is God. There is no other play, no other actor. God is the only actor. When you say “I am,” that’s he. Now let me imitate him. He’s not pretending that he’s you; he gave up himself, and sunk himself in you and became you. And whatever he imagines in you he brings to pass, for nothing is impossible to God. I don’t care what it is, nothing is impossible to God. He actually became you; he isn’t pretending it at all. If you will believe that he who actually is playing this part when you say “I am” is God, then you will imitate him and bring to pass what you want in this world.For as God you can imagine yourself to be anything. You aren’t going to stop the outcome of a play, for that outcome is predetermined. No one’s going to stop it; no one is going to even divert it. God will use everything in this world towards the fulfillment of that final curtain. It will come down on the end just as he had predetermined.But here, take it to heart, this is a vision, a wonderful vision. I hope you’ll believe it.

In the same—I wouldn’t say mail, because he gave that to me last Friday night—but this morning’s mail, special delivery, at eight, and here came this letter from a friend who is here tonight. I didn’t think I would see her tonight. She told me in her letter she was taking care of her grandchildren for her daughter and son-in-law while they’re on vacation. And this is her experience, and you put it together, see how it works. She said, “I found myself”—now this lady is a grandmother, as you’ve just heard, and she’s a widow, a widow of many years—“but in this dream, “ she said, “I am married, I am living in a vast forest, and my husband takes care of the trees. They call him a terrifying pruner; he prunes the trees.” She said, “I mean this in the sense that he is remorseless when he is committed to take care of a tree. People seek his service, but when he is committed to take care of a tree, their tears, their anguish, their concern, does not move him at all. He takes these shears, the pruning shears, and he will simply remove limb after limb, branch after branch. What I thought to be a perfect branch in my eye, he was completely unmoved with my feeling towards it; and when he took the pruning shears and severed that branch I saw the dry-rot within. And here, he’s taking care of this vast, vast forest. But when the tree, with his care, blooms it is perfect, it’s symmetrical, it’s green. You could not improve upon its beauty. Then he said to me quite suddenly, after seventeen years of service that now he’s coming to the end, and I held his hand with a joy I cannot describe that his work is at an end. He embraced me and he looked upon me. I looked into his face and saw that heavenly love which he showered upon me. Here he’s looking down and smiling, but a love that you can’t describe in words and he’s showering it upon me. As I looked into the face, suddenly in a series, the most rapid series, on that face of my husband is every face I had ever known.” And she mentioned many faces in this audience tonight. “All the way back to not only my childhood but beyond that, face after face is the face of my husband. Faces that I knew intimately but I couldn’t put a name upon them. He himself had no name. He wasn’t called John, Henry, Peter, James or any other name, just ‘my husband.’ That’s all that he was. He was just my husband. But in that face of his were faces beyond number, more numerous than the sands of the sea…and he was my husband.”

Well, here is this most marvelous picture fulfilling the 54th chapter of the Book of Isaiah, “Your Maker is your husband, the Lord of hosts is his name. I left you for a moment, I hid my face from you for a moment, but I will gather you with compassion, with everlasting love” (verses 5-8). Only for a moment it seemed. And she said, “Strangely enough, at the end of the seventeen years it seemed as though it were only yesterday. I tried my best to remember the trying things, the horrible things when he, with these pruners that were so terrible, pruning shears, would sever without seeming compassion when he had committed himself to do a certain job. And I could not remember one single thing in the seventeen years, just this being, now, who now embraces me, and I am his wife and he is my husband.”

As the story tells us, he must leave everything and cleave to his wife until they become one being. Well, one being means one being, and we seem to be three and a half billion people in the world…and there aren’t really. In fulfillment of the greatest of all commandments, the ten words, called the Ten Commandments—the Ten Commandments are condensed into ten words, “Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is one Lord” (Deut.6:4). Ten words! So we seem to be billions, more numerous than the sands of the sea, but we are not really. It is simply a compound unity; one made up of others. So in her husband she saw the face of as many as she could as it flew past. the vision, remember. She will one day know he contains every being in this world. There is nothing but God, and God contains all, and God is your husband—he is the actor in you.

Now all things being possible to God, you can put him to the test. Test him. If all things are possible to him and he didn’t pretend, then I can’t for one moment feel another when I say “I am.” He so became me I can’t actually divorce this being from myself. He isn’t pretending that he’s me. Well, this complete sacrifice, this grand actor that could empty himself completely of his grand form that was divine and take upon himself the form that I feel to be mine, and play this part, now he’s asking me to imitate him. Can I to that extent now so completely abandon myself to the feeling of being wanted, being healthy, being wealthy, so there aren’t two of us and I am pretending that I am? Can I abandon myself to that mood just as though it were true? If I do, may I tell you, it must come to pass.

I am not denying—any more than she denied in her letter to me—there were not moments of pruning. Oh, there were moments of pruning! So in my own case and, may I tell you, if you watch your dreams carefully you will see there isn’t one idle thought in the course of a day that does not take objective form in your dream, there isn’t one. But you haven’t any memories, they don’t come back. One crowded, exciting, dramatic incident may come back. If you were aware, there isn’t one idle thought that doesn’t take objective form. And then you realize how, really, you must prune this tree. This brings to mind this wonderful statement…speaking of this wonderful tree which is my own human Imagination, your human Imagination: “I found it a wild, wild tree, whose wanton strength had swollen into irregular twigs. But I pruned the plant and it grew temperate…and knotted, as you see, into this clean, full cluster to repay the hand that wisely wounded it.”

If you think for one moment in this world of ours you can spend an idle moment and say, well, no one sees me, no one sees me. I can feel a little thrill in telling him exactly what I think of him, and carry on a little negative conversation for, say, three or four minutes. This is an exciting thing to do, just tell him exactly what I think of him, and ask him who he thinks he is…and then all these things I do. Well, you may not have confirmation of what you’ve done in the night dream, because you don’t remember it. But if you are awake, if you are awake in this world, there isn’t one negative or positive thought in the course of twenty-four hours that does not, both here and there, objectify itself in your world. You’ll see the strangest things happen and they’re all…you can trace them right back to what you’ve done when you thought that no one was seeing you.

In the 8th chapter of the Book of Ezekiel it’s told us so clearly. Son of man, did you see what the elders of the house of Israel are doing, all doing in the darkness…and they say that no one sees us? They are all in their pictures, in their rooms of pictures engraved upon the strange inner, interior of the mind…and they say that no one sees us. And here, the Lord is speaking to the Son of man. That Son of man is the being in man which is I AM that is beginning to awake. The elders of the house of Israel think that no one is aware of what they are doing, and they are all in their own homes, in their own little homes with their pictures, carrying on strange, peculiar arguments with others, and they believe that no one sees it. And everything is seen. So seen, it objectifies itself in tangible, objective form if you were only awake as you fall asleep. If you were only awake!

So I tell you here this night, your own wonderful human Imagination, that is God—the only actor in the world, playing this divine drama of descent and ascent. When he descends to the very limit of his predetermined play, he starts the ascent. The ascent is told us in the New Testament. It’s all recorded and foretold in the Old, but it’s not described. The New is where it unfolds.It unfolds in you, because the whole thing is taking place in you. This whole vast world that seemingly is without isn’t without at all. It is within. All of the characters of the Old Testament are within. I meet them within; you will not meet any of these characters without. They seem to be without, but they’re not without. For suddenly you break the spell and you’re on your chair or on your bed, and one second before you were talking to these characters of scripture…all the Old Testament characters. They’re all within, they’re not without; and as you unfold within yourself they come, one after the other, to bear witness to that state where you have arrived in the unfolding drama, this eternal divine play.

So here, my friend has arrived at a fantastic point. Two men, overwhelming men, come rushing out to welcome him, and here he sees reflected on their face his beauty, this incredible beauty and power and intensity. Just as they are about to embrace him, he wakes, because they can’t tell him who he is. I can’t tell you who you are with conviction. Only one being in this world can tell you who you are. There is no being in eternity other than the Son of God who can tell you who you are. In the lady’s experience, he had no name, just “my husband.” If he is my husband and he is productive, if he is creative, then I must have a child. If you’re really a creative power, there’s a child. And so, these two men could not tell him who he is any more than I from now to the ends of time could persuade anyone in this world by words who you are: It takes the Son. No one knows who this husband who is my Maker, who is my Father, is but the Son; and no one knows who the Son is but the Father (Mat.11:27; Jn. 1:18) And so, if I don’t see the Son I will never know who I really am. My name is not John, Neville, Peter, Henry, or any other name in this world. My name is the Father, I’m Father, and what in this world could reveal me as the Father but my Son?

So a few weeks ago he had the experience. He has to have the experience of the Son calling him “Father.” Two weeks ago he was on the verge of it—they came to greet him, to tell him who he is, and he woke because they could not tell him who he is, not with conviction. He said they were the most beautiful…he never saw such incredible beauty, such incredible power, such incredible intensity! But they could not, with all that, convince him as to who he is. No one in this world can reveal to you who your real identity is, who this actor is, but the Son. Suddenly the Son comes into your world, and there is no doubt as to who he is, no uncertainty. He stands before you, you’ve always known him; you’ve always been his father. You can’t say it happened x-number of centuries ago, you have always been his Father and he has always been your Son.

And so, a few weeks ago he was on the verge of the discovery of who he really is. For in his letter, “I’m an actor, it is night, I’m on a train arriving in a city whose name I cannot remember. My own name I cannot remember. The play in which I am to appear I cannot remember. No one can enlighten me, but they’ll take me across the square…and this wonderful cluster of grapes, like a growing vine.” For the vine has been well pruned to produce these grapes. Behold these lovely clusters, full and clear, to repay my hand that wisely wounded that vine. And he crosses the square. And she doesn’t know him, she can’t tell him. He’s despairing, no one can tell him. Here comes a seeming voice, two men—beauty, power, intensity. As they embrace him he awakes. They can’t tell him.

So at that moment he was “on the verge.” Only the Son, the Son called David, God’s only begotten Son, can reveal to us who we really are (Ps. 2:7). When he reveals to us who we really are, we are God the Father. There is only God playing all the parts in the world; there is nothing but God. I don’t care what pigment of skin, what social position, what intellectual position, what financial position, every being in this world is played by one being, and that one being is God. God plays all the parts. So in the end, “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord” (Deut. 6:4). This is the only commandment…and therefore the second I give unto you, it is equal to this, “Love your neighbor as yourself”—for there is no “other.”

Just as my friend saw all of these faces in the face of the one man who was her husband, a rapid progression of faces, every one she identified, male and female, all the face of her husband. Here is our hero of unnumbered faces, more numerous than the stars, more numerous than the sands of the sea. He had no other name, just “my husband.” And my husband and myself are one; for he leaves—as told us in the 2nd chapter of Genesis—he leaves everything and cleaves to his wife until they become one. Now she will recognize the unity of being, the oneness of all. She still has a husband. The Son will come one day and it will not be husband and wife, it will be just the Father. They’ll cleave until they become one, and the one Son will appear, and the Son will call—she will have no sex then, really, for in the resurrection man is above the organization of sex—and she will simply look into the face of David, and David will know her as his Father, and she will know David as her Son. They will have this relationship and they will know it to be forever; it was always so.

When this happens, well, she still remains in this world to tell it to those who are well pruned. You wouldn’t be here this night or any night since I’ve been taking this platform were you not well pruned. You’re well on the way. And he who took the job, he who began the work in you, he will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ. And so what may look lovely on the outside, and you will say “Don’t cut off that limb!” he will not have any ears for your pleas, for your tears, your anguish. He will sever it, and you will see the dry rot behind it. Seeing the dry rot behind it you will know only that was necessary, it had to come off, or the dry rot would remain with a façade all over it, and you would think it was a perfect tree. But every tree that he took upon himself to really make perfect, he had no mercy, seemingly, in the eyes of man. But he made it perfect—beautiful, symmetrical, and perfect when his work was done.

It was the seventeenth year of his work. The seventeenth Hebrew letter is Pe. You spell it P-E, with an E and a grave, but you sound it with ph-e. And the symbol is the mouth…he spoke it into being. So in her mind’s eye, the pruning shears seemed to be an implement, but in the depths of the soul it is the word of God. I will simply assume that things are as I desire them to be. That assumption made up of symbols forms my word, forms my sentence. When I’m finished speaking the word and the tree is finished, she was the tree that she saw multiplied by all. She was the one that he loved, and so loved he was pruning her. It was objectified in all the others, like trees that were being pruned. No, she has been pruned, for the seventeen years were over. How near she is now to the great symbols that must appear! And they appear first by the awakening within oneself.

I was quite pleasantly surprised today in Time magazine, under the section of religion, the Catholics are now bringing out a new Bible and trying to modernize it. Well, this great scholar—and he’s been condemned and criticized in all the Catholic press for his translation—but he was speaking of the end of the drama, and the end of the drama is, in most Bibles, “He is risen.” The Catholic scholar said no, it is a more literal translation based upon the Greek manuscript if we say “He has been raised.” And may I tell you, he’s right! You look up the word risen in the concordance, the biblical concordance, and you will see it means, originally, and the first definition given is “to awake; to gather oneself together and to awake as from sleep”; and the second one is “as from death.” And he’s right (Ps.78:65).

You feel yourself waking. You do, you actually feel you’re waking. And you think it’s the waking that you’ve known in the past…only this intensity of the head…you can’t quite understand it.You think when you wake you’ll wake as you’ve always been awake through the years, on your bed or wherever you fell asleep. But you don’t. You do awake, but you wake in a grave and the grave is your skull. So the definition is right. It’s gathering your senses together to awake from sleep but to awake from death. For if your skull to you is a tomb, were you not dead in that tomb? You know it’s a tomb. So you wake. So they come to find where he is, and they said, He isn’t here. He has been raised. You have been raised. You’ve been raised and you’ve come out of that tomb in which you found yourself.

Then coming out of your tomb, you find the symbol of your birth into an entirely different sphere, and the symbol is that of a child. After the child comes David, that’s the next, who reveals you as God the Father. You still have others to go…not very far, just a matter of moments, months. And then comes the splitting of the curtain of the temple, your own body, and you, as Son of man, ascending that spinal cord of yours like a serpent up into your skull…something entirely different now, a new world. And then comes two and a half years later, approximately two and a half years later the descent of the dove. And that’s what John was waiting for. He couldn’t see these things at all; he didn’t know who the Christ was. He wasn’t present at the birth; he wasn’t present at the resurrection; he wasn’t present at these things. Therefore, who is John?

For John was told, I will give you a sign, and “the one on whom you see the Spirit in the form of a dove descend and remain, he is it,” that’s the one. Who is John now but the outer garment of man. Every being in this world is clothed as John—he has skin, he has hair—and John came clothed in a camel’s hair and a leather girdle. This is John. You are John, and you and you alone will see it. You will have no witness to see it. You will have the experience of the descent of the dove upon you, and then you’ll know who John is. For you saw it, you felt it, and when you return to this level you have full, full consciousness of the experience. You are told, he on whom he descended, he, that is he; and you know he descended upon you. So you don’t ask the world’s permission and you don’t tell them who you are. You say nothing to the world, because no one in the world could convince the other, and rightfully so. “If anyone should come to you saying, ‘Look, here is the Christ!’ or ‘Look, there he is!’ do not believe it” (Mk. 13:21). Why shouldn’t I believe it? For the very simple reason, “It does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know when he does appear we shall be like him, and see him as he is” (1Jn. 3:2). I shall be like him because he descended upon me…so I am he. And I see him just as he is. I never thought that was the mystery before. I always thought it was related to another, something on the outside. It’s related to the inside. And everyone is going to have this experience, but everyone. None can fail, because God, and God alone, plays all the parts. He is the only actor in the drama. When something horrible happens, it’s only the state of pruning…and we can’t see why this one should be pruned.

Well, take a simple little story, this is a true story. I read it here recently, either in the New York Times or some other paper of not more than a month or two months ago. There’s a very able judge in New York City, he’s just reached his eighty-fifth or eighty-sixth year; Socorro(?) is his name. He was appointed to investigate this shenanigan that went on in the stock market. He mentioned ten by name. I will not mention them to you, but it’s in print. They are all the very top of the social world, top, and beyond top of the financial world. And just before the Depression they sensed it. They knew exactly what was coming. And they took a company, say “X”, and they took it and together they controlled it. One oral agreement between all these men—I will just simply sell x-number of shares and this over here will buy…no money exchanged. In those days, it was only ten percent, anyway, down; you could exchange all kinds of stock. This one would sell, this one would buy, no money exchanged. But this one would buy at five percent higher or five points higher. The next day, this one would buy at two points higher; next day, this one would buy. And this stock was interchanged and moving this way—started below twenty. They knew what they were doing. So when it hit the seventies, they unloaded. They brought all the fish into the market, and all the unsuspecting people like us came in with our little nest egg and bought at eighty. Then they unloaded, and crash, it went down to five. But they had all of your money.

It ran into tens of tens of millions of dollars. They still hold it, but people have no memory and they do not know of this inside. But Socorro, who is now a wonderful old gentleman, he hasn’t a thing to lose, and he was simply revealing the facts of life. He mentioned names, and you’d be surprised the names who are now in the Who’s Who, the social register, the top of the ladder and all of their offspring, and they’re all these big shots. See, that tree has to be pruned. They don’t know it, it’s rotted on the inside, completely rotted. So, on the outside, if you look at it and see this wonderful social standing, this wonderful intellectual so-called standing, and this wonderful financial structure, take off the limb and it’s full of termites. So if God has decided to make that tree a perfect tree, you may weep tomorrow morning when you see the headlines that this one has been found guilty of some indiscretion belonging to that so-called family tree, or this one has been so and so, and then these things are being severed. They have to…for the health of the tree. The only healthy thing that may be left when that tree is really pruned may be the root, may be the stump. But when God took upon himself that, I would say, job, to make each perfect as he is perfect that he may give himself to us, he has to prune seemingly unmercifully.

But when this thing comes and you are coming to the end…like these visions of tonight…when one right at the embrace to be told who he is! Man can’t tell me who I am. No man in this world can tell me to convince me who I am, only God’s Son can tell me; so when God’s Son comes into my world and he calls me “Father” then and only then do I know who I am. So that dream of his had to come to an end before any man could tell him who he is. So I tell you, every one of you is being pruned. And may I tell you, in spite of the hurts, in spite of the tears of your friends, in spite of everything, not one little branch was ever severed without a reason behind it, because he had eyes to see not appearances. God judges not by appearances as man judges, God judges the heart. So he takes off all the seeming beauty on the outside and reveals the rottenness, reveals that, exposes that to the world so it can be made clean and grow into a wonderful healthy tree. And everyone will grow into that perfect tree. When you become the perfect tree it’s the tree of life, and the tree of life is God himself. Then his wonderful Son comes into your presence, and he stands and calls you “Father.” Then and only then do you know who you are.

Now let us go into the Silence.

* * *

Now are there any questions?

Q: Is John the same as Esau, as far as….A: Yes, Esau, Elijah and John. John is Elijah come again, as Elijah is Esau come again, all clothed in the same outer garments, all doing the perfect work, and in the end all will be redeemed. In what way it is not revealed. The garments that played the part so well, all were redeemed. The 8th chapter of Romans gives us the hope that the whole creation waits longingly for the redemption of the sons of God, that it may be redeemed. But it can’t be redeemed until the sons of God come out, and the sons of God coming out are one with God, for I and my Father are one. So until that redemption takes place—the whole vast creation groans and waits for it—it cannot be redeemed.Q: Do animals reach their identity also, Neville?A: As far as I’m concerned, animals are but expressions of the emotional states of man. I saw it one night quite clearly, yet I can’t go beyond what I saw. That question was asked, what is the future evolution of the animal world? Well, I couldn’t answer save I theorize, and I’m not an evolutionist. To say that the animals are evolving into man and man into something else, I’m not saying that. So not believing that, I couldn’t answer intelligently to those who have gone to school in the present generation and have been, well, conditioned to believe in evolution. As far as I am concerned, evolution belongs only to the affairs of man, but not to the creation of God…that the birds make their nests today as they did in the beginning of time. But you and I, in the affairs of man, instead of floating across a river with a raft we can now sail across or take a motor boat across; instead of plowing with our hands and a hoe, we can take a tractor; we can run across the country walking or taking some other little conveyance; we can fly across. So evolution to me belongs to the affairs of man. But God’s creation is finished. All things are, and they simply externalize what man is, because God became man.Well, this night in question I found myself on a very tall ladder. At the foot of the ladder were all of the animals of the forest—I mean wild animals, lions, tigers, panthers, everything—and they were moving in a state of anger. Being alone and not being aware that I was in a state of vision, I was, naturally, anxious and a bit afraid. Then it dawned upon me this is vision and at that I lost my fear of the animals; and they ceased to be angry in their motion and became like domesticated cats. Then I went beyond that and I knew they were only externalized emotions of my own being, for when I lost fear they gave me no reason to be afraid. Then I went down, knowing that they were only myself made visible, and I arrested within myself that feeling, that thing I always feel in my head which animated them. When I arrested it they became as still as this, and they were just as dead as though I’d walked into some wax museum.

So I ask myself constantly, what is this whole vast world? Whenever I get into these states everything stands still. So something entirely different is taking place in man. So we’re told in scripture, scripture must be fulfilled in man. Not by man, in the sense that he goes out and has this, that and the other experience: it’s all taking place in man. So the whole vast world is! As Blake saw it so clearly, he said, “Eternity exists and all things in Eternity independent of Creation, which was an act of mercy.” So the whole vast world exists—animals, birds, fish, everything—and man is simply becoming aware of increasing portions of what already is. But as he unfolds it within himself, he becomes more and more in control of self and in control of the vast world that reflects it.

So the animal world, I do not know other than what the 8th chapter of Romans tells us: Creation will be redeemed. How that will be redeemed, I do not know. But after the redemption of the sons of God, when he takes his creative power that he buries in creation and brings it back enhanced beyond the wildest dream—having restricted himself to this, he then brings it out expanded beyond anything one could ever imagine, and we are it. For the creative power of God is the Son of God, called in scripture Jesus Christ. So the animal world, I can’t see that a little bird is becoming other than a bird. It’s always made its nest…it has always done what it has done. We have no evidence in this world to support the theory called evolution; yet there isn’t a school in this world that doesn’t teach it. Yet you can’t read the Bible in the school—that’s mythology; that is not history, that isn’t true. But we take a theory called evolution which has not one, not one little bit of evidence to support it, and teach it as fact.

Oh, you can theorize, I can theorize from now ‘til the ends of time. I can stand here and tell you, “You know what, tomorrow you’re going to have a tail. Tomorrow you’re so and so.” I don’t mean tomorrow in twenty-four hours, I mean tomorrow in a million years. Can’t I say that? Who can disprove it? If I tell you a million years ago you walked with fins, well, you can’t disprove it. So I get someone to believe it and teach it, but you can’t disprove it because I tell you it happened a million years ago. Then I project it, a million years from now this is what you’re going to have. Well, you can’t disprove that either. We can’t go back no matter how far we go back and find any evidence to support the theory called evolution. And the Bible does not teach it. It’s a closed book, it’s a play. The Bible is a play. So when I go to a play tonight, the final curtain, which I must wait to see, was written before the first curtain went up, or there would be no play. You don’t improvise; you go and see a play. So I go to a play and the curtain goes up and here is this wonderful unfolding drama. But the last word was written before I entered the theater. And it’s a closed play, and only one being plays all the parts. He who plays all the parts wrote it, he is the author. In the end, when we know who he is, he is the father of it all, therefore, the author of it all…and you are he.

Good night.