We Have Found Him

I wondered if I should start with what most people need -- the normal sphere of how to get a house or how to get a better job or how to get a fortune. I said no, time is short as far as I am concerned, so I must tell you what I have discovered. And so, in the course of time, you will know how to get a house and a better job, and more money and all these things ___(??), but for an opening night I thought I couldn’t compromise and I had to tell you about him. For I have found him. I have found him of whom Moses and the law, and the prophets wrote. Yes, I have found Jesus Christ. So when you find him, if he is all that you feel that he is, you can’t keep him to yourselves, you must share him. And so I want to share him with you.

So we are told, “If anyone ever says to you, ‘Look, here is the Christ!’ or ‘Look, there he is!’ do not believe it” (Mark 13:21). And that I will endorse. If anyone, no matter who he is, says to you, “‘Look, here is the Christ!’ or ‘Look, there he is!’ do not believe it.” And yet this night I’m going to share him with you. But I can’t point to another and I can’t point to myself, and yet I will share him with you.

The first book written in the New Testament was written by Paul. Scholars are divided whether this book was Galatians or Thessalonians, but both were written by Paul, so it doesn’t really matter. But they all are agreed that Paul wrote the first book in the New Testament. In the letters of Paul there is no trace whatsoever that man can find an historical Christ as we today use the term, none whatsoever. Yet, if man wants to see Jesus Christ, he’s always sure to see him more clearly if he looks at him through the eyes of Paul. For Paul saw him clearly. Paul saw, also, the deep mystery of its meaning.

Now, to Paul it’s about a mystery. He said, “Great indeed we confess is the mystery of our religion.” A mystery is not a matter to be kept secret but a truth that is mysterious in character. So I will reveal the mystery; so look at it now through the eyes of Paul. Paul made the statement that “The gospel that I have preached is not man’s gospel. For I did not receive it from a man, nor was I taught it, but it came through a revelation of Jesus Christ” (Galatians 1:12). Revelation to Paul was an act of God in self-revealing. God revealed himself. So, Jesus Christ to Paul was God himself, not a man. He said, “I regard no one from a human point of view; even though I once regarded Christ from a human point of view, I regard him thus no longer” (2 Corinthians 5:16). No one from a human point of view, no, not Jesus Christ. Well, then who is he and where is he? How can I share with you my discovery of Jesus Christ, and not point to another; and not point to any being in this world, and make no image of him? Well, how can I show you who he is? Well, that’s my task this night, and I hope I succeed in showing you Jesus Christ.

We turn now to what I think is the earliest book, the Book of Galatians: “Paul an apostle—not from man nor through men, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead” (Galatians 1:1). And “When it pleased God to reveal his Son in me… then I conferred not with flesh and blood” (Galatians 1:16). There was no one to whom he could turn to explain why it never happened in eternity before. “Then he spent his days from morning to evening expounding the matter to all who would listen, trying to persuade them, to convince them of Jesus, both from the law of Moses and the prophets. Some were convinced by what he said and others disbelieved” (Acts 28:23). That’s the eternal story: The man who finds him cannot convince them, for no man can see David in bodily form and show who the Son is. They can only invite you to come with them… and then they turn back to scripture and show you what was foretold; and tell you, hoping that you will believe what they have experienced that matches what was foretold, that you may see who he is. And some will believe it and others will disbelieve it.

Now he turns to his letter to the Galatians, he says: “O 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 works of the law, or by hearing with faith? Are you so foolish? Having begun with the Spirit, are you now ending with the flesh?” (Galatians 3:1) Now listen to the words carefully. He uses every word as a poet would use words, with great caution. Every word has significance. “Before whose eyes Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified.” The word portrayed means “represented naturally and vividly, whether by drawing, painting, verbal description, or by action.” So the entire drama, whether you saw it painted, just in drawing, or someone like Paul verbally describes it to you in his letters, or, whether you sat in an audience, and the curtain rose, and before your eyes was portrayed a man—so that the entire drama of Jesus Christ crucified was portrayed, as you would go to the theatre and see it on the stage.

So everything was vicarious—the suffering and the shameful death—like an actor being slain this night on the stage, he is not dead and you know it, and the one who so killed him, as it were, didn’t really kill him. The curtain will go up tomorrow night and the same actors will reenact the part. One will perform the action of murdering and one will drop as though murdered. And yet, night after night, they reenact the part. So it was portrayed as crucified. It was not a drama that took place 2,000 years ago; it takes place in the soul of man.

This past month I went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to see one grand picture, the picture by Rembrandt of Aristotle contemplating the head of Homer, valued at a million and a half. It was a perfectly marvelous painting. There were guards all around, and we, the viewers, were separated from the picture by, say, five feet. We could get no closer, all roped off. I don’t blame them, because there are certain fellows in the world who would throw something on it and disfigure this masterpiece. But in the same gallery there were pictures of the crucifixion, valued in the hundreds of thousands. They were portraying a drama that I personally have experienced, and they did not portray it correctly. For here, one has the stigmata on the left side, the hands, the feet, the head and the left side. That is an incorrect portrayal of the drama. There were others that had it correctly done, hands, feet, head and right side. But even that isn’t true. For they had nails driven into fleshly hands upon a wooden cross, and that is not true.

That which binds God to the real cross that is man is a vortex. And may I tell you, the expression on these faces that I saw and these priceless masterpieces by these great artists is a sad, sad face. And it’s not a sad face at all. May I tell you, when you experience it this will be a recurrence, because you have already experienced it. But when it is once more brought back to memory and once more you feel it, it will be an ecstasy that you cannot describe in words. Your hands, your feet, your head and your right side, you are nailed upon this by vortices, not nails. And yet in all of these great masterpieces ___(??) if they knew it, they would have painted a vortex honing into my body as it were. But they nailed my body to a wooden cross. It’s no wooden cross. I am actually nailed to a tree, but the tree, as Blake so beautifully brought out: “The gods of the earth and the sea sought through Nature to find this tree; but their search was all in vain: There grows one in the human brain” (Songs of Experience, page 217). It’s on that tree that we are nailed, and we are nailed by vortices, not by any nails, as depicted on the canvases that I saw only this past month in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Where within that confine you couldn’t buy it for, maybe, a billion dollars or two if you took the value placed upon these canvases by men who are supposed to know what they are addressing. So here was portrayed the great drama of life through death, but not properly depicted. It wasn’t true.

So I want to share with you what I know from experience. And I can’t conjure a being and point and say, “Here is the Christ! Or there he is!” for that would be a lie. It is a way of salvation, just a way of salvation. And may I tell you, when you receive God’s grace, which is God’s gift of himself to you, and you are fully aware of it, you find yourself ascribing the entire process of your salvation to God’s actions. You, yourself, will confess you had not a thing to do with it, nothing whatsoever. Your very faith, in your eyes, was a gift of God. You had nothing to do with it. It’s all God’s gift, therefore, all will receive it and none can fail. Every being in this world will be salvaged by God’s grace, grace and grace alone.

By grace we mean, “saved through faith.” It is not your own doing, it is the gift of God: “Not by works, lest anyone should boast. We are his workmanship.” I am his workmanship. Well, how can I, the thing worked, the pot, say to the potter “Why do you make me in this form?” I have no choice in the matter. He has made me as he desired me, and then endowed me with life by giving me himself. Then, it’s by grace he ascends from faith and it’s not my own doing. Then salvation by faith is really salvation by the faithfulness of God.

So I know there are many in the world, especially today in this nuclear age, those who call themselves scientists and great philosophers and the wise men of the world, they will ask such—nothing beyond what they call the world of Nature. No explanation whatsoever unless it comes within the confines of what they say is the world of Nature. And so I can’t speak to them. If you’re present, my words would be simply an idle tale, wouldn’t mean a thing to you, because I am not speaking of this world at all. Like Paul I did not receive it from a man, nor was I taught it, it came to me, too, by the revelation of Jesus Christ.

And what is this revelation? God unveils himself in us at his own appointed time. And, we are told, God’s vision of man “has its own appointed hour; it ripens, it will flower. If it be long, then wait; for it is sure and it will not be late” (Habakkuk 2:3). So don’t try to hasten it. Don’t ask “When will it happen to me?” for no one knows the time or the season. As we are told, Wait for the promise of the Father. Do not ask the time, ask the season, for it’s not yours to know. For the Father has fixed it by his own authority. Just wait, wait for the promise of the Father. But power will come to you when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and then you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea, in Samaria, to the end of the earth (Acts 1:4-8).

Well, how will you and I be witnesses to all that is told us? For the Father is God’s witness. You are told, “The testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.” All that is prophesied is going to happen to you. Not a thing matters, really, outside of the fulfillment of God’s word—your homes, your position in the world, socially, intellectually, financially, in the intellectual world, all will vanish and not even leave a trace of ever having been present. But God’s word will remain forever, and he has to have witnesses to the truth of his word, “For thy word is truth.”

Well, how are we going to have witnesses? When it happens to you, when it happens to me, we witness. As we are told, only by the evidence of two witnesses or three witnesses can charges be sustained. I can’t bring one witness. I can know the Bible backwards and say, “Here, this is the witness.” Well, that is true. But I can’t defend it as one witness. I must have two witnesses at minimum, three, yes, and the more the better. But I can’t have just one witness. So I will say, I’ll memorize the Bible; I know it backwards. I’ll present that as my witness, that God’s word is true, and it’s very good to know the Bible, but that’s not what God will accept. “For God has taken his place in the divine council, in the midst of the gods he holds judgment” (Psalm 82:1, 6). So when God enters into that divine council, he has to have two witnesses. And the external witness we all have—that’s the Bible. We must have an internal witness, where our internal list of experiences parallels the Bible.

And so you step into his presence and you don’t have to say one word. For God does not judge you by your social position in this world, by your intellectual position in this world, for the wisdom of man is foolish in the eyes of God. So when you’re brought into the divine council, he sees only the heart. He does not see outward appearances; what you did in this world, what you made, what you accomplished, that is as nothing. He’s only looking for the witness, the witness that parallels his prophecy of what will unfold within the mind of man. So you stand before him and he sees the Father. And then it parallels this way of salvation. And the way of salvation is this. It will happen to everyone born of woman. I don’t care if you are dead now and it didn’t happen to you before; you haven’t really died. That’s also a grand mystery. Your body was consumed by the fire and scattered in the four corners of the earth, but you really haven’t ceased to be. Man does not terminate at that point where my senses cease to register him. He still is a living reality, whether he has experienced it or not. But he will experience it, because to himself he is just as solidly real as he was here to us who touched him and felt his bodily presence.

But he has to come one day into the divine council where God sees the witness that no man can see. And when they are parallel so that the birth spoken of Christ Jesus, he has experienced; and when David, the eternal David, calls him, Lord, he has experienced; and when his departure from Egypt, which is always symbolized by the turning of a rod ___(??) into a serpent, when he has experienced that; it simply signifies his departure from Egypt, meaning this age. He doesn’t have to say he’s done it it’s so obvious to the one who sits in judgment. So when these experiences are paralleled by the external witness of scripture, he enters the divine council.

Now we are told the day is coming that the Lord will reign as king over the whole land; on that day the Lord will be one and his name one. That name is Christ Jesus—only one, Christ Jesus. It’s Christ Jesus that David calls Adonay. He calls him “my Father” in fulfillment of the 89th Psalm, “I have found David… he has cried unto me, ‘Thou art my Father, my God, and the Rock of my salvation’” (verses 20, 26). When you find him and he calls you the same thing, then you know who Christ Jesus is: Jesus Christ is God the Father. And everyone one day will be called by David, “Adonay,” and when he calls you “Adonay,” he knows who he is. Well, “What think ye of the Christ? Whose son is he? And they answered, ‘Why, the son of David.’ He said, ‘Why then did David in the Spirit call him Lord? If David thus calls him Lord, how can he be David’s son?’” (Matthew 22:42). Well, you’re going to have these experiences, and then because he only calls in scripture, he calls Christ Jesus “Father,” when he calls you that you know who you are. For on that day the Lord will be one and his name one. So in the end, when all awaken, there’s only one; and that one is God the Father.

So Paul recognized no intermediary between man and God. He completely repudiated all institutions, all authorities, all customs, all laws that interfered with the direct access of the individual to his God. So man is sure that between himself and God is Jesus Christ. Don’t believe it! No intermediary between the self and God. But God is personified in scripture as Jesus Christ, and throughout the centuries man has mistakenly taken personifications for persons; and the acted parable for history; and the gross first sense for the ultimate sense intended; and the vehicle that conveyed the instruction for the instruction itself.

So here, Jesus Christ is not someone that lived 2,000 years ago. Jesus Christ is God himself, who became you that you may become God. He is actually the life of your being, as told in Paul’s letters to the Corinthians. And he acted as though he’s shocked that they didn’t know, “Do you not know that you are the temple of the living God and that God’s spirit dwells in you?” (2 Corinthians 6:16; 1 Corinthians 3:16) Well, if God’s spirit dwells in me, I should know it. If not now, eventually I should discover him, for God could not emerge from a man in whom he did not exist. He exists in you, and one day he will emerge by a series of revelations so that I will know him. And when he unveils it by the series of revelations, I will know him, and when I find him I find myself. It’s the unveiling of myself that is Jesus Christ.

So, Jesus Christ is the way of salvation, personified for us as a man. And so in this year l963 we are still bowing to a being who lived 2,000 years ago. We have made an idol of something that we were told, “Make no graven image unto me,” but none. ___(??) the second commandment, “Make no graven image unto me… and if anyone should ever say to you, ‘Look, here is the Christ!’ or ‘Look, there he is!’ believe it not.” But in spite of that we still make these images. And there are unnumbered images that man will conjure in his mind’s eye when he hears the word Christ Jesus and see it as something objective to himself. You will not in eternity find him until he unveils himself in you as you… when he unveils it in the most marvelous way by that which was God’s mystery, the Bible.

So the whole thing begins to unveil in you—you have the experience. You go back and read the scripture, the Old Testament, and there you see exactly what was foretold. But you could not foresee it. Yet there it was; it was foretold. Then suddenly… whoever would think, in this modern day, that he or she is father of the David of biblical fame until it happens? I share with you—I can’t say I will persuade you to believe it, any more than Paul succeeded in persuading those who listened from morning to night, as told us in the 28th chapter of the Book of Acts. And so, he spent his day from morning to evening, telling them about the kingdom of God and trying to convince them about Jesus, both from the law of Moses and the prophets. And some of them believed on what he said, while others disbelieved (verse 23).

So what percentage this night will accept it, I do not know. I have not the slightest idea how many will believe it without having the experience. Many find him not because they sought for him, but those who found him brought them to him. And so, I found him and so this night I will share him with you, but I can’t persuade you that it is true. But the day will come you will have the experience and having it, you will be automatically taken right into the divine council where God, in the 82nd Psalm we are told, has taken his place in the divine council; in the midst of the gods he holds judgment. Not to condemn; no one is condemned. He’s not a God of retribution. He’s waiting for the second witness, for you can’t come into his court bearing only one witness. You could be the greatest scholar in the world, memorize the entire book so you could repeat it word after word as it was in the original tongue. That’s not what he wants. Have you experienced the ___(??), those who bring the second witness? You have the external witness of scripture; you must bring the internal witness of the Spirit. Standing in his presence he sees, because he doesn’t have to ask questions, and seeing it, you become one with the body of Christ Jesus. You are then Christ Jesus. And so when Blake was asked, “What do you think of Christ Jesus?” without batting an eye he replied, “He’s the only God” and then quickly added, “But so am I and so are you.” Well, he who asked the question did not know it. Blake did, for he had the experience.

And so, I know I have found him. Having found him it’s my duty until the end of days when I take it off for the last time to share that discovery with everyone who will listen. For like Paul when he said, “The time for my departure has come,” he didn’t mean a little physical death that all go through, he meant the end of an age. “The time of my departure has come. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. And now, henceforth, is laid up for me a crown of righteousness” (2 Timothy 4:7). So he meant the end of this age for him. It was not what the world would call death but a coronation. That crown of righteousness was his and he would be that king. And only one king, not a bunch of kings; for “The Lord will become king over all the earth, and on that day, the Lord will be one and his name one.” So, there aren’t to be numberless little Christ Jesuses running around, but one. You will not lose your identity, any more than I will lose my identity, but you will have a greater self. For we are heirs not only to his promise but to a person. We actually inherit God, and without loss of identity. All will know each other and yet all Christ Jesus.

Now, you try it. When you go home, you dwell upon it. You dwell upon these two witnesses. Try to read it in the scripture. If you do not now do it, make a habit of it, just read it. Much of it will mean nothing to you, but read it anyway. Just read it and dwell upon it. When you hear the story of Job and Job ___(??) and cries out, “Oh, that I could find him.” He heard about him, but he hasn’t seen him: “Oh, that I could find him.” Tonight the whole vast world is trying to find him outside of self. Until the very end of Job, in that last chapter, “I have heard of thee with the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees thee” (Job 42:5). I see what you meant in the beginning of time, but I was looking elsewhere. I was looking for some external savior I thought would come in some miraculous way and conquer my enemies and then set me up in some wonderful way. So I was looking for an external savior. And then it happened in me. It wasn’t an external savior; it was God’s way of salvation.

And so, Paul taught Christ crucified that all might see not God’s weeping but God’s love. All the difference in the world. The whole vast world sees on the crucifix, they see God weeping, the crying, weeping God. That was not what Paul did at all. He ___(??), in every letter he did, that we might see God, not his weeping but his love. That’s what he did. He portrayed the dying and the rising Christ in every letter, the mystery of life through death. “Unless I die thou canst not live; but if I die I will arise again and thou with me.” [Jerusalem, Plate 96] And so God dies by actually becoming one with this tree called man, and then putting himself through the furnaces of affliction. In the end, known only to God he unfolds and ___(??) himself by unveiling himself in man as man. Then man sees who he is… and he is Christ Jesus.

So let no one tell you that they know a man and then take you to meet a man, a holy man. Run in the opposite direction. Let no one fool you that they have found him in the form of some man that they have met. I meet them everywhere I go, these so-called holy men. And so, having gone through the furnaces myself, I invariably turn in the opposite direction. I have found him, so I am not looking for him. But until that day when this garment is taken off for the last time… for the one single thing in scripture that is given to us that signifies our departure from this world is the turning of a rod ___(??) into a serpent. It has happened to me. And so having happened to me in the core of my being, I know this is my exit from this age into an entirely different age, where all things are then subject to my imaginative power. While I’m here I must, in the world of Caesar, obey the laws of Caesar and use God’s law to the best of my ability within the framework of his purpose. But at the end, there too waits for me the crown of righteousness, where I am one with the only being that reigns over all the earth.

Until then, play the part well, play it lovingly and tell everyone in the world who will listen to you that you found him. And try to the best of your ability by verbal description to describe who Christ Jesus really is. I love engraving… I can’t do it by engraving, I can’t paint, I can’t draw, and I’m not a playwright to write the play, but I can to the best of my ability by verbal description share with others my discoveries of Christ Jesus. And so I hope this night that you will exercise your own powers of perception to come with me and actually try to test what I’ve tried to tell you.

Only a few of the Galatians are well-favored to use their own power of perception. They couldn’t seem to put two and two together as he was talking to them, and so he accused them of being foolish: “O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you?” You started with the Spirit, didn’t you, and now ending with the flesh? And so, anyone who has some visible objective picture of Christ Jesus is ending with the flesh. You started with the Spirit and now are you ending with the flesh? Who bewitched you that you would turn back to the flesh having heard it with faith? “Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law, or by hearing with faith? Now are you so foolish having begun with the Spirit, are you now ending with the flesh?”

So tonight, make no mental image of any being external to yourself as Christ Jesus, for you’re only having an idol. An idol has no power, none whatsoever. But wait patiently for the promise of the Father. Do not ask when he’s going to give it, for a time and a season are not yours to know; but the Father has fixed them by his own authority. We simply wait patiently for the grace that is coming to be given. When it comes, it will come in the form of a power. And power is given to you when the Holy Spirit has come upon you. At that moment the veil is lifted, and then a series of mystical experiences you will go through, all parallel to scripture. Then you will become one of the witnesses. There will be crowds and crowds of witnesses to the truth of God’s word. Everyone one day will witness to the truth of scripture, which is God’s word. And God’s word is truth.

So the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy. So wait, it will come and it will not be late, that I assure you. It came on me like a thief in the night; when I least expected it, it happened. I had not the slightest idea that this thing could happen. For as a boy I never heard it from a man. I certainly was not taught it by a man. No one ever shared it with me before. It came suddenly out of the blue that he shared his experiences with others, but I did not have the perception to see what he had left behind him in the form of letters. And so, no one ___(??) to see it or they would have shared it with me, but they did not. So, like him, I did not receive it from a man nor was I taught it, it came by a revelation of Jesus Christ when he unveiled himself in me as my own being. For the one who calls him Father called me Father.

And so you say you’re looking for the Father? “Have I been so long with you, Philip, and you have not seen the Father? He who has seen me has seen the Father; why then do you say, ‘Show us the Father’? And they asked him no more questions” (John 14:8). They should have asked him, “Then where is your Son?” Well, you can’t be a father unless there’s a son. But no one asked him, “Where is your son if you’re a father?” So he brings up the matter and answered it for them, “What think ye of the Christ? Whose son is he? And when they answered, “The son of David,” he then in turn said, “Why then did David in the Spirit call him Father? If David thus calls him Father, how can he be David’s son?” (Matthew 22:42) So he answered it. He tells them who he is and there must be a son. You go back and you read scripture. Well, in the 2nd Psalm, “Thou art my son, today I have begotten you.” To whom is it spoken? To David… by the Lord… and David calls Christ Jesus the Lord, or my Father.

Now let us go into the Silence.

N: So, Ina, the time has come for your departure.

I: Thank you very much.

Q: (inaudible)

A: ___(??) I understand correctly as I told you that the individual’s faith is also the gift of God. ___(??) I once confessed that having received the grace of God I not only found myself ascribing the process of my salvation to God’s actions, I also found myself thoroughly convinced that my own faith was the gift of God.

Any other questions, please?

Q: (inaudible)

A: ___(??) is a quote from Blake, and I endorse it one hundred percent: “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.” [Annotations to Berkeley; “Laocoon”]

Good night.