Neville Goddard on 1 Samuel 17:36-37 - Mystical Bible Interpretation

Read 1 Samuel 17 in context

Scripture Focus

36Thy servant slew both the lion and the bear: and this uncircumcised Philistine shall be as one of them, seeing he hath defied the armies of the living God.

37David said moreover, The LORD that delivered me out of the paw of the lion, and out of the paw of the bear, he will deliver me out of the hand of this Philistine. And Saul said unto David, Go, and the LORD be with thee.

1 Samuel 17:36-37

Biblical Context

David recounts his past deliverances from the lion and bear and declares that God will deliver him from the Philistine; faith rests in the living God.

Neville's Inner Vision

Within this text, the lion and the bear are not beasts but states of mine I have already mastered in consciousness. The Philistine stands for any belief that dares to defy the armies of the living God, yet the armies of God are a state of awareness I carry now. When David says, The LORD delivered me, he is naming an inner law—the I AM—that has sustained me in past fright and will sustain me in present trial. The same power that parted the paw of the lion and the bear is the power that I now rely on to meet any apparent giant. The external scene is but a mirror of inner conviction. If I assume the feeling that God is with me and that this victory is already mine, the scene rearranges itself to fit that assumption. So the battle is not fought in a field but won in imagination, by a revision and feeling-it-real of an inner truth made visible.