Neville Goddard on Joel 1:13-15 - Mystical Bible Interpretation

Read Joel 1 in context

Scripture Focus

13Gird yourselves, and lament, ye priests: howl, ye ministers of the altar: come, lie all night in sackcloth, ye ministers of my God: for the meat offering and the drink offering is withholden from the house of your God.

14Sanctify ye a fast, call a solemn assembly, gather the elders and all the inhabitants of the land into the house of the LORD your God, and cry unto the LORD.

15Alas for the day! for the day of the LORD is at hand, and as a destruction from the Almighty shall it come.

Joel 1:13-15

Biblical Context

Joel 1:13-15 invites the spiritual leaders to lament, fast, and gather inwardly, warning that the day of the LORD approaches as judgment. It calls for purification and turning back to God as the true sustenance of life.

Neville's Inner Vision

Joel’s cry is a movement inside your own consciousness. The priests and ministers are the thoughts and desires you summon to the altar of awareness; when the meat offering and drink offering are withheld, it signals you have not fed your God with steady attention. The call to fast and to assemble is inward discipline: sanctify a time of quiet, gather the elders of your mind—the memory, judgment, courage, and hope—and invite all inhabitants of your life into the house of the LORD your God, the temple of your awakened I AM. Cry unto the LORD becomes the sustained awareness that you are not separate from God. The day of the LORD is at hand as a psychological turning: not a future disaster, but a shift in consciousness in which old identities melt and the true self emerges. Destruction from the Almighty appears as the breaking down of worn-out patterns, inviting you to re-create from within. Your practice is to assume unity, feel the reality of this inward temple, and let the day dawn in your present experience.

Practice This Now

Imaginative_act: Assume I am the priest in my own temple; in the next moment, I gather every inner faculty into the house of God and silently declare a fast from fear and doubt; feel the new nourishment of divine presence awakening within me.