By Water And By Blood

Neville Goddard 1956

My subject this morning is taken from the First Epistle of John. Now these twenty-one letters, or as we call them Epistles, are not really addressed to individuals or groups. They are mysteries, as is the entire Bible. Whether the Bible in the Old Testament tells the story in the form of history or whether they tell it in the form of a parable, or whether in the form of a letter, they are all revelations of the mind of God expressed in symbolism. Now, I do not claim that I can give you an exhaustive interpretation of any single story of the Bible.

Because they are revelations of the mind of the Infinite, no single interpretation could ever be exhaustive. On one level it may be true, and then you and I expand in consciousness and we re-read the letter and see it differently, and a further expansion in consciousness causes us, even when we re-read it for the third or fiftieth time, to still see the letter in a different light. So in this morning’s interpretation I will try to keep it on to a level that is most practical.

We are told in this 5th chapter of First John, “This is He that came by water and blood even Jesus Christ, not by water only, but by water and blood.” So these are symbols of birth. Every natural birth in the world is accompanied by the flowing of water and blood. It’s trying to tell the individual of a certain mystery of birth but he uses the word Christ Jesus and that is the symbol of a truly mysterious birth – something out of nothing. That is the mystery. Out of death life. Man cannot conceive it. How can something alive come out of that which is dead – how can something come out of nothing? Man accepts it in the mineral world for he sees if he goes back far enough in time could he push the mystery in some remote past, he will accept the fact that some time, in a way not known to modern science, out of a non-organic substance came an organism.

He will call it by some little tiny name – an amoeba – and that will satisfy his mind, but he stops – he still will not admit that he stated that there was a non organic substance, or nothing or something that was dead, out of which came life – out of which came something. He doesn’t want to wrestle with that problem so he leaves that, jumps over the pages of history and comes to some little thing more complex. Then he teaches evolution from that state. But when he goes far enough back he finds no answer for the appearance of life out of nothing or death.

So here is the mystery. It comes by water and by blood, not by water only but by water and blood. This is the great mystery of the incarnation, the death and the resurrection. What incarnation – what death and what resurrection? The mind instantly thinks in terms of two thousand years ago and we think that was the great mystery, but before I jump into the mystery, let me quote you the very last verse of this wonderful 5th chapter: “Little children keep yourselves from idols.” No matter how officialdom justifies them and tells you this is the image of your Savior revealed through the minds of a Saint or a great artist, you are warned in this chapter to keep yourselves free, completely free of idols, in harmony with the Second Commandment, “Thou shall make no graven image unto the Lord thy God.” No matter how it is justified by officialdom or orthodox society, you are asked please not to make anything external to your own mind and bow before it as a creative power, for here he is trying to reveal the true creative power that is in man. It sleeps in man as his passive mind. As you unfold the mystery, it awakens from its passive state into its active state, and the birth of the active mind is truly the resurrection of Christ in man. It is Christ in man that is the hope of glory.