Neville Goddard Lecture: Keep the Sabbath

10 Apr Neville Goddard Lecture: Keep the Sabbath

3/3/67

You’ll find tonight a very practical night and yet profoundly spiritual. “And God saw everything that he had made and behold, it was very good. God rested on the seventh day from his work which he had made” (Gen.1:31;2:2). Now we are told this seventh day is the day for man to observe. It’s part of the creative act of God. The unknown author of that verse that I just quoted connects the sabbath with a creative act of God. It’s a ___(??) and without it there is no creation. And the seventh day was the sabbath of the Lord your God and in it you shall not do any work.

Here is a creative act. If one Commandment is treated imaginally, then all Commandments must be treated in the same manner. The Old Testament is a prophecy of all that must take place in the individual, fulfilled in what we have as the New Testament. The New Testament interprets the Old, not the other way around. You can’t understand the Old without the New. When the time was fulfilled it unfolded in the individual and we have what is known as the New Testament. In the New Testament we have one of the Ten Commandments analyzed for us. “Thou shalt not commit adultery. But I say any man who looks upon a woman lustfully has already committed the act of adultery with her in his heart” (Mat.5:27). He’s committed the act by looking lustfully; that is, to imagine the act and to desire it is to have performed the act, whether you did it physically or not. Well, that is one commandment. Why take all ten? This is given to us in the Sermon on the Mount.

Well, here we are called upon to keep the sabbath. In it you shall not do any work. Then what is the sabbath? First of all he creates…and God is invisible…“God calls a thing that is not seen as though it were, then he keeps the Sabbath, and the unseen becomes seen” (Rom. 4:17). That which was subjective becomes objective only by the keeping of the Sabbath. It’s part of the ___(??). So I imagine the scene just as I would like it to be, perfect, to me perfect. Wouldn’t it be wonderful were it true! Now, can I keep the sabbath? We all break it morning, noon and night. This coming Sunday millions of Christians and, well, today at sundown the orthodox Jew is keeping the sabbath. Beginning on Sunday, millions, hundreds of millions of Christians will, so-called, keep the sabbath. They’re not keeping the sabbath. Listen to the words, “Formerly, when you did not know God, you were in bondage to beings who by nature are no gods; but now that you know God, or rather that you have come to be known by God, how can you turn back? You observe days, and months, and seasons, and years! I am afraid I have labored over you in vain” (Gal.4:10).

So we think we keep the sabbath. I went to my barber yesterday and this shoeshine fellow, an awfully nice lad, he’s a deacon in his church, and so we always have a good joke together and he certainly knows a lot of jokes. I said, “Hal, how are things going?” Oh, he said, “I spent the whole day Sunday in church. I went to church and after service we went home and we had coffee and cake, oh, the most wonderful cake they had made”…and he’s telling me all these things…“and from there we went to another service. I didn’t get home for dinner until 6:30…the whole day given over to God.” He spent it in church. He thought he kept the sabbath. Well, I would not argue with Henry. He doesn’t know what I do. I’ve been going to the same barber for the longest while, for years and years, but Henry is not the first shoeshine boy that he’s had. But here is Henry and he’s a deacon in the church, and he thinks he keeps the sabbath by going to church.