Neville Goddard Lectures: “Advent” (1965)

07 Dec Neville Goddard Lectures: “Advent” (1965)

11/30/65

Tonight’s talk is “Advent.” Should it seem a bit mystical and therefore you call it spiritual, let me remind you, whatever is profoundly spiritual is, in reality, most directly practical. You need not always think in terms of some earthly objective in order to realize it. You could be far removed mentally from the immediate pressure and dwell on the mystery of God, and that which is now your great need will find itself wrapping itself in some objective fact, and you’ll realize it.

Today, the 30th of November is called in the church tradition Andrew’s Day. The church has taken the twelve apostles, Christ and John the Baptist, and given a day of the year to each. So this day has been given to Andrew. It’s not in scripture. In fact, Paul in his letter to the Galatians warns us against such a practice. He said, “I notice that you observe days and months and seasons and years. I am afraid I have labored over you in vain” (4:10). Because, this day could take place any moment of the day, any day of the year—you don’t have to wait for any 30th of November to experience this day. It’s all built around the first chapter of the gospel of John. We’re told in that first chapter that John the Baptist was standing with two of his disciples and he looked and he saw Jesus, and he said, “Behold, the Lamb of God” (verse 29). One of the two present was Andrew, so Andrew followed him and came to his home and remained with him because it was the tenth hour. The tenth hour is the creative hour.

Every letter in the Hebrew tongue has a numerical value as well as a symbolical value. So the letter Yod which begins the name of God—Yod, He, Vau, He—has the numerical value of ten, but the symbolical value of “the hand of the Creator”; it’s a creative hand. It also has the symbol of a seal, the creative seal. It was the tenth hour. He first found his brother, Simon Peter, and told him he had found the Messiah which means “the Christ.” Then in the same chapter we’re told how we know he is the one. So we’re told, I have found him of whom Moses in the law and the prophets wrote. For everything is foreshadowed in the Old Testament. The Old Testament, or the story of the Old Testament, is a prefiguration of the Christ. In fact, according to certain rabbinical principle, what is not written in the scripture is non-existent. All of the accomplishments of men are as nothing if it is not in scripture. Well, it will not be in scripture, all of the accomplishments of men, because this of which the scripture speaks takes place in the depths of the soul of man. There is no secular history in the Bible; it’s all sacred history.

So let us turn to the first word that designated him as the Christ: “Behold, the Lamb of God.” So we search the scripture, naturally meaning the Old Testament, to find where it is used. Here we find it in the 22nd of Genesis. Here is a prototype of the real sacrifice. And so Abraham takes his son Isaac up to the mountain to sacrifice him. Isaac said, “Father, I see the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a sacrifice?” The father said, “God will provide himself the lamb for a sacrifice” (verse 7)…and the two went on together. You know the story—a substitute was found, that the lad was not sacrificed; a goat was sacrificed in his place, a substitute. But there’s no substitute for this sacrifice in the real drama of the soul. God actually becomes man that man may become God: “Unless I die thou canst not live, but if I die, I shall arise again and thou with me” (Blake, Jerusalem, Plt.96). This sacrifice is not vicarious; it’s an actual sacrifice where God empties himself of his creative power and takes upon himself the limitation of a man, man being his sepulcher (Phil. 2:7). This is the great mystery of life through death: Except a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it will bring forth much…thirty, sixty, a hundred-fold. So here is the mystery of life through death.