Neville Goddard Lectures: “An Apostle”

16 Dec Neville Goddard Lectures: “An Apostle”

11/28/66

Tonight’s subject is “An Apostle.” I really should have said The Apostle, but we let it go. In the epistle to the Hebrews we have this statement…and here Hebrews is completely anonymous, no one knows who wrote it. Scholars have speculated and thought it was Paul, and yet Paul is just as anonymous as Matthew, Mark, Luke and John…the whole Bible is anonymous. But in the epistle to the Hebrews, the 3rd chapter, he said, “Holy brethren, who share in a heavenly call, consider Jesus, the apostle and high priest of our confession” (3:1). In this epistle the word apostle is applied only to Jesus, as if there were no other apostles. May I tell you, he’s right…whoever wrote it, he’s right. The word apostle means “one who is sent, not as a mere envoy but as one who is authorized to speak in the name of him who has sent him.” So throughout the gospel of John you read, “He who sees me sees him who has sent me” (John12:45). Here we find the apostle. Without explaining why, we say just Paul, as though he were a person. Paul is a state as much as Abraham is a state. Well, we say Paul, and he lays it down as an indispensable qualification for apostleship, that is, to have seen the risen Christ. He said, “Am I not free? Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen Jesus our Lord?” (1Cor.9:1). That is the indispensable prerequisite for apostleship, to have seen the risen Christ.

So we read in the 52nd of Isaiah, “How beautiful are the mountains…how beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news, who publishes salvation, who says to Zion, ‘Your God reigns’” (verse 7), because he speaks with authority. He stood in the presence of the risen Christ, and he was embraced and incorporated into the body of the risen Christ, who is Jehovah, and sent to tell the story of the risen Christ, called the gospel. The gospel is the Word of the risen Christ.

Here, this is the perspective in which the whole of life is understood. That you become a king, a financial giant, a brilliant person, a great scientist? These things mean nothing compared to standing in the presence of the risen Christ and having him embrace you and incorporate you. And although you come to earth clothed in a garment of flesh, no one sees you, but no one. There is no human eye that can see the thing that your really are. Because when you are once incorporated into his body let no man put us asunder. He who is joined to the Lord no man can put asunder. We are called, one by one, to be incorporated into this glorious body, and our lowly bodies are changed to be of one form with that wonderful, glorious body (Mark 10:9; Mat.19:6; Phil.3:21). You can talk about it and say all kinds of things, but who can see it?

So here, the apostle is simply the one man; and so in Hebrews it is only given to Jesus. It’s so difficult for man to believe that all could fit into one man, that we’re gathered one by one to be incorporated into one man, and that one man is Christ the Lord, and one man, Jesus. This is a strange, peculiar thing, but I’m telling you what I know from experience. I’m not speculating, I’m not theorizing…I tell you exactly what happened to me. Thirty years before the birth [from above], it was 1929, and we are told, two were in the field and one is taken, one is left. Two women in the mill and one is taken and one is left (Mat.24:40). Do not return to ask why. No one knows the secret of God’s elective love. All will be called, but the order in which they are called remains his secret. No one knows why we are called as we are called, in the order in which we are called.