Neville Goddard Lectures: “Call the Next Witness”

19 Jan Neville Goddard Lectures: “Call the Next Witness”

5/26/64

___(??) which is the last for a little while. We’ll be returning on the 6th of October. And this has been a perfectly marvelous session. I want to thank you for your case histories. As far as I’m concerned they are tops, not only in the working of the law but in your visions which you have shared with me and allowed me in turn to share with others.

Well, tonight’s subject is “Call the Next Witness.” Everyone in the world will be called as the next witness. We are told in the Book of Isaiah: “And now go, write it upon a tablet and inscribe it in a book that it may be for the time to come as a witness forever” (30:8). So the first witness is the book, that book is our Bible. It is a witness forever. But our Bible, in this instance, is the Old Testament, that’s the witness. That is the external witness. But, as we are told in the Old Testament, in the Book of Deuteronomy, the 19th chapter, that only on the evidence of two witnesses, or three witnesses, can a charge be sustained (verse 15). So here we have one witness, the external witness of scripture, and there must be a second witness to sustain the charge. This is God’s promise to the whole vast world. And then we are told we are called one by one: “I will gather you one by one, O people of Israel” (Is. 27:12). Everyone is called and the one who is called is the witness, the next witness; and he has to parallel by his own experiences this that is the external witness, recorded in scripture.

So when the first one comes into the world who has the witness of scripture, it is said of him he is the first-born of the dead, the faithful witness. You read this in the Book of Revelation, the 1st chapter, the 5th verse: “And he is the faithful witness, the first-born of the dead.” But no one believed him, or few believed him, because they expected a different kind of a witness. They thought some mighty giant would come from outer space and be their leader, to enslave those who had enslaved them, and raise them to some victorious state in the world. And that’s not the picture of scripture. You and I will be, one by one, called as we can parallel that testimony as described in scripture.

So we are told, if two persons who differ, like two witnesses, if they agree in testimony it is conclusive. And so we have the Old Testament and we read it carefully—that is the external witness. Now, I differ from that, for I will say I didn’t write it but I was told about it or I read it. Now, can I actually have an experience that parallels that which is recorded in the external witness? So there must be an external witness of scripture and the internal witness of the Spirit. So here comes one who makes the statement: “Scripture must be fulfilled in me. For all that was written about me has its fulfillment, and beginning with Moses in the law and the prophets and the psalms, he interpreted to them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself” (Luke 22:37; 24:44). Every passage in the Old Testament that was in any way related to himself he showed them where this had to be experienced by him. He couldn’t share it with them, for the experiences take place in the soul of man. It doesn’t take place that the mortal eye could see. And then he began to tell them what had happened to him. Then we are told the one who really believed it in this world, though he fought him in the beginning, that in the end of his days he expounded the matter from morning to night, trying to convince them of the reality of Jesus, using all the scripture as his argument; and some believed while others disbelieved. And that’s the entire story.