Neville Goddard Lectures: “Christmas” (1965)

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

12/17/65

…. for a very short while, closing tonight and reopening on the 4th of January, same place, same time. But I’m not sending out notices, so please remember the date. I will take a small ad to remind those who may read the Saturday paper, and that would appear on the 1st of January stating that we’re reopening on Tuesday, the 4th of January. Outside of that we have no notice to send. The subject will be “Your Future.” It will be based mostly on this level of Caesar, just a small portion given to your ultimate future. But on a whole it will be on this level. So if you have a friend you can tell him. For I have no other way of reaching him save through that small ad.

This being the last and Christmas follows within a week, I thought it best to give this as the last of the year. So my subject tonight is “Christmas,” as misunderstood as all the other great mysteries of scripture are. There are supposed to be one billion Christians and a week from tomorrow millions will fill the churches and hear the story as it never took place. So tonight I want to share with you what I know of Christmas from my own personal experience.

The evangelists are not recording incidents of the past as you record the story, say, of Abraham Lincoln. They tell what happened in the depths of the soul of Jesus. The resurrection, the birth from above, the discovery of the fatherhood of God, the rending of the curtain of the temple from top to bottom, the serpentine ascent of the Son of man, and the descent of the dove upon the risen Christ were seen and heard by none save Jesus. No mortal eye witnessed this series of events, yet man believes that at the birth a woman with her spouse were present when it happened, and three shepherds, mortal men, came in flesh and blood and witnessed it; and then the crowds came. They’ve even added things like the donkey and the little lamb and things of that sort. As the years go on they build it up and they really believe that these series of events were witnessed by mortal eye…and they were not. The evangelists were not telling that story…an entirely different story. They were not interested in the events in the life of Jesus between the physical birth and his physical death; they were simply concerned in telling the story of salvation. Theirs was essentially, well, a revelation of the risen Christ.

The Jesus you read about in the gospels is one with your own wonderful “I am,” that’s Jesus. One day you will discover it, one day you will know it from experience by the same series of supernatural experiences. Always bear in mind that Jesus is a wholly supernatural being. He’s in you now, actually in you now. When you say “I am,” before you say anything, that’s Christ Jesus. But he’s not awakened, he’s not aroused, but that’s Christ Jesus. And everything recorded in scripture of that Christ Jesus you will experience; for there’s only one Christ Jesus. You will experience it without loss of your individuality, the loss of identity.

It’s a very grave mistake in interpretation to ignore the out and out supernatural being that is Christ Jesus, this character that is in man, and try to explain him in some naturalistic way, as they will one week from tomorrow. They will tell of a unique being who was born of a physical woman of flesh and blood but he had no father; the Holy Spirit came upon her. If you take it in that light, well, then declare “I am Mary and birth to God must give, if I in blessedness for now and ever more would live.” If that is the story, then every person in the world, regardless of sex, is Mary.

That the Holy Spirit comes yes. The word Spirit is wind, it does come. It comes upon you and then you awaken. That is the beginning of the entire drama, the resurrection. So the resurrection comes first and you awake in the tomb of your own skull. While in that tomb, you know the drama, you know it intuitively, and then you come out as one that is being born. And the signs that accompany that event are recorded in scripture, and man has taken up the signs and personified it and made it something real, like flesh and blood. It’s only a sign of your own departure from the skull, from the tomb.