Neville Goddard Lectures: “Everyone Has the Plan in Him”

02 Oct Neville Goddard Lectures: “Everyone Has the Plan in Him”

1/24/66

___(??) the Bible is. I’ll let you decide from what you will hear. For what would I call it? I presume that everyone here has a plan, has a purpose. We find it in business, we find it in government; and we wonder, if we believe in God, well, does he have a plan, does he have a purpose? Is there a plan for the overall picture? We’re told in scripture there is a plan; “As I have planned, so shall it be; as I have purposed, so shall it stand. And the anger of the Lord will not turn back until he has executed and accomplished the intents of his mind. In the latter days you will understand it clearly” (Is.14:24; Jer.23:20). The word translated anger in our biblical concordance (Strong’s) is “to breathe hard.” He used the word with emphasis on breath. Well, breath, wind and Spirit are the same in both Greek and Hebrew. It could be the Spirit of the Lord, which could be the Lord himself. They give another definition, “to know,” therefore the face, therefore the person himself. So you may read it: “The Lord will not turn back until he has executed and accomplished the intents of his mind. In the latter days you will understand it clearly.”

It is not what man was looking for. No man by the revelation in the Old Testament could have discovered his plan, could have discovered his purpose. The New Testament interprets the Old; it’s not the other way around. And when it came to the surface after the fullness of time, man could not accept it. He didn’t accept it then and he doesn’t accept it today. The hundreds of millions who think they have accepted it by calling themselves Christians are as far from the truth as they were when it was first revealed. So from time to time he sends one, as he sent Paul, and he sends him not because Paul was wise, articulate, a big strong man. No one sent seems to feel qualified, and they aren’t qualified in their own eyes. But he who sends him by the very act of seeing him qualifies him. That one qualification is the consequence, not the result of anything that we did but the consequence of seeing God. When you see him you are qualified; not because you’ve earned the right to see him. What he saw in you, you didn’t see, and no one on earth saw. But he sends you.

So Paul in his letters, or his one letter to the Ephesians, he speaks of “the mystery of the will of God, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time” (1:9). And then he goes on in the same letter and he said: “This mystery was made known unto me by revelation. When you have read it you will perceive my insight into the mystery of Christ” (Eph.3:3)…when you read it. Now he goes on and makes the statement, and you will see from the statement he now makes, that the mysteries of God are not matters to be kept secret, they are truths which are mysterious in character, truths so fantastic that man denies them. They are not to be kept secret and that’s why the prophets of the Old could say: “If I say, ‘I will not mention it or speak anymore in his name, then there is in my heart as it were a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I am weary with holding it in, and I cannot’” (Jer. 20:9). You can’t restrain it, though in the eyes of others you are a laughing stock. You are sent to tell it…God’s plan of salvation.

Today we think by historical research we will find religious certainty. Historical research cannot give us religious certainty. You may dig from now to the ends of time, find all the old manuscripts that even predate what we have, but you will not have that inner certainty by anything save through revelation. And this one he makes now as ___(??), he said, “To me this grace was given to preach…and to make all men see what is the plan of his mystery hidden for ages in God” (Eph. 3:8). And I am convinced that you may do whatever you think you should do for ___(??), but you cannot hasten the time. It’s like a birth and it’s coming into fulfillment in its own good time. When that time has reached fullness you will experience these signs.