Neville Goddard Lectures: “Family Portrait”

30 May Neville Goddard Lectures: “Family Portrait”

By Neville Goddard (Date Unknown)

Tonight’s title is: the “Family Portrait.” Thirty-odd years ago a play appeared on Broadway called the “Family Portrait (*1939).” It was a study of Jesus, and starred Margaret Webster and Judith Anderson. They played the parts of Mary Magdalene and Mary the Mother. The central figure . . Jesus . . never appeared on the stage, just as it should be. The brothers appeared, bringing the news of what he had said and the reactions of the crowd, and the concern of the two Marys. This went through the entire play for its two and a half or three hours.

I do not know if it ever came on the road . . if you ever saw it, but it was a perfectly wonderful presentation of this greatest of all mysteries, and in keeping with the story, He never appeared, because Jesus Christ is not what the world thinks he is.

Jesus Christ is the Pattern Man. It’s a pattern buried in every child born of woman. There is no description of Jesus in the Bible, because everyone, one day, will experience the story of Jesus in a first-person, singular, present-tense experience, and he will know that he is the Lord Jesus Christ.

So, you cannot pinpoint it and take one face and say, “That is Jesus,” because that would not be Jesus. Everyone, wearing the same face that he has now, will realize, “I AM He.” Then, before others know it, they will witness to the one who knows it. When you are “born from above” and have experienced the entire story, and you tell it, there will be those who believe you and those who will not believe you.

Those who will believe you will see you cast in the role . . not in this world . . no, not here, but they will see it in the world where it really does take place. For, in the depths of consciousness the Gospel is still extant. It is an eternal story, the story of Redemption, and everyone is going to experience it.

So, in the story, the Mother would ask, “What is he doing now?” and they would come back and say what he is doing and what he is saying now. They bring back the story of what he is saying.

“And how are the people reacting?”

“Well, they are very excited. The people are speaking in terms of revolution. The people are thinking in terms of all kinds of violence, over what he is saying.”

And then the two Marys are frightfully concerned, because spiritual growth is the gradual transition from a god of tradition to a God of experience. They had a god of tradition, and he is now turning the whole thing over, and showing a God of experience.

“Well, what did he say to the crowd?” “He told them that he came out from Heaven and came into the world, and he’s leaving the world and returning to Heaven.”

“What else did he say?” said Mary.

“Then he told them that God was his Father. He also told them that he and his Father were one. He also told them that his brothers were those who did the will of Him who sent him, and that his Father sent him, and his Father is himself, and the Father never left him.”

“Did he say that?” said Mary.

“Yes, that is what he’s teaching. The people are going wild. And he’s telling them that we are all brothers, and that he is ascending to his Father and my Father, and he is ascending unto his God and my God. And the people are all for him, but the authorities are against him, but he does speak with authority. He speaks not like the Scribes and the Pharisees; he speaks just like anyone who is speaking with authority.”

He is knowing, and he knows what he is talking about, for he has experienced it. Now, when I tell you that I have experienced in detail the entire story, I must say to everyone who hears me: Believe it or not. Those who believe it will see me cast in the role . . not here, and those who know me very well here know my weaknesses, know my limitations, they say of me just what is said in Scripture, “Why, I have seen him under the influence of wine; he’s a wine bibber and a glutton. He’s a friend of sinners, harlots, tax collectors.” And they will think that is superior insight, and yet it is pure blindness to read into the life of God’s elect some littleness with which one is in some peculiar way familiar.