Neville Goddard Lectures: “Foreknowledge”

21 Mar Neville Goddard Lectures: “Foreknowledge”

1/17/69

Tonight’s subject is “Foreknowledge.” We’re told in scripture that “Thus said the Lord of hosts, ‘As I have planned, so shall it be; as I have purposed, so shall it stand. And the Lord will not turn back until he has executed and accomplished the intents of his mind’” (Is. 14:24; Jer. 23:20). Now the structure of God’s plan is given us in the Book of Romans. Here we have it in five terms: “Those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son. And those whom he predestined he also called; and those whom he called he also justified; and those whom he justified he also glorified” (8:29).

Now here, in these five terms we have a very strong case for predestination, and there is no way that you can interpret these terms and avoid that conclusion. But does it rob us on this level of our freedom?—no. “He who began a good work in us will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ” (Phil. 1:6). He will bring it to completion. But on the surface of his being, where we are, while that work is taking place in us we are not robbed of our freedom. On the contrary, the certainty that our salvation is in the hand of God frees us from worldly anxieties; and then we can say with Paul, “In all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us” (Rom. 8:37). For, never would you have made anything if you had not loved it. Well, he so loved you that he is molding himself within you, and when he completes his job that is Jesus Christ. So when Christ is formed in us, then we are born from above in the same manner that when this physical garment was formed in our mothers it was born from below. So when the image of God is formed within us from above, we are born from above; and that image radiates the glory of God and is the express image of his person. So anyone seeing a being who is born from above would see God. It’s the express image of his person, and they would have no other feeling on meeting that being who is born from above other than that they are now in the presence of God; for he radiates the glory of God and is the express image of his person.

But, although that is taking place in us unknown to the surface mind, that predestined will of God that he will not turn back until he has executed and accomplished the intents of his mind, in the latter days you will know it clearly. But in the meanwhile, on the surface we are as free as anyone could ever wish to be to exercise a power, which is God, whether we do it wisely or unwisely. I state over and over that imagining creates reality…your wonderful Imagination is God. He’s enslaved himself on the surface of our being, allowing us to misuse him for any purpose in the world. But in everything God works for good, so he takes the most horrible thing in the world and still can convert it to good. But God which is our Imagination will not respond to compulsion. You can’t compel him. “God only acts and is in existing beings or men,” but he acts only if we have imagined the wish fulfilled. He will not act under any other circumstances. Persuasion is the sugar that best sweetens his medicine…you persuade.