Neville Goddard Lectures: “Imparting And Implanting The Word”

08 Mar Neville Goddard Lectures: “Imparting And Implanting The Word”

12/15/67

The most incredible story ever told man or that could ever be told man is the gospel. You and I read in the morning paper, and we’re all excited that someone transplanted a heart. Time magazine refers to it as the “ultimate operation”; take a heart from one who is dead and put it into the body of one who needs one badly. Why, I do not know, but he wants to vegetate beyond his present moment. But nevertheless it’s called the “ultimate operation.”

Now, may I tell you what the gospel really is in essence: God, the God who created the whole vast universe and sustains it, became man that man may become God. Can you conceive of any greater story in the world? Well, when man hears it, he turns his back upon it. We are told that it is told to the men of the world and they receive it in four different ways (Mat. 13:3-23). The majority completely turn from it as the most incredible and stupid story that ever could be told. It is said, it falls upon the wayside and the birds of the air devoured it. Then there are those who eagerly take it, but they’re not prepared to really receive it; and then over night it takes a little root but then comes the sun and scorches it because it had no depth. The sun makes visible the facts of life, the things that you and I call real—and it completely denies the reality of what was heard, and they thought it must have been just an idle dream. Then it falls upon, well, the thorns and the thistles of the way…all the cares of life. They’re about paying rent, buying food, clothing, and getting on in this world. And so there must be a moment in time when we will take care of that, but not now; and so all the thorns and the thistles and the cares of the world choke it. Then there are those who have been prepared. They heard it and they struggle to keep it alive. As they struggle to keep it alive, they prepare the ground to receive it. Some bring forth the thirty-fold, sixty-fold, and an hundred-fold.

Now when you hear it, that is imparting the word. You can reject it; you can have it simply scorched by the facts of life, choked by all the cares of the world. Or you can hear it, this most incredible story that ever could be told man and so prepare yourself to receive it that then the word, having been imparted, can then be implanted…all the difference in the world. “Receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your soul” (Jas. 1:21). This may seem to you, well, the height of insanity. But I am not talking out of turn, I am not speculating, I am telling you what I know, what I know from my own personal experience. So, this is the difference between imparting the word, getting it rejected, choked, scorched, or accepted. Then comes that moment in time when the word can be implanted, engrafted. The word translated “engrafted” in the King James Version and “implanted” in the Revised Standard Version is a compound word. We have, first of all, the preposition “in, within” which means “to fix in place, in time or state.” And then we have a word which means “to puff up, to blow up, simply to sprout”…in other words, “to germinate.”

So we take the word and the word is God—God himself being implanted into that soil that has been prepared that is man. It’s done within. When it is implanted, well then, in its own good time it erupts, and a definite system unfolds within, a definite plan, and that one actually begins to expand from that moment on; expands and continues to expand, and expands into God who created this universe and sustains it. Not some little thing, he expands into God forever and forever, the very God who created the whole vast universe.