Neville Goddard Lectures: “Persons Represent States in Scripture”

16 Mar Neville Goddard Lectures: “Persons Represent States in Scripture”

4/25/69

When you are reading the greatest book in the world, the Bible, always bear in mind that the person Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Jesus, Peter, Paul, any name if they’re in scripture are not there meant as persons: they are states. The name only signifies a state that they represent. If you see them as persons, you will never really understand scripture. They are simply the personification of these eternal states which were revealed to mortal man in a series of divine revelations as they are recorded in scripture.

Now tonight, we will take just a few. Go back now to Blake and his Vision of the Last Judgment, he said…now when he speaks of Satan, Satan is not a person, it’s a state, the state of doubt, the complete un-forgivingness. If they can’t touch it or they can’t see it then they cannot accept it. So Satan believed that sin was displeasing to God. He ought to know that nothing is displeasing to God but unbelief and eating of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. The combat of good and evil is eating of the tree of knowledge; the combat of truth and error is eating of the tree of life. These are not only universal but particular. Each is personified. So when he speaks of Satan, it’s not a person…bear in mind he’s speaking of a state. It’s an eternal state into which you and I or all may fall where we completely deny a state because it is not in harmony with our senses.

Now when he speaks of truth, he calls it Jesus. And as far as Blake is concerned, and every mystic worthy of the name, a true judgment need not conform to the external fact to which it relates. If I say, “Aren’t they beautiful,” and you see nothing, and yet I am looking at something that I say is beautiful, well, you’ll think maybe Neville had something to drink or maybe he’s just having a little fun. But I am seeing what I would like to see, and so I am now looking at something that is altogether lovely. I place it where I would place it if it were true to my senses. And I persuade myself that it is true and to the degree that I am self-persuaded that it is true it becomes fact. So I discover that a true judgment need not conform to the external fact with which it relates. Satan insists that it must and truth tells us that it need not.

Well, we’ll take truth on a different level tonight. We’ll bring it back to this and then go back into other areas of it. Jesus is called the truth in scripture: “I am the truth. I am the spirit of truth.” “I came out from the Father and I came into the world; again, I am leaving the world and going to the Father” (Jn.16:28). Well, it didn’t make sense, because they knew his physical origin. Here is a man who is making a fantastic claim and there is not a thing to support the claim. In scripture…that is, you’ll find it in the Talmud, not our Bible, but in the Jerusalem Talmud…Messiah is supposed to come suddenly from some concealed state. As it is said, if he is in the world, he does not know it until Elijah first comes and anoints him, and then he will suddenly appear. But he doesn’t know it, even though he may be in the world, until he is first anointed by Elijah, and then he will suddenly appear. That’s what we are told in the Jerusalem Talmud. For the ___(??) expected was the sudden appearance of Messiah.

Now, it is said in scripture he is the corner stone. He also is the top stone as told in Zechariah: “He shall bring forward the top stone among shouts of ‘Grace, grace to it!’ (4:7). Well, it was said that through Moses came the law, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. So here he is the top stone. He’s also the foundation stone, and there is no other foundation stone. A foundation stone contains the whole stone; it contains the plan of a structure, the plan of the edifice, and its purpose, why it is being constructed. There must be a plan and there must be a reason for the edifice. So in the hollowed stone laid as a foundation stone are the documents and the purposes of the building. This structure is the temple of the living God, laid up and built out of living stones, individuals who are redeemed, all built into the living structure.