Neville Goddard Lectures: “Poor Brother Donkey”

09 Sep Neville Goddard Lectures: “Poor Brother Donkey”

10/18/1971

The title is Poor Brother Donkey. As you know by now, the New Testament is only the fulfillment of the Old. So the central figure in the New Testament makes the claim, “I have come only to fulfill Scripture.” And the only Scripture known at the time was the Old Testament. So the passage of the Old Testament concerning this donkey, you read in the ninth chapter, the ninth verse of Zechariah. The word Zechariah means “Jehovah Remembered.” And the passage is this: “Lo, your king is coming, triumphant and victorious is he, humble and sitting on an ass.”

Now, in the New Testament, in the twelfth chapter of John, it is written, “Jesus found a young ass and sat on it. As it is written, Behold, now in the New Testament, your king is coming, sitting on a ass.” Well, that was the music that brought him in. Are you all ready now? Well, I hope it didn’t disturb your thoughts.

When you make a mental picture of this, you think of a donkey, don’t you? And year after year, in the great pageantry of the Christian faith, here is the donkey. And from the pulpit, we are told that the Lord came riding into Jerusalem triumphantly. And they spread all the palm leaves before him. And he came triumphantly and victoriously into Jerusalem, riding on an ass.

Tonight, I will show you what the ass is. Francis of Assisi, they call him now Saint Francis. He was not a theologian. He was a very rich, handsome, young man. And he had a vision. And the vision changed his life completely. Those who are changed by a vision must walk by faith. To the mile of doubt, he so believed in the vision, that he took the bulk of it and gave up all of his wealth, including the clothes that he was wearing and stood in the nude.

The bishop of Assisi gave him a prop to cover his nakedness. He died at the age of 43, and he believed his austere life was the cause of that short life. I do not go along with that, for I go along with Scripture. There is a season for everything—a time to be born, and a time to die. A time to laugh, and a time to cry.

Forty-three years was enough for the work he came to do. But on his deathbed, he asks forgiveness of poor brother donkey, my body, for all the hardship which I caused it to suffer. The donkey is the body that you are wearing. Scripture tells us when you find it, it’s a wild ass of a man. It’s into the words of the 16th chapter of Genesis. And the angel of the Lord said unto Hagar, “I will so multiply your descendants that they cannot be counted for multitude, and you shall bear a son. He shall be a wild ass of a man, his hand against every man, and every man’s hand against him.”

It’s a man. And when you, the individual self, descend, for you are the son of God—we are the sons of God who came down into this world of death—and we penetrated these bodies and annexed their brains. And then we had to actually confront all the vicissitudes of this annexation. We took upon ourselves these wild asses, these bodies, with all of the passions of the body, all of the weaknesses of the body. This is the only ass on which the king rides.

Behold, your king is coming. He’s in you now. It is the Lord, and his name forever and forever is I Am. He has no other name. That’s the Lord’s name. And he’s riding this animal. He has to ride it until it becomes humble. In the Bible, meek means not to grovel on the floor, but to become self-disciplined.

Possibly the most important and the most difficult thing in the world for man to become, is a gentleman. You may become a dictator, a king, or a queen. Hitler was a dictator. Stalin was a dictator. In my book, they were not gentlemen. The most difficult thing in the world for a man is to become a gentleman. And for a woman, to become a lady. I know nothing more difficult in the world.