Neville Goddard Lectures: “The Bible is the Word of God”

22 Jun Neville Goddard Lectures: “The Bible is the Word of God”

3/30/65

Tonight’s subject is “The Bible is the Word of God.” And we are warned not to change it, not to add to it, not to take from it, just leave it as it is; it will prove itself in time that it’s for our instruction.

So we open the Bible…say it fell upon the 4th chapter of 2nd Corinthians, and you and I read these words, “Always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies” (verse 10). As we are seated here tonight and as I am standing here tonight, we are carrying always in our bodies the death of Jesus; and the reason behind it all is that we may also carry the life of Jesus in our bodies that it may all be manifested in us. Well, we read this and we wonder, what is it all about? Then, the death of Jesus must be a creative act and that we are going to share this creativity with him. So then Blake makes the statement, “Unless I die, thou canst not live, but if I die I shall arise again and thou with me.” So actually we are carrying in our bodies the death of Jesus, and the purpose behind it all is that he will awaken in us and we will share with him the life of Jesus.

Well, let us look at it through different eyes tonight. I say Jesus Christ is a wholly supernatural being. Everything said of him, everything written about him, everything about him, everything he is supposed to have uttered, everything that he is supposed to have experienced, everything is experienced supernaturally. His birth, his resurrection, his death, his discovery of himself as God the Father, his ascension into heaven, the seal of the Holy Spirit upon him, his walking on the water, his feeding of the thousands, the curing of unnumbered people of all kinds of disease—the blind, the lame, the halt, the withered—-everything recorded of him is experienced supernaturally, but experienced in these bodies where we carry his death. So always in these bodies we carry the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in these bodies.

You and I are born normally in this world, born of normal parents, where a man knew a woman, and the result was a child; and you are that child, grown now to manhood, womanhood. This is how the story starts. And here, in us, this normal being, is a being that is a supernatural being. Now does the Bible throw any light upon it? The seed plot of the entire Bible is Genesis, and Genesis begins, “In the beginning God…” and it ends “…in a coffin in Egypt” (1:1;50:26). So God is in a coffin. Am I that coffin? For, if I am carrying in my body the death of Jesus, I must be that coffin spoken of in Genesis. Now, we are told it’s a sarcophagus; it’s a limestone coffin that is supposed to consume the flesh, and turn it into dust. So God is put into this coffin that consumes him and turns him into dust. And the great miracle: Though turned into dust, he shall rise and I with him, that I am the coffin in which he is buried.

Now, let us turn to the 6th chapter of John, which we may almost give a name to it and call it the chapter of cession. For in this chapter they couldn’t understand him, and we are told the disciples left him, never to walk with him again, and only the twelve remained. He said to them, “Would you also go?” Peter became the spokesman and Peter said, “To whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life; and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God” (verse 67). What a progression! We have believed it…that was simply a venture in faith. The most fantastic story in the world was told and they believed it, and believing it, after a while they came to know it from experience, no more faith. Faith was turned into knowledge, knowledge based upon something that was solid, solid facts of personal experience. They knew and knew then that he was the Holy One of God.