Neville Goddard Lectures: “The Eternal Father”

16 Dec Neville Goddard Lectures: “The Eternal Father”

11/25/66

[…] one may not know it, but he really is seeking for the eternal Father. He is seeking for power, he thinks, for fame, for health, all these things in the world; but what he is really seeking for is the core, the cause of it all. The fatherhood of God is the central doctrine of the Bible. The individual will one day transform this doctrine into a first-person, present-tense experience. And so long as it is taken from experience a doctrine is valid and defendable. I tell you from experience it is true. One day you will discover the core, the cause of the whole vast world and all within it, with all of its horrors. And that core, believe it or not, is not only God the everlasting Father, but God the everlasting Father is infinite love. How could you conceive of it now when you see such horrors in the world? And God the Father is infinite love.

When I search the scriptures, we start in the early passages. He first presents himself as Almighty. To Abraham, Isaac and to Jacob I made myself known unto them as El Shaddai, God Almighty, but by my name—which is called Jehovah, which is translated I AM, and we speak of it as the Lord—I did not make myself known. That begins with the revelation to what is known as Moses. As we told you, these characters are not persons; these are eternal states, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, all of them, eternal states. When one reaches a state called Moses…and the word means “to be born.” It’s the old perfective of the Egyptian verb “to be born.” Men and scholars have played upon the word and because it is made up of Mem Shin He, they call it “to draw out.” You can turn it around and get the word “name” out of it, Heshem. You can take the middle letter, put it in the front, Shema, you get “heaven.” But heaven is within you (Luke 17:21). There is something to be drawn out from in man. And from within man is heaven; and you’re drawing out a name. Take the name Moses and turn it around, it spells name, Heshem. What is being drawn out?

The word [Moses] means “to be born.” There is something to be born that comes out of the depths of man…a name…the fulfillment of that which is coming out. It comes out in detail, but it comes out in sections. First: Almighty. Then it comes out as I AM. Finally it comes out as Father. We find that all through the gospel of John. He does not omit I AM, but he tells you “I AM the Father. He who sees me has seen the Father. How can you ask me to show you the Father? I have been so long with you and yet you do not know me, Philip? He who has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). No one understood it, no one grasped it. For, if you are a father, well then, there must be a son. You can’t be a father unless there’s a child. And he speaks about a son from the beginning. He promises a son to the first being to whom he reveals himself as might; that’s Abraham, the state called Abraham, which is faith.

You enter the state of faith and you hear the most fantastic, the most incredible story in the world: God’s plan of salvation. To this state he promises a son and that son is called Isaac, it’s also a state. Here is now the beginning, the shaping of the unbegotten. You must not see Isaac as the product of generation but the shaping of the unbegotten. So here, the formation begins; it’s a prototype of what is finally coming out. You meet him now in Isaiah, “Unto us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called”—and now we have four—“Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace” (Is.9:6). Here are four names given. In Isaiah, in Ezekiel, we find all these four-fold. The great poets, like a Blake, he speaks of the four-fold man. But in Ezekiel so much is said of the four-fold man, the four faces of man. Here we find in Isaiah the four names of a presence that is being born.