Neville Goddard Lectures: “The Kingdom”
29 Dec Neville Goddard Lectures: “The Kingdom”
By Neville Goddard April 30, 1963
Tonight’s subject is “The Kingdom.” We’re told in the Book of Luke, the 12th chapter, the 12th verse, “Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” In the same book, we are told, “The kingdom of heaven is within you” (Luke 17:21). So here, he’s going to give us something that is within us. So we must be locked out from something within us. Fear not, little flock, it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom, and the same evangelist, Luke, now tells us that the kingdom of God, the kingdom of heaven, is within you.
To get to the point, the earliest of the gospels, which is Mark, the first word put upon the lips of Jesus is about the kingdom. It’s the 1st chapter, the 15th verse, and the evangelist has him say, “The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of heaven is at hand; repent, and believe in the gospel.” That’s the message, the whole beginning. Here we have four profound thoughts in that one verse, that 15th verse of the 1st chapter: the time is fulfilled. Everything prior to this moment in eternity was only preparatory, and he’s making a declaration that everything the prophets foresaw, everything that they foretold, is now beginning to awaken. And he’s the first one, the forerunner, of all that was foretold that would happen to man. For the time has been ___(??); it had to be filled up. At this moment in time now, it begins to unfold like a flower. Then he said, “The kingdom of heaven is at hand,” which is a moment. He makes the statement, “Repent, and believe in the gospel.” There are four distinct thoughts all buried in that one verse.
Tonight, we will take many passages of it, with an emphasis on repent. It is not said in this statement that if you and I repent that we will in any way be able to cooperate with God in bringing in the new order. No, the new order is coming whether we repent or not. You can’t stop it. That’s God’s purpose; that’s his plan. So my repentance is not going to aid the new order at all. Yet I’m invited to repent. And we should every moment of time, if you know what it really is to repent. For repentance hasn’t a thing to do with grief, feeling sorry for what we’ve done, feeling remorseful, and regret. That hasn’t a thing to do with repentance. The word “repent” means “a change of mind, a change of attitude toward life itself.” I don’t care what the facts of life are; truth depends not upon fact but upon the intensity of imagining. And so if I repent, I simply change my attitude toward anything in this world. And if I am intense about the change and persist in that changed attitude of mind, I’ll produce a corresponding external fact.
Well, go back to what we said earlier, “It is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom” and “The kingdom of God is within you.” I am shut out from something within me of which there is nothing but; for all things are in the kingdom and the kingdom of God is within you. Then how do I arrive at that inner state? He’s invited me now to practice the art of repentance, just practice it. He doesn’t tell me that if I don’t practice it, I’m going to be shut out from the kingdom. He does not say that. He tells me to repent and believe in the gospel; believe the story, read it, and believe it. But do repent. But I do not bring in the kingdom by my repentance. For that kingdom is coming whether I repent or not. But it makes it so much easier while I’m still shut out to live in the world where I am shut out if I repent.