Neville Goddard Lectures: “The Miraculous Child”

01 Feb Neville Goddard Lectures: “The Miraculous Child”

10/27/66

Tonight’s subject is “The Miraculous Child.” It may not appeal to the world, because they are so fixed in their misconceptions of scripture, and there is no dead weight so heavy as that which is required to change man’s misconception of scripture. So tonight, I ask you to listen carefully, attentively, for “Though Christ a thousand times in Bethlehem be born, if he is not born in thee, thy soul is still forlorn.”

God participates in human history and is known in those through whom his timeless purpose is working in time. Right in this world of time his timeless purpose is unfolding. “He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ” (Phil.1:6). Jesus Christ appears symbolized as a child. The child is only a sign; he is not the child. When Christ appears, you are he. So you listen to one in whom his timeless purpose has been fulfilled. This promise of a child begins in Genesis, the first book in the Bible. It is given to one called Abraham. If you have been with me through the last few weeks, you know what I have said concerning Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and all the characters in scripture. They do not appear in any ancient Near Eastern work whatsoever, they’re only in scripture. They do not appear either as individuals or as tribes. These are the eternal states through which God passes in you as he unfolds his purpose in you. His purpose is to give himself to you as though there were no other in the world, just God and you, and finally only you. For you are he. That is the purpose.

The whole thing begins with the promise of a child. He promises Abraham to give him a child. Abraham laughed, Sarah laughed, because they were beyond the age of bearing a child. When the child was born, they called him Isaac, which means “he laughs.” Now, you think he was born of human stock. No, this child is a prototype of that which must be born. For all the ancient prophets were eschatological in their vision; and their visions are only about the end of days, the last days. It’s all eschatology; it’s all the doctrine of the very, very last things. So the child is a prototype. We next encounter this child in the name of Moses. The word Moses means…it is simply the ancient perfective of the Egyptian verb “to be born.” Something is to be born. We think it is a man. So she calls him Moses because he was drawn out of the water. You draw it out of the deep; something is coming out; something is to be born. So we think it’s a man.

We find this thing unfolding and unfolding, and we come to the point called David. “Go to my servant David, and you say to him, ‘When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your son after you, who shall come forth from your body. I will be his father, and he shall be my son’” (2Sam.7:12). You find the unfolding promise of the child. We move into Isaiah: “To us a child is born, a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called ‘Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace” (Is.9:6). Here we find this promise unfolding and unfolding.

We find the very last book of the Old Testament still waiting for the son. If I am a father, where is my honor? “For a son honors his father. If then I be a father, where is my honor?” (Mal. 1:6). And now, the very first chapter of the New Testament begins with the fulfillment of the promise. Here he’s born, the child is born. And you’ve been taught to believe that some little child came into the world born of a woman who did not know a man. Hasn’t a thing to do with it. The child is born but “born not of blood nor of the will of man nor of the will of the flesh, but of God” (John 1:13)…something entirely different. Now he tells us this shall be a sign unto you. Blessed is she who believed that which she has heard, “that there shall be a fulfillment of those things which were spoken unto her from the Lord” (Luke 1:45). If one could but believe.