Neville Goddard Lectures: “The Resurrection”

15 Dec Neville Goddard Lectures: “The Resurrection”

By Neville Goddard April 12, 1963

Tonight is “The Resurrection.” Although the resurrection is not described in the scriptures, it stands at the very central point of the Christian faith, for if he is not risen, our faith is vain. We are told if the dead are not resurrected, then Christ is not risen. The Christ, we are told, is the power and the wisdom of God (1 Corinthians 1:24). Every child born of woman is crucified with Christ—with the power and with the wisdom. In God’s good time, he resurrects that individual when the individual has completely absorbed Christ—when that wisdom and that power is one with the individual who is actually crucified on that cross. No one can resurrect himself. It is an act of God. God’s mightiest act is the resurrection, to save mankind and establish his people.

So we are told in Paul’s letters to the Corinthians, “What you sow, unless it dies, it is not alive. And what you sow is not the body which is to be. But God gives it a body as he has chosen” (1 Corinthians 15:36). For the resurrection body is determined entirely by the gift of God as he has chosen. Don’t try to even visualize it; you couldn’t visualize it. Don’t speculate. It’s an immortal body, an eternal body given to the individual as that individual is resurrected.

Now let me share with you my experience of the resurrection. It’s a true experience. Everyone will have this experience. Resurrection is a privileged new birth in a new creation. You did not earn your physical birth; you were born by the action of powers beyond your own. You’ll be born spiritually by the action of powers beyond your own. So let no one tell you that you earn it. You don’t earn it; it’s a gift. It’s all grace and still grace. Because it is a gift, everyone will be born from above. So though it’s not described in scripture, I can describe it for you, for I’ve experienced it. We are not born from the body; we are awakened in it. We aren’t awakened from it; we are awakened in it. It’s something entirely different.

Now we are told that they came to the tomb, but bear in mind that only one person saw him placed in the tomb. Joseph placed him in a new tomb, but no one saw him in the new tomb. So they came early in the morning, and they said they looked in. These are the words, “They’ve taken away the Lord from the tomb and we do not know where they’ve laid him” (Mark 16; Matthew 28; John 20). They looked in, and they saw what appeared to them to be angels seated where the body of Jesus had laid, one at the head and one at the feet. Now no one saw how that body had been placed, for it was placed by Joseph, not by the women who came early in the morning and not by the disciples. And yet they claim that they saw what they thought to be angels in radiant light, seated where the body of Jesus had laid, and they said to them, “He is risen.” “But these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe it” (Luke 24:11). That’s how the story is told, it seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe it.

But now let me share with you what I have experienced. That record of the 20th of John and the 24th of Luke is not correct, but they do not describe the event. No attempt is made to describe the actual resurrection. I tell you, the resurrection is simply a new birth into an entirely different world. Don’t try to visualize the world. Here, I tell you, you rise into a world completely subject to your imaginative power. There will be no such thing as systems as we have systems. Everyone will be God, but everyone. You will not have to contend with politicians or men in the churches who call themselves your superior, or anyone in this world who thinks himself greater. You are God, and everything in the world is subject to your imaginative power.