Neville Goddard Lectures: The Riddle

Now here, “He has blinded their eyes and hardened their heart, lest they should see with their eyes and perceive with their hearts, and turn and be saved.” The same word is used but in the Greek sense, the Prodigal Son came to his senses and he turned. He remembered his Father and turned and went home; and received the great robe, the ring, the fatted calf…the kingdom was his. So you and I are in a world where we have been purposely blinded by the Father in us. Our hearts have been hardened by the Father in us. So the words are important when one reaches the end, he can say, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” I can tell you tonight that God himself, God the Father, uses the tyrants of the world for ends beyond their goals. You played all the parts, and every being will be saved. For this is the same Father who wills not that any man should perish, not one being in the world should perish and can’t perish; for he’s only the mask in this world of one that he does not see, for his eye has been purposely blinded and his heart purposely hardened. He plays these parts based upon that environment into which he was placed, not by his own choice. For, we were made subject unto futility, not willingly, but by the will of him who subjected us in hope (Rom.8:20), and we cannot turn back until his predetermined goal is reached. He takes us to the end. When we reach the end, then we turn, and go through the series of events called the story of Jesus Christ.

When it happens in you, Christ is born in you, not of mortal birth. But those in the environment into which they were placed believe he was born from the womb of a woman and they have no ears for you when you tell them who Christ really is, when you tell them who the Father really is…that he who sees me now sees the Father. For the summation of all the experiences of man personified as a youth calls me, Father. And he, too, was not born of mortal birth. And yet the greatest of the great of earth have no mortal birth. Isn’t that strange? Call it Abraham, call it Isaac, Jacob, David, Jesus Christ. And you and I clothed hare in these garments that are mortal, very fragile, the whole drama is in us. It’s the Father and the Father alone playing all the parts, quite willing to take all of the consequences of this strange, peculiar, horrible experiment. And he does. He takes it on himself in Christ and you think Christ is other than the one who sent him. “He who sees me sees him who sent me.”

And so, the Father in me sent me. He clothed himself in this garment of flesh and placed me in a little, tiny island in 1905 in among brothers, many brothers, one sister, in a limited environment, no social, intellectual, financial, or any other worthwhile background. That was the job he had to do in me. And then, unlike the majority, because I was simply prior to that moment of 1905, and the sifting was the riddle and it was separating and breaking ___(??). I couldn’t stand the environment after being adjusted to it and felt the restlessness from a boy to get going in the search. So my one outstanding corporeal punishment in this world was for the Bible. I said, “Take up thy bed and walk” and my master said, “Bring your Bible” and I didn’t have the Bible. He said, “My Bible said, ‘Take up your couch and walk.’” Because I couldn’t produce my Bible, he was allowed to beat me. It was allowed then. I presume it is still allowed in Barbados, corporeal punishment. So he brought in this cane this long, you could bend it all around, placed me over the place, and beat me until he brought blood. I was bleeding from my buttocks down to my knees for the Bible. So, as a boy of nine, that happened to me.