Neville Goddard Lectures: “The Story of Salvation”

29 Dec Neville Goddard Lectures: “The Story of Salvation”

By Neville Goddard May 24, 1963

___(??) by one of our great educators—whether you agree with his political opinions or not that’s irrelevant, really—but his name is Robert Hutchins. Regardless of what you think of a man’s political opinions, if the man has accomplished much in this world as he has, then listen to what he has to say. He said, “When I taught Macbeth as a professor in school”—now here are these great schools preparing our young men for great universities—he said, “My pupils looked upon it as a blood and thunder story. That’s all that they saw in Macbeth. They could not understand Macbeth as Shakespeare meant it to be understood by us without the experience, vicarious or actual, of marriage and ambition. For that’s the story of Macbeth. They thought it was simply a great Scottish western. And so these are fellows just entering our great universities. But you couldn’t understand the great story unless you had either a vicarious experience of it, someone who had experienced it and told you, or that you yourself experienced it. And here is one of the truly great tragedies of all time taking as its theme marriage and ambition. What it can do to man, distort all values in this world, if ambition goes outside of the bounds of your moral and ethical code—what it does to marriage.

So here, I say the same thing is true of the greatest story ever told, and that is the story of salvation, as given to us in the scriptures in the life of Jesus Christ. You cannot fully understand it save vicariously or unless you have the experience. I hope that you will listen to one who has had the experience and believe it. For salvation is pinned upon hearing the true story of salvation, understanding it, and believing it. For belief is essential for it to take root in man.

Now we will turn to one of the many stories told in the gospels. This is the gospel of John, the tenth chapter. In essence, he calls himself “a door.” He says, “The sheep cannot enter save they come through this door. They will hear the voice of no one but the voice of the shepherd. The shepherd will lead them first, and they will follow the shepherd.” Well, that’s not the point I want to make tonight. The point in the same chapter is this, “I and my Father are one.” It’s the boldest claim that man ever made, the 30th verse of the 10th chapter of the gospel of John: “I and my Father are one.” Then we are told, the Jews took up stones to stone him, and he answered them saying, “I have shown you many good works from my Father; for which of these do you stone me?” They answered, “For no good work do we stone you but for blasphemy; for you being a man, make yourself God.” Then he answered, “Is it not written in your law”—now bear in mind he was born and raised a Jew, fully familiar with the law—“Is it not written in your law that ‘I said, you are gods’? If they are called gods to whom the word of God came, (and scripture cannot be broken), then why do you feel that the one who is consecrated by the Father and sent by him into the world blasphemes when he has said, ‘I am the son of God’? If you do not believe me, believe the works. Believe it just for the works sake if you cannot believe me that you may know and understand that the Father is in me and I am in the Father” (verse 34). Then we are told they tried to arrest him, and he escaped from their hands.

Now here is the boldest of all claims, “I and my Father are one.” My Father can never be so far off as even to be near, for nearness implies separation. He can’t be so far off as even to be near, for it implies separation: We are one. And then he turns to that wonderful scripture, the 42nd Psalm, where it’s a sad, it’s a lonely psalm, “As the hart panteth after the water brook, so panteth my soul after thee, O God” (verse 1). And then he paints a word picture of the sadness of life. He has a thirst that nothing can change but an experience of God. Then he speaks of his own tears, he said, “My tears have been my food day and night”—intensifying the ___(??)ness of the tears, intensifying these things—“while men say to me and say continually, ‘Where is your God?’”