The Awakening Of Faith
The Awakening Of Faith
Neville Goddard 11-28-1969
Those who experience the Christian mystery are charged with the responsibility of telling others. Their aim is the awakening of faith in God. For, as Paul, I ask the question: “How can men call upon him in whom they have not believed? And how can they believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how can they hear unless there is a preacher? And how can men preach unless they are sent? As it is written, ‘How beautiful are the feet of those who preach good news!’ But not all have heeded the gospel, for Isaiah says, ‘Who, O Lord, has believed what he has heard from us?’ So, faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes from the preaching of Christ.”
Now Christ is not a person outside of you who lived 2,000 years ago. Christ is the cosmic being who became humanity by burying himself in every child born of woman. Ask the average person if they believe in God and many of them will say, Yes. But when asked to define Him, they will describe someone other than themselves. So, “How can men call upon one in whom they do not believe?”
I tell you: the only God in the universe is your own wonderful human imagination. When you say: “I am,” that is God. There is no other God other than he who is encased in the limitation of your little garment of flesh. How can you call upon him, when you do not believe you are he? And how can you believe in him of whom you have never heard? What preacher ever told you that your own wonderful human imagination is God? They paint a word picture of a god outside of you, but that is not the true God. And when someone comes and tells you who He really is, the idea is blasphemous. No one wants to believe that he is creating the conditions of his life; but God is the only causative power, as there is nothing but God. Everything is caused by Imagination. He is the only reality. So, how can you believe in him of whom you have never heard? And how can you hear of him unless there is a preacher? And how can there be a preacher unless he is sent?
This morning’s paper contained an article saying that scientists have discovered that the so-called throne Peter was to have sat upon 2,000 years ago is only 900 years old. They have now taken the chair out of its encasement, but are keeping it as a holy relic, when it was never any more than a piece of wood upon which some self-appointed nut sat while calling himself the emperor, the pope, or holy one. But now after a thousand years of nonsense the truth has been revealed. What are we going to do when man does not want to hear the truth that he is responsible for his own life, that his imagination is the only God?
When you look out on the world you may think you had nothing to do with its creation, but you did. You do not know it yet, because its purpose has not been revealed to you. But by the restriction and limitation of your own creative power, you became your created world that you may expand beyond it and create a still greater world for even further expansion of yourself. God is ever expanding his illumination. He took upon himself the limit of contraction called man, the limit of opacity called man, that he may break the limitation and expand. That’s the glory of it all.
I have experienced scripture and am under an obligation to tell it. Like Jeremiah, “If I say, ‘I will not mention him or speak any more in his name,’ there is in my heart as it were a burning fire shut up in my being, and I am weary with holding it in and I cannot.” I must share my experience with others to encourage all to believe in God, but it is my responsibility to tell them who God is.