The Kingdom Of Heaven
By Neville Goddard April 30, 1963
Tonight’s subject is “The Kingdom.” We’re told in the Book of Luke, the 12th chapter, the 12th verse, “Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” In the same book, we are told, “The kingdom of heaven is within you” (Luke 17:21). So here, he’s going to give us something that is within us. So we must be locked out from something within us. Fear not, little flock, it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom, and the same evangelist, Luke, now tells us that the kingdom of God, the kingdom of heaven, is within you.
To get to the point, the earliest of the gospels, which is Mark, the first word put upon the lips of Jesus is about the kingdom. It’s the 1st chapter, the 15th verse, and the evangelist has him say, “The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of heaven is at hand; repent, and believe in the gospel.” That’s the message, the whole beginning. Here we have four profound thoughts in that one verse, that 15th verse of the 1st chapter: the time is fulfilled. Everything prior to this moment in eternity was only preparatory, and he’s making a declaration that everything the prophets foresaw, everything that they foretold, is now beginning to awaken. And he’s the first one, the forerunner, of all that was foretold that would happen to man. For the time has been ___(??); it had to be filled up. At this moment in time now, it begins to unfold like a flower. Then he said, “The kingdom of heaven is at hand,” which is a moment. He makes the statement, “Repent, and believe in the gospel.” There are four distinct thoughts all buried in that one verse.
Tonight, we will take many passages of it, with an emphasis on repent. It is not said in this statement that if you and I repent that we will in any way be able to cooperate with God in bringing in the new order. No, the new order is coming whether we repent or not. You can’t stop it. That’s God’s purpose; that’s his plan. So my repentance is not going to aid the new order at all. Yet I’m invited to repent. And we should every moment of time, if you know what it really is to repent. For repentance hasn’t a thing to do with grief, feeling sorry for what we’ve done, feeling remorseful, and regret. That hasn’t a thing to do with repentance. The word “repent” means “a change of mind, a change of attitude toward life itself.” I don’t care what the facts of life are; truth depends not upon fact but upon the intensity of imagining. And so if I repent, I simply change my attitude toward anything in this world. And if I am intense about the change and persist in that changed attitude of mind, I’ll produce a corresponding external fact.
Well, go back to what we said earlier, “It is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom” and “The kingdom of God is within you.” I am shut out from something within me of which there is nothing but; for all things are in the kingdom and the kingdom of God is within you. Then how do I arrive at that inner state? He’s invited me now to practice the art of repentance, just practice it. He doesn’t tell me that if I don’t practice it, I’m going to be shut out from the kingdom. He does not say that. He tells me to repent and believe in the gospel; believe the story, read it, and believe it. But do repent. But I do not bring in the kingdom by my repentance. For that kingdom is coming whether I repent or not. But it makes it so much easier while I’m still shut out to live in the world where I am shut out if I repent.
And that is called “the days of Messiah.” For there are two ages discussed in the Bible, this age and that age, described in the 20th chapter of the Book of Luke, the 24th through the 36th verses. And these two ages are separated by the act of resurrection. Resurrection separates them. But around the resurrection, before and after, there is what is known as “the day of Messiah” or the “days of Messiah” as characterized as good days, joyful days, and the days where you can reap the harvest. And that is repentance. But it does not, if I repent every moment and owned the earth, it doesn’t really matter as far as the kingdom goes. I’m getting into the kingdom, as you will, everyone will. But for our own sakes while we’re in the world, let us master the art of repentance.
Now, ___(??) a week ago, I told you concerning a little girl. She didn’t call it repentance, her grandmother didn’t call it repentance, but she puts on an act, an imaginal act, and produced one after the other of these fantastic, lovely demonstrations. The grandmother went home that night and wrote me out the entire story in detail, and added one, which is a delightful story. The child was then only four, and she said to the child, “Now, Pammie, you know what you did to get the house for daddy and mother?” Yes. “And you know what you did to get the playhouse with all the toys.” Yes. “Well, now I would like a stereophonic machine for my records, but Daddy won’t give me one. He will not give me anything, and here I only have the same little radio that I had when I was a girl, when I was a child. That’s the only means in the house. And so I would like, really, this wonderful instrument to play the records. I want a slow one, a long one that would almost fill that wall. But an enormous one!”
“Now, this is what we do, Pammie. You stand right here, close your eyes, but you don’t physically walk across, any more than you did when we got the house. But you do walk across the carpet, you walk across the room, and you go over and you feel this wonderful instrument. You feel the lovely wood and you see it, but your eyes are closed. But now you’re there physically. But you walk toward this instrument, and then you hear it. When you hear the music coming from it, you and I will dance. We’ll dance all over this room together. And so now let us play our little game.”
Remember this little girl, what she said to her grandmother, “You’re old. You can’t do it, but my Imagination works like thunder.” Well, here is thunder. The divorce was already in the works; papers were signed. The month is August, and a week before her birthday, which was October 11, he said to his wife, “On your birthday there will be delivered to your home this stereophonic machine, to play all the records.” “When it came, it was exactly as we had imagined it, a long one, a long one filling almost the wall, and it’s perfectly heavenly. It’s the one thing she wanted; that is, my daughter wanted because all through her life it relaxed her when she heard good music. She put the records on and simply relaxed. As we would relax with something else, she relaxed with good music. And here, he gave it to her on her birthday.” A little girl four years old!
Now, you and I will teach our little children—I know I taught mine—to say thank you, and how to say thank you, and how to be gracious. But we don’t have to teach any person in this world how to feel it. We can teach them how to say it, but we don’t have to teach them how to feel it. They can feel it, and that is the secret. But man will not let himself feel what the senses will not allow. He may on his own try to feel what reason denies. So he’s shut out from the fabulous world within himself. Where did she do it? She did it within herself. She remained physically stationary in the room, and mentally she walked forward and felt what was not there to be felt physically. But she gave it all the tones of reality; she gave it all the sensory vividness a little child of four can give it. And she brought all the senses to play on it: she touched it, she heard it, and she felt.
Well, you can’t taste the wood, and you couldn’t, well, I dare say you could, but if you brought three senses to play upon that imaginative drama—within six weeks that was realized in a household where this lady of the house was still using a little, tiny machine she had when she was a girl. Yet she was the mother of two children, and he never felt that that was something he should give her, because that to him was an unnecessary luxury. That was a luxury, an unnecessary luxury, why give it to her? And so she didn’t ask him; the little girl didn’t ask it. They dropped it having done it, and having done it, it was done.
That’s the word repentance. Listen to it again, the beginning of the teaching of Jesus Christ in the Book of Mark, the very first word put into his mouth—if you have a red letter edition, you can see the first red-letter phrase, “The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent, and believe in the gospel.” Believe the story, for the seed must be sown on man. For there is a certain moment in time when the time is fulfilled, when it’s filled up; and man can’t stop it, he’s going to be moved right into the next world. He can’t stop it. But I am convinced by that last statement in that 15th verse, “Believe in the gospel.” Believe it. The sower in rabbinical tradition is the teacher. So you hear the man telling the story; he’s telling you he’s the teacher. And some will not believe it, some believe it, some hold it with a reservation, and some with a big question mark. Believe it implicitly. You can’t understand it, but believe it. From day one he’s trying to ___(??). And when that time is fulfilled, well then, the kingdom of heaven is at hand. But in the meanwhile, practice repentance and repentance is simply a change of attitude toward everything in this world. No matter what it is that denies the fulfillment of your dream, change it. Just as she, four years old, did it.
Now tonight, before I took the platform, another story by a lady who is here… and she, too, has gone through the usual thing in California, a divorce. It seems to be epidemic. So she went through it. She has two children, two sons. There was no settlement in the divorce for any car for a boy seventeen years old. But he would like a car. He wouldn’t come to the meetings. She told me what the other brother has done using this technique. But he thought it would take too long. The divorce was granted, monies all settled, all arranged, and the judge said, “No, no seventeen-year-old boy would I recommend for a car.” So that was not in the cards. She went home, and she said to the boy, “You know what (calling the brother by name) what he did, so why don’t you try it anyway? It isn’t going to cost you anything. Your father said no, the judge said no, everybody said no, but you still would like the car, why don’t you try it?”
So last night, as he retired, he was in his new car. “With all the feeling that you would have were you in the new car, and it’s your car.” This is on Sunday. On Tuesday night, the husband called and said, “You know, in spite of what the judge said, in spite of what the settlement reads, I promised him a car and I’m going to give him the car.” Now this is only this past week. The car has not been delivered, but within three days, his imaginal act… then said he to himself, “It worked so quickly and so easily, now I’m going to work upon my skin and upon my own marks in school.” It never occurred to him before to use this wonderful law of forgiveness. We call it forgiveness, the Bible speaks of it as forgiveness, but the first word was repentance.
How do you repent? Not to feel remorseful that my father and mother separated; if he wants his father back, he can bring him back, if he wants him back. She can bring him back, if she wants him back. But if she sees the paper all signed and that is the end of the picture, well then, you can’t repent. I can’t repent when I accept the facts of life as they appear on the screen of my world. For the whole thing is within me, it’s not on the outside: All that I behold, though it appears without, it is within, in my Imagination of which this world of mortality is but a shadow. How can you deny the fact of the little girl producing the instrument? Who knew in that household that a little child, four years old, was the one treading the winepress? As William Butler Yeats said, “I will never be sure that it was not some woman treading in the winepress who started the subtle change in men’s minds.” Or in that household, the father’s mind was changed suddenly. He thought he initiated the desire to buy this machine. He didn’t; the little girl did, four years old. And who knows today what we are reaping because someone other than members of the household are imagining for him? We’re doing it anyway, until that moment in time when it’s all filled up and we enter a world completely subject to our imaginative powers.
So I tell you the kingdom is yours regardless because it’s within you; it’s not on the outside. And God is going to give it to you. He has to open up the way, and the way is very, very narrow. So we’re not called collectively; we’re called individually. The 27th chapter of the Book of Isaiah, “And you will be gathered one by one, O people of Israel.” And you will be gathered one by one, O people of Israel. Well, Israel means “the pure in heart”; that’s what the word means. Only the pure in heart shall enter the kingdom. But everyone is going to be made in the likeness of his Father, who is perfect, therefore, pure in heart. For to see him, one has to be pure in heart. “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God” (Matthew 5:8). “I behold an Israelite indeed”—his name was Nathanael—“I behold an Israelite indeed in whom there is no guile” (John 1:47), one incapable of deceiving another for personal gain.
A week ago, last Sunday, a friend of mine was home, and he told me this story. He said, “I have been to jail. I’m not ashamed of it. I ___(??) and for my abuses in that department, I went to jail. I met all kinds of types there. I met two men ___(??); they wrote a book. They were con men.” He called them bilko artists. “And there was a book in which they confess in this book that they had never been able to bilk a man who himself was incapable of bilking another. Not in the history of their experience could they take from any man a dollar by selling him the Brooklyn Bridge. They set out an ethical code by which they operated. They were successful, and you couldn’t take them over.” No man who is incapable of bilking another can be bilked. It isn’t his cup of tea. He doesn’t know how to operate that way.
But if there are people in this world who will only buy what is repossessed, you can take them over. There are those who only wait until they repossess something, the repossess set. When it’s repossessed—the man lost his initial investment—they can get it at x-number of dollars less than that. Repossess a car, repossess this, and what you can buy repossessed, well then, such people can be bilked. They don’t realize they’ve got to go through all the fires of the world until the heart becomes the heart of Israel, where it cannot take anyone over. They’d rather die than do it. They’d rather starve to death than do it. But any man in this world who can bilk another can himself be the victim of a bilko artist. And these two men who wrote this book wrote it in jail, and they confessed in all their years—for that was their profession—___(??) their life was simply that, that’s all gone. But they couldn’t take one man who himself couldn’t bilk another.
I can go back to my own personal experience in my father’s life. A most successful businessman, very successful, incapable of taking advantage of another for personal gain, in a highly competitive society, little, tiny Barbados, very competitive; but he could not take advantage of another for personal gain. He could go around with him in a competitive bid for a job, but not in any way deceive you, so that he, personally, would get the contract. Not ___(??). So when he made his exit, he left a fortune for his family. And I know in my own family that was their ethical code. They’re sharp dealers, very, very successful businessmen, and they buy at the lowest price, but they do not bilk. And there are people who will take anything in this world on that basis, and everyone can be taken over, everyone.
I went to the track with friends of mine the other day, and this gentleman who drove us out, as he walked out of the track, someone approached him with a watch and said, pointing to a car, “See that car?”—a lovely car, maybe a six- or seven-thousand-dollar job—“That’s my car.” Well, right away, my friend, who is a lawyer, noticed that behind the little glass he saw the Turf Club sticker. And the man is trying to sell him a watch for twenty-five dollars he claimed is one hundred fifty dollars in value. Well, he knew that any member of the Turf Club could go into the Turf Club and cash a check for twenty-five dollars if that’s what he needs. But instantly, my friend couldn’t possibly do that because he couldn’t bilk anyone. He’s a fine, decent gentleman. He couldn’t take anyone over, yet he’s a very successful lawyer. He couldn’t possibly take somebody’s watch. And so here the bilko artist was up against a stone wall with my friend. So he came back in and told the story, and he was just simply amused. He couldn’t possibly be taken over because that’s not the way he approaches life.
Now here in our world, we are given the chance to practice repentance. It works like a charm. I don’t care what the facts are. You don’t need to bilk anyone regardless of what the facts are. So this little girl did not go hit the father over the head to buy the instrument; she simply played a little game. She heard the music and she danced to the music and she felt the wood and she walked across and saw it and touched it and felt it and heard it. Then, six weeks later, seven weeks later, here comes a gift. He thought he originated the urge to give his wife something she had never dreamed of in the past he would give. Now who in the interval held him in the state of the giving in? The wife did. He never expressed it, and she accepted the facts of life. He never expressed that feeling of generosity. Because he never did, she took the facts of life and lived by the facts.
Imagination has many aspects. One aspect is the conservative aspect. It’s fed by memory. If I feed my Imagination only images supplied by memory—he never did it; therefore, he isn’t going to do it, and he never did it; therefore, he cannot do it—and so all day long, I feed my Imagination with these images supplied by memory, I perpetuate what is the conservative aspect of imagining and that is fed only by images supplied by memory. There is a transformative aspect—that’s where repentance comes in—where I would take a scene that is already in being and modify it. And so I have the same room, the same living room. What did I do? I put against that wall an instrument that were it true, I would then hear the music I want to hear. And so I modify the scene. But the house is here, the whole building is here, everything about it, the same children, same husband, and same everything. But now I change the pattern of the living room and modify that scene of that living room that is the conservative aspect.
But the day is coming when you and I get into the kingdom of heaven, where everything is subject to our imaginative power, we create radically. We don’t need any memory image to supply models to build our world; out of the nowhere we create. That’s what you and I are destined to be tomorrow. And everyone will enter that world, that fabulous world called the kingdom of God. Because the kingdom of God is in us, and we’re only shut out of something that’s already in us. We’re living on the surface looking out, not knowing that we are casting these shadows on the screen of space, shadows that are really prompted from things within ourselves.
I invite you to try it. Try this theme, which is the third statement as he begins his message to the world. He proclaims the fantastic thing that “the time is fulfilled,” that what the prophets foresaw over ages and ages and ages has now come to its fulfillment. He’d be the first one in and he proclaims it. No one believes it because he didn’t come as they thought he should come. He didn’t come to conquer the outer world; he conquered himself. He overcame self. Not the outer world, for he knew there was nothing on the outside. The whole vast world reflected the harmony within himself. And so he proclaimed, “The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand”—he’s been waiting for this moment for unnumbered eons of time and now it’s come—now “repent, and believe the gospel.” Believe the story of your ___(??), the most fantastic story in the world.
What story? That God so loved man that he became man that man may become God. That’s the story. He actually became us? Yes. How could he do it? He emptied himself, completely emptied himself and became us, every one of us. And then, as it’s fulfilled, the time is fulfilled, the door opens, a very narrow door, for we go in one by one: “And you will be gathered one by one, O people of Israel.” What, Israel? Yes, the pure in heart. Only the pure in heart can enter and the pure in heart is Israel.
And so everyone will come through because he’s just like his Father. As you’re told in the 19th of Leviticus, “You shall be holy”;—no doubts about it—“because I the Lord your God am holy” (verse 2). You can’t avoid it. If I put you through all the furnaces in the world, you can’t avoid it, “You shall be holy; because I the Lord your God am holy.” And, “Be ye perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect.” You can’t be less than your Father because he’s given you himself. He’s given you fatherhood. And when you enter that kingdom, you are the Father, the King of kings, and everything subject to your imaginative power, but everything. In the kingdom, you will create radically. You need no model supplied by memory. You don’t modify scenes in being; you create out of the nowhere, out of nothing, something out of nothing. It’s all your own wonderful Imagination.
But until the end of it, well then, let us repent. Everyone can take someone in this world and use that one to repent, as a challenge. Don’t raise a finger to make it so. Use it as a challenge. So anyone can ask you because you know the story; you can ask me, I can ask you, and we can ask each other and then conceive a scene which would imply the fulfillment of the dream. Just like the little child. The grandmother, the mother ___(??). The mother said, “You know how we got the house?” “Yes.” “You know how we got all the toys and the playhouse?” “Yes.” “Well, let us play this stereo machine, and there it is against the wall. But you don’t walk over there physically, you remain right here. Close your eyes, and you see it?” and Pammie said, “Yes, I see it.” “Well, now do you know the color?” “Yes.” “Do you know how it feels, if you could feel it?” “Yes.” “What it would sound like?” “Yes.” “Well now, you walk over mentally, not physically, and go over mentally and put your hands on it.”
Because Imagination is spiritual sensation, that’s what that means. If at this very moment I would imagine a ball here, but no one sees a ball here, but I could feel a ball there, couldn’t I? And to prove that I am feeling the ball, let me now imagine after I felt the ball that I am feeling a piece of silk. Could I discriminate between a ball and silk? Well now, let me imagine something else. I imagine I’m feeling something steel. Can I discriminate between a ball and a piece of silk and steel? Well, if I can discriminate between these three imaginal objects, then they exist. You can’t discriminate between that which does not exist. If they don’t exist, there is no distinction; there’s no discrimination. If I can feel one in my Imagination after the other, and no two feel alike, do they not exist to me? Well, they do. So ___(??) natural to this little girl, and she heard music and she danced, so she brought into play all these things based upon an imaginal act, and it came to pass.
Now you may not credit her imaginal act as the cause of it. But when the little girl, who is now only five, has four outstanding case histories to support her imaginal acts, are you going to discount it? As I said, if there is evidence for a thing, what the rational world thinks about it or even ___(??) for it, it’s nothing to the point. She actually knows what she did when they got the house, even though it seemed to be a disaster. For the house came as a result of his little company being absorbed by a big company, and the big company putting him through an aptitude test and forcing him out of his job at the desk into a salesman job, where he made many, many times what he made at the desk. With all of his money, then he could buy the house. And it’s exactly the kind of a house the little girl had imagined, with the aid of her mother and grandmother.
On the strength of this, they got this wonderful thing at Christmas, this playhouse filled with toys. On the strength of these two, they got the stereo. And then on the strength of these three, she brought her father and mother back together after the divorce had been finalized. Here, the papers were signed and delivered. She was living in Hollywood, and he was living in an apartment with the two girls. The grandmother said, “You want Daddy and grandmother back?” “Yes.” She came back. A little girl—well now, if the little girl didn’t know from experience what she did in the past, she would not have repented. She would not have known the art of repentance. She would have allowed this divorce to be final and cry her eyes out night after night because she wanted her mother, and her mother wasn’t there. But she was not going to allow this after she had suffered it and was reminded of what she had done by the grandmother.
Do you know that you and I could be the most successful this night from repentance and then within a matter of a week forget it? Completely forget what we did to produce the result that we got, completely forget it, and start once more rationalizing time and space and arguments what to do, when we have done it without persuasion, without a thought of ___(??). We do it all the time. But let me encourage you; the kingdom is open, and you cannot be locked out indefinitely. For repentance, marvelous as it is, will not in any way allow you to work and cooperate with God in bringing the new order. The new order is coming whether you repent or not.
But while we’re shut out, repentance is given to us to make life easier. For we’re shut out, all of us, until that moment in time when we are resurrected. For the two ages are separated by the act of resurrection. In the 20th chapter of Luke, “The sons of this age marry and they are given in marriage; but those who are accounted worthy to attain to that age and to the resurrection from the dead, they neither marry nor are they given in marriage, for they cannot die any more, they are sons of God, sons of the resurrection” (verse 34). Lifted up completely above the organization of sex, where the individual is himself a unity, creating without the aid of any divided image. No matter what he imagined in the world he created, living in a world that is fabulous, all from within himself. And don’t think some little, tiny world, it’s magnified beyond the wildest dream of man, just like this. But he’s not on the outside removed; he’s on the inside creating. And that’s God.
So tonight, you try it. Try it and see how it works, not if it works. Because not “I’ll think about it”; try it and see how it works. Take every person’s request, and then do it in feeling, not in words. There are millions of people across the country who will declare, “I am rich, I am rich, I am rich”; in the depths all they are feeling, where is the next dollar coming from? They are feeling poverty, but declaring in words, “I am rich”—doesn’t work that way. As we said earlier, I’ll teach one little child to say when someone gives you something, “Thank you.” If someone is kind to them, say “Thank you.” Teach them how to say “thank you,” but I need not ever teach anyone how to feel it. So how do I feel it? Not the words, get below the words into the feeling. Well, what am I feeling? She felt that machine and she sang. She danced to the music she was hearing. Well, the music didn’t come from anything but that wonderful stereo, and she danced all over the place. And then, they forgot it. Then he has the impulse to buy it for his wife’s birthday. That’s how it works. Two kinds of motion, one is done from the inside, and the outside is under compulsion. The one on the inside, ___(??); the one on the outside moved by compulsion to only bear witness to the inner motion.
You try it. Take a friend’s hand, and congratulate him on his good fortune, on his wonderful job, on his success, on his—for anything in this world. But put your hand mentally into his hand and actually congratulate him and feel the thrill of ___(??) with a friend. How wonderful it is to have a friend who has been so successful because a friend would be happy for the friend’s success. And feel it. Don’t tell him a word. Say nothing to him and watch it work, just watch it work. And then the whole thing works in the world. But you’ve got to feel it. Ignore all the facts of this world, and then inwardly perform the act, and it will outwardly become the fact.
So I tell you, this book, the Bible, is the greatest book in the world. And just imagine what the prophets foresaw and those who wrote about it, for whom they searched and they inquired, asking what person and what time was indicated by that Spirit of prophecy within them when they predicted the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glory (1 Peter 1:10). But they couldn’t find him. No matter how they searched, they couldn’t find him. And then one day, it happened. And when it happened, it happened so naturally that no one would know it. You can talk about it and tell others. Some will believe it, and some disbelieve it. But it happens in you, individually, and you are the same person you were before it happened. And they expect some fantastic being to come out of nowhere in a mysterious way. He doesn’t come that way.
Everything that happens in you is mysterious. Oh yes, the birth is very mysterious. An unusual mystery takes place within you, as told in the 3rd chapter of the Book of John. For the discussion that takes place between Nicodemus and Jesus is the theme of this work. This peculiar birth that must take place is the only means of entry into the kingdom of heaven. There is no other way to get in unless this thing takes place first. And so, “Except you be born from above, you cannot in any wise enter the kingdom of heaven” (verse 3). But you will be born from above. May I tell you, all the precepts of Jesus are to be taken literally. People say, oh no, it couldn’t be literal. I tell you every precept is stated as some literal fact to be understood in its literal manner. And I’m speaking from experience. I had no idea that this thing was so literally true.
So we are told, except you be born from above, Nicodemus, you cannot inherit the kingdom of heaven. You can’t get in. And he said, well, how could this be possible? I am fifty years old, a man my age? And how could I be born a second time? He said, “Except ye be born from above, you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. And you a master of Israel and you do not know this?” It all starts, a birth only in one way, from the womb of a woman. And it isn’t from the womb of a woman. It’s from the womb of God, and the womb of God is the skull of man. That’s where God is buried. And out of that wonderful skull of man, generic man, comes the man, the individual man, no loss of identity, and he comes out born from above. It’s literally true.
In that moment of awakening came the division between the two great ages: this age he left; that age he’s entered. But he still wears the veil of the flesh; and therefore, he’s not fully aware of his inheritance until the veil is taken off for the last time, for he can die no more, can’t die. He’s been resurrected from the grave, which is the skull of man. And having resurrected, he’s inherited, but it cannot become to him actual, or at least, it is not fully realized in him so long as he wears the body. And so he plays his part teaching everyone who will listen, hoping that they will believe the story. For they must believe the story so that it may germinate as it were; for we are soil on which the seed is planted, and the seed in the Bible is called the word of God. And the word of God is called the gospel. So believe the gospel if you believe the word, the message of salvation.
So try it, try it tonight. Don’t delay. No matter what the world looks like at the moment. And it’s distressed for you—I trust it isn’t—but if it is, you can’t conceive of any more distressed state knowing it would be for a little child of five whose mother isn’t coming home. How many nights she must have cried herself to sleep. And this night, she started the crying once more when she said, Now stop the tears. You know what you did. You did this, you did that, you did the other, and you can do the same thing. Then at the end of four days, the mother comes home and she could say to her grandmother, “You know that my Imagination works like thunder.” Let our Imagination work just like thunder and make it all come to pass.
Now let us go into the Silence.
Q: (inaudible)
A: First of all, you couldn’t stop influencing people. As you walk the earth your every imaginal act is influencing the world. As the poet said, “All things by a law divine in one another’s being mingle.” You can’t disturb this and not influence the stars, all interwoven, all one. Like my ___(??) the morning’s paper, and you’re influenced. Ninety-nine percent of the paper is really a planned, controlled news picture. Everyone has a press agent—all the big ___(??) have press agents—and they want you to read what they want you to read. But they’re influencing you anyway. People who aren’t meeting you personally, they’re influencing you by the written word. You’re doing it without spending any money for a ___(??) as you walk the earth. You’re influencing everyone. ___(??) saw this night that he was ___(??) someone other than himself, and the other influenced thought they had initiated the desire to do what they did. The boy at seventeen goes to sleep, driving his new car, a ___(??) he hadn’t tried before because he thought that that was hopeless. The father, now divorced, with the sanction of the judge—but he didn’t have to do any car—he was paying so much a month for his keep and his brother’s keep and so much for his wife and then so much insurance and all that___(??). But in spite of that, he calls up on Tuesday, three days after the boy begins to imagine the act and said, “I’m going to give him the car. I promised it to him a while ago, and I’m going to give it to him” and ___(??) give him his car.” So the father thinks that he had a soft feeling toward his son. It’s the son that did it.
Now the son may forget after getting the car how he got it and go sound asleep again. All through the Bible, it is one constant refrain: “Rouse thyself! Why sleepest thou, O Lord? Awake! Why cast us off forever?” and the command is to God in man. For this is the 44th Psalm: “Rouse thyself! Why sleepest thou, O Lord?”—not man. And then, in the New Testament, “Awake, you sleeper and arise from the dead”—the sleep is so profound it’s likened unto death (Ephesians 5:14). And so man has to be constantly awakened from this state and go back to the exercise of repentance. He brings in the prize once, and then he forgets it. He has to be reminded, and he goes back again and goes back again until finally he lives by it—until that moment in time when he enters for the last time into the kingdom of heaven, which is within. For the kingdom of heaven is within you. And then he doesn’t have to be reminded because he’s completely awake, and he knows who he is. For God succeeded then in giving himself to the individual. But don’t be concerned if you fail a thousand times, go back anyway. This is the way it works.
__(??) all of God’s promises to Israel. It’s not a new religion. Christianity is as old as the faith of Abraham. It’s only the fulfillment of the faith of Abraham. And every word spoken in the New Testament if one searches the Old diligently they’ll find the source of the quote. It’s only fulfillment. ___(??) of the man’s soul as it unfolded. He goes back into the Old, and there he finds what was foretold. (Tape ends.)
