Kind of talk
Lecture
Collections
Delivered
23 September 1966
unresolved
Participants

Love Endures

Tonight’s subject is “Love Endures.” I made you a promise when I started that everything I tell you from this platform I know from experience. I am not theorizing. When we are told, “He who does not love does not know God; for God is love.” The apostle John was not speculating. This is not a conclusion that he reached after years of philosophic contemplation. This was an act of God in self-revelation. If God had ever revealed himself as infinite love to man, I doubt that man could ever, with all the philosophy in the world, ever come to the conclusion that God is love. God is love, in spite of all the horror of the world. I tell you it is true; I know that from experience. Another apostle tells us that “Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not love, I am as sounding brass or tinkling cymbals.” Then he takes all the gifts of God and compares them to love, and if love is not present, I am as nothing. I may have all the wisdom in the world, all the power, everything in the world, if I have not love, it is as nothing. There is no gift of the Spirit comparable to love, and in the end love is the only thing that really will abide. It will abide forever. Faith will be realized, hope will be realized, these are attributes of God, but God is love. He’s not an attribute of God; God is love. When you stand in the presence of the risen Christ, you have no other emotion in the world, no other feeling, it’s simply love. God is love. And when love embraces you, it’s only love. And you wear the body, which is the body of the risen Christ, and it’s only love. So everything else will pass away, but love will endure forever. So he who does not love does not know God, for God is love.756 ¶1

Now tonight, I will tell you several things that seem incredible. They are all scriptural. [...] aren’t true. We are told, “Let us be persistent in the race as we run it, looking to Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was to be realized by him endured the cross, despising the shame.” Embraced the cross and despised the shame. That’s true…I know that to be true. When he nailed himself upon this body, I know that’s true, and despised the shame to which he would have to go as the speaker. When he did it on you, embraced it willingly with the joy, and despised the shame which he knew he would have to go through, that was love.756 ¶2

Now tonight the things that I will tell you, all from scripture, you wonder, how could anyone believe it? Here is one, “He who drinks my blood has eternal life and I will raise him up at the last day.” Well, I have a very large selection of Bibles at home and commentaries, and many scholarly works, exegeses on all kinds of the sixty-six books. I haven’t read one where they can grasp this theme. They cannot believe that it could be taken literally. But may I tell you these statements are expected to be taken literally and fulfilled literally. I will drink the blood of God? “He who drinks my blood has eternal life and I will raise him up at the last day.” It doesn’t make sense, does it? That’s why Myers in that lovely poem she called “St. Paul”, “Oh, could I tell, ye surely would believe it. Oh, could I only say what I have seen. How can I tell, or how can you believe it, how, until he bringeth you where I have been?” Until you see that temple split in two and the liquid golden light at the base of the spine, as though you put a sponge upon it and every drop is absorbed. You look upon it and the word “drink” or to “eat the flesh” or “drink the blood” is defined in the biblical concordance as “to do it with enjoyment.” It’s the most repulsive quote in the world if you take it on a certain level. May I tell you, the concordance is right. When you look at it there’s nothing but joy in your being, because you say within yourself, “I know it is myself, O my Divine Creator and Redeemer.” Then coming closer you fuse with it, absorbing it every little drop like a sponge; and then up, like a spiral of lightening into heaven. I will raise you after you have taken my blood: “He who drinks my blood…I will raise him up at the last day.” The last day is not some day in the remote future; it comes every moment of time to the individual. This thing has happened, but it is still in a sense happening. Look to him, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was to be, I would say, realized by him, embraced the cross, endured the cross and despised the shame. Everyone will simply have that experience. And when you drink it, it’s sheer enjoyment. You don’t absorb it with the tongue. I don’t put it in my mouth and drink it. I look at it and I know with infinite joy that it’s my very being, my Creator and Redeemer; and I fuse with it and absorb it as a dry sponge would that pool of golden liquid light. Then he tells you, I will raise you up after you have drunk my blood, and I will raise you up at the last day; and up you go right into heaven. So how to tell it? If one could only tell it, I know there are those who would believe it. But how to tell it that one could receive it?756 ¶3

Here in New York City, this past summer, I always call on my friend who has run this wonderful bookstore over the years. In fact, most of my library I bought from her. She was only interested in money. I would go…she would sell my book because she made a dollar. She had no interest whatsoever in anything I wrote in the books. She had a fabulous library of metaphysical books. She didn’t know the contents of one of them, but she knew where every one was and the price of business. If she knew your interest and you started in a certain direction, she could divert you for a moment while she’d take that book out, rub out the price and put another price in. I never corrected her. I caught her doing it with me. She always did it to my wife when my wife went in looking for a certain books for me. She knew she would never question the price if she had the book, and she would do it. I would go in and she would say, “Oh, Neville, you certainly do dream, don’t you?” I said, “Mary, these are not dreams, these are visions paralleling scripture.” “Oh, Neville!” then she’d turn to something else. If I would talk politics, which I didn’t, if I would talk money with her, occasionally I did, then she would have all ears. But when I began to tell her of a vision, of an experience of mine, Mary had no time for it at all. This goes back into the 20s.756 ¶4

So this year, as was my custom, I thought I would go and call on Mary. I said to a friend of mine at the meeting one night, “I haven’t had the time as yet to go and see Mary. I think I’ll go tomorrow.” She said, “Haven’t you heard?” I said no. “Mary was killed last month. She [...] and there is no more metaphysical library.” It used to be called The Gateway. She and her husband had no children, married for 40-odd years and they went their separate ways. They made lots of money. Mary ran the bookstore, and he lived in a home in the country in Bucks County, where so many artists and writers live in Pennsylvania. So they would call each other if someone needed something. If she needed someone to go hunting for certain books, she’d call Bill and Bill would take the train in or ride in and do whatever Mary needed. She would occasionally go out to the house. So they never had any feeling they should call and really inquire. No reason for it, so they thought. So, many days went by and he called, he wanted some help, and there was no response. He called all through the day, both the shop and her home in the Village, on 18th Street, and there was no response. So he came on in, went to the home first, there was all the uncollected mail. The neighbors said, we haven’t seen Mary in five days. He went to the shop, right off Madison Ave. and 60th, and here uncollected mail, and they hadn’t seen Mary in five days. It appears that Mary, five days before, needed something from the grocery store and it was late. It was just at the end of the block. So she went out with just a little change purse and no identification at all, nothing on her but her little change purse. Stepped off the curb and a truck moving at tremendous speed…and she was gone instantly. So Bill went down to the police department and inquired about this missing wife of his. They said, “You know, have you tried the morgue?” He said, “I’m not talking about a dead wife, I’m telling you my wife is missing. She has been missing for five days.” The cop said to him, “After all, these things happen all day in New York City. You’ve just described a woman just like your wife and she’s at the morgue. Why don’t you go and look.” So Bill goes to the morgue and there’s Mary, unclaimed for five days.756 ¶5

Not one moment could I arrest her attention as I have yours now. Mary made a considerable sum of money on other people. That’s all she wanted. And I would have given her any day that I visited…I would say four or five days a week I’d go and browse in her library, the most wonderful metaphysical library. I think that and the one in Long Beach are the two outstanding libraries in this country that I know…the one called Acres of Books in Long Beach. Well, these are the two fantastic libraries. Mary made this quick departure from this level unprepared, not knowing one word of the great mystery of life. She had every opportunity over the years to hear from one who had experienced scripture, and Mary wouldn’t take it at all.756 ¶6

So we are told, at the very end of his days Paul turned many and he spent from morning till night trying to persuade all who would listen to him about Jesus, and using as his argument the laws of Moses and the prophets and the psalms. Many were convinced by what he said, while others disbelieved. Well, Mary didn’t even give me the chance to disbelieve it. It was simply to her all sheer fantasy, all [...].756 ¶7

Yet I tell you every precept in that book, called the Bible, is literally true, and will one day be experienced by you and fulfilled by you literally, even to the drinking of the blood. And it’s not blood as I would cut my veins. When you see it you know it’s the only living reality in the world. It’s that which made you alive while you walked this earth. It was the blood of God, and because God became me that I may become God, when I was severed in two, there was the blood that gave me life. And on that blood I knew it was myself, for in the blood there is life, life is in the blood, golden liquid living light. And you saw it. You become one with it, and then, as you are told, “Then I will raise you up after you drink my blood.” All that scholars can get out of this statement is, if I would only read his words and assimilate them and begin to understand them, well, then I am eating his flesh and drinking his blood. You will do it literally. I’m not saying you should not understand them and that is the lowest aspect of what is intended. That is intended to be taken literally and experienced literally. “He that drinks my blood has life eternal.” Now he said, “Because I live, you will live also.” See the difference in tense? He has completed it. “Because I live”—that’s present—“you will live also.” He’s telling everyone that he addresses, and this is in the 14th of John , that though you seem to be alive you’re really not, not yet…not until you drink my blood. But I have animated you, for I have put my blood within you. “Unless I die thou canst not live; but if I die I shall arise again and thou with me.” So he dies by crucifying himself on me, on you, on everyone. So his blood is in you. But I did not drink it until he severed me in two. And then after he severed me in two, I absorbed it. Absorbing it was complete drinking of every drop of the blood, and then on the heels of it, you ascend like a serpent, or like a bolt of spiral lightning, just as you’re told in scripture.756 ¶8

So here, I tell you love endures…it was love. You take the word Jesus in scripture, it means God, it means Jehovah, and it means love, for that is the nature of God. That’s the ultimate reality. So every time you read it, you can say love. If the word Jesus offends you, say love…and love said so and so and so…that’s alright. And Jesus said so and so, fair enough, same thing. Jesus is love, infinite love.756 ¶9

Now here, I asked you for your case histories. I want to thank you for the six that have come so far. I will use them as the evening permits. One I will use tonight. This lady gave it to me and she said it happened to her on the night of the 4th of September, this month. She said, “As I fell asleep and my body lay asleep on the bed, I found myself looking for something. I didn’t know what it was that I should find, but there I am looking and looking for something. I had to find something, but what it was I didn’t know until in my left hand appeared three coins. I said, not to anyone, just speaking aloud in the dream, ‘Should there not be thirty pieces of silver?’ The voice answered and said, ‘No, you have the three precious ones.’ Then, as the voice spoke, the three were taken out of my hand towards the right, one by one, each separately. As the hand took the first one out, the voice said, ‘This is faith’; took the second one out said ‘This is hope’; took the last one out said ‘This is love.’ And then I awoke.”756 ¶10

There is the fulfillment of the 13th of Corinthians, 1st Corinthians: “Faith, hope and love, these three abide; but the greatest…is love.” Faith will one day be translated into vision and therefore fulfill itself. Hope will be completely realized in this state. But love endures forever. It’s something that is basic, you can’t analyze it. It’s something that’s altogether God…there’s only God and God is love. So she held the three coins, the three precious ones in her hands, and she thought in terms of the thirty pieces of silver. The voice said, “No, you have the three precious ones.” And then came…and the voice…as she relinquished, she didn’t have any choice in the matter, it just took one after the other. The voice began to speak.756 ¶11

So whenever vision breaks out into speech the presence of Deity is affirmed, as told us in the 3rd chapter of Exodus and the 6th of Isaiah. But it breaks out into speech. When you are in presence of vision and speech takes place, then the presence of Deity is affirmed.756 ¶12

So I say every word of scripture you one day will experience. I have experienced scripture and now, night after night, all the lovely things that come afterwards. Like the 23rd Psalm, who would have thought you took that literally? “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want; he maketh me to lie down in green pastures.” Would you believe that is literally true for a man to experience? Well, the last two years in New York City we were warned not to walk through the park, Central Park. There were muggings day and night. They said you took your life in your hands if you entered the park. Professors of Columbia were murdered. Bing, the head of the Metropolitan Opera, he was mugged, and stripped, and all of his money gone, right at the very beginning of 59th Street as you entered. And this is where the lights are on, only at ten at night. But I felt regardless of all these rumors I must go through the park. And so, I go for my daily walk and I started through the park. I can’t tell you how green the grass was, that luscious, luscious green, and it was so thick. For years New York has suffered from the lack of rain. And they wouldn’t give you water in the restaurants; you had to ask for it. They had little signs in the hotels “Please do not keep the water running and only use it when you have to.” And they asked you all kinds of pertinent things about “Don’t flush the toilet unless you have to” and all these things to save water. It was down to almost fifty percent of capacity. Well, in the last year, for some wonderful reason, the rains came and the grass was so deep. I can’t tell you my thrill as I walked through the park and remarked to myself, “How green the grass is.”756 ¶13

The following night this is my experience. I saw my earthly father. He looked about fifty years old. He died when he was eighty-five in the year ’59. But he looked about fifty and radiant and robust, and I was lying on the grass, right on this wonderful stretch of green luscious grass. I said to him, “Isn’t this strange, only yesterday I had a dream, I had a dream that I saw this grass and remarked to myself how green it was, how altogether comforting and wonderful it was, and now here it is an objective reality, it’s a fact. Last night in my dream it was subjective, and now here it is objective.” He looked at me and smiled. What is objective and what is subjective? Is it not wholly determined by the level on which consciousness is focused? I’m telling him in a dream that this is the reality, and what I experienced only yesterday was the dream. I told him how I dreamed it, and when I woke back here I realized from this level what I told him was the dream. And what I told him was the dream was really the fact. Which was the fact and which was the reality?756 ¶14

Now who is my Father? We’re told in scripture the whole vast world is seeking the Father, and Christ tells us, “I am the Father. He who sees me has seen the Father.” The whole vast world is seeking Christ. They are seeking the authority that is imaged as your earthly father, that seat of authority, that seat of power that you can trust, that you can respect. That power to which you can submit yourself, even if it does, and it does sometimes, chasten. And in doing so, you think it’s afflictions, but still you will submit to it if you can trust it. Now what is it? It’s the Father in our very selves that we are seeking, that same Father that the Christ of the gospels claims himself to be. So when I met my father, I was only seeing the authority that I had found. He was the image, the symbol of that authority that I loved. I always trusted him. I could always submit myself to him. He was always generous and kind.756 ¶15

And here I am, stretched out on the grass, in complete fulfillment of the 23rd Psalm. “He maketh me to lie down in green pastures,” who?—the Lord. Well, we’re told in scripture Christ is the Lord…and he calls himself the Father. Here’s my father. And I’m lying down, not standing on it, lying down in green pastures. It’s so green and so luscious.756 ¶16

And night after night the entire book unfolds as experiences, after the four major ones take place. Well, they have taken place; that’s all behind me now. So I’m sharing with you…and to repeat it, how can I tell and anyone—I wouldn’t say anyone—-but the majority receive it? How until he brings them where I have been? He takes them to that same level and then they will know, and they will know all of these precepts are to be taken literally and fulfilled literally. So I tell you, God who is love endures. Everything is going to pass away. It will simply wither like the grass and simply vanish from the earth, and the earth itself. But God will rise, and then you are he, completely incorporated into the one being who is God. There is nothing but God, and God is all love. Everything else is an attribute of God. Faith will be fulfilled, hope fulfilled, all the attributes fulfilled, but God, who is love, endures forever. It is love.756 ¶17

So here, this wonderful story of the three coins…I can’t tell you my thrill when someone who comes here will have a vision of that nature and will share it with me. She very sweetly wrote it out in a type written form and gave it to me. Others I have…I have five others and they’re perfectly marvelous, and when the night comes that they fit I’ll share it with you.756 ¶18

So again I’m going to make an appeal to share your experiences with me. They encourage everyone. This sweet lady who wrote it, her message has gone out tonight to everyone who is here. And you will know that you, too, will have a similar experience and know that these three qualities, virtues, they abide. The greatest of these came last, and the last is first, and the first is last. So the last was love, comes out of her hand last.756 ¶19

And these, “You have the three precious ones,” not the thirty pieces of silver, the price of him who would gore a man by what he said; for that’s the price you would pay the owner of the ox. If the ox gored a slave, you pay the owner of the slave, not the slave. You paid the owner of the slave thirty pieces of silver if you had the ox. The ox is the symbol of Christ. And Christ comes to gore man. He simply gores him into…like that ox state called the Lamed or the [...] in scripture, an ox goad…and it goads you into moving on to higher and higher levels of awareness. So when he comes he doesn’t bring peace, he brings the sword, he brings the ox goad. So when the ox goads someone, the one injured, well then, thirty pieces of silver must be given to the owner of that slave. So she wonders, “Are there not thirty pieces of silver?” and the voice answers, “No, three…and you have the three precious ones. These are the three.”756 ¶20

When you stand in the presence of the risen Christ, the only question asked is to name the greatest thing in the world. You do name the three and you also go on to say, “But the greatest of the three, these three, is love.” And that’s when love embraces you and you become one with love; forever you are one with the body of love and there is no divorcing it. What God has now joined together—you and God are one—no man or organization of men can put asunder. You are one with the body of God, and forever you are that body. So when you leave this sphere in the not distant future after that experience, you awaken as the very being the whole vast world talks about. While you experience it and remain covered in flesh…for the Godhead on this level is simply veiled perfection…and while veiled perfection, no one sees the body that you really wear, and so they have to simply guess at the reality behind what you say.756 ¶21

How can I preach God’s love? How can God have love, for God is Spirit? How could I see his body? How could I lie down in green pastures? And lying down in green pastures tells me I am protected forever. It’s the story of God’s protection of his anointed one, his elect. So you are told he actually allows you to lie down in green pastures, for what? He tells me in the very beginning, it’s all because [...] no concern about where it comes from, no concern about anything in the future, just, I will let you lie in green pastures…an abundance is yours from now on, just for the taking.756 ¶22

And then you go on to the fields, “If I were hungry, I would not tell you, for the world is mine and all within it. The cattle on a thousand hills are mine, and so, were I hungry I would slay and eat.” Why tell anyone of my hunger if the world is mine, when you have an inheritance that is infinite, that is unspoiled, unwavering, when these things begin to happen within you?756 ¶23

And the minute you drink the blood, you are raised. The whole story begins on the resurrection. There would be no Christianity without resurrection, and resurrection without crucifixion is simply sheer nonsense. How could there be resurrection without death? So God dies, and that was his love for you, his love for me: “Unless I die thou canst not live; but if I die I shall arise again and thou with me.” Not as two, as one, yet without loss of identity of the one whom I raise. No change of identity, no change of that wonderful specific individuality, the same self, yet now including a far greater self than before, who is none other than God the Father, Jesus Christ. To include him and yet remain the being that I am? Yes. Without change of identity you encompass this infinite presence who is Jesus Christ, and you are he, without change of identity. That’s the mystery. And in the end, only Jesus, nothing but Jesus, and you are he.756 ¶24

So I tell you, love endures forever as told us in the 13th chapter of 1st Corinthians. Everything will pass, but love endures always.756 ¶25

Someone defined the three virtues, faith, hope and love: faith as believing what is incredible, hope is hoping when all seems hopeless, and love is forgiving what is unforgivable, that’s love.756 ¶26

But everything that you have ever done is forgiven. If I had to expiate my past as the world teaches one must, I could never be exonerated, not in eternity. But in that embrace of love, though my sins were there at that moment like scarlet, they were, at that very moment, made white as snow. Here was complete divine acquittal of all that I had ever done…and I did everything that man could ever do. I had to. Everything that man was capable of doing I did up to that moment, and he embraced me, and exonerated me. I was divinely acquitted, and my sins that were then like scarlet became white as snow.756 ¶27

No one can really save himself. We are saved by the grace of God. It’s not your own doing, so there is no way to boast…it’s by the grace of God.756 ¶28

Now tonight, take this. We are called upon to imitate God as dear children. Tonight, here is how I would imitate him were I you. It’s told us in the 1st Epistle of John, the 4th chapter, “We love, because he first loved us.” “Because” implies causation. Our love is response, only response; the cause is God loved me first. Now, that apostolic “we” must now become a personal “I”: I love, because God first loved me. Now imitate God as a dear child, as I’m told in Ephesians . Start to love. I want a response of love? Then I start loving the one I would have respond. If I expect it to come from there and I don’t initiate it, I will wait in vain. I’ll wait forever, for I must imitate God as a dear child. Well, I’m told because I live, you will live also…therefore, I must be dead. I live, therefore you will live also. See the change in tense?756 ¶29

Pygmalion and Galatea: She’s dead, the creation of the great artist. She’s made of marble. And to whom does he pray to make her alive? He prays to the goddess of love, and asks the goddess to make her animate that he could embrace her, and find affection, and find a companion in his creation. And love responds. When love responds, Galatea utters…her first word is to call her creator’s name, and she calls out “Pygmalion.”756 ¶30

Well, the first word I ever uttered and you ever uttered is to call our Creator’s name. Before I can say anything or see anything, though I couldn’t utter the words, I had to be aware of being before I could become aware of being aware of something. I had first to be aware of being before I could be aware of anything. So although I couldn’t use words, I was but a tot, you made me. No matter what I could [...] my hand moving before my eyes, but I had to be aware of being first before I was aware of a hand, or whatever it was moving before my eyes. And so, a little child is first aware of being before it becomes aware of anything in this world. So here, the first word that the child is really uttering is the name of its Creator. Because, to be aware of being is saying in the depths of one’s being, “I am.” If I am, then I’m aware. So I must first be before I can be aware of anything. So, as Galatea became aware she calls her creator’s name and she calls out, “Pygmalion.” Here is simply an aspect of this eternal vision.756 ¶31

So, if I must imitate God, and the initiative is with God, and I am loved because God first loved me, well, then imitate him. Well, then I am aware of being, and I want someone in my world to respond, to appreciate what I do, and to express that appreciation, well, then I must start loving. I must start expecting that appreciation and go beyond it and hear it as though it were true. I must listen just as though I heard what I would hear were it true, then comes the response; for the world is but an echo, the world is only a response of what you are doing.756 ¶32

So when I am not loved, then I am not imitating God as a dear child. I’m expecting it to originate there, and it can’t originate there, it has to originate in you. So the whole vast world is myself pushed out. And if God is love, then I love him because he first loved me, and I must imitate him. Well, then I see the whole vast world round about me. Alright, I want the world to respond in what kind?756 ¶33

I once said to my brother Victor, who has made a fortune in this world on the little tiny island called Barbados. You could put four Barbadoses in Los Angeles and still have room. He’s made a considerable fortune and he started behind the eight-ball. He said to me, “You know, Neville, nobody will believe it…maybe you will…when they say, ‘What is the secret of your success?’ they think that because I have money that I love money. I don’t love money. Oh, yes, I have it, I have millions, but I don’t love money. I love the use of money. But if I told you what I consider my success and the secret of my success, maybe you will believe, maybe you won’t…others don’t.” Because, being a successful businessman, they are afraid of him, and they think he’s hard. They think he’s everything that he’s not. And this is what he told me. What do you think he said? He said, “My secret is this: I love people. They’re all afraid of me because I have money, but I’m never too busy to see anyone. Regardless of the pigment of their skin, they can sit right down…with anyone coming in. If Churchill came in…when Churchill was alive he came…he would sit in the same seat that my porter would come, if my porter wanted to see me. And I really love people.”756 ¶34

And so, he’s done it all through believing, by giving. He’s always giving, not thinking of himself, just simply giving. But he makes a fortune and he can’t stop making it. It pours and pours and pours. And he tells me his secret is because “I love people.”756 ¶35

Now he doesn’t know the Bible as you do. He certainly doesn’t know it as I do; but innately he knew that God is love and I love because he first loved me. How he got that I don’t know, but he just loves people. People have to bring him all kinds of information that you can’t buy in any other way. He finds all kinds of deals because people love him, and yet they’re afraid of him.756 ¶36

Just as man not knowing the unknown is afraid of God, who is in the flower. If you ever saw the risen Christ, you wonder, how could I ever in eternity have ever been afraid of God when there is not a thing in the risen Christ but infinite love, nothing but love? And yet man fears this unseen. You can’t see him until he calls you. He hides his face, because you went astray, and simply served another god, and played the harlot with one who is not God, by worshipping some false power, call it by any name. There’s only God, and you go back to him. And one day he will not hide his face any more, he’ll unveil it, and you will see infinite love. He embraces you and then you are he. The union is complete and no one can sunder it.756 ¶37

So tonight, you take me at my word. I’m telling you what I’ve experienced. You start tonight and, alright, fall in love with being successful. And success…you always need, a state always needs a man to express it. And so, a man will express it. He’ll come into your world. Fall in love with being successful, and then men will come, and you’ll be successful without the effort you think it will take. All these things work almost without effort, if you really believe in God and imitate him as a dear child.756 ¶38

So I tell you everything in the world that we now hold so dear will all pass away, but love will not pass away, because love is God himself.756 ¶39

Now let us go into the Silence.756 ¶40

* * * [...] and I think you will find the story I will tell on Monday a very fascinating story, based upon a letter I received. She doesn’t know as yet how perfectly it fits in with the visions, my own personal visions over the past, I would say, twenty years. She may not be here tonight, I don’t know if she is here or not, and she may not even come on Monday. Doesn’t really matter. But what she wrote me this last week…and how perfectly it fits with the visions that I will tell on Monday. Is this drama secular or sacred? Now are there any questions?756 ¶41

Q and A

Last week, Neville, you said to seek him out and brood over him, would you expand on that?756 ¶42

Speaker

Well, if you took what I said tonight and not just drop it because it’s over when you go through the door, brood over what you heard while I’m giving you his words. And when I quote scripture…all prophets were inspired by the same Spirit as told us in the epistle of Peter. So when we read the four gospels…and I quoted tonight from the Book of John, “He who drinks my blood has eternal life and I will raise him up at the last day.” Well, these are his words and his Word is himself, so brood over that. Brood over everything that he has said. His precepts are to be taken literally. And he dwells in you, Bill. So tonight I have explained, taken from my own experience, what it means to actually drink the blood of God. The word translated “drink” means “with enjoyment,” not a repulsion. And you can’t conceive of anything more repulsive to the orthodox Hebrew mind than the drinking of blood, for the simple reason they are trained in orthodoxy that the animal must be drained of all blood, for life is in the blood. To put blood, why, that’s the most repulsive thing. They kill the chicken differently from the way heathens slaughter a chicken, and they would slant the board and drain all the blood from the animal, trying to get all the blood out. Now, raised as I was in a Christian environment, we go in for black sausage and, well, rare goat’s meat, and things of that sort, but not to drain the blood. So it hasn’t anything to do with that level. It’s something entirely different. When they know what that blood is, or when the Christian knows what that blood is, what Christian would take it that he would even entertain the thought of drinking the blood of Jesus? He wouldn’t, would he? Now take this in remembrance of me…people take a little wine…that’s not the blood. That is a symbol, a shadow of what will give them real enjoyment when they see that blood and absorb every drop of it. It takes no time at all. You do it willingly, you’re so thirsty for it, and you absorb the whole thing, you’re it. Now there’s life in you. He who drinks my blood has now eternal life. Now I’ll raise him up. And from this generation you’re turned around into regeneration, and you’re raised up through the drinking of the blood. So I said brood over it. Brood over that very thought tonight, in the hope that in the not distant future you experience it. And then hope one day will be realized. Have faith in it; that will be realized in the actual experience. But love cannot pass away.756 ¶43

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[...]756 ¶44

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First of all, what man has not departed from the true religion? What man? If we go to the highest level, call it by any name, say the pope, if you say the archbishop of Canterbury, if you spoke of the highest in the Presbyterian world—there aren’t any bishops or popes but they certainly have heads in that [...]—or you go in to any of the great Sanhedrin, they’re all departed from the true God, because they don’t turn within themselves and see that I am he. The fundamental sin is not to believe that I am he. “Unless you believe that I am he, you die in your sins.” And so when they cross themselves with everything on the outside for the benefit of a seeming other, then they’ve departed from the truth. They’re not serving the one true God. Called by any name, I don’t care how they justify it. They’re not serving the one true God. They’re playing the part of the harlot. Another word that’s used in scripture for the harlot is called “the sinner.” When he became the friend of “the sinner,” that was the prostitute in the sense that you and I understand the word. And yet, she was the one who wept and so filled his feet with water she could wash it; when the Pharisee, who was always on the outside—he washed the outside of the cup—that he did not give him water with which to wash his feet when he and the guest came to dine. Yet she came in and with her tears she washed the feet. He did not anoint the head…and she with her little…and he wondered, “How can this man be a prophet? If he were a prophet, surely he would know what sort of woman she is. For he tells me she is a sinner, but he ought to know what sort of a woman.” He knew exactly who she was. And he said, if someone owes 500 denarii and someone owes fifty and you forgive both, which shows the greater gratitude? He said, well, I presume the one who was forgiven the 500; it cancelled much. She has sinned much so she is forgiven much. And he who is the holier than thou remains, well, in the same state he was before. But that is something far deeper than what I’ve just told you, which we will touch on Monday. You can’t stop the flow of tears at a certain level of awakening, can’t do it. You just can’t do it. And, well, I can’t go into it now, it’s a long one. But the harlot…to play the part of the harlot, as you’re told in the Book of Deuteronomy, “Your time has come to sleep with your fathers”—he’s speaking now to Moses—in other words, it’s a euphemism for death…time to die now. After you depart, they have no physical leader. They’re all allowed to go astray and play the harlot with the strange gods of the land where they go to be among, and they will simply forget my covenants and in that day I will hide my face from them. He hides his face from everyone who seeks another God. Therefore, the man who has not actually seen the risen Christ is still serving, whether he knows it or not, a false god. When I turn to the one true God, well then, he will unveil himself and embrace me. I have returned having played the harlot, for we all play the harlot. But even to the part of playing that form of sinner, which is called in scripture just the word sinner…but it means one who has gone astray sexually with everyone, and he called it a “sort of woman.” But he was a friend of the sinners, he was a friend of the tax collectors, and they called him a winebibber and a glutton. That’s why if a man is just like a man they can’t believe for one moment that this whole drama has unfolded within him, for they know his history. And he loves the sinners, who else would he help? He came not to serve and to save the righteous; they have no need of saving. They are so righteous in their own mind’s eye that they know because they have money and they go before God, they can say, I left fifty million behind in churches, and I gave to charities [...]. And he said, “I do not know you”…I do not know you. The old story of the temple, I am so grateful that I am not as that sinner while he asks for forgiveness, the sinner. It’s an old symbol. So in the eyes of God all gifts, all things will be forgiven. If you play the part of the prostitute from now to the ends of days, all is forgiven. And those who thought themselves so pure, so altogether good, that they even perform violence among themselves so they could not perform the act, he doesn’t know them. But she went astray and played the part because of what? Excessive love, excessive passion. Well, God is all love. No condemnation whatsoever, none. So he came among the sinners and the one who saw him at the end was the one who played the part of that kindliness, the prostitute. He appeared to her first and appeared to her last. She came unannounced to the banquet and she washed his feet with her tears. When they complained, no one saw the woman she is. “She washed my feet. You didn’t give me any water to wash my feet. Is that not customary?” They thought him just an ordinary man and not really worth his time to give him water; she came in and she watered him with her tears. That’s a fact that happens. I’ll tell you…tell you on Monday. Goodnight.756 ¶45

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