Fall Love With Christ

[The first few sentences lost due to room’s sound-system malfunction.] [...] tonight if you have a desire, an intense desire that you can clothe as you would a dream, and then imitate God by actually losing yourself in it as though it were true. Well, that’s what I’m told in scripture that he does; he does not turn away from side to side. “He began the good work in me, and he will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.” Well, Jesus Christ reflects the glory of God and bears the express image of his person. If he will not stop until that wish is completely realized, well then, I must be equally persistent and not stop in spite of things to the contrary until my dream is completely realized.782 ¶1

Now here, if I take the story of Jesus Christ as it ought to be taken and see it as the story of God, it is a plan, it’s a complete plan. And if I read it correctly, I will see this in it…it’s only concerned with the risen Christ. He only makes himself manifest as the risen Christ. Judas said to him, “Why do you manifest yourself to us and not to the world?” How will you manifest yourself to us and not share it with others? And then he gave the reasons for it, “Any man who loves me will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. He who does not love me does not keep my words; and the word I speak is not my word but the word of the Father who sent me.”782 ¶2

He speaks of the word…well, everything said in scripture as I read it is his word. They are given to us first of all in paragraphs, each paragraph is complete in itself, and does not depend upon any other paragraph for its own explanation. It exists in itself. So I come to you and I give you, say, a pile of paragraphs…these are complete individual expressions of the risen Lord…and I ask you to put it into a story form, and you take it and write a story. So, much is editorial and little of it would be the paragraphs that I gave you. But you’re going to tell it in the form of a story. There is not a thing in the paragraph to lead you to the chronological set-up of the paragraphs. But you tell it to the best of your ability and you make a story of it.782 ¶3

Now here, we will take one tonight where it fits a letter that I received this week. In her letter she said, “My daughter and our mutual friend Jan had a vision, separate visions. They wouldn’t tell me the vision but told me to ask for confirmation of the vision. I went to bed and I thought of you and I brought you forth at least in my Imagination, asking for confirmation, and then I slept. When I woke quite early in the morning, I could not remember that I had dreamt, which is unusual for me, for I remember in detail my dreams, and if perchance I do not remember the dream, I know that have dreamt. But in this case, I could not remember having had a dream. Because it was early I turned over and slept and instantly you came before me and I knew you were the risen Christ. In a way I do not understand you gave me the number twenty-six and I toyed with it for awhile…adding the two and the six together to make eight; and then I took the twenty-six itself and added it to the day where the vision took place and brought it to November the 13th. I kept on doing all kinds of things with the number twenty-six.”782 ¶4

Now, that’s where we get off. I gave you twenty-six. Yes, you can total it and it comes to eight. Eight is the number of the risen Lord; he rose on the eighth day, the first day of the new week. Eight is always associated with resurrection, regeneration, and the number of the Lord, but twenty-six is what I gave you. In the Hebrew alphabet there are twenty-two letters, but there are five finals. There are five letters of the twenty-two that are repeated and they are called “finals.” Their numbers change, all but this one. We have Kaph as twenty; when you find it as a final, it is 500. It’s not a two toned, it’s 500. We have a Mem that is forty; when we encounter Mem as a final letter in the alphabet, we find its numerical value is 600. We have Nun that is fifty and when we encounter it as a final, it is 700. Now we have Pe, a P-e or P-h, and you pronounce Phe. That, when you first encounter it is eighty, and when you encounter it as a final, it’s 800. So you do not change the tone of the number. The symbolical value of this letter is the mouth, it’s the mouth of God: “And my word that goes forth from my mouth…it shall not return unto me void, but it must accomplish that which I purposed, and prosper in the thing for which I sent it” (Is. 55:11).782 ¶5

Now he speaks of sending a word…well, you are the word. Christ is the word, and “Christ in you is the hope of glory.” Christ in you is God’s plan to make you his perfect image, possessing all that God possesses. The word cannot return void. I gave her twenty-six. Well, this lady said just recently, she wondered, “Why do I have certain intuitive states which I know to be true and hesitate to voice? I seem to hesitate…I do not feel confident and yet I know it’s true.” I gave her…she saw me as the risen Lord…I gave her a voice of authority, twenty-six, to speak out regardless of what others might say. Do not go beyond twenty-six. Don’t add it to the day of the month to make it Nov. 13. It hasn’t a thing to do with that, it’s twenty-six: It’s the Pe, the final word, because twenty-six is the final Pe.782 ¶6

You can only see the risen Lord. I can tell you from this platform from now ’til the ends of time that I have had the experience of being ascended from earth into the highest heaven. I can tell you that I have, but I can’t persuade you. And no one in this world will see me as I’ve told you that I am unless it’s revealed to you from within by the Father. “Who do men say that the Son of man is?’ ‘Well, some say John the Baptist come again, some say Elijah, some say Jeremiah, some say one of the prophets of old.’ ‘But who do you say that I am?’ And Peter answered, ‘Thou art the Christ, the Son of the risen Lord.’ He said ‘Flesh and blood could not have told this to you, but my Father who is in heaven, he has revealed it to you’” . No one can see the risen Lord but one who loves him.782 ¶7

Now, others will say “I love him.” Only one who loves him…loves who…a man called Neville, the flesh and blood? No, loves the teaching, for he’s only expressing what he is in the form of a plan, the form of a pattern. He tells you that he is simply an erupted pattern that God had placed within him. All that he is is simply a complete eruption of that pattern. One who heard it, loved it, loved the idea of containing such a pattern, in the hope that one day it would erupt within her. So she’s in love with the pattern. If she’s in love with the pattern and I am the pattern, she’s in love with me…not me, flesh a blood, for flesh and blood cannot tell her to the point of convincing her. She has to see it from within. So in this moment she asks for light and instantly I appear and manifest myself to her, and give her twenty-six, the number twenty-six. But as I manifest myself to her she not only knows me but she knows I am the risen Christ.782 ¶8

Now, no one of flesh and blood could tell her that to convince her. She would have to have the experience that Peter had. Peter heard it and Peter loved what he heard. Others heard it but they did not love it, so they did not have the experience. So how can you manifest yourself to these, just a few, and not to the world, the unbelieving world? And he answered that such is granted to the discernment of love: those who can see it and fall in love with it, they love it.782 ¶9

Well, people will say, “But I love Christ!” Well, they have an icon they call Christ; they have some little idol that they call Christ. That’s not Christ! Christ is the plan of God, the plan that was in the beginning: “Let us make man in our image” (Gen. 1:26). Well, he is called the image of God: “He reflects the glory of God and bears the express image of his person” (Heb. 1:3). That’s Christ. Well, can I find that image in scripture? Search it…search it and see if you can find in the search from these paragraphs such an image. And you’ll find it. I have told it to you in the most simple manner I am capable of telling. I have told it in a more chronological manner than recorded in the Bible, because they were given these paragraphs and they did not know which came first. They wrote a beautiful story…they all disagree. We speak of the synoptics because they do have something in common, but, oh, what a difference in the very genealogy between Matthew and Luke! If you find these things, they all differ.782 ¶10

But those who actually fall in love—not with Neville, not with Neville a man—but when he tells you the whole story awoke within him, in detail, and he tells you the chronological order in which it did, well then, I instruct those who fell in love with what they heard…not the man. One departed last July, she saw it. She didn’t say she knew Neville, but as she saw him she knew he was the Lord. Another one (who is here tonight, in fact, two), she saw it but didn’t think for one moment she should even write the letter to tell me until the one who departed made her write the letter. So she saw the risen Lord. Not a man, for you see a man of flesh and blood…and you know this man’s father is Joseph…we know him, we know the limitations, we know all these things…and he’s not speaking of that.782 ¶11

So, just as he loses himself in a dream to bring it to fulfillment, on this level we can be imitators of God as dear children. And while we wait for the work of God to be finished in us so that the whole thing explodes and the pattern unfolds within us, we can have our dream. If we are equally persistent in that dream, no power in the world can stop it from coming to fulfillment, but no power. But we cannot deviate, we cannot turn from the dream to see what others are thinking, what they think of us. We have to actually lose ourselves in it.782 ¶12

But no man who comes into this world, flesh and blood…if anyone ever tells you he is Christ, don’t go. That he is something different, don’t go. You’re told that so clearly in the 13th chapter of the Book of Mark: “If anyone should say, ‘Look, there is the Christ!’ or ‘Look, here he is!’ believe him not” (verse 21). But you will know and this knowledge that comes to you from within is without uncertainty. No one has to tell her tonight the truth of what she saw. She saw it and she knew it. The man that is talking to her now that man is full of weaknesses, full of all the limitations of flesh and blood. She could tomorrow hear of some unpleasant thing in his life, but it would not disturb what she saw, what she heard. She may hear tomorrow, as it is recorded in scripture, he is a glutton and a drunkard, a lover of sinners, and one who keeps the company of harlots. Well, she could hear that, but it would not disturb her in what she saw when he appeared to her not as flesh and blood but as the risen Lord, who could give her then the number twenty-six and give her a voice that from now on will speak with a far greater authority and will not ask others, “Should I say it or do you think it’s right?” She will now have the courage to speak out when intuitively she knows it is right.782 ¶13

That’s why I ask you for your visions, for your dreams, for in this manner I know. Now you may lie to me, that I have no control over, but you’re not lying to me, you’re lying only to yourself if perchance you think now I will simply tell a nice little white one, and then get into a circle, feeling I’m part of it. You’re only deceiving yourself. That’s why I say tell me just what happened and don’t augment it. Don’t go beyond twenty-six…well, you did, you went to the eight, well, that’s all right. But don’t go into all the other things. You’ll get so confused and you’ll be so wrong. By adding that to make Nov. 13th you’re completely out. You just simply stop right with what I gave you, and I gave you a voice, I gave you twenty-six. The day will come you will know Hebrew. You will know these letters, you’ll know these things, and then you can interpret beyond where you can now. Until that day, write me and I’ll interpret for you.782 ¶14

So here, everything said of him you will experience, but everything. The day will come you, too, having experienced it, will say to your friends, “You know this is what happened.” Ninety-nine point ninety-nine will turn their backs upon you, because they’re looking at you through the eyes that are mortal, and they’re seeing the mortal man with all the weaknesses that they know. You will not impress them. You don’t tell it to impress them; you tell them only to show them the truth of God’s word. Well, they could never see that in you. But, there will be a remnant who will believe it when you tell them that that whole thing is in you. And the day will come the whole thing will unfold within you, too, and others will know that what you said is true, because they will know you are the risen Christ.782 ¶15

So, not one person saw him as the risen Christ until after the ascension. Read it carefully, not one saw him. People think the ascension means he died and then he rose. No. While you’re walking this world in a body of flesh and blood, you have the experience of the ascension. That’s why I told you I’m not here…my nights are certainly not here, and if I am anchored here during the day to complete a certain passage of time, all well and good. But on the 8th day of April, 1960 (well, that’s eight years ago) I ascended. And from that day on everything in me was turned around, and from that day on I have been seen, not only here, up north, east, all over, by a few. They’ve told me, “I saw you, Neville but strangely enough I saw you as the risen Lord.” Now, they were the ones who were in love not with Neville they were in love with what they heard. The hope I held out to them: That the same Neville that now is so weak carried within him God’s plan of salvation and the plan to unfold it. They were in love with what I told them concerning that plan that God placed in every man born of woman, a plan of redemption, and when the time is fulfilled, that plan awakens within man. Then they fall in love with that…that was the Christ that they loved.782 ¶16

Because no man born of woman, from the womb of woman, is Christ: it’s what he contains within him. If there is another Christ other than he who was crucified and buried within us, that Christ is a false Christ. I don’t care what they tell me about that Christ, he is a false Christ. And false teachers teach him as coming from without. So if there is any Christ that anyone talks about other than that Christ who was crucified and buried within us, that Christ is false. Don’t go to listen to him and pay no attention to those who will tell you all about him—they do not know Christ. Christ is the plan of redemption. Listen to the words, “He has made known unto me the mystery of his will, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time” (Eph. 1:9). He set it forth in Christ as a plan…he is the plan. He is the word, and the word and the one who speaks it are the same. So he speaks it and remains constant, and he doesn’t deviate from it.782 ¶17

If tonight I would imitate God as a dear child, have a dream. Not the dream where I am not in control, a day dream, something where I am absolutely in control. I say, I want this, that and the other and I make a composite picture of it. I want to be this, I want to be that, and I ask no one to aid me. I ask no one if it is right for me. I’m living in the world of Caesar, would that make life to me full? All right, then I take it, and then I do exactly what God does to bring man to the fulfillment of his dream: He doesn’t turn from left to right. “He will not turn back until he has executed and accomplished the intent of his will. In the latter days you will understand it perfectly.” So when you go through the mill and go through the furnaces, you’ll understand in the end that it was essential to bring out the image that could reflect the glory of God, and express the very image of his person. Then he endows it with life in itself; therefore, then it becomes one with God, who inherits God so that whatever God was now this one is…whatever he was. He was a father…just a father or the Father? He was the Father with the Son. Well then, I am that. Whatever claims made for God must be made for the one when the work is finished within him. And this is how it’s finished.782 ¶18

So I tell you, if you haven’t read it, you don’t have it, get the book…that last chapter, Resurrection. I have told it in the chronological order. I know of no other book, including the Bible, which has told it in this order. And the Bible when you see it in its manuscript form, it was only given to the individual who wrote it, the evangelist, in paragraphs. I bring you a pile of paragraphs, each complete in itself, not dependent on any other paragraph for its explanation, it’s complete in itself! Well, you take them and you go over them. I ask you to tell a story, tell a story because those who were eyewitnesses to it are passing out of this world of Caesar and therefore you can only have an oral tradition from now on. With an oral tradition and nothing written but these, you are going to simply have confusion. So try to put it into as orderly a form as possible.782 ¶19

So Luke gave us in his first four verses: “In as much as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things that have been occurring and have happened among us by those who are eyewitnesses from the very beginning and ministers of the word, it seemed good to me also to write an orderly account for you, dear, most excellent Theophilus, that you may know the truth concerning the things of which you have been informed” (Luke 1:1-3). So he puts it down for Theophilus. Well, who is Theophilus? The word means “one who loves God,” the one who is going to see the risen Lord…for that is the condition. Who will he appear to?—the one who loves me. “The one who loves me will keep my word, and my word is not mine but the word of the Father who sent me.” And so, if you love what I have told you, you will keep it and put your hope on it that it will unfold within you. So he writes an orderly account for the individual who loves the Word.782 ¶20

Now he does not claim that he has made a more exact chronological presentation of the source material. What Luke is claiming is that he has made a better use of the source material; it is better presented than those who preceded him in the attempt to tell the story. For he begins by saying, “In as much as many have undertaken to compile a narrative…”, therefore, he tells you many tried it. We only have four records, but many tried to compile from these paragraphs a story of God’s plan of salvation. Well, Luke did a marvelous job, but he incorporated what St. John didn’t. John tells us that “we must be born again, born from above,” but he gives no such thing as the story of man’s birth. He tells you, you must be born from above, but he doesn’t bring any of the symbolism into it. And Luke, by bringing it in, the world has taken it that you’re born as a little baby from the womb of woman. Anyone who reads the story will think that’s how the Savior was born…from a woman. Came in the same normal manner that all children come, with one exception, she didn’t have a husband. Matthew even goes beyond that. Luke takes it in its normal state, because he takes shepherds rather than kings. And today, scholars are convinced that the story as Matthew tells it is definitely inserted…he with his three kings.782 ¶21

But, it’s a simple thing, and normal men will witness it, not kings, but three normal people will witness the event. And the child is only a sign of the event, and the event is your birth from above, that could happen when you’re fifty, when you’re sixty, when you’re eighty. It doesn’t happen at the so-called appearance in this world when you came through your mother’s womb. While you’re walking the earth as a normal, natural individual, suddenly it happens; and there is no preparation for it, it takes you by surprise. When it takes you by surprise, you simply record the event.782 ¶22

Now I know that many have had the experiences and they never once recorded it. Put it down next to the parallel passage of scripture. When mine happened, instantly I wrote it in the Bible against that parallel passage. Just like the scripture tells us, that paragraph was complete in itself. If I never had another experience, I wouldn’t know there were other experiences. And so, when on the 6th day of December the other one came, I put it against its parallel passage. But the first one did not depend upon the second to exist. That first one is a complete paragraph within itself. And the second is complete in itself and does not require the first or the third or the fourth for any explanation of itself. So when the third happened, I didn’t realize the third was coming. It came just as unexpectedly as the first and the second…and then the long interval. Then comes the fourth…I certainly didn’t expect it. I put it down. So when I could tell the story, I could tell them in the chronological order how they appeared.782 ¶23

Now others came in between, but I did not put them down…like the unveiling of the arm, the nailing of the peg into the shoulder; the betrayal by one who I taught, who I thought really loved what I was teaching. He in turn rose quickly and departed, and I knew exactly what he was going to do…he was going to betray what I am teaching. And I thought while I taught him he loved the teaching—the teaching being myself, because I am one with the teaching, for I’m only telling what happened to me. And this came after the four events as recorded in my Bible. So we can see where the whole betrayal took place: It’s the unveiling of the power of God.782 ¶24

So I ask everyone here to believe it and fall in love with it. If you really fall in love—not with the speaker, doesn’t matter a thing about him; but in him it did awake, in him Christ rose; in him the Father appeared, all as self, not another. Then you hear the story and then you know it’s going to happen in me? I said yes, it’s going to happen to you, and you’ll be cast in the central role as the being that is called in scripture Jesus Christ. For you are that plan, you are the word of God that cannot return to God void and it must accomplish that which it was sent to accomplish. So in you the whole thing is going to unfold and you too will tell it, and they’ll fall in love with what you tell. Those who fall in love with what you tell in the hope that it will unfold within them will have the privilege and the joy of seeing you as the risen Lord. For in the end there is only going to be the risen Lord.782 ¶25

If we have different gifts…as we are told in scripture that the gift depends upon the nature of the grace that he bestows. Some are apostles, some prophets, some teachers, some healers, some helpers, and therefore they all differed in the kingdom as to the gifts. But the gift was unmerited, the gift was not due to any…it was completely unearned. But the measure of the gift will determine the nature of the part you play in the body of the risen Lord. All are important and all are right and all are good. The least there makes one greater than the greatest here. So what does it matter what part we play in the kingdom!782 ¶26

But I tell you, the prophets—and many of you are those who see clearly and record it clearly—they are so high in the kingdom. They’re really the voice of God himself. They hear it as coming from within. And as he makes the statement, “When they are dictated to by the Spirit of Christ within them”…and the Spirit of Christ within them is themselves. How closer to God can you get than to be his voice, than to be his mouth? And that’s what the prophet is. But he’s not granted the right to interpret what he hears and sees; that belongs to another aspect of being.782 ¶27

But tonight, imitate God by having a most glorious dream of the man, of the woman that you would like to be. Don’t ask anyone if it’s possible; all things are possible to God. Don’t ask anyone if you should want it…you simply want it. Because there is no death in the true sense of the word, unfinished business here will be completed. So start your dream. What does it matter, you could be ninety and still have a dream, things you have not experienced that you want to experience, things you have not realized here and you want to realize them. Well, start it.782 ¶28

I, personally, would say to the whole vast world, “set your hope fully upon the grace that is coming to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ” (1 Pet. 1:13), but I would not set myself up as the criterion of what they ought to want. Let them tell me what they would want, and if I can aid them in constructing a scene which would imply the fulfillment of that dream, I will aid them. But I will not say you should have this above all things. I can suggest such a hope, but I can’t say it’s the one thing you should want. If someone has never known or has no memory of affluence, no real memory of security, and they want a taste of that in the world of Caesar, what’s wrong with it?782 ¶29

When people say, after all, it’s a difficult thing. No, not in this world. The majority of people today who are very, very wealthy are not living on inherited wealth. We have the publicized, this one and that one, the Tommy Manvilles and the Barbara Huttons, but they are little compared to the great wealth earned right here in one generation. We see tonight on TV or on radio, tomorrow morning’s paper, and he started with sixty dollars and he claims he’s sixty-two. Others say that they know from experience that he is sixty-nine, all the better. But in his own little lifetime, a short interval…started when he was twenty with sixty dollars and now worth a half-billion. And so, he is not alone, there are others with their half-billion who started with a dream and they were not diverted. They say he is ruthless. So what! Maybe if you have that sort of a dream, you appear in the eyes of others as ruthless. And those who are not ruthless in the eyes of others are without a dream, so they have no one to offend. They are not offending anyone because they are not even known to exist in the world. But there are those who like this fellow had to dream to realize it.782 ¶30

So I would say to anyone, if you haven’t tasted something that you still have a hunger for, well then, make it part of your dream. Let no one tell you, you shouldn’t want it. Make it part of the dream. One day you will fall in love with what today you will only give a passing glance at. Don’t think for one second the billion Christians in the world are in love with Christ, the true Christ of scripture. No, they’re in love with other things and they pay attention certainly not to Christ but to theological substitutes…for certainly that is not Christ.782 ¶31

When tonight, here, a voice from the Vatican, he cannot now take the sacrament, because not until the highest order of the Greek Orthodox Church admits that the first union was terminated in a way that would make her children and his children bastards. For if it is annulled, the marriage never took place, and if the marriage never took place and they’re confronted with two physical children that they admit are theirs, well then, the children are bastards. So to please the Vatican to make the children bastards to keep the traditions of the church alive? Of all the nonsense in the world! Of course, I do believe she’s big enough to simply say, “Take your little nonsense your side and I’ll take my half-billion my side”…that’s what she has and live fully in her own wonderful world.782 ¶32

So you don’t have to ask anyone. You’re going to hurt someone? Don’t hurt anyone. Dream nobly. What do you want? When you know what you want, take the Bible literally: Imitate God as a dear child. How did he do it? Well, he had to start with a wish, for he said, “Let us make man in our image.” That’s a wish. Well, if it’s going to take time, well then, it’s going to take time. He has then to start with a wish and persist in his wish as though it were true. Well now, I have to take a wish and persist in my wish, if I’m going to imitate God, as though it were true and not deviate. Just continue in my wish as though it is true. In the end, I will unveil my wish projected on the screen of space as he unveils his wish and it is Christ Jesus. And the man in whom he unveils it always thought himself John Brown; not for one moment did he believe he was that glorified being who reflected the glory of God and bore the very stamp of his nature. That he was as perfect as his Father and he didn’t earn it; holy as his Father and he didn’t earn it. It was all a gift, because it was the wish of his Father that he have it.782 ¶33

Now let us go into the Silence. * * * Are there any questions, please?782 ¶34

You fall in love with the story. As Mark begins it, “Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand.” Well, that kingdom of God which is the gospel of God is simply the story of salvation. Fall in love with that story that is contained in man. And when it happens, it will possibly happen in one that you would think, “Well, that’s the last person in the world that I would ever expect it to happen.” For we judge from appearances and we think, “Why did it happen to him, for I am more holy than he is…I go to church.” I hear that all the time.782 ¶37

I have friends of mine back east, every Sunday morning whether it shines or snows, whether they feel well or not, they must be in church. Two hours on Good Friday, Easter all day—with a new hat, of course, a new dress—and they give their time to the Altar Guild, they see that fresh flowers are there and they give their time. To them that’s Christianity.782 ¶38

I was saying to a very dear friend of mine two days ago on Saturday, “I’m so happy that the Rev. So-and-so has been appointed the new rector of the church here in Beverly Hills.” Well, she wasn’t at all happy. I said, “I heard him twice speak at Westlake when my daughter was there, and I thought him a very able speaker and a nice man. He has love, he has tenderness.” She said, “Well, he doesn’t draw the people.” In other words, he can’t raise the money.782 ¶39

The one they had there never wrote one of his own lectures but had a lecture bureau back east in Philadelphia to which he subscribed, and they would send him his weekly lecture. Well, if I depend upon someone 3,000 miles away to write a lecture for me for Sunday morning, I should at least go to school and learn how to read it. He wasn’t a good reader and he couldn’t commit it to memory. He didn’t have a good memory. So here, from 3,000 miles away comes his lecture that he’s going to give on Sunday morning, and this went on all the years that he was there…twenty-odd years. Well, now they have retired him and his assistant’s been appointed.782 ¶40

She meant every world she said, “No, I have to think in terms of the church, not the individual.” I said, “I think in terms of the individual. He’ll serve well, he has a heart, he loves people. I know he loves people. So he can’t raise huge sums of money, because that doesn’t interest him. Well, let other people get out and raise it if the church needs it. The other one was an administrator and could get out and browbeat these people into giving large sums of money, when he himself is as dead as the chair you’re seated on. Hasn’t the slightest concept of the mystery of Christ. Fortunately for anyone who has to go there he has reached the age of retirement.”782 ¶41

That’s true all over the country. If you can really raise large sums of money, wonderful! You can go after and be a cardinal, but you may have the mystery backwards. You may have experienced it and could tell it in detail; but without that other ability you can’t get off the floor. Not that you want to. The others go off with all their robes and paraphernalia and persuade themselves that they’re really very holy people. And the unthinking masses believe it.782 ¶42

I tell you that the only Christ, the only Christ of which the scripture speaks, is in you as a plan, as a pattern. And if anyone teaches any other Christ, he is a false teacher and his teaching is false. There is no other Christ! And one day, he erupts and it will seem to you the most marvelous thing that could ever happen to man.782 ¶43

The night that it happened to me, I lived a very normal day, had my usual two or three martinis before dinner, had a lovely roast beef dinner and a baked potato; and didn’t turn in for several hours after. So it was not the result of some undigested piece of beef, for I had my dinner at five and it was eleven when I doused the lights. Well, certainly anything in my stomach at five should have been a way down by eleven, so it was not any undigested food in my stomach that prompted this miraculous experience. Yet, here is a perfectly normal, natural man in the world of Caesar.782 ¶44

And I thought, well, this is in itself complete, and I didn’t realize for one moment it was one of a series, and each in the series was in itself complete and needed no other experience to interpret it or to explain it. But put them together, and then turn to scripture and you see where that was the hidden book, the Old Testament. So when Paul writes that the things have been hidden for generations and ages and now made manifest to his saints, he is speaking of the Old Testament. Then after it was broken, then man could understand the Old, because now they had the key provided by the experiences of man, a normal man.782 ¶45

And they said to him, “Well, what does he know? He has no learning for he’s never studied, and his brothers don’t believe in him, and we know him well. We know he’s seen in the [...] all the time, and we know he’s never studied. What learning has he that he would confront the Sanhedrin and confront those who consider themselves the last word in understanding the law of God?” And he’s transcended it, because he has the key now. It erupted in him, not in them. And they knew nothing of what they read, yet they wrote volumes about it.782 ¶46

We can only have in the Red Letter edition a matter of a few words…the words attributed to the one who had the experience there are only so many words. They’re all in red, if you have a Red Letter edition and they put them on a few pages. He left nothing written. It’s all about him. There’s no description of the personal appearance of the man, not a thing. So it happens to normal man.782 ¶47

People are always looking for it to happen in the palace or in the Vatican or in some holy spot as they consider these places holy. It happens to one…as it is said of him, he was a drunkard and a glutton and one who loved sinners, harlots, tax collectors, stopping at a home of a sinner and asked to be lodged for the night. He didn’t go to palatial homes, just stopped at the home of a sinner. One who never washed his hands before eating, one who did not wash the feet before…all these were traditional things that made you a sinner if you did not do these things. He stopped in there and he found a receptive heart in these homes who could love him. Love who? Love the pattern that was unfolding within him and believed it, and therefore to them he presented himself for what he was. But no one can see him unless he manifests himself, so he has to manifest himself and he manifests himself in what he is. The individual has no doubt when they see him as the risen Lord.782 ¶48

So you fall in love with the story. And the day will come, the one in whom it has already happened will present himself to you and you will know him as the risen Lord. He knows it whether others know it or not, so it doesn’t really matter. But these happen not after the physical departure of the man, it happens after the ascension of that man. So the ascension comes while he is walking the earth. Mine happened eight years ago and still I am waiting for physical departure. And since then I have been presenting myself to those who love me…love me, the one in whom it happened, not the thing, but that which has happened.782 ¶49

I certainly have not presented myself to any member of my family, for they love this but not that which I talk about. They heard that I was not feeling well. The phone rang last Friday morning and here is my brother and sister on the phone from Barbados. Then I tried to shut them up, I said I feel fine. “Well now, look here, don’t cut me off, I’m paying the bill!” and they kept on talking and talking and talking. You would have thought they were calling from next door. Well, that’s how they feel toward this, but not towards what I am talking about tonight. That doesn’t interest them at all. But if anything should happen to this little body of flesh and blood, they’re right there to respond. And so, they got just a normal letter from my wife, just saying the normal things, not asking for sympathy; just stating the facts that he has been feeling a little weak. That’s all they needed…long distance phone from Barbados…and goes on and on and on. But they’re in love with what they see, a brother.782 ¶50

But you’re in love not with this that you see, you’re in love with what you hear concerning the mystery that has already awakened in him. That is your love and for that I manifest myself. And so he will come to all who love to that degree. Good night.782 ¶51