Amnesia, The Sleep Of Death

The Bible is a revelation of eternal truth. This eternal truth is called in Scripture Jesus Christ. It is written without regard for secular history. It’s all about Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ defines himself as the truth. He said, “I am the truth,” and that is our subject tonight. It’s all about Jesus Christ. But I’m speaking of the power of God, or Jesus Christ, as he is described in Scripture — the creative power of God and the wisdom of God. We are told that Jesus Christ is in you. Do you not realize that Christ is in you, unless of course you fail to meet the test. So I’m speaking of a creative power buried in man, the only creative power in the world. So I completely forget secular history when you read Scripture — it’s all about a power that is in you. Now he defines himself as the truth, that “I am the truth.”1062 ¶1

But God’s truth is not so much contrasted with falsehood as it is with fickleness. “Whom will you serve?” Then we are told, he replied, “I choose to serve the Lord.” Then he asked the crowd, and they said, “We will serve the Lord.” Then he said, “You are witnesses to yourselves.”1062 ¶2

And so we are witnesses to ourselves whether we are truly serving the Lord, which is the truth. Now, who is he? I tell you, he is your own wonderful human imagination. That is the Christ Jesus of Scripture. That is God. That is the Lord.1062 ¶3

Now, I would try to explain it, and you may say, “Well, I will believe it, and to the best of my ability I will be faithful to it.” And then suddenly you turn away. You come home and you say, “I met so-and-so today, and you know what he said to me — as long as my business opens and continues, you have a job.” You’ll turn completely from your confidence and your faith in God, which is your own imagination, to a man. And all men are liars, as we are told. They’re all liars. Two months later you are fired. You came home and you were so proud that he was going to keep you forever. Who wants to be kept forever on any one job? Is there no growth, no expansion in it?1062 ¶4

And so it is — the contrast of truth in Scripture is not with falsehood, it is with fickleness. Man turns from the one true God to another — there is no other God. So I ask you tonight to believe me — the Christ of Scripture is your own wonderful human imagination. That is God, and there is nothing impossible to God if you know the true God. If you think he’s on the outside, well then you do not know the true God. Do you not realize Christ is in you, unless of course you failed to meet the test? I hope you’ll realize we have not failed in the test.1062 ¶5

Now, everything — but everything — is possible to him. Well, how do I do it, and how do I go about testing it and proving it? If I really believe it, my imagination is God, and there is no other God. That everything I will, no matter what it is — today it was first imagined. The suit I wear, the building that now houses us, everything in the world had to be first imagined and then executed, but it first had to be imagined. All things were made by him, and without him was not anything made that was made.1062 ¶6

And I said, “Well, I’ll believe him. I will put all my faith in him.” Now, to what extent will I be faithful? Of truth in Scripture is the steadfastness — the faithfulness of God. As we are told, “I will make a covenant with you, my steadfast faithfulness and steadfast love to David.” That is my covenant with you. “I have made him a witness to the people.” Tonight I will tell you what it means. Yeah, I’ll tell you exactly what that covenant is with us. He is a witness to this truth of God. He called him his son. He will not violate it. He tells me now he dwells in me as my very being. He dwells in me, and he has proved to me that his covenant will not be violated. His covenant is: “I have made a covenant with you, my steadfast love for David. I’ve made him a witness to the people,” which means that he is my son, and I dwell in you. I have found him in me as my imagination, and I can’t get away from my imagination. I can’t put it over there and remain here — there’s no place where I can go and put it elsewhere. If I dream, I am the dreamer — that’s imagination. If I awake, no matter what I’m doing, I’m imagining, and I cannot separate myself from this core of my own being, which is my imagination. He became the very core of my being, and now he has made a covenant with me that I will actually prove one day that his covenant with me is kept. He is sure and steadfast love for David. I will know — and he tells me David is his son. “Thou art my son, today have I begotten thee.” And he dwells in me as my own imagination. One day, if he keeps his covenant, I must know I am the father of David, for he is the father of David.1062 ¶7

Now, can I be faithful to that being who said to me that he is faithful to his covenant with me, or will I tomorrow, or tonight, or next year, be fickle and turn from the only God to something that is not God?1062 ¶8

Now I’ll tell you a story. Take any scene in the world which would imply that you are the one that you want to be. I don’t care what you want to be — take a scene, and when you look at it, if it implies that you are the man, the woman, that you want to be, who is looking at it? God is. God is your own wonderful human imagination, and all things are possible to God. Will you now remain faithful to what you are seeing and keep that vision in time of trouble, or will you be diverted and then turn to something that is not God? If you remain faithful to God, knowing that God is your own wonderful human imagination, no power on earth can stop it from coming to pass, because there is no other power. If you turn to false gods — turn to a man who makes you all kinds of promises — you’re turning to a false god. If you remain faithful to this, and this only, God, you cannot fail in this world. That is what Scripture teaches — it is a complete revelation of an eternal truth written without regard to secular history.1062 ¶9

When you read these characters in Scripture, forget characters — they aren’t characters as you and I are persons. They are eternal states through which you and I pass. We pass through these things, coming into a climax, and the climax is called Jesus Christ, which also is a state. When you reach that state, you have found God, and everything said of him in Scripture will be said of you. Everything that is said of him, that he experienced, you will experience. David in Scripture called him “my God.” David in the spirit will call you “my God,” which means “my father,” for God is Father. He will call you “my Lord,” he will call you “my father,” and you will know that he is your father.1062 ¶10

And the account that is kept — we have to keep it on our side here as it is kept by the eternal being. The truth in Scripture does not mean what we think it means here. For instance, a true judgment on this world of Caesar means that if I say a flower is here and there is no flower to support my claim, well then it’s a false judgment. A true judgment must conform to the fact; if the fact will not support my judgment, then we call it a false judgment.1062 ¶11

That’s not what Scripture speaks about. It allows me to say that a flower is there. It allows me to say that I am seeing what my mortal eye cannot see. It allows me to see that I am actually seeing what is not there to be seen, that my mortal eye cannot see. And if I dare to persist in my assumption that it is there, and I’m still, and sleep in it as though it were true, it will become an objective fact. That’s what Scripture teaches — “when you pray, believe that you have received, and you will. Whatever you desire, believe you have it, and you will.” I must not wait for facts to believe that I am the man that I want to be. I produce the facts if I know who I am. And I am all imagination, so I’m an imagining being, and I am imagining that I am well — that I would like to be. I persist in my imagination, believing it to be true. Now, if I persist in my assumption, it will become a fact. That’s what Scripture teaches.1062 ¶12

Do I really believe in that God, or am I fickle, and am I turning from that God, the only God, to something that is not a god? That is the question asked in Scripture.1062 ¶13

So in the Book of Joshua: “Choose this day whom you will serve.” And Joshua replied, “We choose the Lord.” And the Lord really means “I.” I is the only God in the world — that is my name forever, forever and forever. I will choose to serve the Lord, and the Lord is “I am.” Then he turns to the people: “You make your choice,” and as we choose the Lord, “you are witnesses to your choice.” “We are witnesses,” said the people. But they soon forgot, and turned to some false god.1062 ¶14

Now you can, morning or night, protect yourself as to whether you’re really believing in the only true God, or placing your faith in a false one. So I’m not saying that man should not be trusted, but don’t put your hope in any man in this world. Oh, they’ll tell you all kinds of things. I have friends of mine who will say to me, “I just came back, and you know what the boss said to me — the job is yours forever.” I’m speaking of experience — two months later he was fired. He didn’t do one thing that was wrong; it was a change in policy, and his department was simply closed, and he had put all confidence, all faith, in that man.1062 ¶15

Another one, something similar — forty-odd years ago, when I was fired from J. C. Penney, running up and down the elevator, folding hats, doing all kinds of silly, stupid things — they gave me the large sum of money of twenty-two dollars a week; of course that was years ago. I asked the man, “Why do you fire me? What have I done?” He said, “You haven’t done anything that’s wrong, but there’s a little change in the economy at the moment, and so we’ve got to let out people, and you have to figure that out. You’ve been here a year, and you’ve been very good, but we simply have to economize now, and that job at the moment we have to dispense with.” I said, “Where I come from, we don’t do that — a man doesn’t steal, and he doesn’t violate the code of decency. They go through these ups and downs and keep him.” So, “We don’t do that here,” he says. “There’s something else — cut quickly, cut bait quickly. Now, this man is a greenhorn” — I was only eighteen years old — “so just take this little letter over to my friend at Macy’s.” And they gave me a little letter, and, amazing, they reduced me from twenty-two to eighteen a week, doing the same stupid things, this time in the grocery department, filling bins of all kinds.1062 ¶16

[Music] So I worked there about ten months. I figured no one’s going to fire me ever again — I’m gonna quit. And so I quit. I went to the boss and said, “I’m quitting as of now.” “But what’s wrong? Not a thing is wrong, but I’m going to work for myself from now on, not working for anyone.”1062 ¶17

Well, I do work for others, but I never considered it working for others — I was on my own. I started dancing. I couldn’t dance. There was no dancing lesson in my life; I said I contained it, and then you could do anything in this world that you want. I didn’t take any lessons, so they picked me. “All right, he’s arrogant enough to do it — let him do it.” And so I did it. I danced for eleven years, six Broadway shows, all through the country in vaudeville, nightclubs — by sheer audacity, by feeling, “I can do it.”1062 ¶18

I’m telling you, you can do anything in this world that you want to do, but you’ve got to find Christ. He is the only Creator in the world. And when people talk about Christ on the outside, forget it — there is no Christ on the outside. Christ in you is the hope of glory, and Christ in you is your own wonderful human imagination — that is Christ, and there is no other Christ.1062 ¶19

He is buried within you. One day he will rise, not as another — he will rise within you, and you are he. No loss of identity and no change of identity, same being, only all the things said of him begin to happen in you. It is said of him that David called him “my father.” He calls you “my father,” and you know he is your son, and you know you are his father. As the Son of Man was lifted up like a serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, and you are lifted up in the same manner. And I tell you, you say that the whole temple was picked apart from top to bottom, and then he said that temple was my body. Well, your body is split from top to bottom, and it happens just like a fiery service — the same thing. You pride — you are buried in a grave, and you come out of the grave. It happens to you. You are witnesses to your birth — it happens to you. A dove descended upon him — it’s called the Holy Spirit — and it remained on him. It happens to you. The whole thing actually happens in you, on you, and then you know who you are.1062 ¶20

I am telling you that you are suffering tonight — the whole vast world is suffering from amnesia, total amnesia, because they think that they are John Brown, they think that they are Mary Smith, and they are Jesus Christ. Now, if you are Jesus Christ and you don’t know it, and he does all things in the world, then you remain John Brown and worship some Jesus Christ that does not exist. If man tonight is suffering from total amnesia, and as John Smith he has a thought, but he believes he is God’s brother, and John Brown doesn’t have a penny, and you come before him and you try to convince him he is John Smith, he can’t believe it. You bring his wife, you bring his children, you bring his family, bring all the people to remind him that he is John Smith, but he can’t believe it. Hit him over the head, give him shocks, do all kinds of things to him, but he can’t believe it — he’s done, he knows he’s a genre — a man who doesn’t have a nickel, and John Smith has a fortune. You ask him to sign his name John Smith — he will not do it. That’s against his ethical code — he is John Brown.1062 ¶21

You are Jesus Christ. Believe in yourself, Mary Smith, and whatever it is you believe yourself to be — I can’t persuade you that you are Jesus Christ — you are suffering from complete and total amnesia. One day you will awake, you will awake within the grave of your own skull, and remember who you are. It’s only a matter of good memory. May I tell you, you want me to earn it, but I’ve returned to the being that I really am — I don’t earn it, it’s grace. And truth comes through Jesus Christ, and grace is a gift, unmerited, unearned.1062 ¶22

And so memory returns. So he said, “Now hold fast the pattern of the true word which you have heard from me, God the truth, that has been entrusted to you by the Holy Spirit who dwells within.” Well, who is the Holy Spirit? We are told he is our remembrance. We are told the Holy Spirit, when he comes unto you, he will bring to your remembrance all that you have heard from me. The Holy Spirit is the spirit of truth, and what I have told you is true, and he will bring to your remembrance all that I have chosen. But who is he? He is your own remembrance that you have forgotten — you’ve completely forgotten your own identity. He will come when he comes — you haven’t earned it, it’s simply that a man is suffering from amnesia, and he awakens to what he was before he lost his memory.1062 ¶23

We lost our memory, delivered purposely, to come into this world. One day memory will return, and when that memory returns, we are the Lord Jesus Christ, and there is no other Lord Jesus Christ.1062 ¶24

But in the interval I am asking of testing, if you really are — and all things are made by him, and all things are here, that I should be able to appropriate anything in this world that I desire. But if it is true, how would I test it? The first belief — in your own wonderful human imagination — at the moment when I tell you that that is Jesus, you don’t believe it, but I’m telling you it is, and all things are here. Now, if he really has all things — I can’t remember that I am the Lord Jesus Christ, but if I really am, can I, though I still think I have never guessed it, can I really now put it to the test? Suppose I’ve never got it — I’ve been just, for a moment, to believe I am what I never dared to believe. But I’ll try to believe that I am, and then I become it.1062 ¶25

Well, I become it, and then I try again, and I become it. That I try again — I’m not fighting for pretense, and all of a sudden it does produce itself in action — it produces itself in performance. Although I still don’t know that I really am Jesus Christ, because I haven’t had that memory yet, I am proving that the power of which he spoke is true, or I am proving it in performance, right?1062 ¶26

I am telling you memory will return, and you’re going to find out who you are. And when you find out who you are, I am telling you who you are — you are the Lord Jesus Christ, and there is no other. Actually, you’ll be king. But you are suffering from an [Music] amnesia for a divine better, and one day you will awaken and you will know exactly who you are, and you are the Lord Jesus Christ.1062 ¶27

That’s what the Bible is all about — it’s a revelation of an eternal truth, written without regard or respect to history. So forget the story as history. Here — this is 1971. The story told of David is written 1000 BC. Who would believe that a man living today, born in the year 1905, is totally aware, as memory returns, that he who was supposed to be born 1000 BC — that’s three thousand years ago — stands before me as a youth, and I am his father, and he knows I am his father. Then where is God, where is the story, if you take it in a chronological sense, if you take it as secular history — where is it? You rub it out completely.1062 ¶28

And I am telling you what I know from my own experience. And if men should come into my world, coming in the twinkling of an eye from afar, and all of a sudden they are witnessing an experience — now is the return of my memory. Well, all of a sudden I wake in a tomb — how long have I been there, and who put me there? I awakened, and I know exactly what I must do in order to come out of it. And there are witnesses to my birth, or return of my memory. Well, that’s what it is for. I walk with a family — that’s resurrection.1062 ¶29

Who will read a story in the fifth chapter of Second Samuel — well, David took the stronghold of Zion and renamed it the City of David; we call it Jerusalem, the house where God loves most of all the dwelling places of Jacob. He loves Zion, and that’s where God dwells. And he took it by going up the water shaft, and he took it in one assault, and he built that area, by which he ascended from the outside in and up at the same time — therefore you can only build it in a survival — and he took it in one certain assault.1062 ¶30

Who would have thought for one moment that you would experience that in the only way you would ever explain it? That suddenly your body is split from top to bottom, and you look at the base of your spine — at the base is a golden, liquid, pulsing light. As you contemplate it, you know it is yourself, and you fuse with it, and at the moment of fusion, one sudden assault in a spiral, fiery manner, you were seen into Zion, and there you are, as told in Scripture, “they take it by violence, the violent take it by force.” And the whole thing reverberates — does it reverberate! Your skull reverberates, you think the whole thing is coming apart, but it doesn’t — you take it by violence. That’s how David took it, and that’s how the Son of Man ascends into heaven, and everything recorded in Scripture is literally true. The words are figurative, but the truth is different, and you do it in the same manner — everyone does it in that manner.1062 ¶31

I’m sharing with you my experience. I am telling you I am not something apart, believe me, as human as anyone here. All the weaknesses of the flesh I have had them, have many of them still, for that matter, and yet in spite of all these things, he who is spoken of in Scripture has unfolded within me. So I tell you, you are only suffering from amnesia. I can tell you now who you are.1062 ¶32

But like a person, if you’ve ever seen one — it’s a very unpleasant thing, I tell you — to meet someone you know well and love well, and they do not know you. Meet someone who may have known you at a certain point in time, and they do not know you at all — that section of time is completely gone. And then they go for maybe ten years, and there is no knowledge whatsoever in that intervening period, and all that the doctors can do to bring them back, they can’t bring them back to have any knowledge of what happened in those ten years. Our hospitals, few of them — it is not a pleasant thing — to stand before someone that you love dearly, and you always believe they love you, and they do not recognize you, they do not know you, and you can say anything in this world that you want, they cannot relate it to anything.1062 ¶33

People say it’s amnesia, or partial amnesia — you and I are suffering from total amnesia until Christ returns within and awakens, because you’re only Christ — there is nothing but Christ in the world, there is nothing but God. He became as we are, that we may be as he is.1062 ¶34

And so I’m not denying that you are playing a certain part, and believe me, in a sense, you can’t quite bring back the memory that you are Jesus Christ. You can exercise the power that is Jesus Christ, and I tell you, he is your wonderful human imagination, and you can take your imagination now — see what you would like to see, believe in the reality of what you would like to receive, persist in that assumption, and it will harden into fact. Now, if all things were made by him, and then you know what you need to make it, try it again, and then try it again. And if it works, as it will work, then at least you do know that in some strange way — I cannot bring back the identity of being the Lord Jesus Christ, I can prove a power easily of which I was formerly unaware.1062 ¶35

And one day, suddenly, it will happen to you, and you will awaken, and when you awaken you are the Lord Jesus Christ, and you and I will be one, equal — no one telling you, “Ah, because he came before you in the awakening process, he received you in rank” — no, you can’t receive rank because there is only one Lord Jesus Christ. So should you tonight awaken — and I awoke almost twelve years ago this coming July — I will not precede you in rank. No one will precede another — we’re all one.1062 ¶36

And when you know it, you don’t want it to feed another impulse, “For the Lord is one, and his name is one,” and the day will come when he will be king over all the earth, and in that day the Lord will be one, and his name one, and all this will form one body, one spirit, one Lord, one God, unfolded within us all.1062 ¶37

The truth of Scripture is not a conflict between what we call truth and error, or truth and falsehood, so much as it is between the true God and our selfless love for him, and our fickleness. So we pick our fickleness as we move away from the true God and worship the false god.1062 ¶38

For tonight, believe me, and see if we cannot, in the immediate present — I do not mean next year, I do not even mean next month — it’s only a little way away — but now try. “He said, who will believe our report, and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?” Now you think there’s pure poetry, beautiful imagery, may I assure you that is true, just as the prophet Isaiah wrote it: “Who has believed our report, and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?” The arm is called in Scripture the power of God, and the power of God is called Christ.1062 ¶39

And I tell you it is an actual story. He is jealous, for it happened to me. Here I am in a room, not as big as this, but square like this, and I’m sitting on the floor talking to my pupils of the world — call them disciples — explaining the word of God. And suddenly one of these listening, seated on the floor, rises quickly and departs the room. And I knew instantly what he was going to do — he is going to tell the authorities what I am teaching. I am teaching of a king — it is not Peter — I am teaching of a power unknown to mortal man. I am teaching them that in them is the king that transcends all the species of the world, all the powers known to man. And he rises quickly and leaves the room. I knew instantly the authorities would know it, what would happen. And suddenly the door opens, and this one, dressed in the most glorious robe of the finest raiment, tall, handsome man, entered. Here he comes down, and he turns at right angles, turns at right angles, turns at right angles, and comes and faces me. Now we’re all standing. Then he takes off his attendant’s mallet and a wooden peg, and he hammers it into my shoulder — didn’t hurt, but he hammers this peg into my shoulder. Then he takes a sharp instrument, and with one circular motion he removes my sleeve, and my arm is bare from my shoulder to the ends of my fingers, completely bare, the right arm.1062 ¶40

And then he extends his arms in a cross, embraces me, and kisses me on the neck — I kissed him on the neck. And then the scene is fading, and fading, and fading, and I see far below a baby-blue color as he started away.1062 ¶41

And here is Scripture: “Will you come out and betray the Son of God with a kiss?” Would you reveal him? Because the Son of God is the arm of God, for the Son of God is the power and the wisdom of God. Were you now to unveil him and betray his identity? He had to.1062 ¶42

Everything said in Scripture is true, and when you awake, these things happen — they all happen.1062 ¶43

So, if only they are certain — this arm is not as strong as the average tall man’s arm in this world, it is a normal arm. It’s only a symbol of the being that awoke within you — you are the arm of God, all the power of God, the wisdom of God, and he will now use it.1062 ¶44

In the play, just a pretty little — or, “he is nailed upon you the pain,” as you are told in Isaiah, “and for a season you will be in control, only for a season, to carry the burden — the burden of Israel — and then you’ll bear the pain and take it off, and another one will carry it, and another will tell you, but in that interval you will carry it.”1062 ¶45

And you are the power of God and the wisdom of God, and he comes in and he unveils me — unveils not the body, unveils the arm, for it is the arm that symbolizes the power of God, the creative power of God. And that happened in 1966, the tenth day of October, 1966. So I can’t forget them — these days are indelibly impressed upon me.1062 ¶46

Everything said of him I have experienced — I have been awakened within myself. And everything said of him you must experience, as your weakness within — so do not let anyone tell you of any Jesus Christ outside of you, you are not going to find him. He sleeps within you, and he dreams the life that you are now expressing — he is dreaming that you are — and one day he will awaken, and then memory will return, and you will not be gone. You will be, and you will know it was Jesus Christ.1062 ¶47

And then, go to bed at night, and you’ll put down John Brown as the world sees John Brown on the bed, but you fall asleep as Jesus Christ, and your nights are not the nights that they were prior to that moment. You are instructing, and you are teaching, and you aren’t frightened of anything, and fighting in any room — no more nightmares, just teaching. That anything happens, you’ll know exactly who you are, and you shouldn’t be alarmed if it doesn’t hurt — you’re ready, just let things move. Memory has returned, and the being who was all in the beginning has now returned.1062 ¶48

In the morning you’ll pick up the living garment called John Brown, and you’ll go through life as John Brown, not trying to disturb anyone in the world. Someone just calls “John,” you answer, “Mr. Brown,” you answer — but you know exactly who you are, and you’re playing a dual part until the end, when you take off for the last time John Brown, and you are to be you yourself, to be after you awoke from the dream of life, and that being is Jesus Christ. Now let us go into the silence.1062 ¶49