Did you hear the question? I can’t understand, said the gentleman, why there are children who are born at the age, well, at birth sometimes, sometimes two, three, four and then they depart this world. Sir, departing this world is not death. It’s a lesson for those that are left behind. The individual who departs this world finds himself instantly restored in a body same as before but new, unaccountably new, in a world just like this, a terrestrial world, and he is in an environment best suited for the work to be done in him. That work is the unfolding of this pattern man. And his entrance there could be for the most fantastic lesson for the parent. I have in New York City two darlings. They met in my meeting on a blind date. She had just enough to go to Paris and he happened to be in Paris at the time. She said, “Neville, it seems insane. All I have is a quickie, one week, and I have to live in a very modest little place, but I’ve longed to go to Paris. I know no one there. Do you think I’m foolish?” I said, “No. As far as I’m concerned, do anything your heart desires.” So she bought her little round-trip ticket to Paris. The second night she was there she went on a blind date and met the man. He was already married five times, no offspring, five times and divorced each. He was fabulously wealthy…awfully nice chap, many years her senior. She was a girl, a beautiful girl, a model out there, in her early thirties and he was a man on in years…not by his standards, he always thought himself twenty and still does at seventy-seven. But they were blessed with a little boy, little Larry, and then two years later blessed with a second, and they named him after me, Neville. Well, little Larry was killed two weeks ago last Saturday in London. He was in college, his first year in college, and they got a cable saying that he had a fatal automobile accident. Now he has all the money in the world. He plotted everything for Larry. Now this is a lesson for Joseph and Louise. They’ll learn it…that money isn’t everything. They tried to cushion him against everything in this world by setting up trust funds, this, that and the other. Now it’s a lesson for Joseph to learn at the age of seventy-seven…for they can’t bring him back. But Larry is alive; Larry is not dead. Larry is restored to life. He’s not mangled as he was in this sudden death in this automobile accident… not a thing is missing. He is a restored youth, a beautiful youth, just as he was when he was here at the age of seventeen. He was an unusually handsome fellow, a little taller than I am and gave evidence of growing even taller than that and he was a perfect darling. All right, so he’s gone. He doesn’t need their cushion of dollars and cents. But they needed the lesson of the loss. And so, they cry out, as we have it in scripture, “O Absalom, my son, my son! Would that I had died instead of thee” . So he had to learn a lesson in the death of his son. And so, we’ll find in the end that mercy, infinite mercy, did it all, infinite mercy. Doesn’t seem right, but I tell you God is infinitely merciful…and we are the gods. You wouldn’t think it when you see a man’s inhumanity to man. But he still is infinitely merciful. I tell you, you are the gods spoken of in the 82nd Psalm. Scholars claim it is the most difficult psalm of the 150. And that the ideas, said this great scholar, Thomas Cheney, who was the editor in chief of The Encyclopedia Biblica, and he was considered the greatest Hebrew scholar of his time. He took these ancient manuscripts and he was the editor in charge. The volume is that thick. Today, fortunately, they’ve all come out in four volumes…each, though, is still that thick and that big. And it’s considered the most scholarly of higher biblical criticism. He said, “The ideas in this psalm might have been perennial, but their meanings have long been lost to us. We have no understanding of the meaning, because he can’t conceive that “God and gods,” and then God is saying to the gods that “You are sons of the Most High; nevertheless, you will die like men, and fall as one man, O princes” . Then comes the fall of one man containing all men; and then the return to that divine bliss but beyond the wildest dream of anything known here…for you can’t conceive of what you’ve shut out in coming here! We’re all suffering from total amnesia. And then when you return, you return to the glory that was yours before that the world was, but you bring back the glory of the experience of conquering death. For the gods can’t die. So they have to actually enter a state where they die like men. And still they can’t die, therefore, they overcome death. Then the creative power of God is increased by reason of all of us going back bringing our talent that we have exercised and increased. Came down with our talent, go back with the talent multiplied, and the power of God is enhanced that much. And all will be one God. There’s only one God: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God the Lord is one.” There is no greater confession of faith than that. The minute you start other gods…put any man up as some important person you are making another god. And don’t. “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God the Lord is one.” There is no other. That is our great confession—the Shema. Now the time is up…until Friday. Thank you.731 ¶44