Neville Goddard and the Development of the Gospel from Mistake to Correct

Note 02/16/2016:

After receiving a critical comment (next paragraph), I reviewed this post and decided it does need a rewrite. I will post the rewritten article separately.

"I just hope by now that you’ve been committed like the nut-job Neville Goddard should have been. How can any of you that believe that garbage and interpret the Bible like you do with a straight face? You twist and turn it to however it feels good to you. I can only hope that your wife talked some sense into you, that is, if she hasn’t left you already. I’ll pray to the REAL God in Heaven for your soul." –Anonymous

Well, I haven't accomplished a rewrite yet, but I did answer Mr. Anonymous at http://imagicworldview.blogspot.com/2016/02/criticism-of-neville-goddard-and_25.html.

Now I have another ESI (Evangelical Standard Insult) comment in the comment section below, this time from a Ms. Bonnie Appleby. Ms. Appleby, at least, is an actual Bible Student. Like Mr. Anonymous, I will answer Bonnie in a separate post ().

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My original Article:

My wife often accuses me of being in a cult. Bill, an acquaintance I had at work, wouldn't even talk to me because he thought I was a heretic. I am just a seeker. I happen to know and believe all the tenets of the historic Christian faith as presented in the Bible, but not like the historic Christian Church has made it. Learning what the Bible actually means by what it says has led me far afield from what the church says it means.

I am about as heretical as the Bible is itself. It says a lot of things contrary to the orthodox Christian view. Sadly, while the orthodox view is "biblical," it isn't actually Christian.

Say what?

"Seeking" led me to views beyond the pat formulas of the church, whose prescriptions are not necessarily wrong, but are basic, truncated, and understood in error. The church's view of God is too small, their view of the world's history is too limited, and their understanding of metaphysics is just flat out wrong.

I say that as a seminary trained theologian. After getting saved and baptized in the Holy Spirit I studied theology to better understand the reality I had discovered. I found that what the church taught did not jibe with my experiences with this reality. Even my very basic training in Greek and Hebrew demonstrated that Bible translations were skewed to support the doctrines of the church.

Part of the my problem is that in seminary I learned how to read (I didn't learn much about writing, though -

- sorry). I found that massive tomes have been written to cover small bits of doctrine from every conceivable angle -- but what was that one essential idea that was the point of it all? I learned to dig, wrestle, and weed through chapters of obfuscating verbiage to grasp the essence of an author's thoughts, to extract his (or her) inspiration, the essential, singular point written about. Everything I learned needed to be tested, held up to the Light, disproved if possible, held onto lightly until thoroughly confirmed, or discarded if wrong. My own convictions are always up to be chucked if they turn out to be wrong. I have been deceived before, and I am always ready to be corrected by a better, improved revelation of truth (not necessarily yours).

Fortunately, I read far beyond the pale of Christian

literature. I read the ill logic like the Jehovah's

Witnesses', which is just fun to tear apart, and

nut-case logic like the Moronians, which is just

unbelievable that anyone couldn't think their way out

of. But some of the "enemies" of the church had better understanding, logic and arguments than I found in

the church, and the core-points of their views jibed

better with the reality I knew was true from my own

personal experience, my world-view. I found their

perspectives were often essentially my own perspective.

From C. H. Dodd's Apostolic Preaching and its

development I learned that there is development of

ideas in the Bible. Oh really? Just as we start out

in life dumb and, hopefully, get smarter as we learn,

it's the same in the Bible: people believe one thing,

and finding that they were mistaken, they change their

views. The Bible's authors got educated over time, too.

BOTH views, the mistaken and the correct, wound up in

the Bible. "Rightly dividing" the Word of God has to

do with figuring out which is the wrong idea, and

which is the right. Paul changed what he believed long

after his conversion, and we can, too.

Take Adam, for instance.  Adam, which is the life-force

of the Ineffable, is a portrait of God. The intense,

focused energy of this force is the cause, the "mother"

of all existence. Early on, life-force, that is, Adam,

enjoyed the wantonness of wild, undirected discovery

and disorderly expansion. It was "naked and unashamed."

It liked its freedom, and had no interest in right or

wrong, because such determination would limit it:

"Of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil thou

shall not eat of it: for in the day thou eatest thereof

thou shalt surely die" (Genesis 2: 17). That is,

life-force had no interest in limitation.

Adam knew there would be limitation to expressing his

desires IF he acknowledged the existence of right and

wrong. As long as he didn’t know the law, he was free,

guiltless. Nothing ruins a good party like a conscience.

Then, the life-force of the Ineffable was constrained by

the rightness of the son, the end-goal of the Ineffable:

Its own likeness. The child of Proverbs chapter eight,

the Ineffable's own manifest power and wisdom

conceptualized as Its son -- "daily His delight" -

- limited the unrestrained energies of life and directed

it into becoming us.

Knowing the glorious son gave Adam a conscience, and

then the fun really began. This son is "given unto us"

as the life of the Ineffable becomes us. It flips

from being the consciousness of God onto the "belly"

of being the animating consciousness of dust, our

mudden, human imaginations. 

To flip from divine to dust's level of experience, the

son (all this stuff is one, you know), which is spirit,

forgets. Life finds itself here in futile manifestation,

still omniscient God, but behind darkened imagination.

If spirit were air, we would be vortexes of wind. We are

vortexes of spirit -- we are the spirit of life, the son,

in motion. In this darkened world, we find affliction.

The Gospel of Jesus Christ is that we are God. That does

sound more than a little bit heretical, but that is the

message of the Bible -- like it or lump it. There is no

devil out there except the ignorance we took on to become

here. Fight the ignorance that steals, kills and destroys

our understanding of what the Bible actually says.

"Ye are God" (Psalm 82: 6). Not gods, God. There is only

one God, and all are of him without separation from him.

One body, one God and Father of all, from the

incomprehensible heights of the Ineffable to the

intelligence of quantum vortexes -- the whole spectrum is

It -- and that without division.

Jesus Christ is the power and wisdom of God, the son who

rejoiced before the Highest. He says, "Come unto Me"

(Matthew 11: 28). Your "me," for he is the one who

flipped down to become your imagination –- the

consciousness in you who says, "I am . . . ." 

Your I am is that I am. We are the turbulence of divine

spirit who is becoming, expanding as our worlds. That is

why your world mirrors you: your imaging creates your

world because it is God. Watch out what you watch on

TV.

This is the Gospel of Jesus Christ, that we are God, the

creative being.

Jacob, who speaks in the early Christian epistle as

James, considered himself a brother to the divine son

who must supplant all. The Old Testament is a series of

these brothers, one the flesh, who must be supplanted as

the spirit becomes Israel, God ruling as man: as, in, and

through you.

Paul, like so many others in the early church, thought

that the divine son Joshua -- Jehovah, our salvation -

- was a previously historic human who was both fully

human and fully divine, a being who had descended, died,

ascended back to heaven and was returning to save us. It

took a long time for his ideas to "cook," that is, for

Paul's human perceptions to develop and mature. He

eventually realized that Jesus Christ -- God -- didn't

become a fully human, fully divine visitor, he has became

us all -- inside! To the Thessalonians he had written,

"keep looking up for the salvation to come." By the time

he wrote to the Ephesians, his tune had changed –- "keep 

looking down, for you ARE the salvation, for you ARE

seated in the heavenlies in Jesus Christ, for you are God!"

Abraham was a Babylonian, Moses an Egyptian, and David

a scoundrel. And Paul, a hypocritical rat. The fool

thinks there is no real God. Then he has a spiritual

experience and knows there is a God, but thinks that

God is separate, distant and watching, hearing by some

kind of remote control. Then he learns God is watching

with his (the man's) own eyes and hearing with his own

ears, for God is "in" him. Then he figures out that "in"

means is and realizes that he is God, that there is no

separation between himself and the eternal spirit.

The Gospel of Jesus Christ -- God become man -- is about

us, that we ARE God.

Get a conscience about it. Your "me" and "I" are him.

We start stupid, self-"ignoranced" from the flip, and

then learn from scratch. Understanding the spiritual

dynamics of God takes time to develop, time to work

things out. It is hard to comprehend, but if one reads

the Bible for what it actually says, there it is -

- clear as day.

Don't limit God with your understanding of church

doctrine. Learn what it is, by all means, but allow

its correction, for the church doesn't distinguish 

between the mistaken views presented in the Bible and

the corrected views. The Truth is a lot bigger than

the church allows: God isn't just creating a crowd to

reverence him in heaven, he is cultivating his own

existence here in "the Heavens," that is, our minds.

This is purified relevance. You are God. When you want

to find The Great I AM, think of Me.

Believe it. Signs will follow.