Response to Comment by Anonymous 11:36 on Test of Believers by Bible, Pharisaical Fundamentalists, and Neville Goddard

I hope I have not obfuscated the point here. Anonymous 11:36 (I believe) asked a good question I am always wrestling with. I hope he or she likes the way I have worked it out for myself. I did some minor editing--mistakes are mine.
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Hi Daniel. One thing that has bugged me after leaving churchianity for the way that Neville Goddard showed us is the test of Christ as per 1 John 4:1-6. Neville emphasized that Jesus Christ is our own wonderful human imagination. The voice of the Pharisee in my imagination cries: "Hear that? 'Jesus Christ is our imagination'?! Denying the physical body, the physical person, the very real person who lived in the Middle-East during the Roman times? False spirit! Spirit of error! Neville Goddard fails the 1 John 4 test so easily!"

The way I reconcile this matter is by seeing it this way: as Christ is my imagination, Christ is me as well. And since I AM a real person on this earthly plane with a physical body, so Christ is come in the flesh. I AM Christ. I am in the flesh. Christ is in the flesh. Nothing wrong with Neville Goddard.

Daniel, I am curious as to how you view 1 John 4. Perhaps you have a far better case of explaining this very important biblical test for who Jesus Christ is. Neville would ask people to test Christ by using their imagination to manifest something in the physical plane. However, I would like to know if there is a way we can test "Neville's Christ" against 1 John 4. Pharisees are adamant that the only way to test a spirit is by 1 John 4. So I seek your view on this matter. After all, as a theologian, you would have the "perfect blade" to do battle with Pharisees!

Thank you very much.
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Thank you, Anonymous, for a most excellent question. For Christians and Jews, this is the biggie. For those unfamiliar with Christian doctrine, there is the belief that that facet of the Eternal God, the Logos or "Word" of God, the "Creator," descended into the form of a human zygote and was born in Bethlehem as the Son of Man at the end of the Season of Grace with all the limitations of a normal human infant. Any half-decent seminary library will have entire aisles dedicated to the belief, with shelves labeled Theology of the New Testament, The Gospel of Jesus Christ, Christ in the Old Testament, Trinity, Incarnation, Bodily Resurrection, Atonement, Justification, Redemption, Propitiation, Soteriology, Eschatology, and a host of other subsets of the institutes of the Christian religion--all hinged on this one essential point, Ground Point Zero of all Christian philosophy.

Your question, Anonymous, is two. The test of the Pharisaical Fundamentalists is whether one believes Christ was the unique, one-and-only incarnation of the Son of God. Answer yes, you go to heaven; answer no, you go to hell--no ifs, ands, or buts. You and I are on the fence on this one, but you can see, I believe, that this is not the same test as 2 Corinthians 13:5, which is whether or not Christ is in us.

From Neville Goddard's lecture, "Test Yourselves," September 25, 1967:

"In his 2nd letter to the Corinthians, Paul is speaking to the whole world when he says: "Examine yourselves to see if you are holding to the faith. Test yourselves. Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you? - unless, of course, you fail to meet the test. I hope you will discover that we have not failed."

I am on the fence as to how Christ was incarnate, because He transcends. He transcends to touch me, to order my life and my world, to enlighten and illumine me, etc., etc. Even if He transcended to enliven a woman's ovum or transcended to devote an earnest man, that would not mean He was the Christ who is in the New Testament, which is an ILLUSTRATION of Him. The real guy--or affected community--was what it was, and the picture of the transcendent affectation is just that, a testimonial picture about it.

You, know, Anonymous, that there were two to two-and-a-half decades between the supposed time of Christ and the first writings about Him. We have literally NOTHING from the era of the actual event. Except the test. I READ IT BOTH WAYS, and I have absolutely no problem with being on both sides of the fence. That the dynamic Power and Wisdom of the Consciousness of the Ineffable which Gods us became a human AND devoted that or another earnest human is well within Its transcendent powers. And, as you formulate in your justification above, Jesus Christ is us in us. I think Job agreed:

"I know my Redeemer [ever] lives, and at the latter day on earth stands; and after [worms] this body have consumed, yet in my flesh I Eloah see: whom I, even I, see upon my side. Mine eyes see Him--stranger, now, no more: [For this] my inmost soul with longing waits" (Job 19:25-27, Companion Bible margin; my take on Bullinger's take).

Made me cry. "In my flesh I Eloah see." Me in my flesh, or Him in my flesh? I think it is the unique, one-and-only Guy is ALSO in us, as us. This is just His development course, a process He is going through. He is us becoming Him. All the blame was on Him, the resolution of which our inmost souls with longing wait. Let's look also at 1st John Chapter Four (Alexander):

1. [My] beloved, do not believe all spirits, except choose between them to see if they are from God* (or, except become spirit choosers if from God they are). Because there emerged many false prophets from the world.
2. In this way you will know the Spirits of God. Every spirit that professes that Jesus Christ came in the flesh, is from God.
3. And every spirit that does not profess that Jesus came in the flesh is not from God, except this is of the false messiah, whom you have heard will come, and now he is in the world already.
4. But you came from God His children, and shall conquer them, since He is Supreme* (also Father and Creator) who is in you, greater than the one who is in the world.
5. And these who are from the world, because of that they speak of the world, and people* (the world) listen to them.
6. But we who are from God and the one who knows God hears us and the one who is not born of God does not hear us. By this then we learn about the Spirit of Truth and the spirit of oblivion.

"Every spirit that professes that Jesus Christ came in the flesh, is from God...You came from God His children, and shall conquer them, since He is Supreme* (also Father and Creator) who is in you...Did you not realize that He, Eashoa the Messiah, is in you? And if not, you are deficient" (1 John 4:2,4; 2 Cor. 13:5 Alexander). Christ might only ever have come IN MAN'S FLESH. OUR flesh. A literal, historical Christ not common to us I do not know, but I believe because I know the Transcender. I am not one to doubt Him. If He says He did, He did. How, I do not need to know. His immediacy in me, THAT I know. The Kingdom of God is within me, and it has to do with attitudes and imagination. It is all consciousness, invisible power and thought...and Him.