Stop Misreading the Bible: The Gospel of Neville Goddard's A Standing Order and Ferrar Fenton's Version of the Lord's Prayer

Before December 24, 2013, I am going to post an abbreviated and more direct article about A Standing Order by Neville Goddard and the Lord's Prayer by Ferrar Fenton.

A fresh insight: the Lord's Prayer isn't a prayer at all. It is directions for a form of meditation, a guide to the attitudes to strike, the attitudes in which to pray -- guides in a mystical exercise.

Fenton was right, the "Lord's Prayer" is about a standing order, the observation of which effective prayer depends upon. In short, God's knowing of our necessities means he knows their completion. But the prayer does not ask God to complete them. It simply puts us in the attitude of RECEIVING that completion.

Every time I listen to "A Standing Order" I hear something new. “God's Law and His Promise,” “Believe It In,” “Call Upon Self,” “I Am the Lord Jesus Christ” -- each time I listen to them it is "Oh! I never heard that before," even though I have listened to them a dozen times over.

For example, I am quite familiar with Neville Goddard's philosophy that God became man that man may become God. He repeats it so often that I almost tune it out while I am listening to him. In "A Standing Order," though, he speaks emphatically and enthusiastically about Ferrar Fenton's translation of the Lord's Prayer, and I had a difficult time trying to catch Neville's point about the significance of the Greek aorist imperative passive mood being a standing order. I brought up Fenton's translation of the Lord's Prayer on the internet and tried to figure it out.

Fenton (1832-1920) determined to achieve near native fluency in New Testament Greek. He did well and was asked by his father to render the most literal translation of the Lord's Prayer possible. As a model, the Lord's Prayer doesn't tell us to pray "with these words" but rather "after this manner." What Fenton found was that the "manner" specified by Matthew and Luke was aorist of the imperative passive mood.

This Apostolic intention is conveyed in the original Greek, but the traditional Lord's Prayer we know from church liturgy came from the Latin, and Latin had no such tense! So for as long as the church has fashioned its praying after the Latin model, it has prayed incorrectly.

Oops.

Well, what is the Greek aorist of the imperative passive mood? It would seem a contradiction in terms. Aorist is a verb, an action completed in a single motion. It is done and that is that.  Imperative is a directive, a command -- "Duck!" "Run!" "Go!" These examples, though, are active voice: the hearer to do them.

What stands out in the scriptural model is the passive mood. This escapes us in the Latin. In the Greek, God is being told to RECEIVE the action. So biblical praying isn't like the imperative active, "Duck!" but the imperative passive: "Be ducked!"

Weird, huh? How do you figure that? You are telling the person, in this case God, to NOT do the action but to receive it as being done to or for him. The motion is to be completed and the directive is to passively accept it.

(I think this was Charles Fillmore:) "Fenton says that the Aorist is a tense expressing complete action in a single movement. So we see that according to the preface of the Lord's Prayer as originally given by Jesus, He wants us not to pray for something to be done in the future. Instead, since God has already provided the things we need before we ask Him, our prayers should be in the nature of a command implying our recognition of the fact that they are now appearing in our world. As Fenton says, the prayer is of the nature of a standing order, 'a thing to be done absolutely, and continuously.'"

This wasn't really helping me much. "A thing to be done absolutely, and continuously" -- and passively? If God wasn't going to do it, who was supposed to be doing the hallowing, restoring, etc., to him?

I could see that, in contrast, we commonly pray the Latin Lord's Prayer as a series of platitudes and pleadings. "O God, resolve our problems: You are great! Your kingdom come (for me)! Your will be done (by them)! Help me! Help me! Give me! Give me! And let me get away with what I have done!"

I do, however, have a grasp on standing orders. As both a sailor and a civilian I worked on Navy bases where the base commanders had issued standing orders regarding things such as the speed limits of traffic on the base. Marines performed police duties on the bases, and if I as much as looked at a Marine and nodded in the direction of a speed-limit violator, in about one second whistles would be blowing all over the base as that driver was flagged down and stopped by any number of Marines and informed in no uncertain terms that the base commander had issued standing orders regarding speed limits and that the driver would henceforth comply with the orders. "This is the directive from the base commander, sir! You will comply with the standing orders issued by the base commander, sir! Do you understand me, sir? Very well, you may proceed, sir!" And believe me, that driver would comply. Got to love the Marines.

I understand that standing orders are to be honored and obeyed. They are enforced. But who is the base commander here? It occurred to me as I wrote this that the Hebrew for "base commander," the representative Biblical character, that is, is Sarah (Strong’s Concordance, Hebrew Dictionary #8283<8282<8269<8323: sarar, to have dominion). Abraham = the exalted, merciful Father; and Sarah = the Base Commander.

Hmmmmm. Sarah is to Abraham as Eve is to Adam, and each is God. Oh! It's the mechanics -- the two hands of YHWH! The God "up there" giving is the same God "down here" receiving. And the Father passively receiving is us. The Father actively giving is the Ineffable.

Let's take a look at the Lord's Prayer as Fenton saw it:

"For your Father knows your necessities before you ask Him. Consequently, ye must pray in this way:

Our Father in the Heavens;

Your Name must be being hallowed;

Your Kingdom must be being restored.

Your Will must be being done both in Heaven and upon the Earth.

Give us to-day our to-morrow's bread;

And forgive us our faults, as we forgive those offending us,

For You would not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from its evil."

(Ferrar Fenton, The Lord's Prayer, The Complete Bible in Modern English.)

Ah ha! There it is: 1) "'Your Father knows your necessities before you ask Him," and 2) "Our Father in the Heavens" -- two different Fathers that are not separate at all except in office. The Ineffable in his office knows our necessities because he became us and is our imagination in the "Heavens," the office of our minds.

The model prayer, then, is affirmations of faith and statements of confidence that the Ineffable hears our every thought and knows our every need because he is the Father in our selves. The Lord's Prayer is a picture of advaita, the e'had nature of YHWH: the LORD is a composite One; all the "sons" of God make up the Father, and though they are not the same, neither are they two. All parts are engaged in the same project, the increase and expansion of the Ineffable into form.

God's name, of course, is his nature, and hallowing has to do with observing or pronouncing his nature clean, i.e., accepted. HIS nature IN us, AS us, is being hallowed. God's kingdom is the quality of king-ness had by his king, i.e., it is the King, and our consciousness of OUR kingdom is being restored. God's will is OUR established intention, the perfect world we determined to accomplish in our original mind in Genesis 1. We have said it, and the Ineffable will do it, for as it is created in the heavenly mind, it shall be manifested on earth.

We "pray" to the Infinite in us affirming our faith that the Infinite beyond us is conscious of all our needs, is powerful to meet each one, and has a standing order that they be met. The Apostolic sense is: "Human Imagination, the Infinite, Eternal and Almighty YHWH Elohim has issued standing orders that your nature must be being hallowed, your kingdom must be being restored, and your will must be being done!"

That made me stand to my feet. We are to be quiet on our beds and know that "I am God." Our "I." And God wants to back it up.

Don't like it? Take it up with Matthew and Luke.

Q. How is it that the Ineffable knows what I want and need while my life continues to suck so bad?

A. Well, yeah. We already covered how you've been praying the Lord's Prayer all wrong -- begging and pleading instead of affirming your faith in his faithfulness. The afflictions from our wrongs are inducements to fly right. We talk to the Infinite in our imagination, “office to office,” so TALK NICER. God, by the way, can tell a good joke (e.g., he made you), but he doesn't take them very well. If we in our ignorance imagine misery, he takes it as a special request. If we imagine all the misery we don't want, well, he still takes what he SEES as a special request. As much as you can, EFFECTIVELY IMAGINE ONLY THE GOOD THINGS YOU WANT.

As you lie on your bed before going to sleep, know that you are God and, reviewing your day, REWRITE IT! Correct your tomorrow by thinking it right today. This is your daily bread: imagine each thing that went wrong AS THOUGH IT WENT RIGHT. Put yourself in the good places you want to be. Vividly and clearly imagine doing the good things you want to do. Imagine every good and noble thing you would have happen AS THOUGH THEY DID.

You are the divine consciousness imparted to man by God. Rest confidently in the standing orders of the Base Commander that your divine nature must be hallowed, your divine kingdom must be restored, and your divine will must be done! Think and do everything in love, mercy, and forgiveness -- the loving-kindness of God.

Okay, why on earth would God do this? Was the infinite and eternal Most High God lacking in anything? I do not know. Maybe It was bored and needed a diversion. Eternity is a really long time if you have nothing to do. The best explanation I have heard is that the Eternal had no form and decided that It wanted form. Such need and desire is the Mother of invention (this, by the way, is Miriam, Mary, our Mother who knew not a man).

Well, infinity and eternity are pretty big fields; it takes a lot to fill them. Endlessness has lots of room to expand in! And there is a goal in it: form that is the Ineffable. The end form will be bliss of the highest order -- full consciousness of being the ineffable, Most High God. Anybody up for that?

Wait a minute -- the ride has one little caveat: the full likeness of the Ineffable in form has to be generated through countless lifetimes of experience in complete ignorance of being the Ineffable, until awakening, consciousness and awareness are kindled and break forth. You can take the ride, but you have to completely trust the faithfulness of the Ineffable to pull you through to "the day of Christ Jesus." His dominion (do I hear "Sarah"?), will act to hallow your divine nature, the restore your divine kingdom, and to bring forth your divine will.

Abraham -- the Exalted, Merciful Father -- said to his friend the Ineffable Source, "Dude, I believe in you. I will trust your standing order until I become fully generated as you. I trust your faithfulness: I will go for the bliss of becoming fully God-conscious form. I'm all-in!" Abraham is the Infinite who became you. And I. Abraham launched into the deep of ignorance, the death of forgetfulness, and has for a long time thought he was a man. He sort of is, too, because he is in men as their enlivening consciousness – the human imagination. We are his seed "as the sands of the sea." For however many lifetimes we have ridden this ride, I figure we are closing in on the end, IF we go on and wake up.

The consciousness that you are, eternal Spirit imputed down into man, God has promised to raise up to the effulgence of his glory. Go his way, trust him, and receive.