The Most Precious Gift

THE MOST PRECIOUS GIFT : Neville Goddard

Tonight’s title is: "The Most Precious Gift." If He Who created the Universe  and all within it gave it to you, and with the whole vast universe owned by you, you would consider that the greatest gift in the world. And yet, He gave you something far greater than that. He gave you Himself – God actually became as you are, that you may be as He is.

If you owned the Universe and it slowly – through unnumbered trillions of years – should melt away and you could not recreate it, though it’s a marvelous gift, it could not compare in any manner whatsoever to the gift of Himself  – to you that could recreate it. For, God actually became as we are, that we may be as He is.

Now, how do we know this? Scripture reveals it – literally tells us how it happens in us. It is revealed in Scripture that God is a father. That’s the ultimate revelation of God to man. It started off as God Almighty.

"I made myself known unto Abraham and to Isaac and to Jacob as God Almighty – El Shaddai, but by my name, the Lord – which means, ‘I AM’ – did not make myself known to them." (Exodus 6:3)

Now, He is speaking to the character called "Moses," but ultimately He reveals Himself as God the Father.

If He gave Himself to me, and God is a father, then I, too, must be a father – but not just a father; I must be the Father – the very father that God is.  And if God is a father, there must be a child to bear witness to His fatherhood, and Scripture reveals the name of that son. We are told, in the book of Samuel (I Samuel 7:12) that He will actually raise up out of him a son, and he will be the father of that son. And the son, coming out of Samuel, will be His son, as we are told in the 7th chapter of I Samuel.

This is now confirmed in the last chapter of the New Testament,

"And I Jesus" – the Lord "have sent my angel to testify unto you to declare

I am the root – being the Father –

"I am the root and the offspring of David, the bright morning star" (Revelation 22:16, RSV).

He is both the father of David and David’s son. He did not say he was David. He was the father of David and David’s son, so the grandfather and the grandson are the same Being.

"David" is the symbol of Humanity. The whole vast world of man is symbolized in a single being, and his name is David. Jesus Christ is God the Father. "He who sees me," said he "hath seen the Father." (John 14:9)

"How then can you say, Show us the Father? Have I been so long with you that you do not know me, Philip? He who hath seen me hath seen the Father." (John 14:9)

Here is God the Father, the Creator of it all, Who actually gave Himself to us in the most literal sense, and He is the Father, and David in Scripture calls Him, "my father, my lord."

So, in the 2nd Psalm David said, "I will tell of the decree of the Lord. He said unto me, Thou art my son, today I have begotten thee." (Psalm 2:7) Here David tells us that the Lord said to him, "Thou art my son, today I have begotten thee."

So, the question is asked in the book of Luke, and they answered when he asked, "What think ye of the Christ, whose son is he? And they said, ‘The son of David,’ and then he answered, ‘Why then did David in the spirit call him, my Lord?’ If David thus calls him, my Lord, how can he be David’s son?" (Matthew 22:42, 43) He is David’s father. (Matthew 22:44; Luke 20:41-44)

Now, if God succeeds in His purpose to give me Himself, I must be David’s father. Am I David’s father? Born in this Century, in the year 1905, and David, chronologically speaking – if you take it as secular history, which it is not – it would be that I am the father of one born three thousand years before I was born – if you take it as secular history.

But the Bible is theology. The Bible is sacred history. The Bible is the story of Salvation; it is not recording any records of things on earth. The whole thing takes place beyond the wildest dream of man on earth.

I speak from experience. Now, let me share with you my experiences, for this is my last night. I am giving you tonight what I personally have experienced. I did not know until it happened. I was born and raised in the Christian faith; I have never wavered from it. Nothing has ever turned me from the Christian faith. I was first taught it at my Mother’s knee.

Then, where I was born, the Bible was taught in our school; it was compulsory, but we were taught it as secular history, as my Mother taught it to me, because she understood it as secular history. And I believed it just as she taught it to me.

Then one day, without warning, with the most sudden, sudden shockingness, the story of Jesus unfolded itself within me, casting me in the central role. Then I knew He actually gives Himself to me! He is not sharing it. He literally died for me.

He is not pretending that He is I. He literally died. And all that is true of Him repeats itself in us individually, and because He is the Father of Humanity, and David is the symbol of Humanity, when the individual has gone through all the experiences of Humanity – good, bad, and indifferent – and he has been tried "furnaces of affliction," the Lord Jesus Christ – the Father of it all – brings him out, awakens him from the dream of life. Then the whole drama unfolds within him, and David calls him, "Father."

You are first awakened in the tomb where you are buried.

"For God Himself enters Death’s Door always with those who enter, and lays down in the very grave with them, in visions of eternity, till they awake, [Wm. Blake, from "Milton"]

– and when they awaken, they see the garments that the female had woven for them – that my Mother wove for me, this garment [indicating the physical body]. And here was a garment that Mother wove, born from the womb of my Mother.

But my Father – Jesus Christ – Who gave Himself to me, awoke within me as my very Being, from the skull of my Being, which is Golgotha. And then I came out of my skull, and here surrounding me is the imagery of Scripture: the child wrapped in swaddling clothes. And here are the witnesses to the event that is now taking place, three men – they were my brothers in this world – my older brothers. And, here, they heard exactly what I heard; this fantastic, unearthly storm of wind, and they were just as disturbed as I was disturbed.

Then one of my brothers, Lawrence, went over to investigate the nature of the disturbance, and he announced –

"It is Neville’s baby."

And my other two brothers, Cecil and Victor, asked,

"How can Neville have a baby?" with the most incredulous voice.

He didn’t argue; he raised from the floor the evidence of what he had said, a little child wrapped in swaddling clothes. And going over to where I was, he placed it on the bed. I took that infant up and looked into its face, and I said –

"How is my sweetheart?"

It broke into the most heavenly smile, and the whole scene dissolved.

Then, a hundred and thirty-nine days later, a vibration similar to the one that started in me began, but now, it is centered, not at the base of my skull (which was the first), but at the top of my skull, and when it reached the apex of intensity, it seemed as though my head exploded.

And when the whole thing gathered itself together, I found myself seated and looking at a lamp and here is David of Biblical fame, leaning against the side of an open door and looking out at a pastoral scene.

He is just as he is described in the book of Samuel, the 16th chapter: fair – the blonde- beautiful eyes. He is a blue-eyed blonde. You can’t describe the beauty of David! No one could paint him. No one could make a sculpture and fashion the beauty of that lad – a lad in his early teens, and here I am looking at David, and David calls me, "Father." And I know I am his father, and he knows he is my son.

And here, the entire imagery of Scripture surrounds me: the very head that is spoken of in Scripture as the head of the giant that he brought down, meaning that when man has played all the parts, he has overcome the enemy within himself, for he has discovered that the only enemy he ever had was his own thoughts, that he entertained and harbored within himself. And what he entertained within himself objectified itself among men, and men played the part of the enemy, and they then injured him. They abused him, and it was all himself.

He was the enemy of himself. When man brings down the enemy within himself, he brings down the enemy of Israel.

Here is the giant head right before me as my son stands and leans against the side of the open door, and this beautiful relationship between the two of us – my son, who is God’s son.

Then, and then only, I knew that God literally gave me Himself. He is not sharing His son with me; he is my son. He gave me His son. And I’m going to tell you, He has given you Himself.  You are going to have this experience, and you will see David, and David will be your son. Therefore, you and I are one, for God is One!

The word "God" is a compound unity. The word is "Elohim." It is one made up of others. We are the Brotherhood. We are the "unnumbered sons of God" that God decided to give Himself to His sons and raise the sons to Himself – the Father, as told us in the most difficult Psalm of the hundred and fifty. It is the 82nd Psalm.

Thomas Paine, who was the editor of the most scholarly criticism of the higher nature of Biblical works – for he was the editor of the Encyclopedia Biblica [it is still to this day considered the most scholarly of all the higher scholarship concerning the criticism of Scripture] says, "This is the most difficult of all the Psalms to decipher. And I hope my guess comes near the meaning of the one who wrote it." Well, listen to just a few passages:

"God has taken his place in the divine council; in the midst of the gods he holds judgment"(Psalm 82:1)

Now, the word translated "God" and "gods" is the same word there, "Elohim." – "Elohim" is a plural word, but it is first translated in the singular as, "God has taken his place in the divine council."

The first time that word appears in the Bible is in the very first verse of Genesis, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." (Genesis 1:2) That word is "Elohim." It’s a plural word, but translated there in the singular. Here (the 82nd Psalm) it is translated both in the singular and in the plural.

"And God has taken his place in the divine council;

In the midst of the gods [Elohim] – he holds judgment…"

Now God, collectively, speaks as a single Being, and speaks to all of us:

"I say, "Ye are gods – [that’s "Elohim"] Sons of the Most High, all of you:

Nevertheless you shall die like men,

And you will fall as one man, O ye princes." (Psalm 82:6, 7)

We are the gods and – in the beginning we are the brothers who actually form the One Man, the Lord Jesus Christ. And the Lord Jesus Christ fell "as one man," carrying all that is within Him, and then came the fragmentation – Humanity.

And after He passed through the "furnaces of affliction" and experienced death, as we were told we would, "you will die like men," then we are called back into the One Body, one-by-one-by-one, because you are too unique to be called in pairs, to be called as a nation, to be called as a group. You are so unique, no one can duplicate you; therefore you can’t be lost in the Divine Body. If one is missing, the Body is not complete. So, every being in the universe will be redeemed, and they will be redeemed in only one manner. There is only one play that redeems you. It’s the story of the Gospel.

"I am the way, the truth, the life: No one comes to the Father, except by me." (John 14:6)

Read the story of the Being who is speaking. You are going to duplicate it, because He indwells in you, and because He indwells, He will repeat in you His story. Well, when He repeats it in you, you are not a spectator viewing it; you are cast in the central role. You are the Lord Jesus Christ. There is no other story worthwhile in the world. There is only God the Father, and God the Father is Jesus Christ.

So, when Paul said, "The truth of Christ is in me," (II Corinthians 11:10) then he said, "He has made known unto me" – speaking now of the Lord – "the mystery of His will which, according to His purpose, He has set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time," (Ephesians 1:9, 10 RSV) the plan is buried in us.

You will go astray, yes, we’ve all gone astray. But you will never find the Heaven that you seek – you will never find the Father that you seek, save through this way. There just is no other way. It doesn’t come in any other way; there is only one way. God unfolds Himself within you. As He unfolds Himself within you, it begins with the Resurrection.

If I told you now that you are sound, sound asleep, you wouldn’t believe me. I would not have believed it either if anyone had told me on the night of the 19th day of July in the year 1959. I was in this City. If you had told me the night I went to bed – it was the 19th of July 1959 – that I was sleeping, and the world was my dream, and that I was dreaming this dream of life, I would have laughed at you.

And, yet, I’ve been telling this story of God’s law since my first time on the 2nd day of February 1938. I had been telling it week after week, and I did not know it – I only knew the Law. I knew nothing of God’s Promise. I did not realize that His Promise really entails His Self – that He actually gave me Himself. I didn’t know that.

I went to sleep here in the hotel – the Sir Francis Drake, and had anyone told me – the greatest authority in the world, I would not have believed it. And, yet, on the morning of the 20th the whole drama erupted within me. It began with the Resurrection; I awoke within my own skull to find myself completely sealed within this sepulchre that is my skull. It is Golgotha, and I had been dreaming all along, and I didn’t know it.

I have never been so amazed in my whole life. Here I am, completely sealed in my own skull, and I knew it to be a tomb, and I knew that someone placed me there. I did not know that God Himself entered death’s door with me when I entered, and that He laid Himself down within the tomb with me and shared with me this dream of life. And then He actually broke down the dividing wall between the two, and fused with me, and we became one Being. And, then, He awoke as me. He actually awoke within me as my very Being.

Then I came out of that tomb like a child being born from the skull, from the tomb of man – where God is buried. I can tell you now, the world is a dream, and you are The Dreamer of the Dream. You can change the dream if you know you are dreaming, but if you don’t know you are dreaming, you can’t change the dream. If you know it’s a dream, you can dream, because the power of The Dreamer is in you. And that Dreamer is God.

You can bring before your mind’s eye what the world would call a daydream – it’s still a dream – and you can give reality to that daydream until it will objectify itself and become real in your world – but you are still dreaming.

You are dreaming until that moment in time when God, Who is the Lord Jesus Christ, awakes within you. And, then, as He awakes within you, you are all alone, but He has the power to come out and break the seal of that tomb, and you do know exactly what you are doing, and you are breaking it. Another doesn’t break it. You break it. No one on the outside rolls away the stone. You roll it away from within. You push the base of your skull, and something rolls.

As it rolls, there is an opening – not a very large opening, but you put your head there, and you push yourself out, inch by inch, by inch, and then you pull the remaining portion of you out of that skull. And when you rise, you look back, and here is the body that your mother had woven for you, signified in Scripture as the "linen clothes."

And then the wind – the unearthly wind spoken of in the 3rd chapter of the book of John. (John 3:8, RSV) "You must be born from above; for unless you are born from above, you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven." (John 3:3)

And, then, the wise man of the Sanhedrin – and he asks, "How can this be? How can a man who is old enter once more into his mother’s womb and be born? And he said, ‘You, a master of Israel, yet you do not know? Unless you are born from above, you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven.’" (John 3:9, 10)

Now he makes this marvelous statement, "No one has ascended into heaven but he who descended." (John 3:13 RSV)  – But no one but he who descended. The One Being carries all of us within Him. And, then, in this stage we become That One Being, and now we ascend into Heaven. And this is how you ascend.

He tells us now – He says, "No one has ascended into heaven, but He who has descended, the Son of Man." (John 3:13) That which came out of man is one with the Creator of man, which is Jesus Christ. He is the only one who can ascend. And he is called the Son of Man, and he refers to himself as the "Son of Man."

Now, he says in the next verse, "As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up." (John 3:14)

Now, a hundred and twenty-three days after David calls you, "Father," a bolt of lightning tears your body in two from the top of your head to the base of your spine. One blow, and you are cut – no pain, no pain whatsoever – just one sharp blow of a bolt of lightning and you look at the body, and it’s torn from top to bottom, and it is separated about six inches. At the base of that spine is golden, pulsing, liquid light.

Now, we are told, "At this moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom." (Matthew 2:51 RSV) People think it was a church made with human hands. No, it is the Temple of God, and we are told in I Corinthians, the 3rd chapter, the 16th verse –

"Ye are the temple of the living God, and the spirit of God dwells in you."  (I Corinthians 3:16)

Well, if you are the Temple of the Living God, and the curtain of that temple is split in two, you are split in two from top to bottom! And you see this pulsing, golden, liquid light. It is the blood of God Himself. Now, you fuse with the blood of God. You are the blood of God. Now you ascend as a fiery serpent, like fire, itself, spiraling up that spine right into heaven. And when you enter, you enter like thunder. As we are told in Scripture –

"And those who enter, enter like thunder." (See Matthew 11:12; Luke 16: 16 RSV)

The whole thing reverberates when you enter. And you are that fiery being that goes up. Only he who descended can ascend, and only Jesus Christ descended. He was the One Man who "chose us in Him before the foundation of the world," (Ephesians 1:4) and He was God the Father, and He chose all of us in Him, and then one man fell and became fragmented.

We are the fragmented body of the Lord Jesus Christ.

There is only one way for the redemption, and He has mapped it out in Scripture. He played the part and brought it to its climax, and now the pattern of that play is buried in us. We receive it in us, and we simply go right up into the skull, and you are the Lord Jesus Christ, once more rebuilding the temple that He deliberately shattered.

Then, nine hundred and ninety-eight days later, completing the cycle of one thousand two hundred and sixty days – as told us in the 12th chapter of Daniel and the 12th chapter of Revelation – from the birth of the child, from the birth of the child, as told us in Revelation.

When this miraculous child appears, it will take twelve hundred and sixty days, and on that twelve hundred and sixtieth day the heavens open – and Heaven is within you. Your skull opens. Everything becomes translucent. There is no circumference, but none whatsoever! It’s not bounded by anything – a complete infinity of translucence. Complete – well, you describe it; there is no boundary, and that’s your skull.

And then hovering over you, say about twenty feet above you, as though floating, is a dove. This heavenly dove floating – it’s not using its wings; it is simply floating. Therefore, it must be on fluid, for it’s floating. And you look up, and its eye catches your eye. The most heavenly love is pouring from the eye right into your eye, and you do it automatically – you raise your hand.

In my case, I raised my left hand and protruded the index finger, and it simply descended. It descended and lit on my finger, and I brought it automatically to my face, and it smothered me with love, kissing me all over my face, all over my neck, all over my head, and while it is kissing me, a woman to my left made the statement –

"They avoid man, for man gives off the most offensive odor. But to prove and demonstrate his love for you, he penetrated the ring of offense and came down to demonstrate his love for you."

And while he was still kissing me, the scene dissolved.

The whole thing actually begins and ends in man, and that’s the drama. Then you remain in this world, and you tell your story to the best of your ability. If you are a painter, you’ll paint it. If you can write, you will tell it to the best of your ability in writing. If in some other way you could fashion it in the form of a sculpture, you will. If you cannot express it in some artistic manner then you will tell it to the best of your ability to those who will listen. But the journey – as far as you are concerned, the journey is over.

Then, in a moment when you do not expect it, He will call you back. Now, you do not find yourself as the world without this experience will find themselves, for everyone in the world will be redeemed. But this is the plan of redemption, and if the plan has not yet unfolded within the individual, at what he calls death, that individual is restored to life in a world just like this – terrestrial, in a body just like this, only it is young – unaccountably new.

Nothing is missing, eyes are perfect, teeth perfect, the body is perfect. Everything is perfect; not a thing is missing, regardless of the condition of the body when we called it dead – to continue a journey that started in this world, for it’s the same world – this identical world, and you will do there what you do here.

And then what I am telling you now, when you least expect it, as it came to me so suddenly – it will come to you just as suddenly. As we are told in Scripture, "He comes like a thief in the night." (I Thessalonians 5:2)

You don’t expect Him when He comes. He calls you from the dream of life, and you awake within the tomb where you were buried. So, all of us were buried in Golgotha, and Golgotha is your skull.

But there is a Universal Skull. It’s called "Zion" in Scripture. In the 87th Psalm, it says –

This one was born here and that one was born there, and these were born here and he points out within Zion, and Zion is the home of the Lord Jesus Christ.

All are born at this one point within the Universal Skull, but your skull, individually, is but a replica of the Universal Skull. If I could pinpoint for you with my finger where, when I ascended, I actually reverberated, it would be a little bit left of the straight line, if I drew a straight line down my forehead. It was just a little bit left of my skull, right here [indicating].

So, then, we are called in Scripture, "the living stone of the New Temple."

And here – rooted here – I entered. And with all of my force I tried to penetrate the skull and get out, but you don’t, because this is the New Jerusalem. This is the New Temple. And everyone is called back as a living stone to put into that New Jerusalem.

You are individualized from then on forever and forever, and you are part of "the one body, the one spirit… the one lord… the one God and Father of us all." (Ephesians 4:4-6)

So, the greatest gift in the world could not be the thing created, but the Creator. God literally gave Himself, the Creator, to us, so that we become as He is. And He is the Father, and the sum total of Humanity, personified, comes out as David.

David is the one symbol that personifies the Will of God. Humanity has played His Will.

"I have found David, the son of Jesse" – "Jesse" means "I am" – "a man after my heart who will do all my will." (Acts 13:22)

He’s after my heart, and he will do all my will. That’s Humanity – You have done the Father’s Will.

In the end, you will forgive every being in the world and excuse all, for you’ve done the Father’s Will.

"How long, how vast, and how great the anguish ’ere we find the Father were long to tell." [Wm. Blake, from "Jerusalem"]

But you will find the Father, and when you find the Father, you find your Self. So, we came out and fell as one man, the Lord Jesus Christ, who descended, and then we are fragmented. Then we ascend as that One Man, in the same pattern that He sets for the world, back into the One Body.

So we came out in search of God the Father, and return, having discovered our Self as God the Father. For, no one returns into that Body that is harmonious and perfect until he first finds the Father. And when you find the Father, it is not another; it is your Self. But it takes His son to reveal you as the Father, for –

"No one knows who the Son is, except the Father, and no one knows who the Father is, except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal it." (Luke 10:22 RSV)

So, "No one has ever seen God, but the only Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known." (John 1:18 RSV)

So, I can tell you now, David one day will stand before you, and you will know he is your son. He will not deny it in time. You may deny it now, but when confronted with the evidence, you can’t deny it. And there is David. And Jesus Christ is God the Father. There is no other God. There is no other Father. He is the Lord of Lords, but no one can say Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit is what? In the 14th chapter of John he says –

"I will send you the Holy Spirit, which is the spirit of truth, and he will bring to your remembrance all the things that I have told you." (John 14:26)

So, the Holy Spirit is the remembrance now. Memory returns, and you are God the Father! For when you meet Him, it is not something new. When you look at David, it is as though Eternity returns. You’ve always known it, but you must have suffered from amnesia – total amnesia, like a man looking into his mother’s face and not recognizing his mother, and she is worried about her son who cannot recognize her.

We know amnesia in this world, either partial or total. We have all experienced it in some way with our friends. I have a friend of mine now – a block of time is missing. He painted a picture recalling a pier in Trinidad, and then he went in there on the docks and painted another picture. It has been rumored that a friend of his who always despised him struck him. It has not been proved, but he is now away for the rest of his earthly days, one block completely missing.

He knows that he came up on the surf in Trinidad, and now he thinks he was actually shot in the Island of Trinidad. And that block of time is completely rubbed out in his mind’s eye, and he picked it up from there, but they can’t let him out. He has completely dropped out.

If the man did it or not, it really doesn’t matter. In the end, all will be forgiven. His motive – if jealousy could have prompted the act, I don’t know.

Nevertheless, my friend Walter is in this home for the rest of his earthly days with a large section of time completely missing.

So, this whole thing was "sown up" before the world was. We saw the play. I’ve been trying to remember it ever since, for we are the gods who formed the "God."

We are the gods spoken of in Scripture. We are the Elohim who came down deliberately in a state of amnesia – total amnesia, or we could not do what we are doing. If we are pretending that we are men, knowing all along that we are God, we could not do what we are doing.

We had to completely forget who we are to do what we are doing. And that power, which is – Christ In-Us –  the creative power of God, at the moment in time when we have done the work that we came to do, awakens. We awaken, for we are that power. And, then, the drama – the only drama in Eternity that could ever take us back to the Source of all Being, which is Jesus Christ, is the Gospel. There is no other play.

If you are tempted to follow some other road, remember these words: Don’t do it.

If someone tells you tonight that they know someone who has the most marvelous diet to keep you perfect, or someone who has all the yoga-ism to sit in meditation and do something for you, forget it.

I am telling you what I know from experience: the one and only true way to God the Father is through the Pattern Man that is Jesus Christ. There is no other way. There is no other Lord. There is no other God. And Jesus Christ is but the fulfillment of the Old Testament. The whole thing was an adumbration, a foreshadowing in a not-altogether conclusive or immediately evident way; so they couldn’t understand it.

So, when it happened in one and he interpreted it, based upon his own experience of Scripture, they rejected it. It was not what they were expecting. They were expecting Redemption to come in an entirely different way, as the whole vast world today is expecting it.

They think that Jesus Christ is going to come from the outside, and many who are now teaching millions of people on TV – they hope to be still here in the body to go forward and greet Him and tell Him what marvelous work they are doing. He will never, in Eternity, come that way. He comes to you as one unknown, yet lets you experience who He is, and then when you experience who He is, you will discover Him in yourself, for He became you.

God literally became, as you are, that you may become as God is. There is no other God but the Lord Jesus Christ. And do not look for Him to come from without. He deliberately died for you.

"Unless I die, thou canst not live, but if I die, I shall arise again, and thou with me." (John 12:24)

"Wouldst thou love one who never died for thee, or ever die for one who has not died for thee? And if God dieth not for man and giveth not Himself eternally for man, man could not exist. So God died literally and when He died, He entered Death’s Door with you, and he laid down in a grave with you and shares with you the visions of Eternity until you awaken and see the linen clothes that the female wove for you." [Wm. Blake, from "Milton"]

Then you come out of that grave as the Lord Jesus Christ, for the way he is born surrounds you; the babe to bear witness to the great event that has taken place, and the witnesses that see the babe – not you. They can’t see you, for you are the Lord, and Jesus Christ is invisible. They can’t see you because God is Spirit. They can talk about you, but they cannot see you, because the day will come that other witnesses will talk about them and not see them, for they will be born, too, from above, and "born not of blood nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God." (John 1:13)

So, they are all born of God as God. So, "I am the root of David and the offspring of David." (Revelation 22:l6) For that which comes out of man, having buried Himself in man is one with that which entered man. "I am the root"

Who is speaking? – Jesus Christ. What did he say?

"I am the root of David, and the offspring of David, the bright morning star." (Revelation 22:l6)

And, "to him that overcometh… I will give the Morning Star." (Revelation 21:26, 28)

So, He gives you Himself.

Now, do not think that you have to labor to become it. This is Grace – Grace – Grace, and still, more Grace!

Let no one frighten you. It’s an unmerited, unearned gift. You could not earn it in Eternity. Because you cannot earn it, it is given. And God gives you Himself. You cannot earn it. Your fitness for the Kingdom is the consequence, and not in any way the result, of things that you did. It’s the consequence of Grace.

So, let no one frighten you and tell you that you’ve got to do this and do that and do the other. Believe the story. That’s all you have to do. You’ve heard the Christian story. Believe it. And one day, unexpectedly, suddenly the story will reenact itself in you, casting you in the central role.

So, the greatest gift in the world – the most precious gift – was God’s gift of Himself to man. And He was not giving a portion of Himself; He gave Himself. When He gave you Himself, He had to give you His Son.

So, "God so loved the world" – that is, Humanity – "He gave His only son," (John 3:16) because if He gave me Himself and He is a father, He has to give me His son. And His son stands before me and calls me, "Father," and I know I am his father, and he knows he is my son.

So, God gave me, because of His love for me – He gave me His son, and only the Son can reveal the father. "No one knows who the Father is, except the Son." (Luke 10:22 RSV) So, when the son comes, then – and only then – do you know the Father.

Let us now go into the Silence.