Tonight’s subject is, “What shall you ask of me?” This story we find in the Book of Genesis, we find it in the Book of Samuel, and repeated again in the New Testament. It really begins with ___(??) “What wilt thou give me?” and that is in the 15th of Genesis. Then he said, “I am childless, I have no heir… and a slave boy in my home will be my heir” and he was told, “The slave will not be your heir; your own son will be your heir.” Then we are told, “As the sun went down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram; and a dread and great darkness fell upon him. Then the Lord God said to him, “For a surety your descendants will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs, and they will be as slaves in that land; they will be oppressed for four hundred years… and afterwards they will come out with great possessions” (verses 12-14). Now, there’s not a word said that Abram was in any way awakened from this sleep, not a word. He fell into a deep sleep and all this was told him in a deep sleep, and there was a dread and great darkness that fell upon him.
Now this is our subject this night. He asked for a son; he was promised a son. Then we are told in the story, as he dreamed and the son was mentioned, he made this statement, he fell on his face and laughed when he was told he would have a son. And said he, “Shall a man who is a hundred years old have a son? Shall Sarah, who is ninety years old, bear a child? And said that he laughed—is this the laughter of derision, laughter of incredulity, or the laughter of rejoicing? We’re told in the scripture of John that “Abraham rejoiced that he was to see my day; he saw it, and was glad” (John 8:56). You can take it in any form you want. Either you can say, well, he laughed because of disbelief, or he laughed, he rejoiced he was to see my day; he saw it and was glad.
Now when we read scripture, we’re not reading secular history, we’re reading divine history. Man is not aware of that. The Bible is a vision. It is a mystery to be known only by revelation. And those who think they know it by trying to analyze it they’re far removed from the truth. It comes by revelation and only by revelation. If you haven’t had the experience, listen to one who has had it, and either believe him or disbelieve him. Don’t try to rationalize it. So I will tell you and I have told you what I have seen, and you will not accept my testimony. Seeing and knowing in the Greek are one. Seeing is experiencing. He is telling you, I have experienced it and you will not believe it, because I can’t share it with you on the level where you now live.
And so here, what is he trying to tell us in this story of falling asleep and being told what must happen to man? Well, first of all, we’re reading in the Hebrew. Every letter in the Hebrew world, as it were, has a numerical value and a symbolical value. He was a hundred years old. The nineteenth letter of the Hebrew alphabet is Qoph. If you want to sound it, Q-o-p-h, Qoph. We put a q in the q. The symbol of it is “the back of the head.” The number, its numerical value is a hundred. A man is not a hundred years old. This is a mystery. Here is a hundred., a hundred what? The number of the back of the head. He is being told you will bear a son; it will come from the back of your skull. And so you will say, he fell on his face and laughed. That’s ridiculous on this level. It comes from the womb of a woman. But he is told, he’s a hundred years old, and you will bear a son, and it will come from the back of your skull. Well, you can take the laughter in any way you want, either the laughter of disbelief, or, as we’re told in the Book of John, the 8th chapter, rejoicing. “He rejoiced that he was to see my day; he saw it, and was glad”(verse 56).
Now we are told in this story, your descendants will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs. It’s this world. We don’t belong here. These garments belong here. Every garment in this world is part of the eternal structure of this world. No matter what you do, it’s part of the eternal structure of this world. When Kennedy was shot, that is taking place forever and forever as part of the structure of this world, and the one who pulled the trigger is pulling it forever as part of the structure of this world. God gets into this world as a sojourner and in this is the land that is not his as it were. In this he is as a slave: “took upon himself the form of man and became obedient unto death, even death upon the cross” (Philippians 2:6-8). Death upon the cross—we think it took place on the north shore of Africa two thousand years ago.
Now listen to the next line in this statement, “And they will be oppressed for four hundred years… afterward they will come out and have great possessions.” Four hundred years. The last letter of the Hebrew alphabet, the twenty-second letter, Tau, has a numerical value of four hundred and the symbolical value of a cross. The symbol of Tau is a cross and it is numerically four hundred. So here, for four hundred years—not four hundred years as we measure time. No, this is the journey: we are sojourners in a land that is not ours. And while we journey we are enslaved, and while we are enslaved we are oppressed for the length of time that it takes for us to come out with great possessions. And the possession is not only the kingdom of God; we will possess not only the kingdom, we possess the King (Ezekiel 44:28). We possess a presence; the presence is God. So we go through the horror of the world and come out as God. God becomes as we are that we may be as he is.
So that’s the story of this journey that is a horrible journey, frightful horror. But in the end, we possess a great man, and great possessions, and possess a presence, and the presence is God. All ends run true to origins: if the origin is God, the end is God. “You see yonder fields! The sesame was sesame; the corn was corn. The Silence and the Darkness knew! And so was a man’s fate born” (Light of Asia). So the origin is God and the end is God. There is nothing but God.
So in this story he makes the statement, “Before Abraham was, I am. Your father Abraham rejoiced that he was to see my day; he saw it, and he was glad.” They said to him, “Why, you are not yet fifty years old, and you have seen Abraham?” He said, “Before Abraham was, I am.” So I stand before you now, I am approaching fifty-nine, and yet I know there’s a David, for David is my son. Is a father not older than his son? Did he not call me Father? Did David not call me Lord? “What think ye of the Christ? Whose son is he?” “The son of David.” The son of David? “Why then did David in the spirit call him Lord? If David doth call him Lord, how can he be David’s son?” (Matthew 22:42). But you’re not yet fifty. It doesn’t matter. You say he is 3,000 years from this moment in time? Well, he called me Father. If he calls me Father, am I not older than he is? Well, he called me Father. So he called me Father, am I not older than Abraham? Then who are you talking about? I am talking only, at every moment of time, about God. There’s nothing but God.
So, what shall I give you? What was the answer to that statement? “O Lord God, let thy promise to David my father be now fulfilled” (2 Chronicles 1:9). Well, what was that promise? That “When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your son after you, who shall come forth from your body. I will be his father and he shall be my son” (2 Samuel 7:12). Let that promise now be fulfilled. So he brings forth from humanity, from you, from the back of your skull; that’s the being I will bring out of you. You’re a hundred years old? That’s Qoph, the back of the skull. I will bring forth from you a son. And so he laughed. The whole thing was crazy, ridiculous. It’s so unnatural. It’s not something that could ever happen in eternity. This is not a natural birth; it’s a spiritual birth—born from above, not from below. And so he comes out. Let it happen now, said he.
But before it happens, can I ask for anything else? Certainly. Listen to these words, “If you ask anything in my name, I will do it.” You want to check it? The 14th chapter, the 14th verse of the gospel of John, “If you ask anything in my name, I will do it.” Well, who is speaking? They never once addressed him as Jesus. They spoke of him, but never addressed him as Jesus. Jesus and Jehovah are one and the same. When we translate the word Jehovah, Yod He Vau He, which is really I AM, we always speak of it as the Lord. Only on rare occasions do we say I AM, as in Exodus, “Go and say unto them, ‘I AM sent you. I AM that I AM. I am what I am. I am who I am.’” But beyond this and a few statements, it’s always translated as the Lord. So they speak of him as the Lord in the New Testament, not Jesus. No one addresses him as Jesus and then, “Jesus, tell us so and so,” but “Lord, show us the way.” “I AM the way.” “Lord, show us the Father.” “I AM the Father.” So, always, the Lord is the name given to him. So when he’s called the Lord, he’s called the Father.
So here, “If you ask anything in my name, I will do it.” So the name is not Jesus, the name is not Jehovah, the name is not the Lord, the name is I AM. That’s the name. Well, how would I ask for health or wealth or fame in his name? By daring to assume that I am healthy, when the doctors give me no hope. By daring to assume that I am wealthy, when all my creditors are on my neck. By daring to assume that I am known, when I am, by reason of my senses, unknown. And so daring to assume that I am that which I want to be, when at the moment of my assumption reason and my senses deny it, is asking in his name. There is no other name. “If you ask anything in my name, I will do it.”
Well then, test him. You’re invited to test him. Come prove him and see. “Do you not know that Jesus Christ is in thee?—unless, of course, you fail to meet the test!” (2 Corinthians 13:5). So we’re invited to test him in his name, and his name is I AM. Let everyone dare to assume that I am… and then name it. Then see the world as you would see it were it true. What evidence have I that I really am this before it becomes objective to the world? Well, the only evidence that I have now is to see on the faces of my friends an expression implying recognition of that which I am. Let me look at my friends mentally and see them seeing me as they would see me were it true. Let me now see my world as I would see it were it true. And then, if in the not distant future I crystallize that which I am assuming into this world, by a way that consciously I could never devise, the thing happens, then haven’t I found him and I know who he is?
Well, I tell you this story is true from beginning to end, but not as the world sees it. They’re trying to see it as secular history, and it’s not; it’s divine history. The whole drama unfolds in man. And the story of Abraham is true. In the depths of the soul God slept. It is God who fell asleep. It is God who fell to make sons, to bring us into the world as sons. And because the father and the son are one, if the father and the son are one, then the son must be father. If he’s a father, then there must be a son. And who is that son? If I and my father are one, and my father is Father, then who is the son?—David. David is the Son of God. Jesus Christ is God the Father. It’s Jesus Christ in us that is buried that must awaken. And as he awakens and is the father, then how do I know I am a father? Where is the son? And then comes David.
Now, the nineteenth letter, Qoph, is “the back of the head.” Out of that will come the child. You’ll be born, right out of the back of that skull of yours. I’m speaking from experience; I am not theorizing. Having come out of the back of the head, then there must be a son bearing witness of the being that you are. The next letter is Resh, and its value is 200. Its symbol is the head but the crown of the head, the whole head, but, above all, the crown of the head. All right, so out of the crown of the head will come this explosion and right before you one day will stand this immortal son, David. You look into his face and you see David and he will call you Father.
Now, you are only fifty years old. “And you not yet fifty years old and you know David?” Yes. Before David was, I am. Well, I AM is the name of his father. His father was called Jesse, and Jesse is any form of the verb “to be”: it is I AM. And so he calls you Father. And so you look right into the eyes of David, and yet in this world of mortality you’re only fifty. And you can say, “Yes, before David was, I am.” Because the father precedes the son, and the son calls you Father. And so you will know in the eyes of those who are still blind you are only fifty. And they know your background. They know exactly where you began in this linear world, as one ___(??) blind as it were. So you know, in spite of what they think you are, you have experienced the fatherhood of David. And David is God’s only begotten son: “Thou art my son, today I have begotten thee,” the 2nd Psalm, 7th verse. It’s addressed to David, in spite of the priesthoods of the world. No matter how they try to justify it and call that Jesus Christ, they are in error. They’re not speaking from experience; they’re theorizing. And the whole vast world takes the Word of God, and theorizes it, and comes up with false conclusions because their premises are wrong. Their beginnings are wrong. It is David. And when you see him you know without any uncertainty that he is your son, and he knows without any uncertainty you are his father.
It is David that God buried in the mind of man. As told us in the 3rd chapter, the 11th verse of the Book of Ecclesiastes: “And God has placed eternity into the mind of man, yet so that man cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.” But at the end he will. When man comes to the last days of his journey, when the pilgrimage is over, and the oppression is over, and he comes into his inheritance, then David explodes out of his brain. From the top of his head this time, not from the base of his skull. He came out of the base of his skull, but the Son of God, buried in his head, comes out of the top of his skull, the king, and he is the father of that only begotten son. The son calls him Father, and he sees him, and they both meet in an understanding that no one on this level could really grasp.
So I say believe it. Believe it, because the beatitude is pronounced upon those who did not see and yet believed. By seeing they didn’t experience it, and yet they believed the one who tells them he has experienced it. That beatitude is given to us at the end of the 20th chapter of the gospel of John. So they may not see, yet they believed. But many who did not see still would not believe, because they insisted on taking it on this level. I tell you, “Abraham rejoiced that he was to see this day, my day. He saw it—experienced it—and was glad.”
So this is the story: What shall I give you? You can ask this night for help. You can ask for anything in this world. But the day will come that you’ll have a hunger that only an experience of God can satisfy. “I will send a famine upon the land; not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of God”—a hunger that only an experience of God can satisfy (Amos 8:11). And so, until that hunger comes upon you, believe the one who had such a hunger. Whose hunger has been satisfied by having experienced David as his son; and can with scripture, “What think ye of the Christ, whose son is he?” And when they answer, “Why the son of David,” then he replied, “Why then did David in the spirit call him Father?” He called him Adonay, my Lord, which is the name used by every son of his father. Every son referred to his father as Adonay, my Lord. So David calls him “my Lord,” how then can he be David’s son?
So tonight you can ask for anything in his name, if you know his name. Get down on your knees and say, “In the name of Jesus,” not a thing is going to work. “In the name of God, in the name of Jehovah, name of this?”—no answer, no response. Ask in his name and his name is I AM. So without any help from anyone in this world, dare to assume “I am…” and then name it. “I am employed, gainfully employed.” Don’t ask others if you can make it. “I’m gainfully employed, making more than I have ever made in my life.” Let them say what they will. Things will reshuffle themselves in this world. And you, by being faithful to his name, will externalize what you are claiming by your assumption, and it becomes fact. Then you can share it with the whole vast world.
So, “If you ask anything in my name, I will do it.” Who will do it? Jesus on the outside? No, Jesus is in you. God became man that man may become God. Listen to the words, “Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in thee?—unless of course you fail to meet the test!” I am quoting from Paul’s letters to the Corinthians. It’s the thirteenth chapter, the last chapter, of 2 Corinthians, “Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in thee?” (verse 5). Well, if he is in me, and making these statements “Ask in my name,” well then, I know his name. He said, “I am the truth.” You mean of anything that I claim? Yes, because all things are possible to God, and his name is I AM. And I am the truth? The truth of what? The truth that is confined to the evidence of my senses?—certainly not! Truth is determined by the intensity of my Imagination, not upon the evidence of my senses. So I dare to assume that I am what I want to be, and assuming it, remaining faithful to it, I externalize it. It becomes a fact in my world.
So here, “Ask what I shall give you.” The day will come you will ask, as Solomon asked, “Let thy promise to David my father be now fulfilled.” And that promise: let the son be born. For he promised him that when his days are fulfilled and he lies down with his fathers, he will raise up after him his son, who will come out of his body; and that you will be the father and he will be your son. Let that now be done. Let him come out. Let him bring forth David out of me. For David, the origin is David, the end is David. Bring him out, out of me. If you bring him out of me and your name is I AM, or Jesse, and I see David, then I am Jesse. I AM the I AM of whom I spoke and others discussed, but I didn’t know it.
Suddenly he comes out, and the only way in this world I would ever know that I am he is by the son. “For no one knows who the Father is except the Son, and no one knows who the Son is except the Father” (Matthew 11:27). So if I could only know it by reason of the Son, then let that Son come. Bring him out. So what comes out of David but David. He brings David out. Well then, if he brings him out of me, this garment must have been David. Humanity then is David; the whole vast world of mankind is David. But, bring something out that I know when I see him; it’s altogether different. And you do. Well, then who brought him out? It came out of me. He actually came out of me and I saw him, and he called me Father.
You dwell upon it. It’s something entirely different, but you dwell upon it. It’s far more than if this night I put into the hands of everyone here a fabulous earthly fortune, for the earthly fortune disappears. It all withers, it all vanishes like smoke, but this of which I speak never passes away. This is the immortal faith. And so, you can have anything in this world that you want, but anything, if you ask in his name, and his name is I AM. But the day will come, you will have a hunger, a hunger that not a thing in this world—you can go from lecture to lecture, from place to place—and nothing can satisfy you but an experience of God, to know that God really exists.
And God is a person. You’re a person. Well, God is a person in your own very being. He becomes you and raises you up through this horrible experience that ___(??). Listen to the words, “Your descendants will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs.” Can’t take one piece with you. If Rockefeller dies tonight, he can’t take one shilling with him. Has to leave it just where it is, as his father did and his grandfather did. His grandfather left a billion dollars; couldn’t take a penny with him. And then, the father left hundreds of millions and he couldn’t take one-half penny with him. All the others will leave it all behind and they can’t take a penny with them. Leave it just where it is.
So they will be in a land that is not theirs, and while in that land they will be as slaves. Who is not a slave? Can Rockefeller buy health with billions of dollars? Oh yes, he can have all the doctors in the world, all the services of doctors, but can’t buy health. I know people sell you health out of bottles and out of health stores and all kinds of things, and those who run the little businesses from their health stores die just as young and just as painfully as the others. So they all have the same exit, with all their little things, selling you all kinds of things: “You will live forever.” At forty you read his obituary.
And so, they play all these little parts. They’re all slaves in this world. And they will be, as we are told, oppressed for 400 years—as long as they wear the cross of the flesh. This is the cross on which Jesus Christ is crucified, not any wooden cross. This cross, this is the 400 years, the Tau, the twenty-second letter of the Hebrew alphabet. It is on this—not 400 years by measure of time but as long as it takes to bring me out. There is one disconcerting note in the 28th chaper of the Book of Deuteronomy, which I would not fret, but the whole chapter implies that the time is not really measured as we understand time; that if at the very end of what we should think would be the whole journey we start it all over again. Start it all over again. It is not explained why, because God is playing the parts, and I can’t understand how God could fail in what he has predetermined, I can’t. But, nevertheless, there is the word of God in the 28th of Deuteronomy. But I will say to everyone, don’t be disturbed by it. The end is determined. God will not fail.
He will not fail; he brings everyone out. And when he brings us out we’re all equal. We’re all God the Father, and all have the same Son. What symbol in this world would make you and I one more than to be the father of the same son? If you look into the eyes of my son and you know he’s your son, and I look into the eyes of that same son and know he is my son, are we not one, one Father? “For in that day the Lord will be one and his name one.” We’ll be one, although seemingly many. So it is a oneness made up of many. So “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord.” “Hear, O Israel, the Lord”—and the word Lord is the I AM—“our God”—our I ams—“is one I AM.” So the whole vast world of… everyone can say, “I am” . . . and that forms our God. And together it is the I AM. The one Father of the one Son, and we’re all the Father of that one Son, so we’re all one. And that’s how it unfolds in this world.
Now what I’m telling you this night I’m telling you from experience, I am not theorizing. I’ve gone on panels with priests, with rabbis, with Protestant ministers, with great educators, and they stand aghast, because it’s not what they ever conceived. I can’t blame them. It has not been revealed to them. They’re speculating and I am not speculating. I’m not trying to set up some workable philosophy of life. I’m telling you what happened to me. It happened to me as naturally as a natural physical birth happens to another. So I think it, at the moment, disturbing, and then you go back into scripture and you read it to find it was all foretold.
Now listen to this lovely poem by Edward Thomas, “Now first as I shut the door I was alone in the new house, and the wind began to moan. Old at once was the house, and I was old. My ears were teased by the dread of what was foretold. Nights of storm, days of mist without end, sad days, when the sun shown in vain. Old griefs and griefs not yet begun. All was foretold me, naught could I foresee, but I learned how the wind would sound after these things should be.” You dwell upon it. The new house—God enters this world of death. For we’re all dead, we’re part of the eternal structure of the universe, every garment in the world. It’s new. He buries himself and shuts the door, and he’s alone in the new house. Then the wind began to moan. In scripture, the wind and the Spirit are one and the same word. And then, the whole thing is foretold him, but naught could he foresee—the horrible oppression in the land of Egypt, this world. And only at the very end do you really realize how the wind really sounds. “All was foretold me, naught could I foresee, but I learned how the wind would sound after these things should be.”
May I tell you, when this thing happens that was foretold in the beginning: I’ll give you a son, when you’re a hundred years old, and ___(??) to the back of your head, that’s where you’ll come from, and I fall on my face and laugh, it’s ridiculous. It’s the most unnatural thing in the world. Or, maybe I rejoice because I saw it and was glad. But then the journey starts and, oh, what horrible nights and misty days when the sun shone in vain. But I didn’t quite understand until the very end. The story is “But I learned how the wind would sound after these things should be.” And when it happens, now you know how the wind really sounds. The whole house vibrates like a cyclone and you don’t know what is causing it, and you wonder where it is coming from. You feel it in you, and yet you feel it coming from the far corner of the room.
And then come the wise men to discover what has happened. Now listen to the words, “And Abraham sat in the door of his tent in the heat of the day and looked up and beheld three men standing before him.” They were not seen approaching, suddenly they are standing before him, three men, exactly as described in the 18th chapter of Genesis. Suddenly, three men stand before him… and the wind begins to moan. They, too, are disturbed. And may I tell you, of the three, two also laugh. They laugh because it seems to them incredible what one is announcing, that the child is born. One announces it; and two are completely hysterical with laughter because what has happened shouldn’t happen; it’s incredible. But he presents the evidence of what he’s declared. And then and only then do you know. So I learned then how the wind would sound after these things should be.
So believe it, and let that beatitude be pronounced upon you who have not seen and yet believed. You haven’t had the experience, but believe one who has had the experience. I am not theorizing; I am speaking from experience. And a truth which man knows from experience he knows more thoroughly than he knows anything else in this world, or than he can know that same truth in any other way. You know it tonight because you believe me; I hope you do, but you don’t know it to the extent you will know it after these things should be in you when you experience it. So I tell you, no matter what you hear from others, if they experience it they will duplicate what you’ve heard from this platform tonight. If they have not had the experience, they’ll speculate from now ’til the ends of time, and might be persuaded and try to convince you of the reality of their speculations. So, it’s entirely up to you. I am not theorizing.
So, what shall I give you? The last question, or the last one is, “Let it now be fulfilled.” What fulfilled? The promise you made to David my father. And that is that you’d bring out of him a son, and the son will be your son, and you will be that son’s father. Let it now be fulfilled. That comes from the very top of the skull, Resh. Before that is fulfilled, you have to come out of the back of the skull, Qoph. And so you are the Abraham when it happens and you are a hundred years old, though in the body you’re but fifty. The hundred is Qoph and the symbol is the back of the skull. Out you come and you are born, and you see the symbol of your birth. The next one is the explosion from Resh, the top of the skull, and that which comes out is David, and he’s your son.
So here, we are in the spirit of Christmas, a week from tomorrow. The whole vast Christian world will celebrate the birth of Christ, and I wonder what proportion of an nth part of one percent will really know the story. They’ve been taught it, but, may I tell you, they’ve been taught it erroneously. They’re now making some great caravan to go off to Jerusalem to find the birthplace. He wasn’t born there at all. To find where they put him in some sepulcher, and he wasn’t buried there at all. It is God who became man that man may become God, and he’s buried in man’s wonderful human skull. That’s where he’s buried and it’s from there that he will be resurrected. There’s no other place in the world from which he’ll be resurrected. He’s resurrected right out of your own wonderful skull, and the whole drama takes place there. And so, every word of scripture is literally true in the depths of the soul, but not on the level where now man finds himself in the world of Caesar.
Now let us go into the Silence. And if tonight you really want a home, more than you really want Solomon’s request—which you read in the 1st chapter of 2nd Corinthians—if you want a home or you want a job or you want money or you want these things more, don’t for one second let anyone divert you. You can get them. “If you ask anything in my name, I’ll do it.” You don’t have to ask for Solomon’s request, you can ask for dresses, for suits, for homes, for fame, for anything, but ask it in my name.