By Neville Goddard May 17, 1963
___(??) very practical and yet you’ll find it very spiritual, which to me is the most practical. When you see a cross, do you think of suffering? And you hear someone say he was crucified, do you think, as the world undoubtedly thinks, that it is a suffering state? And if I told you that the cross is a spiritual wedding ring, would you believe it? When you see someone wearing a wedding ring, you know that there’s a union, there’s a marriage, and there should be love in that state, there should be. But may I tell you, when you see the cross hereafter think of a spiritual wedding ring, for it really is. For the cross is the symbol of God becoming man that man may become God, and that’s the cross. The central teaching of the Bible is the cross. He actually becomes us, nails himself upon us. For we were dead, and he was alive, and he so loved the creature that he became his own creation to convert it, to transform it—like a Pygmalion and a Galatea—into himself.
Now, we are told in Genesis, a little man is given seemingly to another, but all the commands in the Bible are to God by God. For man was not alive. And he commands man to leave everything and cleave to his wife, and then they become one flesh. So when we read the Bible and saw the bodies male/female, you might think when you read of a woman that it means a female, no, it doesn’t; when you read of a man it means a male, no it doesn’t. Whether it be male or female, it is speaking of us. And woman, we are told in Paul’s first letter to Timothy, “And woman will be saved by the bearing of children.” If you take that phrase “the bearing of children” and go to the bottom of the page—it should be in your Bible, it is in my Bible, in all my Bibles, I have many—there’s a little note at the bottom of the page which tells us that that phrase “bearing of children” literally means “by the birth of the child.” Definitive, the child. So woman is saved by the birth of the child (2:15).
Well, I am that woman. I am a man, a male. I have sired two children. My children live in this world. I’m married. But I am the woman spoken of in that passage, the last verse of the second chapter of Paul’s first letter to Timothy. I am the woman; God is the husband. Listen to these words carefully, Sing, O barren—it begins Isaiah 54—Sing out, you barren one… for you will be more fertile than those who are married (verse 1). In the same chapter, Isaiah 54:5, the statement is made, “Your Maker is your husband, the Lord of hosts is his name.” My Maker is my husband; the Lord of hosts is his name. Now I am told he has to become me and cleave to me, for I am his wife. He had to leave everything and forget everything and so cleave to me we become one flesh.
Now, Paul tells us, in the very end when he completes the job, Paul makes the statement, “Henceforth, let no one trouble me, for I bear on my body the marks of Jesus” (Galatians 6:17). Not little holes through here or a crown of thorns on my head or a gash in my side or holes in my feet, but everything said of him you experience seemingly in your body. You go through all the experiences, and it takes place in your body. His birth, his fatherhood, everything in the world takes place in you. So you bear on your body the marks of Jesus.
Now, in the meanwhile, let us now turn to what came after this comment was made to man. It came, if you read Genesis it’s only 400 years; if you read Exodus and the letters of Paul, it came 430 years after the promise, and this is what he calls the law. He said, “No man is justified before God by law.” Yet here was the law, and God gave it to us because of transgression. It pays to the nth part, to the most simple iota of one’s transgression, whatever it is. And here, use it, but you can’t be justified by it. But learn the law, for we are told in the 1st chapter in the Book of Psalms, “Blessed is the man who delights in the law of God, for in all that he does he prospers.” This is a promise. Dwell upon it. It’s not the real promise, but this is a promise concerning the law of God. The real promise preceded it by 400 years if we read one book and 430 if you read another book. But regardless, it precedes this law. “But blessed is the man who delights in the law of the Lord, for in all that he does he prospers.” You can’t fail in the law.
But no matter how wisely you exercise your talent, which is the use of law, it doesn’t in any way qualify you for the marks of the body of Jesus. That is grace, that’s the gift. It will happen regardless of what you do in this world. Not one person in this world will fail. It can’t fail because you, personally, are not doing it. You are the bride of God. It is God who is doing it, and God is doing it on us. He fell in love with us, as told us in the 1st chapter of Ephesians, “He chose us in himself before the foundation of the world.” So I was his choice before the foundation of the world. He selected me, as a man will go out to find a woman that he wants, and he wants her with all of his heart to bear his name and bear children, if he can have children.
In this case, only one child God is going to have from you, only one. Only one, as told you in the 3rd chapter, the 16th verse of Galatians: there will only be one. Everyone’s going to have one to prove that God loves you and became you. The one is going to be God’s child, and it’s going to be your child because that child is going to call you Father. Although I am his bride and seemingly female, in this state, a wonderful statement is made, “We shall all be one in Jesus Christ.” And the phrase in Greek “all be one in Jesus Christ,” “all will be masculine.” Why they didn’t use it, I will never know, but there it is. We shall all be one, and that phrase all be one literally translated “all be masculine.” He fell in love with man, generic man, in a capitalized sense, though in this level, we’re all split in two, male and female.
Now, we come back to the law. In all that you do you will prosper if you abide by the law. And the law is just as simple as this: as I stand here now I could in twelve seconds be in twelve different states of consciousness. I can think of you, think of you, think of the other one; and then all of a sudden, everything that I think of, that’s a state of consciousness. I could be in as many states as there are seconds in the time that I’m thinking. But the state that I’m going to externalize and objectify and make real in my world is the state that I occupy more than I do others. That state to which I most constantly return constitutes my home, my true self.
And so, I go into a state. If tonight you want wealth, let no one in this world tell you, you shouldn’t want it. If you want health, let no one tell you, you shouldn’t want it. I don’t care what you desire now in this world. You may after you realize it tire of it. We know that in the world. There are people who build a home, spend a fortune on the home, they’re in it just a matter of moments and they tire of it. Not just the home alone but family relationships in the home change, and they don’t want any part of that home because it ___(??) the relationships that occupy it. They don’t want the home, they don’t want the relationships, and they don’t want any part of it. And yet they wanted it, seemingly, forever when they got it. That’s life.
There is no static thing in this world because man at every moment in time could change a state. So when you know what you want, I don’t care what it is that you want. You want to be happily married, perfectly all right. There are people all over this world today, many of them are in the limelight, running for the highest office in this land, who wanted a change of marital relationships more than the highest office in the land. Because if they wanted it more than that change, they would have subjected themselves to what they considered the unlovely relationship in the hope of fooling the voters tomorrow because they wanted it. No, they wanted a change of this relationship more than they wanted the highest office in this land, and did it.
So I say there is no static picture in this world. Tonight, let no one and ask no one if you should want it. For let me quote one of the truly great awakened minds of all eternity, Blake, “I do not consider either the just or the wicked to be in a supreme state, but to be simply states of the sleep which the soul may fall into in its deadly dreams of good and evil” (The Vision of the Last Judgment). So I fall into a state. It seemed to me good, and it’s good because I so hungered for it. I am in it. I may tire of it in a matter of moments or in a matter of thirty years or in a matter of some other length of time. It was neither good nor evil, simply a state.
There are infinite states in the world into which man falls. But when you come here, you shouldn’t fall into states, you should deliberately enter a state. Even though you think, well now, this is a state, but don’t fall into it. With your eyes wide open, “I want to be wealthy!” as you conceive wealth to be. All things being relative, what you and I consider a normal income to live graciously in our present world would be a millionaire’s income in most of this world—if you think x-number of thousands you require to live well in this world we live in. But you go to ninety percent, maybe ninety-five percent of the world, if you had that sort of income, you would be a king of kings in their area. So all things are relative.
So where you are, what do you want? And you name it. Well, when you know exactly what you want, listen to the words, “Blessed is the man”—this is a Beatitude—“Blessed is the man who delights in the law of the Lord, for in all that he does he prospers.” You can’t fail if you delight in the law of the Lord. You don’t feed your mind with anything other than the image desired to be externalized in your world. If today reason denies the image, you deny reason. If anything in this world, if your senses dictate that these are the facts of life, but they are in conflict with the image that you want to externalize, you deny your senses. Completely deny the senses and reason and entertain the image, for this is God’s creativity.
And so I live this night in the assumption that I am the man that I want to be, even though everything, reason and senses, deny it, but I live in it—and I’m speaking from experience—then at the end of the not distant future, I begin to crystallize it and externalize it. And then I duplicate it. I tell the story to others and they begin to duplicate it, and then they tell it to others. At the end of a few years we have hundreds and hundreds of witnesses to this principle. Does it matter what the world thinks? Does it matter what anyone in this world would tell me about it if I can duplicate it and prove it by experience? Well, this is God’s law.
The law is conditional. I can’t be feeling sorry for myself and expect to call some practitioner who will push a button, leaving me as I am, and then produce results for me. I have it all the time. Someone will call up and say, “Will you do so and so?” The purpose of it all is to produce a change in the individual, not just a change in the circumstances round about, where it vanishes like a snow when the sun comes out. It’s to produce in the individual a change that sustains the change when it externalizes itself in the world. But someone will say, “You know, my people aren’t paying the rent. Three of them are now in arrears, they owe me three months,” and they want you to in some strange way produce some little miracle where they all put their money down. And they remain just as bitter as they were prior to the loss of the three months. They remain just where they were prior to the call and think that the little pushing of the button is going to produce a change in their life. That call will come through day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year until you can produce in them, the caller, a change in their own heart. When you produce it in them, they need not call you ever again, for the simple reason that the change in them externalizes itself in their world. And it works that way.
So if there’s a practitioner here, you don’t ___(??) push buttons, you produce changes in them. And may I tell you, you don’t need the income from any being in this world. If they pay you, all well and good, but don’t depend upon any person’s income in this world. You don’t need to. Your own consciousness of wealth will produce wealth. You’ll have everyone in this world, and it will simply flow like a river toward you. Don’t depend upon anyone. No one is your source of supply. The only source is God, and his name is I AM. That’s God. There is no other God.
So if they call, let them call. Try to persuade yourself that they have changed their attitude toward self, toward life. That change in them will automatically result in a change in their lives. They can’t help it. But when someone makes them feel; and here, I tell you this because of a recent call, where in the city three different ones from different groups, not all in the same so-called -ism, different -ism, and they tell her, “Forever you will have to depend upon me to produce these things for you.” Well, here this poor child believes it, and so she sends x-number of dollars every month to this one, this one, the other one, and then she calls the speaker. I’ve always warned her, “Don’t you send me one penny”—which she doesn’t have a dime—“Don’t you send me a nickel. I want to produce in you the change.” But she so completely believed that they could influence her that unless she calls upon them these things will recur. But they recur and recur and recur. How to get her to really believe in God? The only God in the world is her own wonderful I-am-ness.
Now here is the story. He loved her; he loved her more than any man in this world could ever love her. I love my wife, and she and I together produced in this world this glorious child, and we revel in the daughter that we have. But I could not in eternity, as a man, love my wife to the degree that God loves us. God so loved her he became her, and he’s one with her. And his name is not Neville; his name is I AM. That’s his name. He’s anchored upon her, crucified upon her. She was but a thought, that’s all she was to him, and he so loved her he nailed himself upon her and completely forgot his divinity. He actually cleaved to her, and he will not let her go until they become one, not two. They were two in the beginning, God and this one that he loved; in the end, only one. And to him, he is so lost in his identity that when he rises in her, it’s she, it’s not another. It’s just the individual that he fell in love with.
He gives his name to her. She had none. He gives his name, and she bears the name, and it’s I AM. ___(??) and she wakes now. “Henceforth let no one bother me, don’t let them trouble me, for I bear on my body the marks of Jesus.” And these are the marks of Jesus. You aren’t going to find them as the religious world tells you with the stigmata, bleeding hands and bleeding head and bleeding side and bleeding feet. They are not the marks of Jesus. I have had these, and they’re marvelous. It’s a thrill beyond the wildest dream when you feel yourself sucked in like a vortex, or a series of vortices, sucked into this body. I’ve had that. But they’re not the marks of Jesus.
The marks of Jesus are all written out in dramatic form in scripture. The first mark of Jesus, but the very first one, is the resurrection, that’s the first mark. How do you mark that? When the individual in himself awakens from a profound sleep to find he really, prior to this moment, was dead, for he awakes in a grave and no one but the dead are interred. So you inter them. And if a person is now in a sepulcher, the Holy Sepulcher, he awakens to find himself awake and alive, but he’s in a grave. Then he must have resurrected. That’s the first mark. The second mark is his birth. He comes out of it, and he comes out of that sepulcher just as a physical child comes out of a physical womb. And then come the other marks in discovery.
Then you look at it. “When the fullness of time had come, God sent the Spirit of his Son into my heart crying, ‘Father.’” When the fullness of time had come. When the nine-month pregnancy is over. Nine months could be nine ages. But when the fullness of time had come, God sent the Spirit of his Son into my heart crying, “Father.” So in my being when the fullness of time has come, his Son comes and calls me, “Father.” If he calls me “Father,” God’s work on me is complete. For he used me as his bride, he cleaved to me and wouldn’t let me go. But he had to produce his creative power, and he had to produce it by producing a son. He produced in me a son that calls me, “Father” after the fullness of time had come. So when the fullness of time had come—if you want it, the 4th chapter, the 4th verse of Galatians—“When the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son forth into my heart crying, ‘Father.’” And then the Son calls me, “Father.” His work in me is complete.
One more step to bear the marks of Jesus. But he takes it—and this is now the 10th chapter, the 20th verse of Hebrews—and he strips me down from top to bottom, and it’s called “the curtain that separated man from God.” There’s one little membrane to be severed, and that which separated man from God is now split right down the middle; and it’s called “the curtain that is his flesh.” You feel it all on your body. Everything that I am talking about, you actually feel it is taking place here. But it’s not on this, but you feel it here, for this is the shadow of the real body. So it actually, in some way, has all the effects that you get in the depths. The real body, the immortal body casts its shadow upon this and you feel it is taking place here. But it’s not. It is in the soul, the real you.
So here, you could this night wisely apply God’s law, and no being in the world can stop you from becoming what you want to be. If you stop for one moment and look over the roster of the world, take all the big so-called intelligent, wise, wonderful men in the world, all the great politicians of the world, any of them, go back, oh, just so short a time and you will see they were all just as you are now. They had no reason in the world to believe that they are what they are today, but none. Not one is endowed with any more intelligence, with any more power. Undoubtedly, ninety-nine percent of them stumbled into these states. I don’t want you to stumble into it; I want you to go deliberately into these states. If you stumble into a state, when the convulsion takes place as it always does in the world and you are emptied from that state, you may not know how to get back into it because you didn’t go into it deliberately.
If you go into these states deliberately, it wouldn’t make any difference what convulsion took place—and they will take place, they always take place—how to go back into that state if it’s a comfortable state to be in. You may go into any state in this world that you want. But if you don’t know you are in a state and you think, well now, this is simply a natural thing based upon my birth. Well then, when you are emptied from that state you may never find your way back into that state. But you can. Everyone in this world could go into the state of his choice. I’m speaking from experience, when I have over 900 letters at home each testifying to a deliberate entrance into a state from people who knew nothing of this before. But they simply decided to take a state into which they would go; they entered that state, viewed the world from it as though it were true, and then in a way that they could not consciously define or devise the state appeared and became real in their world.
Everyone can do it. But don’t forget, don’t fall into it; go into it deliberately. Tonight if I would be, and I name it, anything in this world, then let me assume now that I am the man that I want to be. Remaining in it, let me view the world and see it mentally as I would see it were it true. If I do, I am delighting in the law of God; and in all that I do, I prosper. No one can stop it. But no matter how I do it, I cannot earn the grace because the grace cannot be earned. The grace is a gift. Because it is a gift, it is unconditional, and that’s my glorious concept in this world. No one can fail. So if tonight you be a pauper of paupers, when in the fullness of time God is calling you, you’ll receive the kingdom. And the greatest in this world does not compare to the least in the kingdom. So you may be at the moment when you are called unknown, poor as a church mouse with not a thing in this world to support your entrance. But you don’t need it; you become heir, the heir of God, at that moment when the fullness of time has come.
But in the interval, waiting for the fullness of time, use God’s law. God’s law will never fail you, but it doesn’t qualify you to receive his grace. If you could qualify to receive his grace, then it isn’t grace. For grace means “unmerited gift,” something given without merit on your part. It is love in action that isn’t earned by the one to whom it is given. You couldn’t earn it. On the other hand, if you have done something of which you are ashamed, may I comfort you, the 11th chapter of Romans, “God has consigned everyone to disobedience, that he may have mercy upon all” (verse 32). Were it not for divine mercy no one could be saved, but divine mercy chose us in himself before the foundation of the world. He chose me, he chose you.
When he emptied himself upon me, I do not remember. I have had moments where I have had remembrances of the thrill. It was a thrill, may I tell you. It wasn’t pain to me. Whatever it was to God who nailed himself upon me, that I don’t know. But to me on whom he nailed himself—for I’m the cross, this is the tree on which he hangs—and when he nailed himself upon me, the tree became alive, and it was a thrill. There was no pain whatsoever, as far as I’m concerned. It might have been a pain to him who so loved me that he hanged himself upon me, it may be. And so we’re told by Blake, “The gods of the earth and the sea sought through nature to find this tree; but their search was all in vain: there grows one in the human brain” (Songs of Experience).
So here, on my brain, he is nailed and the extension is right on this body. But as far as I’m concerned it was no pain. It was ecstatic delight, supreme delight, when he made me alive. And then, he cleaved to me, remained faithful to his love, and then he awoke me. Today I can say with Paul, “I now bear on my body the marks of Jesus.” The birth from above, the memory of it is so vivid; the resurrection from the grave is so vivid; the discovery of David is so vivid; the splitting of this body from top to bottom and the ascent up the spinal cord into my skull are so vivid. All these marks of Jesus I bear upon my body. So I know that this is the last time; he has completed his work in me.
And he had to bring forth only one child. Listen to the words, the 3rd chapter, the 16th verse of Galatians, and here he promises to bring forth one. The Greek word really means “seed,” and the King James Version translates the word as seed, but to give it meaning in the modern translation, the Revised Standard Version, they translate the word seed as offspring. And so we’re told in Galatians 3:16 that this offspring—and then they said, “He does not say offspring, meaning many; but offspring, meaning one, which is your offspring, which is Christ.”
Now when you hear the word Christ, you think automatically, if you’re a Christian, of Jesus Christ. The word Christ in Greek is the identical word of the word Messiah in Hebrew, identical: The word means “anointed.” So I bring forth Christ, my offspring, and you think only in terms of Jesus Christ. Go back, “Anoint him; this is he.” Go back into the 1 Samuel and who is spoken of? “That is he; rise and anoint him. He is my chosen one” (16:12). It’s David. “Thou art my son, today I have begotten thee” (Psalms 2:7). He is the anointed. It is David who appears; David is the anointed. Well then, who is Jesus? God himself, you are he. For when God succeeds in giving you himself, who gives you himself? Therefore, you, who began in time, when he, your husband—“your Maker is your husband, the Lord of hosts is his name”—the husband must leave everything and cleave to his wife until they become one. When you become one, he who was your Maker, who so loved you, who became the husband, when you become one, you have an offspring. The offspring proves to you who you are. But the offspring is God’s only begotten son, who is the anointed David. And then you see him. Everyone will bring forth only one, and that one is God’s son.
People can’t quite see the mystery that Jesus… the word Jesus means “Jehovah saves,” that’s what the word means. It is really Jehovah and Jehovah’s name is I AM. And so when the child appears, he is the son of I AM. In the Old Testament, it’s revealed to us in the most marvelous way, but man can’t quite believe the word Jesse means I AM. We have all kinds of Jesses in the world. People name themselves Jesse, Jesse this, Jesse that, Jesse that, and to them it’s a name. The word Jesse is I AM. Well, “Whose son are you?” “I am the son of Jesse,” that’s what David said. And who is Jesse? I AM. So when you come forward, you come forward, because he so gave you himself you are one with God. But how will I know it? Wait, just wait a little while, and then a child will be brought from you. When the child comes, you’ll know him. He was always the Son of God. Now he’s your son, therefore, you are God. So the purpose of this whole fabulous wonderful drama is to bring forth his predetermined purpose. And the purpose is to give himself to me, to you, to all of us, as though there were no others in the world, just you and God in the beginning, and finally only you as God. That’s the great sacrifice: he completely gives himself to you; there aren’t two anymore. The only heaven is your son bearing witness of your fatherhood, and the son is David.
But in the meanwhile, we apply the principle of his law. “Blessed is the man who delights in the law of the Lord, for in all that he does he prospers.” And the law is conditional, no respecter of person. You could be the wisest, the loveliest, and the kindest person in the world. You begin to feel sorry for yourself and you’re entering the state that will bear the fruit of that state, and you’ll have every reason in the world to feel sorry for yourself. Don’t envy anyone; they’re only in a state. They’re either in that state deliberately, knowingly, or they entered it unwittingly. I ask you to enter every state knowingly. You can be healthy, you can be wealthy, you can be famous, and you can be anything in this world. And there is no man in the world based upon the state that he occupies today [who] is worthy of your admiration, no person in the world. Someone is in a state where he’s acclaimed as a great person. It’s only a state, and people bow before the state and make of it a god. There’s only one God and his name is I AM.
So someone goes by… I have seen it. A few years ago, in San Francisco—and may I tell you I admire General MacArthur, a marvelous, to me he’s a grand, wonderful man, I admire him as a true great American and a leader of men, no question about it. He entered this country after years abroad. A friend of mine in San Francisco, a very able lawyer, he acted like a little child of about three. You’ve never seen such devotion, such complete hypnosis when the general drove by. The crowd was hailing him for what he’d done for our country in the last war and in the first war; but this man, he would have followed him right straight to a gallows, and put his neck in place of the general. You’ve never seen such worshipfulness. And I wondered, I said to myself, “What is it all about? He’s been coming to my meetings for years, and he can’t see a state moving by.”
Recognize the state of greatness. Recognize a state, but to identify the individual as the state, he could tomorrow fall from that state and the same one will wonder what happened to his hero, not knowing it was a state. Where is Stalin? Where is Hitler? Where is Goering? Where, mention all of them, Trujillo, with all their statues and cities and towns named after them to be perpetuated forever? Suddenly the state is vacated and the little occupant is decapitated. ___(??). These are all states.
So don’t worship any being in this world. Worship only God, and God is really your husband. Love the man whose name you bear, love the woman who bears your name, but in the end they are shadows of the relationship of God and man. These are only shadows. Your real husband is God, and he’s more faithful than any man in this world could ever be to you. And so, they’re married for fifty years and sired many. I think of one mentioned earlier. So after thirty-odd years, leaving behind his many children, he marries another one who has four children. No criticism, perfectly all right. His father outlived his mother by a couple of years, and then he married a widow that he’d known through the years. Perfectly all right, and so he married her.
God will never marry anyone other than you. But no one in this world he loves more than he loves you; and you are, individually, his only love. That’s the mystery. He could never divorce you for another. And in his life because he is life itself, you could never die because he is life. He is wedded to you, and he’s so wedded to you that he’s determined to prove to you his love in the begetting of his son. And when he brings his son forth, it’s your son, your boy. And strangely enough, in that little phrase “one person in Christ Jesus” is a phrase used in Matthew, you’re his father, for God is a father and the heart of a father. Though he picks you out as his bride, when he completes the process, you are he. But he wasn’t a bride; he was father. That’s the mystery. He transforms you into himself. And he was, before he wedded you, a father, and so he transforms you, his bride. You are his emanation yet his wife ’til the sleep of death is over. When the sleep of death is over, you’re transformed into him; and he was, before he wedded you, a father, and so you are a father, and there is your son.
Now let us go into the Silence.
Q: (inaudible)
A: The question is, I speak so often of the fullness of time—this is taken from the Book of Galatians, the 4th chapter: “When the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were born under the law” (verse 4). Everything has its own appointed hour, all pregnancies in the world.
At what moment in time after the nailing of the cross within you he impregnated you with himself to beget you in his own likeness, I do not know at what moment in time. But at that fullness of time no one can stop it. What is that fullness of time? No one could be animated in this world, no one in this world could live and breathe were it not because of God nailed upon him. The 2nd chapter, the 20th verse of Galatians: “I have been crucified with Christ; it is not I who live, but Christ who lives in me; and the life I now live in the flesh I live by the faith in the Son of God.” There are two; one says “by the faith in the Son of God,” and one is “in his faith.” So you can take your choice—either because of his faith or my faith having felt him. But I am crucified, for I have been crucified with Christ.
So the act is finished, my crucifixion is through, yours is through, everyone’s is through or we couldn’t be here. But at one moment after the union—for to me a cross is a spiritual wedding—so it’s done. At that moment the wedding takes place. But when, after the union, were you impregnated with himself? He animates you, I am alive, but when would I be impregnated? I rest assured when the fullness of time has come, his son will come forward and call me “Father.” It has to, for the son only has so much time between impregnation and externalization. So when will he come? Well, again, Habakkuk, “It seems long, wait; for it is sure and it will not be late.” “For every vision has its own appointed hour; it ripens, it will flower. If it seem long, wait” (Habakkuk 2:3).
So I cannot tell anyone. Was this the night that infinite love embraced me? Was it that moment in time when I stood in his presence and he embraced me and I became one with his body that he impregnated me? I must confess it was infinite delight; it was sheer ecstasy when he embraced me and I became one with his body. Was that the moment of impregnation? I don’t know. I know he knows today I bear the marks of Jesus on my body. So he can’t impregnate me with anyone but that, and brings forward David to cry, “Father.” Now, whether that was that moment in time? That doesn’t go back very far, you know. I go back to the age when I was about twenty, twenty-one. And so this happened in 1959, and so it wasn’t too long, if that was the moment. But I cannot speak with authority. I know what’s happened, but I cannot definitely state that that was the moment of impregnation.
Prior to that I lived as everyone lives in the world, and I’m an animated being as we all are animated beings. But was that the moment when I stood in his presence and answered correctly that love was the greatest thing in the world? For he can only bring forth love: he calls David. But the very word David means “my beloved.” And so was it that, when he said to me, “What is the greatest thing in the world?” and I answered, “Faith, hope and love, these three, but the greatest of these is love.” Then he embraced me, and we became one, but really one, not two. And I was the body of the being who asked the question, and I stood in the presence of infinite love who is God. So was that the moment of impregnation? I don’t know. If that was, doesn’t take long between ___(??) and fulfillment.
Good night.