1962 Manchester Closed Class
Joel S. Goldsmith
491B – The New Man 1/5

Good evening.

The attention of the world has for many years been on the subject of “attaining one world.” A world in which all people can be at-one with each other, and in which all of their interests may be one. Behind this of course, is the fact that human history has divided us up into many peoples, many nations, many races, many religions.

But the basic truth of life is that there is only one God. Here you have the foundation of all relationships; here you have that which will determine the entire future of the world: the fact that there is only one God. In other words, there is no such thing as a Jewish God or a Christian God or an Oriental God. There is no such thing as an English God or French God or American God—there is only one God. Surely the human race worships many gods, and yet not quite many gods; rather, many concepts of God.

We may of course entertain or worship any concept of God that is presented to us. And this is actually what happens. When we are defenseless children, our parents and our churches present to us concepts of God, which we have no way of denying, no way of refuting. And because of the authority vested in them, concepts that they can really enforce upon us.

The history of the world shows how few there are able to overcome the early conditioning, and overthrow the concept of God to which they were introduced, and begin to seek and search for themselves for the true God. This remember happens in pagan countries, and in so called civilized countries—there is no exception to this. One generation passes on its concept of truth or its concept of God to the next. And then comes the struggle to overcome those early concepts, when we individually discover that the God we have been worshiping is not doing for us what the true God would be doing if we knew the true God and could make contact with the true God.

The history of the world is a testimony, a living testimony, to the failure of god, that is, to the failure of the gods that have been worshiped. Never believe that God has failed—mankind has failed to find God, and has been worshiping idols, mental images in thought, in one form or another.

Here and there throughout the ages, you discover that there are men who have discovered the God, the one and only God, and each of these has revealed this God to followers, disciples, apostles, students. Always however, the vision of God has been lost. It would take an entire encyclopedia to give you all of the reasons that it has been found necessary to hide this God from the people so that they may not be enlightened, awakened, and thereby be made free.

Moses discovered the true God, and Moses’ career shows forth what does happen when an individual discovers God. Moses not only was enabled to carve out for himself a life that has enabled him to come down through all of these centuries, known as the prophet, the man, the seer who took a whole nation out of slavery, without arms or ammunition. Took an entire people away from a nation well supplied with arms and ammunition; took them right out from under these weapons of flesh, and brought to them their first semblance of freedom. And we are told how he accomplished it. He accomplished it by his knowledge, his understanding of God—in no other way.

In one day he was just an ordinary man like everyone else, the next day he sets out to become a leader, an emancipator of an entire race of people. And he accomplishes his purpose, and he does it because in the interval of that one day, God revealed Himself to Moses, and on the strength of that revelation these great works were done.

Elsewhere in human history, in the Hebrew human history, you find other Masters who had attained the same revelation as Moses, the same understanding of the nature of God. They too have come down to us, their names not lost, their works not lost, but preserved through all of these centuries, and only for one reason: because by their understanding of God, they not only carved out their own lives as prophets, seers, but did mighty works for their followers.

Christ Jesus comes to us, and in the light of what has been revealed now in the Dead Sea Scrolls, it must seem strange that a man who is an ordained Hebrew rabbi, teaching and preaching in the synagogues, should twenty centuries later, stand forth as the origin, the start of a whole new religious dispensation. The founder, you might say the “creator” of Christianity—the revelator.

It really sounds like an impossible story of from bootblack to President in one generation. But it is so; it is so that we have now spreading the world, at a far more rapid rate than ever before in history, the teachings of Christ Jesus being held up to a wider circle in the Occident than in the Orient.

You might say that at last Christianity is coming into its own and being recognized as a world religion, a universal religion. And so it will be that some day it will be the only religion. Not in its present form because forms change, but in its essence and teaching. And what is the essence of that teaching?—the name and nature of God. This is the discovery of Christ Jesus, or rediscovery, this is the revelation on which Christianity is based. This is the revelation that is taking hold of the entire world—the nature of God.

This God, that we find to be the foundation of Christianity and which is spreading and being accepted as the basis of other religions, has the same God that Moses had, the same God that Isaiah preached, the same God of Elijah and Elisha: the God revealed as “I Am.” This is the one God; this is the only God.

Men may build as many concepts of God as they will, but this will be nothing more nor less than idolatry. The moment that we move away from the God of “I Am,” we move away from the one true God and begin to entertain concepts of God, ideas about God, theories about God, opinions about God. But, pray to these concepts of God, pray to these theories of God, and where are the answers? Pray to all of these images of God that have been presented to us, not only externalized images in form, but the mental images that have been given to us as concepts of God—pray to these, and see what manner of answer comes forth. And you will discover no answer comes forth, because there can be no answer from an opinion, there can be no answer from a concept. Answers can only come from the actual Source, the actual Being, the actual God, which “I Am.” “I Am” alone is God.