Many of us enjoy the classes in which Joel answers questions from students. Sometimes the question is one that we ourselves might have asked. Other times it is one that might not have occurred to us, but which we find interesting, and we are curious about how Joel will answer it.
On this page of our website, on the first and third Saturdays of the month, we will post a new question and answer from one of Joel’s classes or books. We trust that you will find these interesting, helpful, and sometimes an answer to just what is on your mind.
You can also view, download, or print THIS question and answer by clicking/tapping here and then clicking on the download icon at the bottom of that page.
Posted on 7/4/26
This copyrighted excerpt is from Recording 623A: 1953 Second New York Closed Class, titled “Questions and Answers.” It is posted with the kind permission of the Estate of Joel S. Goldsmith, which holds the copy protection on the recorded classes and the copyright on the transcripts. The full transcript of this recording is available from The Infinite Way Office or by calling 1-800-922-3195.
Goldsmith Global has permission to provide this material to Goldsmith Global participants for educational and study purposes. Please respect the copyright on this material.
PLEASE NOTE: If you have access to the recording from which a question is excerpted, you might enjoy hearing Joel himself answer it. When possible, we will provide the time stamp at which Joel addresses the question. The timestamp is from the recording on the Streaming Service, which begins with a 10-second announcement. So, if you are listening to your own recording, the excerpt will probably begin 10 seconds before the timestamp.
If you have access to recording 623A and would like to hear Joel answer, he begins the class with this question, so just start the recording. If you have a streaming service subscription, you can go directly to this question and answer by clicking/tapping here. The recording will already be queued; simply tap the play button.
Q: “Whatsoever ye desire, believe that ye have it, and ye shall have it.”
A: Well, of course, in interpreting Scripture, it is always the wisest thing to turn within to see what interpretation is given to you, because you may receive a meaning from it that is your own, more especially your own for that particular moment, and I may receive a light that is mine.
Now, as you know, Scripture has been interpreted so that there are, oh, something over fifteen thousand different interpretations of the New Testament alone, and each one with some idea or unfoldment that has come to the particular individual. So when I interpret a quotation of Scripture, you will, of course, remember that that is in the light of the unfoldment that has come to me, and it does not necessarily mean that that is the last word on the subject, nor does it mean that it is absolutely correct insofar as it may apply to you.
That is very much like the subject of the will of God. I assume that you all know what the will of God is, what the will of God is for man, and, of course, I am assuming that with your background that you accept the will of God for man as being very good and having in it no plan or action of evil or quality of evil, nature of evil. Wouldn’t you say that you would agree on that?
Well, a minister, having read The Infinite Way, wanted to speak with me about it, and when it came to the subject of the will of God, his idea was that the will of God is always evil for man. There is no good will of God except after you’re dead and have gone to heaven and perhaps merited some reward. And his explanation was that volcanoes and tornadoes and heavy winds and droughts and wars and ships sinking at sea and airplanes falling from the air—this is all the will of God for man. And, of course, death itself is the will of God for man, and therefore, it is wrong to have spiritual healing, because it interferes with the will of God for man.
Now, you would hardly believe that this is an ordained minister, but it is. It is, and a very responsible one in his particular field. And to show you that he is neither just an isolated case nor insane, another minister recently visited one of our students, saying that he felt the call to save his soul. Why? Well, he knew this man hadn’t been in church for three years, and so his soul needed saving. And this man said, “My soul was never in better shape.” He said, “I study the Bible never less than one hour a day, sometimes more, and in fact, have been coming so close to God’s presence that I am doing spiritual healing.”
“Ah!” said the minister, “I knew it! I knew there was something wrong. You see, spiritual healing is all wrong. The members of our church,” he said, “asked for healing meetings, such as other branches of our same denomination have, and I finally consented. But at the first meeting, they brought in a young boy who had been injured in an automobile accident, his back injured. He was unable to walk, and they prayed for him. And at the second meeting he came in again, and this time he was healed.” And he said, “I have stopped those meetings. They just interfered with God’s plan for that boy. With prayer healing, mind you, praying to their own God, they succeeded in thwarting God’s will.”
Now, do you see why I say that my interpretation of Scripture may differ from others, and in many cases, it may differ from yours? I went on to tell this first minister that the will of God for man was good. He couldn’t agree, and I said, “Well, doesn’t God ever heal anyone or save anyone?”
“Oh,” he said, “That’s Christian Science.”
“Aha, the will of God for man in Christianity is evil, but in Christian Science it is good.” And I said, “We need more Christian Science.”
Now, you would be surprised at many of the interpretations of Scripture that you can hear in traveling around this world and meeting many ministers and priests and rabbis, as I have since I’ve been in this work. And so, when I say, “Accept my interpretation with a grain of salt until you’ve been to God yourself and gotten your own,” that’s exactly what I mean. Anything that you get from God is really and truly your own and is the law unto you at that moment. You may find a year later that you would get a different interpretation—a higher one if you’re advancing in understanding—but you will always get the one needful for you at that moment.
So to this, I will say, “Whatsoever ye desire, believe that you’ve received,” I would put that in the same classification with the statement, “To him that hath shall be given.” In other words, if you can believe that the good of God is yours; if you can rise to some measure of faith, of conviction, that the will of God is good, that’s what it will be unto you. I would not translate it to mean that if you can believe you’re going to get an automobile, you will get it, although I do know that in psychology that is possible. You can visualize a new automobile or a new home, and sometimes, through psychological processes or hypnotic suggestion, really come into the demonstration of it. That, of course, is not scriptural teaching nor is it spiritual in any wise. But if your innate desire is for God, someday God will open the door. If you knock, it will be opened to you. If you implore, it will be given unto you.
It is up to us—the desire of our devotion, the desire of our seeking, the desire of our praying and knocking—and if we can just stand fast in enough conviction to believe that the things of God will be opened unto us, it will be so. But do not make the mistake of using spiritual prayer for material objects. Do not pray for what ye shall eat or what ye shall drink, or wherewithal ye shall be clothed. The nations of the world desire those things and seek after them and pray after them. It profiteth them nothing. You must seek the kingdom of God, and all these things will be added unto you.
So if your desire, then, is for God, if your hope is in God, if your faith is in that direction and it continues there, it must ultimately come unto you. Very often, the trials and tribulations that come with us on our spiritual path would make it seem that God has deserted us or that we have become unworthy of God’s grace. Those are the periods of temptation. That is the meaning of temptation. We are never tempted to steal, even if we think we are. We are never tempted to lust, even if we think we are. We are never tempted with lack, even if we think we are. There is only one temptation that ever comes to us, and that is the temptation to believe in a presence and a power apart from God. We are tempted to believe that we have become separated from God. We are tempted to believe that we are ourselves something apart from God. That is our temptation.
Now, that temptation can take many forms. That temptation can take the form of lack of food and clothing and housing. It can take the form of lack of transportation. It can take the form of lack of business, lack of income, lack of morals, lack of health. But those are only the forms that the one temptation assumes. The one temptation is to believe that God has forsaken us or that we have become unworthy of God.
Neither of these can be true. Why? In our spiritual identity, we are one with God. As mortals, even good ones, we are not in the kingdom of God and never will be. It becomes our task, as mortals, as ordinary humans born into this belief of separation from God, to return to the Father’s house and be vested with the robe, the purple robe and jeweled ring of divine Sonship.
Now, in our true being, in our spiritual identity, we are the Son of God. Divine Sonship is our right and our heritage. As humans, we are the prodigal. We have wandered away from the Father’s house. We are using up our substance every day, getting weaker, getting older, getting poorer, getting less able to contend with the world. All of these things are happening to us as the prodigal, away from the Father’s house, and, of course, our clothes are wearing out, too. There’s no royal raiment about us. But as we realize the nature of our plight and turn back to the Father’s house step by step, ultimately, we find the Father rushing out to us, investing us with the royal robe of divine Sonship and that royal ring, that jeweled ring emblematic of our princely state, that of a Son of God.
Now then, in truth, the father and the son had never been separated. It was only in the Prodigal’s belief that he was ever other than the Son of God. At no time was he other than the Son of God, but he had turned away from the house of his father and his father’s heritage. Now, as he awakens, he returns. And so it is.
To desire the return to the Father’s house, to desire the realization of divine Sonship, to desire, to hope, to pray fervently, to use every means in our power to bring ourselves back to a state of consciousness in which we realize our divine Sonship, that must fulfill Itself, even though like the journey of the pilgrim, it is a long one and one beset with many fears, trials, and tribulations.
The point that we must agree upon is this: that divine Sonship is our true estate; that as humans, we still are the divine Son of the Father, merely, in a measure, unaware of it and turning back to the realization of it. And that is why I say that our errors in life are not actual conditions of being, and therefore, nothing has to be corrected or changed on the outer plane. All that takes place is an activity of truth in our consciousness.
In other words, supposing I now, for some reason, imagine myself to be a beggar, poor, outcast. Now, what must I do to be that which I am? Must I go through some process of getting a job, and earning money, and saving money, and going to a Turkish bath, and getting cleaned and so forth and so on? No, no. All I have to do is have a change of activity of consciousness and awaken to my true identity, and my whole identity as the beggar is wiped out.
You would be surprised at some of the opinions, concepts, and beliefs that are held by people about everybody from Jesus Christ to you and me. Now, what shall we do about it? Something in the external to change ourselves, or remain in the realization of ourselves as we are, and permit everyone else to have a change of activity in their consciousness about us?
In the writings—I have written this because right from the start of this ministry, I have been honored by violent gossip and rumor thrown in my direction about myself—and in the writings, I have said, “Please, please, please, if this comes to your attention, don’t alibi me; don’t think to make excuses for me.” You won’t be believed, even if you believe it. Just maintain your own integrity and believe that which comes to you as an experience, and tell the other fellows to find out more for themselves. Do you see what I’m getting at? That whatever I am, that I am, but somebody’s opinion or rumor or gossip doesn’t change that. The change mustn’t be made out here. I don’t have to change myself; somebody must change their concept about me.
Well, so it is. I also entertain a false concept of myself. I do not yet make the declaration that I am the Christ, and yet, in reality, someday I must do that, just as you must. You must come to the realization that you are the child of God, the full and complete child of God, the Christ of God, the Son of God, the divine heir of God. Well, you see how hesitant we are to come out boldly and make that claim? There’s a reason. Not that we have to change ourselves and grow to the stature of manhood in Christ Jesus, but to the realization that that is our true identity! Do you see that? There is the whole picture. All of this that we’re going through in this classwork . . . surely, there it is in Scripture: “Be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind.” Do you see that? Not by some external thing, not by some external change: “Be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind.”
Now, there’s my interpretation of it: that all we have to do is go within and have a transformation whereby we now not only learn our true identity but actually come to a place of acceptance of ourselves as the divine heir, the divine child of God. Now, as long as you are carrying around a sick body or a sick purse, it will be very difficult to convince yourself, and so don’t attempt it through affirmations and self-hypnotization. Don’t attempt it just by going around declaring, “Oh, I am the child of God, I am the child of God, I am the child of God,” because you may hypnotize yourself into believing that and then find out that you can’t measure up to your statement of yourself; that is, you can’t measure up in demonstration.
Don’t lift yourself there by affirmations and self-hypnosis. The way to lift yourself there is through the reading of Scripture and the permitting of God, the divine Intelligence, to interpret it to you, so that bit by bit you come to actually see that the will of God for man is good, that you come to apprehend and comprehend that divine Sonship is your true relationship with God. Don’t you see that? It is not a matter of somebody making the statement that you are the Son of God and then turning around and affirming yourself into it, but rather, slowly, step by step, through Scripture and by any spiritual literature that will help you into the realization, “Why, this must be so!”