Drawn from four Joel S. Goldsmith class recordings. Goldsmith's words are quoted as spoken on the tapes, with punctuation added. Scripture is from the King James Version.
Overview
Most of us were taught to think of supply as money in the bank, food in the cupboard and a job that pays the bills. In four class tapes recorded in the 1950s, Joel Goldsmith gives a very different answer. Supply, he says, is spirit. It is God, and it is already within us. Money, food, work and home are only the forms supply takes. Once we know the Source, the forms follow.
This fits closely with a theme that runs through Bible Fun Quiz: our true identity is not that of a beggar but of a son and heir. "Wherefore thou art no more a servant, but a son; and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ" (Galatians 4:7).
1. Money Is a Symbol; Supply Is Spirit
In the 1955 Cape Town class Invisible Supply, Goldsmith compares supply to truth. You never see truth itself, he says, only its symbols on a page or its sound in your ear. Supply works the same way:
"Money is a symbol of supply. The fruit on trees or the crops in the ground, these are symbols of supply. These are forms which supply assumes. But supply itself is invisible and it is within you."
He gives a business example. Of a company sold for its assets and its goodwill, he says: "The intangible was worth more than the physical assets of the corporation." Goodwill can't be seen or touched, yet it is real. Supply is like that too.
2. The Orange Tree
To show the difference between supply and its forms, Goldsmith turns to the orange tree illustration from his book The Infinite Way. The oranges are not the supply. Pick them, sell them, or lose them to wind or worms, and:
"The supply is still there because the supply is operating inside of the tree and will appear in its due season as another crop of oranges."
Every crop can be used up. The life inside the tree can't. The same is true of us. What shows up in our bank account is this season's crop. The Source keeps producing.
3. Seek God, Not Things
If supply is within, it makes no sense to hunt for it outside. Goldsmith builds on Jesus' words, "the kingdom of God is within you" (Luke 17:21):
"If the kingdom of God is within you, then the place to seek it would be within."
So the real "demonstration" is not money at all. It is knowing God:
"The demonstration of supply is the demonstration of the realization of God."
In Spiritual Supply: Between Two Worlds he connects this to the familiar promise "But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you" (Matthew 6:33). Had the world been taught "to seek first the kingdom of God, to make this inner contact," he says, "there'd be no lack anywhere on earth."
4. "Son, Thou Art Ever With Me"
The verse that sits at the center of all four tapes is the father's answer to the elder brother in the parable of the prodigal son: "Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine" (Luke 15:31). Goldsmith draws out its meaning:
"Son, thou art ever with me. All that I have is thine. So as long as you are ever with God and so long as you ever have God with you, you have supply."
He links it with Jesus' words, "I and my Father are one" (John 10:30):
"All of God's supply is man's supply. All of God's love is man's love. Why? Because I and the father are one."
In the tape on Spiritual Supply, he asks why such a promise should be in Scripture at all: "Why should such a statement be in scripture if it isn't true?"
This is the sonship theme in plain words. "And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ" (Romans 8:17). An heir doesn't plead for an inheritance that is already his. He learns to recognise it.
5. No "My Supply" or "Your Supply"
In Between Two Worlds, Goldsmith reminds us that everything belongs to God. "The earth is the LORD'S, and the fulness thereof" (Psalm 24:1). So he says:
"I must lose all sense of limitation by not claiming anything as mine."
He asks us to look at the world even in the years of depression and "see if there was any lack," any less "cattle on a thousand hills." That is an echo of Psalm 50:10: "For every beast of the forest is mine, and the cattle upon a thousand hills."
6. The Self-Contained Tree
Looking at a tree outside the classroom window, Goldsmith notes that it doesn't draw from the tree next to it:
"Just by looking at that tree you have a picture in front of yourself of self-containment, self-perpetuation, self-sustainment."
Sun, rain and soil all come to the tree, drawn by the life inside it. So it is with us:
Our awareness of supply, he says, is not about pulling things toward us. It is "drawing the indwelling supply forth from us."
7. At the Beautiful Gate
In Spiritual Supply and Its Demonstration, Goldsmith retells Acts 3. Peter said to the lame man, "Silver and gold have I none; but such as I have give I thee: In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth rise up and walk" (Acts 3:6). Goldsmith's point is that the apostles gave what they had, an awareness of God, and the man received it in the form he needed:
"They gave the beggar at their level of consciousness, which was what? Spiritual understanding, the understanding of the presence of God. That's all they gave him. But the beggar interpreted it as a new pair of legs and he jumped up dancing."
8. "God Does Not Give": Goldsmith's View
Here Goldsmith makes one of his boldest statements. It is his own teaching, not a doctrine every reader will share:
"God does not give supply. God does not give money. God does not give employment... God is spirit. God gives himself."
What he means is that God doesn't hand out things separately from himself. God gives his own presence, and that presence appears as our good. Readers may want to set this beside James 1:17: "Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights." The two need not clash. James honours God as the Source of every good gift. Goldsmith is pointing out that the greatest gift is the Giver himself.
9. His Own Story of Lack
Goldsmith was open about his own struggle. Early in his healing practice he faced "the problem of maintaining a family with an insufficient income." One day, out walking, he remembered Psalm 37:25: "yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread."
"And so it must be not that there was any fault with God or truth, but the fault must lie with me."
When he asked himself what God is, he found he only knew quotations: "When it came right down to it, I knew nothing but quotations." The answer came as a realisation of oneness. God is "the very life, the very soul" of man, and "God has established the fullness of his wisdom in us... the fullness of his supply in us." He said, "That immediately changed my life."
10. Manna, Ravens and Loaves
Scripture is full of supply showing up in unexpected forms: manna in the wilderness (Exodus 16), and the ravens feeding Elijah. "And the ravens brought him bread and flesh in the morning, and bread and flesh in the evening" (1 Kings 17:6). There is also the feeding of the five thousand (Matthew 14). Goldsmith takes these stories personally:
"I need not be surprised if the ravens bring me food... I need not be surprised whatever form of supply comes to me or through what means."
He calls this inner Presence "this that multiplies loaves and fishes," and asks why the Master taught supply "by multiplying loaves and fishes and proving how abundant it is without limit, always with baskets full left over."
11. Love and Giving: Letting It Flow Out
Finally, Goldsmith teaches that supply flows out from us, not in. People who lack, he says, have often "never felt the real feeling of gratitude, of love, of giving, of sharing." Supply "may be right outside the door, but it cannot roll up to your or my door except as we open our consciousness." Even a little "human love, giving, sharing, serving" opens that door. As the Lord Jesus said, "It is more blessed to give than to receive" (Acts 20:35).
In Short
Supply is spirit, and it is already within you. Money and things are its forms. Seek God, the Source, and the forms will follow. You are not a beggar at the gate. You are a son and heir, and the Father's word to you is still: "Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine."
Credits
Quotations are from these Joel S. Goldsmith class recordings:
- 706B – Invisible Supply (Cape Town, 1955)
- 292A – Spiritual Supply and Its Demonstration
- 266A – Spiritual Supply
- 549A – Spiritual Supply: Between Two Worlds
Scripture quotations: King James Version.