Abraham: The Promise and the Covenant

Neville Goddard taught that the Bible is not history, but a psychological drama. Every character, event, and covenant represents a process within the human mind. At the heart of this process is the Promise—that whatever you dare to assume as true, and persist in, will become your reality.

This Promise is powerfully expressed in the story of Abraham. In Genesis 15, God tells Abraham to look up at the stars and count them, saying, “So shall your seed be.” Traditionally interpreted as a prophecy about descendants, Neville revealed that it is a symbol of infinite inner potential. The stars represent states—possibilities—available to imagination. “Seed” here echoes the principle found in Genesis 1:11, where the seed is described as being “in itself”—meaning every seed contains within it the full power and pattern for its own fulfilment. In the same way, the assumption sown in consciousness contains all that is needed to manifest as reality.

Abraham’s journey, then, is the journey of anyone learning to trust imagination. When he believes what he cannot yet see, he is credited with righteousness. In Neville’s terms, this means Abraham assumes the feeling of the wish fulfilled—he lives from the end, and this inner movement is what makes him “righteous.”

Following this vision, Abraham enters into a covenant with God. Animals are cut in two and a smoking furnace and burning lamp pass between them. Neville interpreted this not as a historical ritual, but as a symbolic act of inner certainty. The divided pieces represent doubt and duality being laid aside. The furnace and lamp are the subconscious mind and the light of imagination—moving between and sealing the vision.

For Neville, the covenant is not God swearing to do something later—it is a picture of what always happens when imagination is impressed by faith. Once an idea is accepted as true within, it must express without. The covenant guarantees that what is imagined in faith will be fulfilled.

This is the Bible's inner logic: not that promises are “granted,” but that assumptions harden into fact. Abraham’s seed is whatever you dare to believe. The Promise and the Covenant are not external; they are the structure of reality for the one who knows imagination creates.