New Christian Bible Study

Commentary

 

Memorable Occurrences in Swedenborg's Writings

This list of Memorable Occurrences in Swedenborg's Writings was originally compiled by W. C. Henderson in 1960 but has since been updated.

From Swedenborg's Works

 

Apocalypse Revealed #462

Study this Passage

  
/ 962  
  

462. Since no one today knows what is meant by enchantments, we will briefly say what they are.

Enchantments are listed just above in place of the eighth commandment of the Decalogue, "You shall not bear false witness," for mentioned there are three other prohibited evils, namely, murders, sexual immorality, and thefts.

To bear false witness means, in the natural sense, to act as a false witness, to lie and defame; and in the spiritual sense it means to convince and persuade that falsity is true and that evil is good. It is apparent from this that to practice enchantment means, symbolically, to persuade someone of falsity and thus to destroy the truth.

[2] The practice of enchantments existed among ancient peoples, and they were accomplished in three ways:

First, they would keep someone else's hearing and thus his mind continually focused on their words and declarations, without letup on any part of them, while at the same time inspiring and instilling their thought then through their breathing, coupled with the affection in the tone of their discourse, with the result that the hearer could not form any thought of his own. Thus would speakers of falsehood forcibly infuse their falsities.

Second, they would infuse a persuasion, which they would do by keeping the mind from anything contrary, and by keeping it intent only on the idea in what they were saying. Thus the spiritual atmosphere of one person's mind dispelled the spiritual atmosphere of another person's mind and suffocated it. This was the spiritual witchcraft that magicians once employed, and they called it overcoming and binding the intellect. This kind of enchantment was an enchantment of the spirit or thought only, whereas the first kind was a enchantment of the mouth or speech as well.

[3] Third, a hearer would keep his mind so firmly in his own opinion that he would almost close his ears to hearing anything of what someone else was saying. He would accomplish this by holding his breath, and sometimes by a tacit muttering, and thus by a continual denial of his adversary's opinion. This kind of enchantment was practiced by people listening to others, while the first two kinds were practiced by people speaking to others.

These three kinds of enchantment were practiced among ancient peoples, and are still practiced among spirits in hell. In the case of people in the world, however, only the third kind remains, and this among people who have affirmed in themselves falsities of religion out of a conceit in their own intelligence. For when these people hear contrary views, they do not admit them any further into their thought than to superficial contact, and then they emit from the inner recess of their mind a kind of fire which consumes those views, of which the other person knows nothing beyond the indications of the facial expression and tone of voice in reply, if the enchanter does not contain that fire, that is, the anger of his conceit, by hiding it.

This kind of enchantment today causes truths not to be accepted, and in many cases, not to be understood.

[4] Many magical arts were practiced in ancient times, and that these included enchantments is apparent in the book of Deuteronomy:

When you come into the land..., you shall not learn to imitate the abominations of those nations. There shall not be found in you anyone who causes his son or his daughter to pass through fire, or one who practices witchcraft, or a diviner or fortune teller, or a user of potions, or one who uses enchantments, or one who inquires of an oracle, or a reader of signs, or one who seeks the dead. For (all of these things) are an abomination to Jehovah. (Deuteronomy 18:9-12)

A persuasion to falsity and thus the destruction of truth is symbolically meant by enchantments in the following passages:

Your wisdom and your knowledge have led you astray... Therefore evil shall come upon you... Stay now in your enchantments, and in the multitude of your sorceries... (Isaiah 47:10-12)

...by (Babylon's) enchantment all the nations were deceived. (Revelation 18:23)

Outside are dogs and enchanters and the sexually immoral and murderers... (Revelation 22:15)

(Joram said to Jehu,) "Is it peace...?" He answered, ."..as long as the harlotries of your mother Jezebel and her enchantments are many?" (2 Kings 9:22)

Harlotries symbolize falsifications (no. 134), and her enchantments symbolize destructions of truth by persuasions to falsity.

[5] Conversely, an enchantment may symbolize a rejection of falsity by truths, which was also accomplished by tacitly thinking and muttering against falsity out of a zeal for the truth, as is apparent from the following:

...Jehovah... will take away from Jerusalem... the mighty man, the man of war..., the counselor, the practiced mutterer, and the expert in enchantment. (Isaiah 3:1-3)

Their poison is like the poison of a... deaf cobra; it stops its ear, so as not to hear the voice of mutterers, of the skillful user of enchantments. (Psalms 58:4-5)

...behold, I am sending basilisk 1 serpents among you, against which there is no enchantment... (Jeremiah 8:17)

...in distress they sought you, they cried out in their muttering... (Isaiah 26:16)

Footnotes:

1. A legendary serpent or dragon, whose breath and glance were said to be lethal. Formerly identified in English translations of the Latin Vulgate with the cockatrice, and retained as such in the King James Bible.

----------

  
/ 962  
  

Many thanks to the General Church of the New Jerusalem, and to Rev. N.B. Rogers, translator, for the permission to use this translation.

From Swedenborg's Works

 

Survey of Teachings of the New Church #119

Study this Passage

  
/ 120  
  

119. The second memorable occurrence taken from Revelation Unveiled. One time just after I woke up from sleeping I fell into a deep meditation on God. Looking up I saw above me in heaven an oval of intensely shining light. As I fixed my gaze on the light, it gradually receded toward the sides and merged into the periphery [of my vision].

Then, behold, heaven opened up to me! I saw some magnificent things, and angels standing in a circle on the south side of the opening, talking to each other. Because a burning desire came over me to hear what they were saying, I was allowed to hear it—first the sound of it, which was full of heavenly love; then the conversation itself, which was full of the wisdom that goes with that love.

They were having a conversation about the only God, about being in partnership with God, and about the salvation that results. What they were saying was ineffable—most of it could not be expressed in the words of any earthly language. Several times before, however, I had been in gatherings of angels in heaven itself, and had been able to join in their conversation because I was then in a state similar to theirs. This enabled me to understand them now, and to select from their discussion a few points that could be expressed in a rational way using the words of earthly language.

[2] They were saying that the underlying divine reality is united, uniform, absolute, and undivided. They said that the same is true of the divine essence, because the underlying divine reality is the divine essence, and that the same is also true of God, because the divine essence that is the underlying divine reality is God. They used spiritual images as illustration.

They said, “The underlying divine reality cannot be divided into many entities, each of which possesses an underlying divine reality, and still remain united, uniform, absolute, and undivided. Otherwise each separate entity would think on its own from its own separate underlying divine reality. If it also happened to be concurrently of the same mind as the others, there would be a number of deities in agreement; there would not be one God. Agreement, or the consensus of many, each one acting on its own or by itself, is not an attribute of one God but of many.”

They did not say “gods” because they were unable to. It was suppressed by the light of heaven that shaped their thought and was the context in which their conversation took place. They also said that when they tried to utter the word “gods” and to describe each one as a person by himself, the effort to say that immediately veered off toward “one,” and in fact toward “the one only God.”

[3] They added, “The underlying divine reality is a reality in itself, not from itself, because if it were from itself, that would imply an underlying reality that existed in itself from some prior underlying reality. It would mean there was a god from a god, which is not possible. What comes from God is called ‘divine,’ but it is not called ‘God.’ What is ‘a god from God,’ what is ‘an eternally begotten god from God,’ and what is ‘a god emanating from an eternally begotten god from God’ except words utterly devoid of heavenly light?”

Later on they said, “The underlying divine reality, which in itself is God, is uniform—and uniform not just in a simple way but in an infinite number of ways. It is uniform from eternity to eternity. It is uniform everywhere, and it is uniform with everyone and in everyone. (It is the condition of the recipient that causes all the variety and variability in reception.)”

[4] The angels demonstrated the absoluteness of the underlying divine reality, which in itself is God, as follows: “God is the Absolute, because he is absolute love and absolute wisdom, or to put it another way, he is absolute goodness and absolute truth. As a result, he is life itself. If these qualities were not absolute in God they would never exist in heaven or in the world, because they would be relatively nonexistent compared to the Absolute. Every quality is what it is because it comes from the Absolute, both as its source and as its point of reference.

“The Absolute (meaning the underlying divine reality) has no specific location. It is with those and in those who are in specific locations, depending on how receptive they are. Love and wisdom, goodness and truth, and the life these qualities give are absolute in God; in fact, they are God himself. A specific location cannot be attributed to them, and neither can a progression from place to place as the source of their omnipresence—they are not in a particular place. For this reason the Lord says he is in the midst of people [Matthew 18:20]; and he is in them and they are in him [John 6:56; 14:20; 15:4, 5].

[5] “Nevertheless, no one can comprehend God as he is in himself. Therefore he appears as he is in himself to be a sun above the angelic heavens. He himself as wisdom emanates from that sun in the form of light, and he himself as love emanates from that sun in the form of heat. That sun is not God himself. The divine love and wisdom surrounding him as they first go forth from him come to angels’ view as a sun.

“The Absolute in that sun is the Human Being. It is our Lord Jesus Christ, including both the divine source and the divine-human manifestation. Since the Absolute, which is absolute love and absolute wisdom, was in him as his soul from the Father, therefore divine life or life in itself was in him. None of us is like this. The soul in us is not life; it is merely a vessel for receiving life.

“In fact, the Lord teaches this when he says, ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life’ (John 14:6); and in another passage, ‘Just as the Father has life in himself, so he has also granted the Son to have life in himself’ (John 5:26). ‘Life in himself’ is God.”

They added that people who have any spiritual light at all can see from all this that the underlying divine reality, which is also the divine essence, cannot be shared among many, because it is united, uniform, absolute, and undivided. If anyone were to claim that the divine reality could be shared, further points that person made on the subject would contain obvious contradictions.

[6] Then the angels became aware that my thoughts included common Christian ideas of God: ideas of a trinity of persons in unity, and a unity of persons in the Trinity, and also of the Son of God’s birth from eternity. At that point they said, “What are you thinking? Surely you are thinking those thoughts from an earthly light that is incompatible with our spiritual light. We are closing heaven to you and leaving unless you get rid of the ideas that go with that point of view.”

So I said, “Please go deeper into my thinking. Perhaps you will see a compatibility.”

They went deeper and saw that three persons to me meant three emanating divine activities: creating, redeeming, and regenerating, which are activities of the one only God. The birth of a Son of God from eternity to me meant his birth foreseen from eternity and carried out in time.

Then I explained that my earthly thoughts about the trinity and the unity of persons and about the eternally begotten Son of God were based on the church’s statement of faith that was named after Athanasius. I added that the Athanasian Creed is accurate, provided that instead of the trinity of persons mentioned there one substitutes a trinity in one person—a trinity that exists uniquely within the Lord Jesus Christ; and provided that instead of the birth of a Son of God from eternity one substitutes the birth foreseen from eternity and carried out in time, because his human manifestation is openly referred to as the Son of God.

[7] The angels then said, “Good, good.”

They asked me to pass on a statement from them: “Anyone who does not seek help from the absolute God of heaven and earth cannot come into heaven, because heaven is heaven as a result of the one only God. The absolute God is Jesus Christ, who is Jehovah the Lord, Creator from eternity, Redeemer in time, and Regenerator to eternity. He is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit combined. This is the gospel that needs to be preached.”

Afterward the heavenly light I had seen above the opening came back. It came down bit by bit and filled the inner reaches of my mind, enlightening my ideas of the unity and the trinity of God. Then I saw my former merely earthly ideas being separated out, just as husks are shaken off wheat tossed in a winnowing basket. I saw my old notions carried off as if by a wind to the north of heaven and scattered.

  
/ 120  
  

Thanks to the Swedenborg Foundation for their permission to use this translation.

©2024 New Christian Bible Study Corporation. All rights reserved. Printed from newchristianbiblestudy.org