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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

 

Survey of Teachings of the New Church #114

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114. To these points I will add two memorable occurrences taken from Revelation Unveiled.

The first memorable occurrence. I was suddenly overcome with a deathly illness. My whole head felt worse and worse. A poisonous smoke was blowing in from the great city that spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt (Revelation 11:8). I was half dead and in severe pain. I thought I was about to die. I lay in bed in that condition for three and a half days. My spirit developed this sickness, and then my body came down with it as well.

Then I heard voices around me saying, “Look, he is lying dead in the street of our city—the one who was preaching that we should repent so that our sins would be forgiven and [that we should worship] only Christ the human being.”

They asked some of the clergy, “Is he worthy of burial?” (We read that the same thing happened to the two witnesses who were killed in that city; see Revelation 11:8, 9, 10.)

The clergy replied, “No. Let him lie there as a spectacle.”

They kept going away and coming back to mock me.

And I am telling the truth when I say that this happened to me at the very time that I was explaining the eleventh chapter of the Book of Revelation.

Then I heard more serious words from the people who had been mocking me—especially these: “How can repentance be practiced apart from faith? How can Christ the human being be adored as God? Given that we are saved for free without our deserving it at all, what then do we need except faith alone—the faith that God the Father sent the Son to take away the damnation of the law, to credit us with his own merit, to justify us before the Father, to absolve us from our sins, and then to give us the Holy Spirit, who activates every good thing within us? Aren’t these points in accordance with Scripture and also with reason?”

The crowd of bystanders applauded these statements.

[2] I heard all this but was unable to respond because I was lying there almost dead.

After three and a half days, however, my spirit regained its health. In the spirit I went from that street into the city, and I said again, “Practice repentance and believe in Christ, and your sins will be forgiven and you will be saved. If you do not, you will perish. The Lord himself preached that we must repent in order for our sins to be forgiven, and that we must believe in him. He commanded the disciples to preach the same message. Surely the dogma of your faith leads to utter complacency about the way you live!”

“What are you babbling about?” they replied. “The Son has made satisfaction. The Father has assigned us the Son’s merit and has justified us for the reason that these are our beliefs. We are now led by the spirit of grace. What sin could there be within us? What death could there be among us? Do you grasp this Good News, you preacher of sin and repentance?”

Then a voice from heaven said, “Surely the faith of someone who has not practiced repentance is nothing but a dead faith. The end has come, the end has come upon you who are complacent, guiltless in your own eyes, justified by your own faith—devils!”

At that moment a chasm suddenly opened up in the middle of the city and spread outward. The houses were falling in on each other and the people were swallowed up. Soon water bubbled up from the great hole and flooded what was already devastated.

[3] After they sank to a lower level and were seemingly covered in water, I wanted to know what their situation was like in the depths. A voice from heaven told me, “You will see and hear.”

Then the water that had seemingly flooded them disappeared from before my eyes. (Water in the spiritual world is a correspondence that appears around people who have false beliefs.) I saw the people in a sandy place at a great depth, where there were piles of stones. They were running between the piles of stones and loudly bemoaning their having been cast out of their great city.

They were shouting and wailing, “Why has this happened to us? We are clean, pure, just, and holy because of our faith.”

Others were saying, “Surely through our faith we have been cleansed, purified, justified, and sanctified.”

Still others were asking, “Hasn’t our faith made it possible for us to be seen and esteemed by God the Father and the whole Trinity, and to be declared before angels, as clean, pure, righteous, and holy? Haven’t we been reconciled, atoned for, ritually purged, and therefore absolved, washed, and wiped free of our sins? Didn’t Christ take away the damnation of the law? Why then have we been thrown down here like the damned? We did hear from a bold proclaimer of sin in our great city, ‘Believe in Christ and practice repentance.’ But didn’t we believe in Christ when we believed in his merit? Didn’t we practice repentance when we confessed that we were sinners? Why then has this happened to us?”

[4] A voice was then heard from the side: “Are you aware of any sin in yourselves? Have you ever examined yourselves, and then abstained from any evil because it is sinful against God? If you do not abstain from sin, then you are still devoted to it; and sin is the Devil. You, then, are the people of whom the Lord spoke when he said, ‘You will then begin to say, “We ate and drank with you. You taught in our streets.” But he will say, “I tell you, I do not know you, where you are from. Depart from me, all you workers of wickedness”’ (Luke 13:26, 27). Matthew 7:22, 23 is also about you. Therefore go away, each to your own place. Do you see the holes leading to those caves? Go in there, and each of you will be given your own work to do, and food in accordance with your work. If you don’t go in, your hunger will drive you in.”

[5] After that a voice from heaven came to some people who were up at the level of the ground but were outside the city (see Revelation 11:13). The voice said loudly, “Beware! Beware of associating with people like that. Don’t you understand that evils that are called sins and acts of wickedness make us unclean and impure? How can you be cleansed and purified from them except by active repentance and by faith in the Lord God the Savior? Active repentance is examining yourselves, recognizing and admitting to your sins, accepting that you are at fault, confessing them before the Lord, begging for his help and power in resisting them, stopping doing them, and living a new life. All this is to be done as if you were doing it on your own. Do this once or twice a year when you are about to take Holy Communion. Afterward, when the sins for which you are at fault recur, say to yourselves, ‘We do not want these, because they are sins against God.’ This is actual repentance.

[6] “Surely you can all recognize that if you do not examine yourselves and see your sins, you remain in them. From birth you find all evils delightful. It feels good to take revenge, to be promiscuous, to steal, and to slander. Because they feel good you overlook them. If someone happens to point out to you that they are sins, you make excuses for them because they feel good. You use false arguments to defend them and convince yourselves that they are not sins, and you stay in them. And afterward you do those evil things more than you did before, to the point where you no longer know what sin is or even whether there is such a thing.

“It is different, however, for people who actively go through a process of repentance. The evils that they recognize and admit to [in themselves] they call sins. They therefore begin to abstain and turn away from them. Eventually they begin to feel the pleasure of those evils as unpleasant. The more this happens, the more they see and love what is good, and eventually even feel delight in it, which is the delight that the angels in heaven feel. Briefly put, the more we put the Devil behind us, the more we are adopted by the Lord and are taught, led, held back from what is evil, and kept in what is good by him. This is the pathway from hell to heaven; there is no other way.”

[7] It is amazing that Protestants have such a deep-seated resistance, antipathy, and aversion to active repentance. Their reaction to it is so strong that they cannot force themselves to do self-examination, to see their sins, and to confess them before God. It is as if they are overcome by horror as soon as they form the intention to do it. I have asked many Protestants in the spiritual world about this, and they all said that it is completely beyond their strength. When they heard that Catholics practice this, that is, that they examine themselves and openly confess their sins to a monk, the Protestants were profoundly amazed, especially since the Protestants themselves could not do this even in secret before God, although they had been commanded, just as the Catholics had been, to do this when they were about to take the Holy Supper. Some people in the spiritual world investigated why this was, and discovered that faith alone was what had led to such an impenitent state and such an attitude of heart. Then those Protestants were allowed to see that Catholics are saved if they turn to Christ and worship him, and no longer worship but only honor the leaders of their churches.

[8] After that we heard a kind of thunder, and a voice speaking from heaven and saying, “We are amazed. Say to the gathering of Protestants, ‘Believe in Christ and practice repentance, and you will be saved.’”

So I said it.

I added, “Clearly, baptism is a sacrament of repentance and therefore introduction into the church. What else do godparents promise for the child being baptized but that she or he will renounce the Devil and all his works? Clearly, the Holy Supper is a sacrament of repentance and therefore introduction into heaven. Doesn’t the priest say to those about to take it that they absolutely have to practice repentance first? Clearly, the Ten Commandments are the universal teaching of the Christian church; they urge repentance. Isn’t it true that the six commandments on the second tablet say, ‘You are not to do this and that thing that is evil,’ not, ‘You are to do this and that thing that is good’? Therefore you are capable of knowing that the more we abstain from what is evil, the more we love what is good; and that before that, we do not know what good is, or even what evil is.”

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

From Swedenborg's Works

 

Conjugial Love #183

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183. The second account:

A grove of palms and laurels appeared to me in the eastern zone, with the trees planted in rings in the form of spirals. Going over, I entered and walked along paths that curved around through several of the rings, and at the end of the paths I saw a garden, which formed the heart of the grove. Between the grove and the garden stood a small bridge, having a gate on the grove side and another gate on the garden side. I approached, and a keeper opened the gates. When I asked him what the name of the garden was, he said, "Adramandoni, which means the delight of conjugial love."

I went in, and behold, I found olive trees, with vines running and hanging down from one tree to another, and with bushes in flower beneath the trees and between them. In the middle of the garden there was a grassy circle, on which husbands and wives and young men and women were sitting, paired off in couples; and at the center of the circle was an elevated piece of ground, where a little fountain of water spurted up into the air owing to the force of its stream.

When I moved closer to the circle, I saw two angels in purple and scarlet, who were speaking with the people sitting on the grass and talking about conjugial love, its origin and its delights. And because this love was the subject of their conversation, the people were listening with eager attention and full receptivity, producing in them a feeling of exaltation as though from the fire of love in the speech of the angels.

[2] I have condensed into summary form the following excerpts from their conversation:

The angels began by remarking how difficult it is to investigate and discern the origin of conjugial love, since it has a Divine origin in heaven; for the origin is Divine love, Divine wisdom, and Divine application to useful purpose. These three emanate as one from the Lord, and they flow as one from Him into people's souls, and through their souls into their minds; and there they flow into the inner affections and thoughts, through these into desires nearer the body, and from these through the breast into the reproductive region. Here all the forces derived from the first origin exist concurrently, and together with successive elements, result in conjugial love.

After this the angels said, "Let the interchange in our discussion be by questions and answers, because although a perception of something does indeed flow in when gained solely from listening, still it does not remain unless the listener also thinks about it for himself and asks questions regarding it."

[3] Then some of the married group said to the angels, "We have heard that conjugial love has a Divine origin in heaven, because it comes from an influx from the Lord into people's souls; and that being from the Lord, its origin is love, wisdom, and application to useful purpose - these being the three essential attributes which together make up the one Divine essence. We have also heard that nothing but what is of the Divine essence can emanate from the Lord and flow into the inmost being of a person, which is called his soul; and that these three essential attributes of it are transformed into analogous and corresponding qualities as they descend into the body. So now, the first question we ask is what is meant by the third essential Divine emanation, which is called application to useful purpose."

The angels replied that love and wisdom without application to useful purpose are only abstract and theoretical ideas, which, even after being entertained for a time in the mind, eventually pass away like the winds. "But love and wisdom are brought together in application to useful purpose," they said, "and in this they become a single entity which is called actual. Love cannot rest unless it acts, for love is the active force in life; nor can wisdom exist and endure unless it does so from love and together with love whenever love acts, and to act is application to useful purpose. Therefore we define application to useful purpose as the doing of good from love through wisdom. Application to useful purpose is what good is.

[4] "Since these three elements - love, wisdom, and application to useful purpose - flow into people's souls, we can see why it is said that all good is from God. For all action from love through wisdom is called good, and action includes also application to useful purpose.

"Love without wisdom - what is it but a kind of foolish infatuation? And love accompanied by wisdom, but without application to a useful end - what is it but an airy affectation of the mind? On the other hand, love and wisdom together with application to a useful end - these not only make a person what he is, but they also are the person. Indeed, what may perhaps surprise you, they produce the person. For a man's seed contains his soul in perfect human form, clothed with substances from the finest elements of nature, out of which the body is formed in the womb of the mother. This useful end is the supreme and final end of Divine love acting through Divine wisdom."

[5] Finally the angels said, "We reach the inevitable conclusion that all reproduction, all propagation, and all procreation stem in origin from an influx of love, wisdom, and application to useful purpose flowing in from the Lord - from a direct influx from the Lord into the souls of human beings, from an indirect influx into the souls of animals, and from a still more indirect influx into the inmost elements in plants. All these processes, moreover, take place in things that are last in order as a result of things that are first in order.

"Processes of reproduction, propagation and procreation are clearly continuations of creation; for creation can have no other source than Divine love acting through Divine wisdom in Divine application to useful purpose. Everything in the universe is therefore generated and formed as a result of useful purpose, in fulfillment of useful purpose, and to serve a useful purpose."

[6] Afterwards the people sitting on the banks of grass asked the angels, "What is the source of the delights of conjugial love, delights which are beyond number and description?"

The angels replied that these delights arise from the useful applications of love and wisdom, and that this could be seen from considering that to the extent anyone loves to become wise for the sake of some genuinely useful purpose, to the same extent he is in the stream and vigor of conjugial love, and to the extent he is in this stream and vigor, to the same extent he enjoys their delights.

"Application to useful purpose produces this result," they said, "because love [finds expression in useful purpose] through wisdom [and they] take delight in each other, and play with each other, so to speak, like little children. And as they mature, they congenially unite together, which is accomplished as though through stages of betrothal, wedding, marriage and the bearing of offspring, and this continually and with variety to eternity.

"These conjunctions between love and wisdom take place inwardly in application to useful purpose. In their beginnings, however, the delights are imperceptible, but they become more and more perceptible as they descend by degrees from their beginnings and enter the body. They enter by degrees from the soul into the interior regions of a person's mind, and from there into its outer regions, and from there to within the breast, and from there into the reproductive region.

[7] And though a person does not perceive anything of these conjugal and heavenly interplays in the soul, from the soul they insinuate themselves into the inner regions of the mind in the form of peace and innocence, and into the outer regions of the mind in the form of bliss, felicity and delight, while within the breast they appear in the form of the delights of inmost friendship, and in the reproductive region as the delight of delights owing to the continual influx all the way from the soul, bringing with it an actual sensation of conjugial love.

"Such conjugal interplays of love and wisdom in application to useful purpose in the soul become lasting as they proceed towards their place within the breast, and there within the breast they manifest themselves perceptibly in an infinite variety of delights. And because of the marvelous communication of the interior of the breast with the reproductive region, in that region the delights become the delights of conjugial love - delights which are heightened over all other delights that exist in heaven and in the world, because the use served by conjugial love is the most excellent use of all; for it results in the propagation of the human race, and from the human race comes the angelic heaven."

[8] To this the angels added that people know nothing about the variety of the countless delights connected with truly conjugial love if they do not have from the Lord a love of growing wise for the sake of some useful purpose. "For," they said, "people who do not love to become wise in accord with genuine truths, but prefer to be irrational in accord with falsities, and who through this irrationality of theirs are motivated by some love to serve evil purposes - in their case the way to the soul is closed. As a result the conjugal and heavenly interplays of love and wisdom in the soul become more and more cut off, and together with them, conjugial love with its flow, vigor, and delights."

The people who were listening said in response that they perceived that conjugial love depends on a love from the Lord of growing wise for the sake of useful purposes. The angels replied that this was so. And then on the heads of some of the listeners appeared little wreaths of flowers.

So they asked, "Why is this?"

The angels said, "Because you understood more deeply." And then the angels departed from the garden, with these people in the midst of them.

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

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