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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

 

True Christian Religion #110

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110. At this point I shall introduce these accounts of experiences, of which this is the first.

In the spiritual world I once saw a shooting star, which fell to earth surrounded by a streak of light. It was a meteor of the sort popularly known as a dragon. I noted the place where it fell; but it disappeared in the twilight as the day began to break, as always happens with shooting stars.

After daybreak I approached the spot where I had seen it fall during the night; I found the ground there composed of a mixture of sulphur, iron filings and clay. Then there suddenly appeared two tents, one directly over the spot, the other a little to the south of it. Then when I looked up, I saw a spirit falling from heaven like a thunderbolt; he landed in the tent which stood directly over the spot where the meteor had fallen; and I was in the other tent which stood beside it to the south. I stood at the entrance to the tent and saw the spirit also standing in the entrance to his tent.

So I asked him why he had thus fallen from heaven. He replied that he had been thrown down as an angel of the dragon by the angels of Michael, 'because,' he said, 'I had expressed some of my convictions about faith, which I had formed in the world. One of these was the idea that God the Father and God the Son are two and not one; for everyone in the heavens now believes that They are one as soul and body are one. Any expression contrary to that belief is like a tickling in their nostrils, or an awl piercing their ears, which causes them mental disturbance and pain. For this reason, anyone who contradicts them is ordered to leave, and if he shilly-shallies, he is thrown out.'

[2] On hearing this I said to him, 'Why did you not believe as they did?' He replied that after leaving the world no one can believe anything but what he had proved to himself and so imprinted on his mind. This remains rooted in it so that it cannot be torn out, and this is especially the case with convictions about God, since it is his idea of God which determines everyone's place in the heavens.

I went on to ask what proofs he had found that the Father and the Son were two. 'The passages in the Word,' he said, 'which state that the Son prayed to the Father, not only before the crucifixion, but actually during it; and that He humbled Himself before the Father. How then could they be one, as the soul and the body are one in man? Who prays as if to another, or humbles himself as if before another, if he is himself that other? No man behaves like that, far less the Son of God. Moreover, the whole Christian church in my time divided the Divinity into Persons, and each Person is one by itself, and is defined as that which remains in existence by its own right.'

[3] On hearing him say this I replied: 'I have grasped from what you say that you are utterly ignorant how God the Father and God the Son are one; and since you do not know how this is, you have accepted the false notions about God still prevalent in the church. Do you not know that, when the Lord was in the world, He had a soul like any other person? Where could He have got it from, unless from God the Father? There are plenty of plain statements that this is so in the writings of the Evangelists. What then is it that is called the Son, but the Human which was conceived of the Father's Divine and born of the Virgin Mary? A mother cannot conceive a soul; that would be totally repugnant to the order which controls human reproduction. Nor can God the Father implant the soul from Himself, and then retire, as every father in the world does, since God is His own Divine Essence, and this is one and indivisible; and being indivisible, it must be God Himself. This is why the Lord says that the Father and He are one, that the Father is in Him and He is in the Father, and many more similar statements. This too was seen, at a distance, by those who framed the Athanasian Creed; so after splitting God into three Persons, they still declare that in Christ God and man, that is, the Divine and the Human, are not two, but one, as the soul and the body in man are one.

[4] 'The Lord in the world prayed to the Father as if to another, and humbled Himself before the Father as if before another, because this was to conform with the order established from creation; for this is the immutable order which controls everyone's progress towards being linked with God. This order lays down that as a person links himself to God, which he does by living according to the rules of order or God's commandments, so God links Himself to him, and makes him spiritual instead of natural. In the same way the Lord united Himself with His Father, and God the Father united Himself with the Lord. Was the Lord not a child like any other, a boy like any other boy? Do we not read that He advanced in wisdom and grace, and later, that He besought the Father to glorify His name, that is, His Human? To glorify is to make Divine by union with Himself. This shows plainly why the Lord in His state of exinanition, which was His state while advancing towards union, prayed to the Father.

[5] 'That same order was imprinted on every person from creation, namely the rule that as a person prepares his understanding by means of truths from the Word, so does he make it suitable for the reception of faith from God; and as he prepares his will by means of charitable actions, so he renders it capable of receiving love from God. For as a craftsman cuts a diamond, so he gives it the faculty of receiving and emitting a brilliant light; and so forth. To prepare oneself to receive and be linked to God is to live in accordance with Divine order, and the laws of order are all the commandments of God. The Lord fulfilled these down to the last comma, and so made Himself a receiver of the Divinity in all its fulness. Therefore Paul says that in Jesus Christ all the fulness of the Godhead dwells bodily, and the Lord says that all things of the Father's are His.

[6] 'It is further to be held that the Lord alone is active in a person, and the person by himself is only passive, but he is moved to activity by the inflow of life from the Lord. This perpetual inflow from the Lord makes it appear to a person that he acts of himself. Because this is so, he also has free will, and this is given to him in order to prepare himself to receive and be linked to the Lord, a state which would be impossible if the linking were not reciprocal. This is accomplished when a person acts of his own free will, yet is led by faith to attribute all activity to the Lord.'

[7] After this I asked whether, like the rest of his companions, he admitted that God is one. He replied that he did. Then I said: 'I am afraid that in your heart you may believe that there is no God. Surely everything one says with the lips arises from thought in the mind? Therefore a verbal admission that there is one God must inevitably eliminate the idea of three Gods from the mind; and contrariwise, such a thought in the mind must inevitably eliminate the verbal admission that there is one God. So what can be the result, except a belief that there is no God? Surely this will turn into a vacuum all the intervening stages between the thought and the lips, and in the reverse direction between the lips and the thought? So what other conclusion about God can the mind reach, but that nature is God? Or about the Lord, but that His soul was from His mother or from Joseph? All the angels of heaven recoil from these two ideas as horrible and abominable.'

After this the spirit was banished into the abyss described in Revelation (Revelation 9:2ff) where the angels of the dragon discuss the secrets of their faith.

[8] The next day, when I looked towards the same spot, I saw in place of the tents two statues in human shape, made of dust from the soil, which was a mixture of sulphur, iron and clay. One statue appeared to hold a sceptre in its left hand, it had a crown on its head, and a book in its right hand; its bodice was girded diagonally with a sash decorated with precious stones, and its robe streamed out behind towards the other statue. But these were appearances given to that statue by imagination. Then a voice was heard from one of the followers of the dragon: 'This statue represents our faith as a queen, and the other one behind it is charity represented as her handmaid.' This statue was made out of a similar mixture of powders; it was placed right at the end of the robe streaming out behind the queen, and it held in its hand a placard on which was written: 'Beware of coming too close and touching the robe.' Then a sudden shower fell from heaven, which drenched both the statues, and since they were made of a mixture of sulphur, iron and clay, they began to bubble, as a mixture of those substances will when water is poured on 1 . So they caught fire from internal combustion, fell apart and were reduced to heaps, which afterwards stuck up above ground like mounds in a graveyard.

Footnotes:

1. Sulphur here means a combustible material of a sulphurous nature.

  
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Thanks to the Swedenborg Society for the permission to use this translation.

From Swedenborg's Works

 

Apocalypse Revealed #484

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484. To this I will append three accounts of events that occurred in the spiritual world.

The first event: I once heard in the spiritual world what sounded like the noise of a mill. It was in the northern zone there. I wondered at first what it was, but then I remembered that in the Word a mill and the grinding of grain means to seek from the Word something usable for doctrine (no. 794). Therefore I went over to the place that I heard the sound coming from, and when I drew near, the sound died away, and I saw a kind of domed structure over the earth, with an entrance leading into it through a cave. Seeing this, I went down and entered, and lo, I found a room in which I saw an elderly man sitting, surrounded by books, holding a copy of the Word in front of him and seeking from it something he could use for his doctrine. He had slips of paper lying all around, on which he recorded the texts he found. In an adjoining room there were clerks who would collect the slips of paper and copy them onto a whole sheet.

I began by asking him about the books he had around him. He said that they all dealt with justifying faith, profoundly so those from Sweden and Denmark, more profoundly those from Germany, and still more profoundly those from Britain, but most profoundly those from the Netherlands. And he added that though they differed on various points, they were all in agreement on the article of justification and salvation by faith alone.

After that he told me that he was now collecting from the Word texts in support of this first tenet of justifying faith, that God the Father turned away from grace toward the human race on account of its iniquities, and that to save the human race there arose a Divine need for someone to take upon himself the condemnation required by justice, in order to effect satisfaction, reconciliation, propitiation, and mediation, and that only His Son could possibly accomplish this. He said, too, that after that, a means of approach to God the Father was opened for the sake of the Son. Moreover he said, "I have seen and still see that this accords with all reason. How could God the Father be approached except by faith in this merit of the Son? I have also now found that this accords as well with Scripture."

[2] Listening to this, I was astounded to hear him say that it accorded with reason and with Scripture, when in fact it is contrary to reason and contrary to Scripture, and I also frankly told him so. At that his zeal moved him to hotly retort, "How can you say that?"

Therefore I told him my opinion, saying, "Is it not contrary to reason to think that God the Father turned away from grace toward the human race and rejected mankind? Is not Divine grace an attribute of the Divine essence? To turn away from grace, then, would be to turn away from His own Divine essence, and to turn away from His Divine essence would mean He was no longer God. Can God be estranged from Himself? Believe me, grace on the part of God - as it is infinite, so is it eternal. The grace of God can be lost on mankind's part if people do not accept it, but never on God's part. If grace should depart from God, it would be all over with the whole of heaven and with the whole human race, to the point that people would no longer be in the least bit human. Therefore grace on the part of God continues to eternity, not only toward angels and people, but also toward the devil himself.

"Since this accords with reason, why do you say that the only means of approach to God the Father is through faith in the merit of the Son, when in fact there is a continuing approach through grace?

[3] "Furthermore, why do you call it a means of approach to God the Father for the sake of the Son, and not to God the Father through the Son? Is not the Son the Mediator and Savior? Why do you not approach the Mediator and Savior Himself? Is He not God and man? Who on earth goes directly to some emperor, king, or prince? Must one not find a deputy or someone to introduce him? Do you not know that the Lord came into the world to Himself introduce people to the Father, and that the only means of approach is through Him? Search the Scripture now, and you will see that this accords with it, and that your way to the Father is as contrary to Scripture as it is contrary to reason. I say to you also that it is an act of impudence to climb up to God the Father directly 1 and not through Him who is in the bosom of the Father 2 and who alone is in Him. 3 Have you not read John 14:6?" 4

When he heard this, the elderly man became so angry that he leapt from his chair and shouted to his clerks to throw me out. And when I immediately left of my own accord, he threw out through the exit after me a book that his hand chanced upon, and that book was the Word.

[4] The second event: After I left, I heard the noise again, but this time it sounded like the noise of two millstones crashing into each other. I went in the direction of the sound and it died away, and I saw a narrow entryway leading gradually down to a kind of domed building divided into little compartments, in each of which two men were sitting, who were also collecting from the Word proof texts in support of faith. One of them would find them, and the other would write them down, and this by turns.

I went to one of the compartments and, standing in the doorway, asked, "What texts are you collecting and writing down?"

They said, "Texts about the act of justification or faith in act, which is faith itself, justifying, vivifying and saving - the principal tenet of doctrine in Christianity."

And at that I said to one of them, "Tell me some sign of the act when that faith is introduced into a person's heart and soul."

He replied, "A sign of the act exists the moment a person is moved, by grief at his being damned, to think about Christ as having taken away the condemnation of the Law, and when, conscious of that merit of Christ, with confidence in it, he turns with it in mind to God the Father and prays."

[5] "So that is how the act occurs," I said then, "and that is the moment."

And I asked, "How am I to understand what we are told about the act, that nothing in a person cooperates with it any more than if he were a stock or a stone? Or that as regards the act a person cannot initiate, will, understand, think, do, or contribute anything to it, and cannot conform or accommodate himself to it?

"Tell me how this agrees with what you said, that the act happens when a person thinks about the judgment of the Law, about his damnation having been taken away by Christ, about the confidence with which he is conscious of that merit of Christ, and with it in mind turns to God the Father and prays? Does the person not do all these things as though of himself?"

But he said, "The person does not do them actively, but passively."

[6] And I replied, "How can anyone think, have confidence, and pray passively? Take away a person's active or reactive participation - do you not also take away his receptivity, thus everything his own, and with that the act as well? What then does that act of yours become but something purely theoretical, which we call a figment of the imagination?

"I know that you do not believe in agreement with some that an act of this kind is possible only with those people predestined to it, who are not at all aware of the infusion of faith in them. These may as well cast dice to find out if it has occurred.

"Therefore believe, my friend, that in matters of faith a person operates and cooperates as though of himself, and that without that cooperation the act of faith, which you call the principal tenet of doctrine and religion, is no more than the pillar into which Lot's wife was turned, having the faint sound of nothing but salt when scratched with a writer's pen or fingernail (Luke 17:32 5 ). I say this because as regards that act you makes yourselves to be like statues."

When I said that, the man arose and picked up the lamp violently to throw it at my face. But suddenly then the lamp went out and the room became dark, so that he hurled it at the forehead of his companion. And I went away laughing.

[7] The third event: I heard in the northern zone of the spiritual world what sounded like the rushing of water. I went therefore in that direction, and when I drew near, the rushing sound stopped, and I heard what sounded like a gathering of people. Moreover a house full of holes then appeared, surrounded by a wall, from which I heard the sound coming. I approached and found there a doorkeeper, and I asked him who were inside. He said that they were the wisest of the wise, who were coming to conclusions together about metaphysical subjects.

He spoke as he did out of the simplicity of his faith, and I asked if I might be permitted to enter. He said that I could, provided that I not say anything.

"I can let you in," he said, "because I have permission to let in the gentiles here who are standing with me at the door."

I went in therefore, and lo, I found an amphitheater with a rostrum in the middle of it, and the company of the so-called wise were discussing mysteries of faith. The matter or proposition submitted for discussion then was whether the good that a person does in a state of justification by faith, or in the progress of that state after the act, constitutes the good of religion or not. They were unanimous in saying that the good of religion means good that contributes to salvation.

[8] It was an acrimonious discussion, but those prevailed who said that any good that a person does in a state of faith or its progression is only moral, civic, or political good, which contributes nothing to salvation, but that only faith contributes anything. They established this as follows:

"How can any work of man be coupled with something free? Is not salvation bestowed gratis? How can any good work of man be coupled with the merit of Christ? Is not Christ's merit the only means of salvation? And how can any operation of man be coupled with the operation of the Holy Spirit? Does not the Holy Spirit accomplish everything without the help of man? Are not these three elements the only saving ones in any act of faith? And not do these three also continue to be the only saving ones in the state or progression of faith?

"Therefore any additional good that a person does can by no means be called a good of religion, a good which, as we said, contributes to salvation. If, however, someone does that good for the sake of salvation, it must rather be called an evil of religion."

[9] Two of the gentiles were standing by the doorkeeper in the vestibule, and having heard this, they said to each other, "These people do not have any religion. Who does not see that to do good to the neighbor for God's sake, thus in association with God and impelled by God, is what we call religion." And one of them said, "Their faith has made them foolish." And they asked the doorkeeper who the people were.

The doorkeeper said, "They are wise Christians."

To which they replied, "Nonsense. You are wrong. They are buffoons. That is how they talk."

I then went away. And when after a time I looked back at the place where the house had stood, behold, it was a marsh.

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[10] These events that I saw and heard, I saw and heard while awake in both body and spirit, for the Lord has so united my spirit to my body that I am present in both simultaneously.

My visiting those houses, and the people's deliberations on those matters then, and its happening as described, came about under the Lord's Divine auspices.

Footnotes:

1. Cf. John 10:1.

2. John 1:18.

3. John 10:38.

4. But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you.

5. "Remember Lot's wife."

  
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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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