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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 #621

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621. 1 At this point I shall insert some accounts of experiences, of which this is the first.

I saw a gathering of spirits all on their knees praying God to send them angels, with whom they could talk face to face, and open to them the thoughts of their hearts. When they got up, three angels dressed in fine linen were to be seen standing before them. 'The Lord Jesus Christ,' they said, 'has heard your prayers and has therefore sent us to you. Open to us the thoughts of your hearts.'

[2] 'Our priests have told us,' they answered, 'that in theological matters it is not the understanding but faith which is effective; and that faith based on the understanding is no help in such matters, because it derives from and smacks of man, not of God. We are English, and we have heard a lot from our ministers of religion, which we believed. But when we talked with others, who also called themselves Reformed, and with others who called themselves Roman Catholics, and even with members of sects, they all appeared to be learned, yet on many subjects there was not one who agreed with another. All the same, they all said, "Believe us," and some said, "We are God's ministers, and we know." But we know that the Divine truths, which are called the truths of faith and are possessed by the church, do not come to anyone from his native soil or by heredity, but from God out of heaven; and they show the way to heaven, entering a person's life together with the good of charity, and so leading to everlasting life. So we became worried, and prayed on our knees to God.'

[3] 'Read the Word,' the angels said to this, 'and believe in the Lord, and you will see truths which will be your guides to faith and life. All Christian people draw their doctrines from the Word as being their one and only source.' But two of the gathering said, 'We have read it, but not understood it.'

'You did not approach the Lord,' replied the angels, 'and He is the Word. Also you had first convinced yourselves of falsities.' The angels went on: 'What is faith without light, and what is thinking without understanding? This is not how human beings act. Ravens and jays can learn to talk without understanding too. We can assure you that every person whose soul so desires can see the truths of the Word in light. There does not exist an animal which does not know the food it needs to live on, when it sees it. Man is a rational and spiritual animal, so he knows the food not so much his body as his soul needs to live on. That is the truth of faith, provided he is hungry for it and begs the Lord for it.

[4] 'Moreover, anything that the understanding does not take in is not retained by the memory as a fact, but merely as words. So when we looked down on the world from heaven, we could see nothing, but only heard sounds, which were for the most part discordant. But we shall mention some things which the learned among the clergy have banished from the understanding, being unaware that there are two routes to the understanding, one from the world and the other from heaven. The Lord withdraws the understanding from the world, as He enlightens it. But if religion dictates that the understanding is to be shut off, the route to it from heaven is shut off, and then one sees no more in the Word than a blind man. We have seen many such people fall into pits, and be unable to get out of them again.

[5] 'Let us give some examples to illustrate this. Surely you can understand what charity and faith are - that charity is doing good to the neighbour, and faith is having a correct idea of God and the essential doctrines of the church? And as a result, that a person who does good and has a correct idea, that is to say, who lives a good life and has a correct belief, is saved?' They said that they understood this.

[6] The angels went on to say that for a person to be saved he must repent of his sins, and unless he does so, he remains in the sins to which he was born. Repentance consists in not willing evils because they are sins against God; and once or twice a year examining oneself, seeing one's evils and confessing them to the Lord, asking for help, desisting from those evils and starting a new life. So far as a person does this and believes in the Lord, so far are his sins forgiven. 'We understand this,' said some of the gathering, 'and so we know what the forgiveness of sins is.'

[7] Then they asked the angels to tell them more, and this time about God, the immortality of the soul, regeneration and baptism.

'We shall not say anything,' the angels replied, 'which you cannot understand. If we did, our words would be like rain falling on a desert and the seeds it holds, which, despite being watered from heaven, still wither away and die.'

On the subject of God they said: 'All who come to heaven are allotted their place, and thus have everlasting joy, depending upon the idea they have of God, because it is this idea which is universally dominant in every detail of worship. To think of God as a spirit, if a spirit is believed to be like the ether or the wind, is meaningless. But to think of God as Man is a correct notion, because God is Divine love and Divine wisdom, with all their attributes; and that of which love and wisdom can be predicated is man, not ether or wind. In heaven they think of God as the Lord the Saviour; as He taught us, He is the God of heaven and earth. Make your idea of God like ours, and we shall welcome you into our company.' When they said this, the faces of the others lit up.

[8] On the immortality of the soul they said: 'Man lives for ever, because by means of love and faith he can be linked with God. Every single person has this capacity. And if you think a little more deeply about it, you can understand that this capacity constitutes the immortality of the soul.'

[9] On regeneration: 'Anyone can see that any person is free to think about God or not to think about Him, so long as he has been taught that there is a God. So anyone has just as much freedom in spiritual as in social or natural matters. The Lord continually grants this to all; so a person is to blame, if he fails to think about God. It is this capacity which makes man a man, and its absence makes an animal an animal. Man can therefore reform and regenerate himself as if of himself, so long as he acknowledges in his heart that this comes from the Lord. Everyone who repents and believes in the Lord is reformed and regenerated. A person should do both as if of himself, but this as if of himself comes from the Lord. It is true that a person cannot from himself contribute anything, not in the slightest, to that process. Yet you have not been created statues; you were created human beings, so that you could do it from the Lord as if of yourselves. It is this and this alone which is the reciprocal offering of love and faith, which the Lord expressly wills should be made to Him by man. In short, act from yourselves and believe that it is from the Lord; that is how to act as if of yourselves.'

[10] Then they asked whether acting as if of oneself was implanted in man from creation. The angel replied: 'It is not implanted, because acting from himself is an attribute only of God. But it is continually given, that is to say, it is continually being applied; and then so far as a person does good and believes truth as if of himself, he is an angel of heaven. But so far as he does evil and thus believes falsity, and this too is as if of himself, so far is he a spirit of hell. You may be surprised that this too is as if of oneself, but still you can see this, when you pray to be protected from the devil seducing you, from him entering into you as he did into Judas, from filling you with every wickedness and destroying you both soul and body. But everyone becomes responsible, if he believes he is acting of himself, whether it is good or evil that he does. But he does not incur guilt, if he believes he is acting as if of himself. For if he believes that he does good of himself, he is claiming for himself what belongs to God; and if he believes that he does evil of himself, he is attributing to himself what belongs to the devil.'

[11] On baptism they said that it was a spiritual washing, and this is reformation and regeneration. 'A child is reformed and regenerated when on growing up he does what his godparents pledged on his behalf, the two promises of repentance and faith in God. For they first pledge that he will renounce the devil and all his works, and secondly, that he will believe in God. All children in heaven are taught those two promises, but for them the devil is hell and God is the Lord. Moreover, baptism is a sign visible to the angels that a person belongs to the church.' When they heard this, some in the gathering said: 'We understand this.'

[12] But at this point a voice was heard from one side shouting: 'We do not understand;' and another: 'We do not want to understand.' They made enquiry to discover whose voices these were, and discovered that they came from those who had convinced themselves of false beliefs, and wanted to be believed like oracles, so receiving worship.

'Do not be surprised,' said the angels, 'there are many like this at the present time. To us seeing them from heaven they look like carved images so cunningly made that they can move their lips and make noises, like musical instruments. But they are quite unaware whether the breath that makes them sound blows from hell or from heaven, because they do not know whether a thing is false or true. They keep on reasoning and producing proofs, yet cannot see whether anything is so or not. But you should know that the human brain can prove anything it wants, so that it really appears to be so. So this is something heretics or irreligious people can do; in fact atheists can prove that God does not exist, only nature.'

[13] After this the gathering of Englishmen was fired with a desire for wisdom and said to the angels: 'Such varying ideas are expressed regarding the Holy Supper, tell us what is the truth.'

'The truth is,' the angels answered, 'that a person who looks to the Lord and repents is by that most holy act linked to the Lord and brought into heaven.'

But people in the gathering said: 'This is a mystery.' 'It is a mystery,' the angels replied, 'but one that can be understood. The bread and wine do not bring this about; there is nothing holy about them. But material bread and spiritual bread correspond to each other, and so do material wine and spiritual wine. Spiritual bread is the holiness of love, spiritual wine the holiness of faith. Both of these are from the Lord, and both are the Lord. Thus there is a linking of the Lord with man, and of man with the Lord. It is not with the bread and wine, but with the love and faith of the man who has repented. Being linked with the Lord is also being brought into heaven.'

Now that the angels had taught them something about correspondence, some in the gathering said: 'Now for the first time we can understand this.' As soon as they said this, a flaming radiance came down from heaven and joined them to the angels' company, and they loved one another.

Footnotes:

1. This section is repeated with modifications from Apocalypse Revealed 224.

  
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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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