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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 #846

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846. 1 I was once carried up in my spirit to the heaven of angels, and to one community there. Then some of their wise men came to me asking, 'What is the news from earth?' I told them that the news is that the Lord has revealed secrets far exceeding in excellence any so far revealed since the church began.

'What are these?' they asked. I said that they are: (1) In every detail the Word contains a spiritual sense corresponding to the natural sense, and by means of that sense the Word forms a link between people in the church and the Lord; it also creates an association with angels, and the holiness of the Word resides in that sense.

[2] (2) The correspondences of which the spiritual sense is composed have been disclosed. 'Did not the inhabitants of the earth,' asked the angels, 'previously know about correspondences?' I told them that they knew nothing at all and these had been lost to sight for thousands of years, in fact, since the time of Job. The people of that and previous ages regarded a knowledge of correspondences as the supreme science, and it was the source of their wisdom, because it was knowledge of spiritual matters to do with heaven and the church. But because the science turned into an idolatrous one, it was by the Lord's Divine providence so wiped out and lost that no one could see any trace of it. Now, however, it has been disclosed by the Lord, so that people belonging to the church may be linked with Him and associated with angels. Both of these take place by means of the Word, every detail of which is a correspondence.

The angels were extremely happy that it has pleased the Lord to reveal this great secret, which has lain so deeply hidden for thousands of years. They said that the reason it was done was in order that the Christian church, which is based upon the Word and is now at its end, should be revived and draw breath from the Lord through heaven. They enquired whether by this science it had been disclosed what was the meaning of baptism and the Holy Supper, which up to now have been the subject of so many speculations. I replied that it had.

[3] (3) I went on to say that at the present time the Lord had made a revelation about people's life after death. 'What about life after death?' said the angels. 'Surely everyone knows that a person lives after death?'

'They do and they do not,' I replied. 'They say that what lives on is not the person, but his soul, and this lives as a spirit. Their notion of a spirit is that it is like the wind or the ether; and they say that the person will only live after Judgment Day. At that time their bodily remains which they left in the world, however eaten away by worms, rats or fish, will be gathered together again and reconstructed to form a body; and this is how people will be brought to life again.'

'What an idea!' said the angels. 'Everyone knows that a person goes on living as a person after death, with the single difference that then he lives as a substantial and not as before as a material person. A substantial person can see another substantial person, just as much as a material person can see another material person. They are unaware of any difference, except that they are in a more perfect state.'

[4] (4) The angels asked, 'What do they know of our world and about heaven and hell?' I replied that they know nothing, but that at the present time the Lord had disclosed what the world is like where the angels and spirits live, and so what heaven and hell are like. It had also been revealed that angels and spirits are linked with human beings, and many other surprising facts. The angels were glad that the Lord had been pleased to disclose such matters, so that mankind should no longer be impelled by ignorance to doubt its own immortality.

[5] (5) I went on to speak of another matter revealed by the Lord at the present time. 'Your world has a different sun from ours. The sun of your world is pure love, the sun of our world is pure fire. Consequently all the radiation from your sun, since it is pure love, has something of life in it; all the radiation from ours, since it is pure fire, has no life in it. This is the origin of the distinction between spiritual and natural, a distinction up to now unknown, which has also been disclosed. From these facts it has become known what is the source of the light which enlightens the human understanding with wisdom, and what is the source of the heat, which fires the human will with love.

[6] (6) 'In addition it has been disclosed that there are three degrees of life, and that there are consequently three heavens, and a person's mind is divided into those three degrees. A person as a result corresponds to the three heavens.' 'Did they not know this before?' said the angels. I replied that they knew about degrees between greater and less, but nothing about degrees between prior and posterior.

[7] (7) The angel asked whether there had been more revelations than these. I said there had. These were about the Last judgment, and the Lord as being the God of heaven and earth; that God is one both in person and in essence, and in Him is the Divine Trinity, and He is the Lord. Other revelations were about the new church to be established by the Lord and the teaching of that church; about the holiness of the Sacred Scripture; the Book of Revelation too had been revealed; moreover, about the inhabitants of the planets and the other earths elsewhere in the universe. Further many wonders and accounts of experiences had been reported from the spiritual world, by means of which a great deal of wisdom from heaven had been disclosed.

Footnotes:

1. This and the following sections are largely repeated from Conjugial Love 532-535.

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

From Swedenborg's Works

 

True Christian Religion #389

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389. The fifth experience.

I once saw a document sent down from heaven to a community in the world of spirits, where there were two leading churchmen together with a retinue of canons and presbyters. The document contained an exhortation to acknowledge the Lord Jesus Christ as God of heaven and earth, as He taught (Matthew 28:18), and to abandon as erroneous the doctrine that faith justifies without the deeds prescribed by the law. Many people read and copied out that document, and its contents were considered and talked over judiciously by many of them. But after receiving it, they said to one another: 'Let us hear the opinion of our leaders.'

So they listened to them, but they spoke against it and rejected it. However, the leaders of that community were hard of heart as the result of the falsities they had absorbed in their former world. After a short consultation, therefore, they sent the document back to heaven where it came from. When this was done, after some muttering most of the laymen abandoned their former acceptance, and then the light of their judgment in spiritual matters, which had previously been bright, was suddenly snuffed out. After a second, but vain, warning, I saw that community sinking down, though I could not see how deeply; but it sank out of sight of those who worship the Lord alone, and turn their backs on justification by faith alone.

[2] A few days later I saw perhaps as many as a hundred coming up from the lower earth, to which that small community had sunk; they approached me and one of them said: 'Listen to this extraordinary occurrence. When we sank down, we saw what looked like a lake, and after a while dry land; then later a small town in which many found a home for themselves. Next day we got together to discuss what we should do. Many people said that the two leaders of the church should be approached and gently reproved for sending the document back to the heaven it came from, since it was because of that this had happened to us. They also chose a few people (and the man talking to me said he had been one of them) who went off to the leaders, where one of their number who was especially wise addressed them as follows: "We believed that we excelled others in possessing the church and religion, because we heard it said that we enjoy the strongest light of the Gospel. But some of us have been granted enlightenment from heaven, and this enlightenment has been accompanied by the perception that at the present time there is no longer a church, because there is no religion, in the Christian world."

[3] 'The leaders said: "What is this you are saying? Is not the church where there is the Word, where Christ the Saviour is known, and where there are the sacraments?" Our spokesman replied to this: "They belong to the church, for they make the church; but they make it inside, not outside, a person." He went on to say: "Can there be a church where three Gods are worshipped? Can there be a church where its whole teaching is based upon a misinterpretation of a single saying of Paul, and thus not upon the Word? Can there be a church, when the Saviour of the world, who is the God of the church Himself, is not approached? Can anyone deny that religion is shunning evil and doing good? Is there any religion [where it is taught] that faith alone saves, and not together with charity? Is there any religion where it is taught that the charity which man exercises is only moral and civil charity? Is there anyone who does not see that that sort of charity contains nothing religious? Does faith alone involve any act or deed, though religion consists in action? Is there a nation anywhere in the whole world which attributes no saving power to the good of charity, which is good deeds? Yet the whole of religion consists in good, and the whole of the church consists in the teaching of truths, and by means of truths the teaching of various kinds of good. How glorious our lot would have been, if we had welcomed the teachings at the heart of the document sent down from heaven!"

[4] 'Then the leaders said: "Your remarks aim too high. Surely faith in action, which is the faith which fully justifies and saves, is the church? Surely faith at rest, which is the faith that goes forth and accomplishes, is religion? You must grasp this, my children." But then our wise man said: "Listen, fathers. Surely according to your dogma man resembles a block of wood in conceiving faith in action? Can a block be made alive so as to become a church? Surely faith at rest is according to your notion the continuation and progress of faith in action? And when, as your dogma insists, all saving power resides in faith, and the good of charity on man's part makes no contribution, where is religion then?" Then the prelates said: "Friend, you talk like this because you do not know the secrets of justification by faith alone; and if one is ignorant of these, one cannot know inwardly the way to salvation. Your way is external and fit only for the common people. Go that way if you like. But you should know that all good is from God, and nothing of it from man, so that in spiritual matters man can achieve nothing by himself. How then can a man by himself do good which is spiritual good?"

[5] 'To this our spokesman replied with great indignation: "I know more about your secrets of justification than you do, and I tell you frankly that I have seen nothing inwardly in your secrets but phantoms. Surely religion consists in acknowledging [and loving] God, and shunning and hating the devil? Is not God good itself and the devil evil itself? Is there anyone anywhere in the world, who, if he has a religion, does not know this? Is not acknowledging and loving God doing good, because this is God's and from God; and is not shunning and hating the devil not doing evil, because this is the devil's and from the devil? Or to put it another way, does your faith in action, which you called the faith that fully justifies and saves, or in other words your act of justification by faith alone, teach you to do any good deed which is God's and from God, or to shun any evil because it is the devil's and from the devil? None at all, since you lay down that there is no salvation in either. What is your faith at rest, which you called the faith that goes forth and accomplishes, but the same as faith in action? How can this be perfected, since you exclude all good done by man as if of himself, saying in your secret doctrines: 'How can anyone be saved by any good done by himself, when salvation is a free gift?' Or 'What good can be done by man except with a view to seeking merit, when yet Christ's merit is all-sufficient? Thus doing good to achieve salvation would be attributing to oneself what belongs to Christ alone, and it would also be wishing to justify and save oneself.' Or 'How can anyone do a good deed, when the Holy Spirit performs everything with no help from man? What need then is there for any extra good from man, when all good from man is not in essence good at all?'

[6] There are many other questions; are not these your secrets? But in my eyes they are simply quibbles and tricks invented in order to get rid of good deeds, which are the good deeds of charity, so as to establish firmly your doctrine of faith alone. And because you do so, you consider man as regards faith, and in general as regards all spiritual matters relating to the church and religion as a block of wood, or like a lifeless effigy, not as a human being created in the image of God, who has been given and is continually given the ability to understand and to will, to believe and to love, and to speak and act, exactly as if of himself, especially in spiritual matters, since they are what make a human being human. If a human being were not to think and act in spiritual matters as if of himself, what then would become of the Word? What would then become of the church and religion? And what of worship? You know that doing good to the neighbour as the result of love is charity; but you do not know what charity is. Yet it is the soul and essence of faith. And since charity is both these things, how can faith divorced from charity be anything but dead? Dead faith is nothing but a phantom. I call it a phantom, because James 2:17 calls faith without good deeds not only dead, but even diabolical."

[7] Then one of the leaders, on hearing his faith called dead, diabolical and a phantom, became so furious that he snatched the mitre off his head and threw it on the table saying: 'I will not put it on again until I have taken vengeance on the enemies of the faith of our church.' So he shook his head murmuring 'That man James! That man James!' On the front of the mitre was a plate, with the words 'Faith alone justifies' engraved on it. Then there suddenly appeared a monster rising out of the ground; it had seven heads, feet like a bear's, a body like a leopard's, a mouth like a lion's, exactly like the beast described in Revelation (Revelation 13:1-2), and of which an image was made and honoured (Revelation 13:14-15). This phantom took the mitre from the table, pulled its lower edge apart and put it on its seven heads. At this the ground gaped open beneath its feet and it sank down. On seeing this the leader cried: 'Assault, assault.' Then we left them, and found steps before our eyes which we went up; so we came back upon the earth and into sight of heaven, where we had been before.'

This was the story told me by the spirit who with a hundred companions had come up from the lower earth.

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

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