16. Sketch of the Teachings of the New Church

WHAT follows here is a survey of the teachings of the new church meant by the New Jerusalem in Revelation 21 and 22. In the work itself, these teachings, which concern not only what to believe but also how to live, will be broken into three parts.

Part 1 will present teachings on the following topics:

1. The Lord God the Savior, and the Divine Trinity within Him

2. Sacred Scripture; Its Two Meanings, Earthly and Spiritual; and Its Resulting Holiness

3. Love for God, Love for Our Neighbor, and the Harmony between Them

4. Faith, and Its Partnership with Those Two Types of Love

5. Teachings about Life Drawn from the Ten Commandments

6. Reformation and Regeneration

7. Free Choice, and Our Cooperation with the Lord by Means of It

8. Baptism

9. The Holy Supper

10. Heaven and Hell

11. Our Partnership with Heaven or Hell, and How Our State of Life after Death Depends on That Partnership

12. Eternal Life

Part 2 will discuss the following topics:

1. The Close of the Age, the End of the Church in Existence Today

2. The Coming of the Lord

3. The Last Judgment

4. The New Church, Which Is the New Jerusalem

Part 3 will demonstrate the discordance between the tenets of the church in existence today and those of the new church.

In the present volume, too, we will spend a little time on these points of discordance, because both clergy and lay people in the church of today believe that their church is walking in the very light of the gospel and in truths that cannot be weakened, uprooted, or assailed, even by an angel, if one should come down from heaven. The church today cannot see otherwise, because it has withdrawn the intellect from matters of faith, and has supported its tenets through a kind of sight that exists beneath the intellect. That level [of the mind] is able to provide argumentation to support falsities so effectively that they appear to be truths. Once falsities have been reinforced on that level, they gain a deceptive kind of light. Where light of that kind exists, the light of truths looks like thick darkness.

For this reason we will spend a little time presenting points of discordance, and noting a few things about them by way of illustration, so that people whose intellects have not been closed off by blind faith will be able to see the differences, first as in twilight, then as in morning light, and eventually (when the work itself appears) as in the full light of day.

In general, the points of discordance are the following.

78. Brief Analysis

The prophetic Word includes a number of statements about the sun, the moon, and the stars that are similar to this statement in Matthew 24:29. For example, in Isaiah:

Behold, the fierce day of Jehovah is coming. The stars of the heavens and their constellations will not shine their light. The sun will be darkened in its rising, and the moon will not make its light shine. (Isaiah 13:9, 10)

In Ezekiel,

When I extinguish you, I will cover the heavens and darken the stars. I will cover the sun with a cloud, and the moon will not give its light. I will bring darkness upon your land. (Ezekiel 32:7, 8)

In Joel,

The day of Jehovah is coming, a day of darkness; the sun and the moon will be darkened and the stars will withhold their light. (Joel 2:1, 2, 10)

The sun will be turned into darkness and the moon into blood before the great day of Jehovah comes. (Joel 2:31)

The day of Jehovah is at hand in the valley of decision; the sun and the moon have been darkened. (Joel 3:14, 15)

In the Book of Revelation,

The fourth angel sounded, and a third of the sun was struck, [a third of the moon,] and a third of the stars; and a third of the day did not shine. (Revelation 8:12)

Also in the Book of Revelation,

The sun became black as sackcloth of goat hair and the moon became like blood. (Revelation 6:12)

The topic of all the Old Testament passages here is the final times of the Jewish church, which occurred when the Lord came into the world. The passages from Matthew and the Book of Revelation are similar, but they deal with the final times of the Christian church, when the Lord is going to come again, but this time in the Word, which contains him and is him. For this reason, immediately after the statement in Matthew 24:29 the following passage occurs: “Then the sign of the Son of Humankind will appear, coming in the clouds of the heavens” (Matthew 24:30).

In these passages “the sun” means love, “the moon” means faith, and “the stars” mean knowledge of what is good and what is true. “The powers of the heavens” mean all three of these things as the sources of strength and stability for the heavens, where angels are, and the churches, where people are.

Gathering all the above together into one meaning, then, they refer to the fact that at the last time of the Christian church, when its end is imminent, it will have no more love, no more faith, and no more knowledge of what is good or what is true.

(For a demonstration that the sun means love, see Revelation Unveiled 53, 54, 413, 796, 831, 961; that the moon means faith, see Revelation Unveiled 53, 332, 413, 533; that the stars mean knowledge of what is good and what is true, see Revelation Unveiled 51, 74, 333, 408, 413, 954.)