1. Survey of Teachings of the New Church Meant by the New Jerusalem in the Book of Revelation

[Author’s Preface]

AFTER publishing, within the span of a few years, several larger and smaller works on the New Jerusalem (which means the new church that the Lord is going to establish), and after unveiling the Book of Revelation, I resolved to publish and bring to light the teachings of the [new] church in their fullness, and thus to present a body of teaching that was whole. But because this work was going to take several years, I developed a plan to publish an outline of it, to give people an initial, general picture of this church and its teachings. When a general overview precedes, all the details that follow, of however wide a range, stand forth in a clear light, because they each have their own place within the overall structure alongside things of the same type.

This briefing does not include detailed argumentation; it is shared as advance notice, because the points it contains will be fully demonstrated in the work itself.

First, however, I must present the teachings concerning justification as they exist today, in order to highlight the differences between the tenets of today’s church and those of the new church.

52. Brief Analysis

Experience supports this point. How many people today live by the Ten Commandments and the Lord’s other precepts as a religious practice? How many people today are willing to look their own evils in the face and practice actual repentance, thereby initiating a worshipful life? How many devout people practice a repentance that is more than merely verbal and theatrical — confessing that they are sinners and praying (in obedience to the teachings of the church) that God the Father have mercy for the sake of his Son, who suffered on the cross for their sins, took away the damning effect of those sins, and ritually purged them with his own blood? “May the Son forgive our crimes so that we may be presented spotless before the throne of your judgment.”

Surely everyone can see that this kind of worship is not from the heart; it is only from the lungs. It is external but not internal. We are praying that our sins may be forgiven, yet we are unaware of a single sin within ourselves; and if we are aware of any sin, we either give it our favor and indulgence or else believe that we are purified and absolved of it by our faith without having to do any work of our own.

By way of comparison, this is like a servant coming in with his face and clothes covered in soot and dung, approaching his master, and saying, “Lord, wash me.” Surely his master would tell him, “You foolish servant! What are you saying? Look, there is the water, the soap, and a towel. Don’t you have hands? Don’t they work? Wash yourself!”

The Lord God is going to say, “The means of being purified come from me. Your willingness and your power come from me. Therefore use these gifts and endowments of mine as your own and you will be purified.”

Allow me to mention another example. If you prayed a thousand times both at home and in church for God the Father to protect you for his Son’s sake from the Devil, yet you yourself did not use the freedom the Lord was constantly providing you with to protect yourself from evil or the Devil, you could not be kept safe even by legions of angels sent especially to you by the Lord.

The Lord cannot act contrary to his own divine design. His design is for us to examine ourselves, see our evils, and resist them; and to do this seemingly on our own, although in fact the Lord is helping. Nowadays this does not seem like the gospel, but it is — being saved by the Lord is the gospel.

As for why the worship of our mouths is only acceptable to the Lord depending on how worshipful our lives are: Before God and before angels the sound of our speech reflects how much we long for love and faith; and it is the way we live that determines whether love and faith are present in us or not. If love and faith in God are present in your life, to God and the angels you sound like a dove. If love for yourself and confidence in yourself are present in your life, you sound like a screech owl, no matter how you twist your voice around to mimic the sound of a turtledove. The spiritual quality present within the sound produces this effect.

118. Three Memorable Occurrences Taken from Revelation Unveiled

The first memorable occurrence. Once as I was explaining chapter 20 in the Book of Revelation and was meditating on the dragon, the beast, and the false prophet, an angelic spirit appeared to me and asked what I was meditating on. I said, “The false prophet.”

The angelic spirit said, “I will take you to the place where the spirits meant by the false prophet are.” He added, “They are the same spirits portrayed in chapter 13 of the Book of Revelation as the beast from the earth who had two horns like a lamb, but who spoke like a dragon.”

I followed the angelic spirit. To my surprise I saw a crowd with church leaders in the center of it. The leaders were teaching that nothing saves us except faith in Christ’s merit and that works are good things to do, but not for our salvation. They were also proclaiming that works need to be taught from the Word so as to put lay people, especially simple ones, on a leash so that they obey their civic leaders and feel compelled from within by religion to practice moral goodwill.

[2] Then one of them saw me and said, “Do you want to see our shrine? It has a sculpture in it that portrays our faith.”

I went and saw it. It was magnificent! In the center of the shrine there was a statue of a woman dressed in scarlet clothes. She had a gold coin in her right hand and a chain of pearls in her left.

Both the statue and the shrine, however, were projected images. Hellish spirits have the ability to portray magnificent things using projected images. They do it by closing off the inner levels of our mind and opening only its outer levels.

When I realized that the statue and the shrine were conjured up through sorcery I prayed to the Lord. Suddenly the inner levels of my mind were opened. Then instead of a magnificent shrine, I saw a house that was full of cracks from the roof all the way to the foundation. Nothing in it was solidly connected. Instead of the woman, I saw a dummy hanging in the house, which had the head of a dragon, the body of a leopard, the feet of a bear, and the mouth of a lion. It was exactly like the beast from the sea described in Revelation 13:2. Instead of the floor, there was a swamp that contained thousands of frogs. I was told that under the swamp there was a great hewn stone; and beneath it the Word lay deeply hidden.

[3] Seeing this I said to the sorcerer, “Is this your shrine?”

“It is,” the sorcerer said.

Just then, though, the sorcerer’s inner sight opened up as well. The sorcerer saw the same things I was seeing and loudly shouted, “What is this? Where did this come from?”

“It came from the light of heaven,” I said, “which has disclosed the true quality of each form here, including the quality of your faith, which has been separated from spiritual goodwill.”

Immediately the east wind came up and blew away the shrine with the sculpture. It dried up the swamp and exposed the stone that had the Word lying underneath it.

Then a warm, springlike breeze blew in from heaven. To my surprise I then saw a tent in that same place, a very simple one in its outer form.

Angels who were with me said, “Look, it is Abraham’s tent just as it was when the three angels came to him to announce that Isaac was going to be born [Genesis 18:1, 2, and following]. The tent looks simple to the eye, but as the light of heaven flows in, it becomes more and more magnificent.”

The angels were then granted the ability to open the heaven where spiritual angels live — the angels who have wisdom. In the light that flowed in from that heaven, the tent looked like the Temple in Jerusalem. When I looked inside, I saw that the foundation stone under which the Word had been hidden was now covered in precious stones. From the precious stones a kind of lightning was flashing onto walls that had reliefs of angel guardians on them, giving the angel guardians beautifully different colors.

[4] As I was feeling awestruck by these sights, the angels said, “You are about to see things that are even more miraculous.” They were then granted the ability to open the third heaven where heavenly angels live — the angels who have love. As a result of the light that flowed in from that heaven, the entire temple disappeared. In its place I saw the Lord alone, standing on the foundation stone, which was the Word. He looked much the way he had when seen by John in Revelation chapter 1.

Yet because holiness then filled the inner realms of the angels’ minds so that they felt an overwhelming urge to fall forward on their faces, suddenly the channel of light from the third heaven was closed by the Lord and the channel of light from the second heaven was reopened. As a result, the earlier appearance of a temple, and also a tent, returned. The tent was in the temple.

These experiences illustrated what Revelation 21 means when it says, “Behold, the tent of God is among people, and he will dwell with them” (Revelation 21:3); and when it says, “I saw no temple in the New Jerusalem, because the Lord God Almighty is its temple, and the Lamb” (Revelation 21:22).