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.

67. The idea that God cares only for our faith and pays no attention to our actions is a new heresy concocted from the first two heresies, [instantaneous salvation and predestination,] discussed just above in §§65, 66. It is amazing to note that when the wisest people of our age deeply examined and unfolded the concepts within faith alone, they brought forth this idea as the third pup born of the she-wolf of predestination. Yet because this offspring is insane, ungodly, and Machiavellian, the pup is kept still wrapped up in its afterbirth to keep its hideousness out of sight. Its insanity and ungodliness is in fact described and rejected, though, in Revelation Unveiled 463.