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.

85. Experiences in the spiritual world have made it very plain to me that “the goats” mean precisely people like these. In the spiritual world we see the same things that exist in the physical world. We see houses and mansions. We see parks and gardens — the gardens contain trees of all different kinds. We see fields of crops and fields that have recently been plowed. We see meadows and lawns. We also see flocks and herds. All these things are the same there as they are here on the physical planet Earth. The only difference is that the things on Earth have a physical origin but the things in the spiritual world have a spiritual origin.

In that world I have often seen sheep and goats. I have seen them battling with each other, much like the battle described in Daniel 8. I have seen goats with horns that curved forward and that curved backward. I have seen goats furiously charging at sheep. I have seen goats with two horns, and goats with four horns, violently butting sheep with them. When I have looked around to see what this meant, I have seen people arguing with each other about whether faith is united to goodwill or is entirely separate from it.

These experiences have made it clear to me that the modern-day view that faith is what justifies us (which is a faith that is by definition completely separate from goodwill) is a goat; and faith that is united to goodwill is a sheep.