84. In Matthew we read the following:

Then the Son of Humankind will say to the goats on the left, “Depart from me, because I was hungry and you did not give me anything to eat. I was thirsty and you did not give me anything to drink. I was a stranger and you did not take me in. I was naked and you did not clothe me. I was sick and in prison and you did not visit me.” These will go away into everlasting punishment. (Matthew 25:41– 46)

It is very clear that the goats and the sheep mentioned here have the same meaning as the goat and the ram in Daniel. What evidence is there that “the goats” mean people who are devoted to the modern-day belief that faith is what justifies us? This point is made clear by the fact that the sheep are mentioned in connection with a list of actions that reflect goodwill, and they are said to have done these actions; then the goats are mentioned in connection with the same list of actions, but they are said not to have done them, and this is why they are condemned.

People who embrace the modern-day view that faith is what justifies us neglect to do good works, because they deny that good works have anything to do with our salvation or the church. When goodwill is laid aside, the good works that come from it slip our minds; we never even think of them or make any effort to remember them from the law of the Ten Commandments.

It is a general principle of religious practice that if we are not willing and doing good actions, then we are willing and doing evil actions. The opposite is also true: if we are not willing and doing evil actions, then we are willing and doing good actions. “The goats” are the people who take the first approach just mentioned. “The sheep” are the people who take the second approach.

If “the goats” in that passage had meant everyone who is evil, the list would have covered the evil things they had done; instead it lists the acts of goodwill that they did not do.

103. Brief Analysis

The reason why there is no way to simultaneously hold the views of the new church and the views of the former church (that is, the modern-day church) regarding faith is that the two positions do not overlap by a third or even a tenth.

In Revelation 12 the faith of the former church is portrayed as a dragon (see §§87– 90 above) and the faith of the new church is portrayed as a woman clothed with the sun, who had a crown of twelve stars on her head. The dragon persecuted her and spewed water like a flood at her in an effort to carry her away by it. These two views cannot coexist in the same city, much less in the same household or the same mind. If they were to come together, the only possible outcome would be that the woman would be constantly exposed to rage and insanity from the dragon, and would constantly fear that the dragon would devour her son. After all, we read in Revelation 12 that the dragon stood before the woman, when she was about to give birth, in order to devour her child. After the woman gave birth, she fled into the wilderness (Revelation 12:1, 4, 6, 14– 17).

The faith held by the former church is a faith of the night; human reason has no experience of it at all. This is why we are told that we are to hold our intellect under obedience to faith. In fact, we do not even know whether it is within us or outside of us. The human will and human reason have nothing to do with it.

For that matter, goodwill, good works, repentance, the law of the Ten Commandments, and a number of other things that actually exist in the human mind have nothing to do with it (see §§79, 80, 96, 97, 98). The faith of the new church, however, forms a partnership and a marriage covenant with all the things just mentioned. As a result, this faith lives in the warmth of heaven; and because it does, it also lives in heaven’s light. It is a faith of the light.

A faith of the night and a faith of the light cannot live together any more than an owl and a dove can live together in one nest. The owl would lay its eggs there, and the dove would lay its eggs. After incubation, both sets of chicks would hatch, and then the owl would tear apart the dove’s chicks and feed them to its chicks. (Owls are voracious.)

The faith of the former church cannot live with the faith of the new church because the two are completely incompatible. The faith of the former church is descended from the idea that there are three gods (see §§30– 38 above); the faith of the new church, though, is descended from the idea that there is one God. And because the two are completely incompatible as a result, it is inevitable that if they lived together in us they would collide and cause so much conflict that everything related to the church would be destroyed in us. We would fall into such a state of spiritual madness or else spiritual unconsciousness that we would hardly know what the church was or whether such a thing even existed.

Consequently, people who are deeply committed to the faith of the old church are incapable of embracing the faith of the new church without endangering their own spiritual lives, unless they have first rejected the teachings of the former faith one by one and have uprooted that former faith along with all its live offspring and unhatched eggs (meaning tenets). What these tenets are like has been shown earlier in this work, especially in §§64– 69.