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.

114. To these points I will add two memorable occurrences taken from Revelation Unveiled.

The first memorable occurrence. I was suddenly overcome with a deathly illness. My whole head felt worse and worse. A poisonous smoke was blowing in from the great city that spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt (Revelation 11:8). I was half dead and in severe pain. I thought I was about to die. I lay in bed in that condition for three and a half days. My spirit developed this sickness, and then my body came down with it as well.

Then I heard voices around me saying, “Look, he is lying dead in the street of our city — the one who was preaching that we should repent so that our sins would be forgiven and [that we should worship] only Christ the human being.”

They asked some of the clergy, “Is he worthy of burial?” (We read that the same thing happened to the two witnesses who were killed in that city; see Revelation 11:8, 9, 10.)

The clergy replied, “No. Let him lie there as a spectacle.”

They kept going away and coming back to mock me.

And I am telling the truth when I say that this happened to me at the very time that I was explaining the eleventh chapter of the Book of Revelation.

Then I heard more serious words from the people who had been mocking me — especially these: “How can repentance be practiced apart from faith? How can Christ the human being be adored as God? Given that we are saved for free without our deserving it at all, what then do we need except faith alone — the faith that God the Father sent the Son to take away the damnation of the law, to credit us with his own merit, to justify us before the Father, to absolve us from our sins, and then to give us the Holy Spirit, who activates every good thing within us? Aren’t these points in accordance with Scripture and also with reason?”

The crowd of bystanders applauded these statements.

[2] I heard all this but was unable to respond because I was lying there almost dead.

After three and a half days, however, my spirit regained its health. In the spirit I went from that street into the city, and I said again, “Practice repentance and believe in Christ, and your sins will be forgiven and you will be saved. If you do not, you will perish. The Lord himself preached that we must repent in order for our sins to be forgiven, and that we must believe in him. He commanded the disciples to preach the same message. Surely the dogma of your faith leads to utter complacency about the way you live!”

“What are you babbling about?” they replied. “The Son has made satisfaction. The Father has assigned us the Son’s merit and has justified us for the reason that these are our beliefs. We are now led by the spirit of grace. What sin could there be within us? What death could there be among us? Do you grasp this Good News, you preacher of sin and repentance?”

Then a voice from heaven said, “Surely the faith of someone who has not practiced repentance is nothing but a dead faith. The end has come, the end has come upon you who are complacent, guiltless in your own eyes, justified by your own faith — devils!”

At that moment a chasm suddenly opened up in the middle of the city and spread outward. The houses were falling in on each other and the people were swallowed up. Soon water bubbled up from the great hole and flooded what was already devastated.

[3] After they sank to a lower level and were seemingly covered in water, I wanted to know what their situation was like in the depths. A voice from heaven told me, “You will see and hear.”

Then the water that had seemingly flooded them disappeared from before my eyes. (Water in the spiritual world is a correspondence that appears around people who have false beliefs.) I saw the people in a sandy place at a great depth, where there were piles of stones. They were running between the piles of stones and loudly bemoaning their having been cast out of their great city.

They were shouting and wailing, “Why has this happened to us? We are clean, pure, just, and holy because of our faith.”

Others were saying, “Surely through our faith we have been cleansed, purified, justified, and sanctified.”

Still others were asking, “Hasn’t our faith made it possible for us to be seen and esteemed by God the Father and the whole Trinity, and to be declared before angels, as clean, pure, righteous, and holy? Haven’t we been reconciled, atoned for, ritually purged, and therefore absolved, washed, and wiped free of our sins? Didn’t Christ take away the damnation of the law? Why then have we been thrown down here like the damned? We did hear from a bold proclaimer of sin in our great city, ‘Believe in Christ and practice repentance.’ But didn’t we believe in Christ when we believed in his merit? Didn’t we practice repentance when we confessed that we were sinners? Why then has this happened to us?”

[4] A voice was then heard from the side: “Are you aware of any sin in yourselves? Have you ever examined yourselves, and then abstained from any evil because it is sinful against God? If you do not abstain from sin, then you are still devoted to it; and sin is the Devil. You, then, are the people of whom the Lord spoke when he said, ‘You will then begin to say, “We ate and drank with you. You taught in our streets.” But he will say, “I tell you, I do not know you, where you are from. Depart from me, all you workers of wickedness”’ (Luke 13:26, 27). Matthew 7:22, 23 is also about you. Therefore go away, each to your own place. Do you see the holes leading to those caves? Go in there, and each of you will be given your own work to do, and food in accordance with your work. If you don’t go in, your hunger will drive you in.”

[5] After that a voice from heaven came to some people who were up at the level of the ground but were outside the city (see Revelation 11:13). The voice said loudly, “Beware! Beware of associating with people like that. Don’t you understand that evils that are called sins and acts of wickedness make us unclean and impure? How can you be cleansed and purified from them except by active repentance and by faith in the Lord God the Savior? Active repentance is examining yourselves, recognizing and admitting to your sins, accepting that you are at fault, confessing them before the Lord, begging for his help and power in resisting them, stopping doing them, and living a new life. All this is to be done as if you were doing it on your own. Do this once or twice a year when you are about to take Holy Communion. Afterward, when the sins for which you are at fault recur, say to yourselves, ‘We do not want these, because they are sins against God.’ This is actual repentance.

[6] “Surely you can all recognize that if you do not examine yourselves and see your sins, you remain in them. From birth you find all evils delightful. It feels good to take revenge, to be promiscuous, to steal, and to slander. Because they feel good you overlook them. If someone happens to point out to you that they are sins, you make excuses for them because they feel good. You use false arguments to defend them and convince yourselves that they are not sins, and you stay in them. And afterward you do those evil things more than you did before, to the point where you no longer know what sin is or even whether there is such a thing.

“It is different, however, for people who actively go through a process of repentance. The evils that they recognize and admit to [in themselves] they call sins. They therefore begin to abstain and turn away from them. Eventually they begin to feel the pleasure of those evils as unpleasant. The more this happens, the more they see and love what is good, and eventually even feel delight in it, which is the delight that the angels in heaven feel. Briefly put, the more we put the Devil behind us, the more we are adopted by the Lord and are taught, led, held back from what is evil, and kept in what is good by him. This is the pathway from hell to heaven; there is no other way.”

[7] It is amazing that Protestants have such a deep-seated resistance, antipathy, and aversion to active repentance. Their reaction to it is so strong that they cannot force themselves to do self-examination, to see their sins, and to confess them before God. It is as if they are overcome by horror as soon as they form the intention to do it. I have asked many Protestants in the spiritual world about this, and they all said that it is completely beyond their strength. When they heard that Catholics practice this, that is, that they examine themselves and openly confess their sins to a monk, the Protestants were profoundly amazed, especially since the Protestants themselves could not do this even in secret before God, although they had been commanded, just as the Catholics had been, to do this when they were about to take the Holy Supper. Some people in the spiritual world investigated why this was, and discovered that faith alone was what had led to such an impenitent state and such an attitude of heart. Then those Protestants were allowed to see that Catholics are saved if they turn to Christ and worship him, and no longer worship but only honor the leaders of their churches.

[8] After that we heard a kind of thunder, and a voice speaking from heaven and saying, “We are amazed. Say to the gathering of Protestants, ‘Believe in Christ and practice repentance, and you will be saved.’”

So I said it.

I added, “Clearly, baptism is a sacrament of repentance and therefore introduction into the church. What else do godparents promise for the child being baptized but that she or he will renounce the Devil and all his works? Clearly, the Holy Supper is a sacrament of repentance and therefore introduction into heaven. Doesn’t the priest say to those about to take it that they absolutely have to practice repentance first? Clearly, the Ten Commandments are the universal teaching of the Christian church; they urge repentance. Isn’t it true that the six commandments on the second tablet say, ‘You are not to do this and that thing that is evil,’ not, ‘You are to do this and that thing that is good’? Therefore you are capable of knowing that the more we abstain from what is evil, the more we love what is good; and that before that, we do not know what good is, or even what evil is.”

69. As for the notion that when we are undergoing conversion we are like a log of wood, this is a teaching that the church of today acknowledges — in a great many words — as its own legitimate offspring. For example, it says that human beings are completely powerless in spiritual matters; see §15 a, b, c. It says that in the process of being converted we are like a block of wood, a stone, or a statue; we cannot adapt or accommodate ourselves to grace; and we are like something that has no senses; see §15 c, d. It says that we have only the power to move our bodies and attend public worship, where we can hear the Word and the gospel; see §15 e. But it does say that the reborn, using power from the Holy Spirit, cooperate to some extent with him through the new capabilities and gifts they have received; see §15 k. And many more teachings of this kind.

We are told that this is how we are in regard to our conversion and in regard to our repenting of the evil things we have done; but this is yet another offspring, hatched from the same egg and the same womb — namely, justification by faith alone. The purpose in their saying this is to remove altogether the works that we do and prevent our works from coming into any contact whatsoever with our faith.

[2] Yet this attitude goes against the common sense we all have about repentance and about the process of our conversion; so they add the following statement to the others: “There is a great difference between baptized and unbaptized people. According to Paul’s teaching, ‘All those who have been baptized have put on Christ,’ and are therefore truly reborn. They now have a ‘freed choice.’ For this reason they not only hear the Word of God but are also able to assent to it and embrace it with faith”; see §15 m and the Formula of Concord, page 675.

I call on the wise to consider whether this last statement aligns at all with the others. Is it not a contradiction to say that all Christians go through their process of conversion like a log of wood or a stone, so much so that they cannot accommodate themselves to grace, and yet all Christians have been baptized and baptism entails being able not only to hear the Word of God but also to assent to it and embrace it with faith?

Therefore the comparing of a Christian to a log of wood or a stone must be eradicated from the churches in the Christian world. It must disappear, just as every strange phenomenon we see while we are asleep disappears when we wake up. It is highly offensive to human reason.

[3] In order to clarify what the new church teaches about our process of conversion, I would like to copy some words from an account of a memorable occurrence in Revelation Unveiled.

Surely we all see that every human being has the freedom to think about God and the freedom not to think about God. We all, then, have just as much freedom in spiritual matters as we do in civic and moral matters. The Lord grants all of us this freedom continually. We ourselves, then, are responsible and accountable for what we think.

It is this ability to choose what we think that makes humans human. It is the lack of this ability that makes animals animals. Therefore we possess the power to reform and regenerate ourselves seemingly on our own, provided we acknowledge at heart that this power comes from the Lord.

All who practice repentance are reformed and regenerated. We do this reforming and regenerating seemingly on our own. Even the ability to do things “seemingly on our own” comes from the Lord, because it is the Lord who gives us the will and the power and never takes them away from anyone.

It is absolutely true that we cannot contribute anything to our own regeneration. Nevertheless we were not created statues. We were created human beings so that we would be able to do this regenerating seemingly on our own but actually with the Lord’s help. This responding through love and faith and forging a partnership with him is the one and only thing the Lord wants us to do for him.

Briefly put: Take action on your own, and yet trust that the Lord is helping you. This is what it means to take action seemingly on your own.

The ability to act on our own is not an attribute we were created with. Being able to act on one’s own is an attribute that belongs to the Lord alone. He constantly grants it to us.

If we do what is good and believe what is true seemingly on our own, we become an angel of heaven. If we do what is evil and believe what is false (which are also things we do seemingly on our own), we become a spirit of hell. (The fact that this, too, is something we do seemingly on our own is attested to by our prayers asking to be protected from the Devil, so that he does not lead us astray and bring his evil into us.)

When we believe we are acting on our own, we are always at fault, whether what we do is good or evil. When we believe that we are acting seemingly on our own, we are not at fault. Whatever we believe we are doing on our own becomes a part of us. If it is something good, we view it as our property and claim it as our own, when in fact it belongs to God and comes from him. If it is something evil, we again view it as our property and claim it as our own, when in fact it belongs to the Devil and comes from him. [Revelation Unveiled 224:9– 10]

For the purposes of this brief survey I will forego explaining a number of other things, including the point in the proposition above about adopting [false] principles of reason that are based on the teaching that we are justified by our faith alone and the teaching concerning the person of Christ, and using those principles to judge the uses and benefits of the sacraments (baptism and the Holy Supper); and the point that from the earliest centuries of Christianity until now, heresies have been leaping forth from a single source: the body of teaching based on the idea that there are three gods. These points will be presented and demonstrated in the work itself.