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.

59. Brief Analysis

The statement that the intellect has to be held under obedience to faith serves as a kind of standard opening disclaimer for the tenets of the church of today. (See §54 above for an indication that what lies within them are mysteries or secrets so “transcendent” that they are incapable of flowing into the higher regions of the intellect and making sense.)

When still in school, ambitious ministers in the church who long to have a reputation as outstandingly wise and to be considered oracles in spiritual matters give special attention to teachings that are beyond the grasp of others. Although these teachings are very difficult for them to learn, they pursue them avidly. When, as a result, they gain a reputation for being wise, and become rich and famous because they possess these hidden treasures, they are granted the caps of distinguished professors or the robes of bishops.

In their thinking and in their teaching from the pulpit they focus almost exclusively on the mysteries concerning justification by faith alone and the good works that serve as faith’s lowly servants. Drawing on all they know about faith and good works, they have an amazing way of separating the two at one moment and bringing them together at another.

It is as if they were holding naked faith in one hand and works of goodwill in the other. At one moment they extend their arms wide to separate them; at another, they bring their hands together and combine the two.

Let some examples serve as illustrations. They teach that good works are not necessary for our salvation, because if we ourselves are doing them, we are doing them for some reward. Yet at the same time, they teach that good works do necessarily follow the faith that, for them, is the same as salvation itself.

They teach that faith without good works is alive and justifies us. Yet at the same time they teach that faith without good works is dead and does not justify us.

They teach that faith is not preserved or maintained by good works. Yet at the same time they teach that good works flow forth from faith like fruit from a tree, light from the sun, and heat from a fire.

They teach that good works, when appended to faith, bring it to fulfillment. Yet at the same time they teach that when good works are united as in a marriage or constitute a single form, they deprive faith of its essential ability to save us.

They teach that Christians are not under the law, and yet at the same time they teach that Christians must have a daily practice of following the law.

They teach that our good works are harmful if they become entangled in our being saved by faith — for example, if they become involved in our being forgiven our sins, justified, regenerated, brought to life, or saved. Yet they teach that our good works are profitable to us as long as they do not become entangled in our faith.

They teach that God gives us good works and crowns them with rewards, including spiritual rewards, but not with salvation or eternal life, because these are the rewards with which he crowns a faith that is separate from good works.

They teach that this faith of theirs is like a queen, who parades in magnificence because she is attended by good works as servants following along behind; but if these good works embrace her face-to-face and give her a kiss, she will be dethroned and called a whore.

Especially when they teach about the interaction between faith and good works, they suggest that from one point of view the interaction is beneficial and from another point of view it is not. They carefully choose particular words and skillfully weave them together in such a way that what they say has two meanings. There is one meaning for lay people and another for clergy. The meaning aimed at lay people covers up what they are really saying, but the meaning aimed at clergy reveals it.

Consider, if you will, whether any of the people who hear messages like these will be able to extract any teaching that will lead them to salvation? Will they not instead be blinded by the apparent contradictions in what is taught? And once blinded, will they not grope around for the means of salvation as if they were walking in total darkness? Based on the evidence of our own actions, which of us can tell whether we have any faith or not? Who knows whether it is better for us to do good works, because we fear missing out on the reward if we do not; or not to do good works, because we fear losing our faith if we do?

My friend, disentangle yourself from teachings like these. Abstain from what is evil because it is sinful, do what is good, and believe in the Lord. If you do these things, you will experience a process of being justified that will actually save you.

119. The second memorable occurrence taken from Revelation Unveiled. One time just after I woke up from sleeping I fell into a deep meditation on God. Looking up I saw above me in heaven an oval of intensely shining light. As I fixed my gaze on the light, it gradually receded toward the sides and merged into the periphery [of my vision].

Then, behold, heaven opened up to me! I saw some magnificent things, and angels standing in a circle on the south side of the opening, talking to each other. Because a burning desire came over me to hear what they were saying, I was allowed to hear it — first the sound of it, which was full of heavenly love; then the conversation itself, which was full of the wisdom that goes with that love.

They were having a conversation about the only God, about being in partnership with God, and about the salvation that results. What they were saying was ineffable — most of it could not be expressed in the words of any earthly language. Several times before, however, I had been in gatherings of angels in heaven itself, and had been able to join in their conversation because I was then in a state similar to theirs. This enabled me to understand them now, and to select from their discussion a few points that could be expressed in a rational way using the words of earthly language.

[2] They were saying that the underlying divine reality is united, uniform, absolute, and undivided. They said that the same is true of the divine essence, because the underlying divine reality is the divine essence, and that the same is also true of God, because the divine essence that is the underlying divine reality is God. They used spiritual images as illustration.

They said, “The underlying divine reality cannot be divided into many entities, each of which possesses an underlying divine reality, and still remain united, uniform, absolute, and undivided. Otherwise each separate entity would think on its own from its own separate underlying divine reality. If it also happened to be concurrently of the same mind as the others, there would be a number of deities in agreement; there would not be one God. Agreement, or the consensus of many, each one acting on its own or by itself, is not an attribute of one God but of many.”

They did not say “gods” because they were unable to. It was suppressed by the light of heaven that shaped their thought and was the context in which their conversation took place. They also said that when they tried to utter the word “gods” and to describe each one as a person by himself, the effort to say that immediately veered off toward “one,” and in fact toward “the one only God.”

[3] They added, “The underlying divine reality is a reality in itself, not from itself, because if it were from itself, that would imply an underlying reality that existed in itself from some prior underlying reality. It would mean there was a god from a god, which is not possible. What comes from God is called ‘divine,’ but it is not called ‘God.’ What is ‘a god from God,’ what is ‘an eternally begotten god from God,’ and what is ‘a god emanating from an eternally begotten god from God’ except words utterly devoid of heavenly light?”

Later on they said, “The underlying divine reality, which in itself is God, is uniform — and uniform not just in a simple way but in an infinite number of ways. It is uniform from eternity to eternity. It is uniform everywhere, and it is uniform with everyone and in everyone. (It is the condition of the recipient that causes all the variety and variability in reception.)”

[4] The angels demonstrated the absoluteness of the underlying divine reality, which in itself is God, as follows: “God is the Absolute, because he is absolute love and absolute wisdom, or to put it another way, he is absolute goodness and absolute truth. As a result, he is life itself. If these qualities were not absolute in God they would never exist in heaven or in the world, because they would be relatively nonexistent compared to the Absolute. Every quality is what it is because it comes from the Absolute, both as its source and as its point of reference.

“The Absolute (meaning the underlying divine reality) has no specific location. It is with those and in those who are in specific locations, depending on how receptive they are. Love and wisdom, goodness and truth, and the life these qualities give are absolute in God; in fact, they are God himself. A specific location cannot be attributed to them, and neither can a progression from place to place as the source of their omnipresence — they are not in a particular place. For this reason the Lord says he is in the midst of people [Matthew 18:20]; and he is in them and they are in him [John 6:56; 14:20; 15:4, 5].

[5] “Nevertheless, no one can comprehend God as he is in himself. Therefore he appears as he is in himself to be a sun above the angelic heavens. He himself as wisdom emanates from that sun in the form of light, and he himself as love emanates from that sun in the form of heat. That sun is not God himself. The divine love and wisdom surrounding him as they first go forth from him come to angels’ view as a sun.

“The Absolute in that sun is the Human Being. It is our Lord Jesus Christ, including both the divine source and the divine-human manifestation. Since the Absolute, which is absolute love and absolute wisdom, was in him as his soul from the Father, therefore divine life or life in itself was in him. None of us is like this. The soul in us is not life; it is merely a vessel for receiving life.

“In fact, the Lord teaches this when he says, ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life’ (John 14:6); and in another passage, ‘Just as the Father has life in himself, so he has also granted the Son to have life in himself’ (John 5:26). ‘Life in himself’ is God.”

They added that people who have any spiritual light at all can see from all this that the underlying divine reality, which is also the divine essence, cannot be shared among many, because it is united, uniform, absolute, and undivided. If anyone were to claim that the divine reality could be shared, further points that person made on the subject would contain obvious contradictions.

[6] Then the angels became aware that my thoughts included common Christian ideas of God: ideas of a trinity of persons in unity, and a unity of persons in the Trinity, and also of the Son of God’s birth from eternity. At that point they said, “What are you thinking? Surely you are thinking those thoughts from an earthly light that is incompatible with our spiritual light. We are closing heaven to you and leaving unless you get rid of the ideas that go with that point of view.”

So I said, “Please go deeper into my thinking. Perhaps you will see a compatibility.”

They went deeper and saw that three persons to me meant three emanating divine activities: creating, redeeming, and regenerating, which are activities of the one only God. The birth of a Son of God from eternity to me meant his birth foreseen from eternity and carried out in time.

Then I explained that my earthly thoughts about the trinity and the unity of persons and about the eternally begotten Son of God were based on the church’s statement of faith that was named after Athanasius. I added that the Athanasian Creed is accurate, provided that instead of the trinity of persons mentioned there one substitutes a trinity in one person — a trinity that exists uniquely within the Lord Jesus Christ; and provided that instead of the birth of a Son of God from eternity one substitutes the birth foreseen from eternity and carried out in time, because his human manifestation is openly referred to as the Son of God.

[7] The angels then said, “Good, good.”

They asked me to pass on a statement from them: “Anyone who does not seek help from the absolute God of heaven and earth cannot come into heaven, because heaven is heaven as a result of the one only God. The absolute God is Jesus Christ, who is Jehovah the Lord, Creator from eternity, Redeemer in time, and Regenerator to eternity. He is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit combined. This is the gospel that needs to be preached.”

Afterward the heavenly light I had seen above the opening came back. It came down bit by bit and filled the inner reaches of my mind, enlightening my ideas of the unity and the trinity of God. Then I saw my former merely earthly ideas being separated out, just as husks are shaken off wheat tossed in a winnowing basket. I saw my old notions carried off as if by a wind to the north of heaven and scattered.