From Swedenborg's Works

 

Survey of Teachings of the New Church #98

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98. Why did the Christian world latch onto a faith that has distanced itself from everything good and true in heaven and in the church even to the point of completely separating itself from them? The sole reason is this: people split God into three, and did not believe that the Lord God the Savior is one with God the Father and therefore did not turn directly to the Lord.

Yet the Lord alone, in his human manifestation, is the divine truth itself, “which is the Word that was God with God and the true light that enlightens everyone, and the Word that became flesh” (John 1:1, 2, 9, 14). In other passages the Lord himself testifies that he is the truth itself and the light itself. For example, he says,

I am the light of the world. (John 8:12; 9:5)

While you have the light, believe in the light, so that you may become children of the light. I have come into the world as a light so that anyone who believes in me will not remain in darkness. (John 12:36, 46)

In the Book of Revelation,

I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End, the First and the Last, the bright and morning star. (Revelation 22:13, 16)

In Matthew,

When Jesus was transfigured, his face shone like the sun and his clothing became like light. (Matthew 17:2)

All this clarifies how that imaginary faith came into the world. It came about because people did not turn to the Lord. From the attestation of all my experiences in heaven I can declare with absolute certainty that it is impossible to derive even a single theological truth that is genuinely true from any source other than the Lord alone. It is as impossible to get truth from anywhere else as it is to sail from Britain or the Netherlands to the Pleiades, or to ride a horse from Germany to Orion in the sky.

  
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Thanks to the Swedenborg Foundation for their permission to use this translation.

From Swedenborg's Works

 

Survey of Teachings of the New Church #105

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105. 25 Roman Catholics today are not at all aware that their church once embraced concepts of the assigning of Christ’s merit to us and of our justification by faith in that. These concepts lie completely buried beneath their external rituals of worship, which are many. Therefore if Catholics give up some of their external rituals, turn directly to God the Savior Jesus Christ, and take both elements in the Holy Eucharist, they are better equipped than Protestants to become part of the New Jerusalem, that is, the Lord’s new church.

  
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Thanks to the Swedenborg Foundation for their permission to use this translation.