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.

65. Brief Analysis

The only kind of salvation people believe in today is an instantaneous salvation as a result of direct mercy. They say that a verbal statement of faith alone and a confidence expressed by the lungs takes care of everything we need in the way of salvation. There is no need for goodwill (even though in actuality goodwill is what allows verbal faith to become real faith, and allows confidence expressed by the lungs to become confidence felt at heart). If you remove the idea of a cooperation that we undertake seemingly on our own through our exercise of goodwill, then this cooperation that spontaneously and automatically follows faith becomes “a passive activity,” which is a meaningless expression. What more, then, would we need than the following brief, direct statement: “Save me, O God, for the sake of the suffering of your Son. He washed away my sins with his own blood and is bringing me as a pure, just, and holy person before your throne”? If we had not made a statement like this before, even in our final hour before dying it would serve to initiate our justification.

Section 340 in the work Divine Providence, published in Amsterdam in 1764, shows, however, that the concept of instantaneous salvation by direct mercy is the flying fiery serpent in the church today, that it is destroying the religion, that it gives people an unwarranted feeling of security, and that it blames God for our damnation.