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.

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.

57. I foresee that many people who are now steeped in the absurdities of this faith are going to say, “How can the intellect grasp theological teachings at all? Isn’t something spiritual a thing that is by definition transcendent? Go ahead, though, and see if you can open up the mysteries of redemption and justification so that human reason may see them and finally satisfy its curiosity!”

Anticipating this challenge, I will indeed open up these mysteries, as follows.

As everyone surely knows, there is one God; there is no God other than him. God is love itself and wisdom itself, or goodness itself and truth itself. God himself came down in the form of divine truth, which is the Word, and took on a human manifestation for the purpose of removing the hells, and therefore damnation, from the human race. He accomplished this through battles with and victories over the Devil, that is, over all the hells that were then attacking and trying to spiritually kill every person who came into the world. Afterward he glorified his human manifestation; he did this by uniting divine truth to divine goodness within himself. In this way he returned to the Father from whom he had come forth.

Once we realize this, we understand the following statement in John: “The Word was with God, and the Word was God. And the Word became flesh” (John 1:1, 14). And in the same Gospel, “I came forth from the Father and have come into the world. Again, I leave the world and go to the Father” (John 16:28). From the points just made it should also be clear that if the Lord had not come into the world, no one could have been saved, and that the people who are saved are the people who believe in him and live good lives.

This is the face of faith. It appears before our [inner] sight when we have allowed the Word to bring us into the light of day. It is the face of the faith of the new church. (See the faith of the new heaven and the new church in universal form and in a specific form below, §§116, 117.)