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Memorable Occurrences in Swedenborg's Writings

This list of Memorable Occurrences in Swedenborg's Writings was originally compiled by W. C. Henderson in 1960 but has since been updated.

From Swedenborg's Works

 

True Christian Religion #389

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389. The fifth experience.

I once saw a document sent down from heaven to a community in the world of spirits, where there were two leading churchmen together with a retinue of canons and presbyters. The document contained an exhortation to acknowledge the Lord Jesus Christ as God of heaven and earth, as He taught (Matthew 28:18), and to abandon as erroneous the doctrine that faith justifies without the deeds prescribed by the law. Many people read and copied out that document, and its contents were considered and talked over judiciously by many of them. But after receiving it, they said to one another: 'Let us hear the opinion of our leaders.'

So they listened to them, but they spoke against it and rejected it. However, the leaders of that community were hard of heart as the result of the falsities they had absorbed in their former world. After a short consultation, therefore, they sent the document back to heaven where it came from. When this was done, after some muttering most of the laymen abandoned their former acceptance, and then the light of their judgment in spiritual matters, which had previously been bright, was suddenly snuffed out. After a second, but vain, warning, I saw that community sinking down, though I could not see how deeply; but it sank out of sight of those who worship the Lord alone, and turn their backs on justification by faith alone.

[2] A few days later I saw perhaps as many as a hundred coming up from the lower earth, to which that small community had sunk; they approached me and one of them said: 'Listen to this extraordinary occurrence. When we sank down, we saw what looked like a lake, and after a while dry land; then later a small town in which many found a home for themselves. Next day we got together to discuss what we should do. Many people said that the two leaders of the church should be approached and gently reproved for sending the document back to the heaven it came from, since it was because of that this had happened to us. They also chose a few people (and the man talking to me said he had been one of them) who went off to the leaders, where one of their number who was especially wise addressed them as follows: "We believed that we excelled others in possessing the church and religion, because we heard it said that we enjoy the strongest light of the Gospel. But some of us have been granted enlightenment from heaven, and this enlightenment has been accompanied by the perception that at the present time there is no longer a church, because there is no religion, in the Christian world."

[3] 'The leaders said: "What is this you are saying? Is not the church where there is the Word, where Christ the Saviour is known, and where there are the sacraments?" Our spokesman replied to this: "They belong to the church, for they make the church; but they make it inside, not outside, a person." He went on to say: "Can there be a church where three Gods are worshipped? Can there be a church where its whole teaching is based upon a misinterpretation of a single saying of Paul, and thus not upon the Word? Can there be a church, when the Saviour of the world, who is the God of the church Himself, is not approached? Can anyone deny that religion is shunning evil and doing good? Is there any religion [where it is taught] that faith alone saves, and not together with charity? Is there any religion where it is taught that the charity which man exercises is only moral and civil charity? Is there anyone who does not see that that sort of charity contains nothing religious? Does faith alone involve any act or deed, though religion consists in action? Is there a nation anywhere in the whole world which attributes no saving power to the good of charity, which is good deeds? Yet the whole of religion consists in good, and the whole of the church consists in the teaching of truths, and by means of truths the teaching of various kinds of good. How glorious our lot would have been, if we had welcomed the teachings at the heart of the document sent down from heaven!"

[4] 'Then the leaders said: "Your remarks aim too high. Surely faith in action, which is the faith which fully justifies and saves, is the church? Surely faith at rest, which is the faith that goes forth and accomplishes, is religion? You must grasp this, my children." But then our wise man said: "Listen, fathers. Surely according to your dogma man resembles a block of wood in conceiving faith in action? Can a block be made alive so as to become a church? Surely faith at rest is according to your notion the continuation and progress of faith in action? And when, as your dogma insists, all saving power resides in faith, and the good of charity on man's part makes no contribution, where is religion then?" Then the prelates said: "Friend, you talk like this because you do not know the secrets of justification by faith alone; and if one is ignorant of these, one cannot know inwardly the way to salvation. Your way is external and fit only for the common people. Go that way if you like. But you should know that all good is from God, and nothing of it from man, so that in spiritual matters man can achieve nothing by himself. How then can a man by himself do good which is spiritual good?"

[5] 'To this our spokesman replied with great indignation: "I know more about your secrets of justification than you do, and I tell you frankly that I have seen nothing inwardly in your secrets but phantoms. Surely religion consists in acknowledging [and loving] God, and shunning and hating the devil? Is not God good itself and the devil evil itself? Is there anyone anywhere in the world, who, if he has a religion, does not know this? Is not acknowledging and loving God doing good, because this is God's and from God; and is not shunning and hating the devil not doing evil, because this is the devil's and from the devil? Or to put it another way, does your faith in action, which you called the faith that fully justifies and saves, or in other words your act of justification by faith alone, teach you to do any good deed which is God's and from God, or to shun any evil because it is the devil's and from the devil? None at all, since you lay down that there is no salvation in either. What is your faith at rest, which you called the faith that goes forth and accomplishes, but the same as faith in action? How can this be perfected, since you exclude all good done by man as if of himself, saying in your secret doctrines: 'How can anyone be saved by any good done by himself, when salvation is a free gift?' Or 'What good can be done by man except with a view to seeking merit, when yet Christ's merit is all-sufficient? Thus doing good to achieve salvation would be attributing to oneself what belongs to Christ alone, and it would also be wishing to justify and save oneself.' Or 'How can anyone do a good deed, when the Holy Spirit performs everything with no help from man? What need then is there for any extra good from man, when all good from man is not in essence good at all?'

[6] There are many other questions; are not these your secrets? But in my eyes they are simply quibbles and tricks invented in order to get rid of good deeds, which are the good deeds of charity, so as to establish firmly your doctrine of faith alone. And because you do so, you consider man as regards faith, and in general as regards all spiritual matters relating to the church and religion as a block of wood, or like a lifeless effigy, not as a human being created in the image of God, who has been given and is continually given the ability to understand and to will, to believe and to love, and to speak and act, exactly as if of himself, especially in spiritual matters, since they are what make a human being human. If a human being were not to think and act in spiritual matters as if of himself, what then would become of the Word? What would then become of the church and religion? And what of worship? You know that doing good to the neighbour as the result of love is charity; but you do not know what charity is. Yet it is the soul and essence of faith. And since charity is both these things, how can faith divorced from charity be anything but dead? Dead faith is nothing but a phantom. I call it a phantom, because James 2:17 calls faith without good deeds not only dead, but even diabolical."

[7] Then one of the leaders, on hearing his faith called dead, diabolical and a phantom, became so furious that he snatched the mitre off his head and threw it on the table saying: 'I will not put it on again until I have taken vengeance on the enemies of the faith of our church.' So he shook his head murmuring 'That man James! That man James!' On the front of the mitre was a plate, with the words 'Faith alone justifies' engraved on it. Then there suddenly appeared a monster rising out of the ground; it had seven heads, feet like a bear's, a body like a leopard's, a mouth like a lion's, exactly like the beast described in Revelation (Revelation 13:1-2), and of which an image was made and honoured (Revelation 13:14-15). This phantom took the mitre from the table, pulled its lower edge apart and put it on its seven heads. At this the ground gaped open beneath its feet and it sank down. On seeing this the leader cried: 'Assault, assault.' Then we left them, and found steps before our eyes which we went up; so we came back upon the earth and into sight of heaven, where we had been before.'

This was the story told me by the spirit who with a hundred companions had come up from the lower earth.

  
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Thanks to the Swedenborg Society for the permission to use this translation.

From Swedenborg's Works

 

Conjugial Love #532

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532. To this I will append the following narrative account:

I was once in my spirit taken up to the angelic heaven and into one of its societies; and some of the wise there then came to me and said, "What news do you have from earth?"

"This is new," I said, "that the Lord has revealed secrets which surpass in excellence all the secrets previously revealed from the inception of the Church."

"What are they?" they asked.

I said that they were the following:

1. That in the Word and in each and every particular of it, there is a spiritual meaning corresponding to the natural meaning; that through that spiritual meaning people of the church are conjoined with the Lord and affiliated with angels; and that in it lies the holiness of the Word.

[2] 2. That the corresponding elements of which the spiritual meaning of the Word consists have been disclosed.

The angels asked whether the inhabitants of the earth knew anything about correspondences before. I said that they knew nothing at all of them. They have lain hidden now for several thousand years, I said, namely from the time of Job. Among peoples who lived at that time and before, a study of correspondences was the study of studies, from which they had their wisdom, because they gained from it a concept of spiritual things having to do with heaven and so with the church. But because that study was turned into an idolatrous one, it was of the Lord's Divine providence so blotted out and lost that no one has seen any trace of it. However, knowledge of it has nevertheless now been disclosed by the Lord, I said, in order that people of the church may be conjoined with Him and affiliated with angels. This conjunction and affiliation are effected through the Word, in which each and every particular is a correspondent form.

The angels greatly rejoiced that it had pleased the Lord to reveal this great secret, which for several thousand years had lain so deeply hidden. And they said it was done in order that the Christian Church, founded as it is on the Word and being now at its end, might be revived and again draw its spirit through heaven from the Lord.

They inquired as well whether in consequence of that knowledge it had at this time been disclosed what baptism and Holy Supper symbolize, sacraments about which people have hitherto had such various thoughts. And I replied that it had been disclosed.

[3] I said further, 3. that the Lord has now revealed the circumstances of people's life after death.

The angels said, "What about life after death? Who does not know that a person lives after death?"

"They know it and do not know it," I replied. "They say that what lives after death is not the person but his soul, and that this lives on as a spirit, of which they harbor an idea as of its being like the wind or ether, saying that it does not live as a real person until after the day of the Last Judgment. At that time, they say, the elements of the body which were left in the world, even though eaten by worms, mice and fish, will be gathered together again and constituted once more into a body, and that it is thus that people will rise again."

"What is this you are saying?" the angels said. "Who does not know that a person lives as a person after death, the only difference being that he then lives as a spiritual person? And who does not know that a spiritual person sees a spiritual person as a material person does a material one, without their being aware of a single distinction, except that they are living in a more perfect state?"

[4] The angels then inquired, "What do people know of our world, and of heaven and hell?"

I said that they have known nothing, but 4. that the Lord has now disclosed the nature of the world in which angels and spirits live, thus the nature of heaven and the nature of hell; as also that angels and spirits live in affiliation with men; in addition to many other wonders connected with them.

The angels were gladdened that it had pleased the Lord to disclose such things, so that people would no longer suffer such ignorance as to be in a state of uncertainty regarding their immortality.

[5] Going on, I said, 5. "The Lord has now revealed that there is in your world a different sun from the one in our world; that the sun of your world is pure love, while the sun of our world is nothing but fire; that because your sun is pure love, everything that emanates from it brings with it something of life, while because our sun is nothing but fire, everything that emanates from it brings with it nothing of life; also that this is the origin of the difference between what is spiritual and what is natural, a difference hitherto unknown which has also been disclosed."

It has been made known in consequence of this, I said, from what source the light comes which enlightens the human intellect with wisdom, and from what source the warmth comes which kindles the human will with love.

[6] In addition, it has been disclosed 6. that there are three degrees of life, and consequently three heavens; that the human mind is divided into these degrees, and that the human being thus corresponds to the three heavens.

"Did people not know this before?" said the angels.

I replied that they knew about greater and lesser degrees in a range, but nothing about prior and subsequent degrees.

[7] The angels asked whether in addition to these disclosures anything else had been revealed. I said that a number of other things had been, namely, 7. concerning the Last Judgment; concerning the Lord, that He is God of heaven and earth, that God is one both in person and in essence, in whom is the Divine trinity, and that He is the Lord; also concerning the New Church about to be established by Him, and the doctrine of that church; concerning the sacredness of the Holy Scripture; as also that the Apocalypse has been revealed, nothing of which could have been revealed, not even in one little verse, except by the Lord.

Included also is a revelation concerning inhabitants of other planets and concerning other earths in the universe, I said; as well as many accounts and wonders from the spiritual world, by which much else having to do with wisdom has been disclosed from heaven.

  
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Many thanks to the General Church of the New Jerusalem, and to Rev. N.B. Rogers, translator, for the permission to use this translation.

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