What Constitutes a Church?
By the Rev. Paul L. Booth
By the Rev. Paul L. Booth
Readings:
Nova Hierosolyma and Her Celestial Doctrine 230,241,242,243; Doctrine concerning the Sacred Scripture 50,51,53,57.
Nova Hierosolyma and Her Celestial Doctrine 230,241,242,243; Doctrine concerning the Sacred Scripture 50,51,53,57.
There are two things which constitute the life of a man's spirit, namely, love and faith; love constituting the life of his will, and faith the life of his understanding. The love of good, and the faith of truth from it, constitute the life of Heaven.
(NHCD 230)
What constitutes Heaven with a man, also constitutes the Church. (NHCD 241)
That the Church may exist, there must be doctrine from the Word; because without doctrine the Word cannot be understood. (NHCD 243)
The Doctrine of the Church must be taken from the sense of
the Letter of the Word, and be confirmed by it. (850)
Genuine truth, which is to be the source of the doctrine, is manifest in the sense of the Letter of the Word only to those who are enlightened by the Lord. (S 57)
The Word states those who have love and faith have the Church within them. But, what it is that love and faith signify or mean? It is not just any love or any faith. It is stated in the Word that "God is Love," that the Lord is Divine Love and Wisdom and that both good with truth proceed from the Divine Human as one into everything in the world, good being a things essence and truth its existence. The love and faith that we are to have from the Lord the Divine Human is that we may have within us the true Church. We are of or in the Church when the Proceeding influence or the Holy Spirit, from the Lord, the Divine Human, is within us.
The Word says that man is to have faith because faith is determined according to the doctrine received and matured from the Word, which is of course, the truth with man, the man, of course, needs to live that doctrine.
Therefore, the love and faith that is implied in Nova Hierosolyma and Her Celestial Doctrine 230 is the love and faith granted by the Lord. The quality of the Church with us is determined by the quality of the love and faith that we receive from the Lord. And that quality coming from the Lord is Divine; with man the quality is according to the love and faith he receives from the Lord. The question that is often brought to mind is, how do we receive the Lord's love as faith so that we have the true Church within us, so that we do have a true love and faith, that we may have the love of good and the faith of truth from the love of good, and not from the love of self or the things of this world?
It is also stated in the Word that for a Church to exist, the Word, the Holy Scriptures and who is the Lord, is to be with the Church and must be taught; it is also stated that from the Word there must be a doctrine in order for truth even to be understood. From the understanding of the Word is the quality of the Church. There are many different doctrines taken from the Word, therefore, there are many different Churches, as is evident from the many divisions and diverse Churches derived from the Christian Church, not to mention from the prior Churches of the Ancient world called the Ancient Church or the Noah Church.
The question now before us should be, how do we take from the Word a true doctrine so that the true Church will be within us, and so. that we will spiritually develop in His New Church? We have from our birth affection for learning and acquiring new knowledge. We want to know how and why and when about so many things, however, when we do obtain that knowledge, we claim it as our own and it is ours to use, but it is the Lord's and from the Lord. So, that knowledge, once we come to acknowledge it, becomes ours, and we label it as either "good" or "bad" according to whether we receive delight from it or not. In this we see that man is the cause of evil and what he often thinks of he calls 'good' though it is not good.
We should recognize that all thought comes to us either from Heaven or from hell, that is, from man's infernal love of self. We have the tendency to receive thoughts from hell because of our proprium or our will and not from the Lord's will. But, because the Lord keeps us in spiritual freedom, we can reject what comes from hell, and then, receive true and good thoughts through Heaven from the Lord through angels when we read and meditate on the Word. We either reject or accept those thoughts that would influence us, depending on the doctrine we have confirmed for ourselves in our life. So, we can live for ourselves, which becomes a life from hell, or we can live from the Lord, which is a life of charity to the neighbor and love to the Lord. This, then, is the Lord's life in man.
Now, by the Word is not meant only that which inflows from Heaven, the Divine's Influence, the Proceeding love and wisdom or good and truth, which is from the Divine Human, the risen and glorified Lord who was victorious over the hells, it also means the written Word in the sense of the letter and in its spiritual and celestial senses. It is a truth that if the written Word were not present in the world with man, there would be no Church on earth with mankind. If there were only sciences concerning the natural life, that is, as an example: the sciences of agriculture, economics, biology, and so many others, without the sciences concerning spiritual things, religion and ecclesiastical things, mankind would cease. Why is this? It is, because we are both spiritual and natural in our being, and the natural cannot exist without the spiritual. The science of spiritual things is for our spiritual life here and in Heaven, even as natural sciences are for our natural life here on earth that we may live.
Thus, the Word becomes our salvation. Naturally, we learn how we are to live our life from it in order to be reformed and regenerated and, thus, how we can be led to salvation. We become a 'Church' and the Church is within us when we live from the truths written and taught in the Word, and then, with these together, we become the Church on earth which is the Lord's New Church that now descends from Heaven from the Lord.
The Word reveals truths to man, and from these truths man is to form doctrine that leads him to become a son of God. That doctrine becomes our life when we live according to it. If it is a true doctrine, then we have the Church within us, and we become the Lord's New
Church, which now descends from God from Heaven as the New Jerusalem spoken of in Revelation 21.
However, as stated, the Word cannot be understood without doctrine. And if a man does not live his life according to the doctrine of his Church, then it is definitely not his doctrine, but only one he knows from his natural memory that he has obtained through other influences of man's own ideas of what the truths of the Word are.
In the Lord's New Church which is the Nova Hierosolyma (New Jerusalem) now descending we are taught that the Word has an internal sense which is often called the spiritual and celestial senses of the Word. We learn in the internal sense that the Word is written in correspondences and that within the natural sense - there are the spiritual and celestial senses. It is written so, so that angels may have the Word and read from it even as men do and that there is conjunction with the Lord with them. The angels understand either the spiritual or celestial sense of the Word according to whether they are celestial or spiritual angels. Because the Word is written in correspondences, the idea often arises in man that he needs to attain doctrine from the internal sense. This leads men to try to form a doctrine by knowing the significance and representatives of the correspondences found in the Word. But, in so doing, they often only advance false doctrines. It then might occur, why is doctrine not to be taken from the spiritual sense of the Word? Doctrine is to be taken from the sense of the Letter of the Word because in that sense there is the Lord's Divine Human in all its power. We must remember that man could not be saved unless the Lord Himself or Jehovah came on earth as the Truth. This is because the Lord had to make His Human Divine in the Natural state as well as it was in the Spiritual and Celestial states. Besides, just linking or connecting correspondences together, one after another, leads to strange and different false doctrines, and will not lead to the understanding of the spiritual sense or to the genuine true doctrine that leads man to become a true Church. The internal sense of the Word, however, leads man to know, acknowledge and confirms the doctrine he forms from the literal sense. We are made to be both spiritual and natural, as noted before, but we are not made aware of the spiritual world while we are in the natural world.
Consequently, being natural, we can really only learn, know and acknowledge and act naturally. Thus, in the Doctrine concerning the Sacred Scripture, Heading to Chapter V, it is stated that: THE DOCTRINE OF THE CHURCH IS TO BE DRAWN FROM THE SENSE OF THE LETTER OF THE WORD, AND IS TO BE CONFIRMED THEREBY.
Now, there are parts of the Word written in a language that all who read and hear may understand them. Those who do can form for themselves a genuine doctrine from these parts. These truths of the Word are said to be like the face and hands of a man which are uncovered to the public. Anyone, when he or she sees a person's face, can learn and know the person without difficulty if they wish. Therefore, from these words in the Scriptures is revealed or opened a truth from which doctrine can be made, and if man lives according to it, it becomes a doctrine or teaching with him that he may truly live. Then, the Lord is within that person in love and in faith. But, what about the remainder of the written Word - the part that is clothed and the truth covered or hidden from man - is man to guess what the truth there is? Why is it written for us and yet is not understood, that is, that we cannot be clearly understood so that true doctrine may be drawn from it? The answer is found in the Doctrine concerning the Sacred Scripture 57:
Genuine truth, which is to be the source of doctrine, is manifest in the sense of the Letter of the Word only to those who are enlightened by the Lord.
Here we are told that our understanding of the Word is only true if we are enlightened by the Lord. Then, who does the Lord enlighten? After all, it was said that there is a natural desire or affection in man to know that he may obtain and apply in his living. So, one reads the Word, he reads it because of his desire or love to know what it reveals, thus to know its truths. Though that in its self is not enough, if we are to be enlightened by the Lord and taught truths that may be taken and formed by us into a true doctrine, and thus, for us to receive true love and faith, which constitute the Church both in man and with man. It is said in the Word that:
Enlightenment comes from the Lord alone and is granted to those who love truths because they are truths, who apply them to the uses of life. (Doctrine concerning the Sacred Scripture 57).
From this it may be understood that one thing that constitutes the Church with man is love, that is, a love of truths because they are truths and not because he may learn something that will help him to gain wealth or honor, or because he could acquire much knowledge of spiritual things. But why know truth for truth's sake? Because the Lord uses these truths when they are formed into doctrine and applied into one's life, thus He gives us a new spiritual life. When we become a use for the Lord, His good and truth are one together within us and we are conjoined with the Lord as are the angels, and that is His life with us. Contrarily, if we love truths because of a love of self and worldly things, then, instead of enlightenment there is gross obscurity and darkness. The truths of the Word become distorted and false in man. With the person they seem as the truth and are called truths, but they are falsities. From these falsities comes a false doctrine. Such a man's faith is a false faith and leads him in a life of evil.
We need to recall that from the Lord comes truth and good. Yes, the Lord is Truth. If man loves the good and the truth and applies them to uses in his life for the sake of the good and the true, then the Lord is conjoined in that truth and good with the man. The Lord is not only present, but is conjoined with him when both good and truth are one in man. Otherwise, his mind is divided, his understanding is of one thing while his will is of another. If this man loves the Lord because He is the Lord and applies the love and acknowledgment of the Lord to his life, then the Lord comes to dwell with that man, and the Church is within man, and the man becomes a Church.
So, when man reads the Word in order to know truths because they are truths, man is enlightened, that is, the Word in the spiritual sense is revealed to him. He has the genuine truth. And, when man is enlightened, the Word becomes lucid and transparent with him. What does this mean? It means spiritual and celestial senses flow into man's spirit, and thus, the Lord flows into his rational sense in light (in understanding), and the man sees or understands the Word from an internal perception and are, later, in his thought.
From this, from knowing that enlightenment from the Lord comes from loving truth because it is the truth, is revealed that each person needs to
know, to acknowledge, and to live a life from these truths that he forms into his doctrine. Otherwise, it is not truly his. If he does not obtain truths and form them to make doctrine, that is, if he does not live from the Lord, he instead lives from a false doctrine that is from hell, and what is not appropriated for oneself is not his. It is something like borrowing life from another. The Lord does not lend His life to man. He wants to give it to man because that is the nature of love. Love wants to give what is its own to another.
Therefore, He formed man to be a vessel that may acquire His - the Lord's - life. And, when His life is within man, within that vessel 'so to speak' then man lives his life from the Lord and not from one's self. Now, this life is to be reciprocated to the Lord, for, if it is not, then it is not true life from the Lord, but a distorted life. The Lord's life is love, and love wants to love another and be loved. Otherwise, there is no life from the Lord with man; it is but only a false and evil life from man's own proprium. With those, there can be no true Church.
Every word, every truth from the Word, can be distorted and turned into false doctrine, and if it is confirmed, it brings a life of evil. Yet, man is to take from the sense of the Letter of the Word and to form or make doctrine and confirm it as truth. That doctrine leads to a life of love and faith, thus to a Church within a man. When men are together in like love and faith, there is the Church which is the Lord's New Church on earth. We must not avoid confirming truths or doctrine for fear that we could confirm falsities, and thus, believe a false doctrine. But how do we know if the doctrine taught by the Church is true or not, for falsities can be derived from every truth from the Word and, thus, false doctrines can be taught? For example, there is the truth that God is One God. Yet, there is the doctrine that God is present in three persons. If one confirms this as true, then he sees three separate persons each affirming to be God. This cannot be reconciled with the truth that God is One. Again, there is the truth that Jehovah came into the world to save mankind, yet there is the doctrine that the Father Who is Jehovah sent His Son, who was with Him from eternity, into the world to save mankind. If this is confirmed, then one sees two separate persons, each claiming to have all power. In confirmation of such doctrines, many false ideas concerning the Father, Son and Holy Spirit have arisen in the Christian (first) Church, even leading one to an evil life. One example is
that man can live as he pleases, even live in evil, and when he is on his deathbed, he can, then, still be saved just by praying for forgiveness if only he believes that the Lord's life was imputed to him for his belief of such a doctrine whether or not his life was spent in evil.
It is the life that we live now that determines our present state and the state of our life after death, whether in Heaven or hell. The Lord will enlighten us to see clearly truths from the Word. We then can form them into a genuine doctrine. We are every day confirming doctrine, whether it is a genuine or false doctrine, by our living. It is a true doctrine if we love the Lord and love His Word, for then we love truth itself for truth's sake and the Lord because He is Love and Truth. Then a man will become a use for the Lord. But if it is a false doctrine that we live, then we love ourselves and become a use for evil.
End.
(NHCD 230)
What constitutes Heaven with a man, also constitutes the Church. (NHCD 241)
That the Church may exist, there must be doctrine from the Word; because without doctrine the Word cannot be understood. (NHCD 243)
The Doctrine of the Church must be taken from the sense of
the Letter of the Word, and be confirmed by it. (850)
Genuine truth, which is to be the source of the doctrine, is manifest in the sense of the Letter of the Word only to those who are enlightened by the Lord. (S 57)
The Word states those who have love and faith have the Church within them. But, what it is that love and faith signify or mean? It is not just any love or any faith. It is stated in the Word that "God is Love," that the Lord is Divine Love and Wisdom and that both good with truth proceed from the Divine Human as one into everything in the world, good being a things essence and truth its existence. The love and faith that we are to have from the Lord the Divine Human is that we may have within us the true Church. We are of or in the Church when the Proceeding influence or the Holy Spirit, from the Lord, the Divine Human, is within us.
The Word says that man is to have faith because faith is determined according to the doctrine received and matured from the Word, which is of course, the truth with man, the man, of course, needs to live that doctrine.
Therefore, the love and faith that is implied in Nova Hierosolyma and Her Celestial Doctrine 230 is the love and faith granted by the Lord. The quality of the Church with us is determined by the quality of the love and faith that we receive from the Lord. And that quality coming from the Lord is Divine; with man the quality is according to the love and faith he receives from the Lord. The question that is often brought to mind is, how do we receive the Lord's love as faith so that we have the true Church within us, so that we do have a true love and faith, that we may have the love of good and the faith of truth from the love of good, and not from the love of self or the things of this world?
It is also stated in the Word that for a Church to exist, the Word, the Holy Scriptures and who is the Lord, is to be with the Church and must be taught; it is also stated that from the Word there must be a doctrine in order for truth even to be understood. From the understanding of the Word is the quality of the Church. There are many different doctrines taken from the Word, therefore, there are many different Churches, as is evident from the many divisions and diverse Churches derived from the Christian Church, not to mention from the prior Churches of the Ancient world called the Ancient Church or the Noah Church.
The question now before us should be, how do we take from the Word a true doctrine so that the true Church will be within us, and so. that we will spiritually develop in His New Church? We have from our birth affection for learning and acquiring new knowledge. We want to know how and why and when about so many things, however, when we do obtain that knowledge, we claim it as our own and it is ours to use, but it is the Lord's and from the Lord. So, that knowledge, once we come to acknowledge it, becomes ours, and we label it as either "good" or "bad" according to whether we receive delight from it or not. In this we see that man is the cause of evil and what he often thinks of he calls 'good' though it is not good.
We should recognize that all thought comes to us either from Heaven or from hell, that is, from man's infernal love of self. We have the tendency to receive thoughts from hell because of our proprium or our will and not from the Lord's will. But, because the Lord keeps us in spiritual freedom, we can reject what comes from hell, and then, receive true and good thoughts through Heaven from the Lord through angels when we read and meditate on the Word. We either reject or accept those thoughts that would influence us, depending on the doctrine we have confirmed for ourselves in our life. So, we can live for ourselves, which becomes a life from hell, or we can live from the Lord, which is a life of charity to the neighbor and love to the Lord. This, then, is the Lord's life in man.
Now, by the Word is not meant only that which inflows from Heaven, the Divine's Influence, the Proceeding love and wisdom or good and truth, which is from the Divine Human, the risen and glorified Lord who was victorious over the hells, it also means the written Word in the sense of the letter and in its spiritual and celestial senses. It is a truth that if the written Word were not present in the world with man, there would be no Church on earth with mankind. If there were only sciences concerning the natural life, that is, as an example: the sciences of agriculture, economics, biology, and so many others, without the sciences concerning spiritual things, religion and ecclesiastical things, mankind would cease. Why is this? It is, because we are both spiritual and natural in our being, and the natural cannot exist without the spiritual. The science of spiritual things is for our spiritual life here and in Heaven, even as natural sciences are for our natural life here on earth that we may live.
Thus, the Word becomes our salvation. Naturally, we learn how we are to live our life from it in order to be reformed and regenerated and, thus, how we can be led to salvation. We become a 'Church' and the Church is within us when we live from the truths written and taught in the Word, and then, with these together, we become the Church on earth which is the Lord's New Church that now descends from Heaven from the Lord.
The Word reveals truths to man, and from these truths man is to form doctrine that leads him to become a son of God. That doctrine becomes our life when we live according to it. If it is a true doctrine, then we have the Church within us, and we become the Lord's New
Church, which now descends from God from Heaven as the New Jerusalem spoken of in Revelation 21.
However, as stated, the Word cannot be understood without doctrine. And if a man does not live his life according to the doctrine of his Church, then it is definitely not his doctrine, but only one he knows from his natural memory that he has obtained through other influences of man's own ideas of what the truths of the Word are.
In the Lord's New Church which is the Nova Hierosolyma (New Jerusalem) now descending we are taught that the Word has an internal sense which is often called the spiritual and celestial senses of the Word. We learn in the internal sense that the Word is written in correspondences and that within the natural sense - there are the spiritual and celestial senses. It is written so, so that angels may have the Word and read from it even as men do and that there is conjunction with the Lord with them. The angels understand either the spiritual or celestial sense of the Word according to whether they are celestial or spiritual angels. Because the Word is written in correspondences, the idea often arises in man that he needs to attain doctrine from the internal sense. This leads men to try to form a doctrine by knowing the significance and representatives of the correspondences found in the Word. But, in so doing, they often only advance false doctrines. It then might occur, why is doctrine not to be taken from the spiritual sense of the Word? Doctrine is to be taken from the sense of the Letter of the Word because in that sense there is the Lord's Divine Human in all its power. We must remember that man could not be saved unless the Lord Himself or Jehovah came on earth as the Truth. This is because the Lord had to make His Human Divine in the Natural state as well as it was in the Spiritual and Celestial states. Besides, just linking or connecting correspondences together, one after another, leads to strange and different false doctrines, and will not lead to the understanding of the spiritual sense or to the genuine true doctrine that leads man to become a true Church. The internal sense of the Word, however, leads man to know, acknowledge and confirms the doctrine he forms from the literal sense. We are made to be both spiritual and natural, as noted before, but we are not made aware of the spiritual world while we are in the natural world.
Consequently, being natural, we can really only learn, know and acknowledge and act naturally. Thus, in the Doctrine concerning the Sacred Scripture, Heading to Chapter V, it is stated that: THE DOCTRINE OF THE CHURCH IS TO BE DRAWN FROM THE SENSE OF THE LETTER OF THE WORD, AND IS TO BE CONFIRMED THEREBY.
Now, there are parts of the Word written in a language that all who read and hear may understand them. Those who do can form for themselves a genuine doctrine from these parts. These truths of the Word are said to be like the face and hands of a man which are uncovered to the public. Anyone, when he or she sees a person's face, can learn and know the person without difficulty if they wish. Therefore, from these words in the Scriptures is revealed or opened a truth from which doctrine can be made, and if man lives according to it, it becomes a doctrine or teaching with him that he may truly live. Then, the Lord is within that person in love and in faith. But, what about the remainder of the written Word - the part that is clothed and the truth covered or hidden from man - is man to guess what the truth there is? Why is it written for us and yet is not understood, that is, that we cannot be clearly understood so that true doctrine may be drawn from it? The answer is found in the Doctrine concerning the Sacred Scripture 57:
Genuine truth, which is to be the source of doctrine, is manifest in the sense of the Letter of the Word only to those who are enlightened by the Lord.
Here we are told that our understanding of the Word is only true if we are enlightened by the Lord. Then, who does the Lord enlighten? After all, it was said that there is a natural desire or affection in man to know that he may obtain and apply in his living. So, one reads the Word, he reads it because of his desire or love to know what it reveals, thus to know its truths. Though that in its self is not enough, if we are to be enlightened by the Lord and taught truths that may be taken and formed by us into a true doctrine, and thus, for us to receive true love and faith, which constitute the Church both in man and with man. It is said in the Word that:
Enlightenment comes from the Lord alone and is granted to those who love truths because they are truths, who apply them to the uses of life. (Doctrine concerning the Sacred Scripture 57).
From this it may be understood that one thing that constitutes the Church with man is love, that is, a love of truths because they are truths and not because he may learn something that will help him to gain wealth or honor, or because he could acquire much knowledge of spiritual things. But why know truth for truth's sake? Because the Lord uses these truths when they are formed into doctrine and applied into one's life, thus He gives us a new spiritual life. When we become a use for the Lord, His good and truth are one together within us and we are conjoined with the Lord as are the angels, and that is His life with us. Contrarily, if we love truths because of a love of self and worldly things, then, instead of enlightenment there is gross obscurity and darkness. The truths of the Word become distorted and false in man. With the person they seem as the truth and are called truths, but they are falsities. From these falsities comes a false doctrine. Such a man's faith is a false faith and leads him in a life of evil.
We need to recall that from the Lord comes truth and good. Yes, the Lord is Truth. If man loves the good and the truth and applies them to uses in his life for the sake of the good and the true, then the Lord is conjoined in that truth and good with the man. The Lord is not only present, but is conjoined with him when both good and truth are one in man. Otherwise, his mind is divided, his understanding is of one thing while his will is of another. If this man loves the Lord because He is the Lord and applies the love and acknowledgment of the Lord to his life, then the Lord comes to dwell with that man, and the Church is within man, and the man becomes a Church.
So, when man reads the Word in order to know truths because they are truths, man is enlightened, that is, the Word in the spiritual sense is revealed to him. He has the genuine truth. And, when man is enlightened, the Word becomes lucid and transparent with him. What does this mean? It means spiritual and celestial senses flow into man's spirit, and thus, the Lord flows into his rational sense in light (in understanding), and the man sees or understands the Word from an internal perception and are, later, in his thought.
From this, from knowing that enlightenment from the Lord comes from loving truth because it is the truth, is revealed that each person needs to
know, to acknowledge, and to live a life from these truths that he forms into his doctrine. Otherwise, it is not truly his. If he does not obtain truths and form them to make doctrine, that is, if he does not live from the Lord, he instead lives from a false doctrine that is from hell, and what is not appropriated for oneself is not his. It is something like borrowing life from another. The Lord does not lend His life to man. He wants to give it to man because that is the nature of love. Love wants to give what is its own to another.
Therefore, He formed man to be a vessel that may acquire His - the Lord's - life. And, when His life is within man, within that vessel 'so to speak' then man lives his life from the Lord and not from one's self. Now, this life is to be reciprocated to the Lord, for, if it is not, then it is not true life from the Lord, but a distorted life. The Lord's life is love, and love wants to love another and be loved. Otherwise, there is no life from the Lord with man; it is but only a false and evil life from man's own proprium. With those, there can be no true Church.
Every word, every truth from the Word, can be distorted and turned into false doctrine, and if it is confirmed, it brings a life of evil. Yet, man is to take from the sense of the Letter of the Word and to form or make doctrine and confirm it as truth. That doctrine leads to a life of love and faith, thus to a Church within a man. When men are together in like love and faith, there is the Church which is the Lord's New Church on earth. We must not avoid confirming truths or doctrine for fear that we could confirm falsities, and thus, believe a false doctrine. But how do we know if the doctrine taught by the Church is true or not, for falsities can be derived from every truth from the Word and, thus, false doctrines can be taught? For example, there is the truth that God is One God. Yet, there is the doctrine that God is present in three persons. If one confirms this as true, then he sees three separate persons each affirming to be God. This cannot be reconciled with the truth that God is One. Again, there is the truth that Jehovah came into the world to save mankind, yet there is the doctrine that the Father Who is Jehovah sent His Son, who was with Him from eternity, into the world to save mankind. If this is confirmed, then one sees two separate persons, each claiming to have all power. In confirmation of such doctrines, many false ideas concerning the Father, Son and Holy Spirit have arisen in the Christian (first) Church, even leading one to an evil life. One example is
that man can live as he pleases, even live in evil, and when he is on his deathbed, he can, then, still be saved just by praying for forgiveness if only he believes that the Lord's life was imputed to him for his belief of such a doctrine whether or not his life was spent in evil.
It is the life that we live now that determines our present state and the state of our life after death, whether in Heaven or hell. The Lord will enlighten us to see clearly truths from the Word. We then can form them into a genuine doctrine. We are every day confirming doctrine, whether it is a genuine or false doctrine, by our living. It is a true doctrine if we love the Lord and love His Word, for then we love truth itself for truth's sake and the Lord because He is Love and Truth. Then a man will become a use for the Lord. But if it is a false doctrine that we live, then we love ourselves and become a use for evil.
End.
| About |
| Doctrine
Site Content Copyright 2001 by The Lord's New Chapel All Rights Reserved
Site Concept and Creation Copyright 2001 by Stealth Media Solutions All Rights Reserved