A New Church is Established
By Rev. Paul Booth
Lessons: Isaiah 30: 15, 20-26 | John 5: 24-29 | True Christian Religion 135
By Rev. Paul Booth
Lessons: Isaiah 30: 15, 20-26 | John 5: 24-29 | True Christian Religion 135
"One morning, as I awoke from sleep, the Sun of the spiritual world appeared to me in its splendor. . . Then from the Heavens were heard words ineffable, which, linked together, were proclaiming: "There is one God who is Man, and His habitation is in that Sun."
In the book Revelation one reads that there were those there who were brought up into heaven and in our sermon from the book True Christian Religion one reads where Swedenborg was there in the world of spirits at that time teaching truths to those who being prepared to become that New Heaven. The Word teaches clearly true doctrine, though a man can still reject that truth and follow his own (natural) rational. Now the Third Testament reveals that there is an internal sense to the Word and it from that sense we learn that the names of persons are not understood in heaven, but that their qualities are. It is in this way that we see Swedenborg as a servant of the Lord. The qualities understood by the name Swedenborg reveal spiritual things to the natural and rational understanding. These things manifest a love for truth in a spiritual or internal manner for the sake of truths themselves. It is in this that we understand that the written Word of the Divine Human is as a servant in that it serves in teaching and leading to the infinite and Eternal God. This servant, the Word of the Divine Human, has established the New Church "through the revelation of the spiritual sense [of the Word], and through the introduction of my spirit, and at the same time of my body [Swedenborg's] into the spiritual world, so that I might there be known" (Invitation to the New Church). Therefore it is Life from the Lord, or the Spirit, and the good of love, or body, which is Divine that established or built up the New Church in the Spiritual world when the end came to the (first) Christian Church. Thus we are not to direct our thoughts to the person, Swedenborg, but to his qualities or attributes. These of course are the Lord's working through him, establishing and building up the true Christian Church which is the Lord's New Church.
When the Word is seen in its internal sense, one is like Swedenborg awaking from sleep one morning in the spiritual world. The Word with man is then in illustration. The internal sense of the Word is now revealed to the person. The natural can be raised into a state of light from darkness or from ignorance to intelligence. Now truths can be seen in the light of good and not just in one's natural understanding. This anyone can do; anyone can raise up his understanding to know the spiritual things of heaven. However, without truths seen in the light of good they are useless for man's redemption or for his regeneration. Morning that is mentioned in the text signifies the state of a New Church it is when good is conjoined with truth, and the infernal with the external. It also signifies the Lord's coming to man and His love and truth operating in man.
We see that this state of understanding is more than just the elevation of a man's understanding. For that would not bring a man into rational understanding of truth and good or into a love of truth elevated into the truth in good, which flows into the rational. In the rational a new state is reached. Here is when a man believes and becomes intelligent; here is where the good of the Lord is conjoined with the affection of the truth. This is the meaning of the words, "one morning, as I awoke from sleep" (True Christian Religion 135). Prior to this, one is in ignorance because he only sees truths from his natural senses, the rational has not yet developed. The understanding of truths and goods are still in obscurity to the person.
From this obscure state, which is a state of ignorance as we have shown, one who loves truth and is obedient to the truth receives spiritual and celestial good from the light or heaven and from the Divine. It was the light from heaven shed upon the priest in the temple in which Swedenborg was present that enabled him (the priest) to understand the truths that the angels taught. The priest wanted to be obedient. One who is elevated to see spiritual things in the Word is awakened from his obscurity with regard to spiritual things. The Sun of the spiritual world appears and the heavens are seen beneath. The Divine Human and His Kingdom are seen. One understands this from an internal sense. The first thing to note is that this signifies celestial and spiritual love, Divine love and wisdom, which is the good of love from the Lord. It is pure love proceeding from the Lord who is in the midst of the Sun of the spiritual world. Now, from the glorified Human united with the Divine Love emanates Divine love and Divine wisdom to the spirits in the spirits in the world of spirits and to man on earth. This is seen in the state of illustration. The Sun is seen in the Celestial heaven as a bright Sun and in the Spiritual heaven it is seen as a moon. In the world of spirits the Sun is not seen, but the light there is brighter that it is on earth. So when the Sun appears to those in the spiritual world it is then that the Word is understood in its internal sense.
It is then from an understanding of the spiritual or internal sense of the Word that the love of the Lord can be seen flowing from the Divine. One can hear from the heavens the truths as Swedenborg heard them. Now, to 'hear' signifies obedience and not just learning and knowing or even acknowledging. Influx of good into the will causes a revealing in the understanding, in the mind and in the will. One can sense this influx as that of the Lord's helping. The Lord's love flows into our will, His speech into our understanding, and so His thoughts flow into our mind. These are the words coming from the heavens from the love of Lord.
"There is one God who is Man, and His habitation is in that Sun" (True Christian Religion).
These words are the truths of doctrine. They are proclamations from the Lord to determine whether anyone knows the state of his live from the Lord. From Revelation we see that the learned of Reformed Christian Church that was there that had ascended were ignorant as to the Lord's Essence and the Order in creation, and so they attributed evil and false things to the Lord. In today's lesson there is no mention, that is, of a church. Though they think they are a church and in a church, for they refer to "the head of (their) Church" (True Christian religion 135§2), for they are either a congregation or a multitude of truths of apparent truths of falsities each according to his reception of life.
There is One who is good and perfect, who is Man and this is the One God. We know from the Word that the Most Ancient Church man called Jehovah Man and that they themselves were receptacles of that Man, Jehovah. Man signifies intelligence and wisdom. Thus it is that one can see the unfathomable love that the Lord has for mankind when He 'put on' the human of mankind and became the recipient of the Divine love and truth as mankind does. When the Word talks about man on earth, it refers to man as a church. For, in man is the Church according to a man's reception, whether a noble or ignoble, or false or evil or a destroyed church. We know that the church had been continually corrupted and had shut itself off from the spiritual, and was in danger of being lost forever. Even man's external sense, the corporeal, the most sensual were in danger of being lost forever.
It was in this external state of man that the Lord came into the world and became a recipient of the Divine. The Lord became a man as we are and established or laid the foundation of the New Church by making His Human Divine. The external conjunction of man with the Lord was made possible by the Lord making His Human Divine. If He had not become Divine no one could have received influx from the Divine Human. God's life now flows from the Sun of the heavens into the heavens, into the spiritual world and thence into man. The Church in the world could not receive this life or become the New Church which now flows into man from the new heaven until it was established with those of the spiritual world and raised into a new Christian heaven. This new heaven was founded in the Divine Human. It is because the Lord, when as a man as we first became intelligent and then Divine, that we must first be reformed and then regenerated. The rational or the medium between the natural and the spiritual was formed according to order. The external or natural truth was conjoined to the good within the Lord from the Divine. Thus the Lord Jesus Christ became Man and was God and Man.
This Truth or Word flows from the heavens and is the truth of doctrine in the internal sense; it makes the Word intelligible. The Lord, the Divine Human is doctrine, thus now the proceeding love and wisdom received into man's will and understanding make the Church in man a True or New Church. The Church is no more an external or a representative church that has no internal or spiritual understanding. The Life is seen in and descending from the Sun of the heavens by those who are in that New Heaven, and this is what constitutes the New Church in man.
These words were uttered at that time when Swedenborg was there, "through the middle Heaven to the lowest and from there to the world of spirits," "There is one God who is Man, and His habitation is in that Sun" (True Christian Religion 135).
Man lives by the utterance of "Word". It is the Divine Truth. "By the Word of the Lord were the heavens made and all the host of them by the breathe of His mouth" (Psalms 33: 6). As 'life' or 'words' of life descend to angels who are receptive to the Lord's good and truth in the middle and the lowest heavens, they are in the love of understanding truth and good and the love of knowing truth and good respectively. Thus from a love of being wise in the Celestial heaven through the middle or Spiritual and to the lowest heavens there is a descent in the degrees of truth with the angels.
The degree of descent of truth in the spiritual world is received according to the reception of the spirit. Those who have a love of truth for the sake of truth and not for the sake of love of self are led and taught the goods and truths from the Divine Human. The others who reject the teaching of the internal sense are not taught and lead as can be seen in our lesson. Those who love truth for truth's sake are obedient to the truth and see that God is one in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ and that He became the Divine Human. Those who love self receive truth according to their love of self. Their understanding of scientifics, of knowledge, and cognitions of spiritual and religious things are without the light or truth of heaven. Their idea of three gods is derived from their concept of the triune God.
As such, it is their first or primary reception of faith. This faith is not in the Lord, but in their selves. They have acquired their love, that is, their faith in possessing or wanting to be wise from themselves. Their understanding of truths and goods are from self. Spiritual and religious scientifics and knowledge is learned from the head of their church - the learned. The head of their church is their understanding of truth and will of good, which is ruled by their proprium. Their life from the Lord has been destroyed in time; they were now in evils and falsities. Their will and understanding provided falsities and evils instead of truths and goods for their everyday use of the natural mind. By their sacred dogmas they are bound to believe falsities to be true and evils to be good. From this they developed a fear of loss of reputation, honor or wealth. Their rational became a medium of connection with hell and not with heaven. Those whose reception is from the Lord and not from one's self develop a conscience and are thus led to become intelligent. They can proceed to the reception of a spiritual understanding, a new will and understanding, thus a new rational is formed in them.
Thus it is that when those who love self reason from a false concept of the triune God that the attributes are divided: creation to one, redemption to another and sanctification to a third. They cannot see that the infinite and eternal God is the Divine Human and is the end, cause, and effect in One God. They make themselves to be the source of life and think they are great. In so doing they do not develop a conscience as do those whose faith comes from the Lord, who is their source of life.
As a result the New Church is not established in them. They reject the Third Testament, the teaching from the Divine Human and as a consequence there is no internal understanding of the Word. Those, however, who may have been in these falsities through ignorance and who have an idea of one God can be led and taught what mediation in the Word means. They can learn that the Lord's Human, which the Lord 'put on' or assumed is the medium through which a man can now approach God and thus be saved. They will also see the Sun of the spiritual world, though with spiritual eyes; the others do not, for they look towards hell.
What ideas do we entertain when we hear the Word from the heavens? Are truths, are doctrines formed in our will and understanding? Are they words that guide and lead us to confess the Lord and believe that the teachings of faith are from Him? Finally, are we drawn from evils by the Word of the Third Testament to see the Divine Human as 'Life' proceeding to His New Church as did those in the world of spirits who were there and in their preparation for the judgment and who were taken up into heaven where they could see the Sun as Jehovah in His Human.
Amen.
When the Word is seen in its internal sense, one is like Swedenborg awaking from sleep one morning in the spiritual world. The Word with man is then in illustration. The internal sense of the Word is now revealed to the person. The natural can be raised into a state of light from darkness or from ignorance to intelligence. Now truths can be seen in the light of good and not just in one's natural understanding. This anyone can do; anyone can raise up his understanding to know the spiritual things of heaven. However, without truths seen in the light of good they are useless for man's redemption or for his regeneration. Morning that is mentioned in the text signifies the state of a New Church it is when good is conjoined with truth, and the infernal with the external. It also signifies the Lord's coming to man and His love and truth operating in man.
We see that this state of understanding is more than just the elevation of a man's understanding. For that would not bring a man into rational understanding of truth and good or into a love of truth elevated into the truth in good, which flows into the rational. In the rational a new state is reached. Here is when a man believes and becomes intelligent; here is where the good of the Lord is conjoined with the affection of the truth. This is the meaning of the words, "one morning, as I awoke from sleep" (True Christian Religion 135). Prior to this, one is in ignorance because he only sees truths from his natural senses, the rational has not yet developed. The understanding of truths and goods are still in obscurity to the person.
From this obscure state, which is a state of ignorance as we have shown, one who loves truth and is obedient to the truth receives spiritual and celestial good from the light or heaven and from the Divine. It was the light from heaven shed upon the priest in the temple in which Swedenborg was present that enabled him (the priest) to understand the truths that the angels taught. The priest wanted to be obedient. One who is elevated to see spiritual things in the Word is awakened from his obscurity with regard to spiritual things. The Sun of the spiritual world appears and the heavens are seen beneath. The Divine Human and His Kingdom are seen. One understands this from an internal sense. The first thing to note is that this signifies celestial and spiritual love, Divine love and wisdom, which is the good of love from the Lord. It is pure love proceeding from the Lord who is in the midst of the Sun of the spiritual world. Now, from the glorified Human united with the Divine Love emanates Divine love and Divine wisdom to the spirits in the spirits in the world of spirits and to man on earth. This is seen in the state of illustration. The Sun is seen in the Celestial heaven as a bright Sun and in the Spiritual heaven it is seen as a moon. In the world of spirits the Sun is not seen, but the light there is brighter that it is on earth. So when the Sun appears to those in the spiritual world it is then that the Word is understood in its internal sense.
It is then from an understanding of the spiritual or internal sense of the Word that the love of the Lord can be seen flowing from the Divine. One can hear from the heavens the truths as Swedenborg heard them. Now, to 'hear' signifies obedience and not just learning and knowing or even acknowledging. Influx of good into the will causes a revealing in the understanding, in the mind and in the will. One can sense this influx as that of the Lord's helping. The Lord's love flows into our will, His speech into our understanding, and so His thoughts flow into our mind. These are the words coming from the heavens from the love of Lord.
"There is one God who is Man, and His habitation is in that Sun" (True Christian Religion).
These words are the truths of doctrine. They are proclamations from the Lord to determine whether anyone knows the state of his live from the Lord. From Revelation we see that the learned of Reformed Christian Church that was there that had ascended were ignorant as to the Lord's Essence and the Order in creation, and so they attributed evil and false things to the Lord. In today's lesson there is no mention, that is, of a church. Though they think they are a church and in a church, for they refer to "the head of (their) Church" (True Christian religion 135§2), for they are either a congregation or a multitude of truths of apparent truths of falsities each according to his reception of life.
There is One who is good and perfect, who is Man and this is the One God. We know from the Word that the Most Ancient Church man called Jehovah Man and that they themselves were receptacles of that Man, Jehovah. Man signifies intelligence and wisdom. Thus it is that one can see the unfathomable love that the Lord has for mankind when He 'put on' the human of mankind and became the recipient of the Divine love and truth as mankind does. When the Word talks about man on earth, it refers to man as a church. For, in man is the Church according to a man's reception, whether a noble or ignoble, or false or evil or a destroyed church. We know that the church had been continually corrupted and had shut itself off from the spiritual, and was in danger of being lost forever. Even man's external sense, the corporeal, the most sensual were in danger of being lost forever.
It was in this external state of man that the Lord came into the world and became a recipient of the Divine. The Lord became a man as we are and established or laid the foundation of the New Church by making His Human Divine. The external conjunction of man with the Lord was made possible by the Lord making His Human Divine. If He had not become Divine no one could have received influx from the Divine Human. God's life now flows from the Sun of the heavens into the heavens, into the spiritual world and thence into man. The Church in the world could not receive this life or become the New Church which now flows into man from the new heaven until it was established with those of the spiritual world and raised into a new Christian heaven. This new heaven was founded in the Divine Human. It is because the Lord, when as a man as we first became intelligent and then Divine, that we must first be reformed and then regenerated. The rational or the medium between the natural and the spiritual was formed according to order. The external or natural truth was conjoined to the good within the Lord from the Divine. Thus the Lord Jesus Christ became Man and was God and Man.
This Truth or Word flows from the heavens and is the truth of doctrine in the internal sense; it makes the Word intelligible. The Lord, the Divine Human is doctrine, thus now the proceeding love and wisdom received into man's will and understanding make the Church in man a True or New Church. The Church is no more an external or a representative church that has no internal or spiritual understanding. The Life is seen in and descending from the Sun of the heavens by those who are in that New Heaven, and this is what constitutes the New Church in man.
These words were uttered at that time when Swedenborg was there, "through the middle Heaven to the lowest and from there to the world of spirits," "There is one God who is Man, and His habitation is in that Sun" (True Christian Religion 135).
Man lives by the utterance of "Word". It is the Divine Truth. "By the Word of the Lord were the heavens made and all the host of them by the breathe of His mouth" (Psalms 33: 6). As 'life' or 'words' of life descend to angels who are receptive to the Lord's good and truth in the middle and the lowest heavens, they are in the love of understanding truth and good and the love of knowing truth and good respectively. Thus from a love of being wise in the Celestial heaven through the middle or Spiritual and to the lowest heavens there is a descent in the degrees of truth with the angels.
The degree of descent of truth in the spiritual world is received according to the reception of the spirit. Those who have a love of truth for the sake of truth and not for the sake of love of self are led and taught the goods and truths from the Divine Human. The others who reject the teaching of the internal sense are not taught and lead as can be seen in our lesson. Those who love truth for truth's sake are obedient to the truth and see that God is one in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ and that He became the Divine Human. Those who love self receive truth according to their love of self. Their understanding of scientifics, of knowledge, and cognitions of spiritual and religious things are without the light or truth of heaven. Their idea of three gods is derived from their concept of the triune God.
As such, it is their first or primary reception of faith. This faith is not in the Lord, but in their selves. They have acquired their love, that is, their faith in possessing or wanting to be wise from themselves. Their understanding of truths and goods are from self. Spiritual and religious scientifics and knowledge is learned from the head of their church - the learned. The head of their church is their understanding of truth and will of good, which is ruled by their proprium. Their life from the Lord has been destroyed in time; they were now in evils and falsities. Their will and understanding provided falsities and evils instead of truths and goods for their everyday use of the natural mind. By their sacred dogmas they are bound to believe falsities to be true and evils to be good. From this they developed a fear of loss of reputation, honor or wealth. Their rational became a medium of connection with hell and not with heaven. Those whose reception is from the Lord and not from one's self develop a conscience and are thus led to become intelligent. They can proceed to the reception of a spiritual understanding, a new will and understanding, thus a new rational is formed in them.
Thus it is that when those who love self reason from a false concept of the triune God that the attributes are divided: creation to one, redemption to another and sanctification to a third. They cannot see that the infinite and eternal God is the Divine Human and is the end, cause, and effect in One God. They make themselves to be the source of life and think they are great. In so doing they do not develop a conscience as do those whose faith comes from the Lord, who is their source of life.
As a result the New Church is not established in them. They reject the Third Testament, the teaching from the Divine Human and as a consequence there is no internal understanding of the Word. Those, however, who may have been in these falsities through ignorance and who have an idea of one God can be led and taught what mediation in the Word means. They can learn that the Lord's Human, which the Lord 'put on' or assumed is the medium through which a man can now approach God and thus be saved. They will also see the Sun of the spiritual world, though with spiritual eyes; the others do not, for they look towards hell.
What ideas do we entertain when we hear the Word from the heavens? Are truths, are doctrines formed in our will and understanding? Are they words that guide and lead us to confess the Lord and believe that the teachings of faith are from Him? Finally, are we drawn from evils by the Word of the Third Testament to see the Divine Human as 'Life' proceeding to His New Church as did those in the world of spirits who were there and in their preparation for the judgment and who were taken up into heaven where they could see the Sun as Jehovah in His Human.
Amen.
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