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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

 

Survey of Teachings of the New Church #118

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118. Three Memorable Occurrences Taken from Revelation Unveiled

The first memorable occurrence. Once as I was explaining chapter 20 in the Book of Revelation and was meditating on the dragon, the beast, and the false prophet, an angelic spirit appeared to me and asked what I was meditating on. I said, “The false prophet.”

The angelic spirit said, “I will take you to the place where the spirits meant by the false prophet are.” He added, “They are the same spirits portrayed in chapter 13 of the Book of Revelation as the beast from the earth who had two horns like a lamb, but who spoke like a dragon.”

I followed the angelic spirit. To my surprise I saw a crowd with church leaders in the center of it. The leaders were teaching that nothing saves us except faith in Christ’s merit and that works are good things to do, but not for our salvation. They were also proclaiming that works need to be taught from the Word so as to put lay people, especially simple ones, on a leash so that they obey their civic leaders and feel compelled from within by religion to practice moral goodwill.

[2] Then one of them saw me and said, “Do you want to see our shrine? It has a sculpture in it that portrays our faith.”

I went and saw it. It was magnificent! In the center of the shrine there was a statue of a woman dressed in scarlet clothes. She had a gold coin in her right hand and a chain of pearls in her left.

Both the statue and the shrine, however, were projected images. Hellish spirits have the ability to portray magnificent things using projected images. They do it by closing off the inner levels of our mind and opening only its outer levels.

When I realized that the statue and the shrine were conjured up through sorcery I prayed to the Lord. Suddenly the inner levels of my mind were opened. Then instead of a magnificent shrine, I saw a house that was full of cracks from the roof all the way to the foundation. Nothing in it was solidly connected. Instead of the woman, I saw a dummy hanging in the house, which had the head of a dragon, the body of a leopard, the feet of a bear, and the mouth of a lion. It was exactly like the beast from the sea described in Revelation 13:2. Instead of the floor, there was a swamp that contained thousands of frogs. I was told that under the swamp there was a great hewn stone; and beneath it the Word lay deeply hidden.

[3] Seeing this I said to the sorcerer, “Is this your shrine?”

“It is,” the sorcerer said.

Just then, though, the sorcerer’s inner sight opened up as well. The sorcerer saw the same things I was seeing and loudly shouted, “What is this? Where did this come from?”

“It came from the light of heaven,” I said, “which has disclosed the true quality of each form here, including the quality of your faith, which has been separated from spiritual goodwill.”

Immediately the east wind came up and blew away the shrine with the sculpture. It dried up the swamp and exposed the stone that had the Word lying underneath it.

Then a warm, springlike breeze blew in from heaven. To my surprise I then saw a tent in that same place, a very simple one in its outer form.

Angels who were with me said, “Look, it is Abraham’s tent just as it was when the three angels came to him to announce that Isaac was going to be born [Genesis 18:1, 2, and following]. The tent looks simple to the eye, but as the light of heaven flows in, it becomes more and more magnificent.”

The angels were then granted the ability to open the heaven where spiritual angels live—the angels who have wisdom. In the light that flowed in from that heaven, the tent looked like the Temple in Jerusalem. When I looked inside, I saw that the foundation stone under which the Word had been hidden was now covered in precious stones. From the precious stones a kind of lightning was flashing onto walls that had reliefs of angel guardians on them, giving the angel guardians beautifully different colors.

[4] As I was feeling awestruck by these sights, the angels said, “You are about to see things that are even more miraculous.” They were then granted the ability to open the third heaven where heavenly angels live—the angels who have love. As a result of the light that flowed in from that heaven, the entire temple disappeared. In its place I saw the Lord alone, standing on the foundation stone, which was the Word. He looked much the way he had when seen by John in Revelation chapter 1.

Yet because holiness then filled the inner realms of the angels’ minds so that they felt an overwhelming urge to fall forward on their faces, suddenly the channel of light from the third heaven was closed by the Lord and the channel of light from the second heaven was reopened. As a result, the earlier appearance of a temple, and also a tent, returned. The tent was in the temple.

These experiences illustrated what Revelation 21 means when it says, “Behold, the tent of God is among people, and he will dwell with them” (Revelation 21:3); and when it says, “I saw no temple in the New Jerusalem, because the Lord God Almighty is its temple, and the Lamb” (Revelation 21:22).

  
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Thanks to the Swedenborg Foundation for their permission to use this translation.

From Swedenborg's Works

 

True Christian Religion #112

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112. The third experience.

I once woke up around dawn and went out into the garden in front of my house. I watched the sun rising in its splendour, and around it I saw a halo, first of all narrow and later projecting further, shining as if made of gold, and under its lower edge a cloud coming up, which glittered with the sun's fire like a ruby. This then led me to think about how the earliest people had legends which described the Dawn as having wings made of silver feathers and carrying gold in her mouth.

While my mind was taking pleasure in these thoughts, I passed into the spirit, and heard some people talking to one another. 'I wish,' they were saying, 'we could talk with that original thinker who has thrown the apple of Strife among the leaders of the church; many laymen have run after it, picked it up and held it before our eyes.' They meant by that apple my little book entitled: A BRIEF EXPOSITION OF THE DOCTRINE OF THE NEW CHURCH. 'It is a new doctrine never before thought up, designed to divide the church,' they said. I heard one of them cry out: 'Divisive indeed, it is heretical!' But some of the bystanders answered: 'Be quiet, hold your tongue; it is not heretical. It quotes a large number of sayings from the Word which those who live with us - we mean laymen - pay attention to and support.'

[2] On hearing this, since I was in the spirit, I went up to them and said: Here I am. What is the trouble?'

At once one of them, a German as I learned later, a native of Saxony, said in an authoritative tone of voice: 'How have you the nerve to upset the mode of worship established for so many centuries throughout the Christian world, namely, the invocation of God the Father as the Creator of the universe, and of His Son as Mediator, and of the Holy Spirit as Worker? You are banishing the first and the last God from our Trinity of Persons, although the Lord Himself says: "When you pray, pray like this: Our Father, who art in the heavens, hallowed be Thy name, Thy kingdom come." Is this not an instruction to us to invoke God the Father?'

This speech produced silence, and all his supporters took up their stand like the brave fighters on warships when the enemy fleet comes into view, ready to shout: 'Now let us fight, victory is surely ours.'

[3] So I began my speech by saying: 'You all know that God came down from heaven and became man, because we read: "The Word was with God and the Word was God, and the Word was made flesh." You know all of you,' and here I looked hard at the Evangelical party, to which the spokesman who had addressed me belonged, 'that in Christ who was born of the Virgin Mary God is man, and man is God.' There was an uproar from the assembly at this, so I said: 'Do you not know this? It is in accordance with the doctrine of your sect called the Formula of Concord; it states this and adds many proofs in support of it.'

Then the spokesman turned to the assembly and asked whether they knew this. They replied: 'We paid too little attention to what that book says about the Person of Christ; but we worked hard at the section on justification by faith alone. Still, if that is what it says, we are content.' Then one who could remember it said: 'Yes, it does say that; and it adds further that Christ's human nature was raised to Divine majesty and all its attributes, and also that Christ is seated in Divine majesty at the right hand of His Father.'

[4] When they heard this, they fell silent. So having got them to agree to this, I said: 'If this is so, is not the Father then the Son, and the Son also the Father?' But since this again offended their ears, I went on: 'Listen to the Lord's actual words, and if you paid no heed to them before, do so now. He said: "The Father and I are one; the Father is in me and I in the Father; Father, all things of mine are yours, and all of yours are mine; He who sees me sees the Father." How can you understand these sayings, except as meaning that the Father is in the Son and the Son in the Father, and that they are one like soul and body in man, so they are one Person? You will find that this is part of your faith too, if you believe the Athanasian Creed, which says something very much like this. But take from what I have quoted just this one utterance of the Lord: "Father, all things of mine are yours, and all of yours are mine." What does this mean, if not that the Father's Divine belongs to the Son's Human, and the Son's Human to the Father's Divine? Consequently in Christ God is man and man is God, and thus they make one as soul and body make one.

[5] Everyone can say the same things about his soul and body. Each person can say: all things of yours are mine, and all of mine are yours; you are in me and I in you; he who sees me sees you, we are one in person and have one life. The reason is that the soul pervades the whole and every part of the person, for the life of the soul is the life of the body, and is possessed by them in common. It is plain from this that the Father's Divine is the Son's soul, and the Son's Human is the Father's body. Where can a son's soul come from, if not from his father, and where can his body come from, if not from his mother? When we say the Father's Divine we mean the Father Himself, since He and His Divine are the same; this is also one and indivisible. The truth of this is established by the words with which the angel Gabriel addressed Mary: "The power of the Most High will overshadow you, and the Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the holy thing that shall be born of you shall be called the Son of God." Shortly before He is called "the Son of the Most High," and elsewhere "the only-begotten Son." You, however, who call Him only the Son of Mary, destroy the idea of His divinity; but the only ones who do this are some of the learned clergy and well-educated laymen, who, when they lift their thoughts above the level of the bodily senses, have in view the enhancement of their reputations. This not only casts a shadow, but actually puts out the light, through which the glory of God comes in.

[6] 'But let us go back to the Lord's Prayer, which says: "Our Father, who art in the heavens, hallowed be Thy name, Thy kingdom come." Those of you who are present here understand by these words the Father in His Divine alone; but I understand Him in His Human, and this too is the Father's name. For the Lord said: "Father, glorify your name," that is, your Human. When this happens, the kingdom of God comes. The instruction to use this prayer has been given us for the present time, that is, so that God the Father may be approached through His Human. The Lord also said: "No one comes to the Father except through Me," and the prophet said: "A child is born for us, a Son is given to us, whose name is God, Hero, the everlasting Father;" and elsewhere: "You, Jehovah, are our Father, your name is our Redeemer from of old." There are thousands of other passages where the Lord our Saviour is called Jehovah. This is the true explanation of those words in the Lord's Prayer.'

[7] On finishing this speech I looked at them and noticed that their faces had changed in accordance with the change in their mental state. Some of them supported me and were watching me; some did not, and they turned their faces away. Then I saw on the right a pearly-coloured cloud, and on the left a murky cloud, from both of which rain was falling. The rain from the dark cloud was like a shower in late autumn, that from the other like dew in early springtime. Then suddenly I passed from the spirit into the body, and so returned from the spiritual world into the natural one.

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

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