Here we are in the 21st century. We know that the universe is an enormous place. We're just bursting with scientific knowledge. But how are we doing with the even-bigger ideas? Our human societies seem to be erasing them, or ignoring them - maybe we think we're too busy for them.

Here on the New Christian Bible Study site, we'll buck the trend. We want to explore the big ideas that give us a framework for living better lives. Here's a start on a list of big ideas from a New Christian perspective. For each idea, there is a footnote that lists some references in Swedenborg's theological works:

1. God exists. Just one God, who created and sustains the entire universe in all its dimensions, spiritual and physical. ¹

2. God's essence is love itself. It's the force that drives everything. ²

3. God's essence comes into being, that is, it exists, in and through creation. ³

4. There are levels, or degrees, of creation - ranging from spiritual ones that we can't detect with our physical senses or sensors, to the level of the physical universe where most of our awareness is when we're alive here. ⁴

5. The created universe emanates from God, and it's sustained by God, but in an important way it is separate from God. He wants it to be separate, so that freedom can exist. ⁵

6. God operates from love through wisdom - willing good things, and understanding how to bring them about. ⁶

7. The physical level of creation exists to provide human beings with an opportunity to choose in freedom, with rationality, whether or not to acknowledge and cooperate with God. ⁷

8. God provides all people everywhere, regardless of their religion, the freedom to choose to live a life of love to God and to the neighbor. ⁸

9. God loves everyone. He knows that true happiness only comes when we're unselfish; when we're truly motivated by a love of the Lord which is grounded out in a love of the neighbor. He seeks to lead everyone, but will not force us to follow against our will. ⁹

10. God doesn't judge us. He tells us what's good, and what's evil, and flows into our minds to lead us towards good. However, we're free to reject his leading, and instead opt to love ourselves most. Day by day, we create habits of generosity or of selfishness, and live out a life in accordance with those habits. Those habits become the real "us", our ruling love. ¹⁰

11. Our physical bodies die eventually, but the spiritual part of our minds keeps going. It's been operating on a spiritual plane already, but our awareness shifts - so that we become fully aware of spiritual reality. ¹¹

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25. After his life in the world everyone lives for ever. This is evident from the fact that he is then no longer natural but spiritual; and a spiritual person once separated from the natural stays in the same state for ever, since a person's state cannot change after death. Moreover every person's spiritual side is linked with the Divine, since it can think about and also love the Divine, and be acted upon by all the influences coming from the Divine, much as the church teaches. The spiritual side can as a result be linked to the Divine by willing and thinking, the two faculties of the spiritual man which make up his life. Thus a link can be made with the Divine which can never die, for the Divine is present with him and links him to Itself.

[2] Man has also been created so as mentally to be a model of heaven. The form of heaven derives from the Divine itself, as was shown in HEAVEN AND HELL (The Lord's Divine makes and forms heaven, 7-12, 78-86); man was created so as to be a model of heaven on the smallest scale (57); heaven taken all together resembles a single human being (59-66). Hence an angel has a perfect human form (73-77). An angel is a human being in his spiritual aspect.

[3] I have had a number of conversations with angels on this subject. They were extremely surprised that there are very many among those reputed intelligent in the Christian world, and believed to be intelligent by other people, who have totally rejected any idea that their life is not subject to death, but believe that the soul of a human being is dispersed after death like that of an animal. They fail to perceive the difference in the way human beings and animals live. Human beings have thoughts that can rise above themselves, and they can think about God, heaven, love, faith, spiritual and moral good, truths and such matters, thus rising to the Divine itself, and being linked to Him by all these means. Animals, however, cannot rise above their natural level so as to entertain such thoughts. As a result their spiritual side cannot be separated from their natural after death, ¹ and live on by itself as a human being's can. That too is the reason why an animal's life ² is dispersed together with its natural life.

[4] The angels said that the reason why many so-called intelligent people in the Christian world do not believe their life is immortal is that at heart they deny the existence of the Divine and acknowledge Nature in His place. Those who think from such premises cannot imagine how they can live for ever by being linked with the Divine, and consequently that the condition of human beings is any different from that of animals; for when they banish the idea of the Divine from their thoughts, they also banish that of eternity.

[5] They went on to say that every individual has a highest or most inward degree of life, something highest and inmost on which the Lord's Divinity primarily and most closely acts, and from which He controls the remaining interiors belonging to the spiritual and natural man and arranged in ordered sequence in them. They called this highest or most inward part the Lord's entrance into man and His truest abode with man. It is this highest or most inward part which gives man his humanity and sets him apart from dumb animals, which lack it. This is why men can, unlike animals, have their interiors, which belong to their minds and characters, raised by the Lord to Himself. Thus they can believe in Him, feel love for Him, and receive intelligence and wisdom and speak rationally.

[6] When asked whether those who deny the existence of the Divine and the Divine truths which link a person's life with the Divine Himself none the less live on for ever, they said that these had the ability to think and will, and thus to believe and love what proceeds from the Divine equally with those who acknowledge Him; and that this ability to think and will enables them equally to live for ever. They added that this ability results from that highest or most inward part everyone possesses which was mentioned just above. I have demonstrated at length that even those in hell have this ability, which enables them to reason and speak against Divine truths. This is why every person, irrespective of what sort of person he is, lives for ever.

[7] Because after death everyone lives for ever, no angel or spirit can think about death; in fact, they do not know what it is to die. Whenever therefore death is mentioned in the Word, the angels understand it as damnation, which is death in the spiritual sense, or the continuation of life and resurrection. ³ These remarks are intended as confirmation that all people who have ever been born from the beginning of creation, and have died, are alive, some in heaven and some in hell.

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7495. Exodus 9

1. And Jehovah said to Moses, Go to Pharaoh, and you are to tell him, Thus said Jehovah the God of the Hebrews, Send My People away, and let them serve Me.

2. For if you refuse to send them away and you still hold them back,

3. Behold, the hand of Jehovah will be on your livestock that are in the field, on the horses, on the asses, on the camels, on the herd, and on the flock - an extremely severe pestilence.

4. And Jehovah will make a distinction between the livestock of Israel and the livestock of the Egyptians, and nothing will die of all that belongs to the children of Israel.

5. And Jehovah set a fixed time, saying, Tomorrow Jehovah will do this thing in the land.

6. And Jehovah did this thing on the morrow, and all the livestock of the Egyptians died; and of the livestock of the children of Israel not one died.

7. And Pharaoh sent, and behold, not even one of the livestock of Israel had died. And Pharaoh's heart was stubborn, and he did not send the people away.

8. And Jehovah said to Moses and to Aaron, Take for yourselves in fistfuls ¹ the ashes of the furnace, and let Moses scatter them in the direction of heaven before Pharaoh's eyes.

9. And there will then be dust over all the land of Egypt, and there will be on man and on beast sores breaking out into pustules, in all the land of Egypt.

10. And they took the ashes of the furnace, and stood before Pharaoh; and Moses scattered them in the direction of heaven, and sores producing pustules developed, breaking out on man and on beast.

11. And the magicians could not stand before Moses on account of the sores; for there were sores on the magicians and on all the Egyptians.

12. And Jehovah made Pharaoh's heart unyielding, and he did not hear ² them, as Jehovah had spoken to Moses.

13. And Jehovah said to Moses, Rise up in the morning early, and stand before Pharaoh; and you are to say to him, Thus said Jehovah the God of the Hebrews, Send My people away, and let them serve Me.

14. For this time I am sending all My plagues onto your heart, and onto your servants, and onto your people, in order that you may know that there is none like Me in the whole earth.

15. For now I could stretch out ³ My hand, and strike you and your people with pestilence, and you would be cut off from the earth.

16. But yet for this reason have I caused you to stand ⁴ - for you to see My power, and in order that My name may be declared in the whole earth.

17. You go on exalting yourself against My people by not sending them away.

18. Behold, about this time tomorrow I am causing it to rain an extremely heavy hail, of which there has not been the like in Egypt from the day it was founded even until now.

19. And now send, assemble your livestock and all that you have in the field; every man and beast that will be found in the field and will not be gathered home, ⁵ the hail will come down on them and they will die.

20. And he that feared the word of Jehovah among the servants of Pharaoh caused his servants and his livestock to flee to the houses.

21. And he that did not take the word of Jehovah to heart left his servants and his livestock in the field.

22. And Jehovah said to Moses, Stretch out your hand towards heaven, and there will be hail in all the land of Egypt, on man and on beast, and on every plant of the field in the land of Egypt.

23. And Moses stretched out his rod towards heaven, and Jehovah gave forth voices ⁶ and hail, and fire ran down to the earth; and Jehovah caused hail to rain onto the land of Egypt.

24. And there was hail, and at the same time fire running down ⁷ in the midst of the hail, extremely heavy, of which there had not been the like in all the land of Egypt since it became a nation.

25. And the hail struck in all the land of Egypt everything that was in the field, from man and even to beast; and the hail struck every plant of the field, and broke every tree of the field.

26. Only in the land of Goshen, where the children of Israel were, there was no hail.

27. And Pharaoh sent and called Moses and Aaron, and said to them, I have sinned this time; Jehovah is righteous, and I and my people are wicked.

28. Plead with Jehovah, there have been enough of God's voices' and of hail; and I will send you away, and you will not continue to remain.

29. And Moses said to him, As I am going out of the city I will spread out my palms towards Jehovah; the voices' will cease, and there will be no more hail, in order that you may know that the earth is Jehovah's.

30. And [as for] you and your servants, I know that you do not yet fear the face of Jehovah God.

31. And the flax and the barley were struck; for the barley was a ripening ear, and the flax a stem. ⁸

32. And the wheat and the spelt were not struck, for they were hidden. ⁹

33. And Moses went out from Pharaoh, from the city, and spread out his palms towards Jehovah; and the voices' and the hail ceased, and the rain was not poured on the earth.

34. And Pharaoh saw that the rain and the hail and the voices ⁶ had ceased; and he continued to sin, and made his heart stubborn, he and his servants.

35. And Pharaoh's heart was made unyielding, and he did not send the children of Israel away, as Jehovah had spoken through the hand of Moses.

CONTENTS

This chapter continues to deal with the vastation of those who molest members of the spiritual Church. In the internal sense the chapter deals with the sixth, seventh, and eighth states or stages of their vastation, which the pestilence, the sores breaking out into pustules, and the rain in the form of hail describe. By these plagues is meant the laying waste of things of the Church present with them.

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