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Heaven and Hell #2

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2. The Lord is God of Heaven

First and foremost, we need to know who the God of heaven is, since everything else depends on this. Throughout the whole of heaven, no one is acknowledged as God of heaven except the Lord. Angels say what he himself taught, namely that he is one with the Father, that the Father is in him and he in the Father, that anyone who sees him sees the Father, and that everything holy emanates from him (John 10:30, 38; 14:9-11, 16; 16:13-15). I have often talked with angels about this, and their consistent testimony has been that in heaven they cannot divide the Divine into three because they both know and perceive that the Divine is one and that this "one" is in the Lord. They have also told me that when people arrive from earth with the idea of three divine beings they cannot be admitted to heaven. This is because their thinking vacillates between one opinion and the other, and in heaven they are not allowed to think "three" and say "one." 1

In heaven people actually speak directly from their thought, so that we have there a kind of thoughtful speech or audible thought. This means that if people have divided the Divine into three in the world and held a separate image of each one without gathering and focusing these three into one, they cannot be accepted. In heaven, there is a communication of all thoughts, so if people arrive who think "three" and say "one," they are recognized immediately for what they are and are sent away.

Still, it needs to be realized that in the other life any people who have not put "good" in one compartment and "true" in another - who have not separated faith from love - accept the heavenly concept of the Lord as God of the universe once they have been taught. It is different, though, with people who have separated their faith from their lives, that is, who have not lived by the guiding principles of true faith.

Fußnoten:

1. [Swedenborg's footnote] In the other life, Christians have been examined to find out what kind of concept of God they had, and it has turned out that they had a concept of three gods: 2329, 5256, 10736, 10738, 10821. On the recognition in heaven of a trinity within the Lord: 14-15, 1729, 2005, 5256, 9303.

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

Aus Swedenborgs Werken

 

Arcana Coelestia #7083

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7083. Heat and light in the natural world emanate from the sun in the world, whereas spiritual heat and spiritual light, or love and faith, emanate from the sun in heaven. The Lord is the sun in heaven, and the heat which comes from Him as the Sun is love, while the light which comes from Him as the Sun is faith. The fact that the Lord is light is clear in John,

Jesus said, I am the light of the world. He who follows Me will not walk in darkness but will have the light of life. John 8:12.

And the fact that the Lord is a sun is clear in Matthew,

When Jesus was transfigured His face shone like the sun, and His clothes became [white] as the light. Matthew 17:1.

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

Aus Swedenborgs Werken

 

Arcana Coelestia #3486

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3486. The preliminary section of the previous chapter, paragraphs 3353-3356, explained what the Lord has said and foretold in Matthew 24:3-7 about the close of the age or end of the days of the Church. Here, in the Lord's Divine mercy, let the next section be explained, that is to say, verses 8-14 of the same chapter in that gospel, where it is said,

All these are the beginning of sorrows. At that time they will deliver you up to affliction, and will kill you, and you will be hated by all nations for My name's sake. And at that time many will stumble, and betray one another, and hate one another. And many false prophets will arise and will lead many astray. And because iniquity is multiplied the charity of many will grow cold. But he who endures to the end will be saved. And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole inhabited earth as a testimony to all nations; and at that point the end will come.

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