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Why Did Jesus Come to Earth as a Baby?

Por Curtis Childs

This painting by Richard Cook  of the newborn baby Jesus, with Mary and Joseph, evokes the spiritual power of this long-awaited advent.

Could there be reasons for the humble, vulnerable beginnings of Jesus’s life?

In this video from his Swedenborg and Life web series, host Curtis Childs and featured guests explore how the Divine design may have been at play from the very beginning of Christ's life.

(Referencias: Apocalypse Explained 706 [12]; Luke 2:8-12; The Word 7; True Christian Religion 89, 90, 96, 766)

Tocar Video
This video is a product of the Swedenborg Foundation. Follow these links for further information and other videos: www.youtube.com/user/offTheLeftEye and www.swedenborg.com

De obras de Swedenborg

 

True Christianity #767

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767. If we have faith in the Lord and goodwill toward our neighbor, we are a church in miniature. The church as a whole is composed of such churches-in-miniature.

Here is an astounding fact: All angels see the Lord in front of them no matter which way they turn their bodies or faces. The Lord is the sun of the angelic heaven. When the angels are in a spiritual meditation he appears before their eyes. People in the world who have the church within them go through something similar as far as the sight of their spirit is concerned; but because the sight of their spirit is hidden behind the veil of their physical sight, and the bodily and worldly preoccupations of their other senses supply further distractions, people do not realize that this is the state their spirit is in.

The reason why angels see the Lord before them, no matter where they turn, is that he is the source of every truth that leads to wisdom and faith, and the source of every good action that comes from love and goodwill. These two types of things in them actually belong to the Lord. Therefore every truth that leads to wisdom is like a mirror in which they see the Lord, and every good action that comes from love is an actual image of the Lord. This then explains the cause of this surprising phenomenon.

[2] Evil spirits, on the other hand, continually turn themselves away from the Lord and are constantly focusing on their own love. This, too, occurs no matter where they turn their bodies or faces. The cause of this is the same, although the other way around. In some form or other, every evil act they do is an image of their dominant love, and every false thought they have makes that image visible in a kind of mirror.

[3] Nature, too, exhibits some phenomena like this. We can see it in plants that sprout up through thick grass; they strive to grow taller than the surrounding blades so they can catch the sun. Some plants also turn to follow the sun from sunrise to sunset, in order to mature under its watchful eye. I do not doubt that all the twigs and branches of every tree have the same tendency and make some effort to do the same, and it is only because they lack the flexibility to turn that they remain still. As researchers have discovered, even sandbars in the ocean and whirlpools in the water go around in the same direction as the sun.

[4] Why then would human beings, who were created images of God, not turn to face him, unless they exercised the gift of free choice to redirect elsewhere that force and effort instilled in them by the Creator?

Another analogy would be a bride, who constantly holds some image of her bridegroom in the sight of her spirit. She sees him in the gifts he has given her as if these were mirrors. She longs for him to arrive, and when he does, love leaps up in her heart as she welcomes him with joy.

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

De obras de Swedenborg

 

True Christian Religion #90

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90. People who are not aware that Divine omnipotence proceeds and works in accordance with order can be led by their imagination to form many ideas contrary to sound reason, and even contradictory ones. For instance, why did God not take upon Himself human form immediately, without advancing through these stages? Why did He not gather the elements from the four quarters of the world to create and make up a body, so that He could display Himself as God-Man to the Jewish people, or rather to the whole world? Or, if He wished to be born, why did He not pour His whole divinity into the embryo or Himself as a child; or why did He not at once after being born raise Himself to adult stature, and speak from Divine Wisdom? Those who think about Divine omnipotence devoid of order, may conceive and bring forth these and similar ideas, and so fill the church with nonsense and rubbish; which is what has happened. For instance, the idea that God could have fathered a Son from eternity, and arranged for a third God to proceed even at that point in time from Himself and His Son. Or that He could become angry with the human race, consign it to destruction, and be willing to be brought back to pitying it through the Son, and to do this through His intercession and the memory of His crucifixion;

[2] and then go on to put His Son's righteousness into a person, and plant it in his heart like Wolff's 1 simple substance, in which according to that author all the Son's merits are present, but which cannot be divided, since if it were, it would collapse to nothing. Or further that He can remit anyone's sins He wishes, as it were by a Papal bull, or cleanse the worst sinner from his black wickedness, and thus turn a swarthy devil into a shining angel of light, without a person shifting himself any more than a stone, but standing still like a statue or an idol. Not to mention many other crazy notions, which those who set up Divine power as absolute, unhindered by the knowledge or acknowledgment of any order, may toss out like a winnower tossing chaff into the air. These people may in spiritual matters, those, that is, which concern heaven, the church and so everlasting life, stray from Divine truths like a blind man in a wood, who at one time stumbles over rocks, at another hits his forehead on a tree, at another gets his hair entangled in its branches.

Notas a pie de página:

1. Christian Wolff (1679-1754), a follower of Leibnitz.

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