Heaven and Hell #2

By Emanuel Swedenborg

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2. THE LORD IS THE GOD OF HEAVEN

The first essential is to know who the God of heaven is, since everything else depends upon that. Throughout the whole of heaven no other than the Lord alone is acknowledged as the God of heaven. There they declare as He Himself taught,

That He is one with the Father; that the Father is in Him and He in the Father, that he who sees Him sees the Father, and that everything that is holy goes forth from Him. John 10:30, 38; 14:10-11; 16:13-15.

I have quite often talked with angels on this matter and they have constantly declared that in heaven they are unable to distinguish the Divine into three, because they know and perceive that the Divine is One and that it is one in the Lord. They even said that people who come from this world from the Church having an idea of three Divine beings cannot be admitted into heaven because their thought wanders from one to another, and it is not allowable there to think of three and say one. 1 This is because everyone in heaven speaks from the thought, for there they have a cogitative speech or thought speaking. Consequently, those who in this world have distinguished the Divine into three and have adopted a separate idea of each, and have not made that idea one in the Lord and centred it there, cannot be received. For in heaven, they have a communication of the thoughts of all, so that if anyone came there, thinking of three and saying one, he would immediately be discovered and rejected. It ought to be known, however, that all those who have not separated truth from good, or faith from love, receive, when instructed in the other life, the heavenly idea of the Lord, that He is the God of the universe. It is indeed otherwise with those who have separated faith from life, that is, who have not lived in accordance with the precepts of a true faith.

Footnotes:

1. [Swedenborg's footnote] Christians were examined in the other life to see what idea they had of the one God, and it was found that they had an idea of three Gods. (Arcana Coelestia 2329, 5256, 10736, 10738, 10821).

A Divine Trinity in the Lord is acknowledged in heaven (Arcana Coelestia 14-15, 1729, 2005, 5256, 9303).

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