2. The faith of the new heaven and the new church in universal form is this: The Lord from eternity, who is Jehovah, came into the world to gain control over the hells and to glorify his own human nature. If he had not done this, not one mortal could have been saved; those who believe in him are saved.

[2] I say in universal form because this concept is universal to the faith and something universal to the faith is going to be present in each and every aspect of it. It is universal to the faith to believe that God is one in essence and in person, to believe that in God there is a divine Trinity, and to believe that the Lord God the Savior Jesus Christ is God. It is universal to the faith to believe that if the Lord had not come into the world not one mortal could have been saved. It is universal to the faith to believe that the Lord came into the world to separate hell from the human race, and that he accomplished this by repeatedly doing battle with hell and conquering it. In this way he gained control over it, forced it back into the divine design, and made it obey him. It is universal to the faith to believe that he came into the world to glorify the human nature he took on in the world, that is, to unite it to its divine source. This is how he keeps hell eternally in its place and in obedience to himself. Since this could not have been accomplished except by allowing his human nature to be tested, including even the ultimate test, the suffering on the cross, therefore he underwent that experience. These are universal points of faith regarding the Lord.

[3] For our part, it is universal to the faith that we believe in the Lord, for our believing in him gives us a partnership with him, and through this partnership comes salvation. To believe in him is to have confidence that he saves; and because only those who live good lives can have such confidence, this too is meant by believing in him. In fact, the Lord says in John: "This is the will of the Father, that everyone who believes in the Son has eternal life" (John 6:39-40). And in another passage, "Those who believe in the Son have eternal life. But those who do not believe the Son will not see life; instead the anger of God remains on them" (John 3:36).

502. People who have become earthly because of false beliefs about the spiritual teachings of the church cannot help thinking that divine omnipotence is above and beyond the design [of the universe], and therefore that divine omnipotence exists outside that design. As a result they lapse into deranged thoughts such as the following.

"Why did the Lord come into the world and why was this a redemption, when God's omnipotence could have allowed him to accomplish the same thing from heaven as he did on earth? Why wouldn't he, through his redemption, have saved the entire human race down to the last person? After that point, why would the Devil be able to prevail against the Redeemer in us? Why does hell exist? Since God is omnipotent, why hasn't he destroyed hell, or why doesn't he do so now? Or else why doesn't he lead all the devils out of there and make them all angels of heaven? Why have a Last Judgment? Is he unable to move all the goats from the left to the right and make them sheep? Why did he cast down from heaven the angels of the dragon and the dragon itself instead of changing them into angels of Michael? Why doesn't he grant faith to both groups, assign them the Son's justice, and so forgive their sins and justify and sanctify them? Why doesn't he give the animals of the earth, the birds in the sky, and the fish in the sea the ability to speak and gain understanding, and bring them into heaven along with people? Why either in the past or now hasn't he transformed our world into a paradise that has no tree of the knowledge of good and evil and no serpent, where all the hills are flowing with vintage wine, and yielding their own gold and silver, so that all would spend their lives as images of God there, singing and shouting and in everlasting celebrations and joy? Wouldn't these be fitting accomplishments for the omnipotent God?" And so on.

[2] But, my friend, all this is nonsense. Divine omnipotence is not outside the design. God himself is the design. Because all things were created by God, they were created by the design, in the design, and for the design. There is also a design into which humankind was created, which is that whether we are blessed or cursed depends on our own exercise of free choice in spiritual matters.

As mentioned above [], it would not be possible to create a human being, or even an animal, bird, or fish, that had no free choice; but animals have a form of free choice that is merely earthly, whereas people have both earthly free choice and spiritual free choice.

501. These days people are asking why miracles do not happen any more the way they used to. There is the belief that if they did happen, we would all acknowledge God from the depths of our hearts. The reason miracles are not happening today the way they used to is that miracles are coercive; they take away our free choice in spiritual matters. They make us more earthly than spiritual. Since the time of the Lord's Coming, everyone in the Christian world has had the capability of becoming spiritual. We become spiritual solely from the Lord through the agency of the Word. If miracles induced us to believe, we would actually lose this capability, because, as I just mentioned, they are coercive and take away our free choice in spiritual matters. And when it comes to spiritual things, everything that is forced on us intrudes into our earthly self and closes the door, so to speak, to the spiritual level in us that is our true inner self. It deprives our inner self of all ability to see anything true in the light. After that, our only thought about spiritual matters would be reasoning on the part of our earthly self, and our earthly self sees everything that is truly spiritual upside down.

[2] The reason why miracles did occur before the Lord's Coming was that then the people in the church were earthly in nature and were not open to the spiritual matters that belong to the inner church. If spiritual matters had been opened up to them, they would have desecrated them. Therefore all their forms of worship were rituals that meant and represented the inner teachings of the church. The only way they could be induced to perform the rituals correctly was through miracles; and in fact not even miracles could persuade them, because there was something spiritual lying hidden within those representative acts of worship. This is clear from the fact that even though the children of Israel in the wilderness had witnessed so many miracles in Egypt and the greatest of miracles on Mount Sinai, Moses had not been absent for more than a month before they were dancing around the golden calf and shouting that it had led them out of Egypt. They engaged in similar acts once in the land of Canaan, even though they saw astounding miracles performed by Elijah and Elisha, and later on, the divine miracles performed by the Lord.

[3] The main reason why miracles are not happening today is that the church has denied that we have any free choice in spiritual matters. It achieved this by sanctioning the notion that we are completely unable to contribute anything to our own acceptance of faith, and that we play no role whatever in our own conversion or our salvation in general (see 464 above). People who have these beliefs become more and more earthly, and the earthly self, as mentioned just above, looks at everything spiritual the wrong way up and therefore decides against it. In that circumstance, the higher region of the human mind - the primary location of our free choice in spiritual matters - would be closed; the spiritual teachings that were apparently corroborated by the miracles would inhabit the lower, merely earthly region of the mind, while false beliefs about faith, conversion, and salvation remained fixed in place on that higher level. The result would be that satans would live on the higher floor and angels on the lower floor, like vultures above hens. After a while, the satans would break the dead bolt and burst in with a fury on the spiritual teachings that were allotted a place below, and would not merely deny those teachings but would blaspheme and desecrate them. Therefore for such people the situation afterward would be much worse than it was before.