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Daniel 9

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1 In the first year of Darius the son of Ahasuerus, of the seed of the Medes, who was made king over the realm of the Chaldeans,

2 in the first year of his reign, I Daniel understood by the books that the number of the years, whereof the word of Jehovah came to Jeremiah the prophet, for the accomplishment of the desolations of Jerusalem, was seventy years.

3 And I set my face unto the Lord God, to seek by prayer and supplications, with fasting, and sackcloth, and ashes;

4 and I prayed unto Jehovah my God, and made my confession, and said, Alas Lord! the great and terrible ùGod, keeping covenant and loving-kindness with them that love him, and that keep his commandments:

5 we have sinned, and have committed iniquity, and have done wickedly, and have rebelled, even turning aside from thy commandments and from thine ordinances.

6 And we have not hearkened unto thy servants the prophets, who spoke in thy name to our kings, our princes, and our fathers, and to all the people of the land.

7 Thine, O Lord, is the righteousness, but unto us confusion of face, as at this day, to the men of Judah, and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and unto all Israel, that are near, and that are far off, in all the countries whither thou hast driven them, because of their unfaithfulness in which they have been unfaithful against thee.

8 O Lord, unto us is confusion of face, to our kings, to our princes, and to our fathers, because we have sinned against thee.

9 With the Lord our God are mercies and pardons, for we have rebelled against him;

10 and we have not hearkened unto the voice of Jehovah our God, to walk in his laws, which he set before us through his servants the prophets.

11 And all Israel have transgressed thy law, even turning aside so as not to listen unto thy voice. And the curse hath been poured out upon us, and the oath that is written in the law of Moses the servant of God: for we have sinned against him.

12 And he hath performed his words, which he spoke against us, and against our judges that judged us, by bringing upon us a great evil; so that there hath not been done under the whole heaven as hath been done upon Jerusalem.

13 As it is written in the law of Moses, all this evil is come upon us; yet we besought not Jehovah our God, that we might turn from our iniquities, and understand thy truth.

14 And Jehovah hath watched over the evil, and brought it upon us; for Jehovah our God is righteous in all his works which he hath done; and we have not hearkened unto his voice.

15 -- And now, O Lord our God, who broughtest thy people forth out of the land of Egypt with a strong hand, and hast made thee a name, as it is this day, -- we have sinned, we have done wickedly.

16 Lord, according to all thy righteousnesses, I beseech thee, let thine anger and thy fury be turned away from thy city Jerusalem, thy holy mountain; for because of our sins, and because of the iniquities of our fathers, Jerusalem and thy people [are become] a reproach to all round about us.

17 And now, our God, hearken to the prayer of thy servant, and to his supplications, and cause thy face to shine upon thy sanctuary that is desolate, for the Lord's sake.

18 Incline thine ear, O my God, and hear; open thine eyes and behold our desolations, and the city that is called by thy name: for we do not present our supplications before thee because of our righteousnesses, but because of thy manifold mercies.

19 Lord, hear! Lord, forgive! Lord, hearken and do! defer not, for thine own sake, O my God! for thy city and thy people are called by thy name.

20 And whilst I was speaking, and praying, and confessing my sin and the sin of my people Israel, and presenting my supplication before Jehovah my God for the holy mountain of my God;

21 whilst I was yet speaking in prayer, the man Gabriel, whom I had seen in the vision at the beginning, flying swiftly, touched me about the time of the evening oblation.

22 And he informed [me], and talked with me, and said, Daniel, I am now come forth to make thee skilful of understanding.

23 At the beginning of thy supplications the word went forth, and I am come to declare [it]; for thou art one greatly beloved. Therefore consider the word, and have understanding in the vision:

24 Seventy weeks are apportioned out upon thy people and upon thy holy city, to close the transgression, and to make an end of sins, and to make expiation for iniquity, and to bring in the righteousness of the ages, and to seal the vision and prophet, and to anoint the holy of holies.

25 Know therefore and understand: From the going forth of the word to restore and to build Jerusalem unto Messiah, the Prince, are seven weeks, and sixty-two weeks. The street and the moat shall be built again, even in troublous times.

26 And after the sixty-two weeks shall Messiah be cut off, and shall have nothing; and the people of the prince that shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary; and the end thereof shall be with an overflow, and unto the end, war, -- the desolations determined.

27 And he shall confirm a covenant with the many [for] one week; and in the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease, and because of the protection of abominations [there shall be] a desolator, even until that the consumption and what is determined shall be poured out upon the desolate.

   

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True Christian Religion # 378

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378. IX. There is true faith, spurious faith and hypocritical faith.

From its cradle the Christian church began to be attacked and split by schisms and heresies, and in course of time to be torn apart and butchered, very much as we read of the man who went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and was surrounded by robbers, who, after stripping and beating him, left him half-dead (Luke 10:30). The result was like the description of that church in Daniel:

Finally upon the bird of abominations desolation, to the point of ending and cutting off, shall be poured drop by drop upon devastation, Daniel 9:27.

and in the Lord's words:

Then the end shall come, when you will see the abomination of desolation predicted by the prophet Daniel, Matthew 24:14-15.

Its fate may be compared with a ship laden with a very valuable cargo, which immediately on leaving harbour is struck by storms and soon afterwards is wrecked and sunk at sea, so that its cargo is partly ruined by water and partly consumed by fish.

[2] The Christian church from its infancy was so tossed and shattered, as is evident from ecclesiastical history, for instance even in the time of the Apostles by Simon, who was of the Samaritan nation, and a practicer of sorcery, as related in The Acts of the Apostles (Acts of the Apostles 8:9ff). Also by Hymenaeus and Philetus, who are mentioned by Paul in his Epistle to Timothy [2 Timothy 2:17]; as also by Nicolas, who gave his name to the Nicolaitans (mentioned in Revelation 2:6 and Acts of the Apostles 6:5), as well as by Cerinthus. After the time of the Apostles many more heretical sects arose, such as the Marcionites, Noetians, Valentinians, Encratites, Cataphrygians, Quartodecimans, Alogians, Cathars, Origenists or Adamantines, Sabellians, Samosatenes, Manichaeans, Meletians and finally Arians. After their times whole regiments of heretical leaders assailed the church, such as the Donatists, Photinians, Acatians or Semiarians, Eunomians, Macedonians, Nestorians, Predestinarians, Papists, Zwinglians, Anabaptists, Schwenckfeldians, Synergists, Socinians, Antitrinitarians, Quakers, Herrenhuters, and many more besides. 1 Finally these succumbed to Luther, Melanchthon and Calvin, whose dogmas hold the field today.

There are three principal causes of the divisions and separatist movements in the church; first, the failure to understand the Divine Trinity; second, the lack of any proper knowledge of the Lord; third, the assumption that the passion on the cross was the actual process of redemption. Ignorance on these three matters, which are nonetheless the very essentials of faith, and the faith on which the church is based and the reason it is called a church, inevitably results in everything connected with the church being given a sinister twist and steered away until its course is reversed, while still believing that in these circumstances it has the true faith in God and believes all God's truths. The case of these people is similar to those who blindfold their eyes and, while fancying they are walking in a straight line, yet step by step deviate from it, until they are facing the opposite direction, where there are pits into which they fall. But a person who belongs to the church can only be led away from his wanderings and into the way of truth by knowing what true faith is, what spurious faith is, and what hypocritical faith is. The following propositions will therefore be proved:

(i) There is only one true faith, and this is in the Lord God the Saviour Jesus Christ, and is possessed by those who believe Him to be the Son of God, the God of heaven and earth, and one with the Father.

(ii) Spurious faith is any faith which departs from the true and only faith, and is possessed by those who climb up another way and look upon the Lord not as God, but merely as a human being.

(iii) Hypocritical faith is no faith at all.

Poznámky pod čarou:

1. This list of heretics seems to have been taken from the Concordia Pia, referred to by the author as the 'Formula of Concord', published in Leipzig in 1756; cf. 356, 2.

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