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Matthew 4

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1 Then Jesus was carried up into the wilderness by the Spirit to be tempted of the devil:

2 and having fasted forty days and forty nights, afterwards he hungered.

3 And the tempter coming up to him said, If thou be Son of God, speak, that these stones may become loaves of bread.

4 But he answering said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word which goes out through God's mouth.

5 Then the devil takes him to the holy city, and sets him upon the edge of the temple,

6 and says to him, If thou be Son of God cast thyself down; for it is written, He shall give charge to his angels concerning thee, and on [their] hands shall they bear thee, lest in anywise thou strike thy foot against a stone.

7 Jesus said to him, It is again written, Thou shalt not tempt [the] Lord thy God.

8 Again the devil takes him to a very high mountain, and shews him all the kingdoms of the world, and their glory,

9 and says to him, All these things will I give thee if, falling down, thou wilt do me homage.

10 Then says Jesus to him, Get thee away, Satan, for it is written, Thou shalt do homage to [the] Lord thy God, and him alone shalt thou serve.

11 Then the devil leaves him, and behold, angels came and ministered to him.

12 But having heard that John was delivered up, he departed into Galilee:

13 and having left Nazareth, he went and dwelt at Capernaum, which is on the sea-side in the borders of Zabulon and Nepthalim,

14 that that might be fulfilled which was spoken through Esaias the prophet, saying,

15 Land of Zabulon and land of Nepthalim, way of [the] sea beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the nations:

16 -- the people sitting in darkness has seen a great light, and to those sitting in [the] country and shadow of death, to them has light sprung up.

17 From that time began Jesus to preach and to say, Repent, for the kingdom of the heavens has drawn nigh.

18 And walking by the sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea, for they were fishers;

19 and he says to them, Come after me, and I will make you fishers of men.

20 And they, having left their trawl-nets, immediately followed him.

21 And going on thence he saw other two brothers, James the [son] of Zebedee and John his brother, in the ship with Zebedee their father, mending their trawl-nets, and he called them;

22 and they, having left the ship and their father, immediately followed him.

23 And [Jesus] went round the whole [of] Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the glad tidings of the kingdom, and healing every disease and every bodily weakness among the people.

24 And his fame went out into the whole [of] Syria, and they brought to him all that were ill, suffering under various diseases and pains, and those possessed by demons, and lunatics, and paralytics; and he healed them.

25 And great crowds followed him from Galilee, and Decapolis, and Jerusalem, and Judaea, and beyond the Jordan.

   

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Resistance

Napsal(a) Solomon Keal


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"Resistance", an audio recording of a sermon by Solomon J. Keal

Why is it that when we start to choose something good in our life, we often end up facing resistance, discouragement, or conflict? Sometimes it might even feel like we’re being punished for doing something good. Right after the Lord was baptized by John, He faced temptation in the wilderness with the devil (see Matthew 3:16-17; 4:1-11). This is our story as well. Why is this normal and to be expected? How can we maintain hope and positivity through all this? How does the Lord use these times to make us stronger?

Here are some things to read, from the Word and from Swedenborg's works:

Matthew 3:16-17; 4:1-11

The New Jerusalem and its Heavenly Doctrine 187-188

The New Jerusalem and its Heavenly Doctrine 197

Arcana Coelestia 1690

Ze Swedenborgových děl

 

The New Jerusalem and its Heavenly Teachings # 197

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197. The origin and characteristics of crises of the spirit. Spiritual crises arise from the evil spirits who are with us; these spirits put barriers between us and the goodness we love and the truths we believe, and also stir up evil things that we have done and false things that we have thought: 741, 751, 761, 3927, 4307, 4572, 5036, 6657, 8960. At such times evil spirits use extreme cunning and malice: 6666. When we are undergoing a spiritual crisis we are close to hell: 8131. There are two forces at work in spiritual crises, a force from the Lord from within and a force from hell from without, and we are in between: 8168.

[2] In spiritual crises, what is under assault is the thing we love the most: 847, 4274. Evil spirits exclusively attack the things we believe and love and therefore our spiritual life itself, so that our eternal life is at stake: 1820. A comparison between the state we are in during a spiritual crisis and the state we are in when being attacked by thieves: 5246. When we are in spiritual crises, angels from the Lord hold us to a path of truth and goodness, while evil spirits hold us to a path of falsity and evil, which causes a conflict and a battle: 4249.

[3] A crisis of the spirit is a battle between the inner or spiritual self and the outer or earthly self: 2183, 4256. So it is a battle between the pleasures of the inner and the outer selves, which at this point are opposite to each other: 3928, 8351. This happens because the two kinds of pleasure clash with one another: 3928. So what is at stake is the control of one self over the other: 3928, 8961.

[4] No one can undergo a spiritual crisis who does not acknowledge the existence of truth and goodness and desire them, since if these are lacking no battle occurs. That is, there is nothing spiritual to counteract what is earthly and therefore there is no battle for control: 3928, 4299. Only those who have gained some spiritual life undergo spiritual crises: 8963. Crises of the spirit affect people who have a conscience-people, then, who have gained a spiritual kind of love. Such crises are more severe, though, for people who have perception-people who have gained a heavenly kind of love: 1668, 8963. Dead people-that is, people who have no faith in or love for God and no love for their neighbor-are not allowed to undergo spiritual crises, because they would give up the fight: 270, 4274, 4299, 8964, 8968. So nowadays not many people undergo spiritual crises: 8965. People do, however, have anxieties caused by various worldly situations-whether those situations have happened, or are happening, or are going to happen-situations that generally include mental affliction or physical illness. These are not, though, the same as the anxieties caused by spiritual crises: 762, 8164. Spiritual crises may or may not happen during times of physical suffering: 8164. The state we come into during a crisis of the spirit is impure and filthy, because we are inundated with evils and falsities and also doubts about what is good and true (5246) and because in these crises there are resentments, mental anguish, and many feelings that are not good (1917, 6829). There is also an element of darkness and doubt about the outcome (1820, 6829) and also about divine providence and whether we are being heard, because in crises of the spirit, prayers are not heard the way they are outside of such crises (8179), and because when we are in spiritual crises we experience ourselves as being in a state of damnation (6097). This is because we have a clear sense of what is happening in our outer self and therefore of the things that the evil spirits are injecting and evoking (and these shape the way we are thinking about our state). On the other hand, we do not sense what is happening in our inner self, which means we do not sense what is flowing in through angels from the Lord. The result is that we are incapable of judging our own state: 10236, 10240.

[5] Crises of the spirit continue until we reach despair, at which point the process comes to an end: 1787, 2694, 5279, 5280, 6144, 7147, 7155, 7166, 8165, 8567. Why this is so: 2694. Throughout the course of a spiritual crisis there are certain feelings of despair, but at the end they become all-encompassing: 8567. In despair we say some bitter things, but the Lord pays no attention to them: 8165. Once a spiritual crisis is over we at first fluctuate between truth and falsity (848, 857), but then the truth shines forth we feel peaceful lighthearted (3696, 4572, 6829, 8367, 8370).

[6] When we are being regenerated we experience crises of the spirit not just once but many times, because we have many evils and falsities that need to be put aside: 8403. If people gain some spiritual life in this world but do not undergo spiritual crises here, they go through them in the other life: 7122. How and where spiritual crises happen in the other life: 537, 538, 539, 699, 1106-1113, 2694, 4728, 4940-4951, 6119, 6928, 7090, 7122, 7186, 7317, 7474, 7502, 7541, 7542, 7545, 7768, 7990, 9331, 9763. The state of enlightenment of people who are emerging from crises of the spirit and being raised into heaven, and what happens to them there: 2699, 2701, 2704.

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