157. Since our spirit means our mind, therefore "being in the spirit," as the Word sometimes says, refers to the state of our mind when it is separated from our body. In this state the prophets saw the sort of things that exist in the spiritual world; therefore this state is called "a vision of God. " At those times, the prophets' state was like the state of spirits and angels in the spiritual world. In this state our spirit can move from place to place while our body stays where it is (as is also true of our mind's eye).

This is the state I myself have been in now for twenty-six years, with the difference that I am in my spirit and my body at the same time, and only sometimes out of my body.

Ezekiel, Zechariah, Daniel, and John (when he wrote the Book of Revelation) were in this state, as is clear from the following passages: Ezekiel said, "The spirit lifted me up and led me into Chaldea to the captivity in the vision of God, in the spirit of God. In this way the vision that I saw came over me" (Ezekiel 11:1, 24). The spirit lifted Ezekiel up and he heard the earth tremble behind him (Ezekiel 3:12, 14). The spirit lifted him up between earth and heaven, and led him away to Jerusalem where he saw abominable things (Ezekiel 8:3-4). He saw four creatures that were angel guardians and various details about them (Ezekiel 1 and 10). Then he saw a new earth in the form of a new temple, and an angel measuring the temple (Ezekiel 40-48). At that time he was in a vision and in the spirit (Ezekiel 40:2; 43:5).

[2] The same thing happened to Zechariah when an angel was with him and he saw a man riding among the myrtle trees (); when he saw four horns and a man who had a string in his hand for measuring (Zechariah 1:18; 2:1-2); when he saw Joshua the high priest (Zechariah 3:1, 6); and when he saw four chariots with horses headed off between two mountains (Zechariah 6:1-3).

Daniel was in the same state when he saw four beasts rising up out of the sea, and many details about them (Daniel 7:1-8); and when he saw battles between a ram and a goat (Daniel 8:1-14). He was in a vision when he saw those things (Daniel 7:1-2, 7, 13; 8:2; 10:1, 7-8). In a vision he saw the angel Gabriel and spoke with him [].

[3] The same thing happened to John when he wrote the Book of Revelation. He said he was in the spirit on the Lord's day (Revelation 1:10); he was carried off into the wilderness in the spirit (Revelation 17:3); and he was on a high mountain in the spirit (Revelation 21:10). He was seeing things in a vision (Revelation 9:17).

Elsewhere [in the Book of Revelation] he says that he saw the things he described. For example, he saw the Son of Humankind in the middle of seven lampstands. He saw a tabernacle, a temple, an ark, and an altar in heaven; a book sealed with seven seals and horses that came out of it; four creatures around a throne; twelve thousand chosen people, some from every tribe; a lamb on Mount Zion; locusts rising up from an abyss; a dragon and its war with Michael; a woman giving birth to a male child and running away into a desert because of the dragon; two beasts, one rising up out of the sea and another out of the land; a woman sitting on a scarlet beast; a dragon thrown into a lake of fire and sulfur; a white horse and a great supper; the holy city Jerusalem coming down, with details of its entrances, its wall, and the wall's foundations; a river of living water; and trees of life producing different types of fruit every month; and so on.

Peter, James, and John were in the same state when they saw Jesus transfigured, as was Paul when he heard ineffable things from heaven.

487. It used to seem incredible to me that any Christian could ever come to such a deranged conclusion, let alone spread it around by word of mouth or bring it to light by publication; and I refused to believe it even though such a conclusion was in fact drawn by a select group of clergy at the Synod of Dort in Holland, and was afterward written out in a careful hand and distributed to the public. To convince me, some of those who participated in the decisions of that Synod were brought to me.

When I noticed them standing near me I said, "How could someone whose reason is at all sound conclude that there is predestination? What else could this have led to except a flood of ideas that God is cruel and that religion is fraudulent? If people support predestination and engrave it on their hearts, how can they avoid seeing the teachings of the church and the Word as pointless? Can they think of God as anything but a tyrant, since he predestines hundreds of thousands to hell?"

[2] They stared at me with a satanic look and said, "We were selected to participate in the Synod of Dort. At the time, and even more so since then, we convinced ourselves of many things concerning God, the Word, and religion that we didn't dare divulge. Instead, when we spoke about and taught those topics, we spun and wove a web of multicolored threads, and on it we spread peacock feathers. "

Because the speakers were trying to do the same thing now, angels who were given power by the Lord closed the outer levels of their minds and opened the inner levels in them, and made them speak from those levels instead.

They then said, "We based the faith that we had then and that we still have now on a series of conclusions. We believe the following:

[3] (1) There is no such thing as the Word of Jehovah God; there is only some empty verbosity from the mouth of the prophets. (We came to this thought because the Word predestines all to heaven, and people themselves are to blame if they don't walk on the paths that lead there.) (2) Religion does and should exist, but it is no more than a strong wind that bears a [calming,] fragrant odor to the masses. Therefore religion should be taught by ministers to the small as well as the great, and should be based on the Word, because the Word's teaching is well received. (We had these thoughts because predestination actually renders religion null and void.) (3) The civil laws of justice are religion; but we are predestined not because of the lives we lived by those laws but exclusively because that is up to God, like the decision of an absolute monarch based on one look at our face. (4) With the exception of the one point that God exists, everything the church teaches ought to be regarded as nonsense that we should disapprove of and garbage that we should throw out. (5) The supposedly spiritual teachings that are paraded before us are actually nothing more than vapors of subsolar ether: if they penetrate us deeply they cause dizziness and lethargy and turn us into a detestable monster in the sight of God. "

(6) They were asked whether they believed that the faith on which they based the idea of predestination was spiritual or not. They answered that people are predestined based on their faith, but when faith is granted them, they are like logs. From that state they are indeed brought to life, but not spiritually.

[4] After uttering these horrible things, they wanted to leave, but I said to them, "Stay here a little longer, and I will read to you from Isaiah. "

What I read them was this:

Do not be happy, all Philistia, that the rod that was striking you is broken, because from the root of the serpent a basilisk has come out, and its fruit is a flying fire snake. (Isaiah 14:29)

I used the spiritual meaning of the passage to explain it: Philistia means the church that is separated from goodwill. The basilisk that has come out from the root of the serpent means the teaching of that church that there are three gods and that Christ's righteousness is assigned to every individual. Its fruit, which is a flying fire snake, means the idea that there is no credit for good actions or blame for evil actions; there is instant mercy, regardless of whether our lives have been good or evil.

[5] "Perhaps that is the meaning," they said. "But find us a passage on predestination in that volume that you call the Holy Word. "

I opened it up and in the same prophet I came upon this passage, which agrees with what I had quoted them earlier:

They were laying the eggs of a poisonous snake and weaving the webs of a spider. Whoever eats their eggs dies, and when someone crushes [one of those eggs], a viper is hatched. (Isaiah 59:5)

When they heard that, they did not wait around for the explanation. Five of the people who had been brought to me hurled themselves violently into a cave. Around it there appeared a dark glow - a sign that they had no faith or goodwill.

From all this it follows that the Synod's decree about predestination is not just an insane heresy but a cruel heresy as well. It has to be eradicated from the brain so thoroughly that not even a single jot of it remains.