The Bible

 

Genesis 1

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1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.

4 And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.

5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first Day.

6 And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.

7 And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.

8 And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.

9 And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so.

10 And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good.

11 And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so.

12 And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

13 And the evening and the morning were the third day.

14 And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years:

15 And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so.

16 And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.

17 And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth,

18 And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good.

19 And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.

20 And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.

21 And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

22 And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth.

23 And the evening and the morning were the fifth day.

24 And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so.

25 And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

26 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.

27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.

28 And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.

29 And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.

30 And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so.

31 And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.

Commentary

 

#146 Original Sin Is That the Same Thing as Unoriginal Sin?

By Jonathan S. Rose

Title: Original Sin

Topic: First Coming

Summary: We explore the common idea of original sin. Who or what was Adam? Was he one person or many? And what gets passed on from our parents and how do we deal with it?

Use the reference links below to follow along in the Bible as you watch.

References:
Genesis 1:26; 2:7; 3:1, 12; 4:14; 5:1-2
Psalms 51:4-5, 7, 10, 17
Hebrews 4:15
Romans 5:12-17
1 Corinthians 15:21, 27, 45
Deuteronomy 24:16
Exodus 20:5

Play Video
Spirit and Life Bible Study broadcast from 7/17/2013. The complete series is available at: www.spiritandlifebiblestudy.com

From Swedenborg's Works

 

The New Jerusalem and its Heavenly Teachings #263

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263. The Lord is the Word. The sole subject of the deepest meaning of the Word is the Lord, and it describes all the phases of the glorification of his human nature (that is, of its union with the divine nature itself), as well as all the phases of his taking control of the hells and setting in order everything there and in the heavens: 2249, 7014. So in this meaning there is a description of the Lord's whole life in our world, and by means of this there is a constant presence of the Lord with the angels: 2523. At the very center of the Word there is only the Lord, and this is the source of what is divine and holy in the Word: 1873, 9357. The Lord's saying that the Scripture about him was fulfilled [Luke 18:31; 24:44] was referring to everything in the deepest meaning of the Word: 7933.

"The Word" means divine truth: 4692, 5075, 9987. The Lord is the Word because he is divine truth: 2533. The Lord is the Word also because the Word comes from him and is about him (2859); and in its deepest meaning is about no one but the Lord, so the Lord himself is there (1873, 9357); and also because there is a marriage of divine goodness and divine truth throughout the Word and in its every detail (3004, 5502). "Jesus" means divine goodness and "Christ" means divine truth: 3004, 3005, 3009. Divine truth [ coming from divine goodness] is the sole reality, and only what it dwells in-which comes from what is divine-is substantial: 5272, 6880, 7004, 8200. 1 And because divine truth emanating from the Lord is heaven's light and divine goodness is its warmth, and because everything there comes into being from that light and warmth, and because this earthly world as a whole comes into being by means of heaven or the spiritual world, we can see that everything that has been created has been created from divine truth-that is, from the Word, just as it says in John: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. All things that were made were made through him. And the Word became flesh" [John 1:1, 3, 14]: 2803, 2894, 5272, 7678. For more on the creation of everything by divine truth and therefore by the Lord, see §137 of the book Heaven and Hell. A fuller picture can be drawn from two of its chapters: §§116-125 ["The Sun in Heaven"] and 126-140 ["Light and Warmth in Heaven"].

A joining together of the Lord and us is accomplished through the Word, by means of its inner meaning: 10375. Absolutely everything in the Word is a means to this joining together, and this is why the Word is more wondrous than anything else that has been written: 10632, 10633, 10634. Now that the Word has been written, the Lord speaks to us through it: 10290.

Footnotes:

1Substance, in its philosophical sense, is the basic, underlying constituent that carries the attributes of a thing. Thus, for example, Swedenborg elsewhere stipulates that without substance the attribute of form cannot be present ( True Christianity 52). A rough idea of substance can be obtained by thinking of it as the spiritual equivalent of what we call matter. In this passage, and in several of the Secrets of Heaven passages referred to here (§§5272, 6880, 8200), Swedenborg indicates that divine truth is not merely mental thought, or spoken or written words, but the reality itself that underlies everything in the universe. Therefore all things actually proceed from it, and it literally gives them substance. Although some of these passages appear to ascribe this all-encompassing role to divine truth alone, it seems clear that Swedenborg is not excluding divine goodness: In one of the passages just mentioned, Secrets of Heaven 5272, he writes that "divine truth coming from divine goodness is the most real and most essential thing there is in the universe" (emphasis added; this passage is the origin of the material presented in brackets here in the main text). Elsewhere he presents the two divine attributes as completely integrated, as the singular verbs in the proposition of Divine Love and Wisdom 40 suggest: "Divine love and wisdom is substance and is form. " For further discussion of the idea of substance in Swedenborg's works, see Brown 1919, 398-413; for relevant passages in Swedenborg's works, see those collected at Odhner 1986, 6 with note 1 in New Jerusalem 4. [SS, JSR, RS]

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