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Memorable Occurrences in Swedenborg's Writings

This list of Memorable Occurrences in Swedenborg's Writings was originally compiled by W. C. Henderson in 1960 but has since been updated.

From Swedenborg's Works

 

True Christian Religion #134

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134. At this point I shall insert more accounts of experiences, of which this is the first.

Once in the world of spirits I went into a church where there was a large congregation, and before the sermon they had a discussion on the subject of redemption. The church was square in plan without any windows in the walls, but with a large opening in the middle of the roof, allowing light from heaven to stream in, making the interior brighter than windows at the sides could have done.

While they were talking about redemption, a black cloud suddenly blew up from the north and covered the opening. This caused such thick darkness that people could not see one another, and hardly their hands in front of their faces. While they were standing struck dumb by this, the black cloud was split down the middle, and through the gap angels were seen, sent down from heaven to dispel the cloud in either direction, so that the church was filled with light again. The angels then sent down one of their number into the church to ask the congregation in their name the subject of their dispute, which had caused so dark a cloud to come over, block out the light, and spread darkness. They replied that they were talking about redemption, how this was effected by the passion of the Son of God on the cross, by which means He made expiation and rescued the human race from damnation and everlasting death.

To this the angel who has been sent down replied: 'Why do you say "by the passion on the cross"? Explain why you say it was by that means.'

[2] Then a priest came forward and said: 'I will give an orderly exposition of our knowledge and belief. These are that God the Father in His anger against the human race damned it and shut it out from the sphere of His clemency, declaring all its members condemned and accursed, and consigning them to hell. He was willing for His Son to take that sentence on Himself; the Son consented, and therefore came down, took human form, and allowed Himself to be crucified. He thus transferred to Himself the damnation of the human race; for we read "Cursed is everyone who hangs upon the wood of the cross." The Son thus by His intercession and mediation appeased the Father; and then the Father out of His love for the Son, and as the result of witnessing His suffering on the cross, was moved to pity, and decreed that He would forgive men, "but only those to whom I impute your righteousness. These I will turn from sons of wrath and cursing into sons of grace and blessing, and I will make them righteous and save them. Let the rest remain as previously decreed, sons of wrath." Such is our faith, and these things are what is meant by the righteousness which God the Father introduces into our faith, so that by itself it makes us righteous and saves us.'

[3] On hearing this the angel kept silent for some time, he was so astonished. But eventually he broke silence and spoke as follows: 'Can the Christian world have become so mad, and have abandoned sound reason for such ravings, as to deduce the fundamental dogma of salvation from those paradoxes? Is there anyone who cannot see that this is diametrically opposed to the Divine essence itself, that is, to God's Divine love and His Divine wisdom, and at the same time to His omnipotence and omnipresence? No decent master would treat his servants and maids like this; not even a wild beast would so treat its pups or young. It is unspeakable. Is it not contrary to His Divine essence to revoke the invitation given to every single member of the human race? Is it not contrary to the Divine essence to change the laws of order established from eternity, which prescribe that each person should be judged by the life he leads? Is it not contrary to the Divine essence to withdraw love and pity from any person, and more so from the whole of the human race? Is it not contrary to the Divine essence to be brought back to pitying by witnessing the Son's suffering, and since it is the very essence of God to pity, to be brought back to His own essence? It is utter wickedness to think that He could ever depart from it, for He is His essence from eternity to eternity.

[4] 'Is it not impossible to implant in anything, such as your faith, the righteousness of redemption, which in itself is a part of God's omnipotence, and impute or assign it to a person, and without any other means to pronounce him righteous, pure and holy? Is it not impossible to forgive anyone his sins, or to make anyone new, regenerated and saved, simply by imputing righteousness to him, which would be turning unrighteousness into righteousness, and cursing into blessing? Could one thus turn hell into heaven, and heaven into hell, or the dragon into Michael, and Michael into the dragon, and so put a stop to the battle between them? What would it take but to withdraw the imputation of your faith from one person and give it to another? In that case we in heaven would go in fear for ever. Nor is it consistent with righteousness and judgment for one person to take another's crime upon himself, so that the guilty should be held innocent, and the crime thus be purged. Is this not contrary to both Divine righteousness and human justice? The Christian world is still ignorant of the existence, even more so of the nature, of the laws of order that God introduced at the creation of the world; and that God cannot act contrary to order because that would be acting against Himself. For God is order itself.'

[5] The priest understood what the angel had said, because the angels up above poured down light from heaven. Then he gave a groan and said: 'What are we to do? Everyone nowadays preaches and prays and believes this. Everyone is saying "Gracious Father, have mercy upon us and forgive us our sins for the sake of your Son's blood, which He shed for us upon the cross." Then they pray to Christ: "Lord, intercede for us;" and we priests add, "Send us the Holy Spirit."'

Then the angel said: 'I have noticed that priests make ointments from a superficial understanding of the Word, which they smear on the eyes of those who have been blinded by their faith; or make up a poultice from the same source, which they place upon the wounds inflicted by their dogmas, but without healing them, since they have become chronic. So go to the man who is standing over there - and he pointed to me - he will teach you from the Lord that the passion on the cross was not the act of redemption, but the uniting of the Lord's Human with the Father's Divine. Redemption was the conquest of the hells and the ordering of the heavens; and had the Lord not performed these acts when He was in the world, no one on earth, nor anyone in the heavens, could have been saved. He will go on to teach you the laws of order, which were imposed from the time of creation, by which people must live to be saved. Those who live by them are counted among the redeemed and called the chosen.'

After this speech windows appeared in the sides of the church, brightness flooded in from all four quarters, and cherubs were seen flying in a radiance of light. Then the angel was lifted up through the opening in the roof to rejoin his companions, and we went away in a cheerful frame of mind.

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

From Swedenborg's Works

 

Conjugial Love #267

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267. The second account:

Some period of time later I entered a wooded area, where I walked engaged in thought concerning people who are caught up in a craving to possess those things which have to do with the world, and who fantasize on that account that they do. And I saw, then, two angels at some distance from me, talking together and now and then looking over at me. Consequently I drew nearer; and as I approached, they spoke to me, saying:

"We perceive in ourselves that you are thinking about the same thing we are discussing, or that we are discussing the same thing you are thinking about, which comes from a reciprocal communication of our affections."

I asked them, therefore, what they were discussing.

"Fantasy, lust, and intelligence," they said, "and at the moment, people who find delight in picturing and imagining that they possess everything in the world."

[2] At that I then asked them to express their thought with respect to the first three points - lust, fantasy and intelligence.

So, taking up the subject, they said that everyone is in a state of lust inwardly from birth, and in a state of intelligence outwardly from training; but that no one is in a state of intelligence inwardly, thus in spirit - still less in a state of wisdom - except from the Lord.

"For everyone," they said, "is withheld from the lust of evil and kept in a state of intelligence according as he looks to the Lord and is at the same time conjoined with Him. Apart from this a person is nothing but lust. Yet he is still in a state of intelligence in outward aspects, or as regards the body, from training. For though a person craves honors and riches, or prominence and wealth, these two are not attained unless he appears to be moral and spiritual in character, thus intelligent and wise; and he learns to appear such from the time he is a little child. That is why, as soon as he comes into the company of others or into gatherings of them, he turns his spirit about, withdraws it from lust, and speaks and acts in accordance with the becoming and honorable virtues he has learned from early childhood and still retains in his physical memory - doing his utmost to take care that nothing emerges of the insanity of lust which grips his spirit.

[3] "Consequently everyone not inwardly led by the Lord is a faker, a phony and a hypocrite, and so is human in appearance but not in reality. Of such a person it may be said that his outer shell or body is wise, while his kernel or spirit is insane; or that his outward aspect is human and his inward one animal. People like that direct the back of their heads upward and the front downward, thus going about as though afflicted with heaviness, their heads hanging down and their faces turned to the ground. When they put off the body and become spirits, and are then set free, they become reflections of the insanities of their lust. For people who are caught up in love of self have a longing to rule over the universe, even to extend its limits in order to widen their dominion, never seeing an end; while people who are caught up in a love of the world have a longing to possess all its riches, and they grieve and are envious if any of its treasures are kept hidden from them in the possession of others.

"To keep people like this from becoming nothing but reflections of their lusts, therefore, and so no longer human, it is given them in the natural 1 world to think in accord with fear for the loss of their reputation, and so the loss of honor and gain, together with fear of the law and its penalties; and also to apply their minds to some pursuit or work, by which they are held in external concerns and thus in a state of intelligence, however irrational and insane they are inwardly."

[4] Following this description I asked whether all people who are caught up in the lust are at the same time caught up in the fantasy of it.

They replied that those are caught up in the fantasy of their lust who think withdrawn into themselves and indulge their imagination excessively, talking to themselves; for they almost separate their spirit from its connection with the body, overwhelming their understanding with delusion and stupidly entertaining themselves with nonsense as though everything in the universe were theirs.

This madness is what a person comes into after death if he has withdrawn his spirit from the body and has been unwilling to relinquish the pleasure of his madness, thinking little from religion about evils and falsities, and least of all about unbridled love of self as being destructive of love toward the Lord, or about unbridled love of the world as being destructive of love for the neighbor.

Footnotes:

1. The original text reads, "in the spiritual world," but preceding and subsequent statements in the discussion, and the general doctrine delivered elsewhere concerning the nature of the two worlds, suggest that it is probably a slip of the pen for "the natural world." (The same statement is repeated in True Christian Religion, no. 662[3], without correction, but so are several other, more obvious errors, indicating that the latter was simply set in type again from the text here, without careful review.)

  
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Many thanks to the General Church of the New Jerusalem, and to Rev. N.B. Rogers, translator, for the permission to use this translation.

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