From Swedenborg's Works

 

Conjugial Love #407

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407. To this I will add the following astonishing phenomenon. In the spiritual world I have seen fathers who had regarded little children presented to their eyes with hatred and seeming rage, and with so savage a disposition that they would have tried to kill them if they could. But as soon as they were told, untruthfully, that they were their own children, their rage and savageness then instantly departed, and they began to love them inordinately.

Such hatred and love coexist together in people who in the world had been inwardly crafty and had poisoned their mind against the Lord.

  
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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.

The Bible

 

Matthew 23:9

Study

       

9 And call no man your father upon the earth: for one is your Father, which is in heaven.