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Why Did Jesus Come to Earth as a Baby?

Ni Curtis Childs

This painting by Richard Cook  of the newborn baby Jesus, with Mary and Joseph, evokes the spiritual power of this long-awaited advent.

Could there be reasons for the humble, vulnerable beginnings of Jesus’s life?

In this video from his Swedenborg and Life web series, host Curtis Childs and featured guests explore how the Divine design may have been at play from the very beginning of Christ's life.

(Mga Sanggunian: Apocalypse Explained 706 [12]; Luke 2:8-12; The Word 7; True Christian Religion 89, 90, 96, 766)

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This video is a product of the Swedenborg Foundation. Follow these links for further information and other videos: www.youtube.com/user/offTheLeftEye and www.swedenborg.com

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True Christian Religion # 766

Pag-aralan ang Sipi na ito

  
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766. 1 The Lord is present with every person, urging and pressing him to receive Him. And when a person receives Him, which happens when he acknowledges Him as his God, the Creator, Redeemer and Saviour, this is His first coming, and is called twilight. From this time the person begins to have his understanding enlightened as regards spiritual matters, and to advance to more and more inward wisdom. As he receives this wisdom from the Lord, so he advances through morning into day; and he continues in this daylight up to old age and until he dies. After death he comes into heaven to the Lord Himself, and there, for all that he died an old man, he is brought back to the morning of his life, and continues for ever to develop the wisdom which was implanted in him in the natural world.

Mga talababa:

1. There is no 765 in the original.

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

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Apocalypse Revealed # 599

Pag-aralan ang Sipi na ito

  
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599. So as to even make fire come down from heaven to earth in the sight of men. This symbolizes assertions that their falsities are truths from heaven, that people who accept them are saved, and that people who do not accept them perish.

This is the symbolism of these words, because the greatest signs were produced by fire from heaven. It was therefore a common expression of assurance among the ancients that, when bearing witness to some truth, they could rain down fire from heaven to attest to it. And this symbolically meant that they could attest to it to such a degree of certainty.

That fire from heaven also did attest to truth is apparent from the fact that the burnt offering offered by Aaron was consumed by fire from heaven (Leviticus 9:24). So, too, the burnt offering offered by Elijah (1 Kings 18:38).

[2] In an opposite sense, fire from heaven was a sign attesting that the people were caught up in evils and the accompanying falsities, and so would perish. But that fire was a consuming fire, such as the fire from heaven that consumed Aaron's two sons in Leviticus 10:1-6; that consumed the two hundred and fifty men in Numbers 26:10; that consumed the outskirts of the camp in Numbers 11:1-3; and that twice consumed the fifty men sent by the king to Elisha in 2 Kings 1:10, 12. Such also was the fire and brimstone rained down from heaven on Sodom in Genesis 19:24, 25; and the fire from heaven that consumed the people who surrounded the camp of the saints and the beloved city in Revelation 20:9. Once, when incensed at some impenitent people, the disciples said to Jesus, "Do You want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?" (Luke 9:54).

We cite these instances to show that fire from heaven symbolizes an attestation, indeed an assurance, that truth is true, and in an opposite sense, that falsity is true, as in the present instance.

Fire also symbolizes a heavenly love and so a zeal for truth, and in an opposite sense a hellish love and so a zeal for falsity (nos. 468, 494).

  
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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.