The White Horse Described in Revelation 19, Followed by Material on the Word and Its Spiritual or Inner Meaning Drawn from Secrets of Heaven

Table Of Contents

Concerning the White Horse in the Apocalypse Chapter 19, 1-5

The Word and Its Spiritual or Inner Meaning from Secrets of Heaven, 6

The Word is understood only by people who are enlightened. 7

The Word is understood only by means of a body of teaching drawn from the Word. 8

There is a spiritual meaning in the Word that is known as “the inner meaning.” 9

The inner meaning of the Word is primarily for angels, but it is also for us. 10

There are countless treasures hidden in the inner or spiritual meaning of the Word. 11

The Word was composed using correspondences and therefore representations. 12

The literal meaning or outer form of the Word. 13

The Lord is the Word 14

People who are hostile to the Word. 15

The books that are books of the Word. 16

More on the Word. 17

8. The Word is understood only by means of a body of teaching drawn from the Word. The church’s body of teaching must be drawn from the Word: 3464, 5402, 5432, 10763, 10765. Without a body of teaching, the Word is not intelligible: 9025, 9409, 9424, 9430, 10324, 10431, 10582. A true body of teaching is a lamp for us when we read the Word: 10400. Any authentic body of teaching must come from people who are enlightened by the Lord: 2510, 2516, 2519, 9424, 10105. The Word is to be understood by means of a body of teaching constructed by someone who is enlightened: 10324. People in a state of enlightenment construct a body of teaching for themselves from the Word: 9382, 10659. The nature of the difference between people who teach and learn on the basis of the church’s body of teaching and those who do so solely on the basis of the literal meaning of the Word: 9025. People who are focused on the literal meaning of the Word without having a body of teaching do not arrive at any understanding of divine truths: 9409, 9410, 10582. They fall into many errors: 10431. When people who have a passionate interest in the truth for its own sake reach adulthood and can see things with their own understanding, they do not simply rest in the theological tenets of their church but check them carefully against the Word to see whether they are true: 5402, 5432, 6047. Otherwise, what everyone believes could be declared true merely because someone else said so or because it was the religion of the person’s native soil, whether that person was born Jewish or Greek: ¹ 6047. Nevertheless, principles that have become matters of faith on the basis of the Word’s literal meaning should not be eliminated unless they have been fully examined: 9039.

[2] The church’s true body of teaching is made up of teachings focused on caring and faith: 2417, 4766, 10763, 10764. What makes a church is not a body of teaching about faith but living according to faith, which means caring: 809, 1798, 1799, 1834, 4468, 4672, 4766, 5826, 6637. A body of teaching is nothing unless its teachings are lived; anyone can see that they exist to be lived by, not just to be committed to memory and then given some thought: 1515, 2049, 2116. In today’s churches there is a body of teaching focused on faith and not on caring, and the body of teaching focused on caring has been consigned to the discipline known as moral theology: ² 2417. The church would be united if individuals were recognized as members of the church on the basis of their lives and therefore of their caring: 1285, 1316, 2982, 3267, 3445, 3451, 3452. How much more valid a body of teaching focused on caring is than a body of teaching focused on faith separated from caring: 4844. If we know nothing about caring, then we know nothing about heaven: 4783. If we have a body of teaching focused only on faith and not on caring at the same time, we lapse into errors: 2383, 2417, 3146, 3325, 3412, 3413, 3416, 3773, 4672, 4730, 4783, 4925, 5351, 7623–7627, 7752–7762, 7790, 8094, 8313, 8530, 8765, 9186, 9224, 10555 (which include some discussion of the errors in question). [In the ancient church,] people who were devoted teachings on faith but not living according faith, which means caring, were called “the uncircumcised” or “Philistines”: 3412, 3413, 3463, 8313, 8093, 9340. The early people had a body of teaching focused on love for the Lord and caring about their neighbor, and their teachings about faith were subsidiary to it: 2417, 3419, 4844, 4955.

[3] Once a body of teaching has been constructed by someone who is enlightened, it can then be supported by rational and factual means; in this way it is more fully understood, and this strengthens it: 2553, 2719, 3052, 3310, 6047. (There is more on this subject in The New Jerusalem and Its Teachings 51.) People who are committed to faith separated from caring want the church’s body of teaching simply to be believed without any rational inquiry: 3394.

[4] The practice of wisdom is not to support a dogma blindly but to see whether or not the dogma is true before convincing ourselves of its truth; this is what people do when they enjoy enlightenment: 1017, 4741, 7012, 7680, 7950. The light that is shed by convincing ourselves ³ is an earthly light, not a spiritual one, and it is accessible even to evil people: 8780. We can convince ourselves of anything, even something false, in such a way that it seems to be true: 2477, 5033, 6865, 8521.

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