Emanuel Swedenborg

‘Gospod mi je dozvolio istovremeno biti u duhovnom i prirodnom svijetu, i sa anđelima razgovarati kao sa ljudima, i na taj način se upoznati sa stanjima onih koji nakon smrti prijeđu u taj do sada nepoznat svijet. Razgovarao sam sa svim svojim rođacima i prijateljima, također sa kraljevima, vojvodama, i učenim ljudima nakon njihovog odlaska iz ovog života, i to neprestano u trajanju od dvadeset i sedam godina. Ja sam stoga u stanju, iz stvarnog iskustva, opisati stanja ljudi nakon smrti, i to onih koji su živjeli dobrim životima, kao i onih koji su živjeli opakim životima.’

Emanuel Swedenborg

‘Gospod mi je dozvolio istovremeno biti u duhovnom i prirodnom svijetu, i sa anđelima razgovarati kao sa ljudima, i na taj način se upoznati sa stanjima onih koji nakon smrti prijeđu u taj do sada nepoznat svijet. Razgovarao sam sa svim svojim rođacima i prijateljima, također sa kraljevima, vojvodama, i učenim ljudima nakon njihovog odlaska iz ovog života, i to neprestano u trajanju od dvadeset i sedam godina. Ja sam stoga u stanju, iz stvarnog iskustva, opisati stanja ljudi nakon smrti, i to onih koji su živjeli dobrim životima, kao i onih koji su živjeli opakim životima.’

‘E. Swedenborg’s revelation’ is inadequate to prove the necessity for acceptance of Jesus Christ as a Saviour

‘…Now, in this book of essays about Swedenborg, and as addition to what I mentioned above about ‘E.Swedenborg’s revelation’ as inadequate to prove the necessity for acceptance of Jesus Christ, I will copy-and-paste something here for you because it coincides with your argument and present state of mind in relation to this issue 🙂 :

‘Except for the unique role of Christ for Swedenborg. Here too, however, it seems to me that his understanding is not unproblematic. Taken as a whole, Swedenborg’s writings contain a tension between two different positions that never quite become compatible. On the more orthodox side, he defends the uniqueness of Christ as God-Man and the importance of accepting Him as our savior. On the other, more ecumenical side, his emphasis on the influx of love and wisdom leads him to reduce the salvific role of Christ so much that he can be reconceptualized without much difficulty as one avatar among many, a view quite compatible with Buddhism.

     Nevertheless, there is no doubt that Swedenborg understands the historical Christ as unique and the Christian church as special. Before his advent, the Lord’s influence was mediated through the angelic heavens, yet from the time He became human it has been immediate. Since then the Christian church has formed the heart of the human race on earth and in heaven as well. Christians constitute the breast of the Grand Man, the center towards which all others look. It is not necessary that all or most people accept Christianity, but it is very important that some people do, “for from thence there is light to those who are out of the Church and have not the Word” (DLW 233, AC 637, DP 256).

    Yet who is in the Lord’s spiritual church? “[I]t is throughout the whole terrestrial globe. For it is not limited to those who have the Word, and from this have obtained a knowledge of the Lord, and some truths of faith; but it is also with those who have not the Word, and are therefore entirely ignorant of the Lord, and consequently do not know any truths of faith (for all truths of faith refer to the Lord); that is, with the Gentiles remote from the church… And although ignorant of the Lord while in the world, yet they have within them the worship and tacit acknowledgement of Him, when they are in good; for in good the Lord is present. (AC 3263; my emphasis)

    During his visits to hell Swedenborg encountered Church dignitaries learned in the Christian Word “but in evils as to life,” while in heaven he met both Christians and Gentiles “who were in falsities” and “were yet in good as to life” (AC 9192). When we are being regenerated we can fight against falsities “even from truth not genuine if only it be such that it can be conjoined by any means with good; and it is conjoined with good by innocence, for innocence is the means of conjunction ” (AC 6765). From passages such as these — and there are many of them — it is difficult to conclude that it is necessary or even important to be a Christian. The point is not simply that one is saved by living a good life, but that one lives a good life because one has become receptive to the influx of divine love and wisdom. And insofar as this influx is “innocent,” it is unclear why it should be necessary to believe in any particular doctrine whatever. If we accept this important ecumenical strand within Swedenborg’s Writings, a strand which has been even more important in Buddhism, then there is no need for anyone to be a Christian or a Swedenborgian or a Buddhist, except insofar as those teachings and communities help us to turn away from self-love and open up to the influx of self-less love and wisdom.

Why did the Lord manifest on earth as man? The internals of humans are under the dominion of either spirits from hell or angels from heaven; when in the course of time the hellish influence became stronger and “there was no longer any faith nor any charity,” the Lord’s advent was necessary to restore order and redeem man (AC 152). This may be a good reason for the appearance of a savior but it is a poor argument for the uniqueness of Christ as the savior. In fact, it is the same reason given in the Bhagavad-Gita for the periodic appearance of avatars [= Krishna: “Whenever there is a decline in righteousness and rise of unrighteousness, then I send forth [incarnate] Myself. For the protection of the good, for the destruction of the wicked, and for the establishment of righteousness, I come into being from age to age.” (Gita 4:7-8)], and in Buddhism for the periodic appearance of Buddhas (the one previous to Sakyamuni was Dipamkara, the next will be Maitreya).’ 

The Dharma of Emanuel Swedenborg: A Buddhist Perspective’ by David Loy

So, I will repeat once more, this ‘problem’ cannot be solved without a knowledge about first creation… then about our original sin and consequently about God’s eternal Plan of Salvation  🙂

 

 

Hello Lorens,   Dear G., good morning to you… how are you?!  🙂

Sorry for this little delay… but as I already mentioned… I was about to leave the city of Vukovar…

Now I am ‘finally’ in my little wooden house in the nature… where I will hopefully stay uninterupted for a two and a half months…

… this also means a longer hours for prayer and communion with my beloved Jesus Christ :)…



Talking about ‘communion’ and ‘prayer’… two days ago I was thinking about you and ‘our’ ‘The Book of Privy counseling – 2’ when I read these beautiful words of our Lord and Father:

“But for the present, so that you do not have to step once more on the ground of the earth without an answer to your question, take note of this: What life as such and within Me is, you could not possibly comprehend; for how I Myself am the actual Life forever and in all infinity not even the highest and most enlightened cherub will ever be able to comprehend and behold. But the life in you is actually nothing but My breath in you or My perfect image in every human being ( 🙂 ). And as I am forever and perpetually in a state of the clearest awareness of My very own most perfect life, thus every created being has a for you incomprehensibly tiny part of this life of Mine which keeps it fully alive for its particular needs.

“However, all life is of such a nature that it can constantly increase and grow thanks to My incessant flowing in; and the more life has grown the more perfectly it manifests.

“But life becomes aware of itself only when it receives with the little spark of love also a little spark of the light of grace out of God. With this light the existent life recognizes it’s being and becomes freely aware of itself.

“When this life is not only aware of itself, but becomes also aware of its eternal, holy origin, offers Him thanks, praise, love and adoration and recognizes the will of the One Who created it, only then does it become completely free and with this knowledge through love a child of eternal Love and eternal Life; and only through this life will it arrive at the clearest awareness of itself and a living awareness of the One Who is now carrying you on His arm.’

As received from Jesus Christ by His servant the prophet Jakob Lorber and written down in his ‘The Household of God – 1/185:19-22’

Truly, this awareness… of Him being so so near to us… in our very breasts… is a most beautiful thing to ‘hang around’ during our hours of retreats :)!

*

I am fine, thank you for asking. 🙂   🙂

Before I read… I wonder who this other ‘Swedenborg-critic’ might be (Suzuki?–I assume as much from subsequent statements = David Loy, and that essay is named ‘Dharma of Emanuel Swedenborg’, but you already figured that), and would like to answer the question, ‘Does his revelation gives enough proofs for the uniqueness of Christ as the Savior?’, with the following answer that immediately occurred to me in reaction to the question,

…How many ‘proofs’ are needed?…

The only sure ‘proof’ anyone can ever have is to be found in their own heart.  – absolutely!

Absent this, no intellectual, rational, logical, or reasonable ‘proof’ will suffice for all. And one thousand of these latter kinds of ‘proofs’ will avail of nothing for some (except, perhaps, to confirm in their own minds that the offering of such ‘proofs’ constitutes evidence that there is something ‘wrong’ with the offerer (atheists, e.g., come in mind).).

A Muslim believes Christ to have been merely a prophet, and no rational proof will convince him or her otherwise. Not only is Jesus Christ not God to a Muslim. He is a step below Mohammed. Have fun attempting to ‘prove’ otherwise.

A Buddhist believes, a) only Buddha can alleviate the suffering of humans; b) Buddha was a man; and c) there is no God. Again, have fun attempting to ‘prove’ otherwise.

A Jew believes that the Messiah has yet to come. Ditto on having fun attempting to ‘prove’ otherwise.

Yes dear G., it is indeed next to impossible to prove anything to anybody from the ‘outside’, as it is well known (= especially if from their early childhood they are imbibed with something else)… read for example Psalms of David 127:1!

What I had on my mind when I proposed this question and problem, not just to you, was the following:

‘But those who do not know anything about the Lord, like those in two of the three continents, Asia and Africa, not to mention the Indies, if they believe in one God, and live in accordance with the commandments of their own religionare saved by their faith and their life.’  TCR 107

Or:

‘From this it is that everyone can be saved, from every religion whatever, and even the Gentiles who have no truths from the Word, provided they have regarded as their end the good of life.’  AC 10648

From these words it is indeed hard to conclude that one has to accept the Lord, our Redeemer and Saviour Jesus Christ if he is to be saved, and this is something I cannot accept because I am of the opinion that :

‘Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.’   Acts 4:12.

(now for already a two weeks I am spending my morning meditation-prayers with, in and around the Epistle of Paul to Philippians, which is also my favourite one: In this one we read:

‘Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name: That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth; And that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.’ = what a beauty!)

In another words, nowhere in the writtings of Emanuel Swedenborg I found the information that those who are on this earth prepared for heaven by their own religion, i.e. Muslims, Buddhists etc., are also, and STILL, in need of the ONE AND ONLY SAVIOUR, namely, Jesus Christ, Whom they must accept consciously (as Mohamed did! = SE. 339, 344, 510, 511, etc.) and voluntary approach to Him there in the spiritual world if their immense (primordial) guilt is to be canceled.

This is my argument here… because He is the Saviour of all peoples and all nations and all spirits in hell prior to His incarnation… and nobody can in all truth be saved from their immense ancient sin without accepting Him and His act of Mercy (see B.D. 3277 for example!)… and this information and line of thought is missing in the writtings of Emanuel Swedenborg, and one of the reasons for that would be ‘him-not-knowing-about-First Creation-fall of the Satan and his angels-and-God’s-Eternal-plan-of-Salvation’…. etc. etc.

 B.D. 2929, October 17, 1943

REDEMPTION OF GUILT WITHOUT JESUS CHRIST IS NOT POSSIBLE

The magnitude of a person’s guilt remains unchanged as long as he does not acknowledge the work of salvation by Christ, that is, he must himself amortize his guilt to the last little. Quite alone he has to come to an understanding with it; he has to make amends through eternities, for the guilt of man is immeasurably great!

The sins that he has committed on earth, which already suffice to push the soul aside from the face of God for endlessly long periods, are not the only ones, but it is the one-time rebellion against God, the Great Guilt, which cannot be expiated during an earth-life but must therefore be taken along into eternity in order to find some time…. its atonement there. 

Through eternities and eternities the being must languish in darkness…. miss his liberty and endure a condition of most torturous imprisonment. For eternities he incurs the loss of the Divine Sun of Grace, enduring most bitter distress, because – of his own will -he remains in resistance to God and can never be forced to give up his will. He must therefore expiate his guilt himself since he did not free himself from it by his own will. The DIVINE WILL cannot liberate him, because this would be in fullest contradiction to the Wisdom and Love of God. 

Therefore, one who has fallen away from God is punishing himself as long as he does not accept salvation through JESUS CHRIST, not acknowledging Sacrifice.

Each of his sins will be forgiven, each restriction taken away from him and each atonement spared, if a person places himself under the cross of Christ and suffers to be saved by His Blood which JESUS CHRIST shed for all people and their guilt.

HE brought the great sacrifice out of love for man, since HE knew of the endlessly long road of suffering in the beyond and because HE had compassion on account of the great distress of the beings on earth and in the beyond, HE wanted to shorten their distress and wanted to atone their guilt in order to make them everlastingly happy.

The death of CHRIST on the cross was the purchase prize for everlasting life; all guilt has been atoned by it. But one thing is unresistingly demanded, namely that man acknowledges this work for Salvation so that his guilt also belongs to one for which CHRIST paid through HIS DEATH on the cross. Where it not so, the guilt of man would remain unchanged and, after his death, be taken over into the spiritual domain as a burden, with which man could never cope  in all eternities; for he cannot muster the will to save himself.

Therefore, JESUS CHRIST is the only way to everlasting life! Without HIM, there is only PERDITION, but with HIM SALVATlON. Without HIM man is powerless and his will is turned away from GOD. But with HIM he is striving towards God and can receive the POWER from HIM, namely, the fortified will, which JESUS bought for him on the CROSS. For this reason, JESUS CHRIST is the SAVIOR of the WORLD, the Savior of all men who put themselves and their guilt before HIS feet, giving themselves over to HIM in faith and asking for HIS help. For these JESUS CHRIST brought the SACRIFICE on the CROSS in order that they may be freed from all guilt and sin. AMEN

This ‘line of thought’ is in fact contained in these words of David Loy: Taken as a whole, Swedenborg’s writings contain a tension between two different positions that never quite become compatible…

And it was for this reason that I said that ‘I agree with him’, to wit, in my opinion in E.Swedenborg’s writtings this very important truth is missing, namely, that those of other religions who were not in position to learn about and accept the Saviour, are by their very religions prepared on this Earth in their respective living conditions for that ‘awareness’ and ‘acceptance’… which must happen in the great beyond because without that no salvation is possible for them!

(one of the things that I was ‘told’ today in the prayer in relation to this subject is the fact which E.Swedenborg mentioned in his D.P. – 255: ‘The Mohammedan religion is accepted by so many empires and kingdoms. That this form of religion is accepted by more kingdoms than the Christian religion…‘; of course, I am not of the opinion that ‘…no one can be saved unless he has been born a Christian, thus where the Word is by which the Lord is known’ J, but this should be understood in the manner as explained by the Lord via His scribe Gottfried Mayerhofer in his book ‘The Secrets of Life – 18’; see the attachment; you only need to exchange the ‘animal’ for ‘natural affections’ in man, and their ‘life condition and UGLY form’ for ‘their respective religion’ and than you will understand in totality my idea and vision here!)

I am, of course, over-simplifying and speaking sterotypically. And not all members of these three groups are rigid adherents to the pared-down orthodoxies just stated. (For example, the mission statement of Jews For Jesus is, “We exist to make the messiahship of Jesus an unavoidable issue to our Jewish people worldwide”.)

If you have followed some recent discussions on the list regarding a certain quite simple problem in probability, then it should be clear that dissension, objections, and contrary perceptions are certainly to be expected when moving up and beyond questions with answers that are easily and empirically verified, and which answers are objectively independent of individual beliefs.

Sorry, I didn’t.

This having been said, time now to read what you have written…

Well, I will be back in no time with my further comments on your next few mails …

In His love

Lorens 🙂

(February 15, 2009)

 

 

Dear G., good morning to you, how are you?!  🙂

 [1] “…his emphasis on the influx of love and wisdom leads him to reduce the salvific role of Christ so much that he can be reconceptualized without much difficulty as one avatar among many, a view quite compatible with Buddhism.”

Oops.
 
Why should anyone accept Mr. Loy’s claim that Swedenborg reduces the salvific role of Christ?

In speaking of the influx of love and wisdom, Swedenborg is not, does not, and has not reduced the salvific role of Christ. The “influx” *is* Christ–in His proceeding.

If you’ve ever been close to a corpse, then you know just how much charisma there is to be felt emanating from it–none. There is none, for there is no ‘proceeding’ from a corspe. And there is no proceeding from a corpse, for the life that once inhabited it is gone from it.

Christ’s Life is not contained within some small area surrounding Him, beyond which It does not reach–It extends infinitely in all directions. This extension of His life–which, believe or not, people do sometimes feel and have a palpable sense of (as if you didn’t already know this in an experiential way 🙂 🙂 ), and which unceasingly does what it does even when there is no experience or a felt-sense of It–is the proceeding from Him, which proceeding flows into all and sundry, which ‘flowing into’ is also known as “influx”.

How can anyone say that the Life which flows from Him in anyway reduces His role, value, meaning, importance, and necessity? This is an eye- popping, jaw-dropping contradiction.

No, Swedenborg does not say or do what Mr. Loy claims. Rather, Mr. Loy (apparently) misreads and fails to comprehend. Mr. Loy’s intentionally outer-directed claim that Swedenborg reduces the salvific role of Christ  is correctly viewed as an unintentionally inner-directed assertion about what Mr. Loy’s understanding has done to what Swedenborg had to say.

[2] So, I will repeat once more, this ‘problem’ cannot be solved without a knowledge about first creation… then about our original sin and consequently about God’s eternal Plan of Salvation.

What “problem” are you referring to? Surely it must be one of language.

You invoke Krishna. Okay, fine. In this area of the spectrum of language, Maya is that from which man is to be freed. (Of course, man *is* free from Maya. He just does not realize it. “Evil would not be appropriated to man, if he believed, as is really the case, that all evil is from hell, and all good from the Lord.” NJ 170)

You can speak to me in your native language. Perhaps you will say, “G. I enjoy our discussions.” Since English is the only language I understand, however, I can guaranty that I will not understand this if you speak it in your native language. This, however, does not mean that what you are saying is incomprehensible to me, just that your chosen medium of expression ensures I will not understand what I am quite capable of comprehending… Do you see what I am saying?…

Similar kind of thing applies with ‘meta-languages’

 
Here is a little extract from a novel I just completed,

“How’ve you been?” he asked.

“All right,” I said, looking him over. “You?”

“Fine.”
 
“How’s the Global War on Terrorism?”

He smiled. “These days we call it the Global Struggle Against Violent  Extremism.”

“Yeah, GWOT just wasn’t a winning acronym,” I said. “I’m sure it’ll go  better now that you’ve renamed it.”

I just read this part of your serial-answer to my letter… and I must admit that I am still more on the ‘side’ of Mr. Loy, to wit, in my opinion, and that is what I perceive to be Mr. Loy’s observance, E.Swedenborg didn’t said that those people from other religions who are to ‘be saved by that very influx made possible through His Redemption Work’, are in need to consciously accept Him as their Saviour, and approach Him as a God in His Divine Human:

B.D. 5478, September 2, 1952

CHRIST’S BLOOD – GUILT OF SIN

For you, My children on Earth, did I shed My blood; for you I took the most difficult path, because I wanted to help you to come up from the depths which you could never have left with your own force. Therefore for you I died on the cross. The Sacrifice that I wanted to offer God-Father was accepted by HIM, and so it became the Redemption for you, Humanity should therefore receive this benefit, which I had implored from God, and for which I had offered the Sacrifice. It should be to your advantage because you needed urgent help in the state in which you found yourselves as I descended to Earth.

But I knew also that humanity needed help not only while I was on Earth; I knew that as long as the Earth existed, men on it could not fulfill their earthly task because they were too weak, and I took pity on all of mankind, of the past and of the future. And so I included all people in the Redemption-Work – for all I acquired Mercy without measure, which they can use now to reach their aim on Earth.

My Sacrifice to die was a work of greatest Mercy; I accept- ed in full consciousness and free will a state of suffering that I could never have been able to bear without the divine Love-Force. But the appalling misery of humanity touched My heart and let Me endure all I could, in order to help. I knew indeed that the total “Deification” of My being crowned this, My Redemption-Work, but I did not do it for this goal, but solely out of Love for the suffering, from-God- apostate spirituals, that were so far from God and therefore unblessed.    

The Love filled ME with such power that I could draw Force from it for the work of Mercy, and so I suffered and died for humanity in immeasurable bodily pain. I devoted My life on the cross to My unhappy brethren that once, like MYSELF, started out from GOD but had left the path of their destiny. I knew the Blissfulness of God’s nearness, and I felt Mercy for the fallen damned. But I also knew of God’s Love for all HIS Creatures, and I wanted to return to Him those that voluntarily had withdrawn from Him. My Love for God was overwhelming, and also for all those that came from HIM. For that Love alone, GOD accepted My Sacrifice. And My Love prayed to God to forgive the guilt that clung to the fallen ones and that could not be cancelled otherwise, because it consisted in loveless ness. Only Love could bring this Sacrifice about and therefore it was not the death on the cross as such, but all Love to mankind that could be proven through this death, that GOD therefore accepted as expiation.

I shed My blood for mankind and by that I atoned for what you have done. I took your sin on ME and paid for it. But you people must also contribute your part and must be willing to be redeemed through My death on the cross; you must desire that this work of Grace is also done for you; you must use this Grace by recognizing Me and My Redemption-Work, and willingly join those for whom I died on the cross.

Without this recognition and your will, you are and will remain burdened with this sin-guilt and in the chains of the one who caused your fall. Indeed I fulfilled for all of you the Redemption-Work, but it is only your own will that makes it active for you, for you could never be redeemed, against your will, from a sin that you have committed with your free will. You must put yourself under the cross of Christ; you must recognize ME and call ME and must confess your guilt and pray that I carry it for you, and that I may extinguish it with My blood. And all your guilt will be forgiven for the sake of My Love. AMEN

… because in that case that would obviously must happen in the spiritual world because here they were prepared for that ‘moment’ by their respective religions!

And that would brought us again at the threshold of the same ‘old problem’, i.e. does the progress and regeneration of the man’s soul continue in the beyond or not?!  🙂

This would be my argument here, and I would love to hear and, of course, read if you present to me the evidence from his work, what are yours thoughts about that!

In yet more clear words, is it possible for anybody to be saved, no matter from which religion he comes, if he or she does not consciously recognize and willingly accept JESUS CHRIST as their Redeemer and Saviour (here or in the beyond)??!

[you said yourself that in the eyes of the Muslim people, at least most of them, Jesus Christ ranks below their prophet (for better inclined Hindus he is the Avatar, one of many!), but that would be no problem for our dear Swede ONLY IF THEY LIVE IN ACCORDANCE WITH THEIR RELIGION, i.e. do good and believe in the Book = Truth as revealed to them, although in that Book there are falsities, as for example the following one: ‘Pagans indeed are those who say that GOD is the Messiah, the son of Mary.’  Qur’an 5:17, 72, 116; see also 4:171 and 5:75!; that Qur’an doesn’t agree with the Truth of the Holy Scripture in ‘many respects’ E.Swedenborg was aware too; see TCR 479:7; and this in my opinion cannot be reconciled but in the manner he himself explained in his exposition of the Genesis = regeneration of the man and his mind, to wit, ‘apparent truths’ are necessary for the certain period of time and for the certain quality of the mind to be regenerated, and these are here ‘Islamic truths’, but these are to be ‘left out’ when person is ready to accept the real truths, and that for the Muslims and other religions would be in the afterworld; again the conclusion is the same, and in agreement with something that is essence and epitome of my preaching’s, namely, TCR – 337-9, i.e. Jesus Christ or God in His Divine Human cannot be avoided by no-one, not just Christians, if they are to be saved!; it seems to me that mr Loy said with the following words, Taken as a whole, Swedenborg’s writings contain a tension between two different positions that never quite become compatible…’, that E.Swedenborg on one side taught TCR – 337-9, which is a VERY VERY STRICT TEACHING = see for example those quotations from the Gospel of John 3:36; 8:24, and on the other side he said that ‘they’ can do well also without ‘it’, or Him = ‘Son of God’ 🙂 ]

And here I am talking about His very PERSON or STATUTE/BODY & FACE, and also HIS VERY NAME:

‘Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name:

That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and

 things under the earth; And that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to

the glory of God the Father.’

Philippians 2:9-11

In yet another words, in my opinion, God’s Redemption work and His Sacrifice = Act of Mercy in and through His Human, are very Unique happenings and they are so to speak an medium of conjuction with the sinful Human race… to wit, in this VERY HUMAN FORM AND THROUGH IT, JEHOVAH GOD OR ETERNAL AND INFINITE SPIRIT OF LOVE, WISDOM AND MIGHT PERFORMED AN ACT OF IMMENSE AND UNAVOIDABLE IMPORTANCE and THROUGH AND BY IT RECONCILED US WHO WERE AND ARE SINNERS WITH HIM, as we are also plainly taught by Paul in his 2 Corinthians 5:19.

Is it possible then not to approach Him willingly in His Human, and consciously recognizing Him as your Saviour, and be saved anyway, as we read in the writtings of E.Swedenborg when in relation to those who are the members of other than Christian religions (of course, maybe I am wrong here, maybe he said that somewhere and I am not aware of that)?!

Of course, when those who are born inside of the Christian world are the subject, than his opinion is quite clear, as we can read for example in above mentioned TCR 337-339 or chapter about the Lord the Redeemer and Redemption…

… for me, as for mr. Loy too, this would be ‘incompatible’!

[3] Time now to read your ‘defence’….

Dear G.

                           May grace and peace of our beloved Jesus Christ

                                                                  abound in you more and more …

             Lorens 🙂

 

Ps. do you by any chance have a compilation book (in word document) named ‘Conversations with the angels’?!

Ps. 2 That Cross from the picture… stands on the bank of the river Danube in Vukovar… actually on delta of the little river Vuka… it is a Memorial Cross for the dead soldiers and civilians of that most devastated city in the war between Serbia and Croatia; Serbia is only across the river… you can see those trees there; that ‘hand-work’ on the cross is so to speak a Croatian typical wattle… ancient heritage of our people…

(February 16, 2009)

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