Apocalypse Explained (Whitehead) n. 52

Previous Number Next Number Next Translation See Latin 

52. And for the testimony of Jesus Christ, signifies that the Lord's Divine Human may be acknowledged. This is evident from the signification of "testimony," as being acknowledgment in heart (see above, n. 10, 27); and from the signification of the names "Jesus" and "Christ," as being the Lord in respect to His Divine Human (see also above, n. 26). These things are said concerning the church of the Gentiles, which is about to receive Divine truth and acknowledge the Lord's Divine Human. (That these things are said of the church of the Gentiles, see just above, n. 50.) The Christian church indeed, acknowledges the Lord's Divine, but not His Divine Human; when, therefore, they think and speak about the Lord from doctrine, they separate His Human from the Divine, and make His Human like the human of another man; when yet the Divine is in His Human as the soul is in the body. This is why such as these can have no idea of the Divine; although it is the idea that conjoins, because thought conjoins; and moreover, without conjunction with the Divine through thought and affection, or what is the same, through faith and love, there is no salvation. It is said that conjunction through thought and affection is the same as conjunction through faith and love, since what I believe, that I think, and what I love, by that I am affected. To believe in the invisible is much the same as believing in the inmost of nature, an error to which the mind readily lapses when it indulges in its own phantasies. Yet there is implanted within everyone, from heaven, and this by continual influx therefrom, a desire to see what he regards as the Divine, and this, indeed, under the human form. [2] This desire is implanted in the simpleminded, and also with well-disposed Gentiles (see the work on Heaven and Hell, n. 82). All such therefore, if they have also lived a life of charity, are received by the Lord, and heaven is granted them. No others can be received, because they are not conjoined. (That all angels in heaven, also the most wise in ancient times, and all who have spiritual faith, that is, a living faith, both on this earth and on all the earths in the universe, see their Divine in thought, because they acknowledge the Divine Human, and are therefore accepted by the Lord, see Doctrine of the New Jerusalem, n. 280-310; and in the work on Heaven and Hell, n. 79-86, 316, 321; and in the small work on The Earths in the Universe, n. 7, 40, 41, 65, 68, 91, 98, 99, 107, 121, 141, 154, 158, 159, 169.) Because this implanted desire, which is in everyone from heaven, has been almost wholly rejected among the learned of the world, and access to the Divine thereby debarred, therefore, a new church is now being established by the Lord, among the Gentiles that have not extirpated that idea, and faith along with it. The extirpation from the Christian world of this implanted desire had its first beginning with the Babylonish body, which separated the Lord's Human from His Divine, in order that its chief might be acknowledged as the vicar of the Lord's Human, and might thus transfer to himself the Lord's Divine power, saying that the Lord received that power from the Father, when in fact it was from Himself, because it was from His Divine. Thus they are unwilling to hear anything about the Divine Human (see Arcana Coelestia, n. 4738). But on this subject, as it is the chief thing of all things in the church, more will be said hereafter.


This page is part of the Writings of Emanuel Swedenborg

© 2000-2001 The Academy of the New Church