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The point, of course, is that truly every church down through history has
been destroyed by the same evil. The people of the church, eventually, did not
believe in the Lord or His Word but in themselves and their own senses.
At this day, however, it is much worse than in former times, because men can now
confirm the incredulity of the senses by memory-knowledges unknown to the
ancients, and this has given birth to an indescribable darkness. If men knew how
great is the darkness from this cause they would be astounded.
(Arcana Coelestia 232)
The questions are:
• Are we who are associated with the General Church sufficiently aware of
this “Pass-Fail” challenge surging up from our self-serving and worldserving sensual will, and also pressing in upon us from the culture that
surrounds us?
• Are we willing to study and observe from Scripture and the Heavenly
Doctrine how each church, in the past, in its turn, failed?
• Are we going to learn from this Divinely revealed history, or are we
going to ignore it and be condemned to suffer from the same tragic
mistakes that these churches made?
• Are we going to hold with the Lord as He reveals Himself in the Divine
text of the Heavenly Doctrine,
“come hell or high water,”
symbolically speaking, or are we
going to bend and go with the
flow of the incredulity of our five
senses, and with the “uncertainties”
of today’s scientific and societal
certainties?
• Do we really believe that for all ages
and everywhere all of the important
spiritual and moral questions
can be answered from Divine
revelation, or are we wondering,
for example, if some of the things
asserted in the Heavenly Doctrine
are too heavily influenced, perhaps,
by the science and culture of
Swedenborg’s era and maybe are
just not so anymore?
Other like questions might be posed,
but in the final analysis are we open
The question is:
Are we who are
associated with the
General Church
sufficiently aware
of this “Pass-Fail”
challenge surging up
from our self-serving
and world-serving
sensual will, and also
pressing in upon
us from the culture
that surrounds us?
333