new church life: november/december 2016
to be part of Noah’s Flood, and Enoch’s Word (God took him, i.e. preserved
the knowledge of correspondences, i.e. of animals = human affections). Being
descendants of the Celestial Church Adam, they hark back to Dreamtime, i.e.
contacting angels again. The Lord gave those celestial angels to “reign over
the human race,” meant by the “scepter of Judah that should not depart until
Shiloh come.” They carried out the Lord’s transflux – again, the Angel of
Jehovah who scared the shepherds with their “Glory to God in the highest,
and Peace on earth.”
If the Lord came closer with His gentle presence (Apocalypse Explained
418) before 1757, the same proximity also brought on temptations, or in
the historical context, vastations. (cf. Arcana Coelestia 840, 4299) Such a
closer presence of the Lord prior to the Last Judgment could account for the
epochal surges in European history, from the Renaissance through the Age
of Enlightenment, the contemporary Age of Reason and the tag-on Great
Awakening.
The vastations – temptations – that the Lord’s closer presence brought on
could account for all warfare linked with the Second Advent, as well as for
Deism, which is just veiled atheism. The vastations of the Church could also
account for the deadness of church worship, caricatured by Hogarth.18
When the second stage of preparation for the judgment comes, leading
up to the actual Judgment, the Lord reaches “more powerfully” (Apocalypse
Explained 418) into the world of spirits – here’s that “Refiner’s Fire.” The frenzy
of Revivalism and millenarianism, as well as actual worldwide warfare, could
be Handel’s, “Why do the nations so
furiously rage together”?
The Lord’s “more powerful”
reach was the Last Judgment itself:
it was to rescue also the wicked and
raise them into heaven. The Lord
never condemns or is even angry with
anyone. (Apocalypse Explained 375,
Arcana Coelestia 3605.4 1838, 1861,
2706, Brief Exposition 62) “I came
not to judge the world,” the Lord said.
(John 12.47) He only saves. Even of
the wicked He says, “They shall have
their reward.” (Matthew 6.2, 4)
He reaches out to what is His
18 William Hogarth cartoon of sleeping congregation in Church of England, illustrating the Dead
Christianity then.
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