new church life: november/december 2017
determined in large part by the people to whom it was revealed. One example
will suffice. We know from the Heavenly Doctrines that there is one God
of heaven and earth, yet the New Testament contains multiple references
to Father, Son and Holy Spirit as if they were separate entities. The reason,
we learn, is that it was “wholly incomprehensible” to the people interacting
with the Lord Jesus at the time, that He and the Father were one. (Arcana
Coelestia 6993) The timeless truth that there is but one God was delivered in
such a way that people at that time could grasp it, with appearances of truth
accommodated to their state.
3. The Rider on the White Horse. The third Scripture comes in the 19 th
chapter of the book of Revelation:
I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse. And He who sat on him
was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness He judges and makes war.
His eyes were like a flame of fire, and on His head were many crowns. He had
a name written that no one knew except Himself. He was clothed with a robe
dipped in blood, and His name is called The Word of God. (Emphasis added,
19:11-13)
This prophetic vision of the white horse is directly associated with the
revelation of the Lord’s Second Coming – specifically, “the spiritual sense of
the Word revealed by the Lord and the deeper meaning of the Word thereby
disclosed, which is the coming of the Lord.” (Apocalypse Revealed 820) In other
words, this is a picture of the Heavenly Doctrines themselves.
Nevertheless, a curious thing is said about this new revelation. The Rider
“had a name written that no one knew.” Concerning this we read, “A name
symbolizes someone’s character, here the character of the Word, or what the
Word is like inwardly, that is, in its spiritual and celestial senses.” (Apocalypse
Revealed 824) It would seem, with the revelation of the Heavenly Doctrines,
that we would know what the Word is like inwardly. But no one knew the
name. Even with the revelation of the Heavenly Doctrines, we absorb the
amazing statement that no one sees “what the Word is like in its spiritual sense
[except] the person to whom the Lord reveals it” (Ibid.)
This is stated even more directly in the next passage, which says concerning
the spiritual sense: “Nor is it revealed to anyone now unless he or she possesses
Divine truths from the Lord.” (Apocalypse Revealed 825; cf. Sacred Scripture 26)
The conclusion we reach from these passages is that the Heavenly Doctrines
too have a “letter” or a mode of manifestation. In other words, there’s still
the challenge of a revelation given at a certain point in time, within a certain
culture. It goes a long, long way to helping us see the timeless truths of the
Lord directly on the pages themselves, but apparently it still needs some level
of rational engagement based on enlightenment. Otherwise the “name written
that no one knew” concept would be moot.
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