New Church Life Sep/Oct 2014 | Page 100

new church life: september/october 2014 more open to it than grown-ups who are so immersed in the natural business of life in this world. “Ghosts” are what we call spirits who are intrusive and unwelcome. But we want the spirits of people we have loved and who love us to be close to us, and they are. We don’t need to see them; we can feel their presence. They aren’t ghosts, but friends. (WEO) ascending revelations and churches In his new book the Rev. Prescott Rogers explains why the New Church is called “the crown” of all the Lord’s special churches. The following excerpt is from the conclusion: As the crown is the very top of the head, the New Church is the highest church in terms of the truths available to it.... There is an ascension of the nature of the truths from the Old Testament to the New Testament and then to the Heavenly Doctrines. With the Heavenly Doctrines the Lord has finished His revelation to the world. There is no other part of the human mind to which He can appeal. As long as a person is in this world he uses his natural mind. The Old Testament appeals to the sensual of that mind, the New Testament appeals to its imaginative and the Heavenly Doctrines appeal to its rational. There will be no other revelation to the human race, and so there will never be another special church. It is interesting to compare and contrast the last book written for the three revelations. The last book written for the Old Testament was Daniel, whose internal sense deals with the end of the Israelitish Church, and also with the end of the Christian Church. The last book of the New Testament is Revelation, whose internal sense deals with the end of the Christian Church and the rise of the New Church. The last work of the Heavenly Doctrines is the True Christian Religion, whose purpose is to present the most significant teachings of the spiritual sense of the Word for the New Church. It is not apocalyptic as are Daniel and Revelation, meaning that it does not tell of the end of one age and the beginning of a new age. In the True Christian Religion there is no prophecy of another church to replace the New Church. The triune Word is the Word in its fullness and most complete form, by which the entire natural mind in its development is engaged. Just as the adult natural mind always needs and uses all three levels (the sensual, the imaginative and the rational), the New Church needs to increasingly understand and appreciate all three revelations, each for its own sake and all three together as a unity – a triunity. (The Triune Word, p. 170-171) (WEO) 486