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)
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