enlightenment that preceded, and in
which Swedenborg and his scientific
works also played a considerable part.
The Age of Enlightenment itself was, in
my view, the final showdown between
the strict literal understanding of the
Word and the ever-increasing scientific
view on reality.
The understanding of the Word
in its literal sense – that the world was
created in seven days; that the flood
was a worldwide event reaching over
the tops of the mountains etc. – held
that the understanding was to be kept
bound under faith, no questions asked,
and consequently, no spiritual freedom. The literal sense of the Word, or rather
the understanding of the literal sense as being absolute true, was in a battle it
was doomed to lose with the ongoing Age of Enlightenment.
And today? Today it is as it is written in the Bible, in Revelation 20: And
when the thousand years are fulfilled, Satan will be on the loose from his
prison, he is going out, misleading the nations in the four corners of the earth,
Gog and Magog, assembling them to war, whose number is as the sand of the
sea. And they are coming up over the breadth of the land, and they encircle the
camp of the saints, and the beloved city.
For it is as if Gog and Magog (Darwinism) are on the loose. It is as if their
number is as the sand of the sea. It is as if they are spreading out over the
breadth of the land (Christianity). And it is as if they have encircled us, our
camps, and our holy city!
Darwinism has filled our schools and our educational systems, our
medical and our political systems; yes, it has come so far as to threaten our
own belief system, our Holy City!
In Swedenborg’s day Gog and Magog, misled by Satan released, meant the
struggle with the belief system of the old church, based on faith alone, with the
new church, based on charity and then faith, or rather, the fight between faith
without life and faith from life!
Today the battle takes place between those who maintain that everything is
coincidental and random, thus that God does not exist (Darwinism) and those
who believe that there is a God, and that everything has a goal and purpose.
That there is such a fight going on, I need only to quote from Wikipedia:
Darwinism has filled
our schools and our
educational systems,
our medical and our
political systems; yes,
it has come so far as to
threaten our own belief
system, our Holy City!
The essence of the origin of species (their bible) is that human existence or
existence in general, has neither goal nor meaning, but is a result of a combination
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