Posted on 05/22/2011 10:02:42 AM PDT by DaveMSmith
Last Judgment 28
V. THE LAST JUDGMENT IS TO BE WHERE ALL ARE TOGETHER, AND SO IN THE SPIRITUAL WORLD, NOT ON EARTH
The general belief about the Last Judgment is that the Lord accompanied by angels will appear in glory in the clouds of heaven, and He will then raise up from their graves all who have ever lived from the beginning of creation, clothe their souls with a body, and, when they have been summoned to meet, judge them, sending those who have lived good lives to everlasting life or heaven, and those who lived wicked lives to everlasting death or hell.
The churches have taken this belief from the literal sense of the Word, and there was no possibility of removing it so long as it remained unknown that everything mentioned in the Word has a spiritual sense; and this sense is the real Word, the literal sense serving as its basis or foundation. Without this kind of literal sense the Word could not have been Divine, and have served both heaven and the world as a means of instruction on how to live and what to believe, and as a means of conjunction. So if anyone knows the spiritual things corresponding to natural things in the Word, he can know that the Lord's coming in the clouds of heaven does not mean His appearance there, but His appearance in the Word. The Lord is the Word, because He is Divine truth. The clouds of heaven in which He is to come are the literal sense of the Word, and the glory is its spiritual sense. The angels are heaven, from which He appears, and they are also the Lord as regards Divine truths.# This makes plain the meaning of these words, namely, that when the church comes to an end the Lord will open up the spiritual sense of the Word, and thus reveal Divine truth such as it is in itself. This will be a sign that the Last Judgment is at hand.
That there is a spiritual sense within each thing and expression in the Word, and what it is may be seen in the Arcana Coelestia. This book expounds in full detail the contents of Genesis and Exodus in accordance with their spiritual sense. Some selected passages dealing with the Word and its spiritual sense may be found in the small work About the White Horse described in Revelation.
# The Lord is the Word, because He is Divine truth in heaven (AC 2533, 2813, 2859, 2894, 3397, 3712). The Lord is the Word because the Word comes from Him and is about Him (AC 2859). It is about nothing but the Lord, especially in its inmost sense about the glorification of His Humanity, so that the Lord Himself is contained in it (AC 1873, 9357). The Lord's coming is His presence in the Word and the revelation of this (AC 3900, 4060). A cloud in the Word means the letter of the Word, or its literal meaning (AC 4060, 4391, 5922, 6343, 6752, 8106, 8781, 9430, 10551, 10574). Glory in the Word means Divine truth such as it is in heaven and in the spiritual sense (AC 4809, 5922, 8267, 8427, 9429, 10574). Angels in the Word mean Divine truths coming from the Lord, since angels are the means by which they are received, and they do not utter them of themselves but from the Lord (AC 1925, 2821, 3039, 4085, 4295, 4402, 6280, 8192, 8301). The trumpets and horns then blown by angels mean Divine truths in heaven and revealed from heaven (AC 8815, 8823, 8915).
This seems to happen a LOT!
Job is refusing to take any more Medicare patients.
And yet history records the failings of that Catholic church at times; even while it has claimed to be the only TRUE interpretation.
How can this be?
You seem to know a lot about the oddball Protestants out there.
I don't mind if you guys want to speak in tongues; but the Scripture says there must be an interpreter, also.
These were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so.
What a concept!
searching the Scriptures!
(I guess they hadn't learned yet to rely on the traditions of the Fathers yet.)
I think I will just heed 2 Timothy 2:23 and pass on this one.
Does Job have to eat?
You foolish person, do you want evidence that faith without deeds is useless? - James 2:20
I certainly did answer that, as well as show you that your charge of ignorance is on your part. You seem to have firewall that prevents you from reading or comprehending what answers and refutes your premise and statements, including when it is from RC sources, and from understanding the deeper implications of a theological issue.
On the contrary. The Council of Trent "abolished" the practice. So it had to be Church policy at one time whether officially or unofficially. At least it was enough to cause a ruckus. Instead of telling Luther, "Hey, look we're sorry. You're right."; they kicked him out and excommunicated him. Only years later through the Council of Trent did they try to clean up the mess. I guess by then Leo had enough to pay for the Vatican.
Sorry, the Catholic Church owes Luther an apology.
That is known only to God. To whom more has been given more will be expected. I pray I am found worthy.
Swedenborg
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Isnt this the guy Joey Smith borrowed from ???
I dop not know if an expose of the imaginative heretic Swedenborg has been posted yet, but here is an exceprt from http://www.watchman.org/profile/swedenborgpro.htm
Emanuel Swedenborg was born in Stockholm in 1688. Most of his life was dedicated to science. After being educated at the University of Uppsala,1 he was credited with inventions and theories in many areas of study. He designed mining machinery, a glider aircraft and an airtight stove. It is claimed that he “investigated every known science of his times” and “wrote over seventy treatises on subjects such as: ‘fossils, earth’s revolution;’ and ‘fire and colors.’”2
At the age of fifty-five, Swedenborg turned his life’s efforts toward theology. He sought truth by way of meditations and “systematically opened his consciousness to inner influences.”3 Through opening himself up in this manner, Swedenborg was contacted by a being who claimed to be Jesus Christ. He learned much about the spirit world through such spiritual encounters, laying the basis for Swedenborgian theology.
Fifteen years after his death in 1772, the first sect of his followers were organized in England by a British printer named Robert Hindmarsh.4 In 1789 a conference met in the London church, and has met almost every year since.5 Swedenborg’s teachings reached the United States in the 1780’s.6
The below is from an analysis i did on Swendenborg in 2001, one of the first things of its kind that i wrote on a computer.
Swendenborg’s canon consisted of only 33 books of the Bible, eliminating significant portions of the Old Testament, and most everything past the 4 gospels of the New Testament. Perhaps most notably he disdained the writings of the apostle most used of GOD in declaring the transforming Gospel of CHRIST, that being the apostle Paul, whose writings the apostle Peter also authenticated as Scripture, (2Pt.3:16). and whose true apostleship was clearly manifest through doctrinal integrity and CHRIST-like life in the light of the previously established Scriptures, with signs following (according to the grace given them. (2Cor.6:1-10; 11,12; Mk.16:20; Rm.15:18,19; Mk. 16:20).
In contrast, Swedenborg supposed that he superseded the apostles, and eliminated Peter as well as Paul, etc., as an inspired writer of Sacred Scripture.
All of which arrogant censoring allowed him to more easily propagate his own visions of spiritual encounters; in which he professed to have supposedly conversed with such men as Luther, Calvin, Augustine, and St. Paul; debating issues of divine Truth (especially with the last named): And, (ego) triumphing over them, basically claimed to have put them to silence!
Therefore, in working to supplant the faith once delivered unto the saints (Jude v.3, as it is Biblically manifest), with his own revelations, he systematically relegated what he had left of the Bible to be largely (unwarranted) spiritual allegory:
The fall of Adam is said by him to be the apostasy of the church, which he came to replace with his own church of the new Jerusalem(circa 1788).
The statement by CHRIST; he that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be dammed(Mk.16;16) is rendered to mean that unless a man is regenerated by the truths of faith (i.e. Swendenborgs truths), and lives a life according to them, he cannot be saved.”
And the Second Coming of CHRIST is made to be an event that has already happened in 1775, when Swendenborg received his manifestly demonic key to the interpretation of Scripture.
Yet his primary (and progressive) doctrinal delusions were that he misconstrued the Scripturally evident doctrine of the Trinity to be polytheism; flatly denied the heart of CHRISTs mission for man: His sacrificial atonement for our sins (by His own blood as being necessary to reconcile sinful man to a completely pure, holy, and perfectly just and true GOD); The eternal punishment in the Lake of fire, concerning which the LORD JESUS explicitly taught and died to save men from. As well as the bodily resurrection of the Redeemed which CHRISTs resurrection previewed and prepared us for! (All this and more, not included here.)
The last analysis of his work is that we have in the professions of Swendenborg a combination of the work of seducing spirits and doctrines of devils,” and a man vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind, and not holding the Head (CHRIST), having not the SPIRIT, and, which receiveth not the things of the SPIRIT of GOD, (1Tim. 4:1; Jude V.29; Col.2:18,19; 1Cor.2:14) as he denied about half the Scriptures and the basically literal understanding of historical events. .
No, you didn't/ It doesn't require paragraphs of irrelevant clippings and portentously assembled blather, a simple yes or no will suffice. Do you have the gift of infallibility? I just need to know if you expect everyone to unconditionally believe you or to simply take your interpretations as an opinion.
Are you asserting your interpretations are infallible?
Ah, another one who is unlettered in the theological Mother Tongues of Christian theology, even second tier Latin! Elsie, had you not come into the conversation I was having with Harley, Kosta and Mark in media res, as they say, you'd know that I, in my post to Mark, was translating an English phrase, a prayer really, which in turn, and in conformity to the rules of the forum designed to set at ease the paranoia so rampant on these threads that we Orthodox or Latins might be saying something unflattering about the heterodox, was a translation of two beautiful and identical prayers in Greek and Church Slavonic. Follow my post which you were responding to back three posts and you'll see the English. :)
So does the RM.
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