Wednesday, October 8, 2014

Emanuel Swedenborg/The spiritual sence of the word - Community - Google+

john 16 the spirit of truth | Im ashamed to die until i have won some victory for humanity.(Horace Mann)

john 16 the spirit of truth | Im ashamed to die until i have won some victory for humanity.(Horace Mann)





Chapter 16                                                                                                      internal sence          





  1. But I tell you the truth; it is expedient for you that I go away;
    for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come to you; but if I
    depart, I will send him to you.
  2. And when he is come, he will reprove the world about sin, and about justice, and about judgement.

For truth, in its external manifestation, must apparently be taken
away, to the intent that it may be received again internally, and by
such internal manifestation may remove from man the powers of evil and
error, and establish in him the heavenly powers of good and truth, vs 7,
8.



  1. About sin indeed, because they believe not in me.
  2. But about justice, because I go away to my father, and you see me no more.
  3. But about judgement, because the prince of this world is judged.

All which evil and error result from the non-acknowledgement of the
lord’s divine humanity, whilst the glorification of this humanity,
together with the subjugation of the powers of darkness, constitute the
all of good and of truth, vs 9, 10, 11.



  1. I have yet many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.
  2. But when he shall come, the Spirit of Truth, he will lead you into
    all truth; for he will not speak of himself, but whatever things he
    shall hear, [those] he will speak; and he will announce to you things to
    come.

Therefore a limit is set to the instruction of truth externally, but
not to the reception of truth internally, because internal truth is in
connection with divine good and truth, and thus leads man to depend on
the lord in all states of life, vs 12, 13.



  1. He will glorify me for he shall receive of mine, and shall announce it to you.
  2. All things whatever the father has, are mine; therefore said I that he shall receive of mine, and shall announce to you.
  3. A little while, and you shall not see me; and again a little while, and you shall behold me, because I go away to the father.

For internal truth is the operation of the lord’s divine humanity,
and thus the medium of communication with the divine truth in its union
with the divine good, and therefore it succeeds the external
manifestation of truth, vs 14, 15, 16.

Sunday, October 5, 2014

THE POWER OF SALVATION (An Easter Sermon) |

THE POWER OF SALVATION (An Easter Sermon) | Im ashamed to die until i have won some victory for humanity.(Horace Mann)  you could also follow me at havau22.com for more spiritual insight.

THE POWER OF SALVATION (An Easter Sermon)

A Sermon by Rev. Patrick A. Rose Preached in Cincinnati, Ohio April 19, 1992

“And Jesus came and spoke unto them, saying, All power is given unto Me in heaven and in earth” (Matt. 28:18).
The story of the Lord’s resurrection, the story of Easter, is a story
of the most beautiful simplicity. Men had tried to kill the Lord, but
when His followers returned to His sepulcher, the Lord’s body was no
longer there. The Lord could not die, for He was God. He had risen from
the dead. He was alive. He was alive for evermore.

It is a simple story. But it is also profound. When the Lord rose
from the sepulcher, He showed clearly that He was God. He was Divine. He
had power over death. But He also showed something else. He showed that
He had the power to save. Earlier the Lord had told His followers, “And
I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me” (John
12:32). When, therefore, the Lord rose from the sepulcher, when He was
lifted up from the earth, it showed not only that He had the power to
save Himself from death, but that He also had the power to save mankind.
The Lord, by rising from the sepulcher, showed that He was the Savior
of the human race. And so it is that the Easter story is not simply a
story about the Divinity of the Lord. It is also a story about
salvation.

This is why the story of Easter occurs during the celebration of the
Jewish Passover. Passover, together with the feast of unleavened bread
which followed it, was a commemoration and a celebration of the time
that Jehovah had saved the Israelites from slavery in Egypt. Jehovah as
God did not just have Divine power, but He also had used this power to
deliver His people Israel. The Passover was the most important of three
annual Jewish festivals. And it was during the celebration of this
annual festival that the events of the Easter story occurred. Indeed,
the story of Easter cannot be separated from the celebration of
Passover.

Consider, for example, the events surrounding Palm Sunday. When the
Lord rode into Jerusalem, multitudes of people came out to greet Him,
spreading branches of palm trees in the road. The reason there were so
many people in Jerusalem at the time was because of the Passover. A
great number of people had traveled into Jerusalem to purify themselves
in preparation for the feast (see John 11:55). Not only that; many of
them were looking out for the Lord, thinking that He would probably come
to Jerusalem for the Passover (see John 11:56). When news came, then,
that the Lord was approaching the city, this great multitude of people,
people who were in Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover, ran out to greet
Him (see John 12:12,13). The Passover itself became the central focus
the evening before the Lord was arrested. The Lord gathered with His
disciples to eat the Passover. It was the last meal He would eat with
them before His crucifixion. And it was at that time the Lord
established a new feast, a feast which would also celebrate the Lord’s
salvation. He established the Holy Supper.

It was during the night which followed that the Lord was betrayed and
arrested. The next day the Passover is once again an element in the
story. Because it was the most important of the Jewish festivals, the
Romans had, as a gesture of good will, made it a custom to release a
prisoner at the festival (see Mark 15:6). Pilate tried to have the Lord
released as that prisoner. But the multitude – now an angry multitude –
would have none of it. They demanded instead the release of a robber, a
man called Barabbas (see John 18:40). Here was a sad irony. The Passover
was a festival celebrating the Lord’s power of salvation. He had saved
the Israelites from slavery in Egypt. Now He had come to save once
again. This time He had come to rescue men from a deeper slavery. And
yet at the Passover they rejected the Lord. They demanded that the Lord
be crucified. They chose a robber over the Lord Himself.

There were indeed dark forces at work during the week which led up to
the Lord’s resurrection. The Lord had come to save mankind. Yet evil
men, men guided by the hells, were seeking the Lord’s destruction.
Still, this also was an integral part of the story of Easter. When the
Lord rose from the sepulcher, He rose as the Savior of the human race.
The very fact that the-Lord was a Savior implied that mankind had needed
saving. It meant that the Lord had rescued them from danger.

It is in this sense that the meaning of the Easter story is neither
as simple nor as obvious as it might appear. When the Lord had saved the
Israelites from slavery in Egypt, it was clear who the enemy was. It
was clear that the Lord had rescued them from the Egyptians. But the
enemies -the spiritual enemies – who threatened mankind at the time of
the Lord’s coming were by no means as obvious a threat. Indeed, most
people were completely unaware of being in any danger at all. People
were blissfully ignorant of the fact that a multitude of evil spirits
from hell was threatening the very survival of the human race. The Lord
had come to save people from a danger they didn’t even know existed. But
the danger was nevertheless very real. Indeed, the spiritual enemies of
mankind were a far greater threat than the Egyptians had been. The
underlying drama of the Easter week was just as great, just as intense,
as was the drama of the Exodus.

Consider the extraordinary events that occurred on the night when the
Passover was first eaten. Time and time again the Egyptians had
suffered plagues. But time and time again the Pharaoh had refused to let
the Israelites go. The Israelites seemed to be completely and
hopelessly enslaved in Egypt. But then there came the plague on the
firstborn. It must have been an absolutely frightening and horrible
night. All of a sudden, at midnight, destruction came upon the people of
Egypt. We are told that “there was a great cry in Egypt; for there was
not a house where there was not one dead” (Exodus 12:30). That night not
a single Egyptian household escaped tragedy.

During that same terrible night, though, not a single Israelite was
harmed. Four days earlier each Israelitish household had been commanded
to set aside a lamb (see Exodus 12:3-4). Then, during the evening
preceding that terrible night, the lamb had been killed, and its blood
had been splattered on the posts and lintels of their doors (see Exodus
12:6-7). They then roasted the lamb and ate it with unleavened bread and
with bitter herbs (see Exodus 12:8). The Israelites were safe, safe
from the destruction that came upon the Egyptians, for the blood on
their doors served as a sign that they were not to be harmed.

Now it might seem from the story that it was the Lord who destroyed
the firstborn, and that the blood was serving to protect the Israelites
from the Lord. But this terrible act of destruction was in fact brought
about by evil spirits, evil spirits who are referred to as “the
destroyer.” “The Lord will pass over the door, and will not suffer the
destroyer to come in unto your houses to smite you” (Exodus 12:23). What
in fact happened during the night of the Passover was that the hells
were let loose upon the land of Egypt. But the Israelites were protected
from harm by the power of the Lord. They were delivered from
destruction, and that same night they were released from their slavery.

So it was that on a dark and dreadful night, the Israelites were
protected by the powerful arm of the Lord, and were led forth to
freedom. Israel became a free people. And from that time on, this event
was etched deep into the consciousness of the Israelites. Each year, on
the fourteenth day of the first month, they were to reenact the
Passover, by eating a roasted lamb with unleavened bread and bitter
herbs. During this most important festival of the year, they were to
recall that night when the Lord saved them from the slavery of Egypt.

Why did the Passover have such great importance? It of course had
immense historical significance. But there was something else. The real
importance of the Passover lay in what it represented. The Passover
represented that work of salvation that the Lord would do when He came
to earth. It stood for the Lord’s presence, and for the way in which He
would free mankind from the dominion of the hells (see AC 8017). The
actual Passover supper represented the conjunction that would then be
possible between mankind and the Lord Himself (see AC 9965:4). And,
because this work of salvation was completed in the glorification of the
Lord’s Human, therefore the Passover is said to have represented the
glorification itself (see AC 3994:6). It was therefore no accident, no
accident at all, that the events of Easter took place during the
celebration of the Passover. The Lord had told His disciples that He
would be betrayed during the feast of the Passover (see Matt. 26:2). And
it was at that feast that He would rise again. The primary reason the
Passover had been instituted was as a memorial that the Lord would one
day glorify His Human and rise triumphant as the eternal Savior of the
human race (see AC 10655). And so it was at this very festival that the
Lord fulfilled His promise, fulfilled the prophecy contained within the
Passover.

The Passover, that night when the Lord protected the Israelites and
delivered them from slavery in Egypt, was but a picture, a
representation, of a far greater redemption. To begin with, the Lord had
used His Divine power to save a particular group of people – the
Israelites – from slavery. Now, as the Lord rose from the grave, He
redeemed the entire human race. He made it possible for people to be
freed from the dominion of the hells, set free from the slavery of evil.

This is what we celebrate and remember at Easter time. We rejoice and
give thanks for the Lord’s salvation. When Jesus appeared to His
disciples and said to them, “All power is given unto Me in heaven and in
earth” (Matt. 28:18), the power He spoke to them about, the power He
offered them, was the power of salvation, the power to save people from
the influence of the hells.

What the Lord accomplished at Easter might sound more abstract than
what He had done during the original Passover. The Israelites knew and
clearly understood what Jehovah had done for them when He rescued them
from slavery in Egypt. The Lord has rescued us, though, from a deeper
slavery, from the slavery of the hells. And the importance of this can
be difficult to grasp fully. As we have noted, most people at the time
of the Lord’s coming were unaware of the spiritual danger they were in.
They did not realize how terrible the threats from the hells really
were. To a large extent it is the same with us. We have trouble fully
appreciating the danger of evil.

We have trouble realizing just how great a threat the hells can be.
This is because spiritual dangers are extremely subtle. Physical dangers
come from outside of us, where we can see and notice them, and avoid
them. Spiritual dangers are different. Evil lurks within the mind,
and-so we don’t notice evil in the same way. The greatest danger posed
by evil lies in the fact that it doesn’t seem dangerous to us at all. In
fact, we tend to enjoy evil. We tend to love it. It is inside of us. It
seems a part of us. When we are in evil we don’t see how dangerous it
is. It is only as we are lifted out of this evil that we can come to
understand how great the danger really was.

That is why the Lord had to come to earth. That is why He had to
assume a Human and make that Human Divine. He did this so that we could
come to see and understand Him, come to see and understand His love and
compassion, and could turn to Him and follow His commandments. And it is
as we do this, as we turn to and follow the Lord, that we can then, for
the first time, fully appreciate the real horror of evil. In the
Arcana, in our third lesson, it was said, “the hells are around every
man, because every man is born into evils of every kind; and where evils
are, there are the hells” (AC 10659). This is why, we are told, we need
the Divine power of the Lord. Only the Lord has the power to cast away
those evil spirits of hell. There is then added a very telling
statement. It is said that this is something which can be understood by
44 all those … who admit the Lord into their life” (see ibid.). It is
those who admit the Lord into their lives, and only they, who can truly
appreciate the dangers of evil. It is only those who are willing to turn
to the Lord and obey His commandments who can understand that evil is
very, very real, and very, very dangerous.

That is why we must follow the Lord. We cannot rely upon our own
judgment as to what is good and what is evil. We will always tend to
excuse those things we love. We will tend to make light of our own
weaknesses and our own follies. And so we must turn to the Lord. The
Lord is our Savior, our only Savior. We must do what He says. And if we
do, then He will save us. Amen.

Lessons: John 11:55-57; 12:1,12-15; Matt. 28:1-18; AC 10659:1,3


Arcana Coelestia 10659:1,3

… it can be seen that the feast of the Passover, which was also
called the feast of unleavened things, was instituted in remembrance of
man’s liberation from hell by the Lord. That this liberation was
effected by the Lord’s subjugating the hells and glorifying His Human
may be seen just above (n. 10655) …

But to those who are in enlightenment the Lord grants that they shall
understand what they believe; and when they are reading the Word, those
are enlightened and understand it who acknowledge the Lord and love to
live according to His commandments, but not those who say that they
believe but do not live; for the Lord flows into the life of man and
from this into his faith, but not into faith separate from life.
Consequently, those who are enlightened by the Lord through the Word
understand that the Lord came into the world in order to subjugate the
hells, and-reduce into order all things there and in the heavens; and
that this could not possibly be done except by means of the Human; for
from this He could fight against the hells, but not from the Divine
without the Human; and also that He might glorify His Human in order
that He might thereby forever keep all things in the order into which He
had reduced them. From this comes the salvation of man, for the hells
are around every man, because everyone is born into evils of every kind,
and where evils are, there are the hells; and unless these were cast
back by the Divine power of the Lord, no one could ever have been saved.
That this is so the Word teaches, and all those apprehend who admit the
Lord into their life; and these as before said are those who
acknowledge Him, and love to live according to His commandments.