The Pass-Fail Test
the Lord Has Presented
To Every Church Down
Through the Ages
The Rev. Willard L. D. Heinrichs
H
ere is the legacy that I and others of my generation received from
the previous generation and that we hope we can pass on to the next
generation:
It is solely a universal affirmation with which man is imbued as to truths by the
Lord, as that the Word is the Word, that the Lord is the Lord, that Providence
is in the most singular things. When one is in the principle, although he is but
obscurely aware of its existence, innumerable affirmatives are insinuated by the
Lord. (Spiritual Diary/Spiritual Experiences 4533) [Emphasis mine; see the rest of
the series.]
Note what comes first!
Without Divine r evelation through the Word as an all-important means we
cannot know the Lord. And ultimately – from an awareness of the character of
His love, wisdom and operation, and of His Divine attributes of omniscience,
omnipotence and omnipresence – we cannot have confidence in the operation
of His Divine Providence. (See passages such as Arcana Coelestia 10452: 2-1
and Apocalypse Revealed 161.)
Yet the love of self and worldly things, arising out of the sensual man
in every church, has, in the progress of time, undermined confidence in
and the authority of the Word. In every church the Word as the means of
communication and conjunction with the Lord, sooner or later has been made
of no effect by finite human tendencies and traditions.
Note how only a chapter-and-a-half into the text that was drawn by Moses
from the Ancient Word, following hard on the heels of the story of the rise
and best state of the Most Ancient Church, we have the Lord’s warning and
command relating to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
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