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It is at this point in the Arcana Coelestia exposition that the Lord, as it
were, takes us aside and presents us with a little doctrinal treatise relating
to what happens when people choose to investigate the mysteries of faith by
things of sense and the memory. (Arcana Coelestia 126-30) He comes right out
and says we are not to do this, “for in this case the celestial [that which is of
love and charity, what is heavenly] of faith is destroyed.” (Ibid. 126) Why this
doctrinal aside so soon in the exposition? The Lord, in giving us this seeming
bad news right from the outset, knows so well the common tendency of man.
Following immediately after this Scriptural – and, for the New Church,
doctrinal warning – we start into the second half of Genesis chapter two where
the Lord tells about a significant decline in the Most Ancient Church. The
members of this church were no longer “content to be led by the Lord, but
desired to be led by self and the world.” (Ibid. 138)
We might wonder why the Lord did not have Moses bring over from the
Ancient Word a lot more beautiful symbolic stories before bringing us to earth,
so to speak, with this sad account of this church’s sad decline. There has got to
be an important message here! And there is the Arcana Coelestia exposition of
this decline of that first church.
Having introduced us to the decline of the Most Ancients in chapter two
of Genesis, in chapter three we have the even sadder account of the fall of that
church. Halfway through this explanation, the Lord again takes us aside and
confronts us with that powerful series in Arcana Coelestia 229-233 where He
tells us how every church down to the present day has perished because the
people did not “believe the Lord or the Word, but in themselves and their own
senses.” (Ibid. 231)
It is only evidence that in this first published work of the Heavenly
Doctrine the Lord is seeking right from the beginning to bring a cardinal issue
to our attention.
Through four more chapters in Genesis the account of the progressive
devastation and final destruction of the Most Ancient Church continues. Again
no good news, only bad news, until in chapter eight we see the establishment
of a new church, a spiritual church, the Ancient Church.
This is a church, as we know, having a natural will that is totally corrupted,
no longer possessing any reliable perceptive faculty. Instead, it is wholly
dependent for its awareness of what is good and true on the text of a writtendown, objective revelation, and on recurring manifestations out of heaven of
the “Angel of Jehovah.”
In chapter nine, the Lord continues with an account of the establishment
of the Ancient Church. But before it is concluded, already there is the
representation of a big problem. “Noah” becomes drunk and uncovered in
his tent. Again Divine revelation is under assault from puny, finite men. The
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