is why the doctrine of correspondences
which discloses the internal sense of
the Word could not be revealed until
after the Renaissance and the Age of
Enlightenment – until certain ideas
had been planted and come to fruit
in the collective understanding of
mankind.
When that time had come, the Lord
made use of a new prophet, Emanuel
Swedenborg. We may observe that
people today are a little uncomfortable
with the idea of a prophet in modern
times, and yet when we look at the
way the Bible was constructed, and the
testimony of Scripture itself, we see
that there have been literally thousands
of people during the course of recorded
history who have been called by the Lord to be prophets, to have their spiritual
senses opened so that they could hear the word of the Lord through an angelic
messenger, and then carry it by written or spoken word to others.
We should note that the word “angel” is derived from the Greek word
for “messenger,” one who carries the Word of God to men. We should not
automatically discard the possibility of a modern prophet. The principles
of prophecy still apply, and in fact, the scientific and rational nature of the
revelation required that the prophet be a modern, educated man so that he
could understand the ideas presented to him and then represent them to
mankind in a meaningful and clear way.
Emanuel Swedenborg was a man whose accomplishments in many fields
of science, politics and economics made him uniquely suited to the task of
explaining the doctrines of the New Christian Church.
His Theological Writings demonstrate that the “spiritual sense” can
be systematically, even scientifically, drawn out of Scripture by the use of a
system we call the “science of correspondences.” Briefly stated, this doctrine
shows that everything in the natural world exists because it corresponds to
something in the spiritual world.
For example, we say that all the animals in the Word correspond to different
affections. Think of the various places in Scripture where animals play a p art in
the story, and if we know that good animals represent our good and charitable
feelings, while dangerous beasts represent our evil desires, we can begin to
see a reason for the parts that the various animals play in the different stories
Once we accept the
idea that the whole of
the Word is a parable
that can be understood
using a clearly defined
set of keys we find
that the Word is full of
teachings pertinent to
our daily life, each level
deeper than the next.
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