New Church Life May/June 2016 | Page 55

        It seems to me that the following works are related to the establishment of a new church and a new Christian heaven: • Apocalypse Revealed (1766) I can see this work as being a kind of transition between those works related to redemption and those related to the establishment of a new church • Conjugial Love (1768) • Brief Exposition (1769) Which as noted previously also marks the date of the Second Coming • Interaction Between the Soul and Body (1769) • True Christian Religion (1771) This divides the Heavenly Doctrines into three broad categories: • Those related to the preparation for the Last Judgment Arcana Coelestia • Those related to redemption The works published between 1758 and 1764 Heaven and Hell, Heavenly Doctrines, Last Judgment, White Horse and Earths in the Universe Doctrine of the Lord, Sacred Scripture, Life, Faith, Last Judgment Continued, Divine Love and Wisdom and Divine Providence • And those related to the establishment of the new church The works published in 1766 and afterwards Apocalypse Revealed, Conjugial Love, Brief Exposition, Intercourse Between Soul and Body and True Christian Religion Some general observations about this sequence: The Arcana is full of marvelous truths. For example, it has the most detailed explanations of the Lord’s glorification. For the most part, however, the teachings in the Arcana are scattered. There is not, except for the inter-chapter material, sequential treatment of doctrine like you find in the later works. This is appropriate for their role in the preparation for the Last Judgment. Spirits had to be affected by bits and pieces of the Divine truth before they could be led to see them in a coherent manner. The same is true for us when we begin the process of reformation and regeneration. Once good and evil have been separated (the Last Judgment) these bits 257