new church life: november/december 2016
course John Wesley, who became one of the best-known activists.
We know Wesley “wished” to communicate with Swedenborg, which
Swedenborg informed him he had “heard from heaven.”5 Although Wesley
initially thought well of much of Swedenborg’s Writings, they never met, and
Wesley later denied much of the doctrines, trying even to smear Swedenborg’s
reputation. It was at the tail end of this Great Awakening that Handel’s Messiah
and Swedenborg’s call, as well as Wesley’s oratory, converged from 1738 to
1743, just prior to the Last Judgment of 1757 in the spiritual world.
The outdoor enthusiastic preaching may well be what the Writings call
the “frenzy which has invaded theology and the Church” making it “Christian
in name only.” (True Christian Religion 4) This revivalism mixed with
millenarianism – “the end is nigh” – was part of the “naturalism” i.e. Deism,
that brought about the Last Judgment.6 Millenarianism took hold especially
following Lisbon’s earthquake on All Saints Day, November 1, 1755, deemed
back then as a “Last Judgment.”
So Jennens was right to oppose Deism, and assemble the text for the
Messiah. This alone can be seen as providential. Right after Swedenborg’s first
call by the Lord in 1743, after finishing Worship and Love of God and printing
Part I, he started writing about “The Messiah to come.”7
Swedenborg in Arcana Coelestia volume 2 (Lewis and Hart, London 1750)
says of the Messiah: “The Messiah or Christ was to come to eternally save their
souls.” (# 2520) Swedenborg had this
volume translated into English by
John Marchant,8 in six installments.
No one knows who bought these, or
whether one or some of them found
their way to the Bishops of England,
or to King George II himself. But
those Bishops did see Swedenborg’s
five works extracted from the Arcana,
5 Tafel, 564-571
6 Naturalism or Deism and the Last Judgment: the “Church invaded by naturalism” which makes
one with both adultery and atheism. Apocalypse Revealed 464, Arcana Coelestia 5116. 3; Apocalypse
Explained 981, 1220, Coronis 0, Apocalypse Explained 1176, True Christian Religion 94. It uses the human
“natural lumen” which “denies God” (Ibid. 75.7), feeds on “ignorance and takes root in the interior rational
mind” (Ibid. 136, 339, 771) It made the Christian Church at that time “Christian in name only.” (Ibid. 4)
7 “De Messia Venture in Mundum” Swedenborg’s manuscript jottings, from Codex 38, written 1745,
one of several unpublished interworks between Worship and Love of God and Arcana Coelestia.
8 See New Church Life, 1999 p. 255 “The Remarkable Volume II of the Latin Arcana,” by Edward
Cranch.
556