Stepping back for a moment, what if we were to grant the possibility that
the angels were responsible for presenting the natural ideas about matters
relating to the planets and moons discussed in Earths In The Universe, would
this necessarily make them to be potentially misleading, and were they wholly
dependent on Swedenborg’s meager store of knowledge?
Note what the Lord permitted Swedenborg to record in Arcana
Coelestia 10771, a passage in which angels were relating to Swedenborg some
things about conditions on a small planet in another solar system than our own.
“These things the angels related from a comparison made with things on our
earth, which they saw in me, or in my memory. They drew these conclusions
by means of angelic ideas, whereby the measures of spaces and times are
at once known in the right proportion relatively to the spaces and times
elsewhere. In such matters, angelic ideas, which are spiritual, immeasurably
surpass human ideas, which are natural.” While in this instance they made use
of Swedenborg’s knowledge as a part of their resources, they certainly do not
appear to have been much limited by it!
In general, when it comes to where people were from, the “open instruction
from heaven” given to Swedenborg, in the accounts that were published, is
rather unequivocal.
In the little chapter in which our moon is under discussion there is this
assertion: “That there are inhabitants in/on the Moon also is known to spirits
and angels, for they often speak
with them; and in like manner that
there are inhabitants in the moons
or satellites which revolve about
the planet Jupiter and the planet
Saturn. Those who have not spoken
with them nevertheless have no doubt
that there are men in them, for they
too are earths; and where there is an
earth, there is man; for man is the end
for the sake of which every earth was
created; and nothing has been made
by the Supreme Creator without a
purpose. That the end of creation is
a human race, that there may be a
heaven from it, can be seen by every
one who thinks from reason. The
angels also say that an earth cannot
subsist apart from the human race,
because the Divine provides all things
In view of the kind of
teachings that I have
noted, I feel pretty
confident that when
Swedenborg was led
to assert that there are
people living on this or
that planet in our solar
system, or in some other
solar system, they are or
were there at the time
the teaching was given.
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