Last Judgment (Cont.) (Chadwick) n. 74

Previous Number Next Number Next Translation See Latin 

74. All who acknowledge one God as Creator of the universe, and worship him, entertain the idea of God as a human being, saying that no one can have any other idea of God. When they hear that many people have an idea of God as being a kind of small cloud, they ask where such people are to be found. On being told that they are among the Christians, they declare that this is impossible. But they receive the reply that these people have formed such an idea because God is called in the Word a Spirit, and they cannot think of spirit as anything but a wisp of cloud, being unaware that every spirit and every angel is a human being. They were further tested to see whether their spiritual idea resembled their natural one, and it was discovered that it is not similar in the case of those who inwardly acknowledge the Lord as the God of heaven and earth. I heard a certain Christian priest say that no one can have any idea of a Divine Human. I saw him being taken to visit various groups of heathens, proceeding successively to those further and further in, and from there to their heavens, and finally to the Christian heaven. Everywhere he was allowed to share their inward perception of God, and he observed that they had no other idea of God than as a human being, and this is the same as the idea of a Divine Human.


This page is part of the Writings of Emanuel Swedenborg

© 2000-2001 The Academy of the New Church