Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Back to the Basics

I haven't posted much recently due to working on finishing the first draft of my dissertation and getting ready to head to Europe in the fall. (Stay tuned for some posts about the New Church in Europe and some more bite-sized bits from my dissertation.)

In my research I ran across an old favorite passage that's been helpful to me in working on my dissertation and is just a great summary of the important, basic points of religion. Enjoy! (Read the whole thing if you have the time.)
The laws of our religion are that one God is to be worshiped; that adulteries, thefts, murders, false witness, must be shunned; thus also frauds, unlawful gains, hatreds, revenge, lies, blasphemies, and many other things that are mentioned not alone in the Decalogue but everywhere else in the Word…. When man shuns these because they are opposed to the Word, and thence opposed to God, and because they are from hell, then man lives according to the laws of his religion, and so far as he lives according to his religion is he led by the Lord…. Moreover, he is daily taught by the Lord what he must do and what he must say, also what he must preach or what he must write; for when evils are removed he is continually under the Lord's guidance and in enlightenment. Yet he is not led and taught immediately by any dictate, or by any perceptible inspiration, but by an influx into his spiritual delight, from which he has perception according to the truths of which his understanding consists. When he acts from this influx, he appears to be acting as if from himself, and yet he acknowledges in heart that it is from the Lord. (Apocalypse Explaine 825:3)

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