Religions outside the Christian Church

[SpiritualSon]

The Heathen, or Peoples Outside of the Church, in Heaven.
There is a general opinion that those born outside of the church, who are called the nations, or heathen, cannot be saved, because not having the Word they know nothing about the Lord, and apart from the Lord there is no salvation.

But that these also are saved this alone makes certain, that the mercy of the Lord is universal, that is, extends to every individual.That these equally with those within the church, who are few in comparison, are born men, and that their ignorance of the Lord is not their fault.

Any one who thinks from any enlightened reason can see that no man is born for hell, for the Lord is love itself and His love is to will the salvation of all.

Therefore He has provided a religion for every one, and by it acknowledgment of the Divine and interior life. For to live in accordance with one's religion is to live interiorly, since one then looks to the Divine, and so far as he looks to the Divine he does not look to the world but separates himself from the world, that is, from the life of the world, which is exterior life.

That the heathen equally with Christians are saved any one can see who knows what it is that makes heaven in man.For heaven is within man, and those that have heaven within them come into heaven.

Heaven with man is acknowledging the Divine and being led by the Divine. The first and chief thing of every religion is to acknowledge the Divine. A religion that does not acknowledge the Divine is no religion.

The precepts of every religion look to worship, thus to the way in which the Divine is to be worshiped that the worship may be acceptable to Him.When this has been settled in one's mind, that is, so far as one wills this or so far as he loves it, he is led by the Lord.

Every one knows that the heathen as well as Christians live a moral life, and many of them a better life than Christians.

Moral life may be lived either out of regard to the Divine or out of regard to men in the world.A moral life that is lived out of regards to the Divine is a spiritual life.

In outward form the two appear alike, but in inward form they are wholly different; the one saves man, the other does not.

For he who lives a moral life out of regard to the Divine is led by the Divine. He who leads a moral life out of regard to men in the world is led by himself.

But this may be illustrated by an example. He that refrains from doing evil to his neighbor because it is antagonistic to religion, that is, antagonistic to the Divine, refrains from doing evil from a spiritual motive.

He that refrains from doing evil to another merely from fear of the law, or the loss of reputation, of honor, or gain, that is, from regard to self and the world, refrains from doing evil from a natural motive, and is led by himself,not by the Divine.

The life of the latter is natural, that of the former is spiritual. A man whose moral life is spiritual has heaven within him. But he whose moral life is merely natural does not have heaven within him.

For the reason that heaven flows in from above and opens man's interiors, and through his interiors flows into his exteriors; while the world flows in from beneath and opens the exteriors but not the interiors, For there can be no flowing in from the natural world into the spiritual, but only from the spiritual world into the natural.

Therefore if heaven is not also received, the interiors remain closed. All this makes clear who those are that receive heaven within them, and who do not.


And yet heaven is not the same in one as in another. It differs in each one in accordance with his affection for good and its truth. Those that are in an affection for good out of regard to the Divine, love Divine truth, since good and truth love each other and desire to be conjoined.

This explains why the heathen, although they are not in genuine truths in the world, yet because of their love receive truths in the other life.

The heathen (religions outside the Christian Church)who have led a moral life and have lived in obedience and subordination and mutual charity in accordance with their religion, and have thus received something of conscience, are accepted in the other life, and are there instructed with solicitous care by the angels in the goods and truths of faith; and that when they are being taught they behave themselves modestly, intelligently, and wisely, and readily accept truths and adopt them.

They have not worked out for themselves any principles of falsity antagonistic to the truths of faith that will need to be shaken off, still less cavils against the Lord, as many Christians have who cherish no other idea of Him than that He is an ordinary man. The heathen on the contrary when they hear that Jehovah God has become a Man, and has thus manifested Himself in the world, immediately acknowledge it and worship the Lord, saying that because God is the God of heaven and of earth, and because the human race is His, He has fully disclosed Himself to men.

It is a Divine truth that apart from the Lord there is no salvation.But this is to be understood to mean that there is no salvation except from the Lord.

There are many earths in the universe, and all of them full of inhabitants, scarcely any of whom know that the Lord took on the Human on our earth. Yet because they worship the Divine under a human form they are accepted and led by the Lord.

Harry

 

[Runt]

What about atheists? Even if we say that atheists are heathan and atheism is a religion, they still don't fit completely into this picture you have builts because they don't look toward any deity... and yet many are very moral people, not from fear of the law but simply from the conviction of their own non-god-based beliefs. So do they go to heaven or not?

 

[SpiritualSon]

What about atheists? Even if we say that atheists are heathan and atheism is a religion, they still don't fit completely into this picture you have builts because they don't look toward any deity... and yet many are very moral people, not from fear of the law but simply from the conviction of their own non-god-based beliefs. So do they go to heaven or not?

Whoever does not acknowledge God is excommunicated from the church and condemned. Whoever does not acknowledge God is excommunicated from the church, because God is the all of the church; and Divine things which are called theological are what constitute the church.

Consequently a denial of God is a denial of all things pertaining to the church.This denial is what excommunicates the man.He is excommunicated not by God, but by himself.

He stands condemned because he who is excommunicated from the church is also excommunicated from heaven.Since the church on earth and the angelic heaven make one, like the internal and the external or the spiritual and the natural in man.

Man was so created by God that in respect to his internal he might be in the spiritual world and in respect to his external in the natural world.

Consequently he was created a native of both worlds, in order that the spiritual which belongs to heaven might be implanted in the natural, which belongs to the world, just as seed is planted in the ground.That man might become fixed and endure to eternity.

The man who has excommunicated himself from the church and from heaven by a denial of God has closed up in himself his internal man in respect to his will and its genial love.

For man's will is the receptacle of his love, and becomes its dwelling-place. But he cannot close up his internal man in respect to its understanding, for if he could and did he would be man no longer. Nevertheless, his will's love infatuates with falsities the higher faculties of the understanding; and in consequence the understanding becomes closed to the truths pertaining to faith and the goods pertaining to charity; thus more and more against God, and also against the spiritual things of the church.

Thus man is shut out from communion with the angels of heaven, and when so shut out he enters into communion with the satans of hell, and thinks as they think; and all satans deny God, and think foolishly about God and the spiritual things of the church; and in the same way does the man think who is conjoined with them.

When such a man is in his spirit, as he is when left privately to himself, he suffers his thoughts to be led by the delights of evil and falsity which he has conceived and brought forth in himself.

He then thinks that God has no existence, but is merely a word uttered from the pulpit to hold the common people in obedience to the laws of justice, which are, the laws of society.

He also thinks the Word, from which ministers proclaim a God, to be a mass of missionary tales, which have been made holy by authority, and the Decalogue or catechism to be merely a little book to be thrown out the window when it has been well worn by the hands of little boys, since it teaches that parents ought to be honored, forbids murder, adultery, theft, and false witness.

Who does not learn the same things from civil law? He thinks of the church as an assembly of simple, credulous, and weak-minded people, who see what they see not.

He thinks of man, and of himself as a man, as being like a beast, and of life after death as of the life of a beast after death. Thus does his internal man think, however differently his external man may speak.

For, as just said, every man has an internal and an external; and it is the internal that makes the man, that is, the spirit, which is what lives after death; while the external, in which by a semblance of morality he plays the hypocrite, is laid in the grave.

On account of his denial of God the man then stands condemned. In respect to his spirit every man is associated in the spiritual world with his like, and becomes as one of them.

You are not denying God.You are denying man's false ideas about God.You wouldn't be here if you were not searching for understanding of truth.

http://newearth.org/frontier/

Harry

 

[true blood]

I don't follow how heaven is inside of man. I believe its a place of complete bliss and delight and peace for sure. But its also the abode of God and the angles, etc.. somewhere in the celestial sphere no?

 

[SpiritualSon]

I don't follow how heaven is inside of man. I believe its a place of complete bliss and delight and peace for sure. But its also the abode of God and the angles, etc.. somewhere in the celestial sphere no?

Look to the Lord and shun evil as sins.This is done by repentance. love to the Lord and love towards the neighbor are heavenly loves, and these reign in heaven, and also constitute heaven in man.

You think of heaven from natural ideas. Heaven is a state of mind. Man's mind is his spirit,which lives after death,and becomes what he made it into,angel or devil.

Harry

 

[SpiritualSon]

The Heathen, or Peoples Outside of the Church, in Heaven.
There is a general opinion that those born outside of the church, who are called the nations, or heathen, cannot be saved, because not having the Word they know nothing about the Lord, and apart from the Lord there is no salvation.

But that these also are saved this alone makes certain, that the mercy of the Lord is universal, that is, extends to every individual.That these equally with those within the church, who are few in comparison, are born men, and that their ignorance of the Lord is not their fault.

Any one who thinks from any enlightened reason can see that no man is born for hell, for the Lord is love itself and His love is to will the salvation of all.

Therefore He has provided a religion for every one, and by it acknowledgment of the Divine and interior life. For to live in accordance with one's religion is to live interiorly, since one then looks to the Divine, and so far as he looks to the Divine he does not look to the world but separates himself from the world, that is, from the life of the world, which is exterior life.

That the heathen equally with Christians are saved any one can see who knows what it is that makes heaven in man.For heaven is within man, and those that have heaven within them come into heaven.

Heaven with man is acknowledging the Divine and being led by the Divine. The first and chief thing of every religion is to acknowledge the Divine. A religion that does not acknowledge the Divine is no religion.

The precepts of every religion look to worship, thus to the way in which the Divine is to be worshiped that the worship may be acceptable to Him.When this has been settled in one's mind, that is, so far as one wills this or so far as he loves it, he is led by the Lord.

Every one knows that the heathen as well as Christians live a moral life, and many of them a better life than Christians.

Moral life may be lived either out of regard to the Divine or out of regard to men in the world.A moral life that is lived out of regards to the Divine is a spiritual life.

In outward form the two appear alike, but in inward form they are wholly different; the one saves man, the other does not.

For he who lives a moral life out of regard to the Divine is led by the Divine. He who leads a moral life out of regard to men in the world is led by himself.

But this may be illustrated by an example. He that refrains from doing evil to his neighbor because it is antagonistic to religion, that is, antagonistic to the Divine, refrains from doing evil from a spiritual motive.

He that refrains from doing evil to another merely from fear of the law, or the loss of reputation, of honor, or gain, that is, from regard to self and the world, refrains from doing evil from a natural motive, and is led by himself,not by the Divine.

The life of the latter is natural, that of the former is spiritual. A man whose moral life is spiritual has heaven within him. But he whose moral life is merely natural does not have heaven within him.

For the reason that heaven flows in from above and opens man's interiors, and through his interiors flows into his exteriors; while the world flows in from beneath and opens the exteriors but not the interiors, For there can be no flowing in from the natural world into the spiritual, but only from the spiritual world into the natural.

Therefore if heaven is not also received, the interiors remain closed. All this makes clear who those are that receive heaven within them, and who do not.


And yet heaven is not the same in one as in another. It differs in each one in accordance with his affection for good and its truth. Those that are in an affection for good out of regard to the Divine, love Divine truth, since good and truth love each other and desire to be conjoined.

This explains why the heathen, although they are not in genuine truths in the world, yet because of their love receive truths in the other life.

The heathen (religions outside the Christian Church)who have led a moral life and have lived in obedience and subordination and mutual charity in accordance with their religion, and have thus received something of conscience, are accepted in the other life, and are there instructed with solicitous care by the angels in the goods and truths of faith; and that when they are being taught they behave themselves modestly, intelligently, and wisely, and readily accept truths and adopt them.

They have not worked out for themselves any principles of falsity antagonistic to the truths of faith that will need to be shaken off, still less cavils against the Lord, as many Christians have who cherish no other idea of Him than that He is an ordinary man. The heathen on the contrary when they hear that Jehovah God has become a Man, and has thus manifested Himself in the world, immediately acknowledge it and worship the Lord, saying that because God is the God of heaven and of earth, and because the human race is His, He has fully disclosed Himself to men.

It is a Divine truth that apart from the Lord there is no salvation.But this is to be understood to mean that there is no salvation except from the Lord.

There are many earths in the universe, and all of them full of inhabitants, scarcely any of whom know that the Lord took on the Human on our earth. Yet because they worship the Divine under a human form they are accepted and led by the Lord.

Harry

 

[Runt]

What about atheists? Even if we say that atheists are heathan and atheism is a religion, they still don't fit completely into this picture you have builts because they don't look toward any deity... and yet many are very moral people, not from fear of the law but simply from the conviction of their own non-god-based beliefs. So do they go to heaven or not?

 

[SpiritualSon]

What about atheists? Even if we say that atheists are heathan and atheism is a religion, they still don't fit completely into this picture you have builts because they don't look toward any deity... and yet many are very moral people, not from fear of the law but simply from the conviction of their own non-god-based beliefs. So do they go to heaven or not?

Whoever does not acknowledge God is excommunicated from the church and condemned. Whoever does not acknowledge God is excommunicated from the church, because God is the all of the church; and Divine things which are called theological are what constitute the church.

Consequently a denial of God is a denial of all things pertaining to the church.This denial is what excommunicates the man.He is excommunicated not by God, but by himself.

He stands condemned because he who is excommunicated from the church is also excommunicated from heaven.Since the church on earth and the angelic heaven make one, like the internal and the external or the spiritual and the natural in man.

Man was so created by God that in respect to his internal he might be in the spiritual world and in respect to his external in the natural world.

Consequently he was created a native of both worlds, in order that the spiritual which belongs to heaven might be implanted in the natural, which belongs to the world, just as seed is planted in the ground.That man might become fixed and endure to eternity.

The man who has excommunicated himself from the church and from heaven by a denial of God has closed up in himself his internal man in respect to his will and its genial love.

For man's will is the receptacle of his love, and becomes its dwelling-place. But he cannot close up his internal man in respect to its understanding, for if he could and did he would be man no longer. Nevertheless, his will's love infatuates with falsities the higher faculties of the understanding; and in consequence the understanding becomes closed to the truths pertaining to faith and the goods pertaining to charity; thus more and more against God, and also against the spiritual things of the church.

Thus man is shut out from communion with the angels of heaven, and when so shut out he enters into communion with the satans of hell, and thinks as they think; and all satans deny God, and think foolishly about God and the spiritual things of the church; and in the same way does the man think who is conjoined with them.

When such a man is in his spirit, as he is when left privately to himself, he suffers his thoughts to be led by the delights of evil and falsity which he has conceived and brought forth in himself.

He then thinks that God has no existence, but is merely a word uttered from the pulpit to hold the common people in obedience to the laws of justice, which are, the laws of society.

He also thinks the Word, from which ministers proclaim a God, to be a mass of missionary tales, which have been made holy by authority, and the Decalogue or catechism to be merely a little book to be thrown out the window when it has been well worn by the hands of little boys, since it teaches that parents ought to be honored, forbids murder, adultery, theft, and false witness.

Who does not learn the same things from civil law? He thinks of the church as an assembly of simple, credulous, and weak-minded people, who see what they see not.

He thinks of man, and of himself as a man, as being like a beast, and of life after death as of the life of a beast after death. Thus does his internal man think, however differently his external man may speak.

For, as just said, every man has an internal and an external; and it is the internal that makes the man, that is, the spirit, which is what lives after death; while the external, in which by a semblance of morality he plays the hypocrite, is laid in the grave.

On account of his denial of God the man then stands condemned. In respect to his spirit every man is associated in the spiritual world with his like, and becomes as one of them.

You are not denying God.You are denying man's false ideas about God.You wouldn't be here if you were not searching for understanding of truth.

http://newearth.org/frontier/

Harry

 

[true blood]

I don't follow how heaven is inside of man. I believe its a place of complete bliss and delight and peace for sure. But its also the abode of God and the angles, etc.. somewhere in the celestial sphere no?

 

[SpiritualSon]

I don't follow how heaven is inside of man. I believe its a place of complete bliss and delight and peace for sure. But its also the abode of God and the angles, etc.. somewhere in the celestial sphere no?

Look to the Lord and shun evil as sins.This is done by repentance. love to the Lord and love towards the neighbor are heavenly loves, and these reign in heaven, and also constitute heaven in man.

You think of heaven from natural ideas. Heaven is a state of mind. Man's mind is his spirit,which lives after death,and becomes what he made it into,angel or devil.

Harry

 

[martha dodge]

Consider that Jesus, Messiah, God among us, said "I go to prepare a place for you and if I go, I will come again and receive you unto me so that where I am, you will also be. If Messiah Christ called it a place, then it cannot be in our minds. Heaven must be a place. John, the apostle, says he saw a Holy City coming down out of Heaven. If he could look up and see it coming out, then Heaven must be a place. Either that or Jesus was a nut no one can believe. but you don't seem to believe that so maybe you should take another look at what Jesus Christ says about Heaven.

 

[SpiritualSon]

"I go to prepare a place for you, means the Lord prepares a place for a person according to the degree that the person loves and accept the Lord. Man enter heaven or hell to the degree that heaven or hell enter him.

Heaven is divided into two Kingdoms. If you had read Swedenborg's writings you will know that heaven is divided in two. The higher angels are closer in love towards to Lord than the ones below them.

The ones in the higher heaven never question Divine truth,as the ones in the heaven under them do.

They accept and live accordingly,just as the writings of Swedenborg are accepted by me without question,and I live accordly.

When you question Divine truth it become part of your memory only,and in time when you bring them out to see if there is any truth in them.

Harry

 

[Runt]

SpiritualSon--

You cannot accept anything without first questioning it. Not even your own faith. In order to have come to accept Swedenborg's writings you would have had to first encounter them without knowing what they were about, then read them, then access their validity, then make the decision about whether or not you believed them to be true, and only then, after deciding that they were true, could you have stopped questioning them.

If you accepted the writings of Swedenborg without question then you could just as easily have accepted the writings of Dr. Seuss without question... without questioning, you would not have been able to access whether or not those writings were true, because you cannot know that something is true without first being unsure about whether or not it is true and then testing that truth yourself---which involves questions.

Of course you must have questioned it... and apparently, in questioning, found that, to you, Swedenborg was speaking truth. Only AFTER that point did you stop questioning it... but only because you had already done so!

 

[Mr Spinkles]

Buddhists do not believe in any deity, either. Why would good, moral buddhists or atheists not be allowed into heaven?

In many ways, is not the morality of an atheist superior to that of many Christians, in that the good moral atheist does good deeds without expectation of reward in heaven, but simply out of the goodness of his/her heart?

 

[martha dodge]

We will a have a new home in the after-life somewhere. Our soul and spirit will live forever. Heaven has been created by Father God for His children. I am sure that your spiritual daddy has a place for your soul. My Father has promised that my home will be so beautiful that i will be estatic and perfectly joyous all the time. I will never be hungry or sick or unhappy ever again. All I have to do to go there is believe that Father God came to earth as Jesus Christ and told me how to live and what to do and i have to try to do that. Jesus will even come to live inside of me to help me. If you do not believe this, why would you expect to go to Heaven which is where Jesus is? Hey we all gotta make payments somewhere.

 

[Mr Spinkles]

I do not expect to go to heaven, nor do I expect anyone to go to heaven, as I do not believe in a heaven. But I like to hear what others believe/expect, and why.

Why would a forgiving, merciful God expect payment in the form of belief in Him? I thought God is supposed to love us unconditionally and infinitely--not expect 'payment'.

 

[martha dodge]

First of all, you need to understand that Father God created us and He wants us to love Him. I mean really love HIM. Jesus said that Father God wants, most of all , our hearts. Like real honest love. Like for us to give it back.

You know that you can do right things for the wrong reason. You can help someone because you feel sorry for them and you pity them. Or you can help someone because not helping would make you appear hard and cold. Or you can help someone out of guilt. But Father God wants us to help others because He loves them and we should also. This help should always be given in Our Father's name and because we love HIM. That, in my opinion, is what being morally right is all about.

 

[Lightkeeper]

We will a have a new home in the after-life somewhere. Our soul and spirit will live forever. Heaven has been created by Father God for His children. I am sure that your spiritual daddy has a place for your soul. My Father has promised that my home will be so beautiful that i will be estatic and perfectly joyous all the time. I will never be hungry or sick or unhappy ever again. All I have to do to go there is believe that Father God came to earth as Jesus Christ and told me how to live and what to do and i have to try to do that. Jesus will even come to live inside of me to help me. If you do not believe this, why would you expect to go to Heaven which is where Jesus is? Hey we all gotta make payments somewhere.

This is what happens when we find the Christ within us.

 

[martha dodge]

In my opinion, we are only in part in this body. My peace will only increase. My joy will only over-flow more. And my love will be standing before me and I will look on His face and feel His arms around me and my pityful existence in this body will become a vague memory in just an instant. Like Paul said, I will know in whole. Now like Paul, I struggle because sometimes I do things which are not what Jesus would have me do. I know that He forgives me and this just makes me want to see Him more. I cannot speak for anyone else when I tell you that I truly want to go to Heaven because that is where my Lord is and if there is nothing else, He alone is sufficient.

 

[quick]

John 3: 36 "Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God's wrath remains on him." We are all sinners; Christ paid the debt for our sin on the cross; without faith in him, we will all be called before God as sinners, rather than as saved believers, and will suffer God's judgment.