Apocalypse 22:23

19TH OF JUNE

A Sermon by Rev. Robert S. Jungé

Today we are celebrating the birthday of the New Church. Before the New Church was given, people knew very little about heaven. And so they had forgotten what they needed to do to get there. You know that if you don’t know what a place is like, you don’t know what to take with you. If it is hot and there was a place to swim you would want a swimming suit. If it was very cold, you would want a scarf and coat and other warm clothes. You have to know about a place in order to get ready to go there. And so the Lord teaches the New Church all about heaven in what we call the Writings. These are new and wonderful ideas that cannot be found anywhere else. No other Church teaches these things.

Before the Writings were given, people were forgetting to live good lives, because they did not fully understand what they should do. You know that unless you understand what a teacher wants, you have a hard time doing the right thing. So the Lord gave us the Writings, a way that all of us can understand. The Lord is our Teacher in these new and wonderful teachings. The ord meant that these teachings were new when we read, “Behold, I make all things new.”

Now the Lord prepared a man to write down the Writings in a special way, just the way that He prepared the different prophets to write the rest of the Word. The Lord prepared Emanuel Swedenborg from the time when he was a little child, so that he would be just the right man to write down for the New Church whatever the Lord wanted him to. These books that we call the Writings are the Word, and like the Word are different from any other books in the world. They are the way that the Lord teaches the New Church. The older we grow, the more we can learn from them, because every time we read them we see something new. This is the way with the Word, because the Lord who knows everything speaks to us, through His Word.

Now after many years of preparation, when he was 55 years old, the Lord appeared to Swedenborg. And two years later the Lord appeared again to him. Then the Lord told him to write down all the things that He would show him. He opened Swedenborg’s spiritual eyes and showed him all about heaven or the other world. He told him what happens when people die, what heaven is really like, what real worship is. Swedenborg as it were studied the other world just the way that he studied all about this world in which we live. He walked around, and talked to the angels there. He asked questions and saw many wonderful things.

Now other men today do not see in the spiritual world. They do not see the angels of heaven. It is wrong to even try to see them. The Lord does not appear to men today as He did to Swedenborg. But the Lord prepared Swedenborg very carefully for the special job of writing down everything the Lord told him. The Writings are a new and wonderful part of the Word. Wherever people read them and try to follow what the Lord says in them, there is the New Church.

For many years people knew that the Lord was going to come and establish a New Church. They wrote wonderful prophecies about how the New Church would come. We read one of these this morning, about the woman who was clothed with the sun. This beautiful woman meant the New Church. She shone with light, because she was clothed with the sun. The Writings in the New Church shine with light, because the Lord Himself shines like a sun clothing them. You remember that around the woman’s head were twelve stars in a crown. These shone like the many new and wonderful knowledges that are given to the New Church. The prophecy tells us that the New Church will be in heaven, and also on earth. The lesser light of the moon about her feet is like the lesser vision of truth that we have on earth. For the way that the Lord is seen in heaven is ever so much brighter and clearer than we see Him on earth. The New Church is indeed, beautiful and wonderful, like a lovely bride, for those to see who love the Lord and the truths of the Writings, for those who are called to the marriage of the Lamb.

Every day that vision can become more wonderful. The things of the New Church will shine more beautifully if we really try to do what the Lord teaches. Each day of our lives we can have a new good love, a new and wonderful thought or do a new and delightful deed. All things can be made new in us.

But remember that beautiful woman was going to have a baby boy. But a great red dragon appeared who stood before her to devour her baby as soon as it was born. But the baby was caught up to heaven and the woman was protected too.

There are some who do not understand the New Church and will argue against it. But do you know where the biggest enemy of all is? The biggest enemy that the New Church has? It is inside of each one of us. It is selfishness and self love, that makes us want to take everything for ourselves. It makes us forget what we were taught, forget to share with others, and knocks down our beliefs just the way that wicked dragon drew down a third of the stars out of the heaven with his tail. This dragon in us wants us to forget to do the things we are taught, and to be lazy and not to try to learn. We need to fight that dragon in us as hard as we can, or the Lord can never make all things new in us.

As we celebrate the Church’s birthday, we think particularly of how we can help the Church grow. Our first duty is of course to make sure that we ourselves live by the Lord’s Teachings. There is no more powerful way to spread the truth than the strength of example. Yet we must also let our light shine before men. We cannot hide our light under a bushel, but must set it upon a candlestick, for all to see. It is our duty to labor with all our hearts that that wonderful Holy City can descend from God out of heaven, both in our minds, and until it fills the whole earth.
But there must always be protection for that City, there may be a variety of ways for entrance, twelve gates, but each gate is a single pearl. No one can go in who does not have what a single pearl representsBan acknowledgment of the Lord, built up layer upon layer through life, until it makes a beautiful gate of entrance into the life of the Church. If we as a Church ever fail to recognize the Lord and the power of His Word to guide our lives and form the Church, then we are letting things which defile and make a lie enter that Holy City. But if we remain true to the Word of the Lord in His Second Coming, recognizing that it gets its light from the new inspired words of the Lord, then there will be no need for sun or moon in that City, for the glory of God will lighten it, and the Lamb will be the light thereof. Amen.

Lessons: Revelation 21:23; True Christian Religion 779


True Christian Religion 779
Since the Lord cannot manifest Himself in Person, as shown just above, and nevertheless has foretold that He was to come and establish a new church, which is the New Jerusalem, it follows that He will do this by means of a man, who is able not only to receive these doctrines in his understanding but also to publish them by the press. That the Lord manifested Himself before m, His servant, and sent me to this office, that He afterward opened the eyes of my spirit and thus introduced me into the spiritual world and granted me to see the heavens and the hells, and to talk with angels and spirits, and this now continuously for several years, I affirm in truth; as also that from the firs day of that call I have not received anything whatever pertaining to the doctrines of that church from any angel, but from the Lord alone while I have read the Word.”