Not a Bride Until a Holy City
Conjunction with the Lord is Exclusively Through the Heavenly Doctrines of the New Church
Our culture asks us to dismiss differences as equally valid choices. Even in our church organization, there is a growing impression that the New Church is little different from “other” Christian churches, since we basically believe the same thing and how a person lives is more important than what a person believes.
But there is one critical difference: the source of our ideas. Christian churches are all based on merely human inference from the literal stories of the Word. The New Church is based on a spiritual understanding of the internal meaning of those stories revealed by the Lord through Emanuel Swedenborg.
Of course, what makes a church is the life according to faith, a life represented by the holy city prepared as a bride; life is what conjoins a person to the Lord. However the New Church is first described as a holy city because the system of doctrine must come first in time, since doctrine teaches how to live rightly.
In a culture dominated by self-intelligence, it is hard to appeal to a higher truth, an absolute and unchanging truth. The acknowledgement of the Lord Jesus Christ in His Divine Human revealed in the Word is what makes the New Church different.
Spiritual Peace Comes from Being Taught by the Lord
The world today is easily described by the vision of the rider on the red horse. The red horse corresponds to thinking of the Word as a source of truth but not of good. Without good, truth becomes falsity and when falsity is used as a weapon the only result is dissention, conflict among religious people, and anxiety. The Lord is raising up a New Church to bring a new peace to heaven and earth, and into your heart and mind.
Through Isaiah, the Lord calls to us in our cultural and personal suffering, rage, and irritation, comforting us with the promise of peace. The Lord relieves the suffering, quiets the rage, and calms the irritation by rebuilding our lives with precious stones, showing us the light within what were thought to be merely rocks. Learning of that light is to be taught by the Lord. Following the Lord’s teaching renews the truth of the Word as a form of good, as a source of life rather than a source of dissention and conflict. True peace comes from being taught by the Lord.
