Page:A Compendium of the Theological Writings of Emanuel Swedenborg.djvu/175

Rh Jehovah God with all thy heart and with all thy soul" (Deut, vi. 4, 5) ; but in Mark: "The Lord our God is one Lord; and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul" (xii. 29, 30). Then in Isaiah: "Prepare ye the way for Jehovah; make straight in the desert a path for our God" (xl. 3); but in Luke: "Thou shalt go before the face of the Lord to prepare the way for Him" (i. 76) ; and elsewhere. And also the Lord commanded His disciples to call Him Lord; and therefore He was so called by the Apostles in their Epistles; and afterwards by the Apostolic Church, as appears from its creed, which is called the Apostles' Creed. The reason was that the Jews did not dare to speak the name Jehovah, on account of its sanctity; and also that by Jehovah is meant the Divine Esse, which was from eternity, and the Human which He assumed in time was not that Esse. (T. C. R. n. 81.)

The reason why these things respecting the Lord are now for the first time divulged is, that it is foretold in the Revelation (xxi. and xxii.) that a new church would be instituted by the Lord at the end of the former one, in which this should be the primary truth. This church is there meant by the New Jerusalem; into which none can enter but those who acknowledge the Lord alone as the God of heaven and earth. And this I am able to proclaim, that the universal heaven acknowledges the Lord alone; and that whoever does not acknowledge Him is not admitted into heaven. For heaven is heaven from the Lord. This very acknowledgment, from love and faith, causes all there to be in the Lord and the Lord in them; as the Lord Himself teaches in John: "In that day ye shall know, that I am in My Father, and ye in Me, and I in you" (xiv. 20). And again: "Abide in Me, and I in you. . . . I am the vine, ye are the branches; he that abideth in Me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit; for without Me ye can do nothing. If a man abide not in Me, he is cast out" (xv. 4-6; xvii. 22, 23). This has not been seen before from the Word, because if seen before it would not have been received. For the last judgment had not yet been accomplished, and before that the power of hell prevailed over the power of heaven, and man is in the midst between heaven and hell; if therefore this doctrine had been seen before, the devil, that is hell, would have plucked it from the hearts of men, nay more, would have profaned it. This state of the power of hell was entirely crushed by the last judgment which has now been accomplished; since that event, that