Page:A Compendium of the Theological Writings of Emanuel Swedenborg.djvu/483

Rh in Jerusalem shall he called holy, every one that is written among the living in Jerusalem" (Isaiah iv. 2, 3). "At that time they shall call Jerusalem the Throne of Jehovah, and all nations shall he gathered into it, on account of the name of Jehovah at Jerusalem; neither shall they walk any more after the stubborness of their evil heart" (Jer. iii. 17). "Look upon Zion, the city of our festivities: Thine eyes shall see Jerusalem a quiet Hahitation, a Tabernacle that shall not be taken down; not one of the stakes thereof shall ever be removed, neither shall any of the cords thereof be broken" (Isaiah xxxiii. 20). That by Jerusalem here the church is meant which was to be instituted by the Lord, and not the Jerusalem inhabited by the Jews, is manifest from every part of its description in the passages adduced; as that Jehovah God would create a new heaven and a new earth, and also at the same time Jerusalem; and that this Jerusalem would be a crown of glory and a royal diadem; that it was to be called Holiness, and the City of Truth, the Throne of Jehovah, a Quiet Habitation, a Tabernacle that shall not be taken down; that there the wolf and the lamb shall feed together; and there it is said the mountains shall drop new wine, and the hills shall flow with milk, and that it shall abide from generation to generation; and, besides many other things, it is also said of the people there that they should be holy, every one written among the living; and that they should be called the Redeemed of Jehovah, Moreover, in all these passages the coming of the Lord is referred to; especially His second coming, when Jerusalem will be such as is there described. For before she was not married, that is, made the bride and wife of the Lamb, as is said of the New Jerusalem in the Apocalypse. The former church, or that of the present day, is meant by Jerusalem in Daniel; and its beginning is there described by these words: "Know and perceive that from the going forth of the word for restoring and building Jerusalem, even to the Prince Messiah, shall be seven weeks; after that in sixty and two weeks the street and the trench shall be restored and built, but in troublous times" (ix. 25). And its end is there described by these words: "At length upon the bird of abominations shall be desolation, and even to the consummation and decision it shall drop upon the devastation" (ver. 27). These last are what are meant by the Lord's words in Matthew: "When ye shall see the abomination of desolation, foretold by Daniel the prophet, standing in the holy place, let him that readeth observe well" (xxiv. 25). That Jerusalem in the passages above quoted did not mean the Jerusalem inhabited by the Jews, may be seen from the passages in the Word where it is said of this that it was utterly lost, and that it was to be destroyed. (T. C. R. n. 782.)