PREFACE.
The visions of St. John as recorded in the Apocalypse, are confessedly among the grandest ever experienced. Throughout the domains of poetry or fiction there is nothing to be compared with them in sublimity. But what is the import of these visions? What do they typify or foreshadow? And how is their meaning to be elicited?
These questions have been asked a thousand times; and the multitude of conflicting answers which have been given by various commentators, have impressed the wiser ones with the conviction that God must raise up "some theological Newton," and endow him with an extraordinary measure of his Spirit, before we can hope to arrive at the true meaning of this wonderful Book. And not a few have expected that some such divinely authorized expositor would one day arise.
The reader, doubtless, will smile incredulously when I assure him that this expectation has actually been fulfilled in the person of Emanuel Swedenborg. If so, my sole response to his incredulous yet pardonable smile, is: "Come and see."
The grand Key to the treasures of wisdom in the Apocalypse, which Swedenborg offers to all who
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