What Is The True Christian Religion?/Chapter 13
CHAPTER XIII
THE GREAT RED DRAGON
The Book of Revelation has never been understood by the Christian Church. Protestants understand very well that the reference to the Last Judgment upon the Great Harlot means a judgment upon the Roman Catholic hierarchy. But they do not know that their generally accepted belief of Faith Alone, which has been described in these pages as to its evils, is the Great Dragon. It is not to be wondered at that the Book of Revelation has been to them largely a sealed book, except as to the fate of the Roman Church in its final end. Of course, it is a sealed book to the Roman Church whose adherents are not encouraged to read it.
The most fantastic interpretations have been made of the book by Protestants whose eyes are closed as to its spiritual content. It never occurs to them that the Protestant Church so far as this central belief of Faith Alone is concerned should also be condemned as completely as the Roman Church. The book pictures the end of the First Christian Age brought to its end by the evils and falsities of the two leading branches of the nominal Christian Church.
It must he understood that both the Roman and Protestant churches are condemned in the Last Judgment described in Revelation because of their evil teacings and the conduct of their leaders in confirming those evil teachings. This does nor mean that there are not vast multitudes of sincere people in both churches who have realized the Christian life. The judgment is upon religious systems which have falsified the Christian religion and destroyed its effectiveness. Whatever may be said of the Roman Church as to its falsities and evils, what could be worse than the teaching that religion is not a matter of life, but of belief without the need, and even without the possibility, of co-operating with the Lord in living well? This is the doctrine of Faith Alone.
In this New Age the nature of the Last Judgment has been revealed through a servant of the Lord Jesus Christ. Emanuel Swedenborg. Little serious attention should be paid to the claims of interpreters of the Christian religion simply because they claim to be God-directed and God-inspired. It is essential that what they claim appears to be in harmony with reason and with the Word of God. Even then their claims should be examined in a microscopic way; their beliefs compared with other beliefs; their claims thoroughly investigated as to reasonableness and probability; and compared with the basic teachings of the Sacred Scriptures. Are the teachings coming to the world through Swedenborg rational and scriptural? What is the testimony of thoughtful people as to the man and his work? It is desirable to know what position he holds in the world of thought, what students of his writings have to say about him. Any encyclopedia will give general information, but the opinions of reliable men are worthwhile.
The Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, 1911, says:
"Swedenborg was in many respects the most remarkable man of his own or any age." Ralph Waldo Emerson, among many other astounding things, wrote: "The most remarkable step in the religious history of recent ages is that made by the genius of Swedenborg.
Thomas Carlyle wrote: "More truths are confessed in his writings than those of any other man." Edwin Markham said: "Swedenborg was one of the two or three greatest intellects that have appeared upon the planet." Balzac tells us: "Swedenborg undoubtedly epitomizes all the religions, or rather the one religion of humanity." Henry Ward Beecher said: "No man can know the theology of the nineteenth century who has not read Swedenborg." A distinguished Episcopalian divine, R. Heber Newton, wrote: "The first really new conception of the character of immortality given to the world for eighteen centuries came through . . . Swedenborg . . . Swedenborg's thought has been slowly leavening the great churches of Christianity In the Western world." Another distinguished Episcopalian clergyman, Joseph Fort Newton, says of Swedenborg's writings: "They helped me to interpret the doctrines of our Christian faith as nothing else has ever done." But similar testimonies could be applied without limit. At least one can say that thoughtful people regard his message as superlative. And therefore we present his interpretation of the 12th chapter of the Book of Revelation as at least worthy of the most serious consideration, certainly consistent with the facts in the case and deserving of deepest study, despite one's prejudices.
The story in the 12th chapter of Revelation is of the woman clothed with the sun, the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars, in Swedenborg's Apocalypse Revealed we read that the woman represents the Lord's New Church—or the New Christian Dispensation succeeding the old and vastated church or dispensation, which New Church is later known as the New Jerusalem in the 21st chapter. Swedenborg tells us that everywhere in the Word a woman signifies the Church, or the reception of the Lord's life—the Lord the bridegroom and the Church His wife. This understanding of the woman as symbolizing the Church is everywhere received. To be clothed with the sun means to be clothed with the Divine Love which is signified by the sun because of its heat and creative power as representing Divine Love. The moon under the woman's feet—its light derived from the sun—tells us of the New Church founded upon Faith in the Lord and about to be on the earth. The crown of twelve stars represents the completeness of the knowledges (stars) of Divine good and Divine truth from the Word.
The woman was travailing and about to bring forth a man child, the child representing the new teaching of the Christian religion about to be brought forth, the travailing signifying the resistance on the part of those opposed to the new understanding of religion. We can well understand that a new doctrine revealing the iniquity of the doctrine of Faith Alone would be resisted by those who accept Faith Alone.
Swedenborg tells us that the Great Dragon signifies those who make God three, and who make Faith saving, but not love to the neighbor with it. The two essentials of the New Church, and its doctrine, the man-child, are (1) that God is one in Jesus: (Did not Paul say: "In him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily"?) and (2) that true religion is love to God and to the neighbor in thought and deed. (Jesus said, "By this shall men know that ye are my disciples if ye have love one to another.")
Thus religion is covered by obedience to the Ten Commandments, both in the letter and in spirit, and thus to the Two Great Commandments, which Jesus asserts is true religion.
Of course, the inspiration to keep those commandments and the power to do so are from the Lord alone, whose victory over the hells makes it possible for man so to aspire and so to live, for without Him we can do nothing.
It is true that the church of the past has divided Deity into three separate and distinct Persons—as in the Athanasian creed—"each of whom is by Himself God and Lord". But actually today most churches look upon Jesus as a kind of subordinate Deity, as a Son subject to the Father, despite the fact that He said: "All power is given unto me in heaven and earth." And they look upon the Holy Spirit as subject to both Father and Son, but as a Person separate and distinct from the Father and the Son.
But they say that God is One, even though, they claim that God is divided into three co-equal Uncreate, Infinite and Eternal Beings, making obviously three Divine Beings or Gods, and yet from many statements, they seem to feel that the Son is subordinate and the Holy Spirit still more subordinate.
They somehow cannot realize that God is one as we, and has three aspects, or phases of His being, just as man has a soul, manifested through a body, and has a life of activity proceeding from his soul through the body.