He Came as a Thief in the Night

The sharp, two-edged sword of the Word lays bare what is sinful and excusing of sin, inspires us to shun these, and implants what is good and true in their places. It is not an ordinary document but an intricate interface. Jeremiah 1:10 - King James Version (KJV) <10> See, I have this day set thee over the nations and over the kingdoms, to root out, and to pull down, and to destroy, and to throw down, to build, and to plant. Nations pertain to the heart and peoples to the mind. This verse confers authority over sins and errors, authority to rebuke and shun them; that in their places, in their nice clean empty places, the good and truth of the Lord may enter and marry. We are neither married nor given in marriage but as the angels of Heaven when the plate is clean and the cup is clean and the bread is hot and the wine is light and the divine love of the Lord marries the divine truth of the Lord in our souls. To root out has to do with loves; in this case evil loves. It is over nat

 We have briefly touched on the meaning of nations and peoples, a very frequent double expression in the Word, as being either goods and truths or those in them; or contrarily sins and errors and those in them. The driving out of the nations of Canaan here, sometimes abbreviated Canaanites and Perizzites, involves the driving out of sins and errors from the Church and from the individual: "20 Behold, I send an Angel before thee, to keep thee in the way, and to bring thee into the place which I have prepared. 21 Beware of him, and obey his voice, provoke him not; for he will not pardon your transgressions: for my name is in him. 22 But if thou shalt indeed obey his voice, and do all that I speak; then I will be an enemy unto thine enemies, and an adversary unto thine adversaries. 23 For mine Angel shall go before thee, and bring thee in unto the Amorites, and the Hittites, and the Perizzites, and the Canaanites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites: and I will cut them off. 24 Thou shalt

Today we will cover positive and negative senses of cannibalism in the Word; not obviously to be gross but because the Word mentions both senses frequently. Everyone even superficially familiar with the Gospel knows that believers effectively eat His flesh and drink His blood; which has been amply explained as making His love and excuses to be loving (or divine truth) a part of our spiritual bodies. So we will look first at the Lord's Sermon on Flesh and Blood, where He says: "Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you" (John 6:53). He continues in the same vein, and He obviously means that we are to make His love and teachings part of ourselves. For: "He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, and I in him" (John 6:56). This familiar language representing a network of knowing love between God and all who worship Him in spirit and truth has simply been expressed usin

Today we will look at a subject dear to my heart, and dear to the heart of every religious person whose heart is not made out of stone: the fate of people who die in other religions than that of the Church. The typical doctrine that people hear from supposed Christian teachers goes something like this: people can only be saved if they convert to Christianity. Some of these 'teachers' will mumble a bit of add-on about 'only God knowing their hearts', and they are well to do this! Because it is correct, and they should not simply, pointblank say that people of other religions go to Hell after they die as too many say and believe. The common verse quoted to 'prove' the assertion that people who die in other religions go to Hell comes from Acts: "Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved" (Acts 4:12). If people only have the literal sense to go by, then even if they do have hearts

Mention has often been made of the true, spiritual meaning of the Children of Israel being commanded to drive out the Canaanite and the Perizzite from the land of Canaan; and thus enter in to possess it. The correspondences Canaanite and Perizzite can actually mean good and truth respectively; but since these peoples fell from good and truth, the correspondence generally gets used in the reversed position and thus means sin and error. The use of the two terms alone as though they were nations and peoples but expressive of spiritual qualities stands as a symbol for all the sins and errors which we are to drive out of our lives inside and out in order to be allowed into the Heavenly Canaan. The book of Revelation uses a very similar arrangement when it refers to our Lord's being crucified "in that great city which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt" (Revelation 11:8); in that case, we may say more generally that He was crucified by sin and error and more specifically by

Of Revelation 8:17 the Word relates the following: ""The first angel sounded," signifies the exploration and manifestation of the quality of the state of the church with those who are interiorly in that faith, (398). "And there became hail and fire mingled with blood," signifies falsity from infernal love destroying good and truth, and falsifying the Word, (399). "And they were cast upon the earth, and the third part of the trees was burnt up," signifies that with them, every affection and perception of truth, which constitute the man of the church, had perished, (400). "And all green grass was burnt up," signifies thus every living thing of faith, (401)" (Apocalypse Revealed 387). Here is the verse in question: "The first angel sounded, and there followed hail and fire mingled with blood, and they were cast upon the earth: and the third part of trees was burnt up, and all green grass was burnt up" (Revelation 8:17). We have r