He Came as a Thief in the Night

Thinking about the role of suffering in the overall production line whereby we regenerate and come to practice the love of God and in the neighbor in truth, one came to a parable of the Lord's which has not much been under our crosshairs here: Matthew 13:44-46 - King James Version (KJV) <44> Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto treasure hid in a field; the which when a man hath found, he hideth, and for joy thereof goeth and selleth all that he hath, and buyeth that field. <45> Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto a merchant man, seeking goodly pearls: <46> Who, when he had found one pearl of great price, went and sold all that he had, and bought it. Arcana Coelestia says of this passage the following: "'The kingdom of heaven' stands for the good and truth present with a person, and so for heaven present with him. 'Field' stands for good and 'pearl' for truth, while 'buying' stands for acquiring these and making them ...

  Part 1 One would like to begin this lecture with an apology for its shortcomings, because of all the lectures in this course this one, perhaps, has been the most challenging to think about and otherwise prepare. Nonetheless, one hopes that this effort, despite its shortcomings, will help you to see the inspired architecture of the world's religions; and to see the ways in which these sit at the Divine Human's feet and either eat His bread and drink His wine or perish.  Last year, marveling at what the Latin Word says about Islam and world religions in their relation to the Lord, one felt an inner push to read the Quran for oneself accompanied with the assurance that one would find what one sought. Well, one read their Book and found what one sought, a foundation for accepting our Muslim neighbors and teaching acceptance of the same. People in the West and in historically Christians lands are, of course, troubled by the mass immigration by other peoples and strange religions ...

One has off and on mentioned that the horse represents the understanding, and especially the spiritual understanding and that of the Word, so today we will take a closer look at that noble animal and the paraphernalia attached to it, being of course the chariot and the horseman. In brief, the horse represents understanding, the chariot doctrine, and the horseman intelligence; hence the numerous references to these three things. We are even to eat them, along with various captains and men of war, in the supper of the great God! This of course means making spiritual understanding, intelligence, and doctrine a part of our theory and practice and thus of our spiritual bodies. In Hosea the Word promises, "I will make Ephraim to ride" (10:11) -- that is, will teach Ephraim how to ride a horse -- which has been thus stated on account of what we have already covered, Ephraim as the intellectual faculty in the believer and the Church as a whole; vs Manasseh as the will faculty of the ...

The Church quintessentially involves the liberation of oneself and others from spiritual slavery and darkness with the application of the truths of faith to evils and excuses to commit them. But the worm of self-love ever gnaws at the vitals of anything remotely good, and that includes the Church, so that self-love and excuses for that love grow like mildew, mold, or other rot on or in the body of the Church. It is this process over time which has been dramatized in the siege of Jerusalem and the carrying away into captivity of its inhabitants to Babylon.  Broadly speaking, Babylon involves all inversion of religion which proceeds from the love of self and the world and aims at the domination of people with the writings and credit of the Church. Obviously, it helps along the domination of other people greatly if you manage to enslave and dumb them down, so this sort of spiritual totalitarianism inevitably involves both enslavement and endarkening. The End Times industry tends to in...

Yesterday we covered Babylon and Chaldea, which represent an inversion of the Church such that, as a Whore, it cares not about liberation but about enslavement; and not about enlightenment but about dumbing down. Today we will cover another sort of inversion of the Church, the reluctance of the Church to evangelize to those outside the Church. For one Church will differ from another in its willingness to share spiritual truth with the outsiders who are tossed about like dead leaves in a tornado for lack of just such words from the Father's mouth.  The book of Jonah especially highlights this reluctance of the Jewish pretend-Church to evangelize to the Gentiles, those outside its ranks. That the Lord did in fact want the Jewish Church to evangalize to the Gentiles may be seen quite clearly:  "Declare his glory among the heathen, his wonders among all people" (Psalms 96:3). Jonah, who represents the Jewish Church, receives the command from the Lord to warn Nineveh to turn f...

As stated, one wanted to explain sons and daughters differently this year; with reference to verses hinging on the numbers two and three. But in order to explain two and three, one had first to explain 'name'. So we will now jump into the verse one had in mind in order properly to substantiate these matters: "For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them" (Matthew 18:20). The literal sense of this verse can be seen clearly enough. It does not matter if people meet in a large group or a small group, in a cathedral or by a river, in a forest or in a living room; because what matters to God is people hearing and doing the Word while facilitating the hearing and doing of the Word for others. God does not really care about fancy buildings: humans do. God does not really care about fancy rituals: humans do. If two people share bread and wine on a wooden pier or in a factory cafeteria, what matters is not the location but whether or...