December
18

Isaiah 60:15. “Instead of thy being forsaken and hated, and none passing through [thee], I will set thee for an eternal excellence, a joy of a generation and generation.”

For the children from Isaiah 62

6. On thy walls, O Jerusalem, I have appointed watchmen; all the day and all the night continually they shall not be silent. For you who make mention of Jehovah, there shall not be stillness;

7. and give Him no stillness, until He establish, and until He set Jerusalem [as] a praise in the earth….

10. Pass through, pass through into the gates; sweep the way of the people! Build up, build up the highway; clear it of stones! Lift high a standard above the peoples!

11. Behold, Jehovah has made it to be heard to the edge of the land: Say ye to the daughter of Zion, Behold, thy Salvation comes! Behold, His reward is with Him, and His work before Him.

12. And they shall call them the people of holiness, the redeemed of Jehovah; and thou shalt be called Sought After, a city not forsaken!

Readings from the Heavenly Doctrine

TCR 108. ...The Lord is at this day forming a new angelic heaven, and… it is formed of those who believe in the Lord God the Savior, and who approach Him directly, and… all others are rejected. So hereafter, when anyone from Christendom goes into the spiritual world (as every man does at death) and does not believe in the Lord and approach Him alone, and is then unable to receive this faith, because he has lived wickedly or has confirmed himself in falsities, at his first approach toward heaven he is repelled, and turns his face away from heaven and towards the lower earth, to which he goes, and joins those who are there, who are meant in Revelation by "the dragon" and the "false prophet."

Moreover, henceforth no man in Christian lands is listened to unless he believes in the Lord. [If not] his prayers become in heaven like ill-scented odors, and like belches from ulcerated lungs. And even if his appeal is thought to be like the fumes of incense, it ascends towards the angelic heaven only like the smoke of a conflagration which is blown back into his eyes by a downward gust of wind; or it is like the incense from a censer hidden under a monk’s cloak. Such is the case hereafter with all piety that is directed to a divided trinity, not to a united trinity.

To show that the Divine trinity is united in the Lord is the chief object of this work.

To this I will add the following new information. Some months ago the twelve apostles were called together by the Lord and were sent forth through the whole spiritual world, as they formerly were through the whole natural world, with the command to preach this gospel. To each apostle was assigned a particular province; and they are executing this command with great zeal and industry. But on these subjects more will be said in the last chapter of this book, where the Consummation of the Age, the Lord’s Coming and the New Church are specially treated.

previous		next