“These things I have spoken to you in parables, but the hour is coming when I will no more speak to you
in proverbs, but will announce to you plainly concerning the Father.” - John 16:25
There is ONE God, the Lord Jesus Christ, in whom is the Divine Trinity. There is no angry God the Father
who had to be appeased by the blood of the Son who will then send the Holy Spirit to save us from
damnation. The Lord God is Mercy itself, and with His infinite Love (the Father) He came into the
world in Human form (the Son) so that we could know and picture Him and feel His effect in
our lives (the Holy Spirit). Just as we might talk about a person’s soul, body, and his effect
on those around him, so the trinity is a way of talking about three essentials of the one God.
See supporting passages.
The Word:
The Word (the Bible) is a revelation by God of Divine truth itself. Every
word in the Old and New Testaments is from the mouth of the Lord. In the Word He teaches us that
there is a God, that there is a heaven and a hell, and that there is life after death. He also
teaches us how we must live and what we must believe in order to come into heaven and thus into
eternal happiness. Without this revelation, we would know nothing about any of these things.
See supporting passages.
The Word has an internal sense which lies hidden as a soul in a body. The
infinite truth within the Word is not always immediately evident; in fact, many parts of the
Word can seem confusing or irrelevant. Nevertheless within every detail of the Old and New
Testaments there is a deeper meaning and it is because of this deeper meaning that the Word is holy.
See supporting passages. or See two examples of this.
The life of religion is to shun evils because they are sins against the Lord and to do what is good
because it is from the Lord. We should not do what is dishonest, unjust, and insincere because these things are of the devil and
from the devil. We should do what is honest, just, and faithful because these things are of God
and from God. To the extent that we shun evils as sins, we do what is good not from ourselves but from the Lord.
See supporting passages.
Salvation:
People who believe in the Lord are saved. To believe in Him is to have confidence that He
saves and only those who live good lives can have that confidence. See supporting passages.
People of all religions who acknowledge God and live well can be saved.
We are not judged solely according to our faith and what we know, but according to what we love
and how we live. See supporting passages.
Life after Death:
There is life after death. Within our natural bodies, each of us is an
eternal soul. We are spiritual and we live after death in human form. See supporting passages.
We are all created to become angels of heaven. The Lord loves all the people
He has created and wants all of us to experience the greatest possible joy. See supporting passages.
We choose heaven or hell by choosing what we love and how we live. The Lord casts no one
into hell. A heavenly or hellish life is a matter of our free choice. See supporting passages.
Heaven is a kingdom of useful service, not idleness or continual worship.
The highest angels are those that most love to serve other people. See supporting passages.
Divine Providence:
The goal of the Lord's Providence is to create a heaven from the human race. The Lord
always looks to our eternal happiness in everything that He does. See supporting passages.
The Lord's Providence operates according to laws. These laws are now revealed so that we
may not attribute events to chance or to our own planning. See supporting passages.
The Lord is always providing for our eternal welfare. He never permits anything
evil to happen unless He is able to bring some good out of it. Whatever decisions we make, the Lord
is always leading us toward the greatest possible happiness. See supporting passages.
Marriage:
All joy, happiness, and delight from the Lord are gathered into the love of marriage.
Men and women were created to be joined together as the heart and lungs. A husband and wife who truly
love each other and approach the Lord in their marriage will live together as married partners after
death. See supporting passages.
The Second Coming
The Second Coming of the Lord is not a coming in person but in a new and
clear understanding of who He is and how He is present in our lives. The Lord accomplished His
second coming by revealing the internal sense of the Word in the Writings for the New Church
written by Emanuel Swedenborg. See supporting passages.
