books of Genesis and Exodus. Each sentence is taken up in its order, and its spiritual import laid open; for Swedenborg maintained that "there is not an iota or apex or little twirl of the Hebrew letters which does not involve something Divine." "This," he says, "has been shown to me from Heaven; but I know it transcends belief."[1]
Second. The Apocalypse Revealed, wherein are uncovered the mysteries there foretold which have hitherto remained concealed.[2]
Third. The Apocalypse Explained, wherein are disclosed the mysteries there foretold, which have hitherto remained concealed.[3] The former is more summary, and the latter a more extended work, involving incidentally an exposition of a very considerable part of the rest of the Word.
"This year," says Swedenborg in a letter to his friend Oetinger, writing from Stockholm, Sept. 23, 1766, "there has been published the Apocalypsis Revelata, which was promised in the treatise on The Last Judgment, and from which it may be clearly seen that I converse with angels; for not the smallest verse in the Apocalypse can be understood without revelation. Who can help seeing that by the New Jerusalem a New Church is meant, and that its doctrines can only be revealed by the Lord,—because they are described there by merely typical things, i. e., by Correspondences; and likewise that these can be published to the world only by means of some one to whom the revelation has been granted? I can solemnly bear witness that the Lord Himself appeared to me, and that He sent me to do that which I am now doing; and that for this purpose He has opened the interiors of my mind, which are those of my spirit, so that I can see the things which are in the spiritual world, and hear those who are there; which [privilege] I have had now for twenty-two years. The mere bearing witness, however, does not suf-
- ↑ Arc. Cœlestia, no. 9049.
- ↑ Apocalypsis Revelata in qua deteguntur arcana quæ ibi prædicta sunt, et hactenus recondita latuerunt. Amsterdam, 1766, 410, pp. 629
- ↑ Apocalypsis Explicata secundum sensum spiritualem ubi revelantur Areana quæ ibi prædicta et hactenus recondita fuerent Ex operibus posthumis Emanuelis Swedenborgii. Londoni, in 4 vols., 4to, vol. 1, 1785; vol. 2, 1786; vol. 3, 1788; vol. 4, 1789.
