What Is The True Christian Religion?/Chapter 14
CHAPTER XIV
THE LORD IS ONE
The time is come, according to Swedenborg, when the Church must realize that God is one and indivisible, just as is a man made in the Divine image and likeness; and also that God projected Himself into human life by self-limitation as Jesus, with three objectives:
(1) To reveal Himself to men,
(2) In order to save mankind from the power of the hells, and
(3) In order to provide an eternal and Divine Dynamo to make the Divine Love and Truth and Power available to man.
No more confusing and misleading idea of the Divine Being can be offered than that of the old teaching that God exists in three separate and distinct individuals "each of whom is by Himself God and Lord." It is like having three separate suns for our solar system instead of one, or three separate centers for a circle. While all Christians say that God is one, many insist that God is three separate, coequal equal and distinct Beings. This belief is a part of the "Plan of Salvation."
And yet many, after making that claim, inconsistently enough, make the Son subordinate and the Holy Spirit still more subordinate.
But even that after all is a belief in Three Separate Divine Beings.
The Dragon is "red” because of its infernal falsity. It is called "great” because the tenet of Three Gods and Faith Alone are almost universally held.
But why is this frightful beast called a Dragon? The dictionary tells us that a dragon is a mythical monster, of the serpent species, and is regarded even still in some countries as the embodiment of evil". In the 19th chapter of Revelation the dragon is called "that old serpent, which is the Devil, and Satan". We know that the real nature of the serpent in the Garden of Eden was subtle and insinuating, and as our first parents listened to its voice, they were led by excited self-love to reject the Divine.
In mythology the dragon was frightful in its aspect, threatening to destroy, and it breathed out smoke and flame in order to reach or frighten its victims at a distance from its claws.
In Revelation the its seven head signified insanity from the truths of the Word falsified, or as the dogma of Faith Alone, and its ten horns signified much power, for horns in animal life are the means with which the animal fights, "Ten" covers the idea of "all," as for example, the ten fingers on both hands.
When we read that its tail drew down the third part of the stars of heaven, (this signifying—in another aspect—as purpose, cause and effect—three or "all") and cast them to the earth we learn that by the falsification of the truths of the Word in sinuous reasonings all the spiritual knowledge of the good and the true were falsified; but we also learn that practically all were of Christendom drawn to accept its infernal teachings.
If one thinks this a fanciful picture, and has no real relation to the church, he should remember that the followers of the Dragon, who accepted the teaching of Luther that Faith Alone saves, came to have great power, for the church became thoroughly imbued with this false teaching. John Calvin, one of the great supporters of this doctrine, who was led to believe that some people were predestined to hell regardless of their lives, or predestined to heaven regardless of their characters, was able to have an opposer of the Dragon, Michael Servetus, burnt at the stake because he opposed the Dragonistic teaching of three Gods.
And people everywhere in the middle ages when Protestantism became powerful became afraid to think for themselves in matters of religion because of the persecution of the Dragonists. History records such persecutions because of denial of accepted dogmas.
But their power is waning despite the fact that hundreds of voices over the radio today constantly broadcast to the entire country devastating doctrine. And there are many voices in countless pulpits at work to make people believe that they are saved only by the Vicarious Atonement, even though they most inconsistently preach as indispensable repentance and the changed life!
The two ideas are obviously absolutely opposed. If nothing that a man can do has any effect in saving him, why follow the injunction of Jesus to repent and change his life? It is far easier to believe in a dogma and get to heaven by a miracle, or acquire a Christian character without effort.
Genuine repentance evidently means to give up ones evil and by the Lord's power to overcome. It represents human effort. "He that overcometh", we are told, "shall inherit all things, and I will be his God, and he shall be my son," That does not sound like the statement that a man can do nothing of good that will contribute one iota to his salvation but is like a stock or scone when it comes to salvation.
When Jesus said, "If any man will man come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily and follow me", we can find no trace of the Plan of Salvation, but rather the idea of becoming at one with God by the effort to give up one's evils, which is the conflict involved in bearing the cross, and following Jesus daily in the unselfish life. Christian character, it is perfectly evident, can no more be acquired without personal effort than can an education. If that is true, what about the Plan of Salvation where we have only to believe?