What Is The True Christian Religion?/Chapter 15
CHAPTER XV
JUDGMENT UPON THE DRAGON
But we have not finished with the Great Red Dragon. We read in Revelation that this terrifying impersonation of evil stood before the woman to devour her offspring as soon as it should be born. Obviously this means, spiritually, the effort of those in the false belief to extinguish the doctrine of the need to repent and to overcome by the power of Jesus.
But the Dragon was determined to destroy the man-child the doctrine which Jesus taught, which indeed the whole Bible teaches, of one God in Jesus and becoming at one with Him by repentance and living the changed life. And so we are told the woman's offspring was caught up unto God and His throne to protect it from the assaults of the Dragon— who is "the Devil and Satan, the Old Serpent," "who deceiveth the whole world."
The world was not ready for it when this new doctrine was first proclaimed in this New Age through Emanuel Swedenborg, and God had to keep it out of sight of men. Swedenborg wrote the Apocalypse Revealed in 1766, quite a long while ago, but the Lord permitted it to be largely out of the sight of men. It, and his other works, have been relatively unknown, even though today his books are being circulated by thousands every year. Thus the male-child, the doctrine of true religion, was kept away from those who would have profaned and destroyed it.
And then we are told that the woman fled into the wilderness—the woman being the love of the Lord and His truth—"where she hath a place prepared by God." There she was to remain until the fury of the Dragon should abate and cease to have power to destroy.
But, "there was war in heaven, Michael and his angels fought with the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels, and they prevailed not, and their place was not found any more in heaven; and the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, that seduceth the whole world."
By Michael, Swedenborg tells us, is meant the ministry of a great society of heaven "who confirm from the Word that the Lord Jesus is the God of heaven and earth, and that men ought to live according to the commandments of the Decalogue," and, doing so, they have love to the neighbor and, also, that heavenly perception which is called faith. Faith thus comes into being when people have the Divine love in their hearts. Any other kind of faith is spurious faith.Faith, Swedenborg tells us, is not believing what we cannot see to be true, but believing, from, the Divine love in our hearts, what spiritually we perceive as real, just as one who believes in the reality of things which his natural eyes see. "Spiritual things are spiritually discerned."
But we have noted that the Great Red Dragon was cast out of heaven by the opposing belief held by Michael and his angels. This is a picture of what we are told actually took place in the spiritual world in 1757; but the heaven from which the Dragon and his crew were cast out was not the true heaven, instead a false heaven created by illusion. The earth into which they fell was not our earth, but a low plane of the world of spirits. For those who are interested in reading Swedenborg's description of the Last Judgment, which he witnessed in 1757, his book entitled "The Last Judgment" and "Continuation Concerning the Last Judgment" should be read. They can be found in the larger public libraries of the country.
When this Last Judgment was effected, we read in Revelation: "I heard a great voice in heaven, saying, Now is come the salvation, and the power, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of his Christ." This expresses the joy of the angels of heaven at the overthrow of this monstrous belief and the firm and everlasting setting up of the true Christian religion, which is the acknowledgment of the Lord Jesus Christ as the only God and Saviour, and the life according to the commandment of love to God and the neighbor embraced in the Ten Commandments and in the Two Great Commandments.