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254 SWEDENBORG’S CORRESPONDENCE. [Doc. 231.
standing a real city by God’s city. You say it must be under
stood spiritually. Please send me another reply before you
die ; or doubts will enter into our minds even on what you
have stated concerning man’s state after death.
Jehovah appeared unto Gideon (Judges vi, 4), saying, “I
have sent thee." Gideon replied, " Shew me a sign that thou
talkest with me. " You have given us several remarkable signs
touching man’s existence after death. They are important, but
not sufficient to cause us to believe that the Revelation of
John is to be understood only spiritually, and not corporeally
and literally. You also, I suppose, have asked for signs ; but
your signs are not for us. Give us a sign that your doctrine
.
of the New Jerusalem is true ; God cannot say anything contra
dictory to His spirit. I pray you therefore to crave permission
from the Lord, who has appeared to you, to interrogate John
as to the truth of your explanation. As you have conversed
with Enos, you may unhesitatingly demand to speak with the
twelve apostles and with Paul, whose epistles you do not quote.
Or would you have us believe you rather than Paul, and rather
than John ? Does not Paul say, "Should any one preach an
other gospel unto you, let him be accursed ? " Why do you
never make mention in your writings of having conversed with
the twelve apostles or the twenty-four elders ?
But suppose, as Paul says, a false angel of light, who is
opposed to the literal sense of John’s Revelation, should have
resolved and said, "I will be a lying spirit in the mouth of
Swedenborg" (2 Chron. xviii).
How important the Word spoken by Jesus at the end of
the Revelation (xxii, 18), " If any one shall add, ———and if
* Dr. Immanuel Tafel retorts here (p. 353), "This passage does not
apply to Swedenborg ; for by ’another gospel’ Etinger understood here
either a new Word of God, or a new doctrine from the Word opposed to
that which was preached by the apostles. Yet Swedenborg never pretended
to publish a new Word of God, and it would have to be proved first that
his doctrine is contradictory to that preached by the apostles. But the fact
of Swedenborg’s revealing many new things in the former Word, i. e. many
things which were heretofore not noticed in it, and his confirming these
things by corresponding experiences, does not by any means militate against
the Word of God and against the doctrine of the apostles ; but, on the
contrary, is quite in conformity therewith."
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