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"In that day you shall know that I am in My
Father, and you in Me, and I in you" (John 14: 19).
"After this work was finished, the Lord called
together His twelve disciples who had followed Him in the world,
and.....He sent them forth into the whole spiritual world to preach
the gospel that the Lord God Jesus Christ reigns, whose kingdom
shall be from ages to ages.....and blessed are they that are called
to the marriage supper of the lamb" (TCR 791). |
"In that day," said the Lord. That day is the day of the Lord's second coming. It was a prophecy of the time when He, as the Spirit of truth would lead men into all truth, when He would show us plainly of the Father. There are many things which you cannot understand," said the Lord to His disciples, "but wait until He, the spirit of Truth, comes, .....in that day."
That day has come. "I am in My father."
The Father is the Divine love which before the Lord's coming
was invisible, unknowable, unapproachable, because men
had removed themselves so far from the Divine love that they had
closed their minds to its tenderness. They had shut out the light
of His Word and it had become a dead letter. The Lord reached
out to men, but He could not touch them.
Divine Love Came Down
So Divine love came down. Divine love, as the incarnation seed, entered the womb of Mary and wove for itself a body - a finite, human body.
When that body was born into the world the Divine love was inmostly present as its soul, so that it could be called the Son of God. As the Child grew, He willed to be imbued with knowledges from His Word. He learned other knowledges from nature - scientifics - but all things that He learned were ordered according to the truth of His Word, which He loved from an inmost desire to save men. This inmost love gradually became visible in the words and deeds of the Lord Jesus Christ.
This love to save men was now near to them in a human form that
was tangible, a human mind which could communicate with other
minds, a human mind that could become gradually Divine truth itself.
The Truths of the Word, which other men could no longer understand,
the Lord took into His own mind and, from His loved to save men,
organized those truths and accommodated them in a new way so that
He could be called the Son of Man - the Word made flesh.
His Human Mind Was at First Finite
But because His human mind was at first finite, and limited, it was subject to human appearances of truth. There were limitation to those thoughts which the Lord had in His human consciousness. And because there were adjoined to, or touching that human nature, hereditary inclinations to evil taken from Mary, the hells could flow in through those inclinations and excite and stir up doubts - human appearances of truth; such as that the human race could not be saved; or that the human nature which the Lord had put on could not be glorified and retained. The hells fought against everything that Divine love had come to accomplish.
But the Lord in His human, as if from the human, in appearance separated entirely from the power of Divine love, endured grievous doubts:
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"For I beheld, and there was no man; I looked among them and there was no counselor, who, when I asked of them, could answer a word" (Isaiah 41: 28). "He was despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief" (Isaiah 53:3). "And He saw that there was no man, and wondered that there was no intercessor; therefore, His own arm brought salvation unto Him; and His own righteousness, it sustained Him" (Isaiah 59: 15). |
Appearance of Being Alone Necessary
It was necessary that He be alone - in a very real appearance in the human - that He could fight against the hells from His own truth in the human, and open His human to the Divine; calling to the Father as if His infinite love were somebody outside of Him; that that love might descend into, and become one with the human; that it might be humanized, knowable, lovable, touchable; and also that the human whereby He drew near to men - that whole plane of natural thought and feeling - could be glorified.
The human was not done away with, but was glorified, made Divine, lifted up, to be the very form of the Divine love. For indeed, the Divine Human of the Lord is the Divine love now in human form, accommodated so it can be loved and perceived by all in whom the Lord God Jesus Christ reigns.
Good, so formed that it may be intellectually perceived is truth. Love, so formed that it can be felt and touched as a human quality is the Divine Human. How is this present with us? How important become the Lord's words, then, before He glorified His human when He said, ".....in that day you shall know that I am in my father" - that the humanity He put on is now the very form and approach to His infinite love to save. Because of this He said, "and you are in Me, and I in you."
Even as the Lord Jesus Christ entered into and became one with the Father or the Divine love - that is, into full union - so, in image and likeness, are we to be regenerated by the Lord; that is open our minds to His Divine Human that He may lift us up into conjunction with Himself, that it may be said, according to reception that we are in the Lord. We could not be in the Lord if He had not come down; and if His humanity had not entered into the Father.
And when we enter into the Lord, by opening our lives and receiving Him, He is in us in the fullest sense. It is His Divine, then, that makes everything that is good and true with us.
Hear the Word of the Lord as it is written in the Apocalypse Explained:
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"There is nothing pertaining to any angel which makes heaven in him, nor anything in man pertaining to any man which makes the church in him but the Divine proceeding from the Lord; for that all the truth of faith and all the good of love is from the Lord and nothing of them from man is a known thing. From these considerations it is evident that the Lord is all in all of heaven and the church. That we are in the Lord and He in us He Himself teaches.....'In that day you shall know that you are in Me and I in you.' All the angels of heaven and all the men of the true church are in the Lord when they are in the Grand Man, or the heavenly form. Angels and men in such case are in the Lord because they are recipients of life from Him, thus in His Divine, and the Lord is in them because He is the very life, the very good and truth in the recipients." |
The second part of our text is from the True Christian Religion 791:
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"After this work was finished, the Lord called together His twelve disciples.....and sent them forth into the whole spiritual world to preach the gospel that the Lord God Jesus Christ reigns.....[and] blessed are those who come to the marriage supper of the Lamb." |
The Lord Sent Out His Disciples
It is significant that the Lord, at the time of His second coming, sent out His disciples. Disciples represent truths which clothe the Divine Human in the Writings - appearances in rational form that bring the Divine good and the Divine truth of the Divine Human to us.
The Divine must be accommodated. And so the Lord sent out His disciples to preach this wonderful gospel. And in order that this truth - that accommodation or clothing for His Divine Human - might be given, the Lord raised up Emanuel Swedenborg, and prepared him; utilizing in the Divine Providence the rational ideas of Swedenborg's mind to clothe this wonderful proceeding of the Divine; so that when we look to the Writings we see the Lord God Jesus Christ shining forth in the glory of His Divine Human; visible, the all in all of life, of heaven, and the church.
Only in this portion of the three-fold Word (The True Christian Religion) is that full and wonderful name of the Lord used - Lord God Jesus Christ! The name "Lord" refers to the Divine love, which is unchangeable - always was, is, and always will be, but has not always been felt and seen in its own form.
"God" is the Divine Word, the first standing forth
of that love which was in the beginning; from which all things
were created, but which also is above our comprehension. But
the name "Jesus Christ" refers to the Divine Human;
the Divine love and the Divine wisdom proceeding now in human
form, to be with men, and to save them, even on the plane
of natural life.
The Lamb
Blessed are they that are called to the marriage supper of the Lamb.
Who is the Lamb? When John, baptizing in the Jordan River, beheld the Lord standing by the banks, he said, "Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world."
And when another John, on the Isle of Patmos, saw into the spiritual world, and the heavens were opened and a book sealed with seven seals was seen, who was worthy to open the book? The Lamb that was slain! Now we are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.
The "Lamb is a special name for the Divine Human, and the Divine Human is the Lord's name for the New Church. A name has within it quality. In the other world a name can only be mentioned if the quality of the name is written on the heart of the one who speaks.
Swedenborg describes many from the clergy of the Christian world, and many from the laity, who were asked to say Jesus Christ, or one God, or Divine Human, and their lips were paralyzed. In the spiritual world it is not the memory or the mouth that speaks; it is the heart. Upon the hearts of those there the quality of that name was not written, so they could not speak it.
When we, as New Churchmen, enter the spiritual world, will we be able to say the Lord God Jesus Christ reigns? Yes, if His name - the quality of His love and wisdom - is not only etched in the contents of our understanding, but is written upon our hearts and manifested in the works and deeds of our life.
The Lord God Jesus Christ reigns. When we read His Word and know of Him, and begin to understand His teachings, our minds are open to the influx of Divine truth, the living Word within. This is the Lord's love now visible in its glory. This love and wisdom - good and truth - the living Word, then descends from within and illumines those knowledges taken into the memory from the written Word which define the nature of God. The Lord stands forth in bold vision in our minds as a Divine Man, the infinite God of love and mercy.
Blessed indeed are they that are called to the marriage supper of the Lamb.
As we approach the anniversary of the Lord's second coming, let
our prayer be that the Lord will lead us to fashion in our minds
a picture of His Divine Human, and may we be able to say
always, from living faith, His precious name - Lord God Jesus
Christ! Blessed indeed are they who are called to the
marriage supper of the Lamb. Amen.
Arcana Coelestia 2034: 2
When speaking of His union with the Father, the Lord speaks immediately
and without a break of His conjunction with the human race, because
this was the cause of the union, as is evident in John: "that
they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me and I in You;
that they also may be one in Us.....And the glory which You gave
Me I have given them that they be one just as We are one: I in
them and You in Me.....And I have declared to them Your name,
and will declare it, that the love with which You loved Me may
be in them....." (17: 21-23, 26), from which it is evident
that in the union of Himself with the Father the Lord had in view
the conjunction of Himself with the human race, and that He had
this at heart because it was His love, for all conjunction is
effected by means of love, love being conjunction itself.
True Christian Religion 791
After this work was finished the Lord called together His twelve disciples who followed Him in the world, and the next day He sent them all forth throughout the whole spiritual world to preach the gospel that The Lord God Jesus Christ reigns, whose kingdom shall be for ages and ages, according to the prediction in Daniel (7: 13,14) and in the Apocalypse (11: 15); also that "blessed are those that come to the marriage supper of the Lamb" (Rev. 19: 9). This took place on the nineteenth day of June, 1770. This is what is meant by these words of the Lord; "He shall send His angels and they shall gather together His elect from one end of heaven to the other" (Matt. 24: 31).