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Emmanuel Swedenborg was born in 1688 in Stockholm. He went to university, became famous for his work in the sciences and inventions, and was regarded as a genius. In 1743, however, he began to have powerful dreams and two years later was approached by a man in a diner who claimed he was God and Swedenborg should write about the spiritual meanings of the Bible. Swedenborg did. He devoted his life to it and had many meetings with supernatural entities and felt he was divinely appointed to write a new and improved doctrine for the church that would also signal the next coming of Christ (Christensen). The doctrine Swedenborg wrote was largely an “allegorical and esoteric (non-literal) metaphysical interpretation of Bible.” (Christensen.) It incorporated the law of correspondences and the idea of there being a spiritual reality/world and a physical one which employed that law, so that anything that happened in the causal (physical) world had to happen in the corresponding spiritual world first. In addition to this, Swedenborg also claimed that a spiritual second coming had already happened in 1757, resulting in more spiritual understanding, an influx of spiritual energy coming to Earth and the ability for us to now really evolve and grow spiritually (which was our purpose in life) (Christensen). Eternal progression of the soul was also a theme of his work; you do not just have one life, you take on another form of existence that corresponds to where you are at. You existed before you came to Earth and you will continue on. The idea of angels and demons simply being the deceased in a new form, trying to influence you was also his idea. Swedenborg established the New Jerusalem Church in 1787 in London. From Swedenborgianism we draw the “the Spiritualist notion of communication with person on the other side.” (Kyle)
Alternative Religions Continued...
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