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Future of the New Church
by Rev.
Carl Th. Odhner
NEW CHURCH LIFE
1902
IN the preceding chapters on "The Distinctiveness of
the New Church" it was shown that the Lord in His Second Coming has revealed the
future conditions and ultimate fate of the perverted Christian Church. In
general, we are taught in this Divine prophecy, (1) that there will be divided
churches as before, and their doctrines will be taught as before; (2) that those
of the Old Church will remain in their external worship, as the Jews have
remained in theirs; (3) that the devastation will continue through the constant
accumulation of hereditary evil; (4) that the darkness will increase in the Old
Church, as the light increases in the New; (5) that those of the Old Church,
left by the Lord, will become as pagans who have no religion; (6) that the
externals as well as the internals of the Old Church will ultimately perish, and
(7), that the Church will then be transferred to nations which at this day are
Gentiles.
These things having been established by Doctrine, the question arises, What
of the future of the New Church in Christendom while the vastation of the Old
Church is progressing towards its consummation? How will it be established in
the beginning, and how will it grow? Will it suffer persecutions like other
nascent churches, and when and where will it finally prevail?
In regard to these subjects, also, the veil of the future has been lifted
by Him who Is, who Was, and who Will be. The future of the New Church is
foretold, both in the Letter and the Spirit of the Word, and the prophecy is as
follows: (1) The New Church in Christendom is to begin in the same manner as
preceding Churches have begun; (2) it will be received at first by a few,
signified by "the remnant," and "the elect;" (3) these few are to be collected
together, and thus separated, from those of the Old Church, and they are
afterwards to be inaugurated and instructed; (4) the New Church will gradually
increase, in the proportion that falsities are eradicated among its members,
through the instrumentality of a new clergy; (5) the growth, however, will not
take place immediately or in a moment, but will be difficult and slow; (6) while
growing, the New Church is to tarry among those who are of the Old Church; (7)
the New Church is to be persecuted by the Dragon, and efforts will be made to
destroy it; (8) nevertheless, the Church will be protected, hidden, and guarded
by the Lord; (9) preparation will be made cautiously for its wider extension;
(10) ultimately, as the Old Church arrives at its consummation, the New Church
will be established, triumphant, throughout the earth.
THE ANALOGY OF HISTORY
There is nothing more objectionable to a "permeationist" in the New Church
than the principle that "History repeats itself." Give the premises of a
general knowledge of Church History and the principle of Historical Analogy, the
conclusion is inevitable that the New Church is to have previous dispensations
arise. But this conclusion utterly upsets all the cherished notions of an
immediate, unconscious, and universal reception of the New Church throughout
Christendom; it proves the necessity of separation from all the denominations of
the Old Church; it ties us down to a "narrow, uncharitable, sectarian" idea of
slow and painful growth among a few and obscure receivers. It proves too much,
in short, for the palate of our "liberal" brethren, and so they try to explain
away the fatal dilemma of "Historical Analogy." "The New Church," they
say, "is different from all other churches, and it will therefore be established
in a totally different manner from the former churches." "The New Church
is essentially an internal Church, and it will therefore be established in an
internal way, without external separation." And thus, sans ceremonie,
the "Historical Analogy," with all that it involves, is thrown overboard.
But the Analogy is not the mere induction of human reasoning; it is drawn
by a Divine hand, and its applications are too direct to be thus ignored. Consider, for instance, the following teachings:
"The reason it is of the Lord's Divine Providence that at first the [New]
Church should be among a few, and should increase successively among many, is
that the falsities of the former Church are first to be removed. The like took
place with the Christian Church, in that it increased successively from a few to
many." (Apocalypse Revealed 547)
"They frequently inquire of me respecting the New Church, when it will
come, to which I answer, By degrees . . . . It is known that the Christian Church
did not rise immediately after the Ascension of Christ, but increased
gradually." (Documents, 240)
"At the end of
the Church the interior things of the Word are manifested which are to be of
service for the New Church for doctrine and life. This was done by the Lord
Himself when the end of the Jewish Church was at hand, but still those things
were not received immediately, as is known from Ecclesiastical History . .
. . The
like was done when the Most Ancient Church, arrived at its end . . .
. In like manner
it has been done at this day, when the Church which was called 'Christian' has
arrived at its end." (Apocalypse Explained, 670)
"With respect to the Churches the case is as follows:
. . . were several
Churches which come to an end; the Most Ancient Church thus expired about the
time of the Flood; in like manner the Ancient Church which was after the Flood,
and also a Second Ancient Church, which was called the Hebrew Church: and lastly
the Jewish Church. Afterwards a New Church was raised up which was called the
Church of the Gentiles, and which was an internal Church; but this Church is now
at its end . . . . But when a Church is consummated and perishes, then the Lord
always raises up a New Church elsewhere, from the Gentiles who before were in
ignorance." (Arcana Coelestia 3898)
"It is to be known that when any Church perishes
. . . the New Church is
established with those among whom there was no Church before . . . It was thus when
the Most Ancient Church perished . . . . In like manner when the Church called Noah
perished; then the semblance of a Church was instituted with the descendants of
Abraham, who was a Gentile . . . . After this semblance
of a Church had been consummated, Gentile . . . . After this semblance of a Church had been consummated,
the Primitive [Christian] Church was established from the Gentiles, the Jews
being rejected. In like manner it will be with this Church which is called
Christian." (Ibid, 2986)
The same inevitable analogy is taught in passages too numerous to be
quoted; the lesson involved is one with the universal principles that the
general includes the particular, that nature, spiritual as well as material, is
alike to itself in greatest and in least, and that the same universal laws will
operate in the future as well as in the past.
It will not do, therefore, to ignore the "Analogy of History" when
established by the combined testimony of Divine Revelation and of human
observation in all ages. As it has been in the case of the establishment of all
previous Churches, so it will be, (and has been), in the case of the
establishment of the New Jerusalem Church. True, "conditions are different
now" from what they were at any other period in history. "Conditions"
may change, indeed, but the laws of the Divine Providence never change; human
nature remains the same as ever, and it is with this, and not with "conditions,"
that the Divine Providence has to deal in the establishment of a New Church.
But if the Analogy of History is to be thus strictly applied, what of the
future of the New Church itself? Will this Church, also, decline, and be judged,
and be succeeded by some Church still more new? Are we not taught that this is
to be the final and the crowning Church which to all eternity is not to pass
away? Yea, the New Church as a whole, or in general, will never decline or pass
away, but will forever progress upward and inward, to ever greater perfection
and glory, for she is, in the history of the Churches, what eternal life is in
relation to the four ages of mortal life, but nevertheless there will still be a
repetition of the past, or an Analogy of History, in the particular successive
states of the New Church itself. It cannot be otherwise, for, though there will
nevermore be a Flood, as in the time of Noah, or a Last Judgment, as in the year
1757, still, "while the earth remaineth, seed-time and harvest, and cold and
heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease." (Gen. 8:22)
General states will forever succeed one another, and in these there will be
particular states analogous to the rise and progress and decline and death of
the former Churches. General organizations of the New Church - Conferences, and
Conventions, and Assemblies - will have their day; they will arise from small
beginnings; they will increase into greater fullness; infestations from self and
the world will at times cause the light and the love to grow more dim and cold;
there will be judgments, and separations, and dissolutions of external
organizations. What of it! That which is made by man, or in which the hand of
man has any part, is subject to change and decay. These things are as inevitable
as the "Analogy of History" and need not be regretted. But out of the womb of
each preceding state there will be born one more internal and more perfect,
approaching nearer and nearer to a realization upon earth of the New Jerusalem
in the heavens.
WHEN the principle of "Historical Analogy"* has been accepted as applicable
to the New Church as well as to all the preceding Churches, it will he seen in
self-evident light that the New Church is to have its beginning, growth, and
final establishment according to the same universal laws of influx and reception
that have governed all past history. Variations there will be, and must be, for,
though "History repeats itself," it never repeats itself in identically the same
manner (there never being any such thing as the identity of two things or two
events). Analogy does not mean identity, but a resemblance of certain respects
and relations. In what respects, then, will the future of the New Church
resemble the history of the former Churches? In answer we will give, not
our own inferences, but the plain predictions of Divine Revelation.
* See New Church Life, Distinctiveness of The New Church, 1902.
THE NEW CHURCH AT FIRST AMONG A FEW
We are taught, first of all, that the New Church, like all the preceding
Churches, is to be received at first among "a few," signified by "the remnant,"
or "the elect."
It would hardly seem necessary to go to the labor of proving the truth of
this self-evident proposition, were it not for the astonishing assertion which
has been made by Newchurchmen for more than a century and which is still being
put forward as persistently as ever, viz., that by virtue of the Last Judgment
in the year 1757, the Old Church passed away in the natural as well as the
spiritual world, that since that year there is no longer any such thing as an
Old Church, and that therefore the whole Christian world in all its sects and
denominations is actually the Lord's New Church. If this were the case, there
could not, of course, be any possibility for the Church to begin among "a few,"
for the "beginning" then would be among very many, nay, all, and the teaching of
the Writings respecting "the few" would then be meaningless or false.
This teaching,
however, is not contained in any incidental remark, but is a universal
principle, which is repeated and applied again and again. It is stated first in
the Arcana Coelestia, n. 468:
"In regard to a Church, the case is this: in the course of time it
decreases and at last remains only among a few. Those few among whom it remained
in the time of the Flood were called Noah. That the true Church decreases and
remains only among a few, is manifest from the case of other Churches which have
thus decreased. Those who remain are called 'remains' and 'a remnant' in the
Word, and are said to be 'in the midst of the land.' As this is the case
universally, so it is the case particularly; or, as it is in the Church, so it
is with the individual man: unless with each one there were remains preserved by
the Lord, he could not but perish in eternal death, for the spiritual and
celestial life resides in the remains. It is similar in the general or
universal: unless there were always some with whom the Church or the true faith
remained, the human race would perish."
The question as to the actual beginning of the New Church can be solved,
therefore, only in the light of the doctrine concerning remains. An old state is
passing away and a new supervenes, but the beginning of that new state always
takes place with what is left in integrity from the former state. The
flower of a summer grows up and dies down, root and stem; there remain of it
only a few seeds, but from these seeds there springs up a new generation of
plants.
The man grows up, rich in the loves and knowledges of this world, yet these
will all become as nothing when he enters upon the new life of regeneration. Out
of the former state nothing will remain forever, except the remains of innocent
thoughts and affections which formed the beginning of his spiritual life.
These alone can span the chasm between the new and the old, between death and
immortality, and these remains, compared with the vast mass of natural things
accumulated during a long life on earth, are necessarily few.
In the light of this universal law we cannot misunderstand the numerous
statements in the Writings which teach that the Church of the New Jerusalem,
though ultimately destined to "pass over to the Gentiles," yet is to find its
first beginning among the few in the Christian World who are able and willing to
receive the new revelation. Thus we are taught:
"And the woman
fled into the wilderness" . . . These words involve that the New Church, which
is called the Holy Jerusalem, which is signified by 'the woman,' cannot yet be
established, except among a few, for the reason that the former Church has
become a desert.*
* Apocalypse Explained 730
"The Spirit of life from God hath entered into them." This signifies
illustration and reception of the Divine Truth from the Lord with some, for the
sake of beginning the New Church.*
* Ibid, 665
The reason the interior things of the Word are now being opened, is that at
this day the Church is vastated so greatly,--that it, is so devoid of faith and
love,--that, although men know and understand, still they do not acknowledge,
and still less do they believe,-except a few, who are in the life of good, and
who are called 'the elect,' who can now be instructed and with whom a New Church
is to be instituted. But where these are, the Lord alone knows; there will be
few within the Church.*
* Arcana Coelestia 3898
But what are the reasons why the New Church is rejected by the many and is
received, in the beginning, only by a few?
Let the Word answer:
"And this is the condemnation, that Light is come into the world, and men
loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For everyone
that doeth evil, hateth the Light, neither cometh to the Light, lest his deeds
should he reproved."
"Wide is the gate, and broad is the way that leadeth to destruction, and
many there be which go in thereat. Because strait is the gate, and narrow the
way that leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it." (Matt. 7: 13, 14)
"For many are called, but few, are chosen." (Matt. 22: 14)
Hence we learn also:
Few are they who are loves of God.*
* Divine Providence 250
Few are they who believe in the Lord.*
* Arcana Coelestia 2094
Few are reformed at this day.*
* Ibid, 2694
Few know what temptation is, because at this day few undergo any
temptation.*
* Ibid, 4274
Inquiry was made in the Spiritual world as to who could desist from evil
because it is sin, and there were found as few as there are doves in a wide
desert.*
* True Christian Religion, 535
The following striking passage presents in a summary the reason "why the
New Church will at first begin with a few."
1.
Because the Doctrine of the New Church cannot be acknowledged and received
except by those who are interiorly affected with truth,--who are no others than
those who can see them,--and only those can see them who have cultivated their
intellectual faculty and have not destroyed it with themselves by the loves of
self and the world.
2. Because the Doctrine of the New
Church cannot be acknowledged and received except by those who have not
confirmed themselves in the doctrine and life of faith alone.
3. Because the New Church increases according to its increase in the world
of spirits; for spirits from thence are with men, and [with each man] the
spirits are from those who had been in the faith of his own Church while they
lived on earth. And no others of them receive the Doctrine than those who had
been in the spiritual affection of truth: these alone are conjoined with Heaven
where this Doctrine is, and they conjoin Heaven with men . . .
. According to the
increase of these spirits in the world of spirits, the New Church is increasing
on earth. These, also, were the reasons why the Christian Church increased so
slowly in the European world, and did not come into her fullness until after an
age."*
* Apocalypse Explained 732
A glance at the history of the former dispensation fully confirms this
universal principle. The Most Ancient Church began among the first men created
on earth,--the Pre-Adamites, who, though not necessarily confined to a single
pair, still must have been relatively few in numbers. When this Church, after
its golden days of innocent perfection, finally fell into ruins, certain remains
of integrity were preserved among those who are collectively known as Noah,--a
handful of men who, while living in the midst of a spiritual Deluge of evil and
falsity, were saved from destruction by entering into the ark of a new Divine
Revelation,--the Ancient Word. This Church of Noah was represented to Swedenborg
by the vision of "a tall man, clothed in white garments, in a narrow chamber, by
which was signified that they were few, in number." (Arcana Coelestia 788) There was
not, in those days, any "permeation" of new truths among the
Antediluvians. The Nephilim did not, by virtue of the general Judgment upon the Most
Ancient
Church, suddenly become men of the Ancient Church: they never entered into that
ark of salvation, but perished, strangled and choked by their infernal lusts and
persuasions. But the men of the New Church - Noah - were separated from this
wicked crew, and by this separation, outward as well as inward, they escaped
destruction. Nevertheless, these persons only formed the beginning of the
Ancient Church, for that Church was afterwards established in its fullness among
the descendants of Shem, Ham, and Japheth, nations which formerly had been
gentiles.
Thus also, when
the Church of the Silver Age had lost its purity, the true faith, i. e., the
monotheistic worship of Jehovah, remained at last only with a small tribe in
Mesopotamia, known as Eber, from whom came the Hebrew or Second Ancient Church. And finally, when idolatry had become universal, the beginning of a new Divine
Revelation was given to a gentilized Hebrew, Abram, from whose few immediate
descendants came the Israelitish or Third Ancient Church. Still, no "influx" of
truth into the priesthood and peoples of the corrupted Ancient Church, no
"permeation" of light and life in the grave-yard, no restoration of the ruined
Temple of the Silver Age. The Canaanites, Egyptians, Assyrians, and
Babylonians, never accepted the Word and the Worship of the Jewish Church, but
the corruption amongst them increased until the cup of iniquity overflowed, and
their idolatrous civilizations were blotted out by the devastating arms of
gentile nations: Scythians, Medes, Persians, Greeks and Romans.
And when the Israelitish Church had lost its representative character, and
when the Lord Himself established a new and genuine Church upon earth, the
beginning of that Church was again "among a few,"--a very few, twelve men from
the simplest and lowliest class of the Jews. A Last Judgment was then effected
upon the Israelitish Church, but did that Church, by virtue of it, suddenly
become Christian? Did it ever become Christian? The Jews never became
"permeated" by the spirit of Christianity, but waxed ever more hostile to it,
until the early Christians not only found it necessary to separate from them in
worship, but even to flee to gentile lands, to Greece and Italy, where Christian
doctrine found a readier repentance. And even here, the Christian Church
was not established suddenly or miraculously by any "influx" into the minds of
priests or philosophers, but in the midst of indescribable persecution it grew
slowly and organically by open teaching and by the most distinct
separation,--exclusiveness, if you please,--from those of other religions.
They did not go to worship the Lord in the temples of Jupiter and Apollo. They did not accept Jewish circumcision or pagan washing as sufficient sign of
entrance into the Christian Church. They did not favor the "unequal yoking
together" of believers with unbelievers in married life. They did not entrust
the education of their children to heathen sophists. They did not look upon
their Divine Revelation, the New Testament, as some new and luminous
"philosophy," nor were they continually on the look-out for "evidences" of the
unconscious growth of Christian ideas in the theological and philosophical
circles of the outside contemporary world. But they were separated and
distinctive in all things, in worship, in social life, in marriage, and in
education. As long as the Christian Church adhered to its distinctiveness, so
long it was pure. But it fell when it opened wide its gates to the lust for
numbers and for dominion through numbers;--when, by imperial edict and with the
consent of the priesthood, it suddenly was recognized as the Church of the
State; when the millions of uninstructed and unrepentant pagans flocked into the
Church for the sake of selfish and worldly considerations, each one bringing
with him his special heathenism, dressed up in Christian garb. Thus the Egyptian
triads of gods resolved themselves into the Athanasian trinity of persons. The
Carthaginian sacrifice of infants was spiritualized in the Tertullian doctrine
of the vicarious atonement. The Roman love of dominion was "sanctified" as
papacy. Apollo became St. Elias, and Bacchus St. Dionysus or St. Denis. And thus
the process of "permeation" kept on throughout the Middle Ages. The cloak of
Christianity was wrapped about Vandals and Goths Franks, Germans, Slavs and
North-men, but it was the burial shroud of a dead Church.
Thus the universal Christian Church became of such a quality as is
described in the following fearful disclosure:
That such is the condition of the Church does not
appear to those who are in the Church, namely, that they despise and are averse
to all the things which are of good and truth, and that they wage hostilities
against these things, and especially against the Lord. For they frequent their
temples, they listen to sermons, they are in a certain holy state when there;
they go to the holy supper, and occasionally converse among themselves in a
becoming manner concerning these things: the evil do this equally with the good: they also live among themselves in civil charity or friendship. Hence it is that
before the eyes of men no contempt is visible, still less aversion, and least of
all enmity against the goods and truths of faith and against the Lord. But these
things are only external forms, by means of which the one seduces the other.
But the internal forms of the men of the Church are quite different, nay,
altogether contrary to the external forms . . . . But in the other life it is manifest that
although they had appeared so peaceable in the world, they nevertheless had
entertained hatred one against the other, and had held in hatred all the things
which are of faith, especially the Lord, for when the Lord is only named before
them in the other life, there is manifestly exhaled and diffused from them
sphere not only of contempt, but also of aversion and enmity towards Him, even
from those who according to appearance had spoken of Him in a holy manner; it is
the when charity and faith are mentioned. Such are they in the internal form
which is there manifested, insomuch That had external restraints been removed
while they lived in the world,--that is, had they not feared for their life and
the penalties of human laws, and especially had they not feared for reputation
on account of the honors which they strove for and affected and the riches for
which they lusted and greedily sought, they would have rushed one upon the other
with intestine hatred according to their impulses and thoughts, and they would
have seized the goods of one another without any conscience whatever; and they
likewise would have murdered one another without any conscience, more especially
the innocent. Such are Christians at this day as to their interiors, EXCEPT A
FEW whom they do not know. Hence is evident the quality of the Church.*
* Arcana Coelestia, 3489
What further evidence is needed, either as to the state of the Christian
world, or as to the fact that the Lord's New Church did not and could not have
its beginning among Christians except with those "few" whom they "do not know?"
But it is objected: "this was true enough a hundred years ago, but is true
no longer. Since then, the Sun of the spiritual world has been shining upon
mankind unhindered for a century, softening their hearts, awakening benevolence,
aspirations, helpfulness, brotherhood"-- Are men, then, plants or animals, that
vegetate and live according to the weather, without volition of their own! The
New Jerusalem is indeed descending from God out of Heaven, but "he that is
unjust, let him be unjust still, and he that is filthy, let him be filthy still.
And he that is just, let him be just still, and he that is holy, let him be holy
still." By which is signified that "he who is in evils will he still more
in evils, and he who is in falsities will be still more in falsities; while on
the other hand, it signifies, that he who is in goods will be still in goods,
and he who is in truths will be still more in truths." (Apocalypse
Revealed 948)
The New Church,
like every other Church that has ever been on earth, began among a few, and
after more than a century* it is still tarrying among a few, who, in spite of the
most strenuous efforts to make themselves heard in the world, still remain among
those whom the world "does not know." Instead of causing discouragement
and discontent, this fact should be to the men of the New Church a cause of
profound gratitude for Divine Protection and an encouraging sign of the healthy
growth of the Church. It is to be the Crown of Churches, the Church of all
future ages, as different in endurance as eternal life is to the four ages of
man in the natural world. On this account it must grow slowly,--not only as
slowly as did the Christian Church during the first three centuries, but far
more slowly. The slowness of its growth will be, must be, absolutely
unprecedented in history. Thus far, after a century and a half of its existence,
the New Church has amply fulfilled the predictions concerning its slowness of
growth. An impatient enemy has said of it that "it has crept like a sloth
through the century." No, not like a sloth, but like the mightiest of
trees, which is to rear its crown above all other trees in the Garden of God,
and is to endure for ever.
*Article written in [A. D. 1902]
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