Dear J. A.,
Emanuel Swedenborg was a wealthy scientist who went looking for the human soul in cadavers and ended up finding it in the Word of God. For a rich man he lived modestly, mostly in rooming houses in various countries. He wrote over 50 science books and pamphlets in fields ranging from chemistry, mining, physics, mathematics, mechanics, anatomy, geology, hydraulics, optics, botany, magnetics, mineralogy, and astronomy to acoustics.

Swedenborg was an exceptional man of science who drafted many inventions such as the earliest model for an airplane - formerly accepted as by Leonardo da Vinci.

Interest in Swedenborg often stops at his scientific knowledge for he ventured into the science of "don't discuss" religion. When he was 56, in 1744, the Lord God came to him and said that He had chosen Swedenborg to explain to people the spiritual sense of biblical scripture. From that day on Swedenborg "talked" with angels and spirits till the day he died in 1772 - 28 years.

Swedenborg asked his employer for early retirement when all this happened. He was offered a promotion instead, but turned it down in order to have time to write his spiritual "findings". He eventually wrote 30 books on Christianity.

Emanuel Swedenborg claimed that the Lord God Jesus Christ told him a "New Church" of Christianity would be formed, but he did not establish one. Swedenborg gave his books away for free - which he published at his own expense - to the universities and to the clergy of Europe.

He was born in Sweden and died in England.

J.A., I think you would benefit by reading Swedenborg's theological books because they answer life's questions and offer truths and tidbits. Besides, the things he wrote about will blow you away - there is marriage (with sex) after death, God is love and wisdom (female and male), what angels' and devils' homes are like, the Bible as allegorical, the creation story as evolutional, and staying as a teenager for eternity.

He was a remarkable, prolific writer of psychology and religion which will serve as building blocks for future generations. Swedenborg's influence is enormous. The amazing blind, mute, and deaf Helen Keller (portrayed in Hollywood by Patty Duke) was a Swedenborgian and she wrote:

#2.
Dear Candace,
What do you think God is going to do to the Oklahoma bombers?

Dear L. L.,
Nothing.

God doesn't work that way. God is unchangeable. He is Divine Love and Divine Wisdom. He never punishes. It is an appearance that God punishes. Actually, it is the evil (opposite of God) that destroys or punishes itself.

But, God is not going to send any natural disaster upon the evil doers. God permits evil to happen for the sake of free will. Without free will we would be puppets. This truth appears to be harsh in light of the death of the kids, innocently playing at the daycare centre in the Federal Building.

The hundreds of rescuers that worked around the clock were selfless. Know that this is also happened in the spiritual world. Hundreds of good rescue spirits assisted those children and adults as they left this world and entered the next.

Spiritual rescuers, as earthly rescuers, had to calm the injured, comfort the shaken, and instruct the displaced as to what to do next. The newcomers to the world of spirits will need caring for. They may be grieving the separation from their loved ones left on earth. They will need to be shown how to live on in their new environment. Some will even doubt they have died.

Looking at the two famous photos of the police officer handing the lifeless body of one year old, Baylee Almon, to the firefighter, Chris Fields, I think of a spiritual rescue worker being handed Baylee shortly after the photos were taken.

It has been said Baylee will never play games, or fall in love, or go to college, or invent a cure for a rare disease. Swedenborg tells us this is not true. Baylee and the other children will grow up in heaven into adulthood and will learn, love, and work.

It is thought that this bombing could have been prevented through government intervention. Maybe it could have. But, we, individually could have stopped it, too.

At first, this evil act was suspected to have been done by international terrorists, but it was done by domestic terrorists.

It is an appearance that we will not be able to stop the truly evil people roaming the earth with their terrorist desires. There have been numerous studies done by the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms on how to stop violators, but they have not worked.

Evil can be prevented. We can stop the hate from hell by not housing it. God told us how to do this in his ten commandments. A spiritual life is acquired solely by a life lived according to them.

When a person reads the Bible, with love, angels are brought closer to the reader. When a person stops doing an evil, angels come closer to them. The more we all stop evil from being entertained, the closer the Lord will send His angels around us, ALL.

#3.
Dear Candace,
Do you think Swedenborg ever mentioned or dealed with the conception of reincarnation?

Dear B. N.,
I answered this question back in June 1989, but will do it again ... pun intended.

Mary Roach, author of Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers (published 2003), investigated reincarnation for her current book, Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife, (released in October) by traveling to India for a week. The first chapter of Spook is: “You Again. A visit to the reincarnation nation.” Mary writes about the soul jumping concept with humour and healthy skepticism. She found it fascinating that most in India were reincarnated “ordinary people” (poor), whereas believers in reincarnation in the West “tend to spring from royalty and aristocracy”.

Swedenborg doesn’t use the word “reincarnation” when he writes about it, but talks about living again or returning to earth again. He tells us that while the idea is absurd, it is understandable how people can think that we may come back. We are so close to the spiritual world that we sometimes tap into it vividly and imagine we have lived before because we remember something we didn’t know before. That’s commonly called the deja vu experience.

Swedenborg wrote in his Heaven and Hell book, section #256:
“ An angel or spirit is not permitted to speak with us from their own memory, but only from our memory. For angels and spirits have memory as well as us. If a spirit were to speak with us from thier own memory, we would not know otherwise than that the thoughts then in our mind were our own, although they would be the spirits thoughts. This would be like the recollection of something which we had never heard or seen. I have been allowed to learn this from experience. This is the source of the belief held by some of the ancients that after some thousands of years they were to return into their former life, and into everything they had done, and in fact, had returned. This they concluded because at times there came to them a sort of recollection of things that they bad never seen or heard. This came from an influx from the memory of spirits into their ideas of thought.”

We on earth are closest to those who have just died—good and bad spirits—who are not yet in heaven or hell. Furthest from us are angels and devils—who are living in heaven and hell.
Under normal conditions, spirits who are spiritually connected with us—because we love the same things—can know our memories, but we cannot their’s. Under abnormal conditions, spirits can let us see their memories. (Know that all this is happening without either party knowing who the other is; yet, spiritually being connected from one world to the next.) So, for some, thoughts of reincarnation are very real because they’ve tapped into memories of spirits nearest them. It’s not that we were that person, but are seeing with the same eyes, momentarily.

Swedenborg wrote in his “diary” published as the Spiritual Experiences, section #1582-
“ Moreover, that a spirit should be able to pass into the body of another, and live in that body, is at once absurd and impossible, for the consequence would be that the form of one would be changed into that of another, the interior substances of the man would be entirely emptied out, and the substances of another applied, in their stead, to the fibers and vessels, while at the same time all that which had contracted a nature in the [life of] the body and been wrought into obedience to its proper form, would be assumed.”

 

 

1688-1772

Emanuel Swedenborg's notebook
of his dreams.
They were not published until
a century after his death.

 

Swedenborg's Summerhouse
which he used as
a library and office.
Most of his theological books|
were written here.
This building was moved
from its original site
and is preserved at
an open air museum,
called "Skansen", in Sweden.

Sweden issued this stamp
in 2003
commemorating Swedenborg's summerhouse.

1766 Swedenborg portrait
of him holding
one of his books.

Swedenborg bust
in Mariatorget Park
in Stockholm, Sweden.