from WL Worcester (H Blackmer, ed.), 
The Sower.  Helps to the Study of the Bible in Home and Sunday School
 (Boston: Massachusetts New-Church Union, n.d.)

Forward/Introduction
Contents
Genesis
Exodus
Numbers
Deuteronomy
Joshua
Judges
1 Samuel
2 Samuel
1 Kings
2 Kings
The Prophets
The Major Prophets
Isaiah
Jeremiah
Lamentations
Ezekiel
Daniel
Ezra (Historical)
Nehemiah
The Minor Prophets
Hosea

Joel

Amos

Obadiah

Jonah
Micah
Nahum
Habbakuk
Zephaniah
Haggai
Zechariah
Malachi
Maccabees (Historical)

Psalms

Matthew
Mark

Luke 

John

The Acts of the Apostles

Revelation

 

Lesson 43

Topical and Doctrinal Notes

Leading Thought: Power over Serpents

The Lord sent out twelve apostles. He also sent out seventy others. After His resurrection still others were sent out. On the occasion when the seventy came back from their first tour, they told Him how even the devils were subject to them through His name. He told them that this was in consequence of His having overcome Satan, "I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven." And He continued, "I give unto you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy; and nothing shall by any means hurt you." (Luke 10:17-19)

This story tells us that this power was also granted to Paul, who had become His apostle after His resurrection. Though the viper bit him, yet greatly to the surprise of the people who felt sure that he would swell up and die from the poison, the bite did not hurt Paul. And we are also told how he healed many of their sicknesses. While reading all this, let us remember what the Lord told the seventy, after speaking of the power He had given them, "Notwithstanding, in this rejoice not, that the spirits are subject unto you; but rather rejoice, because your names are written in heaven."

The power over diseases of the body and the performance of other miracles was granted by the Lord to the apostles in the beginning of the Christian Church, because in no other way could they be brought to believe in the Divinity of the Lord. But after belief in Him was once established, miracles ceased. And this was because true belief comes through the reason. Miracles compel people to believe, and forced belief is not true belief, although it may lead to it.

When the Lord raised up Swedenborg as His servant at His second coming, people maintained that if his revelations were Divine, he should perform some miracle or show some sign so that they might be sure that the Lord had appeared to him and appointed him to the office of revelator. But Swedenborg showed them that the New Church is to be built up through a rational belief, and therefore such miracles as "healing the sick, raising the dead to life, driving out evil spirits, and having power to tread on serpents and scorpions and being hurt by nothing" would not be performed in the New Church. Instead, people would come to understand about the Lord and His Word, and the holy life of regeneration, because they earnestly wish to know God, and therefore study the revelations made to the New Church.

He referred them to the miracles that were performed by Simon Magus, of whom we read in the Acts, and also by many people in the Roman Catholic Church, where thousands of people have been cured; which shows that those who are in false beliefs can also perform miracles, and that miracles make people believe what is false as well as what is true.

Once, when Swedenborg was visiting in a society of angels (M. 532-535), some of the wise angels of that society asked him what news there was from the earth, and he told them about the many revelations the Lord was then making through him, Swedenborg. After he had a long conversation about them, and they rejoiced that now men on earth can know what angels in heaven know, there were some spirits below who spitefully said:

"Perform miracles, and we will believe."

He asked them whether the revelations the Lord made through him were not miracles? And they answered, " No.

"What miracles, then?" he asked.

"Manifest and reveal future events, and we will have faith," said they.

"Such things are not granted from heaven," answered Swedenborg, "since, so far as man knows future events, his reason and understanding, with his prudence and wisdom, become inactive and torpid, and decay." So he again asked, "What other miracles shall I perform? " And then they cried out:

"Do such miracles as Moses did in Egypt." To this he replied:

"Perhaps you will harden your hearts at them, as Pharaoh and the Egyptians did?" But they retorted, that they would not. Again Swedenborg said:

"Assure me that you will not dance around a golden calf, and adore it, like the posterity of Jacob, who did this within a month after they had seen the whole Mount Sinai burning, and heard Jehovah Himself speaking out of the fire, thus after a miracle which was the greatest of all." (A golden calf, in the spiritual sense, means the pleasure of the flesh.)

But the answer came from those below, "We shall not be like the posterity of Jacob."

But at that moment they were told from heaven:

"If you believe not Moses and the Prophets, that is, the Word of the Lord, you will not believe from miracles any more than the sons of Jacob in the desert; nor more than they believed, when with their own eyes they saw the miracles performed by the Lord Himself while He was in the world."

The last work which Swedenborg wrote was The True Christian Religion, and this, together with his other books that give the Lord's new revelations, exist in the other world as well as here.

It will interest you to know, now that we have finished the story of the Acts of the Apostles that on the 19th day of June in the year 1770, the Lord called together His twelve apostles, who had followed Him in the world. The next day He sent them out throughout the whole spiritual world, as he had before throughout the natural world, with the command to preach the Gospel that the Lord Jesus Christ reigneth, whose reign will be for ages and ages (according to the prediction in Daniel 7:13, 14; and in Revelation 11: 15) and that, "Blessed are they that are called to the marriage supper of the Lamb." (Revelation 19:9)

This was meant by these words of the Lord: "He will send His angels, and they shall gather together His elect from one end of the heavens even to the other." (Matthew 24:31) Each apostle had a district assigned to him, and they are executing the Lord's command with all zeal and industry. This calling together of the apostles in the spiritual world, took place after Swedenborg had completed The True Christian Religion, which contains the universal theology of the New Church. (T. 791)

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