Apocalypse Explained: 51-100

*Apocalypse Explained* is an 18th-century theological commentary by Emanuel Swedenborg, working in the tradition of Christian mysticism and biblical exegesis. The excerpted sections systematically decode the opening verses of Revelation, treating each word or phrase as a symbol with a precise spiritual meaning — trumpets signify divine truth descending from heaven, "the Lord's day" signifies a moment of divine influx, and John's visionary state signifies a mode of perception available to any person whose "spiritual sight" is opened. A central argument is that salvation requires mentally apprehending God in human form: Swedenborg contends that the Christian church has erred by separating Christ's humanity from his divinity, and that this error — which he traces to the Roman Catholic Church — has spiritually severed believers from the conjunction with God that makes salvation possible. He goes further in claiming that because Western Christianity has extirpated this innate God-perceiving capacity, a new church is now being founded among non-Christian gentiles who still retain it. Distinctively, Swedenborg writes as a first-person witness, asserting that he himself has seen heaven through opened spiritual sight while remaining fully awake, and his cross-references to his other works (*Heaven and Hell*, *Arcana Coelestia*, *The Earths in the Universe*) position this commentary as one node in a vast, internally consistent theological system of his own construction.

Apocalypse Explained: 51-100

Related pages View as graph →