Secrets of Heaven 1 Quotes

“Everything good or true that the angels inspire in us is God’s, so God is constantly talking to us. He talks very differently, though, to one person than to another.”
― Emanuel Swedenborg, Secrets of Heaven Volume 1: The Deluxe New Century Edition

“The inner self is as distinct from the outer self as heaven is from earth.”
― Emanuel Swedenborg, Secrets of Heaven Volume 1: The Deluxe New Century Edition

“A life of faith without love is like sunlight without warmth—the type of light that occurs in winter, when nothing grows and everything droops and dies. Faith rising out of love, on the contrary, is like light from the sun in spring, when everything grows and flourishes. Warmth from the sun is the fertile agent. The same is true in spiritual and heavenly affairs, which are typically represented in the Word by objects found in nature and human culture.”
― Emanuel Swedenborg, Secrets of Heaven 1: Portable

“What could be sweeter to us than to hear and persuade ourselves that we can be saved, even if we live like a savage beast? Even non-Christians see that this is false, and many of them shudder at Christian teachings when they observe how Christians live.”
― Emanuel Swedenborg, Secrets of Heaven 1: Portable

“A spiritual church first becomes a church when it acts as bidden by charity, charity being the true teaching of faith.”
― Emanuel Swedenborg, Secrets of Heaven 1: Portable

“458 At times evil spirits have conjectured that some heaven other than the Lord’s could exist. They have received permission to look for it wherever they could. To their own chagrin, they have never been able to locate one. Evil spirits rush headlong into all kinds of craziness, both because they hate the Lord and because hell is so painful, and these are the kinds of fantasies they seize on.”
― Emanuel Swedenborg, Secrets of Heaven 1: Portable

“After the great lights are kindled and placed in the inner self, and the outer self is receiving light from them, the time arrives when we first start to live. Earlier, we can hardly be said to have been alive, thinking as we did that the good we perform and the truth we speak originate in ourselves. On our own we are dead and have nothing but evil and falsity inside, with the result that nothing we produce from ourselves has life. So true is this that by our own power we cannot do anything good—at least not anything inherently good.”
― Emanuel Swedenborg, Secrets of Heaven 1: Portable

“The Lord created us to be capable of communicating with spirits and angels while still living in our bodies, as people actually did in the earliest times. After all, we are one with spirits and angels. In fact we ourselves are spirits clothed in flesh.”
― Emanuel Swedenborg, Secrets of Heaven 1: Portable