For Zion’s sake, I will not be silent; and for Jerusalem’s sake, I will not rest; until her righteousness goes forth as brightness, and her salvation as a burning lamp. And nations shall see your righteousness, and all kings your glory. And you shall be called by a new name which the mouth of Jehovah shall specify. You also shall be a crown of beauty in the hand of Jehovah, and a royal diadem in the hand of your God. You no longer shall be called Forsaken; nor shall your land any longer be called Desolate. But you shall be called, My Delight is in Her; and your land, Married. For Jehovah delights in you, and your land is married. (Isaiah 62:1-4)

I was looking in the night visions. And behold! One like the Son of Man came with the clouds of the heavens. And He came to the Ancient of Days. And they brought Him near before Him. And dominion was given to Him, and glory, and a kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve Him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion which shall not pass away, and His kingdom that which shall not be destroyed. (Daniel 7:13-14)

And I heard a great voice out of Heaven, saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God with men! And He will tabernacle with them, and they will be His people, and God Himself will be with them as their God. (Rev 21:24-25) And the nations of the ones saved will walk in its light; and the kings of the earth bring their glory and honor into it. And its gates may not at all be shut by day, for no night will be there. (Rev 22:16-17) I, Jesus, sent My angel to testify these things to you over the assemblies. I am the Root and Offspring of David, the bright and morning Star. And the Spirit and the bride say, Come! And the one hearing, let him say, Come! And the one thirsting, let him come; and the one desiring, let him take of the water of life freely. (Rev 22:20) The One testifying these things says, Yes, I am coming quickly. Amen. Yes, come, Lord Jesus! (Revelation 21:3,24,25 & 22:16,17,20 )

Today we come to the third and final part of our series looking into how the idea of the Lord’s second coming can be understood spiritually. We have explored the underlying motivation for the Lord having to periodically present a revelation of Himself to the human mind and that always occurs when true ideas about the nature of God and of spiritual life have been darkened or lost due to the misuse of the Word of God for worldly and selfish ends. We have seen that when a Church loses its sense of God as love, the Lord then comes through the giving of a new revelation of Himself to restore what has been lost.

Every Divine revelation forms a Word that consists of Divine truths in the form of ideas that are able to be received into a human mind and communicated abroard. The mode of manifestation has varied down through the ages, but the underlying essentials have been the same. So for example when a genuine spiritual idea of God is drawn from the wonders of nature, then nature serves as the Word for those people, alternatively when a genuinely spiritual idea of God is drawn from rituals and representations then these form the Word for those people or, as in the case of the Lord’s first advent when Divine Truths take their form in a person then the person is the Word for that time and people. When, as in the case of the Christian era, genuine spiritual ideas of God are drawn from the written form of Sacred Scripture then the Sacred Scripture are the Word or the Lord for that people.

So in its broadest sense the Word is whatever is able to reflect and represent genuine spiritual ideas concerning the nature of God. From this it can be seen that the Lord uses many mediums to represent Himself to the human mind in forms it can grasp. The important thing to see is that it is the quality of the ideas or how close they come to reflecting the true nature of God as love that determines whether those who hold to them actually form a Church or not. This is because the term “Church,” spiritually understood is wherever the Lord is and the Lord is where goodness or love is expressed from a genuine motive that has the spiritual or eternal welfare of the human race as its primary goal.

The Lord for us is principally found in ideas, or spiritual teachings. This is how we learn about Him and become connected to Him. Without the Word we would have no concept of the Lord in the person Jesus Christ. So we see that the Lord reveals Himself in ways that can be expressed in human language so that all people can then have access to Divine truths accommodated to their mental grasp. The extent to which a body of spiritual teaching is able to empower people to love in appropriate ways, that promote the spiritual health and wellbeing of others, is directly related to the spiritual quality of the ideas themselves. The closer the ideas found in a spiritual teaching reflect the nature of the Divine Love the greater their ability to empower people to love. Flaws in spiritual teaching are like defects in a mirror so that the further its ideas fall from conveying a genuine image of the love that the Lord is, so too a person’s ability to love in appropriate ways is adversely affected.

The ideas we carry in our minds in spiritual matters are like a mirror that reflects back into our consciousness the image we have of God. If our ideas are centred on the principles of loving the Lord and loving our neighbour then our image of God will be one of a loving creator who is continually working to ensure the spiritual welfare of all people regardless of their religion or lack of it. If on the other hand the spiritual ideas we hold to have self and the world at the center then we will use the things of religion, its truths in particular, to judge others, be critical of them and so exalt ourselves in our own eyes and imagination. With love at the centre we will attribute the best possible motive to the behaviour of others and display mercy and compassion in our thoughts towards them.

On a grand scale the behaviour of the Christian Church by the 18th Century had embodied the opposite of genuine love into itself through its interests in political and worldly power. It dominated the lives of ordinary people with horrendous images of hell fire and an image of God as one who casts those who didn’t accept Him into the flames. Such ideas formed the basis for all kinds of abuses, particularly in the teatment of the Scriptures for these were presented in ways that promoted these false images of God, leaving people spiritually alienated and destitute. With the rise of atheistic philosophies that directed their attacks on the inconsistencies of Scripture understood in terms of the letter of the Word, the Lord saw to it that a new understanding of the Scriptures accommodated to the states of people at that time was able to come forth.

We spoke last time about the coming of the Lord in terms of the opening of the Word as to its spiritual contents. If these new ideas centred in the inner spiritual meaning of the Scriptures were to be something people could access for themselves then they would have to be presented in a form they could grasp. As we have seen, the Lord revels Himself through ideas accommodated to our mental grasp. This means that a new revelation would have to take its form in human language and be written down. In such a form it is potentially made available to anyone who can read. For this to be accomplished, the Lord, as He has done down through the ages, would present them through a human mind prepared for the task.

Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772) claimed to have been given this task by the Lord. He saw his whole life as a preparation for this. Swedenborg, the son of a Lutheran Bishop, testified that he experienced a sense of spiritual connection to the Lord from childhood. His life though didn’t follow a course of study in theology. His interests took him into the sciences including philosophy and engineering, in which he studied, trained and mastered. The breadth and depth of his study was remarkable and was marked by a constant search for spiritual meaning in all that he did. He was driven in his anatomical studies in search of the seat of the soul in the body. He drew many conclusions concerning the operations of the human body and its organs and delved into the workings of the brain presenting ideas concerning anatomical and psychological functions well ahead of their time. His interests extended into the political arena of his homeland, Sweden, and he took a personal interest in the mining industry. But in all that he did, his mind was never far from a spiritual focus in the service of others.

There are many biographies available for those interested. The point of what I have just presented is to show that this human mind was prepared in the sciences where it sought to find the connection between the natural and spiritual worlds from a perspective that affirmed the reality of God and the importance of a life of service to mankind. A quick glance at Swedenborg’s scientific works shows his personal discipline, meticulous attention to detail, and the ability to intuit accurate insights from the facts before him. At age 56 Swedenborg’s attention was drawn to directly focus on Divine matters. A personal inner crises and encounter with the Lord changed the course of his life. This encounter was a call to serve the Lord and he did this through committing his talents to the task of exploring the Word. He undertook to learn Hebrew so that he could read the Word in its original languages. His entry into the area of exploration was an ordered methodical approach. And as he read and studied the Word he experienced having his spiritual eyes opened to perceive an inner or deeper meaning within the Word.

By means of the Word the spiritual world was opened up to him. He entered the inner worlds of heaven and hell, and through direct experience of these worlds and their inhabitants, he was provided with illustrations of the principles drawn from the Word that governed these states of existence. His training in the sciences meant that his powers of observation and discipline in recording these observations could be brought to bear on ensuring that what he experienced in his study of the Word could be published and made available to anyone who was interested. What flowed forth from his pen was a whole range of works that have as their central focus the presentation of a just and true idea of the nature of God as Divine love and wisdom, how He works in the lives of people always looking to their spiritual welfare and eternal happiness and how the Word is the Lord in our midst. Through his study of the Scriptures, the Lord enlightened his understanding as to the nature of the Word. He was brought to see that every word held a spiritual meaning that transcended the literal meaning of the text. That this level of meaning supports the life of angels who know nothing of the literal meaning. This inner meaning is not restricted to angels, for it is now accessible to all who seek it with a view to living a genuine spiritual life. 

Above all, the crowning ideas contained in the works that make up the doctrines for Spiritual Christianity is that the Lord Jesus Christ is the one God of heaven and earth and that that God, the Lord, is a Divine Human in which there are not three person’s in the Godhead but that God is and has always been, One. That He is love, mercy and compassion itself. That the Lord is incapable of causing harm or unhappiness to anyone and that this idea of a loving and merciful God should govern our understanding of the Scriptures. These ideas found within these works, are doctrine drawn from the Word. Through their publication they are available for anyone interested to investigate and evaluate for themselves.

The key questions for me when I approached them with an open mind are, Do they help me understand the Word in a way that is consistent with the idea of a God of love? Do the teachings found within them empower me to love others in more appropriate ways? Do they bring healing and wholeness into my life? Do they enrich my connection with the Lord and others? If they can do this then they must reflect the true nature of God, a God who is love, who forces Himself on no one, who comes to us in ideas we can take into our minds and think about and choose to accept or reject. This is a God who leaves us in freedom, who desires our love not for His own sake but for our wholeness.

Swedenborg never wanted his name tied to these works seen in that he published the majority of them anonymously. He didn’t found a church or seek to start a movement – he simply went about his work as a servant of the Lord, presenting the ideas he received from the Word to the minds of people everywhere, leaving it to them to assess their quality for themselves. These ideas form the basis for a new understanding of spiritual realities found in the Word and when the Word is read keeping the idea of God revealed in these writings, the sincere seeker of the Lord will see the Word open up before them and Lord coming in the clouds of heaven with great power and glory.

Swedenborg’s own statement concerning himself was…

Since the Lord cannot show Himself in person, …and yet He predicted that He would come and found a new church, which is the New Jerusalem, it follows that He will do this by means of a man, who can not only receive intellectually the doctrines of this church, but also publish them in print. I bear true witness that the Lord has shown Himself in the presence of me, His servant, and sent me to perform this function. After this He opened the sight of my spirit, thus admitting me to the spiritual world, and allowing me to see the heavens and the hells, and also to talk with angels and spirits; and this I have now been doing for many years without a break. Equally I assert that from the first day of my calling I have not received any instruction concerning the doctrines of that church from any angel, but only from the Lord, while I was reading the Word. (True Christian Religion 779)

This was his statement, it’s for us to assess it.

We read in many passages that the Lord will come in the clouds of heaven*; e.g. Matt. 17:5; 24:30; 26:64; Mark 14:62; Luke 9:34, 35; 21:27; Rev. 1:7; 14:14; Dan. 7:13. But no one up to the present has known what the clouds of heaven mean; they have thought that He would appear in them in person. It has so far been unknown that the clouds of heaven mean the Word in its literal sense, and that glory and power, with which He is to come at that time (Matt. 24:30), mean the spiritual sense of the Word. This is because no one has even guessed that there is a spiritual sense in the Word, as there is in essence in this example. Since the Lord has now revealed to me the spiritual sense of the Word, and has allowed me to associate with angels and spirits in their world, as if I were one of them, it has been disclosed that the cloud of heaven means the Word in its natural sense, glory the Word in its spiritual sense, and power means the Lord’s strength through the Word. (True Christian Religion 776)

When Jesus was seated on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to Him, saying, Tell us, what is the sign of your coming and of the ending of the age?…After the affliction of those days the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, the stars will fall from the sky, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken. Then will the sign of the Son of Man appear, and they will see the Son of Man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and glory….As with the days of Noah, so too will the coming of the Son of Man…Therefore be ready, for at the time you do no expect, the Son of Man will come. (Matthew 24:3, 29, 30, 37, 39, 44, 46)

We left off last time having looked at the Lord’s first advent into the world and its connection with the idea about God that had come to dominate the thoughts of those who were in the Church. We saw that every advent of the Lord is made when false ideas about God darken the human mind and that the purpose in the Lord making His first advent into the world was to restore to people the idea of a God of love through becoming the living embodiment of love, mercy and compassion in the person of Jesus Christ. In Jesus Christ, Jehovah presented Himself in a human form which people could approach and know through their bodily senses. This was a very different picture of Jehovah to that being fostered within the Jewish religion where God was seen as a punitive harsh judge of people, who was unapproachable except through cold rites and rituals administered by an intermediary priestly class. Such a spirituality was one filled with guilt, fear and foreboding. With the advent of Jehovah in the person of Jesus Christ this idea of an unapproachable harsh God was shown up for what it was – a monstrous falsity that had held the human race in bondage for centuries.

While the memory of the Lord’s life remained fresh in the experience of the early apostolic church, it was enough to keep this false idea in check. The early church was more interested in living the life of love as their religion than becoming too bogged down in doctrinal disputes or differences of opinion. But as time moved on, doctrine and dogma began to take centre stage in the life of the church. Disputes arose, along with heresies that began to tear at the fragile ideas of innocence and love that the Lord’s very life had inspired into the infant church a few centuries before. Great intellects arose and they began to amass Scriptures in favour of their own reasonings and positions. Heavenly love gave way to earthly power and dominion and with that, spiritual insight was darkened within the church once more. The Word was restricted to the learned classes and they began to interpret it to suit the loves of self and the world. The common people were largely illiterate and so they were at the mercy of priests, who themselves were indoctrinated into the false ideas that had taken hold of the church.

The doctrines for Spiritual Christianity teach that the Word is always understood from doctrine and where the doctrine is false, particularly where it teaches a false idea concerning the nature of God, these teachings form the basis from which Scripture is read and understood and this flows on into our very attitudes and life. So for example, if God is seen as a punitive judge then when the Scriptures are read all that takes a person’s attention are those things that confirm this idea. If we look into the history and behaviour of the Christian Church when it held onto such an idea, we see the rise of a worldly organisation that looked to amass wealth and used this to dominate whole nations, in the name of salvation the end justified the means. Clearly the church had lost its way – how anyone could profess to worship Jesus Christ and justify the wars and atrocities carried out in His name clearly shows how far things had fallen from any form of genuine spiritual life.

What had begun in love to the Lord and to the neighbour had descended into a love of dominion over others which is the love of self, and a love of amassing wealth from others which is the love of the world. In general terms, the face of the church had come to reflect in its own expression the idea of God that dominated it, it was harsh and punitive, greedy beyond measure and it lacked mercy and compassion. And while there were individuals and small groups who recoiled from what the church had become, its hold on the majority of minds of those in the Christian world was absolute. If ever the Lord needed to intervene it was now, for when love and faith, and by faith we mean truths that teach love, can no longer effect the minds of those within a church, that church is effectively no more. It is spiritually dead and so a church in external form or name only.

It is these kinds of states in a church that sets up the conditions for the Lord’s advent into the human race’s experience. The Lord’s timing is perfect and we may wonder why things have to deteriorate to such an extent before He will act. The reality is that He acts when the conditions are perfect for Him to do so. It isn’t arbitrary in the sense that God wasn’t willing to act one day but decides to do so the next. That is not how it works. His intervention in time is perfect because the conditions or states within the church are such that they demand His intervention for the sake of the salvation of the human race. We can see this in the historical context as it relates to the development of the human race.

Where there is ignorance concerning the true nature of spiritual realities, the human mind dwells in thick darkness. We have seen that ideas are important, particularly the ideas we hold concerning the nature of God, and that these ideas have a direct impact on our quality of our life, for what is true in the pattern of history is true also in relation to the pattern of our own lives. The Lord when He was in the world said that He would come again when His disciples asked what the sign of His coming and the end of the age would be. His response was somewhat cryptic, although this may well have been lost on the disciples who, in accordance with the cosmological view of the times, may well have seen no problem at all in taking his answer literally.

Jesus said that “the sun would be darkened and the moon would not give her light, and the stars will fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken. And then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the heavens…And they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and much glory.”

For the disciples the idea that the stars could fall from heaven was quite feasible. For us we know it’s impossible. The words are filled with symbolic meaning and Jesus is talking about the inner states of the church not the physical conditions of the outer universe. This is all He is ever concerned with because it is our inner states that are the focus of His desire to save us from the loves of self and the world. This is why He said that the kingdom of heaven is within you. On its most external level of meaning this statement of the signs of His coming relates historically to the very conditions the Christian church fell into. When Scripture speaks of the heavens they’re not referring to the sky above us, but of states within us and in a more general sense within the collective mind of the church. The heavens being higher in elevation refer to the inner man and the earth being lower to the external or natural man. So the sun, moon and stars being in the heavens refer to things within the inner life of man or a church. So what do they represent?

The sun is the primary ruling body of the solar system, everything in the world depends on the sun for its existence. The primary ruling principle within a genuine church around which everything is organised is love to the Lord who is the source of everything genuinely good and true within it. For the sun to be darkened then is for this love to wane and die due to the church having become infested with false ideas relating to the nature of God from the dominance of the love of self. Now the moon reflects the light of the sun – in the inner world of our minds or spirits it is truths belonging to faith from the Word that reflect the nature of love. Genuine truths always lead to what is good or loving, but when the church loses its focus this light is lost due to the fact that the Scriptures are understood in a way that supports worldly ambitions as people begin to manipulate them to suit self orientated agendas. The descent of spiritual knowledge into the service of the loves of self and the world are described by the imagery of the stars falling from heaven. Stars were the principle means of navigation and so corresponded to spiritual ideas from the Word which can guide us on our journey – but when love and faith cease to exist so too this knowledge is lost.

Like the mind of man the Word has an inner and outer aspect to it. Its outer sense is the literal sense and its inner sense which is contained in the letter is its spiritual sense. The outer sense is understood by the natural man but the inner sense is for the spiritual man. When a church falls from having love as its core focus it looses its ability to understand the Word as to its inner sense. This is because the spiritual sense of the Word teaches nothing other than what has to do with charity or love, so if the mind of a church is not attuned to this it cannot see it and doesn’t even acknowledge that such a sense exists in the Word. Thus these inner truths found in the spiritual sense of the Word grow dark and the focus falls onto the letter of the Word which can be interpreted to support any and every false idea that the natural mind can hatch. This is how what is described concerning the end of the age with the sun being darkened and the moon not giving its light and the stars of heaven falling, relates to a dying church’s understanding of the Word.

History shows that the physical presence of God on the earth in the person of Jesus Christ was not enough to stop the fall of the Christian faith from a heavenly focus and purpose to an earthly one. This fall occurred in part due to an inability of those who belonged to it to counter the various false ideas that arose due to the way in which the literal sense of Scripture was used to support them. The majority of people were relatively simple, being uneducated and had very little choice but to accept the meanings of Scripture as given by those in authority. Using Scripture, when it is accepted to be Divinely inspired, to support an idea, even when that idea is false, makes for a powerful spiritual force that is able to hold the mind in bondage. This is due to the fact the mere association of the idea with Holy Scripture leaves a person in a position of being open to a charge of questioning the authority of God’s Word itself when in fact they are really questioning the interpretation.

If the Lord as love was to be restored as the central idea of the Christian faith then the false ideas that had led to its downfall were going to have to be removed. If this was to be accomplished in a way that would be lasting the Lord would have to come in a way whereby people could never again be shackled in false ideas, seemingly supported by the Word, on the mass scale that they had been previously. A new understanding of the Scriptures would be required that would be able to dispel once and for all the false ideas that arise from a purely literal reading of the Scriptures concerning the nature of God. This new understanding would form the basis for a new Church in which the Lord Jesus Christ is worshiped as the One and only God of heaven and earth.

We have seen how important the ideas we hold are in providing the basis for our connection to the Lord. False ideas separate us from Him whereas genuine ideas are able to connect us with Him. A view that sees Him as love connects us, for love by definition is the basis for connection, whereas a view the sees God as a harsh punitive judge separates us from Him. God came into the world in the person of Jesus Christ to show us the true face of God and so for a time dispelled the false ideas that had built up to that point in time. That witness is found in the Gospels. But those who promoted a similar false view of the nature of God within the Christian church, drew from the literal sense of the Old Testament Scriptures what seemed to support this view and unless these passages and others that supported various false ideas were shown to hold a meaning consistent with the face of God that Jesus Christ embodied in His life on earth, it would be impossible for a genuine form of Christianity to be born again.

The key would not lie in having the physical presence of the person of Jesus on earth – but rather it lay in understanding all the Scriptures in the context of the life of Jesus Christ as being the One God who is love and wisdom itself so that they could not be manipulated to say otherwise. This understanding is given for a new Christian Church, a new Spiritual Christianity, that is currently on the rise and it was made available through the opening up of the meaning found in the inner sense of the Word. The revelation of the spiritual sense of the Word is the second coming of the Lord. The Lord is present with us by means of the Word, in fact the Word is the Lord. In its literal sense we are introduced to the historical person in a historical setting in a historical time. This is for us our personal encounter, the Lord’s first advent in our life and it is grasped by the natural man. But within the Word lies what is proper to the spiritual man and this can only be revealed through an understanding of the spiritual sense of the Word. This understanding of the inner meaning of the Word is how the Lord makes His second advent.

The literal sense has the power to attend to the things proper to the external man, it addresses external life and behaviour and effects external changes. But while this is to be encouraged, true change, if it is to be lasting, must ultimately address our inner motivations and thoughts, for this is the domain of the spiritual man. Jesus said at His coming “they would see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and much glory.” Again when speaking of heaven the Scriptures are not referring to the sky above but to the inner part of the mind. Clouds in the natural world are condensed water vapour that obscure the light and heat of the sun. Water is the principle element used to quench our thirst and in this idea we have a correspondence and so can come to see what it might represent in relation to the human mind. You have no doubt heard the phrase, “a thirst for knowledge,” phrases like this reveal how natural things correspond to spiritual or mental things. Water is used in the Scriptures as a symbol for truth or ideas related to spiritual knowledge.

Such ideas for us are found in the Word itself – these alone are able to quench our thirst for spiritual understanding. The Lord we are told makes His coming on the clouds of heaven. These clouds then are a kind of truth and because they are said to be heavenly they must be heavenly truths or ideas. The kind of heavenly truths or ideas that obscure things are those of the literal sense of the Word, its letter. In saying that He will come in the clouds of heaven the Lord is teaching us that His coming will be within the letter of the Word which is the foundation for its spiritual sense. The phrase “power and glory” refers directly to the spiritual sense of the Word, which when understood facilitates the Lord’s coming within our hearts and minds, empowering us in our fight against what is evil and false within and so revealing the glory of His presence with us. This is what is meant by the second coming…the very fact that we are able to look at this particular Scripture in this way is open to us due to the fact that the Lord has made His coming through the Word in the doctrines for Spiritual Christianity. Next time we will look at the process of the giving of these doctrines through the Lord’s servant Emanuel Swedenborg and how they are instrumental in understanding what is meant by the second advent.

This earth has seen a number of churches, all of which have in course of time reached their end, and after this new ones have come into existence, and the process has continued up to the present day. A church reaches its end when there is no longer any Divine truth left in it, but only falsified or rejected truth. When there is no real truth, there cannot be any real good, since the whole quality of good is formed by means of truths; for good is the essence of truth, and truth is the form of good, and no quality can exist without form. Good and truth can no more be separated than the will and the understanding, or, what is the same thing, the affection of love and the thought it gives rise to. Consequently, when the truth in a church reaches its end, so does its good. When this happens, then the church is terminated, that is, it reaches its end. (True Christian Religion 753)

When Jesus was seated on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to Him, saying, Tell us, what is the sign of your coming and of the ending of the age?…After the affliction of those days the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, the stars will fall from the sky, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken. Then will the sign of the Son of Man appear, and they will see the Son of Man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and glory….As with the days of Noah, so too will the coming of the Son of Man…Therefore be ready, for at the time you do no expect, the Son of Man will come. (Matthew 24:3, 29, 30, 37, 39, 44, 46)

Today we are going to look at the idea of the second coming of the Lord from the perspective of how the doctrines for Spiritual Christianity handle this. Not surprisingly it is a very different view on this from that of most other Christian teachings, who have for centuries now been patiently waiting for the Lord to return in a physical, bodily form to earth when He will set up a new kingdom in which He along with His saints will rule and reign. But we know from Jesus own words that His kingdom is not of this world, and that while in the world He had the authority to call on all the powers of heaven but chose not to because to do so would have led to a violation of human freedom in spiritual things. For we see that the Lord holds our freedom in spiritual matters as paramount, even where that freedom led to the rejection and crucifixion of the Word of God Himself, God still would not do anything that would have resulted in Him forcibly changing the minds of those involved.

People must be left in freedom to choose to love Him above themselves and He will never do anything, either now or in the future to change this. So the imagery of Jesus returning with his armies to forcibly put down all those on earth who reject Him in some future coming is just that, imagery, rich in its symbolic nature but not to be taken literally. For this symbolic imagery describes how the Word of God comes in power, when we from freedom allow it to work within our own hearts and minds to conquer all that stands against what is good and true and right and just from a spiritual perspective.

If we are to understand the nature of the second coming we must have a clear sense of what is meant by every advent of the Lord. In fact the term ‘second coming’ can be somewhat misleading for the Lord is perpetually coming – every insight that leads to something good is a coming of the Lord. For the word translated coming, peruosia, literally means presence of. So by the coming of the Lord we are to understand His presence made available to our perception. For the Lord is only present when He is perceived to be so, and we know that His presence with us is made perceptible by means of His Word. Without this we would have nothing by which we could be connected to Him, who was and who is and who is to come.

Every coming of the Lord is by means of His Word, this is why John opens his Gospel teaching us that Jesus Christ is the Word made flesh – He is directing his readers to a most profound idea, and so provides us with a stepping stone that can lead the mind away from thinking of the Lord as to His person, to thinking of Him as the Word, the logos. The idea is that yes, God became flesh through the taking to Himself a body and being born into the world as any other person – but within this idea is the liberating idea that the Lord is not bound by space and time but is constantly be-coming flesh, or making His presence real from moment to moment and that His presence is found in every expression of goodness or love we encounter. It is love that makes the Lord visible. If we are living to integrate the teachings of the Word into our lives then we will acquire the ability to see with new eyes – our eyes will be opened and we will come to see and perceive the presence of the Lord in new ways – we will be witnesses to His coming in our hearts and minds. This is what is meant by His second coming. His first advent in the context of our own lives is a coming of the Lord as truth, when we learn about Him in His Word, His second advent is when the truth is made one with our life and He comes as love.

This truth has been illustrated for us in a historical context, so over the next two articles we will give this some attention to this and to its spiritual implications and hopefully gain a new appreciation of what is meant by the Lord’s advents from a Spiritual Christianity perspective. With that in mind let’s open our look at the historical context with the following statement: that the Lord achieved all that He could possibly achieve by a physical presence in the world as a man in His first advent and that a second physical advent into the world would not add anything additional to what He has already accomplished and made available to every person through His first advent.

But what was this work the Lord performed while in the world? From the perspective of the doctrines for Spiritual Christianity, the human race’s understanding of spiritual realities had fallen so low and become so engrossed in natural ideas about spiritual things at the time of the Lord’s first advent, that unless God presented Himself in a form by which human beings could once again connect with a truer idea concerning His nature they would be spiritually lost forever. The thoughts of people in relation to spiritual things had become so darkened that they could no longer think above natural sensual ideas about God. Natural and sensual thinking doesn’t extend beyond the material – so if God was to present Himself in a form that could be grasped by this state of mind in which the human race had immersed itself it had to be in a material physical form. Only then would it be possible to direct the thoughts of people from the material plane to a higher level of understanding of genuine spiritual realities whereby they could be saved from the life of selfishness grounded in the loves of self and the world and lifted into a life of heavenly love or goodness.

Perhaps we can get a better appreciation of this if we lift our thought to consider the nature of God. The first thing we are confronted with is that no human mind can grasp God as He is in Himself. He is infinite, we are finite and the finite by definition cannot grasp the infinite, for if it could then it too would be infinite and we know that this is something only attributable to God Himself. So God as He is in Himself is unknowable. For this reason God, if He is to be known by us He must present Himself in a form that we as finite beings can grasp. The way He does this is through revealing Himself in ideas that limit Him – so it is that Divine Revelation presents God in human ideas or concepts that we can form some idea about. For example, John the Apostle states that “God is love...” Now every human being carries some idea of what love is. It is true that we can hold some pretty mixed up ideas about what love is but nevertheless having some idea is enough for the Lord to draw a person into a fuller more complete idea of His nature if they are willing to make a sincere commitment to living a spiritual life.

We need to appreciate however that the spiritual condition of the human race had fallen so low at the point of the Lord’s advent into the world that nothing remained in the Church at that time that was able to capture and lift the mind out of its sensual and bodily ideas. So a statement like “God is love…” could find nothing in the mind of that time in which it could take root. The loves of self and the world had risen to such a height that the light of spiritual truths concerning God and spiritual life could no longer affect the ideas and concepts existing in the minds of people to lift them to something higher. It was into these conditions that Jehovah made His coming in the flesh as a person. He came when the Word of the Old Testament could no longer serve to lift the minds of people out of the hellish states of selfishness due to its meaning having been corrupted and skewed by the religious leaders of the day to promote selfish ambition and power – so if the religion of the day could no longer represent and so light a path to a life of love and service, so the Lord would come Himself to demonstrate the way, the truth and the life, as its living material embodiment, and as a living example of that way, and that truth and that life re-presented to the senses of people in a material form in the person Jesus Christ.

With God coming into the world as a man we have the fullest manifestation of divine love and wisdom in a human form able to be accommodated or presented to the senses. Everything the Lord did while in the world was a re-presentation of divine love and wisdom on the level of the material plane of creation. This divine revelation in the person of Jesus Christ took its form in new ideas about God so that a new Church or spiritual understanding could take hold in the minds of his disciples and followers. This new spiritual understanding came to be called Christian and superseded the old understanding embodied in the Jewish church. In the Jewish church God was understood to be an impersonal Divine Being that had to be worshiped with meticulous attention to the detail involved in ritualistic sacrifices and obedience to ceremonial laws. All approaches to God by the individual were through intermediaries who made up the priesthood who performed the acts of ritual. Any departure from the law incurred an immediate penalty which was often severe given the nature of the transgression. This seems to be the pattern of religious life, as a people’s understanding of spiritual things moves from the essential core focused on a life of love into mere external forms, so love as the defining characteristic of the faith begins to die, and harsher more severe forms of expression take its place.

So to restore love to the centre we see that with the life of Jesus came a new understanding of the law as it related to love. As the living embodiment of the Divine Being on the material plane of creation God through His advent into the world showed Himself as One possessing a human face. Thus, He showed Himself as the embodiment of mercy, compassion, goodness and love and in doing so revealed the spirit of the law. His life in the world stood in stark contrast to the punitive, legalistic idea of a God that had become embedded in the minds of those who lived at that time. Such an idea of God destroyed people’s ability to connect with Him, this was a God to be avoided, appeased at all costs, it was an idea that worked only to separate people from Him and if ever they dared approach Him they could only do so in fear and in trepidation.

The religious legal experts of the time were convinced that their interpretation of religious law and so the idea of God they presented was correct. The ordinary person, largely, had no way of searching these things out for themselves and so where at the mercy of those who used religion and the idea of God they promoted to further their own self interest. When Jesus came onto the scene we can see how His life and teaching would have appealed to the common person in particular and infuriated those who held religious power. The Lord’s life struck at the heart of this false idea of God that had been used by those in authority to undermine any genuine sense of spirituality. And the new understanding that arose within His followers, and came to be called Christian, was of a God in the form of a human being, one who cared for them and was supremely concerned for their spiritual welfare. This God could be approached without fear of rejection, without priests as mediators, this new idea of God was one based on a very personal connection grounded in a relationship of love to the Lord and service to others.

The apostolic Christian church was born and its defining characteristic wasn’t circumcision or other impersonal rites that characterised the old Jewish faith, but a new way of relating to one another, a way of relating that flowed from a new understanding and ability to relate to God through the personal qualities He embodied in the person of Jesus Christ. Thus its defining sphere was one of love for one another, a love that flowed from a free choice to live for the Lord in the spirit of mutual love in obedience to His Word. What a contrast this idea of God was to the idea of God that had reigned in the minds of people for those centuries before the Lord’s advent into the world.

By 100AD this new idea of God as love that had been embodied in the life of the person Jesus Christ became ever so slightly removed from the historical person, as under Divine inspiration it took the form of actual ideas expressed in words. In the Gospels we move away from the person and are introduced to the core ideas and qualities the person embodied. These ideas are Divine truths that reveal the nature of God. So for every generation since the Lord’s advent the Gospels now provide a permanent written record of the life and sayings of Jesus which serves as a re-presentation of the operation of divine love and wisdom especially suited to those of us living on the material plane of creation. There is no need for the Lord to come bodily into the world again, everything that could possibly be achieved in a bodily coming was fulfilled in His first advent and remains with us in the written record of His life. For people today the Lord makes His first advent into their lives when they come into contact with the message of the Gospels and recognise Him there. The record of the life of the Lord in the world as found in the Gospels is a symbolic representation that perfectly corresponds to the activity of divine truth within the human mind in every person who recognises that Word as Divine (i.e. as the Lord.)

The doctrines for Spiritual Christianity go on to explain that churches decline in their spiritual quality and become more natural or carnal as they gradually shift their focus from living the life that its faith teaches to becoming more interested in ideas about faith and love disconnected from what it means to actually take these ideas and put them into practice. This is what happened to the Jewish church – it became obsessed with the letter of the law and the traditions of men and so killed its spirit. The spirit of the law is love as Jesus showed by His own life in fulfilling the law. When this kind of shift occurs away from love, false ideas about the nature of God begin to arise and become more and more prevalent until any sense of His true nature is unable to find a place in the human mind. This has a devastating effect on the health of the mind for it then lacks what is needed to stem the assault of the evils and falsities that flow from the loves of self and the world. It is at this point the Lord has to reveal Himself again in a way that can instill a new understanding by which people can reconnect back to God and be saved.

This is what happened to the early apostolic church. The quality of the love that characterised it and set it apart from the other religions of its day began to cool and by AD300 it was virtually unrecognizable. The focus had been gradually shifting from a spirituality built around living ones faith in mutual love to an obsession with doctrine and dogma. The forms and structures of the church before the Lord’s advent also made a return into the Christian faith. Hierarchical structures that supported worldly power and ambitions, the reestablishment of an intermediary priesthood along with various external rites and rituals, formed around sacraments, became the basis for people’s salvation. And again, like the rites of the old Jewish church, the carrying out of the sacraments could only be administered by a priestly class. The idea of a Divine Being that was punitive and harsh returned and this idea became fixed in the minds of people, who, from fear of hell, were encouraged to look to Jesus as their Saviour from the ever present wrath of God. Somehow Jesus was no longer the human face of the One God that the early apostolic church had bathed in but had been relegated to one of three persons each being God.

Fear and foreboding once again began to characterise religious expression. The dark ages descended and like the common people of Jesus’s day so the common people of these dark times had no way of finding their way to a truer more accurate idea of the true nature of God as love. Any survey of history will show how brutish these times were, which was a direct reflection of the state of the church or how low the level of spiritual influence had fallen at that time. Again, like the decline of the Jewish church before it, the Christian church also lost its way. The Word had become of secondary importance to the rites and rituals of external sacramental religious worship and by and large only the priests and learned classes had direct access to the Scriptures, which they misconstrued to promote personal ambition and worldly power through keeping all others under a regime of fear. These were indeed dark times. Any glimmer of a genuine spirituality being able to influence people on a large scale was by all accounts virtually extinguished. Love of a genuine spiritual nature had almost died. So it was that conditions began to reach a point when the Lord would once again have to make His presence known as love…which we will consider in more detail next time when we look more closely at what is meant by the Lord’s Second Advent.

The Lord is perpetually present with every person, wicked as well as good, for no one could live without His presence. But His coming is restricted to those who receive Him, and these are those who believe in Him and keep His commandments. It is the Lord’s perpetual presence which gives a person the faculty of reason and the ability to become spiritual. This is brought about by the light which comes from the Lord as the sun of the spiritual world, which a person can receive in his understanding. That light is the truth which gives him the power of reasoning. The Lord’s coming, however, takes place with the person who combines heat with that light, that is, combines love with truth. For the heat radiated by that same sun is love for God and towards the neighbour. The Lord’s presence by itself, and the enlightenment it brings to the understanding, can be compared with the presence of sunlight in the world; unless it is combined with heat, everything upon earth is desolate. But the Lord’s coming can be compared with the coming of heat, which happens in springtime. Since then heat is combined with light, the earth is softened up, seeds sprout and bear fruit. Such is the parallel between the spiritual environment of a person’s spirit and the natural environment of his body. (True Christian Religion 774)