Mormonism and the Trinity: Uncovering the Differences and Deception
Feb 27, 2025
Recently I came across a video on YouTube from a portion of a talk by Jeffrey R. Holland from the October 2007 General Conference, which I remember watching when I was younger before choosing to leave the Mormon Church, and it got me thinking again about how Mormon doctrines often sound true on the surface until you peel back the layers, sometimes only a little bit, and actually look closely at what the presidency of the Church is saying and doing. I wrote an article a few years ago about Mormonism (also known as the LDS Church) and want now to follow up on a few things.
A disclaimer for this article, similar to my others: the purpose is not to attack individuals, but rather to expose falsities in organizations. The purpose is to help you to see what is really happening, to open your eyes to it, and to protect you from it.
If you read the Bible in full, and in context, especially taking into account the words of the Gospel of John, you can see that the Lord Jesus Christ is the Father and not a separate person, from important passages where this link is made and where he mentions that the Father is a symbol of his immortal soul rather than a literal person:
Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you so long, and you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?”
He that sees me sees him that sent me.
If you had known me, you should have known my Father also: and from henceforth you know him, and have seen him.
Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am.
Then they took up stones to cast at him: but Jesus hid himself, and went out of the temple, going through the midst of them, and so passed by.
When he spoke in parables about the Father, as in the third person, he did so from a spirit of humility, so that he wouldn’t testify from his human manifestation alone, because the process of glorifying his human form wasn’t finished until the cross, and so that they wouldn’t stone and kill him until his Word was spoken. And more importantly, to protect them from themselves because they were living in a sinful, natural state whereby most of them weren’t ready to hear and see through the parables, but those who could, would. For these reasons, he’s obvious about it sparingly.
We know from the Word that everything the Lord taught, he taught in parables (Mark 4:34). The literal meaning isn’t always comprehensible to us at first, but the inner meaning, which is spiritual and has poetic significance, holds together perfectly.
When he did speak plainly, they immediately picked up stones because they didn’t acknowledge that he was and is the Father. The same denial occurs today among old church Christians as it did among the Jews, except today, the “stones” are spiritual, they’re words of false prophets seeking to deny his divinity in some form or another, such as in this clip, below:
The statements by Holland in this talk are very deceptive because he made it sound like he was speaking the truth but then dropped a gross falsity into the middle of his talk, that destroyed the whole fruit, like a worm in the middle of an apple.
What preachers like this do is gradually talk you into nodding your head, thinking, “Yes, the Lord is a human being and we should worship him in his human form,” however, they then attempt to snatch his divinity away from him by claiming that there are three separate and distinct people in the Godhead.
Holland did this when he said:
We declare it is self-evident from the scriptures that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost are separate persons, three divine beings.
(Timecode 5:56)
While both the Nicene and Mormon doctrines attempt to explain the nature of God, they fall short by fragmenting the unity of God into multiple persons or beings. The true understanding of the Divine is that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are not separate entities but are fully unified within the Lord Jesus Christ. This unity is central to understanding the Lord’s divinity and his work in salvation, which transcends the confusion and division introduced by both traditional and Mormon interpretations of the Trinity.
Swedenborg’s opus, “True Christianity”
Worshiping the Lord in human form is a good thing; however, believing in three separate beings isn’t. After the Lord’s resurrection, the three aspects of the Trinity, rather than people, were fully glorified and united in one person as the Divine Human. To say there are three gods denies the Divine Human of the Lord and places his divinity elsewhere. This, in effect, converts the Mormon doctrine into faith alone, which is the same, and no better than the old church systems.
“Faith alone” means a system of belief, rituals, and membership, on their own, when it’s thought of as a one-and-only true faith based solely on its knowledge, traditions, and verbal acknowledgement of the Lord rather than an internal acknowledgment that caring must be joined to that faith.
Its adherents will often say that the Mormon Church and its doctrine is a true restoration of the gospel, but it isn’t. Rather, the Lord gave us the true restoration of the gospel, in Swedenborg’s opus, True Christianity, where the Lord made it clear how and why God is one person.
The reason is because True Christianity teaches that faith isn’t the linchpin for salvation, but rather love and caring united to faith are, regardless of religion, so long as they keep the Lord’s Ten Commandments and believe in one God (or are able to accept that belief after death). In it, it explains the nature of God and the Trinity and how the Lord is one person, how and why he’s not three and why that’s important to know and acknowledge, the decline of the Christian church shortly after he ascended into heaven, and how the Christian church as a whole should operate from now on.
He who has my commandments, and keeps them, he it is that loves me: and he who loves me will be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him.
The logic goes like this:
Faith must have love in it to be legitimate (Matthew 7:21–23, John 13:35).
To love means to obey the Lord’s commandments (John 14:15, John 14:21).
The first of the Lord’s commandments is to worship him as the only God (Exodus 20:3, Matthew 22:37).
A common fallacy that people repeat often these days is that they say and think they’re being caring simply because they’re being nice. But caring has much deeper implications than simply etiquette and the appearance of good manners. It means obeying the commandments, the first of which is:
Thou shalt have no other gods before Me.
—Exodus 20:3
The Greek god Aeolus, or the “god of the winds.”
Many people today envision the Holy Ghost to be something like this, a separate god who works alongside the Father, with as much divinity as him. But this is false and is paganism. The Holy Ghost, or Holy Spirit, is nothing else than the Lord Jesus Christ, acting through good spirits and angels, who are not divine. Only the Lord is Divine.
The truth is that dividing God or the divine essence into three persons, each of whom is individually a god in his own right, causes denial of God.
It is like someone entering a church for worship and seeing a triptych above the altar with one god portrayed as the ancient of days, another god as a high priest, and a third god as Aeolus flying in the air, with an inscription reading, These Three Are One God. Or perhaps it is like the same person seeing a painting above the altar that portrays God’s unity and trinity as a deformed person with three heads protruding from one body or three bodies sharing a single head. If people enter heaven with this as their picture of God, they will definitely be thrown out headfirst, even if they plead that the head or heads stand for God’s essence and the body or bodies stand for God’s distinctly different properties.
They say, “we believe God is one in essence even though we believe there are three people in the Godhead.”
This is exactly what most people say who claim to be Christians but who aren’t really:
I know the blasphemy of them which say they are Jews [meaning the Lord’s people, who are in the goodness of love], and are not, but are the synagogue of Satan.
According to the Lord (Matthew 10:32-33, Matthew 7:21-23), they can’t enter into heaven until and unless they acknowledge that his humanity was made divine and that his divinity exists only in him. While it might appear a bit harsh at the outset, the reason is because to do otherwise correlates with internal corruption.
By Swedenborg:
The faith of the modern-day church has given birth to horrifying offspring in the past, and is producing more such offspring now: for example, the notion that there is instantaneous salvation as a result of the direct intervention of mercy; that there is predestination; that God cares only for our faith and pays no attention to our actions; that there is no bond that unites goodwill and faith; that as we undergo conversion we are like a log of wood; and many more teachings of the kind. Another problem has been the adoption of false principles of reason that are based on the teaching that we are justified by our faith alone and the teaching concerning the person of Christ, and the use of these principles to judge the uses and benefits of the sacraments (baptism and the Holy Supper). From the earliest centuries of Christianity until now, heresies have been leaping forth from a single source: the body of teaching based on the idea that there are three gods.
About Jeffrey R. Holland, watching him teach such a false idea with apparent confidence, that there are three gods, makes it clear to me just how misguided he is, since I know heaven considers it blasphemous. While it cannot be known for sure during mortality who is damned or saved — and this shouldn’t be judged — judgements can be made about what people say and do and whether it’s true or false and whether we’ll choose to simply go along with it, or to take a stand, warn others, and protect them from being hurt by rot present in the churches. Holland speaks from the pulpit like he knows what he is talking about, but he either has absolutely no idea what he’s saying, or he knows it, and is saying it intentionally. I hope it isn’t the latter, but either way, we need to recognize that what he’s preaching is false and not bite into the apple.
Another problem was at the end of the video, how Holland says:
I know that only by relying wholly on his merits, mercy, and everlasting grace, can we gain eternal life.
This is also deceptive phrasing because there is a difference between acknowledging the Lord’s mercy and relying on it as if it’s given sola fide or by faith alone, as the Lord taught:
Not every one that says unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that does the will of my Father which is in heaven.
Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works?
And then I will declare to them, “I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!”
This teaches that salvation cannot come from faith alone, or by simply relying on his grace without an active commitment to living a life of caring and repentance. True faith is inseparable from love and good works, as both must be present for spiritual regeneration. The Lord’s mercy is freely given, and it is by his grace that we are saved, but it is through living according to his commandments that we open ourselves to that mercy in order to receive it.
To rely on the Lord’s mercy, merit, and grace, without active participation with works, is the very concept which the Lord refuted, above, as well as debunked in True Christianity and many other of Swedenborg’s books, such as Apocalypse Revealed. It’s also emphasized in the Apostolic writings in the Bible:
You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone.
But Swedenborg’s books elaborate on it even further, and every reason why, for anyone curious to know the details and the deception that took place by the old churches throughout most of Christian history.
Knowing this, if the Mormon Church essentially claims the same tenets as the Protestants — who also claim that faith alone is sufficient for heaven, it being the central tenet of their doctrine — how can they be the true restoration of the Lord’s church?
The teachings of faith of the modern-day church attribute to God qualities that are merely human: they say, for example, that God looked at the human race with anger; that he needed to be reconciled to us; that he was in fact reconciled through his love for his Son and through the Son’s intercession; that he needed to be appeased by seeing his Son’s wretched suffering, and this brought him back into a merciful attitude; that he assigns the Son’s justice to unjust people who beg him for it on the basis of their faith alone, and turns them from enemies into friends and from children of wrath into children of grace.
Surely everyone knows that God is compassion and mercy itself. He is absolute love and absolute goodness. These qualities constitute his underlying reality or essence. Surely, then, everyone sees the contradiction in saying that compassion itself or absolute goodness could look at the human race with anger, become our enemy, turn away from us, and lock us all into damnation and nevertheless continue to be his own divine essence, to be God. Attitudes and actions of that kind belong to a wicked person, not a virtuous one. They belong to an angel of hell, not an angel of heaven. It is horrendous to attribute them to God.
The fact that things like this have been taught is clear from direct statements made by many of the founders, the councils, and the churches as a whole, from the first centuries of Christianity right up to the present day.
It is also clear from indirect evidence. There are derivative teachings that must have come from thoughts like these as their source, the way effects come from a cause or bodily actions from a brain. For instance, the notion that God needed to be reconciled to us; that he was in fact reconciled through his love for his Son and through the Son’s intercession and mediation; that God needed to be appeased by seeing his Son’s final wretched suffering, and that this brought him back and more or less forced him to adopt a merciful attitude; that God went from being our enemy to being our friend and adopted us (“children of wrath” that we are) as children of grace.
There were theologians who assigned to God attributes that are merely human and unworthy of God. Their purpose in doing so was to preserve the integrity of the doctrine of justification, once it was established, and dress it up in some plausible fashion. They said that anger, revenge, damnation, and other things of the kind were traits possessed by God’s justice, and this is why such things are mentioned so many times in the Word and are attributed to God.
What that mindset results in is that a belief in salvation based on completing external facets of the Church, rather than because of true intentions towards others within them. Once again, it’s exceptionalism, that only they are the saved people of God. The Lord taught that the true church is not confined to a particular denomination or religious group, but exists wherever people live according to love and truth, both inwardly and outwardly.
Swedenborg explains in his writings that in the Word the Lord is often portrayed as angry, but that this is only an appearance, and serves a karmic purpose from good intent. What actually occurs is that when people direct anger and treachery upwards towards the Lord, it’s like a boomerang that never originated in the Lord, but came up towards him from hell, and yet swings back towards them on its own. It’s also like static electricity in the atmosphere that builds up so much tension that there is then only one place for that energy to go, often causing it to break out all at once, violently back to the earth. This is due to the laws of divine providence which require that the heavens be maintained in order (John 12:47-50).
Many Mormons will then say, “Trust us by our fruits. Are we not living a good life?”
But then we heard a clap of thunder and saw a flash of lightning from above; and presently an angel appeared… who cried out… “Do not listen to them! They have not abandoned their earlier ‘faith,’ which teaches that God the Father took pity for the sake of the Son. That type of faith is not faith in the Lord... Only repent and turn to the Lord, and you will have faith. Before then, ‘faith’ is not faith having any life in it.”
This comes from the Lord’s words a few verses earlier in Matthew 7, 16 - 18:
Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.
You shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?
Even so every good tree brings forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree brings forth evil fruit.
A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit.
And this is, of course, true — knowing that if there is a worm in the middle of the fruit, it obviously isn’t good fruit, even if it appears that way on the surface. If there is a worm in the middle of it, it is the same idea as if it was being presented by a ravening wolf.
They think only of moral charity and its civic and political goods, which they call goods of faith, but which are absolutely not. For an atheist can do the same things in the same way and give them the same appearance. Therefore they unanimously say that no one is saved by any works, but by faith alone.
…by performing ordinances of their Church.
They say that “an apple tree produces apples.”
However, if a person does good deeds (solely) for the sake of his salvation… then the apples are inwardly rotten and full of worms.
Swedenborg explained that a moral life alone is not good if it isn’t accompanied by a spiritual life that is correctly in alignment with the Lord’s love, rather than a fake, mirror image of it.
To do moral, civil, or political goods for the sake of oneself isn’t good, because it isn’t eternal or truly charitable. But to do those good things for the sake of the Lord, is good, because that is eternal, and comes from him. This latter type of good is what is called truly “spiritual.” According to the Lord, outwardly moral behavior is insufficient on its own. True moral life must arise from internal spiritual life, motivated by genuine love.
Moral life from the love of self and the world is not in itself moral life, although it seems to be moral; for the man acting thus acts well, sincerely, and justly for the sake of self and the world only, and what is good, sincere, and just serves him as means to an end, which is, either that he may be raised above others and rule over them, or that he may gain wealth; and of these things he thinks in his spirit, or when he is by himself secretly; but these things that he thinks he does not dare to avow openly, because they would destroy the good opinion others have of him, and thus destroy the means by which he wishes to attain his ends.
From this it can be seen that there lies within the moral life of such a man nothing else than to acquire all things in preference to others, thus that he wishes to have all others to serve him, or to gain possession of their goods; from which it is evident that his moral life is not in itself a moral life; for if he should gain what he aims at, or what he has as an end, he would subject others to himself as slaves, and would deprive them of their goods. And as all means savor of the end, and in their essence are of the same quality as their ends, for which reason they are also called intermediate ends, therefore such a life, regarded in itself, is merely craftiness and fraud.
And this also becomes clearly evident in the case of those with whom these external bonds are released, as takes place, when engaged in lawsuits against their fellows, when they desire nothing so much as to subvert justice, and secure the good will of the judge or the favor of the king, and this secretly, that they may deprive others of their goods; and when they obtain this, they rejoice in spirit and in heart. This is still more evident in the case of kings who place honor in wars and victories, that they find the highest joy of their hearts in subjugating provinces and kingdoms, and where resistance is made, in depriving the vanquished of all their goods, and even of life. Such also is the delight of many who engage at such times in military service. This becomes still more evident with all of this character when they become spirits, which is immediately after the death of the body. As they then think and act from their spirit, they rush into every wickedness according to their love, however morally they may have lived in appearance while in the world.
Just because it looks like a sheep doesn’t mean that’s what it is.
“That thou hast a name that thou livest, and art dead,” signifies the quality of their thought, in that they think themselves to be alive, because they are living a moral life, when yet they are dead. This is evident from the signification of “name,” as being quality of state; also from the signification of “living,” as being to have spiritual life; also from the signification of “being dead,” as being not to have spiritual life, but only moral life without it. This is “being dead,” because in the Word “life” signifies the life of heaven with man, which is there also called “life eternal;” while “death” signifies the life of hell, which life in the Word is called “death,” because it is the privation of the life of heaven. Here, therefore, “thou hast a name that thou livest, and art dead,” signifies thinking that they have spiritual life, and thus are saved, because they are living a moral life, when yet they are spiritually dead. But how this is to be understood can be seen from what was said above n. 182 of each life, spiritual and moral, namely, that moral life apart from spiritual life is the life of the love of self and the love of the world, while moral life that is from spiritual life is a life of love to the Lord and love towards the neighbor; this life is the life of heaven, but the other life is what is called spiritual death. When this is understood, it can be known what is meant here by “being alive and yet being dead.”
The case with acknowledging the Lord’s mercy, however, rather than relying wholly on it, is different, and necessary.
“Life” signifies the Lord, and thence salvation and heaven, because all of life is from one only Fountain, and that only Fountain of life is the Lord, while angels and men are merely forms receiving life from Him. The Life itself that proceeds from the Lord and fills heaven and the world, is the life of His love, and in heaven this appears as light, and because this light is life it enlightens the minds of angels, and enables them to understand and be wise. From this it is that the Lord calls Himself not only “the Life” but also “the Light.”
The reason for this is because the Lord’s merit doesn’t cover your sins if you don’t partner with him and turn away from your sins, and towards him, as if on your own. Swedenborg wrote that the power to do so still comes from the Lord, but you have to engage yourself in the process in order for it to be granted. That’s why he said that “relying on the Lord’s merits” is the wrong wording and the wrong concept — a concept not taught by the Lord anywhere in his Word (Apocalypse Revealed #417).
Spiritual life is wholly different [from mere outward moral life], because it has a different origin; for it is from love to God and love towards the neighbor. Consequently, the moral life also of those who are spiritual is different, and is a truly moral life; for these, when they think in their spirit, which takes place when they are thinking secretly by themselves, do not think from self and the world, but from the Lord and heaven; for the interiors of their minds, that is, of their thought and will, are actually elevated by the Lord into heaven, and are there conjoined to him; thus the Lord flows into their thoughts, intentions, and ends, and governs them and withdraws them from their proprium (their ego), which is solely from the love of self and of the world. The moral life of such persons is, in appearance, like the moral life of those described above, and yet their moral life is spiritual, because it is from a spiritual origin. Their moral life is simply an effect of spiritual life, which is the efficient cause, thus the origin. For they act well, sincerely, and justly with their fellows from fear of God and from love of the neighbor; in these loves the Lord keeps their mind and disposition; consequently when they become spirits, which takes place when the body dies, they think and act intelligently and wisely, and are elevated into heaven. Of these it may be said, that with them every good of love and every truth of faith flows in out of heaven, that is, through heaven from the Lord. But this is not true of those described above; for their good is not the good of heaven, nor is their truth the truth of heaven; but what they call good is the delight of the lust of the flesh, and it is falsity therefrom that they call truth; these flow into them from self and from the world. From this it can also be known what moral life from spiritual life is, and what moral life apart from spiritual life is; namely, that moral life from spiritual life is truly moral life, which may be called spiritual, since it has its cause and origin in the spiritual; but that moral life apart from spiritual life is not moral life, and may be called infernal, for so far as the love of self and of the world reign in it, so far it is fraudulent and hypocritical.
For this reason, many people who claim to be Christians aren’t believing as Christians should. They look forward to a literal rather than metaphorical Second Coming, because they believe they will be exalted as saints simply because they claim to be Christians or because they are living a moral life outwardly, like the Jews hoped for when looking for the coming of the Messiah. But, as we know, the Jews didn’t get the type of Messiah that they wanted. Rather than a military leader, they got a Shepard; a spiritual leader. Just like the Jews, Catholics, Protestants, Orthodox, and others; the Mormons are looking for the Lord to be a military leader and to come to destroy those outside of the faith tradition with literal fire and brimstone, and because they read the scriptures literally rather than spiritually, they lack true understanding.
It isn’t going to happen like that because that’s not who he is. The Lord is not a military conquerer in a tribal sense; he’s a Savior, who cares about everyone’s salvation:
For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.
He may support troops and angels to protect the innocent and expel the wicked, but his incentive behind it is never derived from tribal motivations, nor does he take any joy in the destruction of the wicked for its own sake:
Say to them, ‘As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign Lord, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live. Turn! Turn from your evil ways! Why will you die, people of Israel?’
Swedenborg explains this:
Mention of “the anger of God” in the Word actually refers to that which is evil in us. Because this evil goes against God it is called the anger of God. This expression does not mean that God is angry at us but that our own evil makes us angry at God. Because evil carries its own punishment with it (just as goodness carries its own reward), when evil brings punishment on us it looks as though God is punishing us.
This is the same, though, as criminals blaming the law for their own punishment, or our blaming the fire for burning us when we put our hand in it, or our blaming the drawn sword in the guard’s hand when we hurl ourselves onto the tip of it. This is the nature of God’s justice.
These are features of the Word’s literal meaning. They occur because the literal meaning is written in correspondences and in expressions of an appearance. These features do not appear in the Word’s spiritual meaning, however; in this meaning the truth stands forth in its own light.
I can attest that when angels hear anyone saying God was angry and locked the whole human race into damnation, or was reconciled from being our enemy through the Son as a second god born from the first god, they become like people who are about to vomit because their stomachs and internal organs have been violently heaved this way and that.
The angels say, “What more insane thing could anyone possibly say about God?”
How did it come about that theologians attributed merely human qualities to God? The underlying cause is that all spiritual perception and enlightenment come from the Lord alone. The Lord is the Word, or divine truth. He is the true light that enlightens everyone (John 1:1, 9). He says, “I have come into the world as a light so that anyone who believes in me will not remain in darkness” (John 12:46). This light and the awareness that is gained from it flow only into people who acknowledge the Lord as the God of heaven and earth and who turn to him alone. This light and awareness do not flow into people who think in terms of three gods, as has been happening since the early establishment of the Christian church. Because the idea of three gods is an earthly notion, the only light it receives is earthly. It is incapable of opening up to receive any inflow of spiritual light. This is why the only qualities people have seen in God have been earthly in nature.
For another thing, if theologians had realized the vast incongruity between their ideas and the true divine essence, and had removed these ideas from the teachings on justification, this would obviously have amounted to a complete abandonment of a Christianity that had always been centered on the worship of three gods. No alternative was available before the predetermined time for the new church, when fullness and restoration would come.
What is the New Faith?
The idea of “one true faith” is different than “one true church” when “church” is referred to in the literal sense. When Swedenborg uses the word, “faith” he means a faith united to caring, which is why his writings exposed the concept of faith alone as a misnomer.
By Swedenborg:
Before I demonstrate this proposition, I will first lay before the intellect what goodwill is and where it comes from, what faith is and where it comes from, and therefore what the good works called “fruits” are and where they come from.
Faith is truth. Therefore teachings of faith are the same as teachings of truth. Teachings of truth affect our intellect, and therefore how we think, and what we say as a result. They teach us what we should will and what we should do. They teach that some things are evil and we should abstain from them; they teach that some things are good and we should do them. When we follow these teachings and actually do what is good, our good actions enter into a partnership with the truths we understand, because in these actions our will works together with our intellect. (Good actions have to do with our will and truth has to do with our intellect.) This partnership leads us to a love for what is good, which is the essence of goodwill, and a love for what is true, which is the essence of faith. When combined, these two form a marriage. Good works are the offspring born of this marriage, just as pieces of fruit are the offspring produced by a tree. As a result, there are fruits that are born of goodness and fruits that are born of truth. In the Word, the latter are represented as grapes and the former as olives.
Once we accept that this is the origin of good works, it becomes clear that faith alone can never produce or give birth to any of the works that are known as fruits, any more than a woman by herself without a man can produce any offspring. Therefore “the fruits of faith” is a made-up, meaningless expression.
Nothing in the whole universe was or is ever produced unless it comes from a marriage of two things, one of which relates to goodness and the other to truth, or else one of which relates to evil and the other to falsity. Therefore no works could even be conceived, let alone born, if these two elements did not enter into a kind of marriage. Good actions are produced by a marriage of goodness and truth; evil actions are produced by a marriage of evil and falsity.
Goodwill cannot be united to the faith of the modern-day church; there is no marriage there that could give birth to a good work. This is because the assigning of Christ’s merit is thought to do everything for us. It is thought to forgive our crimes, to make us just, to regenerate us, to sanctify us, and to give us salvation and the life of heaven — and all for free with no effort on our part. If this is true, though, what is goodwill and what is its supposed marriage with faith? It is pointless and meaningless. What is goodwill but an accessory or an adjunct to the assigning of Christ’s merit and to the process whereby we are made just? Goodwill is good for nothing.
Furthermore, a faith based on the idea that there are three gods is wrong, as I have shown above. How can true goodwill have a relationship with a wrongheaded faith?
There are two reasons people give for believing that the modern-day faith has no bond with goodwill. One is that they describe this faith as spiritual in nature, but they see goodwill as merely earthly and moral in nature; and in their opinion no relationship is possible between what is spiritual and what is earthly. The second reason they give is to keep anything that comes from ourselves, and therefore any desire for reward, from becoming mixed up with our faith, since faith is the only thing that saves us.
It is in fact true that there is no bond between goodwill and that faith; but there is a bond between goodwill and the new faith.
—Survey of Teachings of the New Church #48-50
THE FAITH OF THE NEW HEAVEN AND THE NEW CHURCH IN A PARTICULAR FORM is this:
That Jehovah God is Himself Love and Himself Wisdom, or that He is the Very Good and the Very True; and that He, as to the Divine Truth, which is the Word, and which was God with God, descended and took on a Human for the end that He might bring into order all things that were in heaven, and all things that were in hell, and all things that were in the Church; for at that time the power of the Devil, that is, of hell, prevailed over the power of heaven, and on earth the power of evil prevailed over the power of good, and thus total damnation stood before the gates and threatened.
This future damnation Jehovah God removed by His Human, which was the Divine Truth, and so redeemed angels and men; and afterwards in His Human united the Divine Truth to the Divine Good, and thus returned into His Divine, in which He was from eternity, together with the glorified Human.These things are meant by what is written in John:
The Word was with God, and God was the Word; and the Word was made flesh
And by this also in the same place:
I went out from the Father and came into the world; again I leave the world and go to the Father
From these it is clear that without the Lord’s coming into the world, no one could have been saved. The same is true today, which is why unless the Lord come again into the world in Divine Truth, which is the Word, no one can be saved.
The particulars of faith on the part of man are:
I. That God is one, in Whom is the Divine Trinity, and that He is the Lord God Savior Jesus Christ.
II. That saving faith is to believe in Him.
III. That evils must be shunned because they are of the devil and from the devil.
IV. That goods must be done because they are of God and from God.
V. And that these are to be done by man as if by himself, yet that it must be believed that they are from the Lord with him and through him.The first two are of faith; the latter two are of charity; and the fifth is the conjunction of charity and faith, thus of the Lord and man.
The tone and context that Holland used in his talk splits the Godhead into two or three, whereas the tone and context of the Lord’s words combine them into one.
At 5:15 in the clip, Holland quoted the Gospel of John, which reads:
That they might know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.
Within the whole context of Lord’s teachings in the Gospels, however, he said that all power was given to the Son (Matthew 28: 18), his Divine Human, and that his Son is the manifestation of God.
In John 17:3, the Greek word καί (kai) is traditionally translated as “and,” making it seem like Jesus is listing two separate persons to be known for eternal life: the Father and Jesus Christ. However, kai can also mean “even” or “indeed,” as a cumulative, like “yea” or “moreover,” rather than a separate item in a list. The English and is less specific in this regard, which is why kai doesn’t perfectly translate to it.
With that correct understanding, this verse is understood as:
Eternal life is to know you, the only true God, indeed, Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.
This interpretation clarifies the truth that knowing the Father is inseparable from knowing Jesus Christ, rather than listing them as two separate beings. While most translations take the conjunctive reading, the explanatory reading is grammatically accurate and aligns with other biblical passages where kai functions as a clarifier rather than a mere conjunction.
This makes it clear that Jesus Christ is the likeness and image of God, rather than another person.
Mormon apologists will say things like, “we only use the King James Version Bible,” not understanding that any English translation isn’t sacrosanct, but the meaning behind the Hebrew and Greek is, and so the focus shouldn’t be on the translation itself but rather on the intent of the true author, the Lord. In my experience, many Mormons barely realize that the Bible was first written in Hebrew and Greek, since their idea of translation is a magical concept along the lines of their belief about the Book of Mormon’s translation by the Urim and Thummim; thus, for them, the KJV Bible, written in the same style, with Jacobean Early Modern English, is considered to be in the same category.
The Mormon scriptures don’t unite the Lord into one body. They split the Trinity. As is shown in the Doctrine and Covenants:
The Father has a body of flesh and bones as tangible as man’s; the Son also; but the Holy Ghost has not a body of flesh and bones, but is a personage of Spirit. Were it not so, the Holy Ghost could not dwell in us.
—D&C 130:22
It’s also evident throughout the Book of Mormon’s narrative where the Father is said to speak from heaven as a separate person, even after the Lord’s total unification with him and ascension into heaven had already been completed. This, and because the Mormon Presidency sets the Mormon scriptures on a pedestal, even higher than the Bible, causes the two contents — one derived from man’s imagination, and the other from God — to be mixed together and cross-referenced as if they were from the same source, into a golden cup of abominations, destroying and diluting the meaning in the Word in the mind of those who could be enlightened by it (See Divine Providence 231, 226, 227).
And the woman was arrayed in crimson and scarlet, and gilded with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand, filled with the abominations and uncleanness of her harlotry.
I know your works, that you are neither cold nor hot. If only you were cold or hot! Since you are lukewarm and neither cold nor hot, I am about to spit you out of my mouth.
Joseph Smith, founder of the Mormon Church, was aware of the Lord’s revelations to Swedenborg, which revealed that the Lord is God, but denied them, instead, choosing to “climb up another way.”
As Holland misquotes the Lord, he has a little smirk afterwards, like he thinks he’s getting away with something. Generally speaking, Swedenborg wrote that people who don’t understand the spiritual meaning of the Word should be forgiven, knowing that, up until the Lord’s revelations to him, nobody could have known otherwise than that there was anything more than a literal meaning in the Word. But there are two major problems with this with regard to Holland and the LDS Presidency:
It’s been over 250 years since Swedenborg’s revelations and yet none of them have seriously searched out the spiritual meaning of the Word, even though Joseph Smith, Parley Pratt, Orson Pratt, and others in the early Church, were exposed to it. Instead, they consider the Book of Mormon to be the keystone of the faith and thereby a greater version of the Word, and by doing so they miss the spiritual meaning of the actual Word in the New and Old Testaments, because they’ve made them secondary to it.
They regularly claim to be special witnesses and anointed spokesmen for the Lord, claiming to have the keys to the celestial kingdom, while directly refuting him, which is profanation.
Joseph Smith was aware of the Lord’s revelations to Swedenborg, as is proven by a conversation he had in 1839, with Edward Hunter, who later became a bishop of the LDS Church. In a biography about Hunter’s life written by his grandson, William, it mentions that Hunter wrote in his journal a conversation he had with Smith about Swedenborg:
Edward Hunter, one of the first bishops of the Mormon Church, who had a conversation with Joseph Smith about Swedenborg.
“The first conversation I had with him was, ‘Mr. Smith, I know there is a God but how to approach Him, I do not know.’ He looked at me very earnestly — I thought questioned me or doubted my sincerity. I was not pleased and would have said something if it had not been in my house.” However, the two men soon came to understand each other... During their conversations on religion, Edward asked the prophet what he thought of the Swedenborgians. “I verily believe,” replied Joseph, “that Emanuel Swedenborg had a view of the world to come, but for daily food he perished.” And Edward wrote with evident satisfaction: “his answer [was], ‘I verily believe’” — thus disposing of his former interest in Swedenborg.
—“Edward Hunter, Faithful Steward,” by William E. Hunter, Page 51 (familysearch.org)
By Swedenborg:
A sixth kind of profanation is committed by people who accept the Word but still deny the divine nature of the Lord. These are the people known as Socinians and Arians in the world. Both kinds of person ultimately find themselves praying to the Father, not to the Lord. They pray constantly to the Father for admission to heaven (some also praying for the sake of the Son), but their prayers are in vain. Eventually, they lose all hope of salvation and are sent down into hell with people who deny God. These are the people meant by those who blaspheme the Holy Spirit, who are not forgiven in this world or the next (Matthew 12:32).
The reason is that God is one in both person and essence, comprising a Trinity; and this God is the Lord. Since the Lord is heaven as well, and since this means that the people who are in heaven are in the Lord, people who deny the Lord’s divine nature cannot be granted admission to heaven and be in the Lord.
A seventh kind of profanation is committed by people who at first accept divine truths and live by them but later backslide from them and deny them. The reason this is the worst kind of profanation is that these people are mixing what is holy with what is profane to the point that they cannot be separated, and yet they need to be separated for people to be either in heaven or in hell. Since this is impossible for such individuals, their whole human volition and discernment is torn away from them and they become no longer human, as already noted.
Almost the same thing happens to people who at heart acknowledge the divine contents of the Word and the church but submerge them completely in their own sense of self-importance. This is the love of being in control of everything that has been mentioned several times before. When they become spirits after death, they are absolutely unwilling to be led by the Lord, only by themselves; and when the reins of their love are loosened, they try to control not only heaven but even the Lord. Since they cannot do this, they deny the Lord and become demons.
It is important to realize that for all of us, our life’s love, our predominant love, stays the same after death and cannot be taken away.
The unpleasant, but necessary truths about Mormonism that have to be mentioned.
This next section from Swedenborg’s writings needs to be included here for everyone who is able to be admonished by it. Based on my research, it’s applicable to Mormonism and its teachings and directly addresses the issues raised in Holland’s talk.
There is only one true faith; it is faith in the Lord God our Savior Jesus Christ. It exists in people who believe that he is the Son of God, that he is the God of heaven and earth, and that he is one with the Father. There is only one true faith, because faith is truth. Truth cannot be split or cut in half in such a way that part of it heads left and part of it heads right, and maintain its trueness…
Illegitimate faith is all faith that departs from the one and only true faith. Illegitimate faith exists in people who climb up some other way and view the Lord not as God but only as a human being. All faith that departs from the one true faith is illegitimate. This is self-evident. Given that only one faith is true, it follows that any faith that departs from it is not true. The marriage between the Lord and the church generates everything that is good and that is true in the church. Everything that is essentially goodwill and essentially faith comes from that marriage. Any goodwill and faith that are not from that marriage come from an illegitimate bed, not a legitimate one. They come from either a polygamous marriage bed or an adulterous one. Every faith that acknowledges the Lord and yet adopts false and heretical beliefs comes from a polygamous bed. A faith that acknowledges three lords over one church comes from an adulterous bed. It is like a single woman who is promiscuous; or like a married woman who has a husband but rents herself out overnight to two other men, and when she sleeps with them she calls each of them her husband. Therefore these types of faith are called illegitimate.
In many passages the Lord calls people with these types of belief “adulterers.” He also means people like this when he mentions thieves and robbers in John:
Truly I say to you, those who do not enter through the door to the sheepfold but instead climb up some other way are thieves and robbers. I am the door. Anyone who enters through me will be saved.
—John 10:1, 9
Coming into “the sheepfold” is coming into the church and also coming into heaven. It means coming into heaven because heaven and the church are one. Nothing else constitutes heaven except the church in the spiritual world. Therefore just as the Lord is the bridegroom and husband of the church, he is also the bridegroom and husband of heaven.
To test and find out whether a given faith is a legitimate or an illegitimate offspring, one can use the three indications presented just above:
1. Acknowledgment that the Lord is the Son of God.
2. Acknowledgment that he is the God of heaven and earth.
3. Acknowledgment that he is one with the Father.
The more a given faith departs from these essentials, the more illegitimate it is.
As we just discussed, the LDS Church, since its founding by Joseph Smith up to the present day, has significantly deviated from at least two of these three points, if not all three.
This can be seen in the Mormon temple Endowment as well, where the Trinity is split into three separate people: Elohim, Jehovah, and the angel Michael:
Brethren and sisters, as you sit here, you will hear the voices of three persons, who represent Elohim, Jehovah, and Michael. Elohim will command Jehovah and Michael to go down and organize a world. The work of the six creative periods will be represented. They will organize man in their own likeness and image, male and female. This, however, is simply figurative, so far as the man and the woman are concerned.
(From ldsendowment.org)
But insofar as God is concerned, they don’t mean it figuratively. However, the actual truth from God is that Jehovah is Elohim. And Michael represents a group of angels who are identified by the message they teach; that the Lord is One and is God (Apocalypse Revealed #548); and so, ironically, and sadly, Michael means the exact opposite of what is represented in the Endowment, and all three aspects of the Trinity are blasphemed there.
In the narrative in the Endowment between Lucifer and Adam, one quickly comes to the realization that the voice of Lucifer is actually the LDS Presidency, who have set up a con job on the laity.
From the narrative:
LUCIFER: Eve, here is some of the fruit of that tree. It will make you wise. It is delicious to the taste and very desirable.
EVE: Who are you?
LUCIFER: I am your brother.
EVE: You, my brother, and come here to persuade me to disobey Father?
LUCIFER: I have said nothing about Father. I want you to eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil that your eyes may be opened, for that is the way Father gained his knowledge…
Although it’s Lucifer saying this, the narrative is that he’s using it as a pretext for subterfuge, by first presenting a truth that he later uses against them. But the reality is that there is a triple-agent, because in fact, Lucifer is the LDS Presidency, and the thing that they’re presenting as a truth which Lucifer is dissembling is actually a falsity.
In LDS parlance, they call this the Doctrine of Eternal Progression, which states that the Father was once a mortal man before the creation of the Earth and was subject to mortality, in a long chain of prior gods. You can see how this totally strips away the Lord’s divinity. Under this doctrine, not even the Father is considered truly divine, but just one of many demi-gods.
This video plays in Mormon temples around the world on a loop. Meanwhile, the Church Presidency sits in their back offices at Salt Lake City, their wallets growing fatter and fatter, as the laity naively pay a 10% tithe on all income to be deemed “faithful” in order to return to the temple and perform its various rituals in order to earn their way into heaven.
From the Endowment:
And as Jesus Christ has laid down his life for the redemption of mankind, so we should covenant to sacrifice all that we possess, even our own lives if necessary, in sustaining and defending the kingdom of God.
Yes — but for the Lord; for his goodness and truth — not for the Church apart from that.
In the Mormon temples there are several oaths that are repeated, including what used to be blood oaths and penalties. After 1990, the wording and gestures of these oaths was toned down, making it appear as if they’d been eliminated; but unfortunately, the essence of these oaths still remains within the Endowment ceremonies, because they continue to be surrounded in secrecy and peer pressure. The Lord taught that Christians should never make oaths under compulsion:
Again, ye have heard that it hath been said of them of old time, Thou shalt not forswear thyself, but shalt perform unto the Lord thine oaths: But I say unto you, Swear not at all; neither by heaven; for it is God’s throne: Nor by the earth; for it is his footstool: neither by Jerusalem; for it is the city of the great King. Neither shalt thou swear by thy head, because thou canst not make one hair white or black. But let your communication be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay: for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil.
The Mormon temple endowment ceremony is externally religious but internally false,
Its oaths are based in hellish fear, not heavenly freedom,
Its doctrines (God once being a man, polygamy, secrecy, exaltation) are falsities that profane what is holy,
And therefore, the spiritual source of these rituals is not from the Lord, but from hell.
It doesn’t matter if the room you’re standing in is surrounded in bright, white light, while making a spiritually unlawful oath; if it’s evil, it’s evil. It should be no wonder that these rituals are shrouded in secrecy.
The Mormon Church has perfected the art of creating an external facade that focuses on Jesus, but, the more you look into its underlying doctrine and rituals, the less it focuses on Jesus, and instead on multiple gods. And, sadly, this occurs the deeper a member enters into it, unless he realizes this and retreats from it. The argument is often posed that no words should be spoken against it and that they should be left alone to worship in their own way — but seeing that its doctrine disobeys the First Commandment — it is not a religion, but a form of idolatrous atheism (see Heaven and Hell #319). People need to be warned about this since it is not what it appears to be.
Swedenborg continues:
People who view the Lord not as God but only as a human being have a faith that is both illegitimate and adulterous. This is obvious from two atrocious heresies, the Arian heresy and the Socinian heresy, which have been anathematized by and cut off from the Christian church because they deny the Lord’s divinity and climb up another way. I am afraid that these abominations lie hidden in the general spirit of people in the church.
Astounding to say, the more that people believe they have better scholarship and judgment than others, the more readily they latch onto, and adopt as their own, ideas that the Lord is human but not divine and that because he is human he could not be divine. When people adopt these ideas as their own, they join the club of Arians and Socinians who in the spiritual world are in hell.
The reason for this general spirit among people in the church today is that all of us have a spirit who is allied with us. Without that spirit we could not think analytically, rationally, or spiritually. Without those types of thinking we would be brute animals, not human beings. We all invite to ourselves a spirit who is similar to the desire in our will and the consequent perception in our intellect. If we develop good desires through truths from the Word and through living by those truths, we connect an angel from heaven to ourselves. On the other hand, if we develop evil desires through convincing ourselves of false beliefs and through living an evil life, we connect spirits from hell to ourselves. Once these evil spirits are connected to us, we increasingly develop a kind of sibling relationship with satans. Then we become more and more convinced of falsities that are against the truths in the Word and more and more hardened in an Arian and Socinian loathing for the Lord, because no satan can stand to hear any truth from the Word or to say the name Jesus. If satans hear these things, they turn into furies running around and uttering blasphemy. Then if light from heaven flows in they throw themselves headfirst into caves, into their own pitch darkness. In those places they have a light like that of night birds in the dark or like that of cats in basements when they are chasing mice. This is how all people who deny the Lord’s divinity and the Word’s holiness in their heart and in their faith turn out after death. Their inner self has this nature no matter how well their outer self does impressions and pretends to be Christian. I know this is true, because I have seen it and heard it.
There are people who honor the Lord as their Redeemer and Savior with their mouth and lips alone but view him in their heart and spirit as a mere human being. In every case, when these people speak and teach, their mouth is like a jar full of honey but their heart is like a jar full of bile…
From Joseph Smith:
We have imagined and supposed that God was God from all eternity. I will refute that idea…
He was once a man like us; yea, that God himself, the Father of us all, dwelt on an earth, the same as Jesus Christ Himself did…
This is good doctrine. It tastes good. I can taste the principles of eternal life, and so can you…
You say honey is sweet, and so do I…
But I am learned, and know more than all the world put together.
By Swedenborg:
Their words are like pastries but their thoughts are like poisoned wine. They themselves are like cake rolls with little worms inside. If they are priests, they are like pirates at sea who fly the flag of a peaceful country, but when a nearby ship signals to them as allies, they replace that flag with a pirate flag and capture the ship and its passengers. They are also like serpents of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil who approach you as if they were angels of light. They hold apples in their hand from that tree that have been painted with deep red colors as if they were plucked from the tree of life.
They offer them and say, “God knows that on the day you eat these, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” (Genesis 3:5). When you eat, you follow the serpent into some underworld and you make your home with it. All around that underworld there are satans who ate the apples of Arius and Socinus.
People like this are also meant by the person who came to the wedding but was not dressed in a wedding garment and was thrown into outer darkness (Matthew 22:11-13). The wedding garment is faith that the Lord is the Son of God, is the God of heaven and earth, and is one with the Father.
People who honor the Lord with only their mouth and their lips, while in heart and spirit they regard him as a mere human being, and who reveal their thoughts and convince others to believe those thoughts are spiritual murderers. The worst of them are spiritual cannibals. Human life comes from love and faith in the Lord. If this essential ingredient of faith and love is removed — the recognition that the Lord is the human God and the divine Human — our life becomes death; its removal kills and devours us the way a wolf kills and devours a lamb.
The human mind is like a house of three stories: in the lowest are those who have confirmed their belief in three gods from eternity, while in the second and third stories are those who acknowledge and believe in one God in a visible human form, who is the Lord God the Savior. The sensual and corporeal man, since he is merely natural, is, regarded in himself, nothing but an animal, and differs from the brute beast only in being able to speak and reason. He is, therefore, like one living in a menagerie where there are wild beasts of every kind, where now he plays the lion, now the bear, now the tiger, the leopard or the wolf. He may even play the part of the sheep; but he then laughs in his heart.
Smith and the Mormon Church teaches a false doctrine about eternal exaltation, which is, that a man can become his own god, equal to the essence of the Lord in divinity and power, like a pyramid scheme.
From Smith:
What did Jesus do? Why, I do the things I saw my Father do when worlds came rolling into existence. My Father worked out His kingdom with fear and trembling, and I must do the same; and when I get my kingdom, I shall present it to My Father, so that he may obtain kingdom upon kingdom, and it will exalt him in glory. He will then take a higher exaltation, and I will take his place, and thereby become exalted myself. So that Jesus treads in the tracks of his Father, and inherits what God did before; and God is thus glorified and exalted in the salvation and exaltation of all his children.
By Swedenborg
Man was so created that everything he wills, thinks and does appears to him as being in him and thus from him. Without this appearance a person would not be a human being, for he would be unable to receive anything of good and truth or of love and wisdom, retain it, and seemingly adopt it as his own. Consequently it follows that without this, as it were, living appearance, man would not have any conjunction with God, and so neither any eternal life. But if as a result of this appearance he persuades himself to the belief that he wills, thinks, and thus does good of himself, and not from the Lord (even though to all appearance as though of himself), he turns good into evil in him, and so creates in him the origin of evil. This was Adam’s sin.
The Lord is the only true good.
Continuing forward with Holland’s talk, he quotes the Lord out of context again at 7:10 in the clip, in order to try to prove that the Father is a separate person:
Why do you call me good? There is none good, but one, that is God.
To understand what it actually means, let’s look more closely at the underlying Greek text again. The Lord’s teaching uses the conditional construction εἰ μή (ei mē) which means “if not.” In this context, it is used to assert that only God is truly good, establishing an exclusive statement: “No one is good unless he is God.” In the narrative, the Lord is questioning the rich man’s motives as an instructional point because he called him “good,” but yet didn’t believe that he was God, as is shown a few verses later when the rich man turns away from him. In other words, the sense of what the Lord was communicating to the man was: “Why do you call me good if you don’t truly believe that I’m God? For no one is good unless he is God.” The rich man obeyed the other commandments, but not the first commandment.
Swedenborg also affirmed the truth of this in his writings:
By this one should understand that the Lord, and the Lord alone, is good, thus is absolute Goodness.
The Lord confirms this truth to believers according to spiritual order.
He has spoken to me personally in a vision and affirmed that he is God, and a few times in ways not too dissimilar to the way he has done in Swedenborg’s dreams, into my inner ear (see Heaven and Hell #248). It’s not something that is beyond the reach of the average person or reserved only for a special few, it just depends on the person and purpose. No one should think that they need Joseph Smith and LDS priests as middlemen for spiritual confirmation, when they have the Word, the Writings, and the Lord himself, who is aware of our every breath.
By Swedenborg:
Some spirits were thinking that only I was able, by a spiritual mental image, to contemplate inward matters and be as a spirit, and they had consequently, as usual, guessed wrong. But they were told that all people could be like this, the Lord willing, even those who are very stupid.
…From the above and many other experiences, one may conclude that the mind can be opened in anyone, in whomsoever it pleases the Lord to do so, so as to contemplate a matter by a spiritual mental image — and to be sure, according to order in those who have faith, but extraordinarily and miraculously in those who do not have faith.
And the Lord conveyed the same thing in the scriptures:
Jesus answered and said to him, “Are you the teacher of Israel, and do not know these things?
Most assuredly, I say to you, we speak what we know and testify what we have seen, and you do not receive our witness.
If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how will you believe if I tell you heavenly things?”
This is why the Mormon Church doesn’t receive the Heavenly Doctrine. When they are shown it, they reject it, because they reason from their traditions and Church rather than from the Lord. It’s the same mistake that the Jews made, even while he was walking among them.
From the Lord:
Making the Word of God of no effect by your tradition which you have delivered up; and many such like things you do.
By Swedenborg:
For things are true not because they are what leaders of the Church have so declared and their followers uphold. If that were so one would have to say that the teachings of any Church or religion were the truth simply because they are those of a person’s native soil and are those into which he was born.
When an affection for truth motivates the search a person receives light from the Lord so that he may discern, though unaware of the source of his enlightenment, what the truth is, and may be assured of it in the measure that he is governed by good.
All of the other quotes that Holland mentioned are similarly lacking wisdom, when he uses them, they’re all quoted without that understanding:
I came down not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me.
This means that the Lord’s inner self (the Father), who dwells within him in eternity, manifested his will in his physical self (the Son). When it’s understood that heaven exists outside of time and space, it’s possible to also understand how this is true without it inferring that there would need to be two people. The Lord has an eternal soul, just as we all do. That soul was manifest in time, just as we are within him. The will that makes up the Father within him, is him; his eternal self, with all of the full essence of existence, wrapped up into one life and one body, manifest in time, through the Son and the life he glorified on earth.
The Son can do nothing of himself but what he sees the Father do.
This means that the Lord’s outer self (the Son) can do nothing but what his inner self wills (the Father). The influx and willingness for kindness, love, and goodness within him is, “the Father” (True Christianity #56). The Father manifests in the Son — the omniscient sight of the eternal heaven and everyone within it, where he acts upon the will of the Father in order to gather us together within him.
Oh my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me.
This means that if it would be possible that his inner love (the Father) could allow for another way, that it could or would be so. But his love for humanity was too great, making it impossible. There was no other way for him to manifest his love than to do everything he possibly could for us, as he did on the cross soon after this prayer.
And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?
The Lord’s infinite love is the very substance of divine life; and God is his own divine soul, which is centered in his love for all of humanity. Keeping this in mind, when the Lord cried out, “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?” he was not lamenting abandonment by the Father, for the Father God is his soul, which could never forsake him. Rather, he was expressing the anguish of temptation during his internal fight against hell — a battle that even the angels could not withstand. During the Lord’s life on earth, he subjugated the hells and restored order in the heavens, doing so by himself, from his divine power (Divine Providence #124). In this sense, “Eli” refers to God in the spiritual sense rather than in the supreme sense. It was his death and suffering that made possible the salvation of spiritual angels — represented by the disciples such as Peter who fled the cross — who could not otherwise have had a path towards salvation.
Yet, through this ultimate trial, he overcame hell, glorified his human, and made it one with the Divine, ensuring that never again would the heavens or humanity be left unprotected (True Christianity #132).
That they all may be one; as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that you have sent me.
The Lord was resurrected with a body of divine substance.
Let’s continue addressing Holland’s concerns.
From Holland:
To acknowledge scriptural evidence that otherwise perfectly united members of the Godhead are nevertheless separate and distinct beings is not to be guilty of polytheism. It is rather part of the great revelation Jesus came to deliver concerning the nature of divine beings. Perhaps the Apostle Paul said it best, “Christ Jesus being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God.”
Unfortunately, to think of them as separate and distinct beings is polytheism. Paul said, “Jesus Christ being in the form of God.” Paul said it wasn’t robbery for the Lord to say he was equal to God because He is God (as he said, “Before Abraham was, I am.”)
Paul never said that Jesus was a separate God. Many times he said that Jesus is God Himself, such as in Colossians:
Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ —
For in him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily.
From Holland:
If the idea of an embodied God is repugnant, why are the central doctrines and singularly most distinguishing characteristics of all Christianity: the incarnation, the atonement, and the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ? If having a body is not only not needed, but not desirable by deity, why did the redeemer of mankind redeem his body, redeeming it from the grasp of death and from the grave, guaranteeing it would never again be separated from his spirit in time or eternity?
Any who dismiss the concept of an embodied God dismiss both the mortal and the resurrected Christ. No one, claiming to be a true Christian, will want to do that.
Good questions; however, the logic he’s using here is misguided because his reasoning is clouded with historical traditions — many of which are false — rather than from the Lord. The answers to these questions are all written in True Christianity, which can be found for anyone seeking them; but because he limits his doctrine to the Mormon scriptures, his view of heaven remains aslant. In short, Holland is almost on to something by pointing this out, but he lands on a wrong solution as a result of teachings that direct people toward a false idol; a false visage of the Lord, that isn’t actually him; in a way not too dissimilar to that of the priests who penned the Nicene Creed.
The old Christian idea that God has no body is a false idea, which Swedenborg emphatically rejected, which is a unique and true aspect of true Christian teaching. The Lord does have a body, and an eternal body that he was resurrected into after his death. However, Swedenborg wrote that the Lord’s body is made of divine substance. By “substance” he means that it’s real, alive, and appears the same as a physical body, with a complete, solid form; just not limited by material physics. Instead, he kept his physical body and made it divine, glorifying it as eternal.
Swedenborg wrote that every angel, too, has a body of substance (with all the five senses and more), but with an important difference. After humans die and become angels, their physical body is left behind as dust and their spiritual body, which they had since birth, is revealed to them. The Lord, however, kept both his spiritual and his physical body, making his physical body divinely united to his spiritual body, since his spiritual body was from Jehovah God. This makes him unique because he is the only one that could do that and the only one that did; it means he’s God in the flesh.
This part of Swedenborg’s teachings can be a little bit difficult to grasp at first, but it is nonetheless true. To make it all more comprehensible, I’ve summarized my findings from his writings like this:
Three types of bodies:
Material Body
What mortals have.
What the Lord had before he was glorified.
We’re all familiar with this body and what it can do, and its limitations, because we’re all living in one right now.
The Lord progressively glorified his material body; it wasn’t done instantly; and he completed this process during his life in the world and on the cross (True Christianity #126). While doing so, being God, he obtained divine powers while in the mortal body that we don’t have.
Substantial Body
What spirits and angels have.
Mortals have this as well but for everyone except the Lord it is vieled until after death.
It is tangible and visible to people who are in spiritual form, but not to mortals, unless their spiritual eyes have been opened first by the Lord.
Thus, it’s not a “ghost” in the traditional sense. It isn’t transparent or a wisp or a phantom that mortals walk through like air (even though spirits may appear to drift through physical matter, this is because they actually exist in a different realm outside of the natural realm, not because they aren’t tangible).
It has powers that the mortal body doesn’t have that are unique to the spiritual world, such as immortal youth, telepathy, teleportation, the ability to be unrestricted by gravity (and thereby walk on water), etc.
Divine-Substantial Body
Only the Lord has this kind of body.
This is a substantial body that also preserves the material body, but that he made divine, called the Divine Human.
Thus the flesh and bones that constituted his mortal body are now divine.
Like the substantial body, it, also, can only be seen by a mortal if his spiritual eyes are opened by the Lord.
The glorified Lord exists now in the spiritual world, appearing as the Sun of heaven; his Divine Human, taken up after the resurrection. By glorifying his body, he created a nexus between the immortal and mortal realms, allowing influx from divine love into all of creation, including the natural world. He is now outside of time and space and fills all of heaven and the church. From his life in the natural world, he restructured the spiritual world, subdued the hells, protected the heavens, and made possible the eternal salvation of the human race.
By Swedenborg:
A person is just as much a person after death, although he is then invisible to the eyes of the material body. This can be established from the cases of the angels seen by Abraham, Hagar, Gideon, Daniel and some of the prophets, from the angels seen in the Lord’s tomb, And afterwards on many occasions by John, as he describes in Revelation. Above all, this is proved by the Lord himself, who showed by touch and by eating that he was a human being, although he vanished from their sight. Can anyone be so crazy as not to acknowledge that, although invisible, he was just as much a human being? The reason they saw him was that the eyes of their spirit were opened; and when these are opened things in the spiritual world appear just as plain as things in the natural world. The difference between people in the natural world and those in the spiritual world is that those in the spiritual world are clothed with a substantial body, but those in the natural world are clothed with a material body. This, however, has the substantial body within it, and a substantial person can see another one just as clearly as a material person can see another one. But a substantial person cannot see a material one, nor a material person a substantial one, on account of the difference between the material and the substantial. This is capable of being described, but not briefly.
A few sections earlier in True Christianity he also explained:
A portrait of the Lord, by Ray Downing,
based on a digital analysis of the Shroud of Turin.
In the Lord’s glorified human manifestation he cannot appear before any human beings unless he has first opened the eyes of their spirit. The eyes of the spirit cannot be opened in people who are engaged in evils and falsities — in any of the “goats,” whom he placed on his left [Matthew 25:33]. Therefore whenever he showed himself to his disciples, he first opened their eyes. We read, “And their eyes were opened and they recognized him, but he became invisible to them” (Luke 24:31). A similar thing happened with the women who were by his tomb after he had risen; this is why they were able to see angels sitting in the tomb and hear them speaking with them. No one can see angels through physical eyes.
Even before the Lord rose, it was not the apostles’ physical eyes but their spiritual eyes that saw the Lord in his glorified human manifestation; after they came out of that state, they appeared to themselves to have been asleep. This is clear from the Lord’s transfiguration in the presence of Peter, James, and John and the fact that they were then “heavy with sleep” (Luke 9:32).
The bottom line, here, is that the Lord is real and is in bodily form (and not formless or merely imagined), but that he’s in the spiritual world now rather than the natural world, and that spiritual substance is just as real as physical matter, and in fact, even more so.
From Holland:
I testify that he had power over death, because he was divine.
Note that, although Holland calls the Lord divine, he also calls two other imaginary gods divine, thus splitting the Trinity and removing the divinity he claimed to have attributed to the Lord.
If all power was given to the Lord, as he said (Matthew 28:18), and knowing that he is divine and is one person, then who is the Father as a separate person? Wouldn’t the Father, if thought of as a separate person, then become subordinate? — which would make no sense.
And so where does the divinity of God dwell, if not in the Son? And if the divinity dwells within the Son, we must conclude that the Son and the Father are one in person as well as in spirit.
When Thomas felt him, he said, “My Lord and my God” (John 20:28) because he was acknowledging that he was both his earthly master (Lord) and his heavenly master (God) in human form simultaneously. He now acknowledged that his Lord was divine and had power over death, something he didn’t believe earlier.
It was because the Lord was now fully united to the Divine Itself, which is called the Father, that Thomas called Him his Lord and his God.
It’s pretty obvious here that the Lord is God. Who else can raise himself from the dead? And yet, do some of us still doubt that he is God, even today?
Cognitive Dissonance
Mormon doctrine splits the Godhead up into two (and three) people, which represents cognitive dissonance with the Word.
Holland then goes on to talk about how the Father and the Son “appeared as glorified embodied beings” to Joseph Smith. In doing so, he contradicted his earlier testimony. At one moment, he combined them into one, and in the next, he tore them apart.
What I’ve found is that there is an ongoing cognitive dissonance within Mormonism; a back and forth between saying “worship the Father” at one moment and then “worship the Son” at the next moment. This is personified in their image of both the Father and the Son as identical twins who appeared to Joseph Smith. In this way, they create a room of mirrors, and a mirage, such that you never know who or what you’re truly looking at.
Swedenborg wrote:
When I even thought about two identical or equal beings, the angels were aghast.
This is because it misses the Lord entirely, because under such a pattern, love and wisdom isn’t united in him. It’s always either love or wisdom — like two identical twins that can never agree on anything.
Holland says:
I think it’s accurate to say that we believe they are one in every significant and eternal aspect imaginable, except believing them to be three persons combined into one substance.
What about the Lord’s teaching in the Gospel of John, such as in John 14: 9?
What Holland is essentially saying is, “We believe they are one, except we don’t believe they are one.”
Confusing.
It’s a desert mirage.
“Look here,” they say, “Oh no, I meant look here…” “No, here!” — meanwhile, you, as the listener, get dizzier and dizzier.
Parched for water, if you follow their mirages, you’ll eventually fall dead.
It should be added further that if it is accepted as a doctrine and acknowledged, that the Lord is one with the Father, and that His Human is Divine from the Divine in Himself, light will be seen in every particular of the Word; for that which is assumed as doctrine and acknowledged from doctrine is in light when the Word is read; moreover, the Lord, from whom is all light and who has all power, will enlighten those who acknowledge this. But on the other hand, if it is assumed and acknowledged as a doctrine that the Divine of the Father is another Divine than the Lord’s, nothing will be seen in light in the Word; since the man who is in that doctrine turns himself from one Divine to the other, and away from the Divine of the Lord which he can see (which is done by thought and faith), to a Divine that he cannot see; for the Lord says:
“You have neither heard the Father’s voice at any time, nor seen His form” (John 5:37; also John 1:18);
and to believe in a Divine and love a Divine that cannot be thought of under any form is impossible.
Because Swedenborg lived and wrote his works before Joseph Smith was born, he wasn’t able to comment directly on Mormonism because it didn’t exist yet. However, the problems that exist today within Mormonism aren’t anything new, and many similar teachings that Swedenborg wrote regarding Catholicism and Protestantism can be applied to it.
For example, about Catholicism:
Roman Catholics today are not at all aware that their church once embraced concepts of the assigning of Christ’s merit to us and of our justification by faith in that. These concepts lie completely buried beneath their external rituals of worship, which are many. Therefore if Catholics give up some of their external rituals, turn directly to God the Savior Jesus Christ, and take both elements in the Holy Eucharist, they are better equipped than Protestants to become part of the New Jerusalem, that is, the Lord’s new church.
This is because, like Mormonism, Catholic sermons and culture tends to direct more of a focus towards taking an active role in good works (unlike Protestantism, which puts more emphasis on taking a passive role). Even though faith alone lurks within Mormonism as well (as was shown by Holland’s talk) all of its members may not be thinking that they are saved by faith alone because, like Catholics, they’re distracted from that portion of the doctrine by rituals and traditions. As Swedenborg wrote, the Lord is able to protect laypeople from the maliciousness of the clergy in this way, until they’re ready to receive the fullness of the gospel from the Lord himself, whereby there is the belief that salvation comes from all three aspects of the Trinity working together as one: love, faith, and an active role in good works combined, without the necessity for ritual or tradition as a stipulation for salvation.
Roman Catholics before the Reformation had exactly the same teachings as Protestants did after it regarding the assigning of Christ’s merit to us and our being justified by faith in that; the only difference was that Catholics united this faith to goodwill or good works.
The leading reformers — Luther, Melanchthon, and Calvin — retained the Roman Catholic dogmas regarding the assigning of Christ’s merit to us and our being justified by faith. They kept those views as they had been, and still were at the time, among Roman Catholics. The reformers separated goodwill or good works from that faith, however, and declared that faith alone saves, for the purpose of clearly differentiating themselves from Roman Catholics with regard to the essentials of the church, which are faith and goodwill.
The leaders of the Protestant Reformation do indeed describe good works as an appendage to faith and even an integral part of faith, but they say we are passive in the doing of them, whereas Roman Catholics say we are active in the doing of them. There is actually strong agreement between Protestants and Catholics on the subjects of faith, works, and our rewards. Clearly, then, these beliefs used to be as important to Roman Catholics as they are now to Protestants.
Nevertheless, today these beliefs have been so thoroughly wiped out among Roman Catholics that they scarcely know the least thing about them. These beliefs have been forgotten not because they were overturned by papal decree but because they were covered over by external facets of worship. In general these are adoring the vicar of Christ, calling on the saints, and venerating images; they are especially things that affect our physical senses with an impression of holiness, such as the Mass, which is conducted in a language people do not understand, the vestments, the candles, the incense, and the spectacular processions; also the mysteries surrounding the Eucharist.
Although the early Roman church believed that faith justifies us through assigning us the merit of Christ, the external facets just listed and many others like them have moved this concept out of sight and removed it from memory, as if it were something buried in the ground, covered with a large stone, and guarded by monks so that it will not be dug up and brought back to mind. The danger in its being brought back to mind is that it would undermine people’s belief in the monks’ supernatural power to forgive their sins, and justify, sanctify, and save them; and that would end the monks’ status as holy, their dominance over others, and their quest for wealth.
You might say that Mormons do the same things as the Catholics, only under a different guise. Rather than adoring the vicar of Christ (the pope) they adore the prophet of the Mormon Church, its apostles, and its prior prophets (“Praise to the man…”). Instead of calling on the saints, and venerating images, they venerate the Mormon scriptures, such as the Book of Mormon, Pearl of Great Price, and Doctrine and Covenants. Instead of the Mass affecting their physical senses with an impression of holiness, they have the Washing and Anointing, the Endowment Ceremony, Baptisms for the Dead, and Temple Sealing. Instead of candles, incense, and spectacular processions, they have the temple, its grounds, and special temple spaces. Although the Lord allows for temples (Apocalypse Revealed #918), their purpose among Christians should be limited to Baptism (for the living) and the Holy Supper so that they don’t tend towards tribalism and idolatry (True Christianity #670). The key point is that there shouldn’t be any external worship separated from internal worship.
Swedenborg wrote:
External holiness is like these pious things and chiefly consists in this: that a person places all divine worship in external sanctity when he is in temples. But this is not holy in a person unless his internal is holy, for as a person is internally, so is he externally; the external proceeds from the internal as action from its spirit. Therefore, external holiness without internal holiness is natural and not spiritual.
Hence, it exists equally among the wicked as among the good. Those who place all worship in it are for the most part empty — that is, lacking knowledge of good and truth. Yet goods and truths are the very holy things that are to be known, believed, and loved because they are from the Divine, and thus the Divine is in them.
He warned that in order to make the switch into the restoration of the gospel, and the New Church, you can’t hold to the churches of the past, as Mormonism has done by holding to external rituals as saving ordinances and thus to false tenants of faith alone from Judaism and the old Christian churches. The Lord said that trying to do so is like trying to patch an old pair of clothing with a piece of new cloth, and like trying to pour new wine into old wineskins. In the case of the old pair of clothing, it’ll not only shrink and tear, but it’ll be mismatched (Luke 5:36). And with the old wineskins, they’ll not only burst open and spill the wine, but the containers will be destroyed (Luke 5:37-38).
Swedenborg wrote:
The faith of the former church cannot live with the faith of the new church because the two are completely incompatible. The faith of the former church is descended from the idea that there are three gods; the faith of the new church, though, is descended from the idea that there is one God. And because the two are completely incompatible as a result, it is inevitable that if they lived together in us they would collide and cause so much conflict that everything related to the church would be destroyed in us. We would fall into such a state of spiritual madness or else spiritual unconsciousness that we would hardly know what the church was or whether such a thing even existed.
Consequently, people who are deeply committed to the faith of the old church are incapable of embracing the faith of the new church without endangering their own spiritual lives, unless they have first rejected the teachings of the former faith one by one and have uprooted that former faith along with all its live offspring and unhatched eggs (meaning tenets).
About the Authority of Revelation
Whenever anyone teaches that God is three people, that’s a smoking gun; a clue that something is off. The Word indicates that it’s false prophecy:
If a prophet or the dreamer of a dream arises in the midst of you, and gives you a sign or else a wonder, and the sign or wonder he has told you comes to pass, and he says, Let us go after other gods which you have not known, and let us serve them; you shall not obey the words of that prophet or the dreamer of that dream; for Jehovah your God is testing you.
Some may then claim, “Wasn’t Swedenborg merely a ‘dreamer of dreams’?” However, if they do, they’re ignoring the crux of this scripture, which is not about dreaming, but about claiming to believe in other gods than the Lord: that is the signification of a false prophet.
The sign of a legitimate prophet is if he worships the Lord as God, and only the Lord as God.
Orson Pratt, an early founder of the Mormon Church, wrote:
Orson Pratt, an early founder of Mormonism. Along with Joseph Smith, he was involved in the printing of Doctrine & Covenants, including section 132, which taught the members of the Mormon Church to practice polygamy. He was initially opposed to polygamous marriage, but later adopted it. His 1848 publication, “Divine Authority,” discounted the Lord’s revelations to Swedenborg.
Did Swedenborg… or did any other impostors during the long age of darkness — profess that the apostleship was conferred upon them by those who held it last — by any angel who held the office himself? No, and therefore they are not apostles, but deceivers.
—Divine Authority; Or the Question, Was Joseph Smith Sent by God? by Orson Pratt
In writing this, however, Pratt didn’t know what he was saying, because Swedenborg did, in fact, receive confirmation, from the Lord personally.
In doing so, Swedenborg never presumed to have received any holy power to speak from himself or from an angel, like the pope assumes upon himself from the succession of men, or like the Mormon presidency similarly does, placing authority in titles rather than in the Logos of the Lord’s words themselves. But he did say that the Lord commissioned him to understand and print what was taught to him from the Lord alone from the Word.
By Swedenborg:
I then continued my prayer, saying, “Thou hast promised to receive in grace all sinners; Thou canst not otherwise than keep thy words!” In the same moment I was sitting at his bosom and beheld him face to face. It was a countenance of a holy mien, and all was such that it cannot be expressed, and also smiling, so that I believe that his countenance was such also while he lived in the world. He spoke to me and asked if I had a bill of health. I answered, “Lord, thou knowest better than I.” He said, “Well, then do,” This I found in my mind to signify, “Love me truly,” or “Do what thou hast promised.” O God, impart to me grace for this! I found that it was not in my own power. I awoke, with tremors.
Why should such an ordination come from an angel? It should come from the Lord himself, as it did with Swedenborg. In True Christianity, he affirmed this, where he wrote:
The Lord cannot manifest himself to everyone in person [because so many are clouded in treachery from the old church], as has been shown just above [776-778], and yet he foretold that he would come and build a new church, which is the New Jerusalem. Therefore it follows that he is going to accomplish this through the agency of a human being who can not only accept these teachings intellectually but also publish them in printed form.
I testify in truth that the Lord manifested himself to me, his servant, and assigned me to this task; after doing so, he opened the sight of my spirit and brought me into the spiritual world; and he has allowed me to see the heavens and the hells and to have conversations with angels and spirits on a continual basis for many years now. I also testify that ever since the first day of this calling, I have accepted nothing regarding the teachings of this church from any angel; what I have received has come from the Lord alone while I was reading the Word.
The Apostle Paul wrote the same thing:
But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed.
—Galatians 1:8
There are two distinct functions in divine work: one is the reception, study, and communication of heavenly truths — a task done by angels and human servants of the Word, such as Swedenborg — and the other is the interior illumination of the understanding and reformation of the will, which is the work of the Lord alone.
Orson Pratt also wrote,
Whence [Swedenborg’s] superior intellect — his depth of understanding — his extensive foresight — that he should so far surpass all former impostors for 1700 years? John [the Apostle] testifies that when the everlasting gospel is restored to the earth it shall be by an angel. Smith testifies that it was restored by an angel, and in no other way.
Pratt is referring, here, to the Book of Revelation, where the Apostle John, while on the Isle of Patmos, wrote:
And I saw another angel fly in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel to preach unto them that dwell on the earth.
The mistake Pratt is making is that he’s reading it literally. John had a revelation while in a dreamlike visionary state, and his visions weren’t about physical events. Swedenborg explained that the Word is written in spiritual correspondences, meaning it’s symbolic, and not a proclamation of literal events, but of spiritual events. In the original Hebrew and Greek, angel means messenger; and, from the dream John had, it signifies the Lord himself, since the Lord is the source and initiator of all divine messages that inflow from heaven.
By Swedenborg:
“Then I saw another angel flying in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel to preach to those who dwell on the earth.” This symbolizes an announcement of the Lord’s advent, and of a new church to descend from Him out of heaven.
In the highest sense an angel means the Lord, and so also heaven. Another angel symbolizes something new now from the Lord. To fly in the midst of heaven means, symbolically, to look down, to observe and to foresee, here to foresee something new in the church from the Lord out of heaven. The everlasting gospel symbolizes an announcement of the coming of the Lord and His kingdom. Those who dwell on the earth symbolize people in the church to whom the announcement is made.
This serves also to announce that a new church is now about to descend from the Lord out of heaven, because the Lord’s advent involves two elements: a last judgment and after that a new church.
It was not impossible for some early Mormons to become a part of this movement, if only it had chosen to. For example, a section of D&C in the 1835 Edition was created, #101, that had a true doctrine in it about conjugial love:
Inasmuch as this church of Christ has been reproached with the crime of fornication, and polygamy: we declare that we believe, that one man should have one wife; and one woman, but one husband.
—D&C 1835 Edition, Section 101:4
Yet they deliberately removed this and replaced it with a false doctrine:
…If any man espouse a virgin, and desire to espouse another, and the first give her consent, and if he espouse the second, and they are virgins, and have vowed to no other man, then is he justified; he cannot commit adultery for they are given unto him; for he cannot commit adultery with that that belongs unto him and to no one else.
—D&C (current edition), Section 132:61
Note that, this teaching still exists in official Mormon scriptures, even up to the present day, such that, even if the practice of polygamy isn’t being committed by the members today in outward form, it suggests that adultery of the Word nonetheless continues spiritually.
By Swedenborg:
If a Christian takes more than one wife, he commits not only natural adultery but spiritual adultery as well. The point that a Christian who takes more than one wife commits natural adultery, is according to the Lord’s words, namely, that it is not lawful for a man to divorce his wife, because they were created from the beginning to be one flesh, and that whoever divorces his wife without just cause and marries another, commits adultery (Matthew 19:3-11). Still more, then, is this true of one who does not divorce his wife but keeps her and marries another in addition.
The law thus given by the Lord with respect to marriages takes its deeper rationale from spiritual marriage; for whatever the Lord enunciated was in essence spiritual. This is what is meant by his saying:
The words that I speak to you are spirit and are life. (John 6:63)
The spiritual content in the present instance is that polygamous marriage in the Christian world profanes the marriage of the Lord and the church, likewise the marriage between goodness and truth, and moreover the Word, and together with the Word, the church. And profanation of these is spiritual adultery.
Parley P. Pratt, an early founder of Mormonism, who, along with Joseph Smith, encouraged its members to practice polygamy and defended its practice among members of the Church.
Orson’s brother, Parley, also wrote about Swedenborg:
I reject Swedenborg, because he mystifies the scriptures, and does away with the ordinances of the gospel.
One must then scratch his head, wondering, since when have the scriptures not been mystical? And, what ordinances did he do away with?
The two ordinances that the Lord established were these:
Baptism
The Holy Supper
Both of these ordinances Swedenborg affirmed in True Christianity. He didn’t do away with any of the Mormon ordinances, such as temple work, because the Mormon Church wasn’t founded until after his death, and Joseph Smith had not yet even been born. However, if he had known about them, he would have done away with them — as I have — because they are not a part of the Lord’s gospel, but were added in later by Smith and the Pratt Brothers, who are the real imposters. Smith and the Pratt Brothers were the conspirators behind the heresies in the Mormon Church and the publication of its Doctrine & Covenants, including early Mormon teachings on polygamy. It’s no wonder, then, that they are at the heart of Mormon fallacies that deny the Lord’s work in what should have been a new, enlightened age, burying Swedenborg’s writings and kicking the can down the road, forcing the proceeding generations such as you and I to sort through their nonsense in order to find the truth that should have already been more readily established. They took the Lord’s work, as revealed in Swedenborg’s writings, and adulterated it.
