True. The preaching that the Apostles did with signs confirming DID have their authority proved by conformity with Old Testament scriptures. Like you mentioned, the Bereans were praised because they heard the message AND made sure the teachings were authenticated by the revealed Word of God (for them, the Old Testament Messianic prophecies). When I read the Swedenborg doctrine about Salvation from your post:
I can see immediately that it doesn't comport with revealed Scripture - neither the Old Testament nor the New Testament. In fact, even though the written explanations of the doctrine taught by Swedenborg claim to hold certain books of the Bible as "inspired", what is said directly CONTRADICTS those very books. Explaining the discrepancy by appealing to "internal" meanings versus the literal is inadequate to account for the disconnect. It is almost as if he rewrites the whole Bible to his own preferences. To say that the passion of the cross was redemption itself is a fundamental error of the church, denies the very PURPOSE of the cross as well as rewriting Jesus' OWN words on that point. Jesus said:
Paul also said:
I can certainly understand why Swedenborg would want to discount the Epistles - seeing as they are the most clarifying of all the Scriptures concerning the person and work of Christ. However, his claims to believe in the inspiration of the Gospels because they contain Jesus' own words, is shown to be false when he comes out with doctrine totally at odds with Jesus' own words. I honestly don't understand how a serious seeker of truth could possibly fall for this heresy. I have a hard time believing they even crack open their Bibles for "Bible Study".
>I honestly don’t understand how a serious seeker of truth could possibly fall for this heresy. I have a hard time believing they even crack open their Bibles for “Bible Study”<
Oh they may, just as the aforementioned “CHRISTIAN SCIENCE” cult does, but which they need not be really bound by as they hold to a very libertarian hermeneutic.
>I can certainly understand why Swedenborg would want to discount the Epistles - seeing as they are the most clarifying of all the Scriptures concerning the person and work of Christ. <
Indeed, as Walter Martin in “The Kingdom of the Cults” (640,41), states,
Swedenborg is consistently and energetically refuted by the epistles of Paul, particularly, the book of Romans, chapters 5 through 8, which Swedenborg detested with abject horror. By attempting to circumscribe the New Testament revelation of Christianity to the Gospels and the book of Revelation, Swedenborg revealed the essential weakness of his theological system. He was apparently well aware of the fact that Pauline theology, if accepted at face value, would vitiate almost en toto his own. So he began with the basic. assumption that he was right, and that the apostle Paul was wrong! In some of his visions and dreams, he stated that he actually argued with Paul, Luther, Calvin, and others. And, as ego triumphed, these great thinkers all retreated before Swedenborg’s new revelations. However, one factor must never be forgotten, and that is the statement that the New Testament is the criterion for measuring all subsequent revelations, and whatever is found to be contrary to it, must be and always has been, rejected by the Christian church.
It would be possible to go on at some length in a refutation of Swedenborg’s theology, but the issues, we believe, are clearly discernible, as is the verdict of Scripture. Swedenborg was a rationalist, and paradoxically, a mystic. He was one who absorbed the introspective and subjective philosophy of Rene Descartes, and the empiricism of John Locke, which he combined with the transcendentalism of lmmanuel Kant, thus forming a mold into which Christian theology was poured, and what would not go into the mold (selected Old Testament works, the Pauline epistles, Acts, James, Peter, Jude, etc.), he simply discarded. What emerged was a deeply speculative philosophical system of theology, couched in a redefined Christian terminology, and buttressed with mystical visions, trances, and dreams. These, when apparently confirmed by clairvoyant experiences, such as the Stockholm fire episode previously narrated, gave some credence to his claims and still continue to deceive many so-called intelligent persons today. In his counsel to the church at Colosse, the apostle Paul uttered a warning that the followers of Swedenborg in particular might well take cognizance of: “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 dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily. “ (Colossians 2:8-9) The great tragedy of Emanuel Swedenborg is that he would not submit himself and his great mind to the discipline of the Holy Spirit and the Scriptures. Because of this, and because of his deliberated preoccupation with spiritism and the occult, in direct disobedience to the express teachings of God, he was despoiled, even as Paul had warned. He was deceived by dreams and visions and the machinations of him whom the Scriptures describe as the “spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience” (Ephesians 2:2b).