Elbert's Divine Providence Proverbs

Page 4

Under inspiration of Divine Providence by Emmanuel Swedenborg (1755, Sweden)

Don’t refrain from evil deeds just being afraid of the laws and for your reputation.  Do so because they are sins against God.  D.P. 101

In the spiritual world where we all arrive after death, no one asks what our faith has been or what our beliefs have been, only what our life has been, whether we are one kind of person or another.  D.P. 101

Life constructs a belief system for itself and constructs a faith for itself.  D.P. 101

It is the unceasing effort of the Lord to united us to himself and himself to us and give us the joys of eternal life.  D.P. 102

Don’t trivialize your neighbor having no fear of God yourself.  D.P. 104

Don’t in your inner thinking argue against: 1. our civil laws, 2.  against the virtues of moral living, 3.  against the theological issues of spiritual life.  D.P. 104

Don’t be driven by your compulsions to evil but want to seem to the world that you are not.  D.P. 104

Have your private thoughts be the same as the thoughts you are expressing.  D.P. 104

It’s flatterers and hypocrites that have two levels of thought.  They can control themselves and prevent their inner thinking from being seen.  D.P. 104

We can reflect on our outer thought from the vantage point of our inner thought and decide whether it is evil or not.  This is how we can see anything evil in ourselves and be reformed.  D.P. 104

There are two kinds of ruling love:  Heavenly love versus Hellish love.  Heavenly love is love for the Lord and for our neighbor, and hellish love is love for ourselves and for the world.  D.P. 106

When we just love ourselves and the world we intend good to no one but ourselves.  D.P. 106

When we love the Lord and our neighbor we intend good to everyone.  D.P. 106 

In Heavenly love we love good people.  In Hellish love we love evil-oriented people.  D.P. 106

Hellish love attracts us to what is evil and false (compulsions); whereas Heavenly love attracts us to what is good and true (predilections).  D.P. 106

If you in your spirit regard evils as permissible you will have cravings for evil.  D.P. 108

There are hypocrite priests who, while preaching love to the neighbor, trivialize the neighbor having no fear of God.  D.P. 109

There are judges who make decisions on the basis of bribes and friendships while pretending to be advocates of justice.  D.P. 109

There are business people who are dishonest and deceptive at heart while they act honestly for the sake of their profits.  D.P. 109

Even adulterers talk about the chastity of marriage sounding rationally.  D.P. 109

One can see in the smallest details of the hypocrite’s façade the self-centeredness, love for the world and wiles aimed at getting a reputation for decency with profits in mind.  D.P. 109

With heavenly love people their inner and outer thinking act in unison when the talk.  D.P. 110

Good people act thoughtfully, “clothed with robes of passion” for both theological truth and good deeds of daily life.  D.P. 110

Evil compulsions combine with deviousness and intrigues to make up their own thought processes.  D.P. 111

Once evil deeds are considered permissible, then the pleasures of the evil deeds unite.  D.P. 111

Consent is the same as action.  D.P. 111 (Matthew 5:28:  “If anyone has looked at someone else’s wife so as to lust for her, he has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”)

In the spiritual world our cravings for evil and their pleasures look like fires, hence the term “hellfire”.  D.P. 112

If our cravings for evil are not healed they spread like floods.  D.P. 112

The more thieves steal the more obsessed they are with stealing.  It’s the same with cheating and cheaters, with hatred and vengefulness, with hedonism and gluttony, with promiscuity, blasphemy, etc.   D.P. 112

The love of power for self-aggrandizement grows to the extent that restraints are relaxed.  The same holds true for the love of possessions.  D.P. 112

We cannot sense the compulsions that underlie our own evils.  Their pleasures seduce our thinking.  We only discover this from some other source that they are evil.  D.P. 113

Madness and distortion rule the realms of evil-oriented people.  D.P. 113

False imaginary constructs and arguments based on illusions  are used to make distortions seem true and to be accepted as true.  D.P.113

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