The Mark of the Beast is INSIDE the Church | Swedenborg's Warning

A lot of people are worried about the mark of the beast. If you read Revelation, it's scary. It's not any of those things actually. It's treasured concepts in Christianity. The Christian church are the ones who made the mark of the beast. Yeah, AF. So now, that's a hot take, and we're about to back it up. Hey everybody, welcome to Swedenborg and Life. Today's episode, the mark of the beast is inside the church. The call is coming from inside the house. You could also call this Swedenborg's warning. Mhm.

So yeah, the mark of the beast, uh, and that's in the same passages, this number 666. Everybody's wondering what's going on with that. Are you like on the internet? It's a huge thing. There's this dire prophecy. It's like oddly specific. You can't buy or sell without the mark of the beast. We're going to give you a triple-digit number that's somehow associated with, I don't know, is the devil or the Antichrist or something. Um, and Swedenborg, the scientist and, uh, revelator or spiritual experiencer, who I believe gave the most full-stack, comprehensive, uh, spiritual experience, worldview, religious description of what's going on with everything anywhere ever, uh, he goes into great detail about it. And it's not what you think. It's this, which is so much his shtick, isn't it? I mean, that's what he does with so many things. Does it say, yeah, I know you're worried about that. And, and I do think it's amazing that the Book of Revelation really is attention-getting with what it says about it. And, you know, what is like, if he's right, if Swedenborg is right, the Book of Revelation in the Bible is telling, is a warning about people who are using it wrong, right? It's like, this is, this is a secret message in the Bible saying, there is going to be a time when people in the, the powerful people in the world are going to be ruining me or using me wrong. But I'm sitting here prophesying. Isn't that like, that's something? Yeah. It's suddenly reminding me of, um, that story in the Old Testament where David kills Uriah and takes Bathsheba, and then is it Nathan the prophet comes and sits down with him and says, tells him a story about a guy who steals the sheep and all that, right? "You are the man." You the man. You know, and David said, "This is horrendous." You know, and he, that's, that's you. And so it's interesting to think about people who are very, very concerned about this without realizing it's actually a very important thing to a lot of those, those same people. The, the thing that Swedenborg says is the mark of the beast, it, the identification is quite different than barcodes. Well, and you say, and that makes me think, lest we sit up here, throw, throw things from our perch at these, these wicked, uh, religious leaders who have done this thing. Uh, you are the man. There's something in each of us. Yes. That does this on a small scale. That wants to do this. The Bible is always also, well, the reason that it's this, like, the reason it's divine revelation, the reason it's different than any other book or any other thing that exists on the planet, the reason why this is what God chose to put here for people, is that it's always relevant to the individual reading it, and it's always a commentary on your own life. So we can get into that too. However, there's like a great, I don't know, there's a great scandal. This is talking about like that Swedenborg was in the 1700s saying the Christian church is dead. This thing is a, is a, is a corpse, and what killed it was this, this, this beast stuff. Man, unbelievable, right?

All right, so I feel like we have to set the scene in case people don't know. I think there's probably a lot of people that have heard of the mark of the beast and the number of the beast, 666, right? That don't know where that comes from, the context, right? Actually, when we were researching this, uh, you know, the Antichrist is often tied up with these things, but the Antichrist isn't even from Revelation. It's from some epistles of John, yeah, right? It's somewhere else, right? And it's not mentioned in here, like, yeah, that doesn't even come in in the story about 666. So the number, but also some people might be saying, ah, you know, these wacky Christians, why do they think any of this is going to happen? It's pretty like, pretty intense, and it says pretty directly, this stuff is going to happen. So let me read it. It's, it's Revelation 13:11-18. Okay, this is the whole, you're going to see the greatest hits of this, like, scary apocalyptic stuff in here. It goes like this: "Then I saw another beast that rose out of the earth. It had two horns like a lamb and it spoke like a dragon." We'll come back to the dragon, okay? "It exercises all the authority of the first beast on its behalf and it makes the earth and its inhabitants worship the first beast whose mortal wound had been healed." Strange. So there was, there was a beast before this. Now this is number two beast, and the beast is directing attention to the first beast. Book of Revelation is not known for its lack of strangeness, man. That's the thing. If you believe this comes from God, that, that's the thing he would leave in your hand. This is like more Tolkien than Tolkien. It's not, you think if you just wipe the slate clean, what's God going to send down? It'd be something very clean-cut, and this is what's good, and this is what's bad, and loving, and sweet, and encouraging, and hopeful, and, but also saying, "Be careful, children, about this or that." Depends on what your, yeah, depends on what your conception of God is like. Everything. If you think, if you think of God as love, you'd think this is going to be straightforward and loving. Or if you think of God as, I guess I would think some of these, uh, mark of the beast type Christians would think of him, it'd be like, no, there was the force of this is what's bad, and you got to, this, okay, yeah, watch out for this. "It performs great signs, even making fire come down from heaven to earth in the sight of all. And by the signs that it is allowed to perform on behalf of the beast, it deceives the inhabitants of the earth, telling them to make an image for the beast that had been wounded by the sword and yet lived. It was allowed to give breath to the image of the beast so that the image of the beast could even speak and cause those who would not worship the image of the beast to be killed." Like, it doesn't sound like something you want to live through. No, it's scary. Like the fire, just that fire from, you know, calling down fire from heaven, and, and everybody being deceived. I mean, isn't that what, isn't every conspiracy theory kind of a thought that we're being deceived? You know, right? Yeah. I mean, we come by it honestly, man. I want to remind me to come back to, "if everyone who would would not worship the image of the beast to be killed." If this is talking about the Christian Church, well, aspects of the Christian Church, yeah, which is what Swedenborg says this is talking about. Oh, there's been times. The Inquisition was the first thing that popped into my mind. There has certainly been times when if you don't qualify as, yep, if you're not, we're literally going to kill you. Although here it's talking more symbolically, but I'm just saying, the, the world has seen things like this. Yeah. And also, "it causes all, both small and great, both rich and poor, both free and slave, to be marked on the right right hand or the forehead, so that no one can buy or sell who does not have the mark, that is the name of the beast or the number of its name." So that's the, so specific. The right hand and the forehead, and the forehead. And that hasn't happened with, with bar, like there's lots of barcoding, there's RFID chips and various things, but, but I haven't seen anybody like with a barcode on their head or on their right hand. And if you're the devil or somebody who's going to do this, you'd be like, "Oh snap, they called, they called it. I can't do it. I got to do it a different way. I got to do it a different way. Got invisible ink or something." So strange, strange. Why would a prophecy speak this cryptically, yet this specifically? Yeah. If you're going to warn people about something that's going to happen, give us a name, don't make us speculate. But why get this specific about make it clear? And, yeah, how can you say this body part and that body part? Everyone's going to know as soon as someone starts to try to do that. This calls for wisdom. Returning to the text says, "This calls for wisdom." Yes, it does. Which means, are you sure you know what I'm talking about? Yeah. "Let anyone with understanding calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a person." It's number. Well, hang on. So the number, the Book of Revelation is kind of famous for these sorts of expressions where all of a sudden, well, wait, it was a beast a moment ago, but now it's a human being. Yeah. Also, that kind of ties it down. Oh, man, there's beast, a person, people. All right, they can be scary, but pretty. There's a lot of people around. Its number is 666. So what do we make of that? And yet he just told you, the text just said that, let wise people, you know, you should calculate, those with understanding should calculate, said calculate it, figure it out. By the way, I'll give the answer. You know, it's 666. Uh, well, that's weird. Why did you tell me to calculate it if you're giving me the answer? That's so, that's such a good point. I had my sister is getting her degree in like education psychology, kind of thing. And so I volunteered to have a test done on me where it asked me a bunch of questions. And they got really hard. I guess it was supposed to be 12th grade math. And I was, somebody help me, help me, someone please. This, I'm sort of, so by the time I got and burned a few different modules, how hard they got, they really ramped up by the end. When the new module popped up and I saw something easy, I was like, "Oh no, this is going to be hard. This, I'm going to end up not able to do what these high school seniors can do." No. And here you're gearing up for that too. This is wisdom. This calls for wisdom. Let anyone with understanding calculate the number of the beast. Oh no, what's it going to be? By the way, it's exactly this. You already win. Everybody passes. I calculated it for you. I couldn't, couldn't resist. Why? The reason why we're, we're lingering on this, that it's so funny that it says that is, there is a problem with people saying, well, this just straightforwardly tells you what's going to happen. Yeah. Someone's going to put a mark on your hand and it's it, and then you can't. It's about literal buying and selling. But then why is it doing that? That, that does not suggest it's speaking clearly. Why do you have to be wise and understanding and why do you have to calculate to figure this out when it's all been laid out supposedly very, very clearly there, uh, what it is and what the number is and everything? And it's not like everybody's going to get the same barcode of 666, you know? Yeah. And also, if, if these beasts come down, like, what does it matter if you have? There's beasts that are like Godzilla. That would be the distracting part, wouldn't it? Not the number. I don't worry about the number. Like, by then, are we telling us all what to do? So what people will do is kind of hybridize this. So take it really literally, but they'll say, "Oh, the beast is symbolic. Like the buying and selling, that's literal." But it's not really a beast that's been healed by a sword. So we want to straighten this out because I think a lot of people are upset and afraid about this. And also, if people go off in the wrong direction and they're thinking, "Well, I'm going to go attack the mark of the beast over here," uh, you're not attacking, you're not fighting against the actual mark of the beast. This is here to warn you. But if you get warned of the wrong thing, you can't help be part of the solution. That's right. So let's look at what, so what do people, how do people generally, um, how, what do people make of this? We went, we, um, have special access to this online encyclopedia called Wikipedia. Really? And so we've gotten straight. How much does that cost? That must be accountants, um, handle that. So we just give you a quick rundown. This is how different people have interpreted this. So the beast's identity and the beast's number are usually interpreted by applying one of three methods, okay? Using Gematria, new word to me, to find the numbers that equate to the names of world leaders to check for a match with a scriptural number. And I believe this is just the concept, which is true, that in ancient Greek, I know for sure, and I think it's also the case with Hebrew, that the letters also had numerical value. You know, so 666 would be also letters. Got it. And, and so you match those letters to, I know people say, "Oh, it adds up to Nero," or it adds, you know, whatever. Drink more Ovaltine. That's right. Then the second method is, treat the number of the beast as a duration of time. Third, linking the scriptural imagery and symbolism of the Antichrist, which is again from a different part of the Bible, right, with characteristics of world leaders who oppose Christianity. Ain't that funny? I mean, ironic that people are looking out. It's Christianist. Yeah. Is the opposite of Christianity. However, according to Swedenborg, yeah, the, the threat came from inside. It was a threat of corruption, not of war.

When I was young, I used to be exposed to a, a person, an interesting person who was a religious zealot. He had, um, some sort of affliction, like an intellectual impairment or something like that. And he would say these religious phrases over and over and over and over again. And when I was young, just didn't know what to make of this guy. Like, you met him in person? Yeah, we'd run into him all the time because he just lived down the way. And so we'd be out riding our bikes and we'd run into him. "Say, let's say a prayer together, fellas. Let's say a prayer." And he would say a prayer with us. And, and he would say things like, um, that, uh, that he thought that the Antichrist was Moshe Dayan, but he had the, the eye patch was on the wrong eye. It should have been the other eye. But he thought that, you know, he was the Antichrist. And, you know, um, so yeah, he had a bucket of prophecies in his head and he's looking at the world news and trying to identify who, who this Antichrist is and warn us about it. Well, you can't, you could empty your bucket because we, we're going to give you who the Antichrist, not the end of the Christ, we'll be the mark of the beast and the number of the beast. Antichrist, we can talk about as well, yeah, in another time. So, yeah, you don't want people get so wrapped up in that. It doesn't make them happier. It doesn't make them more on the path to heaven.

Well, there's got to be something else going on here. Uh, so people have had theories about, so what is the Antichrist? We mentioned some of them. Uh, some people think it was like the, the coins with emperors on them back in the biblical times, like, "Oh, this is the mark of the beast. It's got to have that." When, bar, you got to have the emperor's coin to do any business, right? When, when barcodes, as we mentioned, when barcodes were first invented, people were, "Oh no, no." We go, nobody's worried about them anymore because it turns out, oh, they're really useful. They just like make commerce really easy, fast. But, right, some thought. Now people think, you know, it's a, it's a microchip or something with the banking system or something like that. But the, but even on Wikipedia, there's a little section that says "Alternate Theory," and it's called the idealist view, which is the, also called the allegorical or symbolic approach, which is an interpretation of the Book of Revelation that sees the imagery of the book as non-literal symbols. And that is right, according to Swedenborg. Yeah, that's right. There's many different interpretations of the Book of Revelation. And in some ways, as Jim Lawrence has has argued in an introduction to Revelation Unveiled that hasn't come out yet, that he kind of partakes of all of them in a way, but he definitely leans toward that, that view that these things are are spiritual. And it's interesting, as you say, so, so people take the beast, not, they don't literally, I don't think people think there's just really going to be some big animal person or something. Yeah. But the buying and selling, oh, all in, you know, no, it's 100% about trade. It's about commerce. That's what it's about. And which is, it would be a strange, that would be a strange language for the revelation of John to speak, yes, that I want to tell you, wait, I'm getting a vision, 2,000 years from now, uh, there'll be a different way of buying and selling, and I just need to warn you about that. That's true. Wouldn't it be odd too? Yeah, that, that everybody really, that's why God touched you and gave you a message who lived in between, let's say that, that, you know, it pops up today. Everybody who lived in between that vision and here didn't need to worry about it because it wasn't going to affect them. It wasn't about you. They, they bought and sold in the regular way, in the regular way. And now us, now we need to, and if we just get rid of barcodes, we're going to be fine. So thank you for that prophecy. So, well, then what is it? If it ain't that, then what is it?

This is when Christianity became what Jesus warned us it would become. If you say it's the revelation of Jesus Christ, uh, this is from Swedenborg's, which those are the first words of the book, aren't they? In the book of Revelation, Revelation of Jesus Christ. Jesus appears in it. You get red letters in your red letter, Red Letter Bible about it, right? And what Swedenborg says is that the, um, that Book of Revelation is actually about what God knew was going to happen in the Christian church and how it would wreck the impact of Jesus's first coming to, to an extent, and, and, and facilitate the need for Jesus's return. Yeah, you know, which we talked about in another episode, which is also not symbolic, absolutely literal, or just going to happen at one moment or something, yeah.

So this is from Swedenborg's book, Apocalypse Revealed, it's AR 594, where he breaks down line by line. "Then I saw another beast coming up out of the earth." What's the beast? "This symbolizes the clergy of the Protestant Reformed Church who are caught up in the dragon's doctrine and faith regarding God and salvation." So he said, dragon, you know, the teaching of the dragon. So what's this? I mean, this could be the, you know, Swedenborg's nemesis is this, this doctrine. The dragon's doctrine. Can you give our, uh, audience a quick, uh, explainer? What one point is that Protestant Reformed? I think he means what we mean by Protestant. In other words, there was this thing called the Protestant Reformation. Uh, there's part that's right. I know history, which I was just hearing about, didn't actually happen exactly that way, but, you know, it's one of those things. But, um, so the, he, there's a section of Protestantism that's called the Reformed. The Reformed Churches. Uh, he's, I don't think he's talking about that. I think he's talking about the whole Protestant thing when he uses those two terms. But, um, yeah, so that identification is important. I think what's so, so it's only the, so the beast coming out of the earth is the clergy of Protestant clergy who are caught up in the dragon's doctrine and faith regarding God and salvation. What's the dragon's do? The dragon's doctrine. Okay. So Swedenborg's great on this, that there's basically just two things. Uh, there's your view of God, and there's your view of salvation. And, uh, in a, in a certain way, you could break it down to say that the, the, the view of God is too many, it should be a narrow view, and the view of salvation is too narrow, it should be more multiplicitous. And what he means is that, um, that, uh, in the case of God, that there's not three persons in the Godhead. And where this really gets important is that the three persons idea tends to drift into the idea that one was sacrificed to make the other one feel better about the human race, because he was going to condemn it. And so there was this vicarious atonement, and this, you know, kind of sacrifice. And, uh, so Jesus died for your sins to reconcile you to the Father, and, and that kind of thing. And in response to that, Swedenborg says, no, there's only, there's one God. I mean, the Bible's actually pretty adamant about one God, and that multiple gods is is not true. And there are all these passages in the Old Testament that say, "I'm, I'm the Lord, and there is no other. There's no other God besides me. I don't know one," and all that kind of stuff.

He would say that this, this was something that was so deadly to Christianity that he, Swedenborg, was in a world that if you looked around, it seemed like it was so Christian. You, the government was Christian, you had to be Christian, go to Christian church, everybody's Christian, everybody knows the Bible. And he looked around, after the, he says Jesus Christ opened his spiritual eyes, kind of like John Patmos, he looked around and said, "Oh, this isn't Christian at all." And one of the reasons is, one of the reasons is this idea of there's actually three gods. And he would say, even though people would walk around saying, "Oh, no, no, we just one God, three persons in the Godhead," that idea is incomprehensible. It is, it is an oxymoron. Nobody actually can think of a three-part, one-part person. So people would walk around saying one God, but when you looked in their minds, they actually think that there are like three gods. And he's quite critical to the fact that the Athanasian Creed actually tells you that you're kind of thinking three, but we're forbidden to say three, like we have to say one, you know? It, it basically says that in there. And that we can look further at the cascading effects of that. But, but that taking, I guess you alluded to it, that part of that is it was used primarily to create this story of the Father God who would happily destroy you forever because of the sins of the human race, and that he was placated by the needless or or innocent death of his own son. And so it, like, calmed his, Jesus calmed his dad down, you know, made it so his temper went away. And so then that God, uh, wasn't going to destroy you forever. He still loves you. It just destroys the character of God. And, you know, maybe there's people who interpreted it a different way, but it makes, and it's, that's the same God, that angry God who would kill you all, that fueled, uh, all the behaviors of corruption in the Christian church and barbarism and all these things, right?

It's just a really silly thought comes to mind, but I remember somebody saying that, um, you know, one of these joke jokes about, you know, some kid was ugly, and they say, "Well, how ugly was he?" They said, "Well, they had to tie a slab of meat around his neck to get the dog to play with him." This is kind of like that, in the sense that the only way God is going to love you is if you've got Jesus tied around your neck, you know? Like, you are not lovable the way, the way you are. Jesus would actually, "No, to hell with you," you know? That's, that's who, that's who God is. And Jesus rescued you. So you love Jesus. Thank you, Jesus, you know, for for rescuing me and giving that cloak of merit, inviting me under that cloak. So, and get wise, you know, the dog's not going to play with me. What a weird family, what a weird humanity, dysfunctional. We all, univ. We're going into, we're going into heaven. And, and we, of course, we love Jesus. He, we were all going to go to hell forever without him. Without him. Great. And it was going to be God that sent us there. But now we're up there with that same God, and we're like, "Worshiping him. Great. Thank you." Uh, even like, if you ask, what we really thought. This guy is terrifying. So, and to think about that picture versus who God actually is, which is, there's one God, and Jesus is that God manifest in the flesh, who weeps for people, wants to gather them as a hen gathers her chicks under her wing, who, who loves them, who is the love that you've ever felt for anyone, who is like the essence of like a mother and her little child, and like everything that's good. That's who the Lord is. To be, have this smear campaign against the character of God, uh, how many people have been chased away from Christianity, from religion? How ineffective has Christianity become at actually addressing people's, uh, regeneration? And these other monotheistic religions may justly look at Christianity and say, "That's an insane religion. You know, we believe in one God. What are you talking about?" Yeah. And, um, so it's had a bad effect on the PR as well.

So salvation, we talked about. So that's the problem. That's the God problem. So there's one, there's, there's this little God problem. Then there's a little salvation problem, which is that, uh, uh, the, the view is salvation by faith alone, or salvation by grace through faith alone, people sometimes say. But the idea is that what saves you is not being a loving person or being useful in society or whatever you should do. You should do it all day long, not shit. It won't win you anything. No, no, not repenting, not taking care of your problems or whatever, like, no, don't bother because Jesus, Jesus died to take care of that for you. He's just going to solve that. And so, I, I was really thinking recently about how the question, "What faith alone?" You like, which faith? And I think the idea is that when people say saved by faith, what they mean is the faith that God the Father was angry, Jesus died for you, you don't have to amend your life. I know there's lots of people who Christians who would say, "Oh, you do have, you know, it matters terribly how you treat other people," but would still say, "It's not a requisite for salvation. All you need is to believe because it's not about your works. You, you're justified by faith apart from the works of the law." There may well be people watching, assuming the people are watching this, yeah. I mean, like I would have jumped by now, but I, but people might say, "Well, like, that's, I'm a Christian and that's not what I believe." Yeah. And the Christian Church, there's plenty of pastors and stuff like that. We're not saying everybody has. But there was that, that was there. The, the mark of the beast, it's a thing. It is a thing. It's not everywhere. It's not everybody, but it's a thing. And maybe less currently than it was a couple hundred years ago. It's been a huge part and still in a lot of places is the defining characteristic of Christianity. That, what makes you Christian or not? Well, do you believe that Jesus died for your sins? And what we mean by that is, do you believe that that Jesus took the wrath of the Father on himself? That would have been, do, do you believe our three Gods kind of thing? Then that's what it is. And that that faith saves you. That's, that's, and so it's, it's of secondary importance. You, you should do it. You do good works to show that you have faith, but they are not going to save you because that would just be merit. You're earning your brownie points to get into heaven. And your anything you do is be fouled by your own hereditary, you know, your like the original sin and, and all, you can't get there from here kind of thing. So, so just having belief, that's what you need to, to get in. And of course, there's lots of biblical support for both of those things.

Something I want to say about the Trinity, if I may, is that Swedenborg would say there's absolutely a Trinity. There is a Trinity. That's why the Bible talks about Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And there is a Trinity. It's not a Trinity of persons with an S on the end. It's just a Trinity within one person. That there was the Divine Love, and then that was born in the world in the flesh, and from that comes the Holy Spirit. And those are your, you know, so the idea of a Trinity is very important to understanding who the Lord is. But not that, like, that's a horrible distortion of what the Divine Love is and how it relates to Jesus with this weird picture of like, "Is that enough, Dad, if I die, would you love me?" You did good. Uh, but that's, some people might say Swedenborg's just kicking the can down the road. He's saying, "Just that there's a Trinity." But that, that's still a weird thing. Can't be one person. He's only saying that we are created in the image and likeness of God. Yes. So if what's true of God is true of us, and we are a trinity because you have your soul, your body, and the actions of your life. That's what he's saying. The Divine Trinity is there is like, like the soul, or the, the Divine infinite unknowable. There is the equivalent of the body, just like your mind. You and I aren't hanging out with each other's minds. We can't access those things. But we can through the body, through the body, we can connect. Like I can kind of see, the only way I can know Curtis's soul is through Curtis's body. That's, that's why Jesus is the way. And all that. I can look at your face and be like, "Oh, he thinks I really went off the rails here." But I don't know what you're thinking. But I'm like, he probably does. He probably, right? Like, it's about normal. Okay. So, so it is with God, that there is a Divine infinite unknowable thing that is the Divine Love itself, wants to be able to, to be close to us enough to save us from our own sins, in that those negative, horrible things that we have this affection for will destroy our own happiness and the, and the cohesion of the human race. So Jesus is him saying to take on this thing that you can understand and relate to. And then everything that I do through my Divine Providence, that's the Holy Spirit, okay? That I can understand. That's, that makes us, yeah.

I've always wondered how, how strict Trinitarians view the image and likeness thing. Because we're not three different people who disagree with each other or one's reconciled to the other by, you know, some sacrifice or something, you know? That like, makes no sense. But the fact that when you talk about the things that you do, it's amazing, isn't it? That if you do a painting, or if you write a text message, or whatever, somebody could say, "Oh yeah, that, that's Curtis. I can tell that's a Curtis text message." LOL, smiley face. Like, only he, that, that only he would do that. You, with like a, like a Van Gogh. His, his actions, like the paintings. He, listen, I know nothing. I couldn't even point to a Van Gogh in a museum. But I know that that's a name of an artist. Good. And that's good. That's impressive. People, the bar, the bar is low. The bar is low. That the actions of Van Gogh are as associated with his personhood as anything else. And it's right in that paint, you know, he, his body died a while ago, his spirit is off somewhere else, but his painting is still there. And that's like the Holy Spirit radiated. And that's why the New Testament is a little unclear on whether the Holy Spirit comes from the Son, quote unquote, or from the Father, because it's really the Father, really the Divine Love through this new vehicle that was added, this human part that was able to radiate the spirit everywhere and be present with everybody to help him doing that work that you're talking about, you know? All right. So other than that, that, that's all it is. Those, those two things.

Well, the reason we had to do that is it's going to seem like a letdown to people. Like, what's the mark of the beast? What's the number of the beast? Well, there's a doctrinal issue, theological. No, three, three to one, and one. But yet, this, this has had catastrophic impact and can continue to. Because what it does is it takes Christianity. This is, this is applied to Christianity. It takes Christianity and destroys its impact in the world. Because no longer, what is Christianity supposed to do? Is supposed to get you to understand and and start to, uh, have a relationship with God, and you love, you start to love God. Yeah. And then it's salvation, which means, which is it's going to change your life to go from acting in a way that's harmful to you and to others, to acting in a way that's good for you and for others. And you go from creating hell on earth to creating heaven on earth. Um, that's the two, that's what Christianity is meant to do. This destroys both of those because it says it gives you a picture, an idea of God that's inaccurate, and that you can never actually love. Right. You can be bonded with it. You can be grateful to Jesus for saving you from the other part of God, absolutely. You can bond with Jesus all, all day long. That's right. You can't understand, you still don't understand the other pieces, who he is, or what he did. And then because it's almost like he's just a human being then, who, you know, died on the cross or whatever, and it was sad, and he was a Son of God, but not necessarily fully understanding the divinity that's in there, that, that whole Divine Love was in there. And then with the faith alone thing, if the main thing is like, "Are, are you Christian?" Or "I became a Christian last week," meaning I went up in church and I said that I believe this thing, and then, and now I am one. Um, which, uh, distracts from and doesn't always replace, but can replace the repentance that Jesus taught, the actual work that, that he means by baptism. And, yeah, it's this long process. I think of, I'm just thinking back to the Inquisition again. I don't know what that was. I know it was the Spanish Inquisition, and I think they killed people who were heretics, right? So that's a great example. Heretics, meaning you had the wrong idea of of God. You and I, right now, yeah. It's basically sort of social control, isn't it? Like, somebody's thinking the wrong thing, they're not under our, our control, so we have to kill them, get, like, get that, get that weed out of the. They wouldn't like this podcast right now. They'd be coming after us. And look at that, that would stem out of Christianity. That was done flying the flag of Jesus Christ. So the people who did it, as the New Testament says, they would, they feel like they're doing God a favor, yeah, by killing people. Yeah. And the New Testament actually calls that out. And yet it would still happen. So what does that show about the hierarchy of priorities for Christianity? So what, so what are people being killed for? Wrong, wrong doctrinal ideas, spreading wrong thoughts. Um, that, so that becomes the greatest crime because it's all about faith instead of about actions and love. And, and also that the Christian church is saying, "Well, you know, that whole thing about Thou shalt not murder, right, right?" And, right, uh, Jesus saying, "You shouldn't even hate your brother," true, "or lusting after people's form of adultery," and all, and if somebody slaps you on one cheek, turn the other cheek. If someone asks you to go, all that stuff just get shoved into a corner because the faith is at stake. And the faith, the idea, that's what matters. That's, that's showing you that, uh, when your priorities get that warped, that's just a great microcosm of that's the kind of actions that happen when you have the, the wrong faith. And faith is way overblown in its importance, right? It should be in like third place or something. Faith, the way Swedenborg describes it, is something that you get after a while when you're living as a person and you've taken care of some of your, like, social and emotional problems, or so, you know, faith is kind of at the end of the line, not the. That's why he says so many times, "Repent and believe." You know, because repentance is first, then you believe later.

I was just going to say, people might say, um, what are you talking about? The, in order is inverted. But when Jesus Christ comes, and you got to pay some attention, yeah, to Jesus. I just feel like you can't leave him out of Christianity, not entirely. Can't. People have tried, but you can't get him entirely out of Christianity. The first thing he's talking about, and the thing he talks about most frequently, is repentance. Yeah. "Take up your cross, follow me." Yeah. That's right. He just, and even John the Baptist, first thing he says, yeah, isn't it true that that after he gets baptized, in one of the gospels, and he starts, and he said, "From that day forward," he said, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." Right? And that's like a moment, like something's happening. Why is? And at the very end of his life, after, uh, he dies on the cross and then is resurrected, and he comes back to see his disciples, and these amazing stories, they're behind closed doors, and he appears, and what does he tell them then, when he's got a great chance to tell them? Now he's, you know, in me, resurrected, and, and he says, "Repent. Go tell everybody. Tell the whole world to repent." You know, preach baptism of repentance. Like, that's what they need to tell everybody. So what this did was it just threw that out. It relegated that, yeah, to, to being of no importance. And we're going to get to how, yes, you can cherry-pick a few less frequent commands of Jesus to say, "Oh, look, you have to have this faith." Yeah. But, but you've, you've, you're too selective, and you've ruined it. And that's what's coming up.

Okay, so I think we talked about that a good amount. This is from Apocalypse Explained, so this is taking, uh, the symbolism of the second beast and looking at it on a more personal level. 84. The sentence, "And I saw another beast coming up out of the earth," signifies confirmations from the sense of the letter of the Word in favor of faith separated from life and the consequent falsifications of the truth of the church. Okay. I think what he's talking about there is is being able to, "Oh, I found one. Oh, you know, like, uh, the famous statement that, 'Man is justified by faith apart from the works of the law.'" "Oh, I found one. I found a good one." Yes. So, so you find those things that, uh, confirm a certain doctrinal position that's that's attractive, but just happens to be against most of the. Isn't that you're talking about? That's out of Paul, "Justified by faith." Yeah. Okay. And, and I guess that's what Paul thought. I mean, it's not at all like at the front of every Bible, they have First Corinthians 13 sitting there, which is the, this whole poem about love is so important, which ends saying, "And then there's these three: faith, works, love." No, faith, hope, and whatever it is. "But the greatest of these is love." Yeah. The whole thing is like, "No, this is about love. This is about love. This is about love. This is about love." And yet they'll latch on to, "We're justified by faith apart from works." That's right. And it's quite clear, as Swedenborg points out in Romans 3, where where Paul talks about that, which is after he's already said earlier in Romans that it's by your works, you know, he says things that, that basically add up to you're saved by your works. But in chapter 3, he says that we're justified, uh, by faith apart from the works of the law. And then he goes on to talk about circumcision, circumcision, circumcision. It's like, "Oh, yeah, there were 613 Old Testament laws." So people have said, "Oh, that's the Ten Commandments." Paul's very supportive of the Ten Commandments. He is not trying to get rid of the Ten Commandments. He's big on the Ten Commandments. And, uh, he's talking about the Jewish dietary laws and circumcision was a big deal when you're joining the church at that time. "Do I have to go through this?" And so he says that it's faith. And partly that's because Paul was coming from a perspective of having done the whole. He was, he calls himself a Hebrew of the Hebrews. He did the whole thing, followed all those commandments, and he was a hateful, nasty person, you know, prosecuting people and persecuting them and holding the cloak while Stephen's martyred, or or whatever. He, he's just, he's nasty. And at first, when he converts, Christians don't believe him. They think he's a mole or something because he's been so horrible. Um, so he felt like, "Hey, if following the 613 Old Testament commandments made you right with God, then why did Jesus have to kind of lecture me a little bit about, hey, you're not doing right, you know, you're not doing it right?" But the works of the law, he's talking about is the Mosaic law. And, and the word faith is people have dragged it into this other concept of faith. But he's really talking about that faith in, in the Lord. You know, faith in the Lord.

It goes on because there's features. It says, "And he had two horns like a lamb," which signifies the power, as if from the Lord, of persuading that there is a conjunction with the Word of Faith separate. Okay. So I think what he's saying there is that the, it's, it's lamb-like. Horns always have to do with power. The way Swedenborg interprets scripture. And so it has horns. I don't know, do lambs have horns? I, I don't know. They're not very scary ones if they do, but little nubby things or something. But, but the, um, but that means that the, it has this power through sounding like, "Oh, it's scripture. It said it. You're justified by faith apart from the work of law. It's scripture. You got to do it." Okay? Because people will come and they comment on this channel and they'll say, "What we're," they'll say, "Read your Bible. You got to go read your Bible. You got to read your Bible. You read your Bible. Don't read your Bible. You got to read your Bible." Uh, it's right there in the Bible. But it's not what they're talking about is I have this, somebody sold me this particular super selective interpretation, absolutely specific passage, cobbled together, which is fine. Everybody cobbles together, but people will not admit that they're doing that too. Cobbled together interpretation that way overemphasizes certain things, ignores other things, twists certain things, uh, borrows from sources outside the Bible, all the above. And they say, "Just read your Bible. You're not reading your Bible. That's unbiblical." Uh, that's this. You get Jesus in Matthew 25 saying that if you did this to the least of my brethren, you, you did it to me. And the list is not, "Have faith. Have faith. Have faith." It said, "Did you visit people who were in prison? Did you take care of the sick? Did you, you know, do, do all those beautiful things?" And that's clearly salvation because he said that the people who don't do it, I forget exactly how it puts it, but in the outer darkness, or there's weeping and gnashing of teeth or something.

Know that it's not, it's not going to be good. It, it definitely has a kind of salvation component. Did you treat other people well or not? 'Cause that's how you have a relationship with me. And, uh, some people have viewed that as a, well, the Gospels are kiddie literature. That's for Sunday school. That's for children. The real meat is in the Epistles. And the meat tells you, you don't have to do that stuff. That was for the kids. That's a little catechism thing that the kids do. It's cute. You don't have to do that. If, if you really understood what this thing is, you don't have to do it. And you do all that sort of convoluted marching around, and what do you end up with? A religion that don't make any sense. It doesn't make moral sense. It doesn't make intellectual sense. And you know what happens? People leave it.

Either they leave it with their hearts and minds. Back when it was the law of the land, and you paid a big penalty for not doing it. But nobody actually cares about it. Nobody's working on it. Again, a lot of people are, but a lot of people aren't. And then once those external threats and bonds are lifted, as you've seen in what used to be Christendom, people just walk away. They're like, that doesn't, that doesn't make any sense. There's nothing in that. And they go and try to find something else that does make sense. It does have ethics in it. And does actually sound like, oh, this is might be where I see God. Yeah.

And, and I think people feel very sad about leaving that behind. And Swedenborg hastens to say that there's a ton of good Christians. Uh, he, and, and lots of Christians go to heaven even with those beliefs or whatever. But, but it's like, if they've been a good person, when they get to the other side, they're instructed and they realize, oh, wow, oh, oh, I did have that wrong. You know? And then, then you're good. Come on in. And the angels welcome you and everything. But, but if you're just hammering that faith alone, you know, uh, yeah, that it's not good.

And so I, I love that statement. I think it's in the Ephesians that we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers. In other words, we're, we're not talking about people here. These are ideas that we're talking about. And these are ideas that take hold of Christianity. Yeah. So we're not trying to criticize individual people or whatever. These are concepts that I think the Lord would love people to be a little, have a little distance between it. Question those concepts a little bit. It's like, is that really, does that really make sense that a kid would be happy that a father would be happy because his his son died a gory death? You know? Like, does that make sense? That kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah. That wasn't even a death, 'cause he just resurrected right away. It's, it's just that he suffered for those hours. Yeah. Right.

It continues because it says, "The beast spake as a dragon, which signifies with a similar affection, thought, doctrine, and preaching as belong to those to separate faith from the life of faith, which is charity." I will, the life of faith. I like that way of putting it. I will say that charity is the life of faith. The critiques that we're levying right now against Christianity as it's been traditionally or, or, or, you know, standard doctrine. When I got onto YouTube in 2010, that was all YouTube was. It was the height of New Atheism. And it was all these people who were looking in and pointing out what Swedenborg pointed out, these hundreds of years ago, and saying, there, there's so many holes in this. And this thing is, problems with that. This doesn't make, there's so many problems with this. And they're just ripping it apart. And what it does is it makes Christianity a laughing stock. To have this, and it, it, um, hamstrings its ability to be this incredibly powerful, life transformative, world transformative thing.

Yeah, I mean, to, to some people, to lots of people, I think if, if you bring up Jesus or something, they feel a little sick to their stomach because, like, the association is like this horrible, hypocritical thing. Like, why are you talking about that? Let's talk about love. Let's talk about something, you know, beautiful and important. So that's part of the problem is that it, because as Jesus says about the salt, if it lost its saltiness, how are you going to make it salty again? Right? Uh, all, all there is to Christianity, really, is this idea of who the Lord is, this living, loving God who wants to be in your life and help you change your life and be more heavenly through this partnership with the Divine. Uh, and when that gets kind of wrecked by these, by these problems, uh, what else, where, to whom shall we go? You know? Like, yeah, then, then that's very important to God that this thing not be trashed.

There's a first beast too that we're not even getting into in this. That's right. Episode. We'll just say briefly that Swedenborg said says that the first beast, well, if the second beast is the clergy who adopted and defended these ideas, the first beast is the rest of the people in the church, the laity. He says that that idea actually came from those people at first. It's a wild idea that the, that this was, uh, originated and then later adopted by the clergy. Probably some people, which the clergy would not want. Don't say that. We can't. We, this is ours. This is ours. Somebody, somehow, there's some powerful, influential people who it's easier for us to do the kind of things we want to do in the world, live the kind of life we want to live, hold the power structures we want to have, if it was more like this. So let's make it like that.

I just say that so the explanation of the internal sense of verses 12 to 15 have some reference all woven together seamlessly. So just, you know, in case you forgot, this is what those verses say. "It exercises all the authority of the first beast on its behalf." The second beast does, right? "And makes the earth and its inhabitants worship the first beast whose mortal wound had been healed. It performs great signs, even making fire come down from heaven to earth in the sight of all. And by the signs that it is allowed to perform on behalf of the beast, it deceives the inhabitants of earth, telling them to make an image for the beast that had been wounded by the sword and yet lived. And it was allowed to give breath to the image of the beast so that the image of the beast could even speak and cause those who would not worship the image of the beast to be killed."

Now, Swedenborg, if you want to go and you can get the book series, Apocalypse Revealed or Apocalypse Explained. In both of those, you get the full, detailed, uh, explanation of what this is about on the spiritual level. We're going to summarize it for you here. There's a few pages involved because this podcast has to stay under 16 hours. And we're only going to do it if we do this. So this is a summary of, what does that mean? What does the internal sense mean of that? I'm ready.

This faith alone doctrine gives authority to defend the dogma of faith alone by means of supporting arguments based on particular Bible quotes. Okay? Making it appear to be sacred truth. Which is what I was just talking about. People say, "Read your Bible." You're not reading your Bible when you, you guys are on this channel. Not reading your Bible. What they mean is, here's my doctrine. I have a particular doctrine. I was given that doctrine. Yeah. And you're speaking against that doctrine. So that means you don't read the Bible. Yeah. These rationalizations appear to heal any objections to faith alone. Yes. So there's a natural objection. I think what he's saying there is that there's, there's a natural sort of sense of like, first of all, I, I've heard people say, "You're trying to tell me Gandhi went to hell because he didn't accept Jesus Christ as his personal savior, even though he's like this amazing prodigy of service and, you know, this world-famous example of, like, doesn't make sense." It doesn't make sense. That was Rob Bell's whole thing. But, but, but Hitler's a Christian. So Hitler's in. Like, it's okay to be Hitler. But they, or whatever. Yes. You know that, right? So the human mind recoils at that. Recoils about it. But if you got, well, no, here, here's the scripture. Listen to this. This is how it works. That's the only thing that matters. Right?

Um, yeah. So it heals. It heals that. The classic, like, the, the baby who was born outside of Christianity and dies as an infant. They go to hell because how did they accept Jesus in that time frame? Yeah. They don't even have human life, actually. There's, there's a clip that I think I reacted to in a, on our other channel where it's an Oprah show and this argument is happening. Someone in the audience is saying to, to Oprah, "You got to accept Jesus." And she's like, "What about," gives that example I just said. And the, and then the lady in the audience said, "Well, it says that that he's going to be known in all the corners of the earth. So you figure it out." Which is just kind of a non-sequitur. But it, it's just pointing to some Bible verse. And instead of saying, "You're right, this is, how can this be true? This is ghastly and irrational. Doesn't make any sense at all." He said, "Well, there's this Bible verse." Yeah.

So we, our internal sense summary goes on. Once the rationalizations are established, they are considered signs from heaven that they are true. This leads other people astray, causing them to worship the faith alone doctrine. And if they don't go along with this doctrine, they're considered to be condemned. Okay? So that's, that's the killed. Is that what the condemned part is? That, yeah. That, yes. If they, if they don't buy the signs, you know, if they're not deceived, then, then they get wiped out. Yes. Again, very attention-getting pros on the part of the Book of Revelation. And this is why, maybe there's other reasons, but this is one reason why the Christian world generally has not given Swedenborg the time of day. Even though I would think, if you just look at the ideas, the theology, the picture of God it paints, the problems it solves, there's nothing greater out there. There's, CS Lewis is fine. Not not greater than that. Thomas Aquinas is fine. Not greater than that. It does not give you as full and comprehensive a picture of, this is a, a plausible, this could be the true faith. I get it. Swedenborg's got a lot of stuff working against him. He, you know, he's a weird name. He went and saw spirits. I know there's that stuff too. And sure, you can reject it out on that. Or how do we know how this internal sense? It seems like it's just arbitrary. He's just making up what the Bible says. Okay? That, that can be one thing. But I think there's been a massive rejection of Swedenborg because he doesn't worship the beasts. Yeah. People say he's not, it's not Christian. It's not Christian because he doesn't have a Trinity of persons. And he doesn't have salvation by faith alone apart, you know, from works. And, and to me, Swedenborg is super Christian. More Christian than anybody. In the sense that Jesus is huge. You know, it's all about, I mean, Christian means Christ, right? It's all about the fact that no, that is the one God born into the world. That's not just a separate one that was somehow born from eternity at the same time as the Father. But whatever that means. And, you know, this Holy Spirit didn't exist. Even though John says the Holy Spirit didn't exist yet because Jesus was not yet glorified. And all that.

So he's, he's got a beautiful Jesus in there where that has that full Divine love in there. You can understand the Old Testament prophecies. You rescue the Old Testament for another thing. You know, you don't have the Old Testament is the angry God that's the Father. And then you got this beautiful son in the New Testament. He, his name is Jehovah saves. That's what Jesus means. You know, Jehovah is Jehovah. He's like Yahweh of the Old Testament. That's what his name is. So, Swedenborg's system, the more I go into it, seems super Christian. It's Christian with a, you know, whatever is bigger than a capital letter or something. A double capital. A double capital. And I'm just, my, my blood's boiling. You got my blood boiling on this because people will, people will say, sure, in this channel and then elsewhere, we've had, I've, I've worked with other, you know, I was going to say Swedenborgian things, but Swedenborg himself hated that term. He doesn't like that term. There was a, there was a letter that he wrote to someone where he's like, "People are calling my doctrines Swedenborgian. It's not Swedenborgianism. It's True Christianity." True Christianity. That's the term for it. We use, we use that term. That's why he titled the book though, because that's like, you know, who do you think you are calling True Christian? It's just, it's just convenient to label it that way. But I was going to say, I've been around these Swedenborg, like, Swedenborg-influenced, you know, things. And there's been times. There was a project I was working on way back, and we were trying to use this software that a Christian thing had, a big fancy Christian church had made. And they were going to let us use it. But then they, like, "Oh, we looked you up and you're not really Christian." Yeah. And I'm saying, and people all the time will say, "This is unbiblical. What you guys are saying is unbiblical. Swedenborg is not biblical." Where he, he gets hammered. All he does is go through the Bible. The parts that the, that the Christians, the beast Christians, don't even think about. They don't care about the Tabernacle. How it would, there it spends all this time talking about, we've got to have the Holy of Holies. And then that's got to be made of chittim wood. And that's got to have this. And it goes on and on about this stuff. Which the Christian world doesn't even care about. They never go into it. That whereas Swedenborg saying, "These details are sacred. Take off your shoes. This is telling you." And this is not just telling you about something that God did a million years ago. This is telling you about how to live your life right now. This is, there's, you can see the wisdom of God in here. And that he's presenting a picture of God that is actually consistent with who Jesus is. And is something you would actually care about and want to worship with your rationality and your, and your free heart. And, and he spends more time in the Bible and thinks more about the Bible and talks more about the Bible than anybody. And yet people are saying, "Well, that's not Christian. That's not biblical." Because when you say biblical, what you really mean is you have this weird beast doctrine that you all made up over the centuries. And you call that the Bible. But, but it's, it doesn't even want to look at itself. It doesn't even, it doesn't care about the fact that there's two creation stories that this, that that agree with each other. Two Christmas stories that don't agree. Yeah. Right. It doesn't, it doesn't. "I don't care. Read your Bible. You're going to hell if we believe John 3:16. That's what all we care about." Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely true.

I had a friend who was, um, invited to be on a, on a Christian TV show and going to talk about Swedenborg and everything like that. And she got all, all ready and got the, you know, makeup on, all in the green room and everything. And then they, they yanked her at the last minute. They just, uh, they, same deal. We looked you up. That's not Christian. So why is it not Christian? It's not Christian. Swedenborg is not considered Christian by some Christians because, you know what? It doesn't have the mark of the beast. It doesn't have the mark of the beast. And in order to sell a concept or to buy into a concept that and call it Christian, you have to have the mark of the beast. You can have all sorts of other ideas mixed in there, but you got to have that mark of the beast. If you don't have the mark of the beast, it's a deal breaker. And what, what is the mark of the beast? Let's look at that right now.

So this is from Apocalypse Revealed, 604, talking about Revelation 13, chapter 13, verse 16. "And causes all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, this symbolizes all the people in the Protestant Reformed Church of whatever condition, degree of education, or degree of intelligence, goes on to receive from it a mark on their right hand and on their foreheads." This symbolically means that no one is acknowledged as a Christian. He says here, Protestant Reformed Christian. Which we said Christian, right? But one who accepts that doctrine, meaning the doctrine of faith alone in the Trinity, in faith and love. Because I think there are also people who would not consider Roman Catholicism to be Christian either, on this, on the same basis, right? Which is pretty astonishing because there's more of them than anybody. Yes.

So, so Swedenborg, despite the fact that what it is calling you to do is repent and follow Jesus, despite the fact that it says there's one God and that Jesus Christ is Lord, and it can actually tell you what is holy about the Bible, actually tell nobody else can articulate for some reason, and elevates the Bible and all of the Bible to a higher position than I think it occupies anywhere else. It is telling you that the Bible is not just a couple of Aesop's fable style lessons that you can make a sermon out of, but it is all Divine wisdom. It tells you exactly how the human mind works. It tells you what you should do to live a good life. It tells you the mysteries of mysteries about all the things of faith. It tells you the spiritual history of the human race. It tells you the details what Jesus's inner and outer life was like so that we can take up our cross. And the consciousness that's in there knows you better than you know yourself and can actually help you get over what's in your way. But because it does not say, uh, we are saved by the faith that believes that Jesus, that the, God sacrificed his only son to, to do this for us, and that, and believing in that, that's faith that saves. Yeah. That, that's the faith. Because it doesn't do that, because it doesn't have those marks, it's shut out of Christianity. Yeah. It's not Christianity.

So Swedenborg goes on to receive a mark means symbolically to be acknowledged as a Protestant Reformed Christian or to be among those who confess what the doctrine teaches. The mark is such an acknowledgement that the person is such a one and also a confession that he is such. The right hand. Why the right hand and the forehead? Again, this is Swedenborg saying that matters. Details matter. It's not your left hand. It's not the right hand symbolizes everything in a person relating to the power of his intellect, thus to his faith. For the right hand symbolizes a person's power. The forehead symbolizes everything in a person relating to the power of his will, thus to his love. For the forehead symbolizes love. Ah, that's great. So this, the forehead is in, in your love and in your faith, which is also hand is also has a lot to do with the actions, the way you treat people, how you are in the world, and that sort of thing. Did you tow the party line? You can, some, some people might believe in a Rapture. Was it, their word? Rapture is not in the Bible. But they, they believe in, in this Rapture. Taking this thing literally. All right, you're a Christian. As long as you have the, the mark, you have it. We're fine. Yeah. That's right. Oh, you can believe in the Prosperity Gospel. That, that a good Christian is a rich Christian. You know, uh, even though the Bible has all sorts of things to say about the poor and all that. Harder to go through. The Ian Kimmel. Go. You got the mark of the beast, then you're good. You, you can, you can have it up with the United States of America and say, "Well, we believe there, there's some kind of particular God wants, uh, the United States as a Christian Nation." Which there's nothing obviously that the Bible's written way before then. I'm not saying anything anyway about that. But all I'm saying is that counts as Christian. It counts as Christian. Even though you just made, got the mark of the beast. If you got the mark of the beast, that, that's part of Christian. And any, anything in between. Oh, that biblical literalism is another one. Which just, I think came into existence in 1906 in Princeton or something. Idea that every single, you know, like, just it means what it says. That that's all there is is that outer layer of scripture. Which is not what Christians have believed for for centuries and millennia going back. But that idea comes in. It's completely wacky and easily destroyable. But, uh, it has the mark of the beast. So it's fine. Sure. Biblical literalism. No, that's fine. You come on in. You believe, yes, that the world was literally created in six days. That's right. And we're say, we probably mean the first creation story, not the second one in Genesis chapter two, because it goes in a different order. Goes in different order. But, you know what? You're in. You're in. And that's right. Yeah. I'm not saying that people with those ideas cannot live a good life. No. By that faith. And be more of a heavenly person than you and I are. Absolutely be a good. Absolutely a good person. But the problem is that the filter is off. So you can have all kinds of, uh, doctrines and ideas that are not just, well, that come on, that's not true, but that are evil and damaging. And yet they fly under the Christian banner. Yeah. And good ones are filtered out. So the awful pictures of God come walk right in and sit down and have dinner and everything. While this beautiful vision of, of who the Lord really is, that makes sense with the Old and New Testament, is like, "No, you, you can't buy or sell. And here, we don't trust you. You're not right." Yeah. And same, same thing with, um, people say, "Oh, near-death experiences. That's just the devil." Because because those, you were deceived by. There's like a sort of subcategory of Christian-approved NDEs that have something of that. Like, "Oh, we had to, I don't know exactly what it is, but you got to have the Jesus is this and the faithing say that." That's that's going on. That's still going on. Okay.

So the mark of the beast. Here's what happens if you receive the mark of the beast. Okay? First of all, you can't buy or sell without it. So that no one, this is from Apocalypse Revealed, and he's quoting Revelation. "So that no one can buy or sell if he does not have the mark or the name of the beast or the number of its name." This symbolically means that no one is allowed to teach from the word or, consequently, to be inaugurated into the priesthood, to be accorded the badge of the teaching office, to be granted the doctor's cap, and be called Orthodox. But one who acknowledges that doctrine and swears to a belief in it and love for it, and to such as in conformity with it, or such as does not conflict with it. Belief and love. Do, do you believe it? Do you love it? Yes. Then you're in. And I think, and, and otherwise, you don't get a teaching job. You're not a minister. You can't, yeah, can't use our software. Although I would say that's loosened in the, in the 250-something years. Yeah. There's some places in the world now where it's not church and state and everything. And, yeah, that whole thing is kind of crumbling. And even within, let's say, the Christian denominations, there's plenty of Christianity that will allow for that stuff now. There are people who, who I think think of themselves as Christians, who, who don't believe in the Bible. You know, even ministers or bishops who have said, "You know, when you go down a certain path, you realize actually the Bible couldn't be true or Jesus didn't really say that." You know? And certainly a lot of Christians, I think, from what I'm told, haven't been there, don't know. But a lot of Christian theological schools don't teach anything about life after death because that's, I mean, what is it? What do we know about it? So there's no point. It's about how you live here. How, how you are in the world. And, and all that kind of stuff. So there's pretty major things that are falling off there. Yeah.

Well, you know, 'cause according to Swedenborg, the events in the Book of Revelation really came to a head in his day, in his time, right? That's part of why Jesus was like, Jesus gave John on the Isle of Patmos this revelation. That's why he was giving Emanuel Swedenborg that revelation in that time period because that was another major period of change, just like Jesus's birth, birth in the world was a major period of change. Change the world. So we, we are seeing the effects now. And I think you do see after, I mean, Swedenborg says the Last Judgment happened in the spiritual world in 1757. Which we've already, I know that sounds weird. We've done shows about that. I'm just saying, there's, there's good reasons to reject Swedenborg. That sounds too weird. Fine. Um, however, have we or have we not seen an explosion of religious freedom since then? Amazing. Just the idea that people of different religions can get along without killing each other and stuff like that. Uh, it's not universal yet, but there's a lot of people who feel like, no, this is okay. I can, I can, I can interact with, you know, Muslims, Catholics, Jews, whatever. You know, like, no, this, this is okay.

Think about the, you can be a loving person. America in the, uh, 1800s. And there's just so much going on in Upstate New York and all these new religions, folk religions. But yet Christianity is in there. There's, and even today, even on, I talked about how New Atheism was at the peak of its powers in 2010 when I started this channel on YouTube. Uh, since then, there's been this major Christian revival on YouTube. Yeah. However, it's not the same. Like, that, you could argue it's not, it's not going back to where it was. Is that what you're saying? A new place that, Jordan Peterson was is a hugely influential figure in it. But he's not, he is not, uh, he doesn't even, I don't know if he does now, but won't even quite say if he's Christian or not Christian. Isn't a minister, but he's talking through the Bible and like these psychological things. And people are just like, yeah, let's see. Let's see what's going on there. There was some highs of like celebrities to Christianity like a Russ Britt or something. Everyone wants to hear what they have to say about it. Even though it's not coming through the power structures it came through before. And you mentioned Rob Bell and Love Wins and all that, which was quite a, you know, that was very controversial. But he came in there with a different interpretation of the parables and, yes, and a different sense of how this all works. And, and, and there is a hugely porous membrane between the NDE world and the Christianity world. So it's, and both are very popular and they're crossing over. So it's Christianity's back, but it's a different Christianity. And someone told me that in Sweden, and you know, Swedenborg's birthplace, uh, Christianity has morphed quite a bit from the old Lutheranism, where they're just not talking about that in the same way anymore. And now actually Swedenborg is more prominent there. And even people who aren't talking about Swedenborg, the kind of Christianity is just sort of a simple, "Look, follow Jesus, be a good person." Yeah. Not all lost in the vicarious atonement and you have to think this and do that. You know, just like back to simple Christianity, which, by the way, plenty of people have been doing throughout the history of the Christian church, and it's been working just great for them. That's right.

Swedenborg, and this was always sort of the enclave of the ivory tower people are having these crazy thoughts. And Swedenborg will will constantly hammer his own class, which was the elites, no, the nobles and the clergy and everything, saying, "You guys have through your," and he would count himself among that until he had this sort of spiritual awakening and had to go through this major process of repentance and reformation and everything. "You guys have messed it all up. The, the, the common people, they, they're more wise. They're closer to the picture of reality because they understand that the life of religion is to do good. You tell them that you're the way you live doesn't matter, and they'll, they'll laugh you out of the room." Yeah.

Okay, so you can't buy or sell without the mark of the beast. Yeah. To buy and sell means symbolically to acquire concepts. We're talking about the, the, the buying and the selling of the mind, and particularly of religious things in the mind, because that's what the Bible is concerned with, because that's what most affects the development of your spirit. What are the principles that you consider sacred? And, and we even say, as I mentioned earlier, I think that, "I don't buy it." Like, we use that expression for, yeah, I, many people are using expressions. Not going to, of what we're saying right now. They're typing it in the comments. "I do not buy this." That's right. Many people, you know, and so they're unwittingly supporting our argument, which is that buy doesn't mean physical commerce. It's about commerce and ideas. Do you buy that idea? And are you, "Oh, he was selling me on the idea of so-and-so." And so people use that too, right? That's absolutely right. In this case, concepts. Not that has anything to do with what we're doing here. You think we're selling something? By the way, hey, thanks for watching. Hope you're enjoying the show. You may be thinking to yourself, "How did a show like this ever happen?" The only reason this show could happen and does happen is because of you. Because of people like you donating to make it happen. We are the Swedenborg Foundation, which is not for profit. The only way we can make the content we make is when people like you think, "I'm going to support this and make a donation." So if you want to help this show happen and help these ideas get out into the world, click the link in the description. Make a contribution. And you'll be part of the engine that makes this whole thing go. Okay, cool. Thanks. Back to the show. Is this, is this the place we're going to put the mid-roll? Like, we do, like, a not-for-profit plug every episode. This would be, I don't know if we would put that ironic place to put it. No, but we'll see. We'll see what they do.

In this case, concepts having to do with that doctrine and teach them as shown below. The mark of the beast symbolizes an acknowledgement that one is a reformed Christian and a confession that one is such. The name of the beast symbolizes the character of the doctrine. And the beast symbolizing the doctrine accepted by the laity, thus by the general populace. Moreover, because the verse says, "or the name of the beast," it symbolizes its character, or such as is in conformity with it. Or the number of its name symbolizes the character of the doctrine, or such that does not conflict with it. It is stated so because the doctrine symbolized by the dragon and its beast is not the same throughout the kingdoms in which reformed Protestants are found, though it is the same in respect to this postulate or principal tenant of the doctrine. There you go. That faith justifies and saves apart from works of the law. Yes. That's right.

So there are Christian denominations that absolutely believe in predestination. Absolutely. You know, and there's others say, "No, not the way that you say." You know, right? Is it true or not true? Is this Calvinism that there was this thing that was taken very seriously, still is by some people, that says some people are predestined to heaven and some are, and some are predestined to hell? That's right. Which, uh, and that it's great. It's absolute grace. It's pure grace. So, so you can be, there's nothing you, before you are even made, right? God already said, "I'm, you're going to hell for some reason." You live this little life on Earth, but you, I already know where you're going. You had no say in this. But I'm already doing, uh, obviously horrendous idea, morally, intellectually bankrupt idea. This was taken very seriously by the Christian church. It's been huge. It's got, it's got little to no basis in scripture. Like, you could maybe fair it out a few passages, but it just so ignores everything Jesus says. Repent. Kingdom of Heaven is at hand. Follow me. This is how you go to heaven. This is how you go to hell. You can choose. This is what you got to do. And that, and that the Lord loves and wishes the salvation of all. You. This kind of, the Sermon on the Mount. "Do therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life what you will put on, you know, are the, the, the birds. You, they don't worry about their life." Why would he ever teach you that if some of you are predestined to heaven and some are predestined to hell? First of all, you who are predestined to hell, go ahead and worry about your life. You, you have been placed in the most unfair, terrible, terrifying situation that any science fiction writer could ever dream up, ever in a million centuries. And second of all, why is he teaching us how to live our life if how you live your life doesn't matter at all? Because some people go to heaven, some people go to hell. So why is John the Baptist standing out there in the wilderness and he's saying, uh, you know, and then all these people come up and say, "Well, what should we do?" Yeah. And he doesn't say, "It doesn't matter." You know, he says, "No, if you're a soldier, you know, don't, like, if you're a collector, don't take more than you're owed. And, you know, if you're a soldier, be content with your wages." And, you know, telling people like, "Be a decent person." Why, why does Jesus give a Sermon on the Mount? Why does he tell all these people what to do? What he should just do is stand up there and say, "Hell, hell, hell. Heaven, heaven, heaven. You guys come with me." So just like, whatever you, help people do, it doesn't matter. Spend your days however you want. Heaven people, it also doesn't matter. I'll see you in heaven in 40 years. That idea, which is ridiculous, was given, was like the law of the land. This was a huge load-bearing idea. And, you know, why, why would you ever be allowed to sell that idea under the banner of Christianity that has no basis in anything Christian? Because you got the mark of the beast. Because it believes that faith in Jesus saves. That's right. Jesus saves you. You need, you need Jesus. Although I don't even know how faith with with predestination, that that's just a weird, convoluted mental gymnastics to get there. But yet it's got the mark of the beast on it. So it's like, come on in. You're under the big tent because you got that. So you can buy and sell. Meaning, it's amazing when you think about it. It's amazing to think about all the varieties in, in, in Christianity that all pass for, you know, they have no problem. Yeah.

A few years ago, there was this manifesto. I forget exactly what it was called, but it was very striking. And it was kind of amazing because a number of different, you know, like, I think Methodists and Baptists and, you know, Episcopalian, what, there was different denominations of Christianity got together and said, "Well, what do we agree on?" Which is a great question. You know, what, what do we agree on? Yeah. And, and then they came up with this manifesto. And, and what's, what's clear in there, you've, you've got a Trinity, you know? And that good works are very important. And you should do them 24/7. It said something almost literally like that, you know, like every day. But they contribute nothing to your salvation. You know, like that was what they all agreed on. You know, the mark of the beast. It was, it was basically should have had that up at the top of the document as getting better. The good. Because good works are good. Yeah. And I'm glad that you're saying they should be done. Um, because what, what will the net effect of that be? People will be doing good things to each other and doing good things. There's both the impact on the person, like, "Oh, I did something nice for you, and now your life is better in some way." It also has an impact on you because that is what repentance is. Although you, like, you could be doing all the good things in the world if you're secretly doing evil things at the same time. Like, if you're, if you're a mob boss who donated a bunch to a hospital, but you're extorting and killing people. It doesn't, that doesn't make, doesn't offset. Nobody would say that. Nobody would say, "Oh, well, he was good." They're like, "Oh, no, he was covering up." So, but still, I like your manifesto saying that you should do good things. However, they contribute nothing to salvation. How that, it's, it's so easy to undermine from the, from the Bible. Like, it does seem tone-deaf to, I think I can see why people say the Gospels are kiddie literature. And by the way, something that I thought to bring up here is that Luther hated the Book of Revelation. Wanted to cut it out of the Bible. The guy who did the Protestant Reformation wanted to get rid of that. Just knew that he couldn't, so he pushes it at the back of the book, hopes people don't read it. Because actually, he knew that the Book of Revelation says that how you live makes a difference. You know? And that he was trying to do the faith alone thing to move away from from Catholicism. He had a big project to do. He was trying to return people to scripture. There was a lot of good in what he was doing. But it's very interesting that he hated the Book of Revelation, didn't even want it in the Bible. And because it talks about every single one of those seven letters at the beginning of the book of Revelation says, "You need to repent." And you need, I think all or at least six of the seven or something mentions repentance. And they say that, you know, your works, you know, like, like how, how you treat people, it's important. It's right in there. You know, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your mind and all your strength." Second is like, "Love your neighbor as yourself." On these two commands hangs all the law and the prophets, right? What's the greatest commandment? That's the greatest commandment. And yet still, people's manifesto going together is like, "Oh, love is cool and it's good, but it's, it's the junior varsity. It's secondary. It's the JV. It shows that you have faith rather than the other way around. And it doesn't do anything for your salvation." So that's the mark of the beast.

Let's talk about the number of the beast, which comes right after that, which is the easy bit for Les. Swedenborg's explanation of Revelation 13:18 here is wisdom. "Okay, this symbolically means that from what we have said and explained in this chapter, it is a part of a wise person to see and understand the nature of the doctrine and faith among the clergy regarding God and salvation. Let him who has understanding calculate the number of the beast." This symbolically means that one who is enlightened by the Lord can discern the character of the arguments the clergy use from the word in defense of that doctrine and faith. Aha! So you can sort of see it if you have understanding. And if you have an open mind. And especially since the Last Judgment happened, things are a little clearer coming in from the other side. Uh, you can see, "Oh, I see what's going on there. You've got an argument to, and this serves that, but it's actually destructive in this other way." And, yeah, you can sort of tell what that is. It's, you can, you can see this for yourself if you really start to look. You don't have to take anybody's word for it. No. You can start, if you, if you search your own soul, you can see it for yourself. Not even a weirdo on YouTube. Yeah. You don't have to take. Incredible weirdo on YouTube can't even force you to believe this. Okay.

It goes on, "For it is the number of a man." A human being symbolizes wisdom and intelligence. In this case, wisdom and intelligence gained from the word, because that's what makes us human, according to Swedenborg. Thus also the word in relation to the wisdom and intelligence in a person in the church. This is consequently the symbolic meaning of the number of a man, because it follows after the statement, "Let him who has understanding calculate the number of the beast," which symbolically means that one who is enlightened by the Lord can discern the character of the arguments of the the clergy used from the word in defense of their doctrine and faith regarding God and salvation. I mean, why would it ever be that Swedenborg isn't known the world over with clear, concise, easy to understand, satisfying, crowd-pleasing statements like the one he's, I'm sorry, what is he talking about? And it's like, the answer. Okay, what, what can we par, like, what did that mean? What I just wrote? What I got out of it was this cool sense that there are going to be people who reflect. And I think there are a lot of people. I think there are a lot of people who who are drawn to this show who don't believe that Christianity is just nonsense or the Bible is just worthless, but they know there's something wrong with what they've been taught. Like it just doesn't make sense. You know? Yeah. It doesn't feel right. And surely it should. And when people tell you, "Oh, don't worry, just have faith." You know, it doesn't have to make sense. It's like, "No, it should make sense." You know, what's, what's going on with it? Uh, so that's what it made me think that, that, yeah, there will be people who can calculate this number, this quality, like evaluate and examine to see what is the nature of the arguments, what's the teaching, what's the outcome of it, you know, and look at it and see. Yeah.

Because what did we have before, uh, in Christianity's theocratic history was, uh, "Believe this or else." Yep. We, there, there was, there was a, there was no free market of ideas, right? It was, there was sure, there was like a few, there was some checks and balances within the ruling class. We go to the council, see it together, we come out with something. But generally, that's how it was. And you, you had to go along with that, or else they could kill you, or you'd lose, you'd be excommunicated. Be excommunicated. Cut out. Yeah. Right. Kicked out. But now with the modern world, and the printing press, and the internet, and social media, uh, people can look around and start to discern for themselves. People can really, they can go through YouTube. They go, the degree of freedom is astonishing. And, and even with places where there's the church and state, which includes Sweden, where they were the same thing for so long, uh, I think it's been disconnected now where you don't have to pay taxes to the church anymore, something like that. Anyway, I know there's been shifts in various places. In, in Ireland, you know, Ireland was always Catholic. Yeah. You know, the, and, but, uh, but it's shifting now. It doesn't, it's, and so people, even in places where there's been sort of church and state, people are have a freedom to think about it for themselves and think, "I don't know about that part. Like, I accept this or that seems like be a good person. Yeah. That's very valuable. What would society be without that? But I'm not sure about this teaching." There's a.

Giant discernment going on. People are scanning and saying, "So what is, what's the beast in here?" I mean, they wouldn't use that term, but they would say, "What is it like?" I think that's the reason that this, uh, that this channel be a tiny part of that, where people are just coming in out of the internet with Christian backgrounds or not, and saying, "Like, they're looking for something. I'm going to look at this for myself. I can, it's the easiest thing in the world for me to just click away from this video and dismiss it." Like, we have no leverage over anyone. But yet, with this and many other sources, people are like, "I'm going to look and see, is this true? Am I, am I, am I finding that this, this might be the true teaching?" People are like seeking to find God in all these things. That's discerning the, the N. People are figuring out the number, like, "Where is the beast and where is not the beast?"

Yeah, and our attitude has always been, which I think is the same as Swedenborg's, which is that, "Hey, think about it for yourself. You know, I mean, don't, don't take our word for it. Does it make sense to you? What, what do you think of these different things?" And well, because you can't, you can't, the only way that anyone can actually, uh, come to believe and love anything is if the pressure is removed for them to accept it, and they, and they freely examine it. And I think, you know, I think it stacks up on this side or that side or whatever. It continues, and its number is 666. So the number of the beast is 666. The number of the beast symbolizes the character of the arguments the clergy use from the word to defend their doctrine and faith. 666 symbolizes every truth having to do with goodness. And because the statement is made in application to the word, it symbolizes every truth in the word having to do with goodness. In this case, that truth falsified, because the number is the number of the beast.

Yeah, there's a couple things I love about that. And I've, I've wrestled with. I didn't find this like an easy concept, exactly. But for one thing, he talks about the fact that six is three times two. And that two relates to, because, I mean, it takes two to tango, kind of thing, right? And, and three relates to truth. And so you're talking about two times three. That this is, this is, uh, you know, um, having goodness and truth working together. And what I just heard from what he was saying there was that when you really look at the, the actual truth of what the Bible's teaching, it is the truth about love. I mean, Swedenborg says that there's only one teaching in there, yeah, and that that's charity. You know, that's, that's being loving. It's loving God, loving your neighbor, like you said, the, the two great commandments. Uh, that's what the entire book is about. And so seeing that, and then three there being six, six and six there being three of them, uh, for one thing, means very thorough. Swedenborg never says this part, so this is my own heresy. But I think it means on, you don't have the mark of the beast. You can't at every level. Like often when there's three, it's six up here, it's six here, it's six there. You know, it's like on the, in, okay, inside, in the middle, and in the outermost level. What should be happening? So six, 666 is not a bad number in scripture. Six is, sixes are good. There's six days of creation. There, there's lots of things. There's 100 fold, 60 fold, and 30 fold, and so on. There's a six in there. And, and, uh, six is good. Um, this means that there's been damage to the idea of love of the truth being about love at every level. That's, that's my own heresy. But at very least, you'd say those three is, is it's complete. Like they've, those concepts have trashed the entire idea, yeah, of that it's that to build a loving, you know, society was, is the point of the Bible.

Yeah, so you could see for yourself. You look at the, you go and look at a theology that somebody somewhere, whether they're wearing like a robe or not, right, is telling you, "This is, this is the truth. I speak for God." Yeah, in this. And what you have to see is, does what they're saying ruin all of Christianity, all the impact that it's supposed to have? That, because there, everything according to Swedenborg, everything in the Bible, yeah, has its good sense and then its bad sense. And you don't know, you have to know from context which it is. Mountains are good, mountains are bad. Yeah.

Well, and everything, right? You might be saying, "Well, he's just making that up. 666 is the evil number of the beast." Oh, really? Here's from First Kings 10:14-15. The weight of gold that came to Solomon. Who is there anyone like this guy? Got, he's good. He's so good. He knew not to cut that baby in half. Like, he knew how to figure it out. Like, Solomon is good. He doesn't have the same scandals as David. Like, he's got to be a symbol of something. The weight of gold that came to Solomon in one year was 666 talents of gold, yes, beside that, besides that which came from the traders and from the business of the merchants, and from all the kings of Arabia and the governors of the land. So there's trading again, which is talking about exchange of spiritual concepts. Yeah. This is, it's actually a good number that's been turned upside down.

And what struck me just for a quick second while you're talking about that was that maybe the first six is about your relationship with the Lord. Like, it it destroys your understanding of God. That mark of the beast is bad for that first six. The second six, it's not good with your relationship with other people. It's not a good society builder or whatever. Tends to be a judgmental group, or that you're condemning other people, or, you know, and that you're not reforming, you're not dealing with your own stuff necessarily, if that's your belief. And then number three is, is yourself. You know, like, you're so God, the neighbor, and yourself. Like, all those get wrecked by these mark of the beast concepts. You're not dealing with your stuff.

What, what the, the beast does is makes it the, the primary thing it destroys is religion's ability to change your heart, because it makes you not deal with your stuff. What is the idea of rebirth, which is so basic? What is the, the net impact on, let's just, religion in general, will just focus on Christianity, of scandals in the church where there are religious leaders of all kinds that it turns out they were sitting here and they're telling people, "Live a good life, be a godly." And actually, they were committing horrific crimes. They're doing bad stuff. And when that happens, not only does it obviously destroy the people that they harmed, but it also destroys the reputation of the church. Yeah. And the, and the fact that they're, if they're protected, you know, by the hierarchy or whatever it is, just makes it worse. Makes it worse.

And, you know, what leads to the conditions in which that kind of thing can flourish? A faith-first doctrine where you can say, "I'm, well, look at me. I have a position in this church. I'm well-versed in the things I do, the rituals. Therefore, I'm pretty much there." Yeah, maybe I have this evil I'm doing, but whatever, that's not the central thing that makes me Christian or not. Uh, when I, so like, I'm sitting here on this show and I, you know, in our own mini world, like we're, I'm very well-versed in the doctrines that come out of Swedenborg's writings, you know, and I, like, I know how to say them all and look, look at me. I'm like trying to spread them out there. Good, good, good boy. When I feel like I'm kind of a fraud is if I'm like at home and I catch myself deep into, like, I'm on the internet. I'm like, "I don't like these people." And I did this thing that was, I acted like kind of like a selfish guy in my relationships or at my work or or wherever. Like, that's when I'm like, "Dude, I'm not, I'm not living it." Like that, that's the more, more important thing. If you only knew like two things, but you really, like, the, the important thing is not how many, how much of the ideology you know or can say or publicly say. It is like, how much are you practicing? I'm not saying that that's easy, or that there wouldn't still be scandals. I'm not saying that it's not that you, you know, every right hell is working on everyone all the time. They try to get them to to do evil things and turn evil. Yeah. Great. But the fact that you have a culture that doesn't say that's the main thing we're focusing on, but instead it's like, "Do you, do you tow the party line? Do you, do you say the right things?" That creates the conditions in which you're going to, everyone's going to fall prey to that. And also can create the conditions where you can have full penetration of Christianity, like, like there's, there's like saturation of Christianity into this area, and yet evils of every kind persist. People are still murdering each other. People are still committing adultery. People are still stealing from each other, even though it's like, there's, what's going on here? Is because you, you, you got the wrong, the bouncer at the door is looking for the wrong things.

And I don't know. I, um, feel like some of the worst trolls that we encountered online are the ones who come in the name of Christianity. Like, they're the, some of them are the least open to, you know, it's just interesting. They're, they're like very mean and they don't want to talk to you. And they, certain, and some, some of them melt when you, when you give them a little love back, or you say, "Oh, that, that's interesting. And you know, tell me more about that," or whatever. Just, it's just strange that it's like, "Oh yeah, I'm a representative of the the Church of Jesus." But my, but that was not the way that Jesus responded to people. Like, that's weird. That's weird.

And it also takes me back to the story of Cain and Abel, which we talked about a couple weeks ago, where Cain, the idea Swedenborg says that Cain represents faith, and Abel represents love. Yeah. And that if Abel's in charge of the relationship, everybody's fine. Everybody lives. You, if Cain gets in charge, Abel will be killed. And I think that's the most fundamental story of the whole Bible, because every, every time faith theology, all that sort of stuff, and then judgment, ostracism, all, you know, these kind of things come in, uh, it kills the neighbor love, every time. And that's what's sort of universal about these stories. And that's why it's in the Book of Revelation. It's not just something that happened once in 1757 or whatever, but we all have this in us, you know? We all sort of want to get into that mark of the beast thing because it's easier than having to look at ourselves and change our ways and all that.

Um, yeah, and and you might, you might not do it with Christianity. You might do it with some other belief. Might do it with something else, a religious or non-religious political belief, club, and excluding some people and what, whatever is. And you think, yeah, that, okay, well, I'm going to sort of outsource the actual morality. Is all things you think it is? Like, do unto others as you have them do unto you. Resist the things that are in the Ten Commandments, murder, which encompasses hatred, all, all these things. But instead, we started, "I can hold on to those things because of, I'm actually the people I'm hating, it's really important to hate them." I'm just saying, beast gets in everywhere. Uh, that's why it's the problem. That's why you got to not do it.

I want to say thanks to everyone. If you made it to the end of this, you're a hero. That's right. Oh, I was saying with you, uh, that this is like the, the explanation that Swedenborg gives for this is not a crowd-pleaser explanation. It's complicated. And it comes down, it's not, "Oh, the beast is not, whoa, it's something. It's a real beast." It's not, it's, it's doctrine. Just comes down goodness and truth. And so, yeah, uh, I get it. But I think that it's like, it comes, it comes out as this like dirty old rock. But as you polish that thing, and so it begins to shine more than anything else. And who's got a better explanation of this material in the Book of Revelation? Who, those other explanations, you explain like, like, who does that have traction? Does that make sense? Does that change your own personal life? Yeah. Right.

Okay, so I want to say thank you for going through this with me. That was wild. Thanks everybody for watching. If you're not a member of our channel, hit that join button. We're about to go and record some special bonus content there. Thanks for listening to this. Take it into your own mind. See if you think it's true. Examine it. Does it have the mark of the beast? Or is it, is it some, is it the good, uh, is it like, like Solomon's gold? And then you find out and go live your life and, and be your, be the church in in your heart and mind. And then that's good.

[Music] Oh.