AR 67 - The New Faith

AR 67

THE FAITH OF THE NEW HEAVEN AND NEW CHURCH
IN UNIVERSAL FORM.

This faith is as follows:
The Lord from eternity, who is Jehovah,
came into the world to conquer the hells
and glorify His humanity,
and without this no mortal could have been saved;
and those are saved who believe in Him.

We say, in universal form,
because it is a universal tenet of faith,
and a universal tenet of faith
must enter into each and every component of that faith.

It is a universal tenet of faith
that God is one in person and essence,
in whom is the Trinity,
and that the Lord is that God.

It is a universal tenet of faith
that no mortal could have been saved
unless the Lord came into the world.

It is universal tenet of faith
that the Lord came into the world
to dislodge hell from mankind,
and that He dislodged it by combats against it
and victories over it.
Thus He conquered it and forced it back into order,
in obedience to Him.

It is a universal tenet of faith also
that the Lord came into the world
to glorify the humanity that He assumed in the world,
or in other words,
to unite it to the Divine from which He came.
Thus He keeps hell,
having been conquered by Him,
in order and in obedience to Him to eternity.

Since neither of these objectives
could have been achieved
except through temptations or trials
even to the last of them,
and the last of them was the suffering of the cross,
therefore He underwent even that.

These are the universal tenets of faith as regards the Lord.

The universal tenet of Christian faith
on the part of mankind
is to believe in the Lord,
for believing in Him brings about conjunction with Him,
through which comes salvation.
To believe in Him is to have confidence that He saves,
and because no one is capable of this confidence
but one who lives rightly,
therefore living rightly,
too, is meant by believing in Him.