BE 84 - a general rule of religion

BE 84
It is a general rule in religion
that so far as anyone does not will good actions,
and so does not do them,
to that extent he wills evil actions,
and so does them.
On the other hand,
so far as anyone does not will evil actions,
and so does not commit them,
to that extent he wills good actions,
and so does them.

Jehu Anointed King of Israel

The prophet Elisha summoned a man
from the company of the prophets and said to him,
"Tuck your cloak into your belt,
take this flask of oil with you
and go to Ramoth Gilead.
When you get there,
look for Jehu son of Jehosphaphat,
the son of Nimshi.
Go to him,
get him away from his companions
and take him into an inner room.
Then take the flask
and pour the oil on his head and declare,
'This is what the Lord says:
I anoint you king over Israel.'
Then open the door and run;
don't delay!"

So the young man, the prophet,
went to Ramoth Gilead.

(2 Kings 9:1-4)

BE 66 - predestination

BE 66

But what more hurtful, or more cruel notion
could have been hatched out and believed
concerning God,
than that any part of the human race
are predestined to damnation?
For it would be a cruel belief,
that the Lord,
who is love itself and mercy itself,
willed that a multitude of men
should be born for hell,
or that myriads of myriads
should be born devoted to destruction,
or in other words, born to be devils and satans;
and that, out of His Divine wisdom, which is infinite,
He would not and did not provide for those who live well,
and acknowledge God,
that they should not be
cast into everlasting fire and torment;
whereas the Lord is the Creator and Savior of all,
and He alone leads all,
and wills not the death of any.
. . . Yet this is an offspring
of the faith of the present church;
but the faith of the New Church
abhors it as a monster.

Elisha Goes to Damascus

Elisha went to Damascus,
and Ben-Hadad king of Aram was ill.
When the king was told,
"The man of God has come all the way up here,"
he said to Hazael, "Take a gift with you
and go to meet the man of God.
Consult the Lord through him;
ask him, 'Will I recover from this illness?'"

Hazael went to meet Elisha,
taking with him as a gift
forty camel-loads
of all the finest wares of Damascus.
He went in and stood before him, and said,
"Your son Ben-Hadad king of Aram
has sent me to ask,
'Will I recover from this illness?'"

Elisha answered, "Go and say to him,
'You will certainly recover';
but the Lord has revealed to me
that he will in fact die."
He stared at him with a fixed gaze
until Hazael felt ashamed.
Then the man of God began to weep.

"Why is my lord weeping?" asked Hazael.

"Because I know the harm you will do
to the Israelites," he answered.
"You will set fire to their fortified places,
kill their young men with the sword,
dash their little children to the ground,
and rip open their pregnant women."

Hazael said, "How could your servant, a mere dog,
accomplish such a feat?"

"The Lord has shown me
that you will become king of Aram,"
answered Elisha.

Then Hazael left Elisha and returned to his master.
When Ben-Hadad asked,
"What did Elisha say to you?"
Hazael replied, "He told me
that you would certainly recover."
But the next day he took a thick cloth,
soaked in in water
and spread it over the king's face,
so that he died.
Then Hazael succeeded him as king.

(2 Kings 8:7-15)

BE 52 - the Lord's order and a person's voice

BE 52

. . .  the Lord cannot act contrary to His own Divine order,
and His order is that man should examine himself,
see his evils,
resist them,
and this as of himself, 
yet from the Lord.
This does not indeed at this day appear to be the Gospel,
nevertheless it is the Gospel,
for the Gospel is salvation by the Lord.
The reason why the worship of the mouth
is accepted by the Lord
according  to the worship of the life,
is because the speech of man before God,
and before angels,
has its sound from the affection of his love and faith,
and these two are in man according to his life;
wherefore,
if the love of God and faith in Him are in your life,
the sound of your voice will be like that of a dove;
but if self-love and self-confidence are in your life,
the sound of your voice will be like that of an owl,
howsoever you may bend your voice
to imitate the voice of a turtle-dove.
The spiritual, which is within the sound, effects this.

"Is there no God in Israel?"

After Ahab's death,
Moab rebelled against Israel.
Now Ahaziah had fallen through the lattice
of his upper room in Samaria
and injured himself.
So he sent messengers, saying to them,
"Go and consult Baal-Zebub, the god of Ekron,
to see if I will recover from this injury."

But the angel of the Lord said to Elijah the Tishbite,
"Go up and meet the messengers 
of the king of Samaria and ask them,
'Is it because there is no God in Israel
that you are going to consult Baal-Zebub,
the god of Ekron?'
Therefore this is what the Lord says:
'You will not leave the bed you are lying on.
You will certainly die!'"
So Elijah went.

(2 Kings 1:1-4)

BE 32 - a Divine Trinity; BE 42 - faith & good works

BE 32

That there is a Divine Trinity,
is clear from the Lord's words in Matthew:

Jesus said, go make disciples of all nations,
baptizing them in the name
of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
(Matthew 28:19)

And from these words in the same:

When Jesus was baptized,
lo, the heavens were opened unto Him,
and He saw the Holy Spirit descending like a dove,
and coming upon Him,
and lo, a voice from heaven,
this is My beloved Son,
in whom I am well pleased.
(Matthew 3:16, 17)

The reason why the Lord
sent His disciples to baptize
in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit,
was, because in Him then glorified
there was the Divine Trinity;
for . . . He says:

All power is given unto Me in heaven and in earth.
(Matthew 28:18)

And . . . following:

Lo, I am with you all the days,
even unto the consummation of the age.
(Matthew 28:20)

Thus He spoke of Himself alone, and not of three.

And in John:

The Holy Spirit was not yet,
because Jesus was not yet glorified.
(John 7:39)

The former words He uttered after His glorification,
and His glorification
was His complete unition
with His Father,
Who was the Divine itself in Him from conception;
and the Holy Spirit
was the Divine proceeding from Him glorified.
(John 20:22)

BE 42
. . . faith in one God
without union with good works
is not given.

Jehoshaphat King of Judah

Jehoshaphat son of Asa became king of Judah
in the fourth year of Ahab king of Israel.
Jehoshaphat was thirty-five years old
when he became king,
and he reigned in Jerusalem twenty-five years.
His mother's name was Azubah
daughter of Shilhi.
In everything
he walked in the ways of his father Asa
and did not stray from them;
he did what was right in the eyes of the Lord.
The high places, however, were not removed,
and the people continued
to offer sacrifices and burn incense there.
Jehoshaphat was also at peace
with the king of Israel.

(1 Kings 22:41-44)

BE 19, 21, 24 - the Roman Catholics and the Reformed

BE 19, 21, 24

The Roman Catholics, before the Reformation,
taught exactly the same things
as the Reformed did after it,
. . . namely, a Trinity of Persons in the Divinity,
original sin,
the imputation of the merit of Christ,
and justification by faith therein,
only with this difference,
that they conjoined that faith
with charity or good works.

The leading reformers, Luther, Melancthon, and Calvin,
retained all the dogmas concerning
a Trinity of Persons in the Divinity,
original sin,
imputation of the merit of Christ,
and justification by faith,
just as they were and had been with the Roman Catholics;
but they separated charity or good works from that faith,
and declared that they were not at the same time saving,
with a view to be totally severed from the Roman Catholics
as to the very essentials of the church,
which are faith and charity.

Nevertheless the leading reformers 
adjoined good works,
and also conjoined them, to their faith,
but in man as a passive subject:
whereas the Roman Catholics
conjoin them in man as an active subject;
and that notwithstanding this,
there is actually a conformity
between the one and the other
as to faith, works, and merits.

(BE - A Brief Exposition of the Doctrine of the New Church)

The Lord Sends Ravens to Feed Elijah

Now Elijah the Tishbite,
from Tishbe in Gilead,
said to Ahab,
"As the Lord, the God of Israel, lives,
from whom I serve,
there will be neither dew nor rain
in the next few years
except at my word."

Then the word of the Lord came to Elijah:
"Leave here, turn eastward
and hide in the Kerith Ravine, east of the Jordan.
You will drink from the brook,
and I have ordered the ravens to feed you there."

So he did what the Lord had told him.
He went to the Kerith Ravine, east of the Jordan,
and stayed there.
The ravens brought him bread and meat in the morning
and bread and meat in the evening,
and he drank from the brook.

(1 Kings 17:1-6)

CL 535 - knowing things to come

CL 535
. . . to the degree that a person knows things to come,
his reason and understanding fall
with his prudence and wisdom
into a state of passivity,
become inactive,
and are overthrown.

Omri then Ahab

In the thirty-first year of Asa king of Judah,
Omri became king of Israel,
and he reigned twelve years,
six of them in Tirza.
He bought the hill of Samaria from Shemer
for two talents of silver
and built a city on the hill,
calling it Samaria, after Shemer,
the name of the former owner of the hill.

But Omri did evil in the eyes of the Lord
and sinned more than all those before him.

In the thirty-eighth year of Asa king of Judah,
Ahab son of Omri became king of Israel,
and he reigned in Samaria over Israel twenty-two years.
Ahab son of Omri did more evil in the eyes of the Lord
than any of those before him.
He not only considered it trivial
to commit the sins of Jeroboam son of Nebat,
but he also married Jezebel
daughter of Ethbaal king of the Sidonians,
and began to serve Baal and worship him.
He set up an altar for Baal in the temple of Baal
that he built in Samaria.
Ahab also made an Asherah pole
and did more to provoke the Lord, the God of Israel,
to anger than did all the kings of Israel before him.

(1 Kings 16:23-25,29-32)

CL 528, 529 - purposefully or deliberately

CL 528
It is said in the church
that . . . anyone who sins 
against one commandment of the Decalogue 
sins against them all. 
But this conventional maxim is not as it sounds;
for it is to be understood in this way,
that anyone who purposefully or deliberately acts
against one commandment
acts against the rest,
since to act purposefully or deliberately
is to deny altogether that the action is a sin,
and anyone who denies the existence of sin
regards it as nothing
if he acts against the rest of the commandments.

CL 529
Something similar is true in the case of people
who are in a state of good from the Lord. 
If they from their will and intellect
or purposefully and deliberately
refrain from one evil because it is a sin,
they refrain from them all;
and this still more if they refrain from several.
For as soon as anyone
purposefully or deliberately refrains 
from some evil because it is a sin,
he is kept by the Lord in a purpose
to refrain from the rest. 

King Solomon Forgets the Lord

King Solomon, however loved many foreign women
besides Pharaoh's daughter -
Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Sidonians and Hittites.
They were from nations
about which the Lord had told the Israelites,
"You must not intermarry with them,
because they will surely
turn your hearts after their gods."
Nevertheless, Solomon held fast to them in love.
He had seven hundred wives of royal birth
and three hundred concubines,
and his wives led him astray.
As Solomon grew old,
his wives turned his heart after other gods,
and his heart was not fully devoted to the Lord his God,
as the heart of David his father had been.
He followed Ashtoreth the goddess of the Sidonians,
and Molech the detestable god of the Ammonites.
So Solomon did evil in the eyes of the Lord;
he did not follow the Lord completely,
as David his father had done.

(1 Kings 11:1-6)

CL 516 - the Word; CL 519 - violation of It

CL 516
For the church is founded on the Word,
and the Word is the Lord.
The Word is the Lord
because He is
the Divine good and Divine truth in it.

CL 519
Violation of the Word
is committed by people in the Christian Church
who adulterate its good and truths,
and this is done by those
who separate truth from good
and good from truth. 
It is done as well by those
who mistake appearances of truth
and fallacies for genuine truths
and defend them. 
And so, too, by those
who know truths of doctrine from the Word
and live evilly.

Solomon's Blessing

"Praise be to the Lord . . ..
May He turn our hearts to Him,
to walk in all His ways and to keep
the commands, decrees and regulations
He gave our fathers.
. . . so that all the peoples of the earth
may know that the Lord is God
and there is no other.
But your hearts must be fully committed
to the Lord our God,
to live by His decrees
and obey His commands,
as at this time."
(1 Kings 8:56,58,60-61)

CL 510 - united lives

CL 510
The excellence of a man's life
depends on his married love,
for his life then unites itself
with the life of his wife
and by that union is ennobled.

Solomon Builds the Temple

When Hiram king of Tyre heard
that Solomon had been anointed king
to succeed his father David,
he sent his envoys to Solomon,
because he had always been
on friendly terms with David.
Solomon sent back this message to Hiram:

"You know that because of the wars waged
against my father David from all sides,
he could not build a temple
for the Name of the Lord his God
until the Lord put his enemies under his feet.
But now the Lord my God
has given me rest on every side,
and there is no adversary or disaster.
I intend, therefore, to build a temple 
for the Name of the Lord my God,
as the Lord told my father David, when He said,
'Your son whom I will put on the throne in your place
will build the temple for My Name.'

"So give orders
that cedars of Lebanon be cut for me.
My men will work with yours,
and I will pay you for your men
whatever wages you set.
You know that we have no one so skilled
in felling timber as the Sidonians."

When all the work King Solomon had done
for the temple of the Lord was finished,
he brought in the things his father David
had dedicated -
the silver and gold and the furnishings -
and he placed them in the treasuries
of the Lord's temple.

(1 Kings 5:1-6; 7:51)

CL 499 - basing judgment

CL 499
. . . one ought not to base his judgment of a person
on the wisdom of his lips alone,
but on the wisdom of his life, too.

David's Last Words to Solomon

When the time drew near for David to die,
he gave a charge to Solomon his son.

"I am about to go the way of all the earth," he said,
"So be strong, show yourself a man,
and observe what the Lord your God requires:
Walk in His ways,
and keep His decrees and commands,
His laws and requirements,
as written in the Law of Moses,
so that you may prosper in all you do
and where you go,
and that the Lord may keep His promise to me:
'If your descendants watch how they live,
and they walk faithfully before me
with all their heart and soul,
you will never fail to have
a man on the throne of Israel.'"

(1 Kings 2:1-4)