1. Survey of Teachings of the New Church Meant by the New Jerusalem in the Book of Revelation

[Author’s Preface]

AFTER publishing, within the span of a few years, several larger and smaller works on the New Jerusalem (which means the new church that the Lord is going to establish), and after unveiling the Book of Revelation, I resolved to publish and bring to light the teachings of the [new] church in their fullness, and thus to present a body of teaching that was whole. But because this work was going to take several years, I developed a plan to publish an outline of it, to give people an initial, general picture of this church and its teachings. When a general overview precedes, all the details that follow, of however wide a range, stand forth in a clear light, because they each have their own place within the overall structure alongside things of the same type.

This briefing does not include detailed argumentation; it is shared as advance notice, because the points it contains will be fully demonstrated in the work itself.

First, however, I must present the teachings concerning justification as they exist today, in order to highlight the differences between the tenets of today’s church and those of the new church.

94. Here is the great secret as to why no flesh could be saved if the Lord were not establishing a new church. As long as the dragon and its crew stay in the world of spirits where they went when they were thrown down from heaven, no divine truth united to divine goodness can get across from the Lord to people on earth without being perverted or annihilated. Therefore there is no salvation. This is what the Book of Revelation means when it says,

The dragon was thrown down onto the earth and its angels were thrown with it. Woe to those who live on the earth and in the sea, because the Devil has come down to them in a giant rage. It persecuted the woman who had given birth to a son. (Revelation 12:9, 12, 13)

It was after the dragon was thrown down into hell (Revelation 20:10) that John saw a new heaven and a new earth and saw the holy New Jerusalem coming down from God out of heaven (Revelation 21:1, 2, and following). (For what “the dragon” means and who “the dragons” are, see §§87– 90 above.)

73. The statements in Matthew 24 and Mark 13 and Luke 21, which are similar to each other, are not describing the destruction of Jerusalem and its Temple; they are describing the successive changes of state the Christian church will go through in sequence, even to its final state, when it comes to an end. This will become clear in the work itself, where these chapters in Scripture will be explained.

In the meantime, the truth of this should be clear from the statements in the Gospels just mentioned:

Then the sign of the Son of Humankind will appear and all the tribes of the earth will wail. They will see the Son of Humankind coming in the clouds of heaven with power and glory. He will send out his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they will gather his chosen people from one end of the heavens to the other. (Matthew 24:30, 31; Mark 13:26, 27; Luke 21:27)

As we all know, things like these were not heard or seen in Jerusalem when it was destroyed; today people believe they will occur instead at the time of the Last Judgment.

We read similar things in the Book of Revelation, which from beginning to end treats exclusively of the final state of the church:

Behold, Jesus Christ is coming in the clouds, and all the tribes of the earth will wail over him. (Revelation 1:5, 7)

For an explanation of each of these expressions, see Revelation Unveiled 24– 28. For what the tribes of the earth and their wailing means, see Revelation Unveiled 27, 348, 349.