THE SUCCESSIVE DISPENSATIONS

Rev. C. TH. ODHNER, 1912

    As every society of men forms one larger man, so the whole of mankind in its most universal aspect is a "Maximus Homo," one Greatest Man, possessing all the forms and functions of an individual man. And the spiritual history of this Greatest Man, from first creation to the present day, has been similar to the life-story of a single man, for the Church of God among men has passed through the ages of infancy, youth, manhood and old age, and when at last it seemed to die, it rose again into a new spiritual and everlasting life.

     As every general thing consists of parts similar to itself, so each of the successive ages of the Lord's One and universal Church has in itself been a Church or general Dispensation. In the past there have been four of these general Churches, corresponding to the four atmospheres of the universe, the four quarters of the world, the four periods of the day, the four seasons of the year, the four ages of a human life. For the Church of the Lord first arose in the East, in the golden dawn of innocence and love of God; this was the morning, the spring-time, the infancy of the race, when men lived and breathed in the very atmosphere of Heaven. But they fell from their pristine glory and another Age succeeded, spiritual indeed, but not celestial. The Church had moved from the East to the South, from the love of God to the love of the neighbor. The atmosphere now prevailing was a magnetic aura of mutual love, and the sunlight of spiritual wisdom still shone upon men in the noon-time and summer and early manhood of the race.

     But this Church also perished, and mankind moved from the South to the region of the setting sun. Love, charity and wisdom were lost among the gathering clouds of falsity and evil. Men became purely natural, but there still lingered about them an Ether of Faith, though this Faith was mostly blind obedience to precepts the spirit of which had been lost in the mist of earthly loves. The Sun of Righteousness then arose, with healing in His wings, but men comprehended it not because their deeds were evil. A few simple folks beheld the Light, as through a glass darkly, and what they saw they proclaimed rejoicing, and thus they passed on the knowledge of the Lord in His Human to a new Church which for a short time shone brightly as a new and glorious Star in the dark firmament. But this same Church moved on from the West to the North. The Star, by the magic formulas of man-made creeds, soon lost its luster, then disappeared. An obscure knowledge of the Lord remained with some, producing a still breathable air, but the light of the Word sank beneath the horizon of the Dark Ages, and a night of universal ignorance, a winter of cold indifference to the life of charity, spread their shroud upon the dying Church. Death followed, and the Last Judgment after death, but then immediately the God of Mercy appeared in the clouds of heaven to raise His Church into new and everlasting life. This new Light first appeared in the frozen North, but it will lead the Church Eastward forever.

NEBUCHADNEZZAR'S DREAM

     The foregoing life-story of Mankind is described in wonderful epitome in the dream of the great king of Babylon, recorded by Daniel.

• "Thou, O king, didst see, and behold a great image. This great image, whose brightness was excellent, stood before thee; and its aspect was terrible."
  

• "The head of this image was of fine gold his breast and arms were of silver, his belly and his thighs were of brass."
  

• "His legs were of iron, his feet part of iron and part of clay."
  

• "Whilst thou wast seeing, a Stone was cut out, which was not cut by hands, and it smote the image upon its feet of iron and clay, and brake them to pieces."
  

• "Then were broken to pieces at the same time the iron, the clay, the brass, the silver, and the gold; and they became as the chaff from the threshing floors of summer, so that the wind carried them away and no place was found for them. And the Stone which smote the image became a great mountain and filled the whole earth."

(DANIEL 2:31-35.)

     The Golden Head of this Image of the Ages represents the first or MOST ANCIENT CHURCH upon this earth, a church which in the letter of the Word is called by the collective name of "Adam." In the traditions of antiquity it was known as the "Golden Age," because Gold corresponds to the love of God, the supreme of human loves, which reigned universally in that celestial age. The Breast and Arms of Silver represent the second general Church which is called the ANCIENT CHURCH,--in the Word signified by "Noah" and his sons. This dispensation is known as the "Silver Age," because Silver corresponds to the spiritual love of the neighbor, a noble love, second only to the love of God. The breast and the arms are the abode and instruments of this love.

     The Belly and Thighs of Brass signify the third dispensation, called the ISRAELITISH CHURCH, which is also known as the "Brazen Age," because Brass corresponds to natural good and especially the good of blind obedience to the letter of the Law, which was the only genuine good among the descendants of Israel. As the belly is the receptacle of all food for the body, and as the superior body rests upon the thighs, so all celestial and spiritual goods are collected in natural good and rest upon it.

     The Legs of Iron, and the Feet of Iron mingled with Clay, stand for the fourth general church, called the CHRISTIAN CHURCH, the "Iron Age." Iron corresponds to the solid facts of natural truth, the basis of all interior truths and goods, and the legs and feet correspond to the same. To the Christian Church were given the natural truths of the literal sense of the Word, and the most fundamental of these truths was the knowledge that the Creator of the universe had been born a Man on the earth. But the miry Clay, of which men make imitation stone, signifies the false notions of human conceit; and the Feet of Iron mingled with Clay represent the latter days of the Christian Church, when the truths of the Word were profaned by man-made dogmas.

    The Stone which was not cut by hands, and which smote the image upon its feet of iron and clay and became a great Mountain filling the whole earth, signifies the Heavenly Doctrine of the New Jerusalem. Springing from the Infinite Wisdom of the Lord in His Divine Human, this Doctrine was not fashioned by the hand of man, but is in itself the Rock of Ages which the builders had rejected. This Doctrine came at the consummation of the Ages and produced a Last Judgment upon the Churches of the past. It will in time be proclaimed throughout the earth and upon it will be established the fifth and crowning Church, THE CHURCH OF THE NEW JERUSALEM, which shall never pass away. To this Church will be given all the genuine truths and goods of the former Churches. It will rule (feed) the nations with a scepter of Iron by means of true Science and Philosophy. The Brass of natural good will be restored by means of genuine Ethics based upon Conjugial Love. The Silver of spiritual Charity and the Gold of celestial Love will make glorious the streets of the New Jerusalem, and in the midst of the City men will again eat of the Tree of Life.

THE ANALOGY OF HISTORY.

     Throughout the four Churches of the past there has been a notable repetition of analogous states and events, which are summarized as follows in the CORONIS, the appendix to the TRUE CHRISTIAN RELIGION:
     I. In each Church there have been four successive states or periods, in the Word called morning, day, evening and night. (COR. 5)
     II. In each Church there have followed four changes of state, of which the first has been the appearance of the Lord Jehovih and Redemption, and then its morning or rise the second has been its Instruction, and then its day of profession; the third has been in Decline, and then its evening or vastation; the fourth has been its End, and then its night or consummation (COR. 6.)
     III. After its consummation or end, the Lord Jehovih appears and performs a Judgment upon the men of the former Church, and separates the good from the evil, elevating the good to Himself in Heaven, and removing the evil from Himself into Hell. (COR. 10.)

A CHART OF THE AGES.
 

     IV. After this the Lord Jehovih establishes a new Heaven from the good elevated to Himself, and a new Hell from the evil removed from Himself; and He induces order upon both, that they may stand under His auspices and obedience to eternity. (COR. 14.)
     V. Out of this new Heaven the Lord Jehovih derives and produces a new Church upon the earth, which takes place by means of a Revelation of Truths out of His mouth or out of His Word, and by means of Inspiration. (COR. 18.)
     VI. This Divine work, as a whole, is called Redemption, without which no man can be saved, because he cannot be regenerated. (COR. 21.)

     To these general laws of analogy we may add the following:

     VII. In each Church, just before its consummation, there has been a temporary Reformation, as a protection for those who could still be saved, and as a preparation for the new Church to come.
     VIII. Each new Church had its rise among the remnant of the former Church, but in its fullness it was established among Gentiles who had not been contaminated with the evils and falses of the perverted Church.
 
     Bearing in mind this Analogy of History, we may now briefly review the successive states of the four Churches.

THE MOST ANCIENT CHURCH.

  1) The rise or morning of the Lord's Most Ancient Church is described in the Word by the creation of heaven and earth. The first men created,--the Pre-adamites,--had "Heaven" implanted in their internal man, but their "Earth," or external man, was "empty and void." As to all external things they were like infants,--corporeal, sensual, and ignorant,--and their internal man could take possession of their external only by successive degrees of education and up-building, represented by the six days of Creation, until finally the state of Adam, or the celestial man, was reached.

  2) The noon-day glory of the Golden Age is described by the seventh day and by Adam and his wife in the Garden of Eden. The tree of life in the midst of the garden was their power of Perception, by which Jehovah God revealed to the celestial men all things of love and faith. Will and understanding were at that time one faculty, and the Word of God was written, not in a book, but upon the hearts of men. The Church on earth was in open communication with Heaven; the love of God, and from it conjugial and fraternal love, reigned supreme, resulting in a state of innocence, wisdom, peace and joy such as have never been known since those happy days. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil also grew in the garden, for the celestial man was in complete freedom of choice between internal life and external life, but refused to choose the latter.

  3) Thus ages passed in prehistoric bliss, until a time came when some individuals deliberately listened to the voice of the serpent,--the fallacious appearances of the senses,--in preference to the voice of Jehovah. The idea of self-direction by means of worldly knowledge arose and took hold of a later generation, and thus men fell from their celestial state. The Garden of Eden was closed and a state of evening, decline and vastation set in upon the Church.

  4) As each succeeding generation grew worse by the accumulation of hereditary evil, they gradually sank into a state of profanation by mingling celestial goods and truths with sensual lusts and persuasions. Before complete night overwhelmed them there was a brief period of Reform, when a generation known as "Enoch" undertook the work of collecting and writing down the traditions and doctrines of the Golden Age. This book, however, was soon hidden away from the destructive fury of the antediluvian race, which rushed headlong into such monstrous evils that they were finally destroyed as by a universal good. Through their wicked life their channels of internal respiration were choked up, and as they did not possess the power of external breathing, they perished in the night of the judgment.

THE ANCIENT CHURCH.

  1) The rise and morning of the second Church is represented by the salvation of Noah and his family in the ark. Noah, whose name means "rest," was a generation of antediluvians who still possessed some remains of un-perverted good and truth, and with whom the channels of external respiration were opened.

  2) This Church of the Silver Age existed at first among a few in the land of Canaan, but was afterwards established among many nations in Asia and Africa, represented by the sons and descendants of Noah. The light of the Ancient Word was, in fact, extended throughout the earth, for the mythological systems of all gentile races are derived from this common origin. The men of this Church did not possess the celestial perception enjoyed by the Golden Age, but instead thereof a spiritual conscience of truth was given to them, by means of which they were able to subdue the evil inclinations of their native will. Hence charity and wisdom reigned among them, and some still enjoyed open communication with the angels of Heaven. Religion, philosophy and science dwelt peacefully together, and the science which they most especially cultivated was the science of the correspondence of all natural things with their spiritual prototypes.

  3) In the course of ages men began to abuse these gifts by applying them to the service of worldly and selfish loves. "It came to pass, as they journeyed front the East" that they desired to build a tower of bricks in Babel'. The Church was invaded by the love of ruling over the souls of men by means of man-made doctrines. For this purpose the priesthood entered into communication with evil spirits and began to pervert the science of correspondences by magical practices. Religion became esoteric, and the truths of the Ancient Word were withheld from the common people. Correspondences were gradually forgotten, and men began to worship as gods the images which had been raised as symbolic representations of the various essentials and attributes of the One God. Thus polytheism and idolatry arose everywhere in the Ancient Church; the former charity was lost in the strife of contending heresies and sects; men no longer "understood one another's speech" in the declining day of the Silver Age.

  4) Lest the final judgment should be hastened, a temporary Reformation was instituted in Syria by Eber, who established among his descendants the Second Ancient or Hebrew Church. The forgotten books of the Ancient Word were restored and the worship of Jehovah, and the practice of animal sacrifices was introduced in order to keep the frenzied nations from sacrificing human beings. This reform, however, lasted but a few generations, the Ancient Word was finally lost and the light of the Ancient Church was gradually extinguished in one nation after another.

THE ISRAELITISH CHURCH.

  1) No genuine spiritual Church could now be raised up, for universal idolatry reigned throughout the earth. In order to establish at least the semblance of a true Church, Jehovah therefore revealed Himself to Abraham who chose Him as the patron god for himself and his family. After the release of the Israelites from their captivity in Egypt the Church was formally established among them through the revelation given to Moses, the beginning of which was a portion of the Ancient Word. This was a church which in the most minute things of its ritual represented a true spiritual Church, but it was not in itself a genuine church, for the Israelites knew not the meaning of their representative worship and cared nothing for spiritual or celestial things. It was a purely histrionic church, and the only good which kept the people together as a church and nation was the good of obedience,--blind, unquestioning obedience to the letter of the Law. As long as they obeyed, it was well with them; as soon as they doubted or disobeyed, disaster overtook them. For the conjunction of Heaven with the earth now depended upon mere forms, and if these forms had been perverted mankind would have perished.

  2) The noon-day and summer of the Israelitish Church began with the conquest of Canaan, extended through the reign of the judges, the high-priests, and the first three kings, culminating in the victories of David and the glory of Solomon, when the first great Temple was raised in Jerusalem, and the worship of Jehovah was fully established.

  3) The decline of the Church set in with the division of the nation into two hostile kingdoms, representing the strife which always arises between faith and charity, between the spiritual and the celestial, when both have been perverted and separated from one another. Israel, or the spiritual kingdom, was finally carried away by Assyria, or false reasoning proceeding from the love of the world; and Judah, or the celestial kingdom, by Babylon, the love of dominion.

  4) The vastation of the Jewish Church is represented by the seventy years of captivity in Babylon. A temporary Reform took place after the return of the Jews to Jerusalem under Ezra and Nehemiah. The Law and the Prophets were brought forth from their hiding places, and the Jews became very strict and orthodox indeed, but the spirit of prophecy had died. The people had become a generation of vipers and hypocrites, who rushed from one enormity to another, the terrible story finally culminating in the crucifixion of Innocence Itself. A few years later the Judgment fell upon the insane nation by the siege and destruction of Jerusalem and the dispersion of the Jews.

THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH.

  1) The rise and morning of the fourth Church took place in the days when the Lord in His Human preached His Gospel of Love to the few simple folks who alone were willing to believe Him. He came not at first to the Gentiles, but to the lost sheep of the children of Israel. After the Ascension of the Lord, the remnant was quickly collected, but was soon compelled to leave forever the doomed Church of the Jews, The Gospel now passed over to the Gentiles, and before the age of the apostles closed it had been preached in every part of the Roman Empire.

  2) In the midst of relentless persecutions Christianity grew like a young giant, and the blood of the martyrs was the seed of the Church. Nor was the growth merely external, for the Gospel of Love produced a new charity and a new life among those who received it, and Christian Theology for a time gave promise of increasing light. This halcyon state of primitive Christianity lasted about two hundred years.

  3) From the beginning the Christian Church had been infested with heresies of various kinds, and as the Church grew the heresies increased in number and virulence to the detriment of the primitive charity and purity of doctrine. The sufferings of the martyrs created sympathy and caused multitudes to enter the Church through persuasion rather than rational conviction. When the persecutions ceased and Christianity was established at the imperial court, the Church became the highway to political influence and power, and the ancient Roman love of dominion took universal possession of the Church. Councils were assembled to force dogmas upon the conscience of men. At the first of these general meetings, held at Nicaea in the year 325, the Godhead was divided into three persons, and at the seventh and last ecumenical Council, again held at Nicaea, in the year 787, the worship of images was formally sanctioned. Thus tri-theism and idolatry were established throughout the Christian Church, and the Dark Ages followed, with the rule of the Scarlet Woman enthroned in the city of the seven hills.

  4) In the middle of the night a cock-crow was heard in Germany, and a Reformation took place in preparation for the final Judgment. The Word of God was liberated from the prison house of the Roman Catholic Church, but as a whole, the Reformation miscarried. All the false dogmas of the Councils remained in full force, and to them was added the doctrine of instantaneous salvation by faith alone, without charity and good works. Thus the sun of charity was darkened, and the moon of faith no longer gave its light. All spiritual life now died in the Christian Church, and finally, in the year 1757, the Last Judgment fell upon it in the spiritual world. The imaginary heavens of Christian hypocrites were thrown down into hell by the Revelation of the Lord in the spiritual sense of His Word. The simple good spirits who for ages had been held captive under the altar were now released and formed into a New Heaven from which, in time, a New Church could be produced upon the earth. The Old Christian Church still remains in this world as an external institution, but its dogmas are crumbling and its power broken forever.

THE NEW CHURCH.

     The declining life-story of the Church having been completed, an everlasting ascent has now commenced. A new and unending Church has dawned, the Age to which all the past Ages have looked forward as the fulfillment of prophecy.

     The conception of this New Church was effected by means of the Second Advent of the Lord in the power and glory of His opened Word. The Heavenly Doctrine of the New Jerusalem was revealed in the inspired Writings of the servant of the Lord, Emanuel Swedenborg, but its Advent was perceived at first only by a few faithful shepherds watching over their flocks in the night. A few wise men also came to worship the newborn Light in the Word. Gradually a few disciples were gathered, but as soon as the presence of the New Church was perceived in the world of spirits; the crew of the Dragon began its assaults. Persecutions from without soon gave place to more insidious attacks from within the ranks of the New Church itself. All the heresies and all the evil forces from the dead Churches of the past will unite in the endeavor to devour the woman with the Man child, but their assaults will be vain, for the Lord has come in the power of His glorified Human and will remain with His New Church for ever. Human organizations in the New Church may have their rise and decline, but the New Church itself will never pass away, for the Divine Truth of the Word has been revealed in a form so rational and self-evidencing, that it can never be extinguished among men who have eyes to see and ears to hear and hearts to be kindled by the fire of Divine Love.

    This New Church will at first, and perhaps for ages, remain among a few in the Christian world, but as these few remain faithful to the Light, and pass it on to posterity, the Church will gradually increase among many, who in each generation will come into clearer and purer light and life. And in time this Light will come also to those who now are gentiles, and among them it will be established in a fullness and glory of which we as yet can have no conception. It will then become on earth what it is in Heaven.