After the angel said that, windows formed on the sides of the church.
Light flowed in through them from the four directions of that world. Angel
guardians appeared, flying in a brilliant light. The angel was taken up to his
companion angels above the opening in the roof; and we left feeling happy.
The second memorable occurrence.One morning after I woke up, the 135
sun in the spiritual world appeared to me in its splendor. Beneath it I saw
the heavens as far away from that sun as our earth is from our sun. Then
from the heavens I heard individual words that would be impossible for
me to convey, which came together to form a statement that could be
expressed as follows: There is one God, he is human, and his dwelling place
is in that sun.This utterance came down through the middle heavens to
the lowest one. From there it came into the world of spirits, where I was.
The angels’ idea of one God gradually turned into an idea of three
gods as it came down—I could sense it. So I went over to speak with
spirits who were thinking three gods.
“What a heinous idea!” I said. “Why did it ever occur to you?”
“We are thinking threefrom our mental image of a triune God,” they
answered, “but this does not come down into words when we speak. Out
loud we always say that God is one. If there is a different idea in our
minds, so be it, as long as it does not flow down and break up the one-
ness of God in what we say. From time to time, though, our idea does in
fact flow down, because it is there inside us. If we happened to speak at
that point we would be saying three gods; but we are careful not to say
that so that we are not laughed at by people who hear us.”
[ 2 ] Then they openly voiced their real thinking and said, “Aren’t
there three gods, though? There are three divine persons, each of whom
is God. What else can we think when the leader of our church, drawing
on the treasury of the church’s sacred dogmas, ascribes creation to one
divine person, redemption to another, and sanctification to the third?
Worse yet, when our leader assigns them activities, he gives each person
its own activity and says that that activity cannot be shared by the other
persons. The activities are not only creating, redeeming, and sanctifying,
but also assigning spiritual credit or blame, mediating, and putting
things into effect. In that case surely there is one who created us, who
also assigns us credit or blame; a second who redeemed us, who also
mediates for us; and a third who gives us our assigned and mediated
credit or blame, who also sanctifies us.
“Everyone knows that the Son of God was sent into the world by
God the Father to redeem the human race. That’s why he became the
§135 the lord the redeemer & redemption 189