[ 2 ] Here is the great secret as to why the human race could not be
preserved if the Lord were not building a new church. As long as the
dragon and its crew stay down in the world of spirits where they were
thrown, no divine truth united to divine good can get across to people
on earth without being perverted and falsified or ceasing to exist. 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. (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 New Jerusalem com-
ing down from God out of heaven (Revelation 21 : 1 , 2 ). The “dragon”
means those who share the belief of the church today.
[ 3 ] In the spiritual world I have talked several times with people who
say faith alone makes us just. I said that their teaching is wrong and also
absurd; it brings on spiritual complacency, blindness, sleep, and night;
and it is eventually lethal to the soul. I urged them to give it up.
I received the response, “Why stop? This is the sole reason that the
clergy can claim to be better educated than lay people.”
I replied that in that case they must view a superior reputation as their
goal, not the saving of souls. Since they have applied the truths in the
Word to their own false principles, which means they have contaminated
them, they are the angels of the abyss called Abaddons and Apollyons
(Revelation 9 : 11 ; those names mean people who have destroyed the
church by completely falsifying the Word).
They replied, “What? Since we know the mysteries of that faith, we
are oracles.We give answers from that faith as if it were a sacred shrine.
We are not Apollyons; we are Apollos.”
Irritated at that, I said, “If you are Apollos you are also leviathans.
The leaders among you are coiled leviathans, and the followers among
you are uncoiled leviathans. God will visit you with his sword, great and
strong (Isaiah 27 : 1 ).”
They just laughed at that.183 9. Many absurd, alien, imaginary, and misshapen ideas of God have
come into existence from the Athanasian Creed’s assertion of a trinity of per-
sons, each of whom is individually God.The teaching that there have been
three divine persons from eternity—the chief of all teachings in Christian