The New Church (Swedenborgianism)

Denomination·Founded 1787 CE·The organised New Church has never been large — the two North American bodies together count in the thousands, with additional congregations in Britain, Ghana, South Africa, Korea and Japan; growth is African rather than Western. No consolidated figure is published. Swedenborg's readership has always vastly exceeded the church's membership, which is the movement's standing peculiarity.

Judaism → Christianity → Catholicism → Protestantism → The New Church (Swedenborgianism)

The General Church of the New JerusalemThe Swedenborg Foundation

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Story of The New Church (Swedenborgianism)

The Last Judgment, 1757, in the world of spirits.

Swedenborg reported witnessing the Judgment through the year 1757 — not on earth but in the intermediate world, where accumulated false heavens were broken up. The Second Coming, on this reading, is the opening of the internal sense of the Word, which is why the New Church dates itself from a revelation rather than an event in the sky.

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Where it is toldSwedenborg's spiritual diary and the Last Judgment (1758)
Who appearsSwedenborg; the spirits of the departed; the false heavens
What it teachesThat the promised Judgment was accomplished out of sight, in 1757
Understanding it — context, not catechism: how this passage is held

The Last Judgment, published in London in 1758, reports that Swedenborg was permitted to witness the Judgment in the world of spirits through the year 1757: the intermediate realm had filled with societies of spirits maintaining an outward appearance of heaven, these were broken up, and the spiritual balance of freedom was restored. Nothing happened on earth, and Swedenborg is explicit that nothing was supposed to. The Second Coming, correspondingly, is not a descent in the clouds but the unveiling of the internal sense of the Word, and the New Jerusalem of Revelation 21 is the church that arises from it. This is why the church calls itself the New Church and dates a new dispensation, and it is the claim that makes the question of the Writings' status unavoidable: if 1757 was the Judgment, the books reporting it are not commentary.

The same ground, other faiths

claims that share this one's ideas
The boy who waited three days at Death's door. Hinduism Read it in full →
Y Yama — the judge of the dead. Buddhism · figure Meet them →
The dead will rise. Judaism · core tenet Go deeper →
Christ will come again. Christianity · core tenet Go deeper →
Every soul stands before God on the Last Day. Islam · core tenet Go deeper →
Karbala. Shia Islam Read it in full →

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