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| The Old Testament | |||
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Genesis 1:1
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In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. |
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Psalm 27:4
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One thing I have desired of the Lord, |
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| Hosea 6:1,2 |
Come, and let us return to the Lord.... After two days He will revive us; on the third day He will raise us up, that we may live in His sight.
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| Deuteronomy 30:9, 20 |
See, I have set before you today life and good, death and evil... Therefore, choose life.
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| Psalm 16:11 | You will show me the path of life; In Your presence is fullness of joy; At Your right hand are pleasures forevermore. |
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| Micah 6:8 | |||
| Psalm 103:19 | The Lord has established His throne in heaven, And His kingdom rules over all. |
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| Psalm 145:13 | Your kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, And Your dominion endures throughout all generations. |
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| The New Testament | |||
| John 8:51 |
Most assuredly, I say to you, if anyone keeps My word he shall never see death. |
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| John 12:24-25 |
Most assuredly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat fall into the ground and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it produces much grain. He who loves his life will lose it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. |
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| John 11:25, 26 |
I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live. And whoever lives and believes in Me shall never die. |
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| Matthew 7:21 | "Not everyone who says to Me, 'Lord, Lord,' shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven." | ||
| Luke 12:31-32 | "Do not fear, little flock, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom" | ||
The Heavenly Doctrines |
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The Purpose of Creation
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| Divine Providence 323 | The purpose of creation is a heaven from the human race. |
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| see Coronis 40 | [T]he universe was created for the sake of the human race, in order that from it an angelic heaven might be formed. Religion promotes and accomplishes this end, and religion is walking with God. | ||
| New Jerusalem and Its Heavenly Doctrines 223 | A person was created so that, as to his internal, he cannot die; for he can believe in God, and also love God, and therefore he can be conjoined with God by faith and love; and being conjoined with God means living to eternity. | ||
| Divine Providence 27:2 | Now because heaven arises from the human race, and heaven is a dwelling with the Lord to eternity, it follows that the Lord had this as the end in creation; and because it was the end in creation, it is the end in His Divine providence. The Lord did not create the universe for His own sake, but for the sake of those with whom He would be in heaven. For spiritual love is such that it wishes to give what is its own to another.... [T]he Divine Love, and consequently Divine providence, has as its end a heaven consisting of people who have become or who are becoming angels, to whom it is possible for the Lord to impart all the blessings and felicities connected with love and wisdom... | ||
| Life Is Eternal | |||
| Arcana Coelestia 3016 |
Human life, from infancy to old age, is nothing else than a progression from the world to heaven; and the last age, which is death, is the transition itself. |
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| Arcana Coelestia 5006:4 | A person immediately after death is in the other life, and his life in this world is wholly continued there, and is of the same quality as it had been in this world. | ||
| Arcana Coelestia 1854 |
The death of the body is but a continuation and also a perfecting of life. |
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| Arcana Coelestia 8939:3 | Let him who wishes to be eternally happy know and believe that he will live after death. Let him think of this and keep it in mind, for it is the truth. | ||
| Arcana Coelestia 6036 | Because a person instantly begins a new phase of his life when he dies, he is awakened into life as soon as he has cast aside the material body which had served him for use in the world. | ||
| see Conjugial Love 28 | People have a general perception that one lives as a person after death, happily if he has lived well, and unhappily if he has lived ill. What man, who has loved his married partner and his infants and children, does not say to himself when they are dying or dead, if he is in a state of thought raised above the sensory things of the body, that they are in the hand of God, and that following his own death he will see them again and join with them once more in a life of love and joy? | ||
| We Choose Eternal Life in Heaven or in Hell | |||
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Heaven and Hell 420 |
[E]very person is born for heaven and he who receives heaven in himself in the world, is received. | ||
| True Christian Religion 69:3 | Every person, so long as he is living in the world, walks midway between heaven and hell and is thereby in equilibrium, and thus in freedom of choice either to look upwards to God or downwards to hell. | ||
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Divine Providence 277 repeated |
Everyone after death is judged by the things he has done. These are not charged up against him, but show themselves in his continuing way of life - for death is a continuation of life, though after death a person cannot be reformed. | ||
| Arcana Coelestia 693 | Just as love to the Lord and towards the neighbor, and the resulting joy and happiness constitute heaven, so hatred against the Lord and against the neighbor, and the resulting punishment and torment constitute hell. | ||
| Arcana Coelestia 10596 | A person's life after death consists in the life of his love and the life of his faith. Therefore what his love has been like and what his faith has been like while he lived in the world determines what kind of life will be his for evermore. The life of hell is the lot of those who have loved themselves and the world above all things, and the life of heaven that of those who have loved God above all things and their neighbor as themselves.... The life of heaven is what is called eternal life, and the life of hell is what is called spiritual death. | ||
| Conjugial Love 524:4 | Evil people of their own free will separate themselves from the good. | ||
| see True Christian Religion 652:3 | There is a sphere continuously radiated by the Lord, which raises all to heaven. This fills the whole of both the spiritual and natural worlds. It is like a strong current in the ocean, which invisibly draws a ship along. All who believe in the Lord and live in accordance with His commandments come within that sphere or current, and are raised up. But those who do not believe are unwilling to come within it, but take themselves off to one side or the other, and are there swept away by the stream bound for hell. | ||
| The Happiness of Heaven | |||
| Arcana Coelestia 32 | Love pervades the whole of heaven, for in the heavens no other life is found except the life that belongs to love. This is the source of all happiness in heaven, a happiness so great that no aspect of it can be described or in any way captured in human concepts. People in whom this love is present love the Lord wholeheartedly. | ||
| Conjugial Love 10: 7,8 | "The joys of heaven and eternal happiness do not have to do with location, but with the state of a person's life. The state of heavenly life comes from a combination of love and wisdom in useful service.... Everyone who becomes an angel carries his own heaven within him, because he carries the love that belongs to his heaven." | ||
| Arcana Coelestia 7038 |
The angels in heaven have all happiness from uses, and according to uses, so that to them uses are heaven. |
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| Apocalypse Explained 102:7 | The happiness of heaven is in the affection of loving and doing truth and good, without regard to reward as an end. | ||
| see Arcana Coelestia 10724 | As self-love and love of the world are removed from reigning as ends in view, the happiness of heaven enters in. The happiness taking their place after they have been removed is so great that it surpasses all human understanding. | ||
"I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live" (John 11:25)
