Heaven and Hell (Ager) n. 321

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321. I have been taught in many ways that the heathen who have led a moral life and have lived in obedience and subordination and mutual charity in accordance with their religion, and have thus received something of conscience, are accepted in the other life, and are there instructed with solicitous care by the angels in the goods and truths of faith; and that when they are being taught they behave themselves modestly, intelligently, and wisely, and readily accept truths and adopt them. They have not worked out for themselves any principles of falsity antagonistic to the truths of faith that will need to be shaken off, still less cavils against the Lord, as many Christians have who cherish no other idea of Him than that He is an ordinary man. The heathen on the contrary when they hear that God has become a Man, and has thus manifested Himself in the world, immediately acknowledge it and worship the Lord, saying that because God is the God of heaven and of earth, and because the human race is His, He has fully disclosed Himself to men.# It is a Divine truth that apart from the Lord there is no salvation; but this is to be understood to mean that there is no salvation except from the Lord. There are many earths in the universe, and all of them full of inhabitants, scarcely any of whom know that the Lord took on the Human on our earth. Yet because they worship the Divine under a human form they are accepted and led by the Lord. On this subject more may be seen in the little work on The Earths in the Universe. # Difference between the good in which the heathen are and that in which Christians are (n. 4189, 4197). Truths with the heathen (n. 3263, 3778, 4190). The interiors cannot be so closed up with the heathen as with Christians (n. 9256). Neither can so thick a cloud exist with the heathen who live in mutual charity in accordance with their religion as with Christians who live in no charity; the reasons (n. 1059, 9256). The heathen cannot profane the holy things of the church as the Christians do, because they are ignorant of them (n. 1327, 1328, 2051). They have a fear of Christians on account of their lives (n. 2596, 2597). Those that have lived well in accordance with their religion are taught by angels and readily accept the truths of faith and acknowledge the Lord (n. 2049, 2595, 2598, 2600, 2601, 2603, 2861, 2863, 3263).


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