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Our Daily Bread Dear Reader, Prayer We Hope This Issue’S Arrival Finds You Healthy in Body and Soul, and That the Unfolding Season Is Rife with Blessings

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Our Daily Bread Dear Reader, Prayer We Hope This Issue’S Arrival Finds You Healthy in Body and Soul, and That the Unfolding Season Is Rife with Blessings September/October 2013 Sermons and Meditations of the Swedenborgian Church Our Daily bread Dear Reader, Prayer We hope this issue’s arrival finds you healthy in body and soul, and that the unfolding season is rife with blessings. After a summer hiatus, Our Daily Bread returns with an issue devoted to sermons preached at annual Lord Jesus Christ, conventions of the Swedenborgian church, as well as a Whose arms of love were stretched wide history of the New Church’s first century (presented in upon the cross 1917 as a speech by Rev. H. Clinton Hay) and a piece written by Rev. John Clowes, a notable figure in the earliest days So that all may come within your saving of the Swedenborgian denomination’s emergence. These embrace, writings span two centuries of New Church thought. An old saying reminds us that “the more things change, Stretch forth in mercy the hands of your the more they stay the same.” So it is: for all their diversity church today, of perspective and setting, the sermons and writings in this issue share a common thread. All express an abiding That in its ministry of compassion belief that the Lord created this world in love and for a we may enter again purpose; that humanity is uniquely created to fulfill that Into the Kingdom of your justice and grace. purpose; and that we are all on a gorgeous, terrible, and blessed journey together. “Nothing unconnected ever occurs, and anything not connected [to the Divine] would instantly perish,” notes Swedenborg. We forget that truth Bishop Charles Henry Brent at our own peril. (1862-1929) Much later and in a very different cultural context, Carly Simon wrote, “Let the river run; let all the dreamers wake the nations. Come, the new Jerusalem!” May you, all you dreamers, indeed wake the nations to God’s kingdom of goodness, justice, and mercy, his new Jerusalem. Cover Image: Many blessings, Leah Goodwin & Kevin Baxter The banquet of the delegates to the Convention of the Church of the New Jerusalem, at the City Club, Washington, D.C., May 1923 In This Issue The First Convention . .4 New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989, Rev. H. Clinton Hay Division of Christian Education of the National Council Seeking and Being Found . .9 of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Rev. John Maine Used by permission. Who Do You Say That I Am? . .13 ISSN: 1056-3296 • Volume 65, Number 4 Rev. Renee Billings-Machiniak September/October 2013 Published by: People of the Book . .16 General Convention of the Church of the New Rev. Richard M. Baxter Jerusalem 11 Highland Avenue, Newtonville, MA 02460-1852 The Appellation of Father . .20 (617) 969-4240 Rev. John Clowes, M.A. Rev. Leah Goodwin & Rev. Kevin Baxter, Editors 43 Hobart Square, Whitman, MA 02382 Seeking and Finding . .24 [email protected] • (781) 447-4901 Rev. Junchol Lee www.odb-online.com Issued under the auspices of the A New Earth . .28 Council of Ministers of the Swedenborgian Church Rev. Dr. Jonathan Mitchell USA & Canada: US $15/year As A Ransom For Many . .32 Rev. Dr. Calvin E. Turley Another Train . .36 Rev. Andy Stinson Contributors To This Issue The late Rev. H. Clinton Rev. John Maine is the Hay delivered this speech pastor of the Church of the at the one hundredth anni- Good Shepherd in Kitchener, versary of the General Con- Ontario. He preached this vention (1917). At the time, sermon at the 2010 Sweden- he served as the associate borgian Church Convention pastor for the Boston Society in St. Paul, Minnesota. and as secretary for the New Church Theological School. Rev. Renee Billings- The late Rev. Richard M. Machiniak is the pastor of Baxter served the Virginia the Church of the Holy City Street Church in St. Paul, in Royal Oak, Michigan Minnesota, and the Church and a hospital and police of the Holy City in Washing- chaplain. She preached this ton, D.C. He preached this, sermon at the 2001 Sweden- his final sermon, at the 1993 borgian Church Convention Convention in Massachu- in St. Paul, Minnesota. setts. The late Rev. John Clowes Rev. Junchol Lee is the pas- (1743-1831), an tor of the San Francisco Anglican priest, was a Swedenborgian Church in devoted reader of Emmanuel San Francisco, California. Swedenborg and a prolific This sermon was given at author of Swedenborgian the 2009 Convention of the collateral material. Swedenborgian Church in Seattle, Washington. Rev. Dr. Jonathan Mitchell is Rev. Dr. Calvin Turley was the pastor of the San Diego a professor at the Sweden- Swedenborgian Church in borg School of Religion and San Diego, CA. This sermon served as president of the was preached at the 2011 Swedenborgian Church. This Convention of the sermon was preached at Swedenborgian Church in the 1961 Convention of the Cincinnati, Ohio. Swedenborgian Church in Washington, D.C. Rev. Andy Stinson is the pastor of the Second Congregational Church of Warren in Warren, Maine. This sermon was preached at the 2012 Convention of the Swedenborgian Church. 3 the New Jerusalem, it follows that he will do this by The FirsT ConvenTion means of a man who can not only receive intellectually SEP Rev. H. Clinton Hay the doctrines of this church, but also publish them in print. I bear true witness that the Lord has shown 1 himself in the presence of me, his servant, and sent me Revelation 21:1-5, 9-17 to perform this task. After this he opened the sight of my spirit, thus admitting me to the spiritual world and Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for allowing me to see the heavens and the hells, and also the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, to talk with angels and spirits. This I have now been and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, doing continuously for many years. At the same time, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from I affirm that from the first day of my calling I have not God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her received any instruction concerning the doctrines of husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne that church from any angel, but only from the Lord, saying, “Now the dwelling of God is with people, and while I was reading the Word. he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He In order that the Lord could be constantly present will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no with me, he has revealed to me the spiritual sense of more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old his Word, in which divine truth is illuminated by its order of things has passed away.” Then the one sitting own light; and in this he is continually present. For it is on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things through the spiritual sense and in no other way that he new!” . is present in the Word. His presence passes through the light shed by the spiritual sense into the shadow that Then one of the seven angels who had the seven covers the literal sense. This may be compared with bowls full of the seven last plagues came and said the sun’s light in daytime obscured by an intervening to me, “Come, I will show you the bride, the wife of cloud. I showed above that the literal sense of the Word the Lamb.” And in the spirit, he carried me away to is like a cloud, and its spiritual sense is the glory, and a great, high mountain and showed me the holy city the Lord himself is the sun that gives light—so that the Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God. It Lord is the Word. has the glory of God and a radiance like a very rare jewel, like jasper, clear as crystal. It has a great, high wall with twelve gates, and at the gates twelve angels, Sermon and on the gates are inscribed the names of the twelve tribes of the Israelites; on the east three gates, on the Delivered at the Annual Convention of the New north three gates, on the south three gates, and on the Jerusalem Church, Philadelphia, 1917, on the occasion of its west three gates. And the wall of the city has twelve one hundredth anniversary. foundations, and on them are the twelve names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb. It is a satisfaction to every New Churchman in America to feel that his church and his country The angel who talked with me had a measuring were born into the world at the same time, and in a rod of gold to measure the city and its gates and walls. connection with each other that he understands and The city lies foursquare, its length the same as its appreciates. And it may well seem to him more than a width. And he measured the city with his rod, twelve chance coincidence, believing as he does in the divine thousand stadia; its length, width, and height are equal. He also measured its wall, one hundred forty- providence over every detail of earthly events for the four cubits--the measurement of a human being, that sake of eternal results, that the beginnings of his is, of an angel. country and of the national organization of his church should have taken place in the same city, Philadelphia, whose very name speaks of brotherly love, and True Christian Religion #779, 780 whose Biblical predecessor in the book of Revelation is the one of the seven cities that symbolizes the new This, the Lord’s second coming, is taking place by Christian Church in its purest form, as gathered out means of a man, to whom the Lord has shown himself of the Christian churches of the past.
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