Heaven and It’s Wonders and Hell: From Things Heard and Seen

Heaven and It’s Wonders and Hell: From Things Heard and Seen

by Emmanuel Swedenborg

This very long book makes excellent devotional reading for a Latter-day Saint who is comfortable with the idea of non-traditional possibilities for the influences on Mormonism.

Swedenborg lived a long life 1688-1772. According to Wikipedia, “Swedenborg had a prolific career as an inventor and scientist. At the age of fifty-six he entered into a spiritual phase in which he experienced dreams and visions. This culminated in a spiritual awakening, where he claimed he was appointed by the Lord to write a heavenly doctrine to reform Christianity. He claimed that the Lord had opened his eyes, so that from then on he could freely visit heaven and hell, and talk with angels, demons, and other spirits. For the remaining 28 years of his life, he wrote and published 18 theological works, of which the best known was Heaven and Hell (1758), and several unpublished theological works.

Joseph Smith was familiar with and influenced by Swedenborg’s work. How heavily he was influenced, only those familiar with both Swedenborg and Mormonism can appreciate.

In Heaven and Hell, Swedenborg gives a matter of fact description of the societies and beings of heaven and hell. Some of what he writes is baffling, such as when he describes how the cardinal directions in heaven are rotated 30 degrees from their orientation in the world. Other things are timeless and insightful, such as when he explains how the same spirit that possesses a person when he goes out of this world possesses him in the eternal world, or how righteousness is its own reward and sin its own punishment, or how the Lord does evil to no one and is angry with no one, though it appears to man to be so.

Swedenborg reserves a special place in heaven for married couples, and always speaks fondly of the “simple good” of the world, to whom he gives much more credit than the learned religionists. Here are a few of my favorite passages (Heaven and Hell is divided into numbered sections):

n. 509 Punishment in heaven; good spirits are never punished

n. 541 Opposition necessary 2 Nephi 2:11

nn. 545, 548 God angry with no man.

“No other government than the government of mutual love is possible in the heavens, and the government of mutual love is heavenly government.”

Again, it’s good devotional reading for a StayLDS-er, I think, if you don’t mind prying your eyelids open through the boring parts (like the scriptures when you didn’t get them).