churches is also known. The reason has been that they have not approached a visible God, whom all shall recognize; and He is the Word or law which He will put in their inward parts and write upon their hearts. In Isaiah: "For Jerusalem's sake I will not rest, until the righteousness thereof go forth as brightness, and the salvation thereof as a lamp that burneth. . . . And thou shalt he called by a new name, which the mouth of Jehovah shall name. And thou shalt be a crown of glory and a royal diadem in the hand of thy God. . . . Jehovah shall delight in thee, and thy land shall be married. Behold, thy Salvation cometh; behold, His reward is with Him. . . . And they shall call them, The people of Holiness, The redeemed of Jehovah; and thou shalt be called, A city sought out and not forsaken" (lxii. 1-4, 11, 12). (T. C. R. n. 787-789.)
This new and true Christian Church, it is to be proved from the Word of both Testaments, will endure to eternity (in æternum), and was foreseen from the foundation of the world. It is to be the crown of the four preceding churches, because of its true faith and true charity. (Cor. p. 70.)
Formation of the New Heaven.
"And I saw, and, lo! a Lamb stood upon Mount Zion, and with him an hundred forty and four thousand" (Rev. xiv. 1). This signifies the Lord, now in the New Heaven, gathered from those in the Christian churches who have acknowledged the Lord alone as God of heaven and earth, and have been in truths of doctrine from the good of love from Him, by means of the Word. . . . The one hundred forty and four thousand were treated of in the seventh chapter; but there [the circumstance] that they were sealed upon their foreheads, thus, that they were distinguished and separated from others. Here now [it is taught] that they were gathered together in one; and that of them a heaven [was formed]. . . . This heaven is the New Heaven from which the Holy Jerusalem, that is the New Church on earth, will descend. (A. R. n. 612.)
The New Church from this New Heaven is to be Distinct from the former Church.
It should be known that when any church becomes no church,—that is when charity perishes,—and a new church is established by the Lord, seldom if ever does it take place among those with whom the old church existed, but among those with whom
