4. Letter to Oetinger, September 23, 1766
*It is within the past few days that I have returned home from foreign parts, from Holland and England, and received your two letters, one dated 13 October 1765 together with another; for both of them I thank you.
There are five small works in which I have used the words 'from things heard and seen' - 1. HEAVEN AND HELL, 2. THE NEW JERUSALEM AND ITS HEAVENLY DOCTRINE, 3. THE LAST JUDGMENT, 4. THE WHITE HORSE, 5. THE INHABITANTS OF THE PLANETS. Later on other small works were published-1. THE LORD, 2. THE SACRED SCRIPTURE, 3. THE DOCTRINE OF LIFE FOR THE NEW JERUSALEM, 4. FAITH, 5. THE SPIRITUAL WORLD,** 6. ANGELIC WISDOM CONCERNING DIVINE PROVIDENCE, 7. ANGELIC WISDOM CONCERNING DIVINE LOVE AND WISDOM. The latter seven however do not fill more than 72 whole sheets.*** This year APOCALYPSE REVEALED, which was promised in the small work LAST JUDGMENT,**** has been published, from which book one can see clearly that I do speak with angels since not even the smallest verse in the Revelation can be understood without revelation. Surely anyone can see that by the New Jerusalem a New Church is to be understood, and that its teachings can be disclosed only by the Lord alone since they are described in the Revelation by purely figurative means, that is, by correspondences, nor that they can ever be published in the world except by somebody to whom a revelation has been granted! I can solemnly testify that the Lord Himself has appeared to me and sent me to do what I am doing, and that to this end He has opened the interiors of my mind, which are the interiors of my spirit, for me to see those things that are in the spiritual world and for me to listen to those people who are there; and this has now lasted for 22 years. But to make this credible, an attestation does not today carry sufficient weight. Yet anyone who is intelligent enough can find some confirmation from the witness of my writings, especially from APOCALYPSE REVEALED. Who has previously known anything about the spiritual sense of the Word! And who has known anything about the spiritual world, that is, about heaven and hell? Who has known about man's life after death! Are these and yet other matters going to be concealed from Christians for ever? The reason such matters have now for the first time been disclosed is that it is for the sake of the New Church, which is the New Jerusalem, so that those people may know them. Others will indeed know them yet still they do not know them yet because of their unbelief.
All the above-mentioned works are on sale in London, England, at Mister Lewis's, Paternoster Row, near Cheapside. Those writings of mine concerning the New Jerusalem cannot be called prophecies but revelations.
Fare you well and prosper Yours most sincerely Em. Swedenborg
Stockholm 23 September 1766 * Friedrich Christoph Oetinger (1702-82), a Lutheran pastor serving in Wurtemburg, was an admirer of Jacob Boehme and had a particular interest in the nature and reality of the spiritual world. In 1762, after reading Swedenborg's pre-illumination work PRINCIPIA, he wrote and published Die Irrdische und Himmlische Philosophie (Earthly and Heavenly Philosophy) in which he related Swedenborg's philosophy to the thoughts of Boehme. Three years later this German prelate was introduced to Volume 1 of ARCANA COELESTIA, and was immediately delighted not with its exegesis, which he seems to have rejected, but with the inter-chapter transactions that deal with the spiritual world. This inter-chapter material Oetinger translated into German and included in the first volume of his Swedenborgs und Anderer Irrdische und Himmlische Philosophie (The Earthly and Heavenly Philosophy of Swedenborg and Others), which he published in that same year, 1765. (The work published in 1762 was then reissued as Volume 11.) On 13 October 1765 in a letter now lost Oetinger wrote asking for titles of other books which contained descriptions of the spiritual world. This letter, and another written in December, which were sent to Stockholm, Swedenborg did not receive until 8 September 1766 on his return home from Amsterdam. The original document Swedenborg sent to Oetinger dated 23 September 1766 has been lost, but a copy of it appears on pages 209-10 of H. W. Clemm's Vollstandige Einleitung in die Religion und Gesamte Theologie published in 1767. ** That is, Continuatio de Ultimo Judicio et de Mundo Spirituali, published 1763. *** 'A sheet made 4 leaves (8 pp.) quarto. The above 7 works fill 561 pages' LM 620. **** See De Ultimo Judicio. 42.