Intro to the New Church Doctrines Journal #14

[Image Description: "YOU ARE WORTHY OF NEW BEGINNINGS" in center-aligned white letters on a black letter board with beige wooden bordering. The letter board is also laying on a gray blanket as the background.]



CONTENT WARNING: The religious/spiritual opinions on this blog post are mine based on my own experiences and do not reflect the opinions and experiences of everyone. Commentaries published on my First Former Buddy Club President influencer page represent diverse viewpoints. If you would like to submit a commentary, please contact me for more information. All perspectives and experiences are welcome here.


In my first trimester at Bryn Athyn College, I was required to take a religion course along with eventually some other religion courses since it is a religious school. Bryn Athyn practices the New Church religion of Swedenborg so the required religion course that I took this trimester was Intro to the New Church Doctrines. For the class, one of the required assignments was to write daily journals based on readings from "You Can Believe!: An Introduction to the New Christianity" written by Grant Schnarr (The author was actually my professor for the class! He is a minister in the church!) and we students had to apply what we read to our lives. So, since some of the content mentioned in this short essay that I wrote is related to the content that I post on my disability advocacy influencer page, I have decided to upload it is a blog post. Here is Journal #14.



Prompt: "Read Chapter 8 of You Can Believe! - Are We Living in the End of Time?. Show me you read, thought deeply about what you read, and apply it to your life."

    There is a strong controversial belief that the world will end also known as the apocalypse. Contrary to popular belief, however, the theory of the world ending is false. This philosophy is one of the many derived misinterpretations of things mentioned in the Bible. These misinterpretations are obtained due to what is written in the Bible being taken too literally. Instead of the world ending, God has a much different and more positive plan.

    The Matthew 24:29-30 Bible verse states that Jesus said, "Immediately, after the suffering of those days the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light; the stars will fall from Heaven, and the powers of the Heavens will be shaken. Then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in Heaven, and then all of the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the 'Son of Man coming on the clouds of Heaven' with power and great glory" (pgs. 75-76, Schnarr 2006). When this event occurs, the sun and moon will be gone with the earth still in existence and the stars will fall to somewhere unknown. Jesus was speaking figuratively when He stated this information. Instead of the world ending, Jesus was explaining that these events would be involved in the creation of the Second Coming; according to the New Church religion, the Second Coming is "the development of a new understanding of and relationship with the Lord, the dawn of a new era of believing, loving, and living" (pg. 76, Schnarr 2006). In other words, the Second Coming will be a new historical time period for building a closer, empathetical connection with the Lord.

    Instead of the world being destroyed one day, the Second Coming will occur which is technically a new world to make changes for the better religiously and spiritually. The world ending is one of the common misinterpretations of religious theories due to readings in the Bible being taken too literally. Not all but many individuals commonly misunderstand that pragmatics can have multiple meanings and get adversarial out of anger and frustration over things that they do not understand. To improve comprehension of biblical information, people should become more educated about the Bible and its interpretations.






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                                                                  Citations

1. Schnarr, Grant. You Can Believe! An Introduction to the New Christianity. 2006.

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