Self is the most treacherous enemy, and the most insinuating deceiver in the world. Of all other vices, it is both the hardest to find out, and the hardest to cure.
Richard Baxter

Going Another Way

Going Another Way

Going another way

by Rev. Kurt H. Asplundh

“Then, being divinely warned in a dream that they should not return to Herod, they departed for their own country another way.” (Matt. 2: 12)

When we take a journey it is often possible to go in one way and return in another. We do not have to retrace our steps but may take a different route.

When we read of Wise men from the East who came to find the Lord, the question of direction takes on special importance. While they came to find the Lord by a route that led through Jerusalem, they went back to their country by “another way.”

Journeys on earth represent spiritual progress and direction. We move from place to place a great deal. Although many of our routine trips are along familiar roads and continue the same day after day, we have the opportunity to make choices and changes. It would be possible to trace a person’s travels through a lifetime and discover some idea of that person’s loves. It is our loves that lead us to changes; to travel to new places and to go in new ways. So it is with every move we make on earth, but it is eminently true of journeys mentioned in the Word, for these are correspondential.

We are taught in the Heavenly Doctrine that “whenever travelling, sojourning and passing from place to place occur in the Word nothing else is suggested to the angels than such change of state as exists with them” (AC 1463). This spiritual reality is illustrated in common speech. For example, we may say that someone is “headed in the right direction” or “setting a true course” when we mean that his mental or moral development is good. Of someone who has been in trouble and has corrected himself, we may say he has made a “turnaround’ The question, “Where am I going?” has direct application to discovering our state of life in self-examination.

The point is that natural journeys and directions represent the progress of our spirit. We are taught that there are actual pathways in the spiritual world which lead to the different societies of heaven or hell there. As we make our life decisions, we can be seen turning onto one path or another and moving along it toward a final place of our choosing.

The journeys mentioned in the Word all refer to our spiritual progress. The Exodus is an obvious example. What was meant by the journey from slavery to the promised land but the progress we make in a life of regeneration? We all are born with hereditary tendencies which would eventually enslave us unless we escaped from them.

It is another journey mentioned in the Word that we are considering in this sermon: the journey of the Wise men. The fact to notice is that they came one way and returned another. To find the Lord the Wise men followed the star first to Jerusalem and Herod, the King; and from Jerusalem to Bethlehem. Having seen and worshiped Him, they were instructed in a dream to go back another way (Matt. 2: 12).

This simple fact in Scripture gives evidence of the most tremendous of all spiritual changes and gives testimony to the supreme importance of the Lord’s advent. The coming of the Lord changed the whole spiritual direction of the church.

The state of the church at the time of the Advent is represented by the quality of Herod, then ruler in Jerusalem. Herod was no Jew, but an Edomite. The Writings teach that Edom signifies the natural man in falsities from the love of self. The man in such a state inwardly despises, rejects, and vilifies anything of a higher nature, seeking to destroy spiritual good and truth.

In addition, the Writings teach that a king, when spoken of in an evil sense, means the power or dominion of the natural man over the spiritual which destroys all the truths and goods of the church (AE 638:22).

This secret nature of the church came to light when Herod learned of one born who was called “King of the Jews.” Unable to find the Lord by craft or quiet investigation, Herod stunned the people by ordering wholesale slaughter of the infants in the district around Bethlehem. This signifies the open destruction of all spiritual truths and goods yet remaining in the Church. It marks the complete destruction of innocence. Since the church had come into such a state it could no longer serve to lead man to heaven or the Lord. It had destroyed its spiritual heritage. So the Writings teach that “at the time just before [the Lord’s] coming there was no Divine truth in ultimates with men in the world, and none whatever in the church which was with the Jewish nation, that had not been falsified and perverted” (AE 726: 7). Also, we are taught that in the human race at that time “no celestial and spiritual, or even natural good any longer remained” (AC 2854).

The children at Bethlehem had been slain, but in place of them a Child was born Whose name was to be called “Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace” (Is. 9: 6). This was God incarnate; the Lord Himself bringing to man Divine truth and good in His own Divine Human.

The coming of the Lord changed the direction of religious life. The Lord was not to be found in Jerusalem and what it represented. He was not present in the selfishness and evil that ruled in men’s hearts. Therefore, when they had found Him in Bethlehem, they did not return to Jerusalem. They went a new direction. This signifies how our vision of the Lord gives us the ability to choose another way. We can be inspired by the Lord not to return to ways of life that are destructive and defeating but to find, instead, new ways that lead to genuine spiritual happiness. This the Lord Himself taught when He said, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life: no one comes to the Father except through Me.” (Jn. 14: 6).

There has always been some way for man to approach the Lord. Our life and salvation have depended upon it. The visit of the Wise men marks an essential change in the way.

To understand the change that is here described, we must know that life inflows. Life inflows through three degrees from the Lord into man. When there is an uninterrupted flow and a reception on each degree then all is well. Such was the state of man in Most Ancient times. Life flowed from the Lord and was received as love or good in the highest degree. From here it was passed on as truth in the second degree, and finally, both good and truth were united in uses in the third, or natural, degree of life.

These degrees or life, or their reception, were like treasures which God gave man. As man opened his mind to them, his life thrilled with the delight on each plane or degree. He responded happily to celestial love, spiritual love, and natural love; to good, truth, and uses of life. These treasures enriched him and brought him into association with the heavens.

This sequence of degrees is pictured in those treasure which the Wise men opened and presented to the Lord: the gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Here, the meaning is prophetic as well as reminiscent, for the Lord would open each of these degrees in His Human, providing a full reception of the Divine from within into His Divine Human.

But man, at the Fall, had perverted the reception of the inmost of all degrees, the celestial. This was the more serious in its consequences to man because the lower degrees depended for their source of life upon the celestial. When the celestial degree was closed, then neither could the spiritual and natural degrees receive life from the Lord.

For this reason, the Lord made a new approach to man through the Word. As good was no longer received from heaven, He now approached the second, or spiritual, degree of the mind through the truth of the Word. By means of the Word, He presented and preserved the knowledge of spiritual things. Through these teachings the natural degree could be held in its order. Thus man’s natural life still could be “spiritualized” or influenced by spiritual truth through not by good itself.

Still the decline of the race continued, even until the representative truths of the Word had been falsified and perverted. Man lost his ability to receive anything from the Lord either of good or of truth. His natural life was about to be cut off entirely from anything spiritual. This threatened to make man nothing but an animal, or even worse than an animal. Everything human with him was threatened with extinction.

There remained but one way for the Lord to approach–directly, on the natural plane. That man might be saved, then, the Lord came to earth. He as it were by-passed the degrees which had failed in man and built them anew into His Divine Natural. When this was done, it was possible for man to approach the Lord’s Divine Human from without and seek there that Divine spiritual and celestial life from which he had been cut off.

This change is described in the Heavenly Doctrine: “Before the Lord came into the world the Divine Itself flowed into the whole heaven; and…through this influx…there was brought forth the light which was in the heavens, and thereby wisdom and intelligence. But after the human race had removed itself from the good of love and charity, that light could no longer be produced through heaven, nor, consequently, the wisdom and intelligence that would penetrate down to the human race. For this cause, from the necessity of their being saved, the Lord came into the world, and made the Human in Himself Divine, in order that as to His Divine Human He might become the Divine Light, and might thus illuminate the universal heaven and the universal world” (AC 4l80).

We are taught also that by the Lord’s coming to the world and by the uniting in Himself of the Divine to the Human “it became possible for salvation to reach the human race, in which no celestial and spiritual, or even natural good any longer remained” (AC 2854). The state of the church was completely changed “for in the world He put on the Divine Natural, in which He is present with men” (SS 99).

There is an application to our lives of the account of the Wise men’s journeys. We too, if we are wise, will seek the Lord. And when we find Him we can learn to change our ways. He can give us new direction. We can turn aside from the natural inclinations that have ruled our mind, shunning Herod, because we would serve the Lord instead. The Lord is the new King we have chosen to rule in our life. This is the result of His advent.

Before His birth, we could have no clear idea of spiritual values or eternal purposes. Nothing could prevent us from moving in directions of self interest or worldly success for its own sake. By His birth, we have been given a revelation of new and deeper values and of spiritual purpose in all that we do. We acknowledge this as we sing the words of Scripture: “Thou wilt show me the path of life…” (Ps. 16: 11). This is what we long for in our prayer: “Show me Your ways, O Lord; teach me Your paths. Lead me in Your truth and teach me, for You are the God of my salvation…” (Ps. 25: 4f).

Each day we can come to seek the Lord in the teachings of His Word and, finding Him, we can be led forth in a new spiritual direction. Each day we can turn our backs on one more Herod-like aspect of our character; one more jealousy, one more act of dominion, and place ourselves instead under the rule of the Prince of Peace.

The journey of the Wise men from the East was not only a journey of distance, but a journey of time. By the Wise men is represented that Ancient Church in which the knowledge of the Lord once flourished. This knowledge had faded so as to be almost forgotten in the world. Yet some glimmering of it remained: as it were, a star in the distance. Now, centuries after the prophecy, a star led the Wise men to the source of light itself. What was promised in ancient time came to pass.

The parallel to this can be seen in the life of the individual. The child’s spiritual preparation reviews the spiritual history of the churches. As an infant, we are given those delights from heaven which the Heavenly Doctrine calls “remains.” These are a kind of inflowing celestial life that nourishes our whole life. In childhood, we are instructed in knowledges representative of the Lord drawn from the literal sense of the Word. These are the essential background of our later spiritual development and bring us association with the heavens. Such knowledges, however, do not fully satisfy the states of the mature mind. We must come to see the Lord for ourselves as He is revealed in His Divine Human. Only then will we be able to see spiritual truths in a natural way and thus understand our faith. The religious instruction of childhood has served to keep us in the thought of the Lord but adult life calls for a new kind of instruction and faith. We find this faith in the vision of the Lord Himself as He has revealed Himself in His first and second advents.

Let us consider one final thought. It is notable that the Wise men returned to their own country. A “country” or “kingdom” in the Word refers to a church or state of the church. The Wise men had come from a true church. Having found the Lord, they returned again to its true principles. But they returned by a new way. Truths they had seen only representatively or obscurely, now were seen in clarity and rational light.

So must we all return to a truly spiritual life. When we have seen the Lord and our faith has been strengthened by a new vision of His Divinity, we may not be content simply to glorify and praise God, but we must apply our faith in a new life of spiritual purpose. Turning our backs on the self-love of Herod at Jerusalem, we should return to the East, that is, back to a heavenly life. As we live the life according to those principles which the Lord Himself has set before us, we approach nearer to Him in the spiritual “East” and nearer to the light of His wisdom. Our new-found faith must be applied as we follow the Lord day by day with the humble prayer: “Show me Your ways, O Lord; teach me Your paths…. The humble He guides in justice, and the humble He teaches His way. All the paths of the Lord are mercy and truth, to such as keep His covenant and His testimonies” (Ps. 25: 4-5, 9-10). Amen.