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I’m guessing you’ve never heard of him, but he helped put something in your high school textbook that he discovered in a spiritualistic seance. What in the world am I talking about? Keep reading to learn the answer.
The mysterious sketches of Leonardo da Vinci have fascinated people for hundreds of years. How is it that someone living all the way back in the 15th century managed to dream about things like deep-sea diving suits, submarines and helicopters?
When the rest of the world was just beginning to emerge from centuries of ignorance and superstition, da Vinci’s mind was already living in the 20th century. And of course, da Vinci has high name recognition, particularly here in the West. I mean, who isn’t familiar with the cryptic smile of the Mona Lisa, or the well-proportioned scientific portrayal of Vitruvian Man? Of course you’ve heard of Leonardo da Vinci.
But chances are, you may have never heard of his Scandinavian counterpart, Emanuel Swedenborg. Now, these two men never actually met each other. In fact, they came from opposite ends of Europe and their lives are separated by a couple hundred years. But just like da Vinci, Emanuel Swedenborg was dreaming about submarines and flying machines well ahead of the rest of the planet.
He was born in Stockholm in 1688, the son of a distinguished Lutheran minister who served as the court chaplain to the king of Sweden. And from a very early age, young Emanuel set himself apart from the rest of the pack with his remarkable intellectual ability.
Some people, as they look at the remarkable work he produced all the way back in the 1600s, are convinced that if Swedenborg had been alive today and taken an IQ test, he probably would have scored around 200. Now, for comparison, a score of 100 is considered average, and a score of about 140 qualifies you as a genius and puts you ahead of more than 98 percent of the population. A score of 200? That’s simply off the charts.
By the time he graduated from Uppsala University in 1709, he’d mastered no fewer than seven academic disciplines, compared to most people’s one or two. And because that still wasn’t enough to quench his thirst for learning, he packed his bags and headed for England, where he hoped to meet Sir Isaac Newton and spend some time studying at his feet.
When he arrived in England, however, he was surprised to discover that Newton had taken a new job and was not available. Determined not to come away empty-handed, he looked for another mentor, and found one in Edmund Halley, the astronomer who discovered Halley’s comet.
Emanuel stayed with him for four or five weeks, grilling him on the subject of astronomy every morning over breakfast. Now, making the most of his time in England, Swedenborg also studied under notable scientists like John Flamsteed and Robert Boyle, after which time he crossed over to the European continent to study mathematics.
By the time he returned to Sweden a short time later, he had mastered mathematics, physics, astronomy, bookbinding, map making, lens grinding and geology. And on top of all that, he was already working, if you can believe it, on plans for an airplane and a submarine.
You see, what he really wanted to do was build an observatory in Sweden where he could continue his studies. But hard times and a lack of funding forced him to take a job as a civil engineer. Now, as disappointing as that was, it wasn’t that bad of a job.
In no time at all, the king of Sweden appointed him to a position in the College of Mines, which enabled him to tour many of the mining and smelting operations all over Europe. And of course, he absorbed absolutely everything he saw and became an expert in the subject, such that some of the things he wrote way back then still appear in the study of chemistry and physics today.
There’s no question about it. Emanuel Swedenborg was a genius. In fact, he might have been the greatest scientific mind of the 18th century. But then something happened that changed the course of his entire life. It was the death of his father.
When Swedenborg’s father died, he had trouble coming to grips with it. All of his learning, all of the books in his library, none of it had really prepared him for the ugliest reality of human life. You see, you might be able to explain the physical phenomenon of death in terms of statistics, anatomy and biology. But those disciplines don’t really explain it. We might be able to talk about life expectancy or mortality rates, but instinctively we know there’s more to human life than just numbers.
And maybe one of the biggest problems we have in understanding death is that we still don’t know the secret of life. Oh, we can study life in a test tube, we can put it under a microscope, but we can’t make it happen. The keys to life and death lie just beyond our grasp, as if they belonged to someone else. In fact, that’s what the Bible says in Revelation, chapter 1, where John meets Jesus Christ in vision. Listen to this (Revelation 1:17, 18):
“And when I saw Him, I fell at His feet as dead. But He laid His right hand on me, saying to me, ‘Do not be afraid; I am the First and the Last. I am He who lives, and was dead, and behold, I am alive forevermore. Amen. And I have the keys of Hades and of Death.’”
The only one who really knows the secrets of the grave is the one who’s actually been there and come back. Unfortunately, Swedenborg didn’t look to the Bible for answers when his father died. Instead, he went back to his lab. In 1741, at the age of 53, Emanuel Swedenborg started a futile search for the location of the soul in the human body.
Cadaver after cadaver failed to produce any results, even though he worked long into the night, trying to find the secrets of life and death. And then something important happened. He made a dramatic shift from pure scientific inquiry to what could only be described as mysticism. Instead of gathering raw data and analyzing it, Swedenborg began to rely on his instincts and inspiration.
He believed that every time he was on the verge of a great discovery, a mysterious flash of light would blaze through his mind to let him know that he had just uncovered one of the secrets of the universe. These flashes of light, however, did not answer his questions. His own brilliance failed to reveal the secrets that cadavers refused to yield. Convinced that he would never unlock the secrets of immortality, Swedenborg sank into terrible depression. He had mastered countless subjects as an intellectual, but the grave simply wouldn’t speak to him.
Then, on Easter weekend of 1744, as he was having dinner in a London restaurant, Swedenborg suddenly had a life-changing vision. A mysterious, shadowy figure appeared in the corner of the room and told him not to eat too much. Then it suddenly disappeared.
Later that night, the same shadowy figure reappeared in his bedroom, woke him up, and identified himself as Jesus. And what was his message for Swedenborg? “Emanuel,” he said, “you have been specially chosen to unlock the real meaning of the Bible. The plain words, the ones that everyone can read for themselves, are not the real thing. Your assignment is to read the Bible deeply and then to reveal to the world its hidden meaning.”
Now, as the son of a Lutheran minister, Swedenborg should have known better. The shadowy figure that appeared to him in his room couldn’t possibly have been Jesus, because the words he spoke were in direct contradiction to the words found in the Bible itself.
There is no secret hidden meaning to the Bible. Oh sure, you might have to work a little bit to understand what the Bible says, because it does, after all, represent the very mind of God. But the meaning is right there on the surface for you to discover.
God doesn’t just give one man the keys to the Bible so that we all have to go through his special intellect to come to God. In fact, that’s one of the hallmarks of a religious cult. Just listen to what the Bible actually says in Peter’s second letter. It makes it very clear (2 Peter 1:19-21):
“And so we have the prophetic word confirmed, which you do well to heed as a light that shines in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts; knowing this first, that no prophecy of Scripture is of any private interpretation, for prophecy never came by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit.”
That’s quite a bit to bite off all at once, but here’s what I want you to see. First of all, Peter says that the word we have from God is sure. It’s got God’s signature all over it and you can count on what it says. That’s why Jesus said that Scripture can’t be broken. And it’s the reason Jesus always pointed people back to the words of the Bible, even when He was there with them in the flesh.
For example, when the men on the road to Emmaus were struggling to understand why Jesus had been crucified, he came in person and opened the pages of the Bible and showed them the plan of salvation revealed right from the very beginning. When the devil tempted the Son of God to abandon his mission to save the human race, Jesus answered with a simple phrase: “It is written.” The long and the short of it is, you can count on this Book.
Now, the second thing I want you to notice is that Peter says no prophecy of Scripture is of any private interpretation. That means that no single human being holds the exclusive keys to the words of the Bible. Now, if Swedenborg had been asked to preach the Bible and help the public understand what it says, that would be one thing. But the shadowy figure who claimed to be Jesus told him that he was going to unlock a new meaning for the Bible. And that’s our first signal that something was desperately wrong. The shadowy figure wasn’t Jesus. He was somebody else.
And Swedenborg, as brilliant as he was, should have known better. But the thought of secret knowledge was simply too tantalizing for him to refuse. Up to this point, he’d been worried that his intellect was failing him. And now a being from the spirit world was telling him that he was the only person alive who was capable of understanding the real mysteries of the universe. And so, like Eve reaching for the forbidden fruit in the hope of achieving godhood, Swedenborg crossed the line from science to spiritualism. It was such a powerful event in his life that he believed it was the actual second coming of Christ.
Now, quickly brushing up on Greek and Hebrew, Swedenborg began to write a nine-volume Bible commentary called “The Word Explained.” It’s a work he never finished. He did finish other books, including a work called “Arcana Celestia,” in which he explained that the stories we read in Genesis weren’t literally true, but only spiritual allegories and parables.
Once you’ve done away with God as the literal Creator, you’ve opened the door to all sorts of things, including the theory of evolution, which would surface about 100 years later.
Now, of course, to say that Swedenborg was responsible for the theory of evolution would be to give him just too much credit. But he did make a rather interesting contribution to the modern theory of origins. Let me see if I can explain. As Emanuel Swedenborg plunged deeper and deeper into the world of the occult, he began to perform some rather remarkable feats.
For example, one day in 1759, he was at a Sunday gathering at a home in Göteborg, a long way from Stockholm. At about six o’clock in the evening, he suddenly got up and walked out of the room. Then he came back in with a disturbed look on his face. He said, “There is a fire in Stockholm. One of my friends’ houses has already burnt to the ground and mine is now in danger.”
And with that, he turned around and walked back out of the room. Now, don’t forget, this was 1759. There were no telephones, no telegraphs or television newscasts. There was absolutely no way that Swedenborg could know something like that. And then at 8 p.m., he suddenly came back into the room with a relieved look on his face and said, “The fire has been extinguished. It stopped three doors from my house.”
Three days later, the word arrived by pony express. There had been a big fire in Stockholm, and it stopped precisely three doors down from Swedenborg’s house. So how did he know that? His answer? He said the spirits told him. And the more he dabbled in spiritualism, the more those spirits revealed.
In 1762, while conducting a public seance, Swedenborg had a vision of a young Russian nobleman by the name of Peter II, who was the grandson of Peter the Great. Swedenborg said that he saw young Peter being strangled in his prison cell. Two weeks later the news came from St. Petersburg, and it was absolutely true.
As each new prediction came true, Swedenborg’s faith in the messages of the spirits grew stronger and stronger. They accurately told him where the Queen’s jewels were when they mysteriously went missing. They helped him find an important missing receipt. And finally, there was no doubt in Swedenborg’s mind that the spirits had chosen him as a messenger to the world.
The seances became more and more bizarre with each passing year. The messages he received became more and more unbiblical as he allowed himself to be led further and further down a dangerous path. He began to teach, among other things, that Jesus Christ may have died on the cross, but He didn’t do it in our place.
Now, he knew what the Bible said, particularly in the writings of Paul, but he argued that the spirits had shown him that the Apostle Paul was a fraud. In fact, he said that he had met Paul in one of his night visions, as well as Luther and Calvin and other great heroes of the Christian faith. He said that when he met Paul, he beat him so soundly in a debate that Paul had to admit defeat and declare Swedenborg to be a greater Christian messenger than himself.
You know, when you read about some of the strange stuff that people do after they get sucked into the occult, it’s easy to imagine that you would never fall for it. But don’t forget, the weird stuff doesn’t usually come until you’ve wandered a long way down the path.
That’s why the Bible warns us to be very careful about which paths we choose in life. Listen to this passage found in the book of Leviticus (Leviticus 19:31):
“Give no regard to mediums and familiar spirits; do not seek after them, to be defiled by them: I am the Lord your God.”
You know, it really doesn’t get any plainer than that. The whole spirit world is simply bad news for the Christian. And you’ll notice the Bible doesn’t say a thing about how accurate they are or how convincing they are. It just says stay away, because it’s easier to walk away now than to try and disentangle yourself later.
As the son of a minister, Swedenborg should have refused to listen the first night he met the spirit who lied to him. Because in later years there was almost no convincing him he was wrong.
According to the Bible, if someone—even someone from the spirit world—tries to convince you of something that clearly contradicts what the Word of God says, you need to walk away—and fast. Here’s what it says in Isaiah (Isaiah 8:20):
“To the law and to the testimony! If they do not speak according to this word, it is because there is no light in them.”
Swedenborg should have walked, but he didn’t. And because of that, we’ve inherited an idea from him that is still in our textbooks today. You see, back in England, when Swedenborg was studying under Edmund Halley, he became fascinated with the long tails you find behind comets. He found it interesting that heavenly bodies could throw off particles and gasses.
For 22 years he thought about this, and he eventually came to the conclusion that way back in ancient history, the sun had been spinning so violently that it threw off the materials that make up the planets. Our solar system, he said, was created by gravitating gasses.
Something that still forms a foundation for the modern theory of origins being taught in our schools today. And if he came to that conclusion purely as the result of scientific study, I’d probably have less of a problem with it, even though it would still leave out the important information given in the book of Genesis. But Swedenborg himself told people that spirit beings from other worlds had come to tell him his information was correct.
Now, think about it for a moment. What spirit beings back in the 1700s would be interested in undermining the Creation account as it’s given to us in the Bible? What spirit beings would be interested in convincing Swedenborg that our world came from a long process of gaseous expansion instead of from the hand of a Creator?
Don’t forget that Lucifer originally wanted to seize the throne of God. And don’t forget that God’s right to be worshipped rests on the fact that he is the Creator. Is it possible that 100 years before the theory of evolution took root in Western thinking, fallen angels were already planting its seeds in the heart of Emanuel Swedenborg?
His theory of expanding gasses was called the Nebular Hypothesis, and it still forms the foundation for most theories on the origin of stars and planets today. And men like Immanuel Kant, Charles Darwin, Chamberlain, Moulton, Whipple and Kuiper built on this theory. Is it possible that the Big Bang first appeared in a spiritualistic seance instead of the sterile laboratory of empirical science?
Think about it. Scientific observation may well prove that the universe is expanding. And our calculations no doubt reveal a lot about the nature and movement of heavenly bodies. But nobody can reverse the clock and see what really happened when it all first came into being. The evolutionary theories of our origins, which need billions of years to become even remotely plausible, they remain nothing but theories because we can’t witness it and we can’t reproduce it.
So what are the chances that Swedenborg was lied to? What are the chances, for that matter, that we’re all being lied to? Far too many people, caught up in the pride of their own intellect, are willing to disregard the Bible without really giving it an honest look. But at the same time, we’ll buy the theories of people who are only taking a guess—or worse yet, building their science on the flimsy foundation of a long-forgotten seance.
Few people actually realize the influence that Swedenborg had on Western thought. His contributions may not be as profound as Plato or Aristotle, but his unbiblical words of theology have been read by thousands of people nonetheless.
Helen Keller, the famous blind and deaf lecturer, said, “I acknowledge my profound indebtedness to Emanuel Swedenborg for a richer interpretation of the Bible.”
Franklin D. Roosevelt said, “In a world in which the voice of conscience often seems still and small, there is need of that spiritual leadership of which Swedenborg was a particular example.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Carl Jung, and even the legendary Johnny Appleseed were all familiar with the books that Swedenborg wrote under the direction of the so-called “spirits of the dead.”
Now, I’m not suggesting that all these people were devoted Swedenborgites. But I am suggesting that Swedenborg had some influence on their thinking.
It’s very easy to get caught in a web of deceit when we dabble in the spirit world—even though the Bible plainly warns us that the dead cannot actually speak to us. Some of the biggest lies in today’s world are a result of just a few people believing what a spirit told them. Eve listened to a snake, and we all paid for it. Swedenborg listened to a shadowy visitor in his room one night, and only eternity will tell how many people will have to pay a heavy price for what he did.
You know, there’s a really good reason God says that some knowledge is strictly forbidden. It’s because He loves you too much to let you build your life on a lie. We don’t need psychics or spirit mediums to figure out what to do with our lives, because we have a Heavenly Father who loves us enough to give us the straight goods in a Book that a lot of people haven’t read in quite a while.
You know, there’s always a good reason that God tells us to rely on Him instead of what other people say. So why don’t you and I together now approach His throne? Let’s pray.
PRAYER:
Father in Heaven, we’re glad that you’re a God who reveals yourself to us—that you give us solid information to build our lives on. And so today we choose to trust what your Word says. We choose to place our lives in the hands of Jesus, the only one who’s been to the other side of the grave and back, the only one who really knows. Our prayer is that we will be ready when Jesus comes, that you would teach us to love Him more, and that today, because we’ve studied Your word, we would be a little more like Jesus ourselves. For we pray it in His wonderful name, Amen.
Scriptures Used in “Secret Knowledge”
“And when I saw Him, I fell at His feet as dead. But He laid His right hand on me, saying to me, ‘Do not be afraid; I am the First and the Last. I am He who lives, and was dead, and behold, I am alive forevermore. Amen. And I have the keys of Hades and of Death.’”
—Revelation 1:17, 18
“And so we have the prophetic word confirmed, which you do well to heed as a light that shines in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts; knowing this first, that no prophecy of Scripture is of any private interpretation, for prophecy never came by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit.”
—2 Peter 1:19-21
“Give no regard to mediums and familiar spirits; do not seek after them, to be defiled by them: I am the Lord your God.”
—Leviticus 19:31
“To the law and to the testimony! If they do not speak according to this word, it is because there is no light in them.”
—Isaiah 8:20