Preparing the way  by Rev. Kurt H. Asplund

   "The voice of one crying in the wilderness; `Prepare the way of the
Lord; make straight in the desert a highway for our God....'" (Isa. 40:
3).

   Today, we will speak of preparation. As a general rule it may be
said, the more significant the event, the greater is the need for
preparation. A bride prepares for her wedding; a woman for the birth of
a child; we all must prepare ourselves by education for a career in
life; and, indeed, our entire life is nothing but a preparation for our
life after death.

   The most significant event in human history was the advent of the
Lord. The Lord's preparation for His coming was remarkable, affecting
not only the world but the heavens as well. The Lord "bowed the
heavens" and came down. He took the sceptre of Judah as His own.
Preparation was necessary for the end to be accomplished.

   One reason the Advent did not take place immediately with the fall
of man in most ancient times but was delayed untold centuries was to
provide that both men and angels might be made ready for the Lord's
coming, especially by means of the written Word.

   It is in the Word that prophecies of the Lord's birth are given.
Unless Balaam's prophecy of the star had been given in the days of
Moses, how would Wise Men from the East have known to come to worship
Him? Without Isaiah's words, who would have sought for a king who was a
descendant of David, born of a virgin?

   Our particular interest now is another prophecy found in the book of
Isaiah which concerns a special preparation for the Lord's coming: the
promised birth of John the Baptist. Isaiah did not name John but
referred instead to one crying in the wilderness who would "prepare the
way of the Lord."

   It is clear that this prophecy refers to John. Among the remarkable
circumstances surrounding John's birth is the inspired statement of
Zacharias, his father, in which he says, "You...will be called the
prophet of the Highest; for you will go before the face of the Lord to
prepare His ways" (Lu. 2: 76). Later, John himself, when questioned if
he was the Messiah confessed, "I am not the Christ." He said, "I am
`The voice of one crying in the wilderness; make straight the way of
the Lord.'" (Jn. 1: 23).

   The last of the prophets of Israel, Malachi, also spoke of the
sending of a "messenger" to prepare for the Lord's coming. "Behold, "
he said, "I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the
great and dreadful day of the Lord" (Mal. 4: 5). John was not Elijah
reincarnated or reborn, but was like Elijah in nature, a man of the
wilderness, bold and outspoken, a reformer attacking the open sins of
his day. He acted in the "spirit and power of Elijah." This linking of
the two men also has a spiritual basis in that John, like Elijah,
represented the Lord as to the Word and its power in its direct literal
sense.

   Such a prophet was sent to prepare the people of Israel for the
Lord's coming. The need and reason for this is indicated in the rest of
the words of Malachi: "The Lord, whom you seek, will suddenly come to
His temple...." he said, "But who can endure the day of His coming? And
who can stand when He appears? For He is like a refiners' fire and like
fuller's soap..." (Mal. 3: 1-2). The prophet was being sent to reform
the people, the Lord taught, "Lest I come and strike the earth with a
curse" (Mal. 4: 6).

   "Lest I come and strike the earth with a curse!" These are the final
words of prophecy, the final words of the Old Testament. How different
from our usual concept of the Advent, of our Savior's birth among the
gentle animals of the stall. How different from His own teaching on
earth when He said He had not come "to condemn the world, but that the
world through Him might be saved" (Jn. 3: 17).

   In what sense, then, may it be said that the Lord's coming would be
like a consuming fire and a dreadful curse? Such is the effect of the
approach of the Divine near to those who are in evil. Not that the Lord
wills to bring them hurt, but thus do their evils react to the exposure
to the Lord.

   Here, then, is the mercy of the Lord's preparation for His coming.
Without an orderly preparation, a Divinely ordained preparation, no man
could have stood the approach of the Divine as He came to earth. We are
told that His coming would have brought disease and destruction upon
the Jewish church because of evils of the people (AE 724: 7). So, too,
are we vulnerable to the approach of the heat and light of the Divine
good and truth.

   What is involved here is a doctrine now revealed for the New Church
that explains the appearances of the literal sense of the Word and
shows that God is, always was and always will be a God of love and
mercy. It is the doctrine of accommodation.

   Who is the "jealous God" who visits the iniquity of the fathers upon
the children? Who is angry with those who disobey His laws and brings
death and destruction to thousands of Israel's enemies? Who is the God
who is wrathful and burns against the wicked like a consuming fire? Who
is He that would strike His own creation with a curse?

   The Lord does none of these things. He is never angry, vengeful,
punishing, or condemning. These qualities are the qualities of evil and
of hell itself and when they are loosed upon mankind it is never of the
Lord's will. Why then are these things said of the Lord? It is said
because that is how they appear to us in our natural states. The Word
of the Lord is accommodated to those states of mind. Otherwise, we
would reject it.

   The truth is that the presence of the Lord disturbs the hells, stirs
them up, removes and destroys the false ideas they cling to and the
evil loves that form their apparent life. At the approach of the Lord,
those in evils and falsities become distressed. "The Divine, when it
comes down out of heaven into the lower sphere where the evil are,
presents an effect which is the opposite of its effect in heaven..." we
are told. "That is, in heaven it vivifies and conjoins, but... where
the evil are it produces death and disjunction. This is because the
Divine influx out of heaven opens, in the good, the spiritual mind, and
fits it to receive; but in the evil, who have no spiritual mind, it
opens the interiors of their natural mind, where evils and falsities
reside, and from this they then have an aversion to every good of
heaven, and hatred for truths, and a lust for every crime.... This
influx with the good...appears in the heavens as a fire vivifying,
recreating, and conjoining; but below with the evil, it appears as a
devouring and wasting fire" (AE 504: 18).

   We all share this experience for there is an evil hereditary nature
in us all. When our shortcomings and loves are exposed by the truths of
heaven, we feel uncomfortable. The appearance is that we are being
attacked and condemned by the heavens. In fact, the attack is from the
hells and the spirits there who love nothing more than to find fault
and punish.

   The Lord foresaw that His coming would have this effect if there was
not some way to prepare and protect those on earth from the hells.

   Even the heavens must be shielded from full exposure to the Divine
majesty and glory. No man or angel is perfect and the Divine life is
accommodated to reception. The Heavenly Doctrine describes this. "The
Lord is present, indeed, with all in the universe, " we are told, "but
more nearly or remotely according to the reception of good by means of
truths with them from Him. For good is that in which the Lord is
present with angel, spirit, and man; therefore the extent and quality
of good from the Lord with them are what determine the extent and
quality of His presence; if the presence goes beyond this, there is
anguish and tremor; but by accommodation to reception there is renewal
of life....

   "Renewal of life, that comes by accommodation to reception appears
in the spiritual world...as a cloud, " we are told. "All societies
there are encompassed by such a cloud denser or rarer according to
reception" (AE 80).

   Again, we are told that "the presence of the Divine Itself is of
such a nature that no angel can endure it unless he is protected by a
cloud, which tempers and moderates the rays and heat from that sun..."
(AC 6849: 5).

   The general principle involved in this spiritual law is that "if the
Lord's presence is nearer than in proportion as the man is in the
affection of good or of truth, the man comes into temptation." The
reason, we are told, is that "the evils and falsities which are in the
man, tempered by the goods and truths that are in him, cannot endure
nearer presence" (AC 4298).

   Let us now turn again to what was involved in the sending of John
before the coming of the Lord.

   The Lord's advent was to bring about a presence of the Lord on earth
unlike anything ever before. Although He Himself would be clothed in
the Mary human, His life would be a process of glorification in which
the heredity from Mary would be put off and His Human made Divine. For
while He was born to us as a Child, His name would be called,
"Wonderful...Mighty God, and Everlasting Father" (Isa. 9: 6). Who,
then, could endure His coming and sustain His Divine presence?

   It was to "make ready a people prepared for the Lord" that John was
born. So said the angel to Zacharias. This was reiterated by Zacharias
at the time of John's naming when all the people wanted to call him
after his father and he had said, "His name is John." "Immediately his
mouth was opened and his tongue loosed, and he spoke, praising God....
`And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Highest; for you
will go before the face of the Lord to prepare His ways...'" (Lu. 1:
64, 76).

   John's ministry of baptism for which we now know him was not begun
at his birth. He grew up in that hill country of Judah where he was
born and was in the deserts eating locusts and wild honey for thirty
years before suddenly appearing at the Jordan river where he baptized
and preached repentance. Here it was that many from Judah and Jerusalem
came out to be baptized by him in the waters of Jordan. And he
preached, saying, "There comes One after me who is mightier than I....
I indeed baptize you with water, but He will baptize you with the Holy
Spirit" (Mk. 1: 7f).

   There is a difference between the baptism of John and the Christian
baptism which the Lord commanded His apostles to administer. The
Heavenly Doctrine treats of John's baptism showing that it was, like
Christian baptism in the Lord's name, a sign of introduction into the
church and insertion among angels in the spiritual world. By means of
John's baptism, we are told, "they were enrolled and numbered with
those who in heart were waiting for and longing for the Messiah, for
which reason angels were then sent and made guardians over them" (TCR
691e). The effect of this was to close up the hells and guard the Jews
against total destruction (TCR 689) which would have been their fate
without it.

   "As to the baptism of John;" we read, "it represented...cleans- ing
of the external man; while the baptism of Christians at the present day
represents the cleansing of the internal man, which is regeneration"
This is why John said he baptized with water but that the Lord would
baptize with the Holy Spirit and with fire. "The waters" with which
John baptized signified introductory truths, which are knowledges from
the Word respecting the Lord.

   John preached repentance along with his baptism. The water had no
power to cleanse the life of the Jews. Acts of repentance based on
plain teachings of the Word, however, could bring external order to
their lives. Further, since the act of baptism represented and
signified purification from evils and falsities, those baptized could
be associated with heavenly societies in which there was protection
from hell. "The baptism of John could produce such an effect, " we are
told, "because the Jewish Church was a representative church.... The
washing and baptizing itself did not indeed purify them...but only
represented and thence signified purification from them; nevertheless,
this was received in heaven as if they were themselves purified. It was
thus that heaven was conjoined to the people of that church by means of
the baptism of John; and when heaven was thus conjoined to them, the
Lord, who was the God of heaven, could manifest Himself to them there,
teach them, and abide among them" (AE 724: 8).

   So it was that in the days of Herod, the King of Judea, in the
fullness of time, Mary brought forth her firstborn Son in Bethlehem of
Judea, and the name He was given was Jesus, for He would save His
people from their sins.

   It is our prayer that the Lord may be born in our hearts and become
our Savior. Yet, we too, must be prepared for this advent. We are told
that the Lord's presence is "unceasing with every man, both the evil
and the good, for without His presence no man lives; but His coming is
only to those who receive Him, who are such as believe in Him and keep
His commandments" (TCR 774, 766).

   The baptism of John is also our preparation for the advent of the
Lord. John represents for us those introductory truths of faith from
the Word which can be understood plainly and directly applied. By means
of these we can be introduced into association with societies of
heaven. "For heaven, we are told, "is conjoined to man when man is in
ultimates, that is, in such things as are in the world in regard to his
natural man, while he is in such things as are in heaven in regard to
his spiritual man.... This is why baptism was instituted, also the holy
supper; likewise why the Word was written by means of such things as
are in the world, while there is in it a spiritual sense, containing
such things as are in heaven..." (AE 475: 20).

   The Lord's coming is not into what is evil of life, or what is
devoid of spiritual life. His coming is only into what is His own with
us. Therefore, it is important to furnish our minds with the knowledge
of Divine truths and to confirm those truths in ourselves by a life
according to them. In this way are we prepared for the nearer presence
of the Lord. Our lives are brought into the sphere of heavenly
societies, and when heaven is thus conjoined to us, the Lord, who is
the God of heaven, can manifest himself to us, teach us, and abide with
us (See AE 724:8).

   "`Behold, I send My messenger before Your face, who will prepare
Your way before You. The voice of one crying in the wilderness; prepare
the way of the Lord, make His paths straight.' John came baptizing in
the wilderness and preaching a baptism of repentance for the remission
of sins.... And he preached, saying, `There comes One after me who is
mightier than I, whose sandal strap I am not worthy to stoop down and
loose. I indeed baptize you with water, but He will baptize you with
the Holy Spirit.'" (Mk. 1: 2-4, 7-8). Amen.

   Lessons: Isa. 40: 1-11, 27-31; Lu. 1: 59-80; AE 724: 7-8