Are you looking for a place to discuss the Bible, Swedenborg, and issues of spiritual life with other people in an open format? If so, please check out these two new online Swedenborg discussion groups:
New Church Discussion Group
Swedenborgian Community Online
The first one is moderated by an independent Swedenborg reader from New Zealand.
The second one is moderated by Rev. Cory, pastor of the Swedenborgian Church of North America’s online Swedenborgian Community.
The discussion groups are hosted on the Discord website. Discord was originally set up as a forum for video gamers. However, because of its ease of use and low data requirements, it has expanded far beyond the gaming community.
If you are not already a user on Discord, you will have to set up a username and password before proceeding to the chatrooms. You do not have to reveal your real name and identity if you don’t want to.
You do have to be considerate of other people whose views may be different from yours. These forums are open to Swedenborgians and non-Swedenborgians alike.
See you there!
Update: I have removed the link to one of the discussion groups due to some unfortunate events and overcharged statements that took place there, to which I do not wish to subject my readers. (July 2, 2020)
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Lee Woofenden is an ordained minister, writer, editor, translator, and teacher. He enjoys taking spiritual insights from the Bible and the writings of Emanuel Swedenborg and putting them into plain English as guides for everyday life.
Spiritual Insights for Everyday Life 
Hi, good day. Is it possible if you could give me a daily prayer for a departed loved ones in heaven.. My only daughter 14yr old passed away last year May 10. I am still in deep sorrow and pain, I am a grieving mom😪 Thank you.
Hi tins,
So sorry to hear about your daughter’s death. We will keep you in our prayers. You also might get some help and comfort from this article:
Where are my Children who have Died? Will I Ever See Them Again?
Those links don’t seem to take me to any discussion groups, and I’m unable to find them in the discord app itself.
Hi Todd,
I was afraid that might happen. It turned out to be fairly complicated to get links that would (supposedly) take people to the right place on the Discord site. One other person did find the discussion groups from the links here, which suggests that all hope is not lost.
Did you create a Discord account (username and password), and log in? If not, try that, and then try following the links again to see if they take you to the right place. If that still doesn’t work, please let me know, and I’ll see if I can figure this out further. Thanks.
I did create an account, and also tried using search (on “Swedenborg”) without success. The links just take me into Discord but not beyond the front door.
Hi Todd,
Try following this invite link:
https://discord.gg/4kf4V8c
Thanks, that link worked!
Hi Todd,
I’ve been meaning to reach out to you ever since our discussion was abruptly halted on the Discord server. If you’re interested in continuing the conversation, we could do so here, in the comment section of one of the posts on a related subject.
Hi Todd,
Okay, I did a little more research. I have now replaced the links in the post with invite links that shouldn’t expire for the two servers. Give them a try, and see if they work for you.
Hi Lee,
I found this link from an OTLE related search I saw when typing in their website called:
http://www.swedenborgstudy.com/sciences/sciences.htm
It talks about NDEs, sciences, correspondence and other “Swedenborg Studies”. I was just browsing it and there is stuff that makes sense that aligns with Swedenborg’s writings and then there is other parts of it of it that seems like Swedenborg wouldn’t say that it’s interpreted through today’s pop spirituality than true spirituality. I could be wrong through. But regardless I’m sure like anything else there is people who read Swedenborg as what he meant to say and others take what he says and twist it to fit their narrative. I’m sure there is all kinds of Swedenborg stuff online (I don’t go looking for any other Swedenborg related stuff) but I was just curious and wanted to ask you about that and how not to let other peoples interpretations of like Swedenborg or the Bible weigh you down? There so many people who say “is the accurate way of seeing and thinking”?
Thank you Lee
Hi Sam,
Yes, there are many different views of Swedenborg’s writings even among people who accept them as a genuine revelation. Some are quite fundamentalist in their views, others are quite liberal, and there’s everything in between.
I have had some contact with Ian Thompson, who runs that website, but not enough to get a clear sense of his perspective on Swedenborg in relation to his own academic specialty, which is physics. Being a physicist, he knows far more about physics than I do. What I don’t know is where he stands in his understanding and interpretation of Swedenborg’s writings.
At any rate, if there are any specific ideas or articles there that you had questions about, feel free to run them by me, and I’ll respond as best I can. Although I’m not a scientist, I am a Swedenborgian theologian, so I can respond from that perspective.
Hi Sam,
Oh, about how I don’t let other people’s interpretations of Swedenborg or the Bible weigh me down, I’ve been studying both all my life. I’m quite versed and quite stable in my understanding of them.
I rarely encounter something in relation to Swedenborg and the Bible that I haven’t at least thought about before, and don’t already have some perspective on. When I do run across something brand new, it is quite exciting! But that is the exception rather than the rule when I read other Swedenborgians’ stuff.
Not many people are original thinkers. Most have adopted the perspective of the organization they are aligned with (which is why they’re aligned with it), and think along those lines. If you understand the general position and perspective of that organization, its members and thinkers generally fall within the boundaries of that system. Of course, there are variations on the theme, but they still fit within the theme.
Hi Lee,
Thank you as always for your help and for the guidance when navigating these subjects and life in general. And it’s interesting how a lot of thoughts that are brought forth that there’s nothing new about it and how there are whole groups that share those same thoughts. So really there’s nothing new to be surprised about!
I wonder how within these groups that there can be such elaborate and detailed explanations that is shared and experienced by so many of its people and yet are wrong? Would that be like you said the group in that part of the spiritual world just confirming each others beliefs?
But I don’t really have a specific question on anything within that website it was just a general one. But it did bring up a question though! I remembered watching a video from OTLE called Spiritual Physics – Swedenborg and Life and they had Ian Thompson talking about “Minds” which when I was watching I got confused when he talked about it. I wasn’t sure if he was talking about how our minds are physical from some sort of physics or that he was just using Swedenborg’s spiritual knowledge as a correspondent to explain physical phenomena?
Thank you kindly again Lee
Hi Sam,
In the video, Ian Thompson is talking about the correspondence between spiritual and physical phenomena. He isn’t saying that the mind is physical. He’s saying that physical phenomena and processes such as quantum physics reflect, or correspond to, spiritual phenomena.
About groups of people having elaborate and detailed explanations that are shared and experienced by the people in the group and yet are wrong, two thoughts:
First, it helps to think of groups of people as individual human beings in larger form. This is the “universal human” concept, but on a smaller scale. Not only heaven as a whole, but each community of heaven, Swedenborg says, is in human form. Not that it’s literally shaped like a human body, but that it functions mentally and emotionally like a human being, in a spiritual form that corresponds to the human body.
If we think of a whole group of people, such as a church or a company or a non-profit organization, as being like one person in a larger form, it helps to picture how whole groups of people can think along the same lines, have the same types of experiences, and interpret them in the same general way.
Second, about how elaborate and detailed wrong ideas can get, it helps to understand that evil and falsity are simply a distorted and inverted form of good and truth. If good and truth are elaborate and detailed, so are evil and falsity.
Going back to the “universal human” idea, consider that just as heaven as a whole is like a human being on the largest possible scale, so hell as a whole is like a distorted, upside-down human being on the largest possible scale. Every detail that is in the “body” of heaven is also in the “body” of hell, but in distorted form.
This is how people can come up with beliefs and ideologies that are fundamentally false, and yet are incredibly detailed in their description and detail. There may be thousands or even millions of people all working away at describing this or that aspect or detail of a belief or ideology, and yet the whole complex system of thought is fundamentally false, which means that every detail of it is also false.
Even if something that’s true is brought into that false system as support, the true thing gets falsified, and becomes false, because it is being understood incorrectly and used to support something that’s false.
As an example in religion, Luther’s doctrine of justification by faith alone is fundamentally false. It is specifically rejected by the Bible in the one place that the Bible even mentions faith alone. And yet, an entire branch of (corrupted) Christianity, Protestantism, takes justification by faith alone as the central tenet of its doctrinal system. Thousands, if not millions, of sermons, articles, books, webpages, and so on have been written applying Luther’s doctrine to every aspect of God, the Bible, faith, and life. And yet, the entire edifice is false, because it is built on a false foundation.
Even if something true is brought into the discussion to support Luther’s doctrine, that truth becomes false. For example, the idea that Jesus saves us from our sins. That is biblical and true. And yet, under Luther’s doctrine, it is turned into Jesus saving us from the penalty for our sins, which is a distortion and a falsification of what the Bible says. Yes, by extension Jesus saves us from the penalty of our sins. But what the Bible says is that Jesus saves us from our sins. Being saved from the penalty of our sins is a result of that salvation from sin. Protestantism gets it exactly backwards, which means even this true teaching from the Bible becomes false in the minds of doctrinal Protestants. Though it’s a tangent, for a fuller explanation of the difference, please see:
Did Jesus Really Die to Pay the Penalty for our Sins?
Circling back to your question, the main point here is that large groups of people can share a particular belief, and can put out massive amounts of material explaining that belief and applying it to all aspects of life, and yet that belief can still be false from the ground up. Evil and falsity are a distorted mirror image of good and truth. This means that evil and falsity are every bit as complex and detailed as good and truth.
Hi Lee,
Thank you for the further explanation about the video and for explaining why people interpret the way they do which really gets to the core of people’s experiences. It’s also amazing what Swedenborg wrote and of course the Bible how they can be applied to every aspect of our lives like the reasons why people interpret, think, and experience the way they do. Like how the universal human can be applied to not just communities in heaven but even to churches, companies, groups here in earthly reality. I never thought about that before like even if you brought truth into that community they will twist it into falsity. And of course Heaven with all its details there is going to be the exact opposite with Hell with all its details which is so true and makes so much sense and really helped put things into perspective! It’s basically a house built on the wrong foundation which everything up will also be wrong.
Thank you again Lee