Editing Second Coming (section)

===Emanuel Swedenborg and the New Church===
[[Emanuel Swedenborg]], an 18th-century scientist turned theologian, taught that his time (that historians have called the [[Age of Enlightenment]]) was an age of darkness and doubt for the Christian church. Historian Marguerite Beck Block writes,

{{blockquote|Now therefore it was time for a new church to be founded upon the earth, and for this purpose it was necessary for the Lord Himself to make his Second Coming to the sons of men.

"The night is followed by a morning which is the coming of the Lord. ... The prevailing opinion in the churches at the present day is, that when the Lord shall come for the last judgment. He will appear in the clouds of heaven with angels and the sound of trumpets, etc.," but this opinion is erroneous. The Second Coming of the Lord is not a coming in person, but in spirit and in the Word, which is from 
Him, and is Himself. ... Heretofore it has not been known that 'the clouds of heaven' mean the Word in the sense of the letter, and that the 'glory and power' in which He is then to come, mean the spiritual sense of the Word, because no one as yet has had the least conjecture that there is a spiritual sense in the Word, such as this sense is in itself. But as the Lord has now opened to me the spiritual sense of the Word, and has granted me to be associated with angels and spirits in their world as one of them, it is now disclosed.

... This Second Coming of the Lord is effected by means of a man to whom the Lord has manifested Himself in Person, and whom He has filled with His Spirit, that he may teach the doctrines of the New Church from the Lord by means of the Word. ... That the Lord manifested Himself before me. His servant, and sent me to this office, ... I affirm in truth."<ref>{{cite book |last1=Block |first1=Marguerite Beck |title=The New Church in the New World |date=1932 |publisher=Henry Holt and Company |location=New York |page=38}}</ref>}}