|
"At
its worst, heaven can be an 'effective tool for manipulation,'
says Paul Knitter, emeritus professor of theology at Xavier
University in Cincinnati. "If you can get people to
believe in a certain heaven, you can get them to do anything.'
David Koresh told his followers in Waco that if they died
with him, they would go directly to heaven."
- Why We Need Heaven, Newsweek, Aug. 12, 2002
Some
have wondered where Smith got his descriptions of the afterlife
as first described in Section 76 of the D&C.
In
D. Michael Quinn's excellent book "Early
Mormonism and the Magic World View," he gives a very
fascinating source of Smith's "revelations" on the afterlife.
Quinn offers an exhaustive examination of the sources for
the 1832 D&C Section 76 "Vision" of the "three degrees of
glory."
In fact, Smith's description of the "Celestial Kingdom"
was not only a copy from earlier written works, but also
very controversial to the Latter-Day Saints.
The diaries of Orson Pratt and John Murdock from the 1830's
record their efforts to reassure members who questioned
the 1832 vision of heaven. The two men described countless
excommunications of Mormons, including branch presidents,
who denounced "the degrees of glory" as a "satanic revelation."
Even Brigham Young had a hard time with it at first and
described it as "a trial to many."
Why were faithful Mormons choking on this idea of three
heavens?
Quinn explains that it's because members correctly recognized
it as coming from the occult. The only other sources of
separate degrees in heaven came from occult writers of Smith's
time.
For example, in 1758 a man by the name of Emanuel Swedenborg
wrote a book about his visions of the afterlife. Swedenborg
insisted: "There are three heavens," described as "entirely
distinct from each other." He called the highest heaven
"the Celestial Kingdom," and stated that the inhabitants
of the three heavens corresponded to the "sun, moon and
stars."
By Joseph Smith's own statements, he was familiar with Swedenborg's
writings. Smith told a convert by the name of Edward Hunter
that "Emanuel Swedenborg had a view of the world to come,
but for daily food he perished."
I was so fascinated by the connection that Quinn documented,
that I bought a copy of Swedenborg's book myself from Amazon.com.
It's called "Heaven
and Its Wonders and Hell and was written way before
Joseph Smith. Yet it describes the three Mormon degrees
of glory quite well.
Not
only does Quinn make a strong case that Smith knew all about
Swedenborg's ideas, but he also shows that his book "Heaven
and Hell and Its Wonders" was a book in Smith's hometown
library since 1817. Quinn also writes that "Nine miles from
Smith's farm, in 1826 the Canandaigua newspaper also advertised
Swedenborg's book for sale. The bookstore offered Swedenborg's
publications for as little as 37 cents."
If you ever want to know details about the Mormon afterlife,
read Swedenborg's book. Smith liberally plagiarized from
it to come up with his D&C "visions" of the celestial, telestial
and terrestrial kingdoms. But Swedenborg's works are definitely
the originals.
In fact,
a faithful Mormon and scholar Craig Miller has also written
on this subject in a paper titled "Did
Swedenborg Influence Mormon Doctrine?." Miller
lists 19 unique similarities between Swendenborg's fictional
"Celestial Kingdom" and that of Joseph Smith.
See
for yourself.
You
can also read some of Swedenborg's books online. Here is
the book "Heaven and Its Wonders and Hell" From Things Heard
and Seen:
http://swedenborg.newearth.org/hh/
If you go to the main page, there is more on who Emanuel
Swedenborg was and other links:
http://swedenborg.newearth.org/
|
