One of our core beliefs is that we believe that there is one God, who is the God of all religions.  Different religions give God different names.  If a religion teaches people the ways of love to God and to other people, they worship the same God we believe in.

We believe that there is a place in heaven for all who show love to God and to other people, whatever their religion.

We believe that God has shown Himself in a human form that we could all connect to, as Jesus Christ.  Therefore, we worship God as the Lord Jesus Christ.

We see God as one Being with three aspects, rather like our motives, thoughts and actions are all aspects of us.

We believe that our purpose in creation is to form a heaven of angels from the human race.  If we live a good life, with love to God and to other people, we will live in heaven after we die with other angels who have similar beliefs and motives.  This is a path we choose whilst living as humans.  We can choose to be mainly good and loving to others, or mainly self-centred and worldly.

Life in the spiritual world will feel much like life on earth, but with some important differences.  When we die, we will no longer be able to hide our true thoughts and feelings – they will be apparent in our facial expressions and by the clothes we wear.  This will not be a problem for those people who live openly and honestly, but for others who hide behind a mask and act in a hypocritical way might find it very challenging.

We do believe that hell exists, but not that God sends us there.  It is a place people choose for themselves.  While we are living in the world, we make choices all of the time, whether they be loving choices or selfish choices.  People who make selfish choices would not be happy in heaven, living with angels who are loving to each other.  They are happier in hell, with other spirits who have similar ways of thinking.

We believe that there are influences around us that we are not always aware of.  Have you ever had a thought pop into your head that you can’t quite believe came from you?  Well, we believe that it probably didn’t.

We have angels and spirits with us all of the time.  The angels help God to keep us on the path to heaven and eternal happiness.  God also allows spirits who are not angels to be with us.  This is because otherwise we would not have the choice of whether to be good or bad – the choice would already be made for us by only having loving influences.

The spirits love it when we think unpleasant, selfish thoughts.  They encourage us to do so, and take great delight in seeing us unhappy, or thinking negatively about other people.

It is up to us how we react to unpleasant thoughts, whether we accept or reject them.  If we dismiss them and ask God to help us to think in a happier, more loving way, these thoughts do not become a part of us.  However, if we accept and dwell on them, they become part of our personality, a part that is more difficult to shake off.

While we are living in this world, we believe that we grow and develop spiritually.  When we are feeling receptive, we allow God to lead us towards Him and towards heaven.  He helps us to see parts of ourselves that need attention.  It may be that we are more concerned with other people’s faults than our own, or that we are sometimes unkind to others.  We all have faults like that within us.  God shows us these faults bit by bit, and gives us the tools to conquer them.  It takes a long time to overcome our faults, and we often slip back into bad habits.

If we pray to God for His help, and truly wish to be better people, He will help us to do so.  He wants us to be happy, and to live our lives in a loving, heavenly way.  We will be working on different areas of our personalities our whole lives through.  It is important to realise that we should not leave it too late to think about how we can change, and to ask God for help.  If we have not made changes whilst living in the world, the Bible teaches us that it will be too late once we reach the spiritual world.  We will already have chosen whether we are heavenly or hellish people.

We believe that the Bible is the Word of God.  It can be read on many different levels.  We see its main focus as being a presentation of symbols and parables that teach us about spiritual life, and living the way God wishes us to.

We do not take every historical fact in the Bible literally.  We may learn valuable lessons from what we read at surface level.  Once we look more deeply, we can discover that the Bible itself is like a parable, an earthly story with a heavenly meaning.  We have been provided with information to work this out ourselves, called correspondences.  They work a little bit like a key to the Bible, and help us to learn about our growth and development as spiritual beings.

Once we learn about correspondences, they can seem natural and relevant to our lives.  If we think of the sun as being the central part of our solar system, and the only way our planet can survive, we can compare this to God.  We need His warmth to keep us alive, and His light to show us the way.  His warmth corresponds to love, and His light corresponds to truth.  We need both truth and love working in our lives all of the time to keep us on God’s path.

We learn about correspondences from the writings of Emanuel Swedenborg.  He was an 18^th century scientist, philosopher and theologian.  He had made many discoveries in the field of science, and was highly thought-of in this area.  He wanted to find the soul, and when he could not find it within the human body, he began to have spiritual revelations, similar to how people describe near-death experiences.

Swedenborg’s experiences of the spiritual world continued for 28 years, while he was also maintaining a normal life.  He wrote about these experiences in thirty books, which were published and shared with the leaders of religion of his time.

After his death, churches were formed in London, and have spread across the world.  Many people have been influenced by Swedenborg’s writings, including Blake, Coleridge, Jung, Yeats, and Helen Keller, whose quote “Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all” can be seen on our home page.

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