Children in Heaven

by Chauncey Giles

www.swedenborgdigitallibrary.org/cheav/childheav1.htm

Topics Discussed

1. Who is a child/infant?

2. Death of a child

3. Motherly Angels

4. Children’s education in heaven

5. Death of an embryo

I. Who is a child/infant?

¨Webster’s Dictionary definition of a child:

1. a baby; infant 2. a young boy or girl

A. A child is anyone, under “normal conditions,” who has not developed a mental state where they are capable of identifying the difference between good and evil. They are children because they have not developed a conscience.

→ those kept in ignorance

→ those subjected to the corruption of evil influences

→ those stimulated by to do evil by example

♦ “These people are innocent of wrong against the Lord or man.”

II. Death of a Child

A. It is only a physical death.

♦“What seems to us as death is seen to e entrance into life.”

→ When we mourn for the death of a child we should feel more for the friends and family members who remain in the physical world.

B. All children chose heaven.

When a child physically dies it becomes conscience of the spiritual world. Truths, and love are taught to the child. Evil is also revealed to the child in order for them to reject it. These children, understand truths and chose heaven.

¨“The little one, innocent of wrong against the Lord or man, is taken from the midst of influences which could not fail to corrupt its moral nature, and placed in the best conditions for its spiritual health and happiness.”

III. Motherly Angels

A. Just as here on earth, children that live in the spiritual world also need a mother.

♦“They need instruction and parental care…”

® These angels are very special angels and don’t have to be from the highest spiritual heaven. They are simply angels that had a very strong love for children in the natural world.

B. Love of a child

♦”as soon as infants are raised from the dead, they are carried up into Heaven, and delivered to the care, of angels of the female sex…when in the world, loved all infants from a sort of maternal tenderness, they receive them as their own, and the infants also, from an affection implanted in them, love them as their own mothers.”

♦”We will love it with an affection as deep and pure as your own; we will supply its every want…We will more than fulfill your fondest hopes and largest expectations.”

IV. Children’s education in Heaven

A. Teachers

♦“The lord provides for them the best educators in the universe.”

® They are given teachers that understand and are experts in the intelligence of the child.

B. What do the children learn?

¨“It is the love that determines what one learns. Children in heaven learn about spiritual life and truths--conscience, sin, God, angels, heaven, uses, altruism, etc.”

® They don’t learn about anything that does not apply to the spiritual world.

(No math, biology, history, etc.)

V. Death of an embryo

A. What can we make of unborn babies?

® A fertilized egg has a soul that is alive, but not a spirit or mind.

® If the baby is born without taking a breath of air, and opening the lungs, then the spirit is not alive or opened because it is the action of the lungs that allows the spirit or mind to be born.

® They embryo dies, but the soul lives on in heaven.

® The fetuses are unconscious and have not personality or human experiences.

B. What part of the spiritual world do the embryos reside in?

® The soul goes to the Heaven of Human Internals, which is located between the highest heaven and the Spiritual Sun.

C. What is the purpose of an embryo in heaven?

® The embryos are more holy than angels.

® The souls of these embryos serve a special function of filtering the Lord’s influx before it passes on to the highest angels.

® The embryos never become people because they never developed a spirit or mind.