The Lord is the God of heaven and earth. He is the Divine creator, and is also an approachable, loving, human God who reaches out to all of us. He is one, though there is a Trinity within Him. The aspects of the Trinity—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—make one God, just as soul, body, and activity make one person.

The Lord is love itself and wisdom itself, and is incapable of anger or coldness towards any human being. His greatest purpose and His heart’s desire is to create a heaven from the human race. So He is present with every human being, working with us in countless ways to bend the paths of our lives towards heaven and eternal joy. Read more about God.

The Word, or the Bible, is where God teaches us. In the pages of His Word He tells us about Himself and eternal life, and He tells us that happiness (in this life and to eternity) is found when we live according to His commandments.

We can read the Word on many different levels. There is a literal meaning, a history of God's relationship with His people, and a deeper symbolic meaning which teaches us about our own spiritual lives. On the deepest level the Word is about God's love for all people and His work to bring us close to Himself in heaven. This symbolic meaning is called the "internal sense" of the Word. Read more about the Word.

Jesus said that the two great commandments are to love God and to love other people, and that every other teaching in the Word depends on these two commandments. What we love determines who we are, and whether or not we go to heaven. Heaven is where our hearts rest—and where we go after death—when we love God and the neighbor above all else. Read more about love.

We open ourselves to God’s love by turning away from evil and learning to do what is good. When we do these things His love is shared with us, and it inspires us to live useful and productive lives for the sake of others. This gives us joy and a sense of purpose, and prepares us for eternal life in heaven.

God doesn’t force us to receive His love. He guards our spiritual freedom carefully, because if we aren’t free to choose what we love, we have no real identity. Because we are spiritually free, we can reject His unselfish love and choose to love ourselves more than anything else—and this is the origin of evil. But because we are free, we also have the ability to turn away from evil and find mercy and purpose with God. Read more about the meaning of life.

Being saved, or born again, doesn’t happen in a single moment; and simply saying that we believe in God is not enough. To have faith in God is to live as He teaches: as we do this we are made new, little by little, by the love that we receive from Him.

The New Church teaches that every person who acknowledges God and lives according to the Ten Commandments is saved and goes to heaven. The Lord works through many churches in many nations to make sure that all people have the opportunity to learn these basic principles of religion. Read more about faith and salvation.

The New Church teaches that when we die, we do not really die: we merely leave this world behind and wake up in a new world, a spiritual world. In that world our earthly griefs and confusions will gradually and gently be healed, and who we truly are will come to light. Where in that spritual world we make our home will depend on who we truly are.

The Lord’s goal is to create a heaven from the human race—in other words, He wants everyone to go to heaven. Everyone who has striven to keep His commandments and to love God and the neighbor is received into heaven after death, and becomes an angel. No one is thrown into hell; but people who don’t want to love God and the neighbor also find that they don’t want to live in heaven, where those loves reign. So they choose hell of their own accord.

Heaven is just as real as this world, and the bodies of the angels are just as real as bodies that we have right now—the only difference is that angels’ bodies are more beautiful and more perfect, because they are eternal. Heaven is not a place of leisure: the angels find their joy in lives of useful service to God and to the neighbor. Read more about heaven and life after death.

A marriage is truly a spiritual covenant between a man and a woman, and the love shared by a couple who are united this way is a beautiful gift from the Lord. When married partners look to the Lord and apply His teachings both to themselves as individuals and to their marriage, troubled times can be overcome, and true married love can grow. This love produces peace, trust, and inmost friendship. Marriages in which this love is present do not end with death, but continue to eternity. Read more about marriage and love in marriage.

When Jesus was born on earth, His purpose was to save His people from spiritual darkness. Some people expected Him to establish an earthly kingdom, but that wasn’t why He was there: He had come as a Savior and a teacher of spiritual truth. Earthly things were simply not His priority.

Similar things can be said of His second coming. There are passages in the Word that seem to say that the world will end when the Lord comes again, but that’s not what those passages really mean. His goal is to save people and lead them to heaven; how would ending the world serve that purpose?

The New Church teaches that the Lord has already made His second coming, not in person but by means of a new revelation. Over the centuries after He made His first advent, the world gradually descended into spiritual darkness once again. So He brought new light to the world—and He did this by means of the books that were written in the eighteenth century by a man named Emanuel Swedenborg. In the New Church these books are known as the Heavenly Doctrine, and also as the Writings. The Writings show us how to see the Lord within His Word, and shine new light on the core message He has always taught: if we follow Him and keep His commandments, He will lead us to eternal happiness.

This new relvelation is not to be believed because Swedenborg wrote it, but because it’s founded on the Bible, because it shows us how to understand the Bible, and because its teachings make sense. It invites us to use our rational minds, to see God and His creation in clear light, and to do the most obvious thing of all: to live like loving God and the neighbor is what matters most. Read more about the Second Coming and the new Christianity.