UFOs in the Swedenborgian Church

Adapted from Daniel O'Connor's book "Only Man Bears his Image"

Founded by the Swedish scientist and theologian Emmanuel Swedenborg (†1772), the “Church” which bears his name is based on his writings, which were presented as Christian “revelations.” In the late 18th century this organization spread, and even today counts at least several thousand members. Although these messages denied the Trinity, original sin, atonement, and espoused various other heresies, they are perhaps most well-known for asserting that aliens live on the moon and other places and may be contacted through “astral travel.”

Dr. Walter Martin explains:

Emanuel Swedenborg founded the first formal religion, Swedenborgianism, based largely upon space travel and contact with extraterrestrial beings. Swedenborg’s first work, Earths in the Solar World (1758), relied on this hypothesis. In it, Swedenborg claimed to leave his body through astral projection and travel to other planets, where he gained spiritual insight from spirit-beings on Mars, Venus, Saturn, and Jupiter.[295]

Wherever we see belief in extraterrestrials creep into Christianity, however, even more outright occultism always follows. This, the first major “Christian” ET movement, was no exception:

The door opened perceptibly for popularizing occultism in the Western world and merging it with Christianity in 1743...[through] Swedenborgianism. His revelations and visions of the deceased marked a new trend among occultists and mediums, who often relied upon séances for contact with the dead. ... Many occult, esoteric, mystic, mind science, and New Age groups relied upon this groundwork for occultic contact with spirits. Swedenborg’s metaphysics shaped the thinking of nineteenth-century New England transcendentalists such as Emerson, Thoreau, Ripley, Holmes, and Alcott, who later influenced Madam Blavatsky of Theosophy, Mary Baker Eddy of Christian Science, the early twentieth-century metaphysical schools, [and more]...[296]

Swedenborg himself displayed tendencies which demonstrated he was perhaps not merely a charlatan or a fraudster. He did indeed have access to a spiritual realm—though not Heaven.

Reports circulated about his “mystical” abilities, with which he could “see” current events he was not present for and recount them accurately—well before even the first telegraph machines—a sure sign that either the diabolical or the supernatural was at play. For example, the contemporary leading scholar on Swedenborg, Dr. Jane Williams-Hogan, noted the following in an academic tome published by Routledge:

The Governor interviewed Swedenborg the next day about the fire [he had described hundreds of miles away]. He asked questions about when it began, how it had started, and how long it had lasted, and how it was finally put out. When reports came from Stockholm, they confirmed Swedenborg’s description in every detail. Needless to say, people were amazed.[297]

Since the supernatural is ruled out by the repeated heresies, we can easily discern what remains as the explanation for his “revelations” that extraterrestrials exist. Another hallmark of the diabolical is that a current event was revealed to Swedenborg—this is easy for demons, but it is much more difficult for them to reveal the future (since they do not know it and can only make very good “guesses” at its content). From the very beginning of private “revelations” transpiring within Christianity espousing belief in extraterrestrials, we see the hand of the Devil clearly at work.