Emanuel Swedenborg

Emanuel Swedenborg (born Emanuel Swedberg; February 8, 1688 – March 29, 1772) was a pluralistic-Christian theologian, scientist, philosopher, and mystic from Sweden. Heaven and Hell, his book about the afterlife, became his most famous work (1758).

Swedenborg made a name for himself as an inventor and scientist. At the age of 53, he entered a spiritual phase in which he began to have dreams and visions, most notably during Easter Weekend, on 6 April 1744. His experiences culminated in a "spiritual awakening" in which he was revealed that Jesus Christ had appointed him to create The Heavenly Doctrine in order to reform Christianity. According to The Heavenly Doctrine, the Lord opened Swedenborg's spiritual eyes so that he could freely visit heaven and hell to converse with angels, demons, and other spirits from then on, and the Last Judgment had already occurred in 1757, the year before the publication of Concerning the New Jerusalem and its Heavenly Doctrine in 1758.

Swedenborg wrote 18 published theological writings and additional unpublished works in the last 28 years of his life. In True Christian Religion, which he self-published, he referred to himself as a "Servant of the Lord Jesus Christ." Some followers of The Heavenly Doctrine think that only theological works produced by Swedenborg himself are entirely divinely inspired. Others have considered all of Swedenborg's theological works to be equally inspired, claiming that the fact that some works were "not written out in a final edited form for publication does not make a single statement less trustworthy than the statements in any of the other works".