I recently spoke with someone who has been reading the Writings for several months. He described his amazement that so many of the teachings in the Writings expressed truths that he already believed. “You might think I’m crazy, but I feel that when I read Swedenborg, God is speaking to me.” I replied that the same perception he has is what brought together the people who have formed the General Church and the Academy Schools
This weekend many are gathering in Bryn Athyn to celebrate the founding of the Academy of the New Church. We might wonder why this is important considering the chaos of war and political upheaval around us. Can we survive this political climate? Are we on the brink of another World War?
At a Charter Day banquet in 1943 Willard D. Pendleton spoke of preserving the General Church:
We would not leave you with the impression that we believe the organized church to be essential to man's salvation. We are not speaking tonight of the Lord's New Church, but of a human institution dedicated to the work of the New Church. It is important that we bear this in mind. For human institutions can fail, but the Lord's New Church cannot. Somehow, and in some way, it will survive the rise and fall of civilizations. The truth cannot perish. Yet at all times there must be some organization -some group that will preserve the knowledge of the Most High God. It might well be that in their order and organization they will have little in common with the General Church of today, but one thing is sure, they will, like the General Church, subscribe to the sole authority of the Writings. This faith, even if it be with a few, is imperative to the perpetuation of the Lord's New Church.
(New Church Life 1944, p. 25)
The chaos of the world does not make hearing the Lord speak to us in His new relevation less important. Rather, the rational truths of the New Church are what can bring healing to the nations.
Nineteen years later Hugo Lj. Odhner spoke at Charter Day of the role of the Academy:
The future is, of course, never as we imagine it. Yet all our uses look to the future; and reason, enlightened by the new revelation, grants us to know that the eventual happiness of mankind can be reached only by the reception—in faith and life—of the Lord in His second coming as the glorified Word, the Heavenly Doctrine, the Spirit of truth that leadeth unto all truth.
(New Church Life, 1963, p. 70)