I often hear New Church men and women share the teachings that a person does not need to be Christian to be saved –that a mechanism for salvation is present in all religions. This is true.
What is less commonly discussed is the reality that, while Heaven may be accessible through many religions, those religions don’t all provide equal access. Some religions lead closer to the Lord than others.
Some paths are better than others.
This idea drives me to share the New Christianity with others. Sure, they aren’t damned for not being Christian, but the quality of their eternal life could be so much more joyful if they were!
“The whole of heaven is, in the Lord’s sight, like a single person. So, too, the church…
In that person, the church where the Word is read, and where the Lord is consequently known, is like the heart and lungs –the celestial kingdom being as though the heart, and the spiritual kingdom the lungs.
As the heart and lungs are the two founts of life in the human body, and all the rest of the organs and viscera subsist and have life from them, so also do all people in the world subsist and have life from the conjunction of the Lord and heaven with the church through the Word –all those who have any religion, who worship one God and live rightly, who are therefore included in that grand humanity, and relate to its organs and viscera surrounding the thoracic cavity which contains the heart and lungs. For the Word in the church, even if possessed by relatively few, is life to all the rest from the Lord through heaven, as the organs and viscera of the entire body have life from the heart and lungs. They also have a similar communication.
This, too, is the reason that Christians among whom the Word is read constitute the breast of that grand humanity. They are also at the center of all, with Roman Catholics round about them. Around them are Muslims who acknowledge the Lord as a very great prophet and as the Son of God. After them come Africans. And the outmost periphery is composed of nations and peoples from Asia and the Indies…
All those who are in that grand humanity also face toward the middle where the Christians are.
The greatest light is found in the middle where those Christians are who possess the Word, for light in the heavens is Divine truth emanating from the Lord as the sun there; and because the Word is that Divine truth, the greatest light is found where those people are who possess the Word.
From there as from its center, the light radiates out to all the surrounding areas, even to the outmost periphery. This is the source of the enlightenment of nations and peoples not in the church –also by means of the Word.”
Doctrine of Sacred Scripture 105-106