July 3, 2026 Show with Terry & Tony Cowley on “The Extremely Rare Testimonies of 2 Siblings in the Cult of Swedenborgianism Who Found Salvation in Jesus Christ”

Live from historic downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, home of founding father James Wilson, 19th century hymn writer George Duffield, 19th century gospel minister George Norcross, and sports legend Jim Thorpe.

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Good afternoon, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com. This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Friday.

Today, on this Independence Day Eve, Friday, July 3rd, 2026, and I am absolutely thrilled that the day has finally come for a special interview that I have been anticipating for quite some time. In fact, I could be wrong, but I think this may be the first interview of its kind ever anywhere in the history of interviews.

And this all came about, it began with years ago, probably over 20 years ago, my dear friend, Dr. James R. White of Alpha and Omega Ministries and I had an inside joke about how much I loved to say the word Swedenborgianism.

And in fact, there was a time where very often I could be heard saying at the beginning of my program, when I was inviting listeners to submit questions, I would say we welcome questions from Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Catholics, and even Swedenborgianists.

And this inside joke between Dr. White and I actually became a subject of more serious investigation on my part. And of course, there is a chapter in Kingdom of the Cults by Walter Martin on Swedenborgianism.

And later on in the days of podcasts on YouTube, I began to see a growing number of YouTube programs proselytizing this religion known as Swedenborgianism, founded by a brilliant scientist in Sweden in the 18th century.

He himself did not establish a religion, but he developed teachings and wrote a lot of works expounding his own theological beliefs and thoughts. And later, his followers were to establish a religion based on these teachings known as Swedenborgianism, and the churches are known as the Church of the New Jerusalem and more recently, New Church.

Well, I wanted to interview someone who had left this group and become a born-again believer, especially because I believed that discussing this group, Swedenborgianism, had growing relevance because the number of people globally who have come to believe in intelligent life on other planets has certainly grown.

And the fascination of this subject has intensified, especially when we are hearing almost daily about unexplained flying objects. They used to be called UFOs, now they're called UAPs. And we'll be hearing about government cover-ups as to what these things really are.

And the religion known as Swedenborgianism is, I think, a prime lure to people who are UAP groupies, people who are totally overwhelmed with fascination with life on other planets, because even back in the 1800s, Emanuel Swedenborg believed in intelligent life on other planets.

And not only that, he believed and taught that he personally communicated with them. I was about to give up finding former members of this group. I had scoured the Internet looking for interviews on other programs and podcasts with people that had left Swedenborgianism and had become born-again, Bible-believing Christians, and I found none.

I even consulted AI. AI could not come up with anyone. The closest person I found to what I was looking for chose to remain anonymous. He runs a podcast, I think that had a limited number of episodes, called Planted by the Waters.

He is a former Swedenborgianist who had a series of podcasts where he laid out the discrepancies between the teachings of Emanuel Swedenborg and Holy Scripture. But he chose to remain anonymous, there's no contact information for him, and I'm not even really sure what Christian faith he currently adheres to.

So I don't even know how to contact this person. And then I just thought of posting an advertisement on Facebook saying that I was looking for former members of the Church of the New Jerusalem, aka New Church, aka Swedenborgianism, who had become born-again believers in Christ Jesus.

And not long after posting that ad, a friend of one of my guests today contacted me and gave me his contact information. And that is what led to, by God's providence, our interview today. We have joining us Terry Cattarano and her brother Tony Cowley, who are both members of a prominent family within Swedenborgianism for many, many years.

And they have both, by the grace and mercy of Jesus Christ, been led out of that group. They are born-again believers, and in fact, Tony Cowley is an ordained minister in both the Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America and the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church denomination.

But first of all, it's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the first time, Terry Cattarano.

Hello. I'm so pleased and amazed to be here. I was totally out of the blue when I found an ad on Facebook about this.

And it's great to also welcome you for the very first time, member to Orange Rope and Zion Radio, Tony Cowley.

It's really good to be here. I've gotten the opportunity to listen to about seven or eight of your different broadcasts over the years, and I've enjoyed them all. So at first I was a little scared, you know, this guy out of the blue, what's he think, what's he like?

And he happens to know about seven zillion people that I know. So we had a lot of friends in common and a lot of theological things in common. But yeah, it was a real pleasure to be here.

Just out of curiosity, am I correct in my suspicion that you two are the first to ever conduct a public interview on leaving Swedenborgianism and becoming born-again believers in Christ?

Well, I've never heard of anybody else, but that doesn't mean we're first. It only means I haven't heard of anything.

I would think that there are others that have had similar experiences. But have they been interviewed?

That's my point. Dr. Walter Martin did research on it, but I don't see anything about any live interviews and things like that. Right, yes. I'm sorry, what? I did meet Dr. Walter Martin. I went to a discussion at a church, a Christian church, on the kingdom of the cults.

It was before I was saved. And I had a little argument with one of his supporters. And he was upset about our false doctrine about the Trinity. And he sang to me, God in three persons, blessed Trinity.

And I didn't think that was really a very persuasive argument, but God got me anyway.

Well, amen. And by the way, I am a friend of the late Walter Martin's, one of Walter Martin's daughters, Cindy Martin Morgan. And she has actually been on my program. She is a tireless advocate for the life of the unborn.

And she's an author and a very sweet lady. But I think it would be wise for us, first of all, especially since this is a widely unknown religion, Swedenborgianism, a .k .a. Church of the New Jerusalem, a .k .a. New Church.

So I think it'd be wise for us to have an outline of exactly what this church teaches and some background on Emanuel Swedenborg himself. And Terri, would you like to start?

I think Tony will be better at that. Okay. Since he has background, nation.

So Swedenborg was born in 1688 in Sweden. His birth name was Emanuel Sedberg. And his father was a bishop in the Lutheran Church and a professor of theology in one of the seminaries in Sweden. And he lived from 1688 and he died in 1772.

He had corresponded with John Wesley. He was familiar with Isaac Newton. He moved about and he was published as a scientist. He was very interested in mining because Sweden's main product at that time was mining.

And he became a mining engineer and an expert in that. And he was published in Europe. He made, I think it was three or four trips to different parts of Europe before his experience and was published and studied under Linnaeus and some of the great botanists and biologists.

And he learned, he would live with somebody like a glass grinder and he'd learn how to make telescopes and he made his own telescopes. And so he's listed in the Guinness World Book of Records as possibly the greatest genius in the world.

Wow. Not an idiot. Oh, and I heard... At least because they're intellectually weak.

Right. And I heard there was some similarities between Emanuel Swedenborg and Leonardo da Vinci because they both had developed designs for aircraft and submarines and I think even machine guns. So there was an interesting similarity between those two men living in different centuries.

I don't know. He was da Vinci of the north.

Oh, yes. Actually, that was one of the phrases somebody used. Oh, really? Of him. Really? Yeah. Oh, okay.

I didn't even know that. Yeah. And so how did he shift from an emphasis on science to a fascination with the spirit and religious realm so much so that he began writing prolifically on it and eventually to the point where he has a massive multi-volume series of theological textbooks?

How many books is that?

It depends on how you count what are considered canonical versus non-canonical. Some of the things he wrote, like there's a book called The Word Explained, which was stuff he was doing during his preparatory phase.

But I read a number as low as 18. I always thought it was more like 30, about 30 volumes. And so there's 12 volumes, I just believe, of the Arcana Celestia, which covers Genesis and Exodus. And that was the first thing he published.

Later, he had four volumes called Apocalypse Explained. And some people don't think those are canonical because he has a two-volume Apocalypse Revealed. So some of the things he published in his own lifetime and got them out there.

Other things he had ready for publication and they didn't get published or near to that.

Now, when you say not canonical, are you saying that they could be forgeries?

No, no, no. It's just that they're all known to be by him. That's a good question.

But the Swedenborgians don't recognize him as The Word.

Right. They believe that his writings are the means of the second coming. And the three denominations of Swedenborgians have slightly different interpretations of what it means. But the one we were raised in and the one that my uncle, our uncles, were bishops of, the General Church of the New Jerusalem and the Nova Herzolma, the Lord's New Church, both believe that the writings are themselves The Word.

The Third Testament is the way they like to refer to it. And they also would say that the Third Testament has an internal sense as well. Some of them say that that's the definition of the parts. Not all the Bible makes it into what they call The Word.

So there's a statement in Arcana Celestia where Swedenborg says, these books have a continuous internal sense. That means that they have a natural sense, a sense of the letter, a spiritual sense, which has to do with man's regeneration and progress and holiness, and a celestial sense, which has to do with the love of the Lord, what the Lord himself experienced as he was on Earth.

So there's three levels of meaning. And those that have a continuous internal sense are in The Word. But those that don't maybe were inspired or authoritative at some level, but they wouldn't be considered canonical for the Swedenborgians.

So the General Church has a book they put out called The Word. The Convention still just uses the Bible. But that has, only in the New Testament, the four Gospels and Revelation, the Book of Acts, all the letters of Paul, Hebrews, all the Catholic epistles of John and James and Peter and Jude, and the Book of Revelation itself gets in.

But Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and Revelation are in the New Testament. That's all they have for the Second Testament. For the Old Testament, they leave out Chronicle, Ruth, Esther, Song of Solomon, Proverbs, and I think that's about it.

They have First and Second Kings, First and Second…. No, they don't have Chronicle. So anyway, they would say that these books are not fully inspired, and they would say they're good books for the Church.

And sometimes Swedenborg will quote from Colossians 2 .9, one of his favorite verses, in him dwelleth the fullness of Godhead bodily. And say, the Word says, and he'll quote it. So they can be a little inconsistent, or Swedenborg himself can be a little inconsistent on that.

And it's only one number in the work of Arcana Celestia that is the basis of what they do as far as saying these are in the Word and these are not in the Word. Most Swedenborgians today would be probably more familiar with the rest of the Bible than they were when I was growing up in the Church.

My father's pastor, my father-in-law's pastor here in Pittsburgh, he actually was studying at the Reformed Presbyterian Seminary, and he took his people through the Pauline Epistles and the other books.

And my father-in-law, I was living with him as he was in his older years, and he said, boy, I'm reading this book called Acts. It's almost like a book from the Bible.

I said, it is. That relates to my testimony, too, because I had never read Acts. And Acts, which, of course, tells what happened in the early Church and how the apostles and others continued walking with Jesus and the miracles and signs and wonders that happened, as well as the preaching of the gospel and the growing of the Church.

I had never read Acts. And I was led to read Acts in the process of my conversion as the Lord was bringing me to him. And I was trying to bring somebody else away to Swedenborgianism.

And we will get to that fascinating story soon. But I understand that Immanuel Swedenborg, at the genesis of his theological development, if you will, he had some kind of very bizarre vision involving snakes or something.

Can you explain that in more detail?

Well, just from memory, he was in a tavern.

Oh, yeah, that always starts in a tavern, doesn't it?

Strange visions. Not necessarily drinking too heavily, but he said he saw an alarming mass of reptiles on the ground. And he saw a man appear to him and said, eat not so much. And then the night after that, the same man appeared to him and said, I'm the Lord Jesus Christ, and I'm going to use you as the means of my advent, my second advent.

I'm not sure Terry Prairie has it written down there.

Yes, I have that quote here. I went home, and during the night, the same man revealed himself to me again. But I was not frightened now. He said that he was the Lord God, the creator of the world and the redeemer, and that he had chosen me to explain to men the spiritual sense of the scriptures, and that he himself would explain to me what I should write on the subject.

That same night also were open to me so that I became thoroughly convinced of their reality, the world of spirits, heaven and hell, and I recognized there many acquaintances of every condition of life.

From that day, I gave up the study of all worldly science and labored in spiritual things, according as the Lord had commanded me to write. Afterwards, the Lord opened daily, very often, the eyes of my spirit so that in the middle of the day, I could see into the other world, and in the state of perfect wakefulness, converse with angels and spirits.

He was not always certain that these experiences were from God. One biographer, George Trowbridge, who's a biographer of favorable towards Swedenborg, wrote, he even felt at times that malign spirits had taken possession of him and were endeavoring to force him to commission of evil, which he would not do.

And then Swedenborg said, of some of his writings, Swedenborg stated, it seemed to them, the spirits, as if certain ones were holding my hand and were writing, claiming that they were the ones who were writing.

And even though he saw the potential danger of his traffic with the spirits, his caution was overcome by his intense curiosity and sense of divine mission. Wow, that's creepy.

So, it's very important for us to set the stage before we get to your personal salvation testimonies. What were the core beliefs that he would eventually develop and teach that are at odds with biblical Christianity?

I'll give it to you right from the newchurch .org website, which is the general church that we were raised in. Our Lord Jesus Christ is the one loving God. The Bible is God speaking through literal stories and a systematic inner meaning Love is the essential message of Scripture.

Life after death, heaven and angels are all real. People freely choose their eternal destiny. Salvation is progressive and involves an ongoing process of spiritual growth. Happiness comes when we let God inspire our daily work and service to others.

Marriage, love can become spiritual and continue to eternity. So, each point, this is a really good website. You press the button and you can go on and go deeper and go deeper. Swedenborg said that the old church, which is the church of the Protestants and Catholics, the whole church of the Nicene Creed, the Trinitarian church, had become corrupt and he had different problems with the Catholics and the Protestants, but he doesn't like the traditional, he believes that we Trinitarians are tritheists, that we believe in three gods.

He said you can't take the Athanasian Creed any other way. If you understand that they say that Jesus or the Son is God by himself, the Spirit is God by himself and the Father is God by himself. He believed in three gods, not one God.

And although the Athanasian Creed is probably the toughest one in some ways in terms of how it has some very damnatory clauses and so forth, he often speaks about it. I guess the Lutherans used it a lot, so he grew up with it.

And it is a strong creed, but it also does, it pushes the envelope on the Trinity in ways that the Nicene Creed doesn't. And so he plays with that and he writes in his writings, he brings up the Athanasian Creed a lot, and he says that if you believe it is a Trinity of a person instead of persons, then everything's fine.

So he says that Jesus is the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, that Jesus' soul is the Father, that the body is the Son, and the effect is the Spirit. And so he's a Unitarian, Jesus-only, some Jesus-only Pentecostals.

He's close to being a Modalist or a Sabellian. Those are historic heresies in the early church. And he has a form of those kinds of things. But yes, Jesus is the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. So I can say Jehovah is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

I can say Jesus is Jehovah. But I cannot say Jesus is the Father, and I cannot say Jesus is the Spirit of Christ, the one that comes to us. So especially since Pentecost, the Spirit of Jesus is the one that comes and brings to us the effects and the work of redemption and applies Christ to us.

But you can say he's the Spirit of Christ. But personally, there's different three persons in one God.

When you brought up the Oneness Pentecostals, I'm sure there are many things that Immanuel Swedenborg taught that they, even being heretics themselves, the Oneness Pentecostals, would denounce vociferously, contacting the dead and things that are even blatantly forbidden in the Scriptures.

That would be necromancy, of course, punishable by death in the Old Covenant. But do you know of any direct connection between the origins of Oneness Pentecostalism and Immanuel Swedenborg? I'm just curious.

I don't know of any. And I met some Oneness Pentecostals, and it starts with the baptism in Acts. There's a good argument. Swedenborg wouldn't use that argument. The Jesus-only argument is they're baptized in the book of Acts in the name of Jesus only.

And so sometimes you never see Father, Son, and Holy Spirit used. So if you want to use the book of Acts, which Swedenborgians generally don't, that's as good as it's going to get for them on the Jesus-only side.

And another—go ahead, I'm sorry.

I don't know of any connections between the Jesus-only Pentecostals and Swedenborgianism. No, I think they—like Tony said, they derived it from a few verses in the Bible. Right.

One of the most egregious errors in Swedenborgianism is, unlike the scriptures that teach that salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone, and Christ alone, Swedenborg actually taught a blatant works righteousness salvation, did he not?

He would say it's as of self. So you have to see what you're doing as if you're doing it as of yourself. They would say, in a sense, kind of like Catholic theology would say, that God is the one at work in you when you're doing these things.

So to give them some credit, they would look at this as a matter of grace. But you must—they don't see the—really, if you're going to look at the critical problems, they don't see the fall the way the Bible sees the fall.

So mankind is not dead in his trespasses and sins and the uncircumcision of his flesh. All mankind, by their fall, did not lose communion with God. They're not under his wrath. He has no wrath, nor under his curse.

They are made liable to all the pains of this life and to death itself. But death was planned. That's not an effect of the fall. There is no—there's no inherent problem in the God-man difference in their view.

So if you're going to be justified or saved, saving—salvation for them is just loving the Lord and turning away from your sins. And therefore, faith is—you need faith. It's necessary. If you're in the Christian world, they would say you need faith in Jesus.

But they believe that Muslims get to heaven. Atheists get to heaven. All kinds of people can get to heaven as long as they're sincere. So that's not worth salvation.

In one God who's the creator, I think.

Eventually, yeah, I think they would qualify that. But they even have Muslim heavens and so forth.

Well, I mean, that is proof. Right. No matter how they sweeten it up, it's still a worse righteousness system when you can have people of many religions entering into eternal life. It has to be based on performance in some way.

Well, you know, I guess the reason I hesitated at all to put it that way is that they don't see righteousness itself the way we see it. So they're not seeing merit or demerit. God is just all love. He's like the sun in heaven, shining out love.

And sometimes the clouds might block the sun. Our sins do get in the way. But they're just transactional problems. They're just blocking it. God has no wrath. God does not hate sin. They don't need to like the word hatred for sin.

My brother and I have argued about this. Now, I don't know how technically Swedenborg would quote the Bible about that and so forth. But so if there's no wrath, there's no need for God penalty for this propitiation of his wrath.

And so that's where you have a Jesus did go to the cross and that was his last temptation. And that's how he overcame the hell. So salvation for them is God coming down from heaven to clear up the spiritual fog that had happened because of faith alone or that happened during the first coming, how all the devils were possessing people.

And so Jesus had to come down and through fighting the devil, which he did do, of course, through fighting temptations, he put off the very human, put on the divine human so that the nature, the Trinity is a problem.

But the two natures of Christ, I would say, is even a bigger problem. So the Chalcedonian definition, although the Athanasian definition, that's important. But the Chalcedonian definition of the church, that ecumenical council is very important because it shows that the two natures of Christ are distinct and although never separate, one person in two distinct natures, but not mixing, not combining the natures, but one person doing it.

And so that's where they are more traditional heretics, historical heretics, really, than probably in any other way.

And before we go to the break, go ahead. I'm sorry.

No, go ahead. Go to the break and I'll start this when you come back. Sure.

And I just wanted to further whet the appetite of our listeners to continue listening about this. It may surprise many of them to learn that famous people in history who have been highly influenced by Immanuel Swedenborg, his teachings, that is, include Helen Keller, Ralph Waldo Emerson, William Blake, Carl Jung, and, of course, the famous Johnny Appleseed Chapman.

But we are going to our first break, and if you have a question for my guests, Terry Caterano and her brother, Tony Cowley, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com. As always, give us your first name at least, city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside the USA.

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Welcome back. If you just tuned us in, my two guests today are Terri Caterano and her sister, Toni Cowley, who are two— I'm sorry, Terri Caterano and Toni Cowley. Did I say that right? Or did I—. My brother.

Your sister. Oh. I'm Terri, I'm his sister, and he's the brother. Yes. Getting a little modern there, Chris.

I knew that, but somehow screwed it up. And we may be making history today because this may be the very first ever interview with converts out from the religious organization known as Swedenborgianism, whose churches are known as Church of the New Jerusalem, and more recently in history, New Church.

And I have searched the Internet for over a year and even consulted AI to find other former members of Swedenborgianism who have become born-again believers in Christ Jesus and could not find any until I advertised on Facebook that I wanted to interview such folks.

And a friend of one of my guests, Toni Cowley, contacted me and set this interview up, and I'm so delighted to have both Terri Caterano and her brother, Toni Cowley, on the show today. And I just want to quickly add something, a bit of trivia that might interest our listeners.

Both Terri and Toni are related to the very talented actor Jake Gyllenhaal and his sister Maggie Gyllenhaal, another very talented actress. And they are from another prominent Swedenborgianist family, although, from what I understand, Jake and Maggie's father left Swedenborgianism either before the two actors were born or when they were very young, so they were not raised at all in Swedenborgianism.

I just thought I'd throw that out there because it is interesting. And before the break, Terri Caterano was just about to say something in relation to the heresies of Swedenborgianism, and if you care to continue where I interrupted you.

Well, I was just going to say that Swedenborg's diary reflects a fairly orthodox Christian faith prior to his revelations, but he gradually rejected every cardinal doctrine of the faith. Whereas he had previously fled the blood and merits of Christ and recognized the Trinity, he gradually lost all knowledge of religion as he submitted to the spirits.

And when he began having his dreams and visions, he often experienced violent tremors and frustrations and prances and sweating and swooning following his spiritual adventures. And that's a symptom that's common to spiritist mediums.

He seemed to his friends at times to be in another world as he failed to even respond to their greetings. So having been raised in a Lutheran church by a father who was highly regarding the Lutheran church, he didn't know and was a bishop.

Yes, that's right. He was a bishop. And he was moved in royal circles as well. So, yes, he started out fairly orthodox. These demonic spirits that he thought were angels and spirits from God corrupted his faith, and he believed them.

And it just proves the Bible's warnings. He especially hated Paul and wanted him removed from the New Testament. But Paul sternly warns against being deceived by deceiving spirits.

In one of the Swedenborginist podcasts, I heard that he taught Paul was in hell. Correct?

Yes. He taught that. And I think Calvin is there too.

King David. Even King David.