July 30, 2026 Show with Ian Rose on “Another Man’s Journey Out From the Grip of Emanuel Swedenborg Into the Saving Embrace of the True Jesus Christ of Scripture”

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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 Thursday.

On this 30th day of July 2026, I am delighted to have a first-time guest along with two co-hosts that have been on my program before. Today, we have the privilege of interviewing Ian Rose, who was born and raised in a prominent family within the cult whose teachings are rooted in the many writings of brilliant 18th century Swedish polymath, scientist, engineer, astronomer, mystic, theologian, and spirit medium, Immanuel Swedenborg.

Ian Rose’s Journey Out of Swedenborgianism

And today, Ian is going to be addressing another man's journey out from the grip of Immanuel Swedenborg and into the saving embrace of the true Jesus Christ of Scripture. It's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

I'm sorry, welcome you for the first time to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Ian Rose. Thank you for having me, Chris. And I also want to welcome back this time my co-hosts, Terry Cattarano and Tony Cowley, who are siblings who also abandoned Swedenborgianism after receiving the free gift of salvation through the grace and mercy of Jesus Christ.

And Tony actually eventually became an ordained minister in the Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America and also the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church. It's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to serve as my co-host today, Terry Cattarano and Tony Cowley.

First of all, let me greet Terry. It's great to have you on the show today, Terry.

Well, it's a pleasure and a blessing to be here and to know that you got some response from our previous program and we're seeing other people come out of the cult that we were raised in and come to the true Jesus Christ and receive eternal life.

Amen. And Tony, it's wonderful to have you participate in today's program as well.

It's great to be here again, and it's really nice to get to meet Ben. I keep calling him his uncle name, Ian. Hi, Ian.

And I want our listeners to know that you have definitely, if you haven't heard it already, you've got to listen to my previous interview on Swedenborgianism with my two friends who are serving as co-hosts today, who were my guests on Iron Sharpens Iron on July 3rd of this year, 2026.

And they were giving the extremely rare testimonies of two siblings in the cult of Swedenborgianism who found salvation in Jesus Christ. And unless anybody can correct me if I'm wrong, I believe that may have been the very first interview in the history of interviews anywhere with former members of the Swedenborgianist church.

And today would be the second interview, unless someone knows of other interviews out there with former Swedenborgianists who have become Christians. I'd like to hear about that. But I searched the internet far and wide, did a search with artificial intelligence, and just could not find a single thing.

So we are, I think, making history again today with this second interview likely in history on Swedenborgianism with former Swedenborgianists saved by the blood of Jesus Christ. Well, I'd like to, first of all, just set the stage a little bit so our listeners in a summary form will be more detailed after Ian gives his testimony.

Four Doctrinal Reasons for Rejecting Swedenborgianism

But in a summary form, I am going to actually read four bullet points that should make it clear to any Christian listening, any Bible-believing Christian, any truly regenerate, born-again individual listening, why Swedenborgianism is a false religion identifying itself as Christian.

And these bullet points were provided to me by a pastor. I'm not going to mention his name because I did not tell him ahead of time that I was going to read anything from his email on the air. But a pastor of a Swedenborgianist congregation heard the interview that I conducted with Terry and Tony, and he initially was trying to get me to see that I am being harsh and unloving by referring to Swedenborgianism as a cult or a non-Christian religion, and that many very well-meaning and sincere people all over the world have come to different conclusions about God, and I should just respect that.

I should not seek to convert them through the preaching of the Word as I see it. And yet, after several emails that went back and forth between the two of us, his tone changed during his last email because here he is seeking to get me to stop believing the way I believe.

And this framework that initially started with all roads leading to God, now I am hearing from the same pastor why my faith in Christ or my doctrinal beliefs about Christianity are in serious error, and this should prove to our listeners that if they are indeed born again, that Swedenborgianism is not a genuine representative of Christianity.

He says to me, number one, Trinity of persons is not in the Bible. He says, number two, salvation by faith alone without a life according to the Lord's love and commandments is not in the Bible as clearly or as often as the statements by Jesus that true believers are those who live rightly according to love and the commandments.

Now, of course, there's a mixture of falsehood and truth that I will get to in a second. And then he says, number three, salvation by faith alone didn't even exist as a theology until Martin Luther. And number four, the idea that Christ was a sacrificed son to appease the wrath and judgment of the Father was a dogma not fully developed until Calvin.

Now, I'm making an open invitation to this pastor or to any other Swedenborgianist pastor or theologian or apologist that if you would like me to arrange a debate with you, you can defend these four points that I've read and I can easily find among the many theologians, Christian theologians that I know, I can easily find someone to defend the things that you are denying in those four points.

So I would be more than happy to see if I can arrange a debate right here on Iron Trip and Zion Radio held over a two-day period. And what I mean by that is not 48 hours. I mean a two-episode debate back to back.

So that would be a span of four hours. And please let me know if you'd be interested in doing that. Let me just clarify something that he said here. Salvation by faith alone without a life according to the Lord's love and commandments.

It's not in the Bible as clearly or as often as the statements by Jesus that true believers are those who live a rightly...who live a rightly...I'm trying to figure out this grammar here. To live a rightly...according to love and the commandments.

I am a Calvinist. That's a nickname, by the way. I am a theologically Reformed Christian. I'm a Reformed Baptist. And we believe that the faith, or should I say, faith alone saves, but the faith that saves is never alone.

We believe that the Bible clearly teaches that repentance and good works are a necessary evidence and fruit of a person that is truly born again. Jesus said, you will know a tree by its fruits. And that is true.

But the clear meaning by this pastor in his criticism here, judging from other emails we had, is that he believes that justification by faith alone is a false concept and that we're not saved by justifying faith alone.

And historic Protestantism radically opposes that. And that was really one of the primary reasons that the Protestant Reformation was launched. But they weren't inventing these teachings in the 16th century Reformation.

They were even using church fathers very often, in addition to the Holy Scriptures, to prove that it was Rome that had wandered and abandoned these things, not true Christians that were reviving them.

Swedenborg’s Occult Claims and Altered Canon

But anyway, there are other things that you can find out about Swedenborgianism by listening to the first interview that I mentioned earlier with Terry and Tony Cowley. And one of the primary things that we brought up last time was that Immanuel Swedenborg was a spirit medium.

He claimed to contact the dead and communicate with them and believed that and told the Queen of Sweden that he had communication with her deceased brother. And this is a damnable, occultic, satanic sin that was punishable by death in the Old Testament.

So that's another unique thing about this religion. And the other is that Immanuel Swedenborg believed that he had communication with intelligent life on other planets. But one other thing, a very important thing, that I wanted to have clarified was the Swedenborgianist canon of Scripture.

And Tony Cowley, if you could please let us know the books that were removed by Immanuel Swedenborg from the canon of Scripture, both the Old and New Testaments.

You know, in the copy of the book called The Word—I'm holding my wife's grandmother's copy—the books of the Word, which are those that have an internal sense, but those that have not are not of the Word.

And that's Arcana Celestia 10 .3 .2 .5. So in the Old Testament, they have most of the books—Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges—but they don't have Ruth. They do have 1 and 2 Samuel.

They don't have Esther. They don't have Chronicles. They don't have most of the Wisdom literature. They have the Psalms, but they don't have Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon. And they have all the major and minor prophets, but they don't also, after Chronicles, they do not have Ezra and Nehemiah.

So in the Old Testament, probably 70 percent, maybe they're down 25 percent. I never tried to quantify it before. But in the New Testament, the books that have a continuous internal sense are Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and the Apocalypse or the Book of Revelation.

They don't have any of the letters of Paul or John or Peter or Jude or James in their canon that they consider to have a continuous internal sense. And they also don't have the Book of Acts, which was written by the same fellow that wrote the Book of Luke and has the almost same introduction.

So that's it.

Very telling as to whether this is authentic Christianity or not. And very telling that one of the things that I was being rebuked for by this pastor whose email I was reading excerpts from was that I was demonstrating pride.

And if anything is a demonstration of pride is that a man is on his own picking and choosing a whole host of God-breathed, inerrant texts from the sacred Scriptures, and he's removing them.

I'm sorry? And adding his own writings, adding what he claimed were the true Word of God, his own writings. He claimed that they were the Third Testament or the….

Oh, he claimed that about himself?

Swedenborg? Well, that's what his followers have claimed, that Swedenborg's writings are the Third Testament. And only through Swedenborg's writings can you understand what's in the Old and New Testament, which, of course, it has been truncated drastically.

Ian Rose’s Family Background and Conversion

All right. Ian Rose, you are our primary guest today. And tell us, I know that you were born and raised in Swedenborgianism. Tell us about that upbringing and tell us what you liked and what you even loved about this childhood and then into young adulthood being a Swedenborgianist.

And then we'll eventually get to how the Lord opened your eyes to the truth that this was a religion that was an imposter of Christianity. But continue if you could.

Yes. I was born on August 29, 1989, in an English Air Force base called Lake and East. My dad is a retired teacher at Bernathean College and a retired lieutenant colonel in the Air Force. So I spent….

He was in the Air Force from 85 to 2005. So we were traveling all over the U .S. after we left England a few months after I was born. His father was a very prominent New Church minister, Donald L. Rose.

My mom is a stay-at-home mom. And her great-great-uncle was the first bishop of the General Church of the New Jerusalem named William Frederick Pendleton. His brother is my great-great-grandfather, N .D. Pendleton, Nathaniel Dandridge.

And I know that one of my co-hosts, Tony Cowley…. Well, actually, I guess that would make…. No, it was through marriage that Tony's related to you, right?

Yeah. His wife is my dad's first cousin. Okay. Well, continue. I interrupted you there. So I was…. I had a great childhood. I had a decent upbringing. Let's see. I was in a Pittsburgh New Church school from about 99 to 2001, maybe, when Dad was getting his Ph .D. in political science.

After that, I was homeschooled from the fourth grade until college, and I went to the Bernaffen College. I was a religion major, and I wanted to be in the priesthood, but since I had depression, they didn't want me.

So it's a new thing that they've had a few ministers that had recent troubles with that. So they just said, no, we're not going to accept you into the priesthood, which I fully understand. Let's see. So up until 2001, it was very New Church upbringing.

I was never made aware of Paul, didn't know anything about Job. I knew next to nothing about most of the Bible. I don't blame my parents or any of my family for that. They're sincere believers in what they believe in, and I won't take anything away from that.

So about 10 years ago, I was starting to be witnessed to by Wyatt McQueen and his wife, Barb. They're both from Freeport, Pennsylvania, which is just outside of Pittsburgh. And we went to Pittsburgh New Church School together when we were in the second through fourth grade.

They're part of Calvary Baptist Church in Northeast Philadelphia, which is in Elkins Park. So they started witnessing to me at about 2011, I believe it was. And even before that, I was studying end time prophecies in Revelation and things like that.

And I was familiar with the Left Behind series, which are fiction, but I was very familiar with it. One of the things that caught my attention was the way the world is and the way Israel is, the way things are going.

That was one of my signs that I was in the wrong faith. Because there's no end time prophecies, allowance of any end time prophecies in the New Church. And the one that really opened my eyes was reading Romans for the first time.

The way the Bible is, it's a sword that pierces through a lot of things. And reading Romans for the first time really got my attention and just pierced through a lot of things in my life and in my beliefs.

Amen. I just wanted to quickly clarify to our listeners, because I don't think that I mentioned it before. The religion of Swedenborgianism has churches that are called Church of the New Jerusalem and also the shorter version, New Church.

And there's even another branch, a breakaway group called the Lord's New Church. And Terry or Tony, do you want to briefly distinguish between those two groups, these three groups?

Tony, I would say the convention is a longstanding church and the general church developed out of that. The Philadelphia Society moved to Bernathen. They wanted to develop a distinct New Church social life.

And so they developed a school. Celebration is Charter Day, that October 19th, I believe. That's when they started the Academy of the New Church. So the Academy movement was part of the founding of the general church, to my recollection.

And then within the general church, which had a stronger view of Swedenborg's writings as being a divine revelation, that they called the Word of God or the Third Testament, some of them. The Lord's New Church or the Hemashalir, the Dutch version of that, the Lord's New Church, the New Jerusalem Church, broke away or was expelled.

I don't want to cast aspersions. My great uncle Philip was one of their bishops. My grandparents and a bunch of relatives initially went with the Lord's New Church and a lot of them came back to the general church because there's personality issues that always emerge and those kind of things can break up, whether you're Orthodox, born-again Christians or not.

You can have those kind of problems. And so the Lord's New Church, yes, in one sense, it's a breakaway, but it was sponsored by one of the three major Pitcairn brothers. He had his own castle and kind of like a medieval place, Theodor Pitcairn, and he was a priest in that church.

And he was also a founder of the Lord's New Church with Philip Odiner and some others. And their emphasis was on the continuous internal sense of the writings. My joke is that the Lord's New Church doesn't even take Swedenborg literally, which is maybe not fair because they say they take everything literally on one level.

But that's my initial impression. But I don't think there's a real strong break between them anymore, because most of the ministers that are at the Lord's New Church now come from the general church. Solomon Kiel, Tom Rose, my brother Michael served there.

Hugh Odiner, my brother-in-law, is one of the only trained Lord's New Churchmen in that group. So I think that gray there. Now, there's a bunch in Africa that have only had training within the Lord's New Church, and they're doing their own theology work, but some of them go to the regular seminary as well.

Their general church is a seminary, if I recall correctly.

Okay. And if you could continue about the Lord piercing your heart, Ian, through his word. Go ahead.

Yeah. So during college, I came across this. I think you guys have talked about Conjugal Love, the book that Swedenborg wrote. In the second part, one of the things that horrified me about—I think Tony would know more about this, but I think in the second part of Conjugal Love, there's a clause which says, if the wife is incapacitated, a man can have a mistress.

Wow. I think—I'm not quite sure if that's the proper wording, but—.

The permission is what it's called, a permission that he won't have to go to hell for having a mistress as long as his wife is incapacitated, but he shouldn't have a series of different prostitutes or anything like that.

It's disgusting, yes, and it's so ungodly and so unbiblical.

It's trying to contain the wild outbreak. So it's called Conjugal Love, and there's a second half, The Pleasures of Scorditory Love or something like that. That's the old translation. The new translations try to not use so many Latinate phrases, but Conjugal Love itself is just marriage love.

Swedenborgians like to pronounce it Conjugal because it's a softening and it reminds them of something. There's a spiritual reason for that, but it's just conjugal love. It sounds hard to Swedenborgineers.

Conjugal love, as we refer to that, we think of that as the act of sex, but Conjugal Love does sound a little more dignified, I guess. I don't complain about that to them or criticize them on that front.

But yes, there are permissions and there are Swedenborgians. I know of one, at least, that defines his... He's a single man, as far as I know, but he has a mistress. I think they call it concubinage. I guess, would the world be a better place if everybody that committed adultery followed Swedenborg's rules rather than just regular old adultery and cheating around?

Maybe. Maybe it would be a slight improvement. But we're not going for that. Jesus says you must be perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect. So when you call people to discipleship, you need to be born again so that you can follow Christ.

It's interesting, when people are legalists and say you have to get saved by keeping the law, then they adjust the law to make it doable. Make it a little less... If you make the law doable, then you've said, oh, you don't have to be perfect like your Heavenly Father is perfect.

You just have to be orderly. Just live within order, and then you'll get into the lowest heaven, and everything will be okay if you keep things in order.

Swedenborgianism’s Rejection of Christ’s Atonement

But being washed in the blood of Jesus is totally repulsive to them, that thought, that term. They don't understand the atonement at all. They don't understand why Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Savior, had to die for us as the Lamb of God to take away the sins of the world.

They don't understand that faith in Jesus Christ as our Savior, as our Lord, as the one who atoned and washed away our sins is necessary for salvation. They don't understand that. They repudiate the whole idea of the blood of Christ being kind of repulsive.

Yeah, well, that pastor I was just quoting from, the Swedenborgianist pastor, made that clear. But anyway, I'll tell you what, Ian. Pick up where you left off when I return from our first commercial break, if you want to make a note to yourself where you want to pick up.

But if anybody listening would like to join us with a question of your own, I think I would even especially love to hear from Swedenborgianist listening, active members of Swedenborgianist churches, perhaps you're even a pastor, or I guess perhaps I should say priest in that religion.

Feel free to submit a question to us. Give us your first name at least, city and state of residence, and country of residence if you live outside the USA. Don't go away. We're going to be right back after these messages from our sponsors.

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Swedenborg’s Spiritual Authority and Ian’s Conversion

Welcome back. If you just tuned us in, our guest today is Ian Rose, who was born and raised in a false religious group claiming to be Christian, known as Swedenborgianism, and he was saved by the grace, mercy, and blood of Jesus Christ and is now an evangelical Christian and a member of a Baptist church in Elkin, Pennsylvania.

And we have joining us as co-hosts today Terry and Tony. Terry Cattarano and Tony Calley, who are siblings who were also raised in Swedenborgianism and also, by the grace and mercy of Christ, have become born-again believers in Jesus and they've abandoned Swedenborgianism, and they were my guests on July 3rd, and that could have been the very first interview ever in the history of interviews anywhere with former members of Swedenborgianism who have become born-again believers in Christ.

If you have any questions, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com. Give us your first name at least, city and state, and country of residence. You may remain anonymous if your question is about a personal and private matter.

Let's say you're in a Swedenborgianist church. You're starting to rethink whether you should remain there and you don't want to draw attention to your identity as of yet. We understand things like that would cause you to want to remain anonymous, and I will respect your wishes, but if you're asking a general question, and especially if you're saying anything in opposition to what my guests and co-hosts are saying, well, please identify yourself.

Give us your first name at least, city and state, and country of residence. And Ian, if you could, perhaps I should say one more thing that I don't know if I mentioned. I do know that I mentioned it in my first interview with Terry and Tony, but one of the reasons that Ian Rose said that while growing up he didn't know anything about the Apostle Paul, that's because Swedenborgianists believe he is in hell, and therefore, obviously, Immanuel Swedenborg removed the epistles of Paul from the canon of Scripture.

But anyway, Ian, if you could, pick up where you left off as far as your journey is concerned.

Yes, so I used to love Conjugal Love until I read that second part. That was one of the things I loved about the new church until I read that. And it's interesting, the founder of Mormonism is connected to Swedenborg.

I'm not quite sure if he's a new churchman, but there is a connection, and it's kind of interesting that second part of Conjugal Love comes up and the way he approached marriage.

So it's known that Joseph Smith either interacted with Swedenborg or at least read what he wrote?

Yes, he read some of the writings. Yeah, so did Johnny Appleseed. Johnny Appleseed spread their writings as well.

Right, that's kind of the figure known. I remember hearing that Johnny Appleseed from a child's book as a little kid, sort of like a folk war figure, but I didn't realize he was a Swedenborgianist until I was a Christian myself.

Go ahead, I'm sorry.

So yeah, after I began to be witnessed to, I started looking at Swedenborg's views on his own calling. And I noticed that you guys brought up when he first was contacted by spirits, the snakes and the frogs.

I forget what it was. Yeah, and somehow he made the connection that it was Jesus Christ. But one thing I noticed throughout his writings, he never once questioned the spirits. He never once tested them.

He never sort of said, I forget what John said, test the spirits to see whether they are of God. He never once did that. I think he accepted, for some reason, he accepted the spirit as Jesus Christ right off the bat for some reason.

And that was one of my main hangups. How did he automatically make that decision?

Now, at that point, I don't remember if Terry or Tony brought it up during our first interview. At that point in his life, was he a dedicated Lutheran? We had mentioned in the last interview that his father was a bishop in the Lutheran Church in Sweden.

And I mean, from what you understand of him, did it seem that he was a believing member of his father's congregation and so on?

I think. I'm not quite sure how. I think he considered himself a Christian. He was a communicant member of the Lutheran Church. He took communion from a Lutheran priest on his deathbed in England, or maybe on the bed that he was later to die in.

And so he never actually left the Lutheran Church. My impression from the spiritual diary is that there were a couple of entries where he said, I should test the spirit. He quoted 1 John and said something to that effect.

Why did he quote 1 John if he threw it out of the canon? That's later. I'm sorry, Terry. I didn't understand. I didn't understand what you said.

He threw out all of those epistles later on after he was convinced that his writings were the second coming of Christ.

So, yeah, he wasn't at that point. And I think he said something to the effect that I should test the spirits. And then later on, he said, how can I doubt this is the Lord? So I think he did have enough common sense to be a little suspect about this.

But it's pretty much an overwhelming experience. So I guess he had.

Okay, Ian, pick up where you left off.