The Writings offer a tremendous amount of material on angels. The book "Heaven and Hell" offers detailed discussions as it describes heaven; "Conjugial Love" has much to say about marriage and romantic love in heaven; "Divine Love and Wisdom" offers insight into how angels in their nature reflect the nature of the Lord. So we'll offer some basics here and recommend those books to those who want more detail.

(Препратки: Divine Love and Wisdom 231; Divine Providence 60-67)

Basically, the Writings say that if people in this life open themselves to the Lord, follow the Lord's teachings and let the Lord change their selfish desires into generous loves, they will go to heaven as angels after they die. If they don't, and instead embrace their selfishness, they will go to hell as evil spirits. The Writings also say that this is the only source of angels and evil spirits - they were all once people. There is no separately created race of angels, no fallen angel Lucifer who is now the Devil; that belief is based solely on a few lines of misinterpreted scripture.

This makes sense if you look at it logically. If the Lord could create beings that would live in love and harmony with him with no possibility of evil, why would He have bothered with us? Why not just make more of them? The fact is, such beings would not have any choice in their actions, making them no better than animals. And ultimately, if they were purely good then they would really just be extensions of the Lord, so in loving them He would be loving Himself. The reverse is true of the idea of Satan or "the" Devil. The Lord creates us from love so that he can love us, bring us to heaven and make us happy. For Satan to exist, the Lord would have had to create him, and it would be contrary to His essence to create something that was not intended for heaven, for joy, and for union with the Lord.

So angels were once people, who got to be angels by embracing the idea of being good and followed the Lord's teachings as best they could. The Writings make it clear these people can come from anywhere, from any religious background. Some churches may have doctrine that is closer to the truth than others, but the point of any religion is for people to desire to be good and try to be good using the tools they have.

When those people die, they go first to a place called the "world of spirits." There everyone who has recently died can learn about the Lord and spiritual life and prepare for heaven. There also, people's inner affections start showing on the surface; those who are ultimately evil start losing the ability to cover it up, and the love starts shining through for those who are ultimately good. As this continues and as people learn more, they naturally start congregating with others who have similar loves. This way evil people eventually take themselves to hell, where they can be with others who share their evil. Good people, on the other hand, can be prepared for heaven.

Two important things have to happen for us to truly enter fully into heaven. First, the Lord will push aside our remaining evil desires, so they cannot hurt us or tempt us anymore; angels are in a marvelous state of peace, with no active evil to trouble them. Second, we will each be led by the Lord to the perfect married partner, the one whose soul matches ours, the one we can love blissfully to eternity. All angels are married, because the marriage of a man and a woman represents the marriage of love and wisdom in the Lord, and also the marriage of the desire for good and understanding of truth in each of us. Because of this, we can only fully receive and return the Lord's love as married partners, and heaven is suffused with the sphere of marriage and the love of marriage.

The angelic couples will find their way to communities of other angels whose loves match their own, people with whom they can share the deepest friendships imaginable. They will have houses which reflect the character of their loves, and will be given work to do that springs from their loves and fills them with joy. Beyond that, their lives are much as life might be in this world, though free of sickness and aging and boredom and conflict. They have bodies that are human in form - no wings! - but a beauty in face and form that reflects the good loves they have inside. They eat and drink and laugh and sleep and have parties and games; all filled with the delight of mutual love.

The Writings tell us the work angels do is varied far beyond what we can imagine, though they only describe a few aspects. Among other things, angels care for people in this life, passing on to them true ideas and desires for good from the Lord. They also teach those in the World of Spirits, greet those who have just died, raise those who died as children, keep order in hell and do many other things.

We would finally note that there are three degrees of angelic life, based on the loves people embraced in this life. The first, lowest heaven, called the "natural heaven," is filled by those who are in the love of service. Angels there love to do what's right because they know it is right. The second, middle heaven, called the spiritual heaven, is filled by those who are in the love of the neighbor. Angels there love to engage their minds with spiritual questions to gain an ever-deeper understanding of how to be loving to one another. The third, highest heaven, known as celestial, is filled with those who are in love of the Lord Himself. From that love they have such innocence that they look like children, and they instantly perceive what is true, in all its variety, from the light of that love.

(Препратки: Apocalypse Revealed 818; Arcana Coelestia 228-233, 454, 1802, 2551, 2572 [3-4], 5470, 6872 [2-3], 8747, 9503 [1-3], 9814 [2], 10604 [2-4]; Conjugial Love 44 [6-10], 52; Divine Love and Wisdom 19, 63, 71, 115, 116, 202, Divine Love and Wisdom 321, 322, 334; Heaven and Hell 75, 133, 266, 267, 304, 311, 415)

321. We need to realize that to all outward appearances, the spiritual world is just like the physical world. You can see lands there, mountains, hills, valleys, plains, fields, lakes, rivers, and springs like the ones in our earthly world; everything, then, that belongs to the mineral kingdom. You can see parks as well, gardens, groves, and woods, with all kinds of trees and shrubs with their fruits and seeds, smaller plants, flowers, herbs, and grasses; everything, then, that belongs to the plant kingdom. You can see all kinds of animals, birds, and fish--everything that belongs to the animal kingdom. The people there are angels and spirits.

This is prefaced to let it be known that the whole spiritual world is just like the whole physical world, the sole difference being that things there are not static and stable the way they are in a physical world because there is nothing of nature there. Everything is spiritual.

6626. Let me recount some marvels. The Lord alone is Man, and it is owing to Him that angels, spirits, and inhabitants of the world are called men. By His own flowing into heaven He causes the whole of heaven to represent and resemble one human being; and through an influx both by way of heaven and directly from Himself into each individual there He causes all to be seen as men, and angels to be seen in a form more beautiful and dazzling than anyone can possibly describe. He does the same for people on earth by flowing into their spirits. Indeed with an angel, spirit, or man who leads a life of charity towards the neighbour and love to the Lord the smallest aspects of all that belong to his thought resemble a human being, for the reason that that charity and that love originate in the Lord, and whatever originates in the Lord resembles a human being. Those qualities are also what constitute a human being. But the contrary applies in hell, because those who are there are fired by the opposites of charity and heavenly love. They do, it is true, look like human beings when seen in their own inferior light, but in the superior light of heaven they look like horrible monsters, in some of whom scarcely anything of the human form is recognizable. The reason for this is that the inflow of the Lord by way of heaven is not accepted but is turned away, or smothered, or perverted, which therefore causes them to be seen as such monsters. And the smallest aspects of their thought, that is, their ideas, similarly possess forms such as these; for what anyone is like as a whole, so he is in part, since the whole and the part are the same in type and nature. The form in which those people are seen is also the form of the hell in which they exist. For every hell has its own form, which in the light of heaven resembles a monster; and when one sees any of those who are from it one recognizes from their form which hell they are from. I have seen them in the gates that lie open into the world of spirits, where they looked like many different kinds of monsters. Regarding the gates of hell, that they lie open into the world of spirits, see 5852.