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.

(Verweise: 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.

(Verweise: 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)

76. It does need to be realized, though, that we cannot see angels with our bodily eyes, only with the eyes of our spirit, ¹ because they are in the spiritual world while everything bodily is in the natural world. Like sees like because it is of like substance. Further, the body's visual organ, the eye, is so crude that as everyone knows it does not even see the smaller elements of nature without a lens, much less things that are above the sphere of nature, as are all the realities of the spiritual world. These can be seen by us, though, when we are released from bodily sight and the sight of our spirit is opened. This happens instantly when it pleases the Lord that we should see. It then seems to us exactly as though we were seeing with our bodily eyes. This is how angels were seen by Abraham, Lot, Manoah, and the prophets. This is how the Lord was seen by the disciples after the resurrection. This is the same way, too, in which I have seen angels.

Because this was how the prophets saw, they are called "seers" and "ones whose eyes are opened" (1 Samuel 9:9, Numbers 23:3; 24:3); and the act of enabling them to see this way is called "opening the eyes." This is what happened to Elisha's servant, of whom we read, "Elisha prayed, 'Jehovah, open his eyes, I pray, so that he may see,' and as Jehovah opened the eyes of his servant, behold the mountain was full of horses and fiery chariots surrounding Elisha" (2 Kings 6:17).

Fußnoten:

4622. CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE GRAND MAN - continued

IN THIS SECTION THE CORRESPONDENCE OF SMELL AND OF THE NOSTRILS WITH THAT GRAND MAN

The dwelling-places of the blessed in the next life are many and varying. They are built so elegantly that they are so to speak the embodiments of architectural art itself or the direct products of that art. Concerning the dwelling-places of the blessed, see what has been described already from experience, in 1119, 1626-1630. The blessed are aware of these dwelling-places not only through the sense of sight but also through that of touch; for everything in that life is suited to the sensory powers which spirits and angels possess. Consequently their dwelling-places are not of the same nature as the objects perceived by man with his physical senses, but as the objects perceived by the senses which those in the next life possess. I realize that many cannot believe this, and the reason they cannot do so lies in their lack of belief in anything which they cannot see with their bodily eyes or touch with their physical hands. As a consequence man today, the interiors of whose being are closed, has no knowledge of the things which come into being in the spiritual world or in heaven. He does, it is true, say - because the Word and doctrine so teach it - that there is a heaven, where angels live in joy and glory; but beyond that he knows nothing. He would indeed like to know what it is like there, but when he is told this he still fails to believe it, because in his heart he denies the very existence of heaven. The reason he would like to know stems from no more than curiosity aroused by what is taught in doctrine; it does not stem from any delight to know because of any real belief. Those who do not have any real belief in heaven also deny its existence in their hearts, whereas those who do have such belief acquire to themselves ideas about heaven, its joy and glory, from various sources. Each individual does so from whatever knowledge or understanding he has gained, or in the case of the simple from what they discern by means of their bodily senses.

[2] Even so, the majority of people do not grasp the idea that spirits and angels have sensory powers that are far keener than men's in the world; that is to say, they have the powers of sight, hearing, smell, something analogous to taste, and touch, and above all else delights belonging to affections. If people did but believe that the inner essence of their being is spirit and that the body, and the senses and members of this, are suited solely to uses that are served in the world, whereas the spirit, and the senses and organs of this, are suited to uses that are served in the next life, they would arrive unaided and almost spontaneously at ideas about the state of their spirit after death. For in that case they would think of a person's spirit as his true self which thinks, has longings, has desires, and feels emotions, and after that they would think of each sensory power manifested in the body as that which belongs to the spirit, and to the body only through influx from this. These thoughts they would subsequently confirm for themselves from many other pieces of evidence, and so at length they would take more delight in the powers of their spirit than in those of their body.

[3] There is something further to be said on this matter, namely that it is not the body which sees, hears, smells, and feels through touch, but a person's spirit. That being so, when the spirit sheds its body it retains the sensory powers it possessed when within the body; indeed these are now far keener. For that which belongs to the body, being gross compared with that belonging to the spirit, has blunted those sensory powers; and these have been made even blunter because of the person's immersion of them in earthly and worldly interests. I can say this quite definitely, that a spirit has far keener eyesight than man has in the body, as well as far keener hearing. A spirit also has - and this fact will astonish people - the sense of smell, and especially the sense of touch. For spirits can see one another, hear one another, and touch one another. Anyone who believes in a life after death would also deduce this from the fact that no life is possible without the senses, and that the exact nature of that life is determined by that of the senses. Indeed he would deduce that the power of understanding is nothing else than a keener sensory awareness of interior things, a more superior power of understanding being a sensory awareness of spiritual realities. This also explains why the powers of the understanding and their perception of things are called the internal senses.

[4] So far as a person's sensory powers immediately after death are concerned, the position is this: As soon as he dies and the parts of the body grow cold, he is raised up into life, into a state which involves each of his sensory powers. At first he is scarcely aware that he is not still in the body, for the experience of his senses leads him to think he is still in it. But when he notices that his sensory powers are keener than before, and especially when he starts to speak to other spirits, he realizes that he is in the next life and that the death of his body has been a continuation of the life of his spirit. I have spoken to two of my acquaintances on the very day they were to be buried, and to one who through my eyes beheld his own coffin and bier. Since he still possessed each of the senses he had in the world, he spoke to me about his burial service even as I was taking part in the funeral procession. Regarding his body he said that they were putting this away because he was alive.

[5] But it should be recognized that those in the next life cannot see anything whatever of what is in the world through the eyes of anyone in the world. The reason they have been able to do so through my eyes is that in my spirit I am present with them at the same time as I am present in my body with those who are in the world; see also 1880. In addition to this it should be recognized that I have not used the eyes of my body to see those I have spoken to in the next life, but the eyes of my spirit. I have seen them as clearly, and sometimes more clearly, than with my bodily eyes, for in the Lord's Divine mercy the sensory powers of my spirit have been opened.

[6] But I realize that what has been stated up to now is not going to be believed by people who are concerned solely with bodily, earthly, and worldly interests, that is, by those of them who have these interests as their end in view. For such people have no conception of anything apart from that which is dissipated by death. I also realize that what has been stated up to now is not going to be believed by those who have thought a lot about the soul and have asked many questions about it, without at the same time grasping the point that man's soul is his spirit and that his spirit is his real self living within the body. For these people have been unable to conceive of the soul as anything else than something like thought, or flame, or what is ethereal, which operates solely within the organic forms of the body, not within purer forms belonging to his spirit within the body, and so is the kind of thing that is dissipated along with the body. This applies especially to those who have convinced themselves of ideas like these because the picture they have of themselves has been magnified out of all proportion by the false notion that they are wiser than others.