31. 4. God's infinity in relation to space is called immensity; in relation to time it is called eternity. Yet although these are related, there is nonetheless no space in God's immensity, and no time in his eternity. God's infinity in relation to space is called "immensity" because immense is associated with "large" and "huge," and also with extension and spaciousness within extension. God's infinity in relation to time, however, is called eternity because the phrase "to eternity" means "in an endless succession of stages measurable in units of time. " To clarify: we describe the earth itself and its surface in spatial terms and the earths rotation and orbit in temporal terms. The earths motions anchor our measurements of time, and the earth itself anchors our measurements of space. In consequence of our senses, space and time are also present in a similar way in the perception of our minds as we reflect. In God, however, there is no space and time, as I have shown just above, yet space and time originate from God. Therefore "immensity" means his infinity in relation to space, and "eternity" means his infinity in relation to time.

[2] Angels in heaven see God's immensity as the divineness of his underlying reality and God's eternity as the divineness of his capacity to become manifest. They also see God's immensity as the divineness of his love and God's eternity as the divineness of his wisdom. The reason is that angels remove space and time from divinity; this gives rise to the concepts just mentioned. Since we on earth cannot help basing our thinking on ideas that are spatial and temporal, we cannot conceive of the immensity of God before there was space or the eternity of God before there was time. In fact, if we try to conceive of them, our mind more or less loses consciousness, like a shipwrecked person who has fallen in the ocean or like someone being swallowed in an earthquake. Indeed, if we rashly persevere in that pursuit, we can easily go insane and end up denying the existence of God.

[3] Once I myself was in a state like that. I thought and thought about what God did from eternity, what he did before the world was constructed. I wondered whether he debated the act of creation and worked out a sequence he would follow. I pondered whether mental debate was possible in a pure vacuum, and other useless questions. To prevent these considerations from driving me insane, the Lord lifted me into the atmosphere and light of inner angels. As factors related to space and time in my former thinking were somewhat removed there, I became able to understand that God's eternity is not an eternity of time. Since there was no time before the world came about, I realized that it was completely pointless to ponder such questions about God. Furthermore, since the Divine "from eternity," that is, the Divine independent of time, did not involve days, years, and centuries - they were all an instant for God - I concluded that God did not create the world in a preexisting context of time; time was first introduced by God as part of creation.

[4] In addition, I would like to relate something worth mentioning. At one extreme end of the spiritual world, two statues of monstrous human forms appear with wide open mouths and gaping jaws. People whose thinking about God from eternity is pointless and insane seem to themselves to be swallowed up by these statues. The statues are really the delusions people hurl themselves into when they think discordant and unseemly thoughts about God before he created the world.

628. The Concept of Assigning That Is Part of the Faith of Today Has a Doubleness to It: There Is an Assigning of Christ's Merit, and There Is an Assigning of Salvation as a Result

The entire Christian church holds that God the Father grants justification, and therefore salvation, by assigning the merit of Christ, his Son. This assigning is thought to take place by grace "whenever and wherever God wants. " It is his choice. People who are assigned the merit of Christ are adopted and counted as children of God.

The leaders of the church have not taken a single step beyond this concept of the assignment of merit or lifted their minds above it. Because of their theory that God makes his choice arbitrarily, they have lapsed into wild and horrendous errors. They have eventually wandered even into the detestable notion of predestination and the abominable idea that God pays no attention to what we do in our lives; he only regards the faith that is inscribed on the deeper levels of our minds.

If this error about the assignment of merit is not destroyed, atheism is going to pervade all Christianity, and Christians will then be ruled by the king of the abyss, "whose name in Hebrew is Abaddon and who has the Greek name Apollyon" (Revelation 9:11).

[2] Both "Abaddon" and "Apollyon" mean one who destroys the church with falsities. The abyss means [the hell] in which these falsities exist. (See Revelation Unveiled 421, 440, 442.) It follows then that this false concept regarding the assignment of merit, and all the false beliefs that follow from it in an extended series, are the very things over which the Destroyer rules. As noted just above [627], the entire Christian theological system depends on that concept of the assignment of merit like a long chain hanging on a carefully fastened hook; it also depends on it the way we and all our limbs depend on our head. This concept of the assignment of Christ's merit is dominant everywhere; therefore it is as Isaiah says: "The Lord will cut the head and the tail off Israel. The head is the person who is honored; the tail is the person who teaches lies" (Isaiah 9:14-15).