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.

(რეკომენდაციები: 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.

(რეკომენდაციები: 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)

52. The reason marriages in heaven do not result in the begetting of children, but that instead they experience a spiritual procreation, which is one of love and wisdom - the reason is that in the case of people who are in the spiritual world, a third element is missing, which is the natural element. This element is the containing vessel of spiritual things, and spiritual things without their containing vessel do not assume fixed form like those that are produced in the natural world. Also, regarded in themselves, spiritual things relate to love and wisdom. Consequently, it is spiritual things that are born of their marriages.

We say that these are born, because conjugial love perfects an angel, since it unites him with his partner so that he becomes more and more human. For, as we said above, married couples in heaven are not two but one angel. Therefore by the conjugial union they fulfill themselves in respect to their humanity, which is to want to be wise and to love what has to do with wisdom.

2196. 'And this was behind him' means close to the good which existed with the rational at that time, and separated from it insofar as anything of the human was in it. This is clear from what is said regarding the door where Sarah stood - that it was 'behind him'. 'Being behind him' means not joined together but behind his back. That which is separated from someone is represented by that which has been cast so to speak behind the back, as may become clear from the representatives in the next life described from experience in 1393, 1875. This separation is expressed here by its being said that the door where Sarah stood was behind him.

[2] The situation so far as merely human rational truth - which resided with the Lord at that time and was separated from Him when He joined Himself to the Divine - is that human rational truth has no grasp of Divine things because these are above its range of understanding. Such truth does indeed communicate with the facts which are present in the natural man; but insofar as it looks from those facts at the things that exist above itself it does not acknowledge these things. For such truth is immersed in appearances of which it cannot rid itself; and appearances are born from the evidence of the senses - which leads one to believe as though Divine things themselves are also of a similar nature, when in fact they are free of all appearances. When such Divine things are stated this rational truth cannot possibly believe them because it cannot have any grasp of them. Let some examples be given.

[3] If it is stated that a person has no life except that which he receives from the Lord, the rational, seeing from appearances, imagines in that case that he is not able to live as if from himself, when in fact he is for the first time truly living when he perceives that he does so from the Lord.

[4] Seeing from appearances the rational imagines that the good which a person does springs from himself, when in fact nothing good at all springs from self, but from the Lord.

[5] Seeing from appearances the rational imagines that a person merits salvation when he does what is good, when in fact of himself a person can merit nothing - all merit being the Lord's.

[6] Seeing from appearances a person imagines that when he is being withheld from evil and maintained in good by the Lord, nothing but good, righteousness, and indeed holiness are present with him, when in fact present in man there is nothing except evil, unrighteousness, and profanity.

[7] Seeing from appearances a person imagines that when he does what is good from charity his will is the source of his actions, when in fact it is not his will that is the source but his understanding in which charity has been implanted.

[8] Seeing from appearances a person imagines that no glory can exist without the glory of the world, when in fact the glory of heaven does not have one trace of the world's glory within it.

[9] Seeing from appearances a person imagines that nobody can love the neighbour more than he loves himself, but that all love begins from self, when in fact heavenly love has no self-love at all within it.

[10] Seeing from appearances a person imagines that no light can exist apart from that which flows from the light of this world, when in fact not a ray of the world's light shines in heaven, though the light there is a thousand times brighter than the midday light of the world.

[11] Seeing from appearances a person imagines that the Lord cannot possibly shine before the whole of heaven as a sun, when in fact the entire light of heaven comes from Him.

[12] Seeing from appearances no one can grasp the idea that developments take place in the next life, when in fact those there seem to themselves to be making developments - as anyone does on earth - in for example, their homes, courtyards, and gardens. Still less can man grasp it if he is told that these are changes of state which manifest themselves outwardly in such developments.

[13] Seeing from appearances a person cannot grasp that it is because they are not visible before his eyes that spirits and angels are not able to be seen; nor can he grasp that they are able to talk to man, when in fact they are seen more clearly before internal sight, or the sight of the spirit, than man sees man on earth. And their utterances are also in like manner clearly audible.

Besides these there are thousands upon thousands of things such as these which man's rational, seeing from its own light, which is born from the evidence of the senses and consequently is darkened, cannot possibly believe. Indeed even in natural things the rational is blinded. It is unable to grasp, for example, how those living on the opposite side of the world can stand erect and walk, or to grasp very many other natural phenomena. How blind must the rational be then in spiritual and celestial things which are far above those that are natural.

[14] Such being the nature of the human rational, it is here spoken of as being separated when the Lord, while possessing Divine Perception, was united to the Divine. This is meant by the statement that Sarah, who here is such rational truth, 'stood at the tent door, and this was behind him'.