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)

267. The reason angels can accept so much wisdom is that their deeper levels are open, and wisdom, like any perfection, increases as one moves toward the deeper levels and as they are opened. ¹

In every angel there are three levels of life corresponding to the three heavens (see 29-40). People whose first level has been opened are in the first or most remote heaven. People whose second level has been opened are in the second or intermediate heaven. People whose third level has been opened are in the third or inmost heaven. The wisdom of angels in heaven is according to these levels; so the wisdom of angels of the third heaven vastly transcends the wisdom of angels of the intermediate heaven, and their wisdom in turn transcends that of angels of the farthest heaven (see above, 209-210, and on the nature of the levels, see 38).

The reason for these differences is that the elements of the higher levels are detailed, and those of the lower are general, the general ones being inclusive of the details. The ratio of details to generalizations is on the order of thousands or ten thousands to one, so this is the ratio between the wisdom of angels of a higher heaven and that of angels of a lower heaven.

However, the wisdom of these latter angels similarly transcends our wisdom, for we are engrossed in our bodies and their sensory operations, and these physical sensory faculties are on the lowest level of all. This fact enables us to see the nature of the wisdom of people who base their thinking on sensory information - that is, the ones we call sense-oriented people. Specifically, they have no access to wisdom, only to information. ² It is different, though, for people whose thoughts are raised above sensory matters, and even more for people whose deeper levels have been opened all the way into heaven's light.

სქოლიოები:

9872. 'A tarshish, and a shoham, and a jasper' means the spiritual love of truth, in which higher things terminate. This is clear from the meaning of these stones, which they derive from their colours; for the colour of all the stones in this row is on the white side tinged with blue. The fact that tarshish means the spiritual love of truth is clear from places in the Word where it is mentioned, as in Ezekiel,

Behold, there were four wheels beside the cherubs; the appearance of the wheels was like that of tarshish stone. Ezekiel 1:16; 10:9.

The cherubs' wheels are similar in meaning to a person's arms and feet, which is the power to act and go forward, this power being that of truth springing from good, see 8215. This explains why the appearance of those wheels was like that of tarshish stone; for 'tarshish' means truth springing from spiritual good, which possesses power.

[2] In Daniel,

I lifted up my eyes and saw, and behold, a man clothed in linen whose loins were girded with gold of Uphaz, and his body was like tarshish; and his face was like [the appearance] of lightning, and his eyes were like fiery torches. Daniel 10:5-6.

'A man clothed in linen' was an angel from heaven. 'Linen' means truth that is the clothing of good, 7601. By 'loins' conjugial love, which belongs to goodness and truth, is meant, 3021, 4280, 5050-5062. This is why the man's loins are said to have been 'girded with gold of Uphaz', for 'gold' means the good of love, 113, 1551, 1552, 5658, 9490, 9510. 'The body' however, by virtue of its correspondence, means the good of celestial love and also the good of spiritual love, 6135, while the surface of the body means the truth that springs from that good, which is why the man's body looked like tarshish. So it is that 'tarshish' means the truth that spiritual love desires.

[3] For the meaning of a shoham, the second stone in this row, as the truths of faith that spring from love, see what has been shown in 9476, 9841. As for a jasper, the third and last stone belonging to this row, that it means the truth of faith, this is clear in John's Revelation,

The light of the city, the holy Jerusalem, was like a most precious stone, as if it were a jasper stone, shining like crystal. Revelation 21:11.

'The holy Jerusalem' means the Church that is going to take the place of the one that is ours at the present day. Its 'light' is the truth of faith and resulting intelligence, 9548, 9551, 9555, 9558, 9561, 9684. Therefore it is likened to 'a jasper stone, shining like crystal'. 'Crystal' as well means the truth of faith springing from good, in the same book,

The construction of the wall of the holy Jerusalem was jasper, and the city was pure gold, like pure glass. Revelation 21:18.

The wall of the city is described as jasper because 'the wall' means the truth of faith protecting the Church, 6419. And since 'the wall' has this meaning, verse 19 of that chapter says that the first stone constituting its foundations was jasper. For by 'foundation' is meant the truth of faith springing from good, see 9643.