795. Since this is how it is there, I have conversations every day with the races and peoples of this world. I have interaction not only with people in Europe but also people in Asia and Africa. I talk to people of a variety of religions. Therefore by way of an epilogue to this work I will add a brief description of the state of some of them.

Keep in mind that in the spiritual world, the state of every race and people in general and of each individual in particular depends on their acknowledgment and worship of God. All those who acknowledge God at heart, and from now on, who acknowledge the Lord Jesus Christ as God the Redeemer and Savior, are in heaven. People who do not acknowledge him are beneath heaven and are given instruction there. Those who accept the instruction are lifted up into heaven. Those who do not accept it are cast down into hell. In this second group are people like the Socinians, who turn to God the Father alone, and people like the Arians, who have denied that the Lord's human manifestation was divine. The Lord himself said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me" (John 14:6); and when Philip asked to see the Father, the Lord said to him, "Those who see and recognize me, see and recognize the Father" (John 14:7 and following).

57. It is owing to this that angels are not angels of themselves, but are angels in consequence of their conjunction with the human God; and that conjunction depends on their reception of Divine good and Divine truth, which are God, and which appear to emanate from Him, even though they are in Him. Moreover, their reception depends on their application of the laws of order - which Divine truths are - to themselves, because of their freedom to think and will in accordance with reason, faculties that they have from the Lord as though they were theirs. The result is their reception of Divine good and Divine truth as though of themselves, and this makes possible a reciprocation of love; for as we said above, ¹ love does not exist unless it is reciprocal.

The same is the case with people on earth.

From these observations it can now for the first time be seen that every constituent of the created universe is a recipient of the Divine love and wisdom of the human God.

Bilješke: