817. And he said, "These are the true sayings of God." This symbolically means that this should be believed because it comes from the Lord, namely that those are blessed who are called to the marriage supper of the Lamb, meaning that those people on earth have eternal life who accept the teachings that are teachings of the Lord's New Church.

59. It has not yet been realized that divine providence focuses on our eternal state at every step of our journey. It cannot focus on anything else because Divinity is infinite and eternal, and what is infinite or eternal or divine is not in time. It therefore sees the whole future as present. Since this is the nature of Divinity, it follows that there is something eternal in everything it does, overall and in detail.

People who think in terms of time and space find this hard to grasp, though, not only because they love temporal matters but also because they think in terms of what is present to people in the world and not what is present to people in heaven. This latter is as remote from them as the ends of the earth. However, people who are engaged with divinity base their thinking on the Lord and are thinking in eternal terms even while they think about what is present to them; so they say to themselves, "What is anything that is not eternal? Aren't temporal things nothing at all by comparison, and don't they become nothing when they end?" What is eternal is different. It simply is because there is no limit to its being.

Thinking like this is thinking in terms of eternity even while we are thinking about what is present; and when we both think and live this way, then emanating divinity with us, or divine providence, focuses on the state of our eternal life in heaven at every step of our journey, and is leading us to it.

We will see in what follows that Divinity focuses on what is eternal in everyone, whether evil or good.