2. The Lord is God of Heaven

First and foremost, we need to know who the God of heaven is, since everything else depends on this. Throughout the whole of heaven, no one is acknowledged as God of heaven except the Lord. Angels say what he himself taught, namely that he is one with the Father, that the Father is in him and he in the Father, that anyone who sees him sees the Father, and that everything holy emanates from him (John 10:30, 38; 14:9-11, 16; 16:13-15). I have often talked with angels about this, and their consistent testimony has been that in heaven they cannot divide the Divine into three because they both know and perceive that the Divine is one and that this "one" is in the Lord. They have also told me that when people arrive from earth with the idea of three divine beings they cannot be admitted to heaven. This is because their thinking vacillates between one opinion and the other, and in heaven they are not allowed to think "three" and say "one." ¹

In heaven people actually speak directly from their thought, so that we have there a kind of thoughtful speech or audible thought. This means that if people have divided the Divine into three in the world and held a separate image of each one without gathering and focusing these three into one, they cannot be accepted. In heaven, there is a communication of all thoughts, so if people arrive who think "three" and say "one," they are recognized immediately for what they are and are sent away.

Still, it needs to be realized that in the other life any people who have not put "good" in one compartment and "true" in another - who have not separated faith from love - accept the heavenly concept of the Lord as God of the universe once they have been taught. It is different, though, with people who have separated their faith from their lives, that is, who have not lived by the guiding principles of true faith.

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1408. The events described here and in what follows took place in history as they are recorded, yet the historical events as described are representative, and every word carries a spiritual meaning. This is so in all of the historical parts of the Word, not only in the Books of Moses but also in those of Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings, all of which books contain nothing else than historical narratives. But although they are historical narratives in the sense of the letter, in the internal sense there are arcana of heaven lying hidden there. These arcana cannot possibly be seen as long as the mind keeps its eye fixed on the historical details, nor are they disclosed until the mind removes itself from the sense of the letter. The Word of the Lord is like a body that has a living soul within it. The things that belong to the soul are not apparent as long as the mind is fixed on those of the body, so much so that it scarcely believes it possesses a soul, even less that it will be alive after death. But as soon as the mind departs from bodily things, those belonging to the soul and to life show themselves; and in this lies the reason not only why bodily things must die before a person can be born anew or be regenerated, but also why the body must die so that he can enter heaven and behold heavenly things.

[2] The same applies to the Word of the Lord Its bodily parts are the things that constitute the sense of the letter, and when the mind is fixed on these the internal things are not seen at all. But once the bodily parts so to speak have died, the internal for the first time are brought to view. All the same, the things constituting the sense of the letter are like the things present with man in his body, namely the facts belonging to the memory which come in through the senses and which are general vessels containing interior or internal things. From this one may recognize that the vessels are one thing and the essential elements within the vessels another. The vessels are natural, and the essential elements within the vessels are spiritual and celestial. In the same way the historical narratives of the Word, as with each individual expression in the Word, are general, natural, indeed material vessels that have spiritual and celestial things within them. These things never come into sight except through the internal sense.

[3] This may become clear to anyone simply from the fact that many matters in the Word have been stated according to appearances, indeed according to the illusions of the senses, such as that the Lord is angry, punishes, curses, slays, and many other such statements, when in fact the internal sense contains the reverse, namely that the Lord is never angry or punishes, still less curses or slays. All the same, no harm at all is done to people who in simplicity of heart believe the Word as they find it in the letter so long as they are leading charitable lives, the reason being that the Word teaches nothing other than this - that everyone ought to live in charity with his neighbour and to love the Lord above all things. People doing this are in possession of the internal things, and thus with them the illusions acquired from the sense of the letter are easily dispersed.

10738. Before these things had been said they had supposed that our group as well had consisted of those who wished to confuse them with the idea of three regarding God. Consequently, having heard these things, they said that emissaries from God - whom they would now call the Lord - had also come and taught them about Him, but that they refused entrance to the visitors who disturb them, especially those with ideas of three persons in the Godhead. For they know that God is one and therefore that the Godhead is a oneness, not the unanimity of three, unless those who so insist are prepared to think of God as an angel may be thought of. That is, within an angel there is an inmost, invisible level of life, on which he thinks and is wise; an outward level of life visible in a human form, on which he sees and acts; and an emanation of life from himself, which is a sphere of love and faith surrounding him. For what the love and faith of each spirit or angel are like is recognized at a distance from the sphere of life emanating from him. In the Lord's case, they said, the emanation of life from Him consists in the Divine itself which fills and constitutes the heavens, because the Essential Being (Esse) within the life of love and faith is from Him.

[2] Having heard all this I was led to say that such an idea of three and at the same time of one is in keeping with the angelic idea of the Lord, and that it arises out of the Lord's very own teachings about Himself. For He teaches that the Father and He are one; that the Father is in Him and He is in the Father; that whoever sees Him sees the Father, and whoever believes in Him believes in the Father and knows Him; also that the Paraclete, whom He calls the Spirit of truth as well as the Holy Spirit, goes forth from Him and speaks not of His own accord but of the Lord's, so that by Him is meant the Divine going forth.

[3] And I went on to say that an idea of three and at the same time of one was in keeping with the Essential Being and the Coming-into-being (Esse et Existere) of the Lord's life when He was in the world. The Essential Being of His life was the Divine itself, since He was conceived from Jehovah and the essential being of anyone's life is what he is conceived from; the Coming-into-being of life, springing from that Essential Being, is the Human in [bodily] form. The essential being of anyone's life which the person has from his father is called the soul, and the coming-into-being of life from that essential being is called the body, the soul and the body constituting one complete human being.

[4] The relationship between them both is similar to the relationship between what lies in an endeavour and what lies in an action resulting from it. For the action is the endeavour put into effect, so that the two are one. The endeavour as it exists in a person is called the will, and the endeavour put into effect is called the action. The body is the instrument by which the will that employs it performs an action, and in the performance of it the instrument and the employer of it come together as one. So it is with soul and body.

[5] An idea of soul and body such as this is what angels in heaven have, and from that idea they know that the Lord made His Human Divine by the power of the Divine within Him, which was His soul derived from the Father. The faith accepted everywhere in the Christian world is no different from this, for that faith teaches,

As the body and soul are one man (homo), so also God and man (homo) in the Lord is one Christ. ¹

Since the unity or oneness in the Lord was such, He rose again not just as to His soul but also, unlike anyone else, as to His body which He had glorified in the world. This too He taught the disciples, when He said,

Handle Me and see; for a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see Me have. [Luke 24:39.]

[6] This explains why the Church acknowledges the whole presence of His Humanity within the sacrament of the Holy Supper, which acknowledgement would not be possible unless His Human also were Divine.

These matters were well understood by those spirits, for such matters fall within angelic spirits' range of understanding. They also said that to the Lord alone belongs power in the heavens and that the heavens are His. In response to this I was led to say that the Church knows that too from the mouth of the Lord Himself, who said before He went up to heaven,

All power in heaven and on earth has been given to Me. [Matthew 28:18.]

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