2. Before treating of the New Jerusalem and its doctrine, something shall be said of the New Heaven and the New Earth. In the small work on The Last Judgment and the Destruction of Babylon it was shown what is meant by the "first heaven and the first earth" which had passed away. After they had passed away, and thus after the Last Judgment had been accomplished, the new heaven was created, that is, formed by the Lord. This heaven was formed of all those who after the Lord's advent even to the present time, had lived a life of faith and charity; since they alone were forms of heaven. For the form of heaven, according to which all consociations and communications are there effected, is the form of Divine Truth from the Divine Good which proceeds from the Lord; and this form a man puts on as to his spirit by a life according to Divine Truth.

That the form of heaven is from this source, may be seen in the work Heaven and Hell 200-212; and that all angels are forms of heaven, in Heaven and Hell 51-58, 73-77. From this it may be known, of whom the new heaven was composed, and hence also what its quality is; namely, that it is altogether of one mind; for he, who lives a life of faith and charity, loves another as himself, and through love conjoins him to himself, and thus reciprocally and mutually, because love in the spiritual world is conjunction. When, therefore, all act alike, then from many, yea, from countless numbers consociated according to the form of heaven, there arises one mind, and there results, as it were, a one; for there is nothing which separates and divides, but everything conjoins and unites.

1413. 'To the land which I will cause you to see' means the spiritual and celestial things that were to be brought to view. This is clear from the meaning of 'a land', 662, 1066, and indeed from the meaning here of 'the land of Canaan' which represents the Lord's kingdom, as becomes clear from many places in the Word. For this reason the land of Canaan is called the Holy Land, and also the heavenly Canaan. And since it represented the Lord's kingdom, it also represented and meant the celestial and spiritual things that belong to the Lord's kingdom, and here those that belong to the Lord Himself.

3138. These three verses deal with the preparation and enlightenment of the natural man so that the truth which was to be joined to good in the Rational might be summoned from there. With regard to that preparation and enlightenment the position is that there are two kinds of light which shape man's intellectual concepts - the light of heaven, and the light of the world. The light of heaven comes from the Lord who to angels in the next life is the Sun and Moon, see 1053, 1521, 1529, 1530. The light of the world comes from the sun and moon which a person sees with his physical eyes. The internal man receives his sight and understanding from the light of heaven whereas the external man receives his sight and understanding from the light of the world. The influx of the light of heaven into ideas formed in the light of the world produces enlightenment and at the same time recognition - the recognition of truth if a correspondence exists, the recognition of falsity instead of truth if that correspondence does not exist. But enlightenment and recognition are not possible unless affection or love is present, which is spiritual warmth and imparts life to the things illumined by the light. This may be compared to the light of the sun. It is not the light of the sun but the warmth within the light that imparts life to plants, as is evident from the seasons of the year.

[2] The verses which follow immediately after this describe the preparation further - the light of heaven, which is the Lord's Divine light, flowed into the ideas formed in the light of the world in His natural man so that He might bring forth from there the truth that was to be joined to good in the Rational. Thus it was to be brought forth in what is the ordinary way. Therefore to make His Human Divine the Lord came into the world in the ordinary way, that is, He was willing to be born as any other person is born, to receive instruction as any other does, and to be born again as any other, but with this difference: Man is born again from the Lord, whereas the Lord not only regenerated Himself from Himself, but also glorified Himself, that is, made Himself Divine; also man is made new through the influx of charity and faith, whereas the Lord was made so through the influx of Divine Love that was within Him and that was His own. From this it may be seen that man's regeneration is an image of the Lord's glorification, or what amounts to the same, that in the process of man's regeneration as the image one can envisage, though remotely, the process of the Lord's glorification.