224. 8. The Word has indescribable power. Nowadays scarcely anyone knows that there is any power in truths. People think that the truth is just something spoken by someone in authority, so it needs to be done; they think the truth is only like a breath from someone's mouth and a sound in someone's ear. Actually, truth and goodness are the origin of all things in both worlds, the spiritual and the physical. Truth and goodness are the means by which the universe was created and by which it is preserved. They are the means by which people were created. The two of them are everything to all things.
The Gospel of John openly states that the universe was created by divine truth: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God. All created things were made by it. The world was made by it" (John 1:1, 3, 10). David says, "The heavens were made by the Word of Jehovah" (Psalms 33:6). In each of these passages "the Word" means divine truth. Since the universe was created by divine truth, the universe is also preserved by divine truth, since preservation is an ongoing creation, just as continuing to exist is the same as perpetually coming into being.
[2] We human beings were made by divine truth, because all aspects of us relate to intellect and to will. Our intellect is a vessel for divine truth just as our will is a vessel for divine goodness. Therefore the human mind, consisting as it does of these two primary faculties, is nothing less than a form of divine truth and divine goodness organized both spiritually and physically. The human cerebrum is that form. Since everything in human beings depends on their minds, all the things that constitute their bodies are just appendages that are activated and brought to life by these two primary faculties.
[3] These points make it clear why God came into the world as the Word and became a human being. He did so to redeem humankind. God took on all power through a human manifestation that was divine truth. He took the hells that had risen all the way up to the heavens where the angels were, and he threw them down, brought them under control, and forced them to obey him. This was not done by a verbal word; it was done by the divine Word, which is divine truth.
Then he opened a great chasm between the hells and the heavens so that no one from hell could cross. If any of them try, at the first step they feel tortured like a snake thrown on a sheet of red hot iron or on a swarm of ants. As soon as devils and satans catch a whiff of divine truth, they immediately dive headlong into the depths, hurl themselves into caves, and seal them up so completely that not a crack is left open. The reason is that their wills have evil desires and their intellects have false beliefs. They therefore have the opposites of divine goodness and divine truth. Because, as I say, everything in human beings depends on these two primary structures of life, divine truth affects devils and satans profoundly and violently from head to toe.
[4] You can see from this that the power of divine truth is indescribable. Since the Word that the Christian church has is a three-leveled container for divine truth, it is obvious that this Word is what is meant in John 1:3, 10.
The power of the Word is indescribable. I could support this point with many pieces of evidence I have experienced in the spiritual world; but since these would stagger belief, I will forgo any listing of them here. You can see some of them mentioned in 209 above.
On the basis of the points just made, I will, however, make this assertion: A church that has divine truths from the Lord has power over the hells. This is the church the Lord was talking about when he said to Peter, "On this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it" (Matthew 16:18). The Lord said these words after Peter proclaimed that Christ was the Son of the living God (Matthew 16:16). The "rock" in this passage means this very truth. In fact, everywhere in the Word a "rock" means the Lord's divine truth.
