267. 13. Because of the Word, Even People Who Are outside the Church and Who Do Not Have the Word Have Light.

No connection to heaven is possible unless somewhere on earth there is a church where the Word exists and where the Lord is known through that Word. This is because the Lord is the God of heaven and earth - without the Lord there is no salvation. (For the Word providing a connection to the Lord and association with angels, see 234-239 above.) It is enough if there is one church where the Word exists. Even if this church consists of comparatively few people, still the Lord is present throughout the world by means of the Word, since heaven is connected to the human race through the Word.

800. The Dutch in the Spiritual World

In Heaven and Hell I reported that Christian populations where the Word is read and where the Lord is known and acknowledged as the Redeemer and Savior are at the center of all the nations and peoples in the entire spiritual world. The reason for this is that the greatest spiritual light exists among them. That light radiates out from the center into all outlying regions, even the very farthest, as was shown above in 267-272 in the chapter on the Sacred Scripture.

Within this Christian central region, Protestants are assigned particular places depending on how receptive they are to spiritual light from the Lord. Among the Dutch, that spiritual light is more deeply and fully joined to their earthly light, and they are therefore more receptive than others to what is reasonable and rational. As a result, they are given homes within that Christian central region that are in the eastern and southern parts of it. They are in the east to the extent that they have a capacity for receiving spiritual heat, and in the south to the extent that they have a capacity for receiving spiritual light.

(For the points that the regions of the spiritual world are not like the regions in the physical world, that people live in this or that region in accordance with their receptivity to faith and love, and that people who have an exceptionally great amount of love live in the east and people who have an exceptionally great level of understanding live in the south, see Heaven and Hell 141-153.)