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.

Notas de rodapé:

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.

5256. 'Saying, It is not mine' means that it does not have a purely human origin. This becomes clear from the meaning of 'it is not mine' or not belonging to himself - when these words refer to the Lord, who is represented by 'Joseph' - as that it does not have a purely human origin but a Divine one; for the Divine foresees and consequently knows what something holds within it. When He was in the world the Lord possessed foresight and providence; the two were indeed present in the human, but they had their origin in the Divine. After that time however, once He was glorified, they had their origin in the Divine alone, for the Human, having been glorified, is Divine. Regarded in itself the human is nothing else than a form that receives life from the Divine; but the Lord's glorified Human, or His Divine Human, is not a form that receives life from the Divine but is the actual inner Being (Esse) of that life and so the source from which it comes forth. This is the kind of idea about the Lord that angels have. But as for members of the Christian Church at the present day who enter the next life, almost all think of the Lord as they do of any other human being. Not only do they have an idea of Him separate from the Divine, though they do attribute Divinity to Him; they also have an idea of Him separate from Jehovah. In addition they have an idea of Him separate from the holy one that goes forth from Him. They talk, it is true, about one God, yet they think of three and in practice divide the Divine into three. For they distinguish the Divine into separate persons, calling each one God and attributing a distinct property to each. Consequently Christians are said in the next life to worship three Gods, for their thoughts are of three however much they may talk about one.

[2] But those who are gentile converts to Christianity worship the Lord alone in the next life. They do so because they believed that it could have been none else than the supreme Deity who revealed Himself on earth as man and that this supreme Deity is a Divine Man. They also believed that if they did not have that idea of the supreme Deity they could not have any idea at all and so could not have any thought about God, nor consequently have any knowledge of Him, let alone love for Him.