The Writings offer a tremendous amount of material on angels. The book "Heaven and Hell" offers detailed discussions as it describes heaven; "Conjugial Love" has much to say about marriage and romantic love in heaven; "Divine Love and Wisdom" offers insight into how angels in their nature reflect the nature of the Lord. So we'll offer some basics here and recommend those books to those who want more detail.

(Referenser: Divine Love and Wisdom 231; Divine Providence 60-67)

Basically, the Writings say that if people in this life open themselves to the Lord, follow the Lord's teachings and let the Lord change their selfish desires into generous loves, they will go to heaven as angels after they die. If they don't, and instead embrace their selfishness, they will go to hell as evil spirits. The Writings also say that this is the only source of angels and evil spirits - they were all once people. There is no separately created race of angels, no fallen angel Lucifer who is now the Devil; that belief is based solely on a few lines of misinterpreted scripture.

This makes sense if you look at it logically. If the Lord could create beings that would live in love and harmony with him with no possibility of evil, why would He have bothered with us? Why not just make more of them? The fact is, such beings would not have any choice in their actions, making them no better than animals. And ultimately, if they were purely good then they would really just be extensions of the Lord, so in loving them He would be loving Himself. The reverse is true of the idea of Satan or "the" Devil. The Lord creates us from love so that he can love us, bring us to heaven and make us happy. For Satan to exist, the Lord would have had to create him, and it would be contrary to His essence to create something that was not intended for heaven, for joy, and for union with the Lord.

So angels were once people, who got to be angels by embracing the idea of being good and followed the Lord's teachings as best they could. The Writings make it clear these people can come from anywhere, from any religious background. Some churches may have doctrine that is closer to the truth than others, but the point of any religion is for people to desire to be good and try to be good using the tools they have.

When those people die, they go first to a place called the "world of spirits." There everyone who has recently died can learn about the Lord and spiritual life and prepare for heaven. There also, people's inner affections start showing on the surface; those who are ultimately evil start losing the ability to cover it up, and the love starts shining through for those who are ultimately good. As this continues and as people learn more, they naturally start congregating with others who have similar loves. This way evil people eventually take themselves to hell, where they can be with others who share their evil. Good people, on the other hand, can be prepared for heaven.

Two important things have to happen for us to truly enter fully into heaven. First, the Lord will push aside our remaining evil desires, so they cannot hurt us or tempt us anymore; angels are in a marvelous state of peace, with no active evil to trouble them. Second, we will each be led by the Lord to the perfect married partner, the one whose soul matches ours, the one we can love blissfully to eternity. All angels are married, because the marriage of a man and a woman represents the marriage of love and wisdom in the Lord, and also the marriage of the desire for good and understanding of truth in each of us. Because of this, we can only fully receive and return the Lord's love as married partners, and heaven is suffused with the sphere of marriage and the love of marriage.

The angelic couples will find their way to communities of other angels whose loves match their own, people with whom they can share the deepest friendships imaginable. They will have houses which reflect the character of their loves, and will be given work to do that springs from their loves and fills them with joy. Beyond that, their lives are much as life might be in this world, though free of sickness and aging and boredom and conflict. They have bodies that are human in form - no wings! - but a beauty in face and form that reflects the good loves they have inside. They eat and drink and laugh and sleep and have parties and games; all filled with the delight of mutual love.

The Writings tell us the work angels do is varied far beyond what we can imagine, though they only describe a few aspects. Among other things, angels care for people in this life, passing on to them true ideas and desires for good from the Lord. They also teach those in the World of Spirits, greet those who have just died, raise those who died as children, keep order in hell and do many other things.

We would finally note that there are three degrees of angelic life, based on the loves people embraced in this life. The first, lowest heaven, called the "natural heaven," is filled by those who are in the love of service. Angels there love to do what's right because they know it is right. The second, middle heaven, called the spiritual heaven, is filled by those who are in the love of the neighbor. Angels there love to engage their minds with spiritual questions to gain an ever-deeper understanding of how to be loving to one another. The third, highest heaven, known as celestial, is filled with those who are in love of the Lord Himself. From that love they have such innocence that they look like children, and they instantly perceive what is true, in all its variety, from the light of that love.

(Referenser: Apocalypse Revealed 818; Arcana Coelestia 228-233, 454, 1802, 2551, 2572 [3-4], 5470, 6872 [2-3], 8747, 9503 [1-3], 9814 [2], 10604 [2-4]; Conjugial Love 44 [6-10], 52; Divine Love and Wisdom 19, 63, 71, 115, 116, 202, Divine Love and Wisdom 321, 322, 334; Heaven and Hell 75, 133, 266, 267, 304, 311, 415)

819. "For the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy." This symbolically means that an acknowledgment that the Lord is God of heaven and earth, and at the same time a life in accordance with His commandments, is in a universal sense the whole of the Word and of doctrine drawn from it.

The testimony of Jesus symbolizes an attestation of the Lord in heaven that heaven is His, and thus that He is present in heaven together with the angels there. Moreover, because that attestation cannot be given to any others than people conjoined with the Lord, and those are conjoined with the Lord who acknowledge Him as God of heaven and earth, as He Himself teaches (Matthew 28:18), and who at the same time live in accordance with His commandments, especially the Ten Commandments, therefore these two things are symbolically meant by the testimony of Jesus, as may be seen in nos. 6 and 490 above. That this testimony is the spirit of prophecy means, symbolically, that it is the whole of the Word and of doctrine drawn from it. For the Word in its universal sense deals solely with the Lord and with a life in accordance with His commandments. That is why the Lord embodies the Word. For He embodies the Word because the Word comes from Him and deals with Him alone, and teaches only how He is to be acknowledged and worshiped. These are the precepts of the Word, called Divine truths, in accordance with which a person must live in order for him to come into conjunction with the Lord.

That the Word deals with the Lord alone, and that for this reason the Lord is called an embodiment of the Word, may be seen in The Doctrine of the New Jerusalem Regarding the Lord 1-7, 8-11, 19-28, 37-44, and in The Doctrine of the New Jerusalem Regarding the Sacred Scripture 80-90, 98-100.

This, too, is something the Lord says, that the spirit of truth, which is the Holy Spirit, will testify of the Lord, and that it will not speak on its own, but will take of what is the Lord's and declare it (John 15:26; 16:13, 15).

6. Who bore witness to the Word of God, and to the testimony of Jesus Christ. (1:2) This symbolically means, who from the heart and so in a state of light receive Divine truth from the Word and acknowledge the Lord's humanity to be Divine.

John is said to have borne witness to the Word of God, but because John means all people who possess goodness of life arising from charity and its accompanying faith, as said just above in no. 5, therefore all these are meant in the spiritual sense. The angels, who are concerned with the spiritual sense of the Word, never know the name of any person mentioned in the Word, but only what the person represents and so symbolizes, which in the case of John is goodness of life or goodness in act, and consequently all people as a whole who possess that goodness. These bear witness, which is to say, they see, acknowledge, and accept from the heart in a state of light, and confess the truths of the Word, especially this truth there, that the Lord's humanity is Divine, as can be seen from the copious passages cited from the Word in The Doctrine of the New Jerusalem Regarding the Lord.

Jesus Christ and the Lamb in the book of Revelation mean the Lord in respect to His Divine humanity, and God means the Lord in respect to the Divine itself from which springs all else.

[2] As regards the spiritual signification of bearing witness, this is said of truth, because in the world it is truth to which one is to bear witness, and which, when borne witness to, is acknowledged. But in heaven truth bears witness to itself, because it is the very light of heaven. For when angels hear the truth, they at once recognize it and acknowledge it. And because the Lord is the embodiment of truth, as He Himself teaches in John 14:6, ¹ He is, in heaven, self-witnessing. This makes apparent what is meant by the testimony of Jesus Christ. Therefore the Lord says,

You have sent to John, and he bore witness to the truth. Yet I do not receive testimony from man... (John 5:33-34)

And in another place:

(John) came for a witness, to bear witness of the Light... He was not that Light... (The Word that was with God and was God, and became flesh,) was the true Light which gives light to every man... (John 1:1-2, 7-9, 14, 34)

Elsewhere:

Jesus... said..., ."..I bear witness of Myself, (and) My witness is true, for I know where I came from and where I am going... (John 8:14)

When the Counselor comes..., the Spirit of truth..., it will testify of Me. (John 15:26)

The Counselor, the spirit of truth, means the truth itself emanating from the Lord. Therefore it is said concerning it that it will not speak of itself but from the Lord (John 16:13-15). ²

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