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.

(Izinkomba: 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.

(Izinkomba: 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)

6872. 'You shall worship God beside this mountain' means perception and acknowledgement of the Divine springing from love. This is clear from the meaning of 'worshipping God' as adoration of the Divine, but when the expression is used in reference to the Lord the perception and acknowledgement of the Divine in the Human is meant; and from the meaning of 'mountain' as the good of God's love, dealt with in 795, 796, 2722, 4210, 6435, 6829. From these meanings it is evident that the words 'you shall worship God beside this mountain', when used in reference to the Lord, mean a perception and acknowledgement of the Divine springing from love.

[2] What is meant by a perception and acknowledgement of the Divine springing from love must be stated. Everyone's character is recognized from his love. For the inner being (esse) of anyone's life is love; his very life emanates from it. Therefore the kind of love that reigns with a person determines the person's character. If self-love and a love of the world reign, and as a consequence the love of vengeance, hatred, cruelty, adultery, and the like, then that person is a devil so far as his spirit or interior man which lives after death is concerned, no matter what he may seem to be to outward appearance. But if a love of God and a love of the neighbour are what reign with a person, and consequently a love of what is good and true, and also of what is just and honourable, then he is an angel so far as his spirit which lives after death is concerned, no matter what he may seem to be to outward appearance. But when God's love reigns with someone - as it has done only in the Lord - that one is God. Thus the Lord's Human was made Divine when He received in His Human His Father's love, which was the inner Being (Esse) of His life. From all this one may see what is meant by a perception and acknowledgement of the Divine that springs from love.

[3] It is an unalterable truth that a person is entirely the same in character as his love. This is evident from angels in the next life who, when they are seen, look like forms of love. Love itself not only shines but also breathes out of them, so that you may say that they are in every respect embodiments of love. The reason for this is that all the interiors of an angel, like those of a person in this world, are nothing other than forms that receive life. And being forms that receive life they are forms that receive different kinds of love; for these constitute a person's life. Since therefore the love that flows in and the form that receives it are compatible with each other it follows that the character of an angel or a person in this world is determined by his love. This applies not only to the primary organic substances in the brain but also to the whole body, since the body is nothing other than an organism formed from its primary substances.

[4] From all this it becomes clear that a person is made completely new when he is being regenerated; for at that time every single part of him is being made fit to receive heavenly kinds of love. With man however the earlier forms are not destroyed but removed, whereas with the Lord the earlier forms which came from His mother were completely destroyed and rooted out, and Divine forms were received and replaced them. For God's love is incompatible with any form other than a Divine one; it casts all the rest totally aside. As a consequence of this the Lord was no longer Mary's son once He was glorified.

10099. 'Shall be for his sons after him' means within the natural, successively. This is clear from the meaning of 'Aaron's sons' as those things which emanate from Divine Good as the Father, dealt with in 9807, 10068; and from the meaning of 'after him' as successively or in successive order. And when those things are said of Aaron's garments, which represented the Divine Spiritual, 10098, the statement that 'they shall be for his sons after him' means the Divine Spiritual within the natural, successively. For there are three entities which succeed one another in heaven and which, if people are to have any clear-cut idea of them, must be called by their particular names - celestial, spiritual, and natural. These three emanate there in order one from another; they are interconnected by an influx passing successively from one on to the next, and in this way they make one. What is Divine and the Lord's in the heavens is referred to by these different names on account of differences in the reception of it.

[2] The subject at present is the second ram, called the ram of fillings [of the hand]; and 'filling the hand' means consecration to represent what is Divine and the Lord's in the heavens, and the transmission and the reception of it there, 10019. Consequently, in order that the reception of it in the natural may also be described, the present verse speaks about Aaron's garments, about their being worn in succeeding years by his sons after him. By this the succeeding stage of that reality in the heavens which is meant by 'the filling of the hands' should be understood. From this it is evident that these matters in the internal sense hold together in an unbroken sequence, even though in the sense of the letter a break in the series of details regarding what had to be done with the ram is apparent here.

Since things which exist in successive order in heaven are the subject here, something must also be stated to explain what 'successive' means. The majority of learned people at the present day have no other idea of things existing in successive order than of a continuation, or of things held together by continuing one into the next. This being their idea of the way that things succeed one another they can have no conception of the nature of the difference between exterior and interior things in a person, nor consequently of the difference between a person's body and his spirit. When therefore they contemplate these matters with the ideas they have they cannot possibly understand how a person's spirit can be alive within a human form after the decay or death of the body.

[3] But things existing in successive order are not continuous, merging one into the next; instead they are discrete, that is, belong to distinct degrees that are clear-cut one from the next. For interior things are entirely distinct from exterior ones, so distinct that the exterior things can be separated and the interior ones still retain the life they have. So it is that a person can be withdrawn from the body and think within his spirit or, as an expression commonly used by the ancients puts it, withdrawn from sensory perceptions and raised to more internal things. The ancients also knew that when a person is withdrawn from perceiving things with his physical senses he is drawn up or raised to the light belonging to his spirit, that is, the light of heaven. So it was also that learned ancients knew that when their body had decayed they would be living a more internal life, which they called their spirit. And since they regarded this life to be the truly human life they also knew that they would be living within a human form. Such was the idea they had regarding a person's soul. And since that life partook of Divine life they perceived that their soul was immortal; for they knew that that part of a person which was a partaker of Divine life and for this reason linked to it could never die.

[4] But this idea of a person's soul and spirit disappeared after those ancient times, for the reason, as stated above, that people did not have a right idea about things existing in successive order. This also explains why those who in their thinking rely on present-day learning do not know what the spiritual is, nor that this is distinct from the natural. For those who conceive of things in successive order as something continuous inevitably take the spiritual to be nothing more than a purer extension of the natural, when yet the spiritual and the natural are as distinct from each other as prior and posterior, and so as that which begets and that which is begotten. Consequently learned people such as these do not see the difference between the internal or spiritual man and the external or natural man, nor therefore between a person's inward thought and will and his outward thought and will. Consequently also they cannot understand anything regarding faith and love, heaven and hell, or the life of a person after death.

[5] But those who have a right and distinct idea about things existing in successive order can in some measure comprehend that with a person who is being regenerated interior things are opened in successive order, and that as they are opened they are also raised to interior light and life, and nearer to the Divine; and that this opening and consequent raising is accomplished by means of God's truths, which are vessels receptive of the good of love from the Divine. The good of love is what joins a person directly to the Divine, for love is spiritual togetherness. From this it follows that a person can be opened and raised up on increasingly internal levels, in the measure that the good of love from the Divine exists in him, and conversely that there is no such opening or consequent raising up with the person who does not receive God's truths, which happens if evil resides in him. But a fuller statement regarding this successive order and its mysteries will in the Lord's Divine mercy be presented elsewhere ¹ .

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