784. And Jehovah shut after him. That this signifies that man no longer had such communication with heaven as had the man of the celestial church, appears from the following statement of the case. The state of the Most Ancient Church was such that they had internal communication with heaven, and so through heaven with the Lord. They were in love to the Lord. Those who are in love to the Lord are like angels, with the difference only that they are clothed with a body. Their interiors were uncovered, and were opened even from the Lord. But this new church was different. They were not in love to the Lord, but in faith, and through faith were in charity toward the neighbor. Such cannot have internal communication, like the most ancient man, but external. But the nature of internal and of external communication it would take too long to explain. Every man, even the wicked, has communication with heaven, through the angels with him (but with a difference as to degree, that is, nearer or more remote), for otherwise man could not exist. The degrees of this communication are without limit. A spiritual man cannot possibly have such communication as can the celestial man, for the reason that the Lord is in love, and not so much in faith. And this is what is signified by “Jehovah shut after him.”

[2] And since those times heaven has never been open in the way it was to the man of the Most Ancient Church. It is true that many afterwards spoke with spirits and angels: as Moses, Aaron, and others, but in an entirely different way, concerning which, of the Lord’s Divine mercy hereafter. The reason why heaven was closed is deeply hidden, and why it is so closed at this day that man does not even know that there are spirits, still less that there are angels, with him, and supposes himself to be entirely alone when without companions in the world, and when he is thinking by himself. And yet he is continually in the company of spirits, who observe and perceive what the man is thinking, and what he intends and devises, as fully and plainly as if it were manifest before all in the world. This the man is ignorant of, so closed to him is heaven, and yet it is most true. The reason is that if heaven were not so closed to him while he is in no faith, still less in the truth of faith, and still less in charity, it would be most perilous to him. This is also signified by the words:

Jehovah God drove out the man, and He placed at the east of the Garden of Eden the cherubim, and the flame of a sword that turned itself to keep the way of the tree of lives (Genesis 3:24; see also what is said in n. 301-303vvv2).