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Jeremiah 40

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1 The word which came to Jeremiah from the Lord, after Nebuzaradan, the captain of the armed men, had let him go from Ramah, when he had taken him; for he had been put in chains, among all the prisoners of Jerusalem and Judah who were taken away prisoners to Babylon.

2 And the captain of the armed men took Jeremiah and said to him, The Lord your God gave word of the evil which was to come on this place:

3 *** and the Lord has made it come, and has done as he said; because of your sin against the Lord in not giving ear to his voice; and that is why this thing has come on you.

4 Now see, this day I am freeing you from the chains which are on your hands. If it seems good to you to come with me to Babylon, then come, and I will keep an eye on you; but if it does not seem good to you to come with me to Babylon, then do not come: see, all the land is before you; if it seems good and right to you to go on living in the land,

5 Then go back to Gedaliah, the son of Ahikam, the son of Shaphan, whom the king of Babylon has made ruler over the towns of Judah, and make your living-place with him among the people; or go wherever it seems right to you to go. So the captain of the armed men gave him food and some money and let him go.

6 So Jeremiah went to Gedaliah, the son of Ahikam, in Mizpah, and was living with him among the people who were still in the land.

7 Now when it came to the ears of all the captains of the forces who were in the field, and their men, that the king of Babylon had made Gedaliah, the son of Ahikam, ruler in the land, and had put under his care the men and women and children, all the poorest of the land, those who had not been taken away to Babylon;

8 Then they came to Gedaliah in Mizpah, even Ishmael, the son of Nethaniah, and Johanan, the son of Kareah, and Seraiah, the son of Tanhumeth, and the sons of Ephai the Netophathite, and Jezaniah, the son of the Maacathite, they and their men.

9 And Gedaliah, the son of Ahikam, the son of Shaphan, took an oath to them and their men, saying, Have no fear of the servants of the Chaldaeans: go on living in the land, and become the servants of the king of Babylon, and all will be well.

10 As for me, I will be living in Mizpah as your representative before the Chaldaeans who come to us: but you are to get in your wine and summer fruits and oil and put them in your vessels, and make living-places for yourselves in the towns which you have taken.

11 In the same way, when all the Jews who were in Moab and among the children of Ammon and in Edom and in all the countries, had news that the king of Babylon had let Judah keep some of its people and that he had put over them Gedaliah, the son of Ahikam, the son of Shaphan;

12 Then all the Jews came back from all the places to which they had gone in flight, and came to the land of Judah, to Gedaliah, to Mizpah, and got in a great store of wine and summer fruit.

13 Now Johanan, the son of Kareah, and all the captains of the forces which were in the field, came to Gedaliah in Mizpah,

14 And said to him, Has it come to your knowledge that Baalis, the king of the children of Ammon, has sent Ishmael, the son of Nethaniah, to take your life? But Gedaliah, the son of Ahikam, put no faith in what they said.

15 Then Johanan, the son of Kareah, said to Gedaliah in Mizpah secretly, Let me now go and put Ishmael, the son of Nethaniah, to death without anyone's knowledge: why let him take your life so that all the Jews who have come together to you may be sent in flight, and the rest of the men of Judah come to an end?

16 But Gedaliah, the son of Ahikam, said to Johanan, the son of Kareah, You are not to do this: for what you say about Ishmael is false.

   

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The Word

  
A detail from the Winchester Bible, this shows God putting words in the mouth of Jeremiah.

Consider the beautiful but cryptic statements of John 1:1:

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."

God's love has always been and will always be infinite and perfect. That means the expression of God's love -- His truth -- has also always been and will always be infinite and perfect.

The Lord has shared this truth with us in various ways since the beginning of humanity. The earliest people received truth directly, flowing into the inner parts of their minds from heaven. Later, people understood it through nature seeing the Lord's love expressed in mountains, trees, rivers, and the sun, moon and stars. By using natural language as a container for spiritual language, the Lord expressed truth within the Bible inside its stories, laws and prophecies. When humanity reached its lowest point, God took on a human form and walked among us as Jesus. In this way, the Lord brought us Divine truths in an accessible and tangible way. By accepting and loving the Lord as Jesus we can open ourselves to His love.

Finally, the Heavenly Doctrine received through the pen of Emanuel Swedenborg are themselves a container for Divine Truth, both in speaking plainly about heaven and by unlocking the truth as it is contained in the Bible.

The Word itself is Divine Truth; the Lord's expression of love has and never will change.

Ze Swedenborgových děl

 

True Christian Religion # 351

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351. (ii) The truths of faith are arranged into groupings, and thus, so to speak, into bundles, a fact that up to the present has been unknown. The reason for this ignorance is that the spiritual truths, out of which the whole of the Word is woven, have been rendered invisible, because of the mystical and enigmatic faith which plays the leading role in present-day theology. As a result, they have sunk into the ground like silos.

It needs to be explained what is meant by groupings and bundles. The first chapter of this book, dealing with God the Creator, is divided into grouped topics, the first of which is on the oneness of God; the second is on the being of God, that is, Jehovah; the third on the infinity of God; the fourth on the essence of God, which is Divine love and Divine wisdom; the fifth on the omnipotence of God; and the sixth on creation. The separate points in each make up the grouping; they tie together the contents, as it were into handfuls. These groupings in common and in particular, so both taken all together and individually, contain truths, which in proportion to their volume and coherence raise the level of faith and bring it to perfection.

[2] If anyone is unaware that the human mind is organised, or is a spiritual organism terminating in a natural organism, in which and controlled by which the mind operates on its ideas or thinks, he cannot help holding the opinion that perceptions, thoughts and ideas are merely rays and variations of light falling upon the head and presenting forms which he sees and acknowledges as reasons. But this is nonsense, for everyone knows that the head is filled with brains, the brains are organised, and the mind lives in them, and its ideas are fixed and remain in it as they are received and proved. So the question is, what sort of organisation is there? The answer is that everything is arranged into groupings, as it were into bundles, and this is how the truths that make up faith are arranged in the human mind. This fact can be illustrated by the following considerations.

[3] The brain consists of two substances, one glandular, called the cortical and grey matter; the other is fibrillary and is called the medullary substance. The first substance, the glandular one, is arranged in clusters like grapes on a vine; these clusters are its groupings. The second substance, called medullary, is composed of continuous bundles of fibres projecting from the glands of the first substance. These bundles are its groupings. All the nerves, which project from those and lead down into the body to perform various functions, are simply handfuls and bundles of fibres; so too are all the muscles, and generally speaking all the viscera and organs of the body. Both classes are of such a nature because they correspond to the groupings in which the mind is organised.

[4] Moreover throughout Nature there is nothing which is not composed of bunches to form groupings. Every tree, every bush, plant and vegetable, indeed every ear of corn or blade of grass is both generally and in detail so constructed. The universal cause of this is that this is the way Divine truths are structured; for we read that all things were created by the Word, that is, by Divine truth, and that the world too was made by the Word (John 1:1ff). These facts can allow us to see that, if the human mind did not contain such an orderly arrangement of substances, human beings would not possess any powers of analytical reasoning. Everyone has such powers in proportion to the orderly arrangement of his mind, and so in proportion to the volume of truths cohering as it were in a bundle; and this arrangement depends upon his free use of his reason.

  
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Thanks to the Swedenborg Society for the permission to use this translation.