504. Where also our Lord was crucified. This symbolizes a failure to acknowledge the Lord's Divine humanity, and thus a state in which He is rejected.

It is a saying in the church that people who blaspheme the Lord, crucify Him, and that so, too, do those who, like the Jews, deny that He is the Son of God.

People who deny that the Lord's humanity is Divine are like Jews because everyone views the Lord as a person, and anyone who views His humanity as on par with the humanity of any other person is incapable then of thinking of His Divinity, no matter how often this is called the Son of God, born from eternity, coequal with the Divinity of the Father. When he is told this or hears it read, it penetrates his hearing, indeed, but not at the same time his belief, since he thinks of the Lord as being a material person like any other man, retaining the same properties of the flesh. And because he then sets the Lord's Divinity aside and pays it no attention, he is therefore in the same state as he would be if he denied it; for he denies that the Lord's humanity is the Son of God, even as the Jews did also, for which reason they crucified Him. That the Lord's humanity is nevertheless the Son of God is something plainly said in Luke 1:32, 35, Matthew 3:16-17, and elsewhere.

[2] It is apparent from this why people in the church turn directly to God the Father, and many also to the Holy Spirit, and rarely anyone directly to the Lord.

Since the Jews crucified the Lord owing to their denial that He was the Messiah, the Son of God, therefore their Jerusalem is also called Sodom (Isaiah 3:9, Jeremiah 23:14, Ezekiel 16:46, 48). And the Lord says,

On the day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven and destroyed them all. Even so will it be in the day when the Son of Man is revealed. (Luke 17:29-30)

What the fire and brimstone are may be seen in no. 452, 494.

88. BRIEF ANALYSIS

That seven chapters of the Revelation treat of the perverted state of the Church among the Reformed, and two chapters of the perverted state of the Church among the Roman Catholics, and that the states of both Churches as existing at the present day are condemned, has been shown in the exposition of this book in a work entitled THE APOCALYPSE REVEALED; and this, not by uncertain conjectures, but with full proofs. By the dragon, treated of in the twelfth chapter, are meant those in the Reformed Churches who make God into three and the Lord into two, and who separate charity from faith by making faith spiritual and saving, not charity; see THE APOCALYPSE REVEALED 532-565, and the memorable experience adjoined,THE APOCALYPSE REVEALED 566. They are further described by the two beasts, one rising out of the sea and the other out of the earth, as related in chapter xiii; see THE APOCALYPSE REVEALED 567-610, and the memorable experience,THE APOCALYPSE REVEALED 611. They are further described by the locusts which came forth out of the pit of the abyss, as mentioned in chapter 9; see THE APOCALYPSE REVEALED 419-442. This same faith, when confirmed, is meant by the great city which is spiritually called Sodom and Egypt, where the two faithful witnesses were slain, as related in chapter 11; see THE APOCALYPSE REVEALED 485-530, particularly THE APOCALYPSE REVEALED 500-503, and the memorable experience,THE APOCALYPSE REVEALED 531. They are also meant by the pit of the abyss out of which issued smoke as from a furnace, and the sun and the air were darkened, and then locusts came forth, as described in chapter 9; see THE APOCALYPSE REVEALED 421-424.