938. 22:4 They shall see His face, and His name shall be on their foreheads. This symbolically means that they will turn to the Lord and the Lord to them, being conjoined by love.

To see the face of God and the Lamb, or the face of the Lord, does not mean to see His face, because no one can see the Lord's face such as He is in His Divine love and wisdom and live, for He is the sun of heaven and of the whole spiritual world. Indeed, to see His face as He is in Himself would be like entering the sun and being consumed in a moment by its fire. Nevertheless, the Lord sometimes presents Himself to be seen outside of the sun, but He veils Himself then and so presents Himself to those who see Him, which He does by means of an angel, as He did also in the world when He appeared to Abraham, Hagar, Lot, Gideon, Joshua, and others. That is why those angels are called angels and also Jehovah, for Jehovah was present in them from afar.

[2] Here, however, that His servants will see His face does not mean that they will see His face in this way, but that they will see the truths from Him contained in the Word and will know and acknowledge Him by means of them. For the Divine truths in the Word provide the light that emanates from the Lord as a sun, the light which angels enjoy, and because those truths provide the light, they are like mirrors in which the face of the Lord is seen. That to see the Lord's face symbolically means to turn to Him, will be explained below.

The Lord's name being on the servants' foreheads means, symbolically, that the Lord loves them and turns them to Him. The Lord's name symbolizes the Lord Himself, because it symbolizes His every attribute by which He is known and in consequence of which He is worshiped (nos. 81, 584). The forehead symbolizes love (nos. 347, 605), and being written on the forehead symbolizes the Lord's love in them (no. 729). It can be seen from this what is properly meant by the statement here.

[3] The statement, moreover, symbolically means that they will turn themselves to the Lord and the Lord to them, because the Lord gazes upon the forehead of all those who are conjoined with Him by love and so turns them to Him. Consequently, in heaven angels turn their faces only to the Lord as the sun, and this is astonishingly the case in whatever direction they turn physically. So people say in common speech that they have God ever before their eyes. The same is the case with the spirit of a person living in the world and conjoined with the Lord by love. But regarding this turning of the face to the Lord, more accounts may be seen in Angelic Wisdom Regarding Divine Love and Wisdom, nos. 129-144 and in the book Heaven and Hell (London, 1758), nos. 17 123, 143, 144, 151, 153, 255, 272.

143. It is still more difficult to comprehend in the world that in every turning of their face and body, the angels have the east facing them, since man according as he turns has every quarter facing him. This, then, will be explained.

Angels, like men, turn and move their faces and bodies in every direction, and yet they have the east always in front of their eyes. But the turnings of angels are unlike the turnings of men, because they are from another origin. They appear the same but yet they are not. The origin of those turnings is the ruling love, from which all directions with angels and spirits are determined, for, as just said, their interiors are actually turned towards their common centre, thus in heaven to the Lord as a Sun. Consequently, because love is continually present before their interiors, and the face comes into existence from the interiors, for it is their external form, therefore the love that is ruling is always before their face. So, in the heavens this is the Lord as a Sun, because it is from Him that they have their love. ¹ Also because the Lord Himself is with the angels in His love, it is the Lord Who causes them to look to Him whithersoever they turn. These matters cannot be further elucidated at this stage, but they will be presented more clearly to the understanding in subsequent sections, especially in those dealing with Representations and Appearances, and with Time and Space in Heaven.

That the angels have the Lord constantly facing them, it has been granted me to know and perceive from much experience. For, whenever I have been in company with angels, the Lord's presence was noticed before my face, not actually seen and yet perceptible in a light; and angels have quite often testified that this is so. As the Lord is constantly before the faces of the angels, therefore it is even said in the world that those who believe in the Lord and love Him have God before their eyes and face and that they look to Him and see Him. Man speaks in this way from the spiritual world for, although he is ignorant of their source, it is from there that many expressions are in human speech.

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