49. Up to this point I have shown that in its earthly or literal meaning the Word is in its holiness and fullness. I now need to explain that in its literal meaning the Word is also in its power.

You can tell the amount and the nature of the power of divine truth both in the heavens and on earth from what has been said about the power of heaven’s angels in Heaven and Hell 228-233. The power of divine truth is exercised primarily against whatever is false and evil and therefore against the hells. These need to be resisted by the use of truths from the literal meaning of the Word. The Lord also has power to save us by means of whatever truth we have, because we are reformed and reborn by means of truths from the literal meaning of the Word; and we are then rescued from hell and brought into heaven. The Lord assumed this power in his divine human nature as well after he fulfilled all things of the Word even to the last.

[2] That is why the Lord said to the chief priest, when he was about to fulfill what remained by suffering on the cross, “Hereafter you will see the Son of Humanity sitting at the right hand of power and coming in the clouds of heaven” (Matthew 26:64; Mark 14:62). The Son of Humanity is the Lord as the Word; the clouds of heaven are the Word in its literal meaning; sitting at the right hand of God is omnipotence by means of the Word (see also Mark 16:19).

In the Jewish church, the Lord’s power through the outermost forms of truth was represented by the Nazirites and by Samson, who is described as a Nazirite from his mother’s womb and whose power was associated with his hair. “Nazirite” and “Naziriteship” also mean hair.

[3] Samson made this clear when he said, “No razor has come upon my head, because I [have been] a Nazirite from my mother’s womb. If I am shorn, then my strength will leave me and I will become weak, and will be like anyone else” (Judges 16:17). No one could know why Naziriteship with its reference to hair was instituted, and therefore why Samson got his strength from his hair, except by knowing the meaning a head has in the Word. Heads mean the heavenly wisdom angels and people receive from the Lord by means of divine truth. So the hair of the head means heavenly wisdom in its outermost forms and also divine truth in its outermost forms.

[4] Since this is the meaning of hair because of its correspondence with heavenly realities, the command to the Nazirites was that they should not shave the hair of their heads, because this was the Naziriteship of God upon their heads (Numbers 6:1-21); so there was also the command that the high priest and his sons were not to shave their heads or they would die and wrath would fall upon the whole house of Israel (Leviticus 10:6).

[5] Since hair was holy because of this meaning (which comes from its correspondence), the Son of Humanity, the Lord as the Word, was described as having hair that “was white like wool, as white as snow” (Revelation 1:14), and something similar is said of the Ancient of Days (Daniel 7:9). See also what is said on this subject in §35 above.

In short, divine truth or the Word has power in the literal meaning because that is where the Word is in its fullness and because that is where angels from both of the Lord’s kingdoms come together with people in this world.

1981. Let one further similar experience be related. I once had quite an ordinary dream, and having woken up I related it all from start to finish. The angels said that it coincided exactly with what they had been discussing; not that the things they were discussing appeared in the dream, but instead things completely different, into which the thoughts in their discussion were transformed, yet in such a way that they were representative and correspondent. Not one detail was missing. I also spoke to them about influx, about how such things flow in and are varied. There was a person of whom I had the idea that he was governed by natural truth, an idea which I had gained from the things he had done in life. Among the angels a discussion was taking place concerning natural truth, and therefore that person was represented to me. What he told me in my dream, and the things that he did, as well as the order in which these things came, were representative of and corresponded to their higher source, namely the discussion taking place among the angels. Yet what he told me was not anything like or the same as what the angels were discussing.