119. This is why in the Word the Lord is compared to the sun when the focus is on love and to the moon when the focus is on faith. It is also why the sun means a love for the Lord that comes from the Lord, and the moon means a faith in the Lord that comes from the Lord. Compare the following passages.

The light of the moon will be like the light of the sun, and the light of the sun will be sevenfold, like the light of seven days. (Isaiah 30:26)

When I annihilate you, I will cover the heavens and blacken the stars.

I will cover the sun with a cloud, and the moon will not make its light. I will blacken all the luminaries in the heavens above you and send darkness over your land. (Ezekiel 32:7-8)

I will darken the sun in its rising, and the moon will not make its light shine. (Isaiah 13:10)

The sun and the moon will be blackened and the stars will withdraw their shining; the sun will be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood. (Joel 2:2, 10, 31, 3:15)

The sun became black as hairy sackcloth, and the moon became like blood, and the stars fell to earth. (Revelation 6:12-13)

Immediately after the affliction of those days, the sun will be darkened and the moon will not give its light and the stars will fall from heaven. (Matthew 24:29)

And elsewhere. In these passages, the sun means love and the moon faith, while the stars mean instances of recognizing what is good and true. ¹ These are said to be darkened, to lose their light, and to fall from heaven when they no longer exist.

The Lord's appearance as a sun in heaven may also be inferred from his transfiguration before Peter, James, and John, when "his face shone like the sun" (Matthew 17:2). This is how the Lord was seen by those disciples when they had been lifted out of their bodies and were in the light of heaven.

For this reason, when the early people (who constituted a representative church) were engaged in their divine worship, they faced the sun in the east. It is why they set their temples to face the east.

Poznámky pod čarou:

348. "The ones who justify many" means the ones who are wise. In heaven people are called wise if they are engaged in what is good, and people are engaged in what is good when they involve divine truths directly in their lives, since divine truth becomes good when it becomes a matter of life. Then it truly becomes a matter of intent and love; and anything that belongs to our intent and love is called good. This is why these individuals are called wise, since wisdom is a matter of life. In contrast, people are called intelligent if they do not involve divine truths directly in their lives but consign them first to their memories and then draw them out and apply them to life. The nature and extent of the difference between these two kinds of people in the heavens has been presented in the chapter on heaven's two kingdoms, the heavenly and the spiritual (20-28), and in the chapter on the three heavens (29-40).

People who are in the Lord's heavenly kingdom, especially the ones in the third or inmost heaven, are called the just because they do not ascribe any justice to themselves, but all justice to the Lord. The Lord's justice in heaven is the good that comes from the Lord, ¹ so these are the people meant by "those who justify." They are also the ones the Lord was talking about when he said, "The righteous shall shine like the sun in my Father's kingdom" (Matthew 13:43). The reason they shine like the sun is that they are caught up in love for the Lord from the Lord, and this love is what the sun means (see above, 116-125). Further, the light they have is fiery, and their individual thoughts have something flamelike about them because they are receiving the good of love directly from the Lord as the sun in heaven.

Poznámky pod čarou: