Arcana Coelestia # 1200
1200. That 'Canaan' means external worship that has nothing internal within it has been shown already where Canaan was the subject. The type of external worship which is called 'Canaan' is similar to that of the Jews before the Lord's Coming, and after it as well. They had an external worship, which they also celebrated meticulously, yet they were unaware of what is internal, indeed so unaware of it as to imagine that they lived solely with a body. Of the soul, or faith, or the Lord, or spiritual and celestial life, or life after death, they were totally ignorant. Consequently very many in the Lord's time said that there was no resurrection, as is clear in Matthew 22:23-33; Mark 12:18-27; Luke 20:27-40. When a person is such that he does not believe he will live after death, he also does not believe in the existence of anything internal which is spiritual and celestial. This applies also to people whose lives are sunk in wholly evil desires because they lead merely bodily and worldly lives, especially those who are steeped in filthy avarice. They nevertheless have worship, some going to synagogue, or to church, and taking part in the services, some most meticulously. But because they do not believe in a life after death their worship is inevitably external worship having nothing internal within it, like a shell without a nut, and like a tree on which there is no fruit or even leaves. Such external worship is meant by 'Canaan'. All other types of external worship dealt with above were forms of worship that had internal things within them.
Mark 12:18-27
18
There came to him Sadducees, who say that there is no resurrection. They asked him, saying,
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"Teacher, Moses wrote to us, 'If a man's brother dies, and leaves a wife behind him, and leaves no children, that his brother should take his wife, and raise up offspring for his brother.'
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There were seven brothers. The first took a wife, and dying left no offspring.
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The second took her, and died, leaving no children behind him. The third likewise;
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and the seven took her and left no children. Last of all the woman also died.
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In the resurrection, when they rise, whose wife will she be of them? For the seven had her as a wife."
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Jesus answered them, "Isn't this because you are mistaken, not knowing the Scriptures, nor the power of God?
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For when they will rise from the dead, they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven.
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But about the dead, that they are raised; haven't you read in the book of Moses, about the Bush, how God spoke to him, saying, 'I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob'?
27
He is not the God of the dead, but of the living. You are therefore badly mistaken."
