9667. 'And you shall overlay the boards with gold, and make their rings from gold, houses for the bars; and you shall overlay the bars with gold' means a representative sign of the good from which and through which everything derives its existence. This is clear from the meaning of 'overlaying with gold' and 'making from gold' as a representative sign of good, dealt with in 9510, in addition to which good that lends support is meant by 'boards', 9634, good and truth joined together by 'rings', 9493, 9495, and the power of truth from good by 'bars' or 'poles', 9496. The reason why everything should derive its existence from and through the good is that everything throughout creation has connection with good and with truth, and good is that from which truth and so from which everything derives its existence. And good has its origin in the Divine Himself. The Lord's Divine Love constitutes Divine Good; for all good belongs to love. Divine Love itself and so Divine Good is Being itself (ipsum Esse), which is called Jehovah and also the Lord, and the Manifestation (Existere) of that Being is Truth. From all this it may be seen that everything derives its existence from good.

3483. Everything at all visible in the universe is representative of the Lord's kingdom, so much so that nothing exists in the starry sky above, or on this planet and in its three kingdoms below, which is not in its own way representative. For every single thing within the natural order is an ultimate image, in that the Divine issues forth into celestial things, which are expressions of good; celestial things issue forth into spiritual, which are expressions of truth; and celestial and spiritual things issue forth into natural things. This shows how stupid, indeed how earthly and also topsy-turvy, human intelligence is which separates or isolates natural forces from that which is prior to them and flowing into them - that is, from their efficient cause - and then attributes everything to natural forces. And people who think and talk in this fashion seem to themselves to be wiser than anybody else, that is to say, by their attribution of everything to natural forces. Angelic intelligence however is quite the reverse - it attributes nothing to natural forces but every single thing to the Lord's Divine, and so to life, not to anything devoid of life.

[2] The learned know that remaining in being consists in perpetual coming into being. Nevertheless it is contrary to their affection for falsity, and consequently to their reputation for being learned, to say that natural forces are constantly kept in being, even as they came into being, from the Lord's Divine. Now because every single thing remains in being from the Divine, that is, is constantly coming into being from Him, and every single thing from that source is inevitably a representative of the real thing by means of which it has come into being, the whole visible universe is therefore nothing else than a theatre that is representative of the Lord's kingdom. And this in turn is a theatre representative of the Lord Himself.