10497. 'And it happened on the next day' means the duration of such worship right to the end of the Church. This is clear from the meaning of 'the next day' as that which is perpetual and eternal; but when the Jewish nation is the subject that which continues right to the end of the Church is meant. The reason why the expression 'the next day' means that which continues perpetually and into eternity is that when 'the morrow' is mentioned in connection with such things as serve to mean Divine celestial and spiritual realities it means that which is perpetual and eternal, see 3998, 9939. Here however the duration right to the end of the Church is meant because that expression has reference to the Jewish nation and its worship, which had an end when the Lord came into the world, as foretold in Daniel,

Seventy weeks have been decreed concerning your people and your holy city to bring transgression to a close and to seal up sins and to atone for iniquity, and to bring everlasting righteousness, and to seal up vision and prophet, and to anoint the Holy of Holies. In the middle of the week he will cause sacrifice and offering to cease. At length upon the bird of abominations will come desolation; until the close and the decree will it drop upon the devastation. Daniel 9:24, 27.

And the fact that what still remains of the worship of that nation will have an end at the end of the present-day Church in Europe is foretold by the Lord in Matthew,

Truly, I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place. Matthew 24:34.

That chapter deals with the close of the age, which is the end of this Church, as has been shown and may be seen in the preliminary sections to Genesis 26-40.

Father in the Word means what is most interior, and in those things that are following the Lord's order, it means what is good. In the highest sense Father means the Lord Himself, the creator. In the generation of natural children it is the father who provides the soul or the most interior receptacle of life, and an internal heredity, and the mother who provides all of the substance that the soul uses to form its body, plus an external heredity. In this process the soul comes from the Lord through the father, and not from the father, since all life is from the Lord. The wise person calls the Lord his father and the church his mother because his interior loves come from the Lord, but are given form and actuality through the truths taught by the church. Those things thus brought forth are a person's spiritual "children". In the New Testament, when speaking of Jesus and the Father, what is meant is the outward manifestation with the divine itself as the soul inside. Because Jesus was born from a natural mother, He had a natural body and a natural Jewish heredity. Throughout his life as He was tempted by the hells, He slowly put off all he had from His mother and replaced it with what He had from Himself inside, the Father. In doing this he made himself one with the Father that was His inmost so He could truly say, "I and my Father are one".