938. 22:4 They shall see His face, and His name shall be on their foreheads. This symbolically means that they will turn to the Lord and the Lord to them, being conjoined by love.

To see the face of God and the Lamb, or the face of the Lord, does not mean to see His face, because no one can see the Lord's face such as He is in His Divine love and wisdom and live, for He is the sun of heaven and of the whole spiritual world. Indeed, to see His face as He is in Himself would be like entering the sun and being consumed in a moment by its fire. Nevertheless, the Lord sometimes presents Himself to be seen outside of the sun, but He veils Himself then and so presents Himself to those who see Him, which He does by means of an angel, as He did also in the world when He appeared to Abraham, Hagar, Lot, Gideon, Joshua, and others. That is why those angels are called angels and also Jehovah, for Jehovah was present in them from afar.

[2] Here, however, that His servants will see His face does not mean that they will see His face in this way, but that they will see the truths from Him contained in the Word and will know and acknowledge Him by means of them. For the Divine truths in the Word provide the light that emanates from the Lord as a sun, the light which angels enjoy, and because those truths provide the light, they are like mirrors in which the face of the Lord is seen. That to see the Lord's face symbolically means to turn to Him, will be explained below.

The Lord's name being on the servants' foreheads means, symbolically, that the Lord loves them and turns them to Him. The Lord's name symbolizes the Lord Himself, because it symbolizes His every attribute by which He is known and in consequence of which He is worshiped (nos. 81, 584). The forehead symbolizes love (nos. 347, 605), and being written on the forehead symbolizes the Lord's love in them (no. 729). It can be seen from this what is properly meant by the statement here.

[3] The statement, moreover, symbolically means that they will turn themselves to the Lord and the Lord to them, because the Lord gazes upon the forehead of all those who are conjoined with Him by love and so turns them to Him. Consequently, in heaven angels turn their faces only to the Lord as the sun, and this is astonishingly the case in whatever direction they turn physically. So people say in common speech that they have God ever before their eyes. The same is the case with the spirit of a person living in the world and conjoined with the Lord by love. But regarding this turning of the face to the Lord, more accounts may be seen in Angelic Wisdom Regarding Divine Love and Wisdom, nos. 129-144 and in the book Heaven and Hell (London, 1758), nos. 17 123, 143, 144, 151, 153, 255, 272.

123. As it is from the Divine love that is in and from Him that the Lord appears in heaven like a sun, so all in the heavens are turned constantly to Him, those in the celestial kingdom to Him as a sun and those in the spiritual kingdom to Him as a moon. But those that are in hell turn themselves to an opposite darkness and dense darkness, that is, they turn backwards, away from the Lord; and for the reason that all in the hells are in love of self and the world, thus antagonistic to the Lord. Those who turn themselves to the dense darkness that is in the place where this world's sun is are in the hells behind, and are called genii; while those that turn themselves to the darkness that is in the place of the moon are in the hells more in front, and are called spirits. This is why those in the hells are said to be in darkness, and those in the heavens in light, "darkness" signifying falsity from evil, and "light" truth from good. They so turn themselves because all in the other life look towards what rules in their interiors, thus to their loves; and with angels and spirits the interiors determine the face; and in the spiritual world quarters are not fixed, as in the natural world, but are determined by the face. In respect to his spirit man turns himself in like manner as a spirit does, backwards from the Lord if he is in love of self and the world, and towards the Lord if he is in love to the Lord and the neighbor. But of this man is ignorant, because he is in the natural world where quarters are determined by the rising and setting of the sun. But as this cannot be easily comprehended by men it will be elucidated hereafter when Quarters, Space, and Time in Heaven are treated of.