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Genesis 1

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1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.

4 And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.

5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first Day.

6 And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.

7 And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.

8 And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.

9 And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so.

10 And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good.

11 And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so.

12 And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

13 And the evening and the morning were the third day.

14 And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years:

15 And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so.

16 And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.

17 And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth,

18 And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good.

19 And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.

20 And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.

21 And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

22 And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth.

23 And the evening and the morning were the fifth day.

24 And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so.

25 And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

26 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.

27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.

28 And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.

29 And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.

30 And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so.

31 And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.

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Arcana Coelestia # 904

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904. That 'God spoke to Noah' means the Lord's presence with the member of the Church becomes clear from the internal sense of the Word. The Lord speaks to everybody, for whatever good and truth a person wills and thinks comes from the Lord. With everyone there are at least two evil spirits and two angels. The former activate his evils whereas the latter instill goods and truths. Every good or truth that angels instill is the Lord's; in this way the Lord is constantly speaking to man, though quite differently from one person to the next. To people who allow themselves to be carried away by evil spirits the Lord speaks as though He were not present, or so far away that He can hardly be said to be speaking. But to those who are being led by the Lord, the Lord speaks as one who is quite present. This becomes clear enough from the fact that nobody can possibly think of anything good and true except from the Lord.

[2] The Lord's presence is relative to the state of love towards the neighbour and of faith present in a person. It is in love towards the neighbour that the Lord is present, for He is present in all good, and not so much in so-called faith that is devoid of love. Faith devoid of love and charity is something severed or disjoined. Wherever conjunction exists there has to be a conjoining agency, which is exclusively love and charity. This may become clear to anyone from the fact that the Lord has compassion on everybody, loves everyone, and wishes to make everyone eternally happy. A person therefore who is devoid of the kind of love that leads him to have compassion on others, to love them, and to wish to make them happy, cannot be joined to the Lord because he is not at all like Him, and is in no sense the image of Him. Looking to the Lord by means of that which goes by the name of faith while hating the neighbour amounts not only to standing a long way off, but also to having between himself and the Lord a hell-like chasm into which the person would fall if he wished to go any nearer. For it is hatred towards the neighbour that constitutes that intervening hell-like chasm.

[3] The Lord is present with a person the moment he starts to love the neighbour. It is in love that the Lord is present, and to the extent that a person has love the Lord is present. And to the extent that the Lord is present He speaks to man. No one knows anything other than that he thinks from himself. Yet he possesses not one single idea of thought, not even the shred of an idea, from himself. Rather that which is evil and false he possesses through evil spirits from hell, and that which is good and true through angels from the Lord. Such is influx, the channel by which a person's life comes and by which consequently his soul interacts with the body. All these considerations make clear what 'God spoke to Noah' means. 'Saying to someone' means one thing, as in Genesis 1:29; 3:13-14, 17; 4:6, 9, 15; 6:13; 7:1, while 'speaking to someone' means another. Here speaking to Noah' means His being present, for the subject now is the regenerate person, who has had charity conferred on him.

  
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Thanks to the Swedenborg Society for the permission to use this translation.

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Heaven and Hell # 603

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603. What I have been saying in this book about heaven, the world of spirits, and hell, will be obscure to people who find no delight in knowing about spiritual truths; but it will be clear to people who do have this delight, especially to people involved in an affection for truth for its own sake - that is, people who love truth because it is true. Anything that is loved enters into the concepts of our minds with light, especially when what is loved is true, because all truth is in the light.

[2] References to Passages in Secrets of Heaven Concerning Our Freedom, Inflow, and the Spirits Who Are the Means of Communication.

On Freedom. All freedom is a matter of love or affection, because whatever we love, we do freely: 2870, 3158, 8907 [8987?], 8990, 9585, 9591. Since freedom is a matter of love, it is the life of every individual: 2873. Nothing seems to be part of us unless it comes from freedom: 2880. There is a heavenly freedom and a hellish freedom: 2870, 2873-2874, 9589-9590.

Heavenly freedom comes from heavenly love, or a love of what is good and true: 1947, 2870, 2872, and since a love of what is good and true comes from the Lord, we are truly free only when we are led by the Lord: 892, 905, 2872, 2886, 2890-2892, 9096, 9586-9587, 9589-9591. The Lord brings us into heavenly freedom through regeneration: 2874-2875, 2882, 2892. We need freedom in order to be regenerated: 1937, 1947, 2876, 2881, 3145-3146, 3158, 4031, 8700. Otherwise the love of what is good and true could not be sown in us and become so much a part of us as to seem to be our own: 2877, 2879-2880, 2888. Nothing is united to us that happens under compulsion: 8700, 2875. If we could be forcibly reformed, everyone would be saved: 2881. Compulsion in matters of reformation is destructive: 4031. All worship offered in freedom is worship, but not what is offered under compulsion: 1947, 2880, 7349, 10097. Repentance needs to happen in a state of freedom, and if it happens in a state of compulsion, it does not work: 8392. Just what a state of compulsion is: 8392.

[3] We are allowed to act from the freedom we have as rational beings, so that good may be provided to us; we therefore have a freedom of thinking and intending evil as well, and even of doing it to the extent that the laws do not prevent it: 10777. The Lord holds us between heaven and hell and therefore in a balance so that we can be in freedom for the sake of our reformation: 5982, 6477, 8209, 8907 [8987?]. What is sown in freedom stays with us, but not what is sown under compulsion: 9588. So freedom is never taken away from anyone: 2876, 2881. The Lord does not compel anyone: 1937, 1947.

To compel oneself stems from freedom, but being compelled does not: 1937, 1947. We ought to compel ourselves to resist evil: 1937, 1947, 7914; and to do good as well, apparently on our own, but still recognizing that it comes from the Lord: 2883, 2891-2892, 7914. We become more solidly free in those temptation struggles in which we win, because then we are inwardly compelling ourselves to resist, even though it does not seem that way: 1937, 1947, 2881.

[4] Hellish freedom is being led by love for oneself and love for the world and by their cravings: 2870, 2873. This is the only freedom people in hell know: 2871. Heavenly freedom is as remote from hellish freedom as heaven is from hell: 2873-2874. Hellish freedom, which is being led by love for oneself and love for the world, is not freedom but slavery: 2884, 2890. So slavery is being led by hell: 9586, 9589-9591.

[5] On Inflow. Everything we think and intend flows in; [learned] from experience: 904, 2886-2888, 4151, 4319-4320, 5846, 5848, 6189, 6191, 6194, 6197-6199, 6213, 7147, 10219. Our ability to look into things, think, and draw analytic conclusions comes from inflow: 1288 [1285?], 4319-4320. We could not live for a moment if we were deprived of the inflow from the spiritual world, [from] experience: 2887, 5849, 5854, 6321. The life that flows in from the Lord varies depending on our state and our openness to it: 2069, 5986, 6472, 7343. In evil people, the good that flows in from the Lord is turned into evil, and the truth into falsity; from experience: 3643 [3642 or 3743], 4632. We accept the good and true things that flow in from the Lord to the extent that what is evil and false does not bar the way: 2411, 3142, 3147, 5828.

[6] Everything good flows in from the Lord and everything evil from hell: 904, 4151. Nowadays people believe that everything is in themselves and from themselves, when actually everything is flowing in, as they might learn from the doctrine of the church, which teaches that everything good comes from the Lord and everything evil from the devil: 4249, 6193, 6206. If our belief were in accord with doctrine, we would not claim evil as our own or make good our own: 6206, 6324-6325. How happy our state would be if we believed that everything good flows in from the Lord and everything evil from hell: 6325. People who deny heaven or know nothing about it do not realize that there is any inflow from it: 4322, 5649, 6193, 6479. What inflow is, illustrated by comparisons: 6428 [6128?], 6480 [6190?], 9407.

[7] All of life flows in from the first wellspring of life because this is its source; and it is constantly flowing in, so it comes from the Lord: 3001, 3318, 3237 [3337?], 3338, 3344, 3484, 3619, 3741-3743, 4318-4320, 4417, 4524, 4882, 5847, 5986, 6325, 6468-6470, 6479, 9276, 10196. The inflow is spiritual and not physical, which means that the inflow is from the spiritual world into the natural and not from the natural into the spiritual: 3219, 5119, 5259, 5427-5428, 5477, 6322, 9110-9111 [9109?]. The inflow comes through the inner person into the outer, or through the spirit into the body, and not the other way around, because our spirit is in the spiritual world and our body in the natural world: 1702, 1707, 1940, 1954, 5119, 5259, 5779, 6322, 9380 [9110?]. The inner person is in the spiritual world and the outer in the natural world: 978, 1015, 3628, 4459, 4523-4524, 6057, 6309, 9701-9709, 10156, 10472. It seems as though there were an inflow from our outer natures into our inner, but this is an illusion: 3721. There is an inflow into our rational workings and through these into our information processing, and not the other way around: 1495, 1707, 1940. What the pattern of inflow is like: 775, 880, 1096, 1495, 7270. The inflow comes directly from the Lord and indirectly through the spiritual world or heaven: 6063, 6307, 6472, 9682-9683. The inflow from the Lord comes into what is good in us and through that good into what is true, but not the other way around: 5483 [5482?], 5649, 6027, 8685, 8701, 10153. What is good enables us to accept the inflow from the Lord, but not what is true apart from that good: 8321. Nothing that flows into our thought harms us, only what flows into our volition, because this becomes part of us: 6308.

[8] There is a general inflow: 5850. This is a constant energy favoring action in keeping with the design: 6211. This is what flows into the lives of animals: 5850; and also into the members of the vegetable kingdom: 3648. Further, our thought descends into speech and our intentions into actions and modes of behavior according to this general inflow: 5862, 5990, 6192, 6211.

[9] On Agents. The spirits who are sent out from communities of spirits to other communities or to individual spirits are called "agents": 4403, 5856. Communications in the other life take place by means of emissary spirits like these: 4403, 5856, 5983. Spirits who are sent out to act as emissaries do not think for themselves but think from the spirits who commissioned them: 5985-5987. More about these spirits: 5988-5989.

The End

  
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Thanks to the Swedenborg Foundation for the permission to use this translation.