25. THE FIRST STATE OF THIS MOST ANCIENT CHURCH, OR ITS RISE AND MORNING, is described in the first chapter of Genesis by these words:

God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and God created man in His own image; in the image of God created He him; male and female created He them (Gen. 1:26-27);

and also by these in the second chapter:

Jehovah God formed man dust of the earth, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of lives; and man became a living soul (Gen. 2:7).

That its rise, or morning, is described by his being made, or created, "in the image of God," is because every man, when he is first born, and while an infant, is an "image of God" interiorly; for the faculty of receiving and of applying to himself those things which proceed from God, is implanted in him; and since he is also formed "dust of the earth" exteriorly, and there is thence in him an inclination to lick that dust like the serpent (Gen. 3:14), therefore, if he remains an external or natural man, and does not become at the same time internal, or spiritual, he destroys the "image of God," and puts on the image of the serpent which seduced Adam. But, on the other hand, the man who strives and labours to become an "image of God," subdues the external man in himself, and interiorly in the natural becomes spiritual, thus spiritual-natural; and this is effected by a new creation, that is, regeneration by the Lord. Such a man is an "image of God," because he wills and believes that he lives from God and not from himself: on the contrary, man is an image of the serpent as long as he wills and believes that he lives from himself and not from God. What is man but an "image of God" when he wills and believes that he is in the Lord and the Lord in him (John 6:56; 14:20; 15:4-5, 7; 17:26), and that he can do nothing of himself (John 3:27; 15:5)? What is a man but an "image of God" when, by a new birth, he becomes a "son of God" (John 1:12-13)? Who does not know that the image of the father is in the son? The rise, or morning, of this Church is described by Jehovah God's "breathing into his nostrils the breath of lives," and by his thus "becoming a living soul," because by "lives," in the plural, are meant love and wisdom, which two are essentially God; for, in proportion as a man receives and applies to himself those two essentials of life, which proceed continually from God, and continually flow into the souls of men, in the same proportion he becomes "a living soul"; for "lives" are the same as love and wisdom. Hence it is evident, that the rise and morning of the life of the men of the Most Ancient Church, who taken collectively are represented by Adam, is described by those two shrines of life.

2896. The Word in the Most Ancient Church before the Flood was not a written Word but one revealed to each member of the Church; for they were celestial people and so, like the angels in whose company they lived, knew through perception that which was good and true. Thus they had the Word written on their hearts. For these matters, see 597, 607, 895, 920, 1114-1125. Because they were celestial people and lived in the company of angels, everything they saw and apprehended with any of their senses was to them a representative and a meaningful sign of celestial and spiritual things within the Lord's kingdom; so that they did indeed see worldly and earthly things with their eyes or apprehend them with one or other of their senses; but from and through those things their thoughts were of celestial and spiritual things. In this and no other way they were able to talk to angels, for the things that exist among angels are celestial and spiritual, and when these come down to man they descend into such things as exist with man in the world. The fact that particular objects in the world represent and mean those that exist in heaven has been shown all through from Genesis 1 to here. Such was also the origin of the representatives and meaningful signs, which, when communication with angels started to fade, were gathered together by the people meant by 'Enoch'. See 521, where it is shown that the gathering of those things is meant by the following words,

Enoch walked with God, and he was no more, for God took him. Genesis 5:24.