3898. What these words embody no one can know except from the teaching of the internal sense - such as the prediction that false Christs will arise who will show great signs and wonders; the command that they should not go out if they were told that Christ was in the wilderness, and that they should not believe it if they were told that He was in the inner rooms; the declaration that the coming of the Son of Man will be like lightning which comes from the east and is seen as far as the west; and also the comment that where the carcass is, there the eagles will be gathered together. These various statements - like those that come before and those that follow them in this chapter - do not seem, in the sense of the letter, to have any connection with one another. But in the internal sense there is a most wonderful flow of ideas, and this starts to be seen when one understands what is meant by 'false Christs', by 'great signs and wonders', by 'the wilderness' and 'the inner rooms', also by 'the coming of the Son of Man', and lastly by 'the carcass' and 'the eagles'.

[2] The Lord's reason for speaking in this manner was that people should not understand the Word in case they profaned it; for once the Church had been destroyed, as it had been at that time among the Jews, people would have profaned the Word if they had understood it. This was also why the Lord spoke in parables, as He himself teaches in Matthew 13:13-15; Mark 4:11-12; Luke 8:10. For the Word cannot be profaned by those who have no knowledge of its mysteries, only by those who do, see 301-303, 593, 1008, 1010, 1059, 1327, 1328, 2051, 3398, 3402; and more so by those who consider themselves learned than by those who consider themselves unlearned.

[3] But the reason why the interior contents of the Word are being disclosed at the present time is that the Church today has been so much vastated, that is, is so devoid of faith and love, that although people know and understand they still do not acknowledge, let alone believe, see 3398, 3399 - with the exception of a few who lead a good life and are called the elect. Among these few who are now able to be taught the new Church is to be established. But where those few are the Lord alone knows. Few of these will be inside the Church. In the past it has been the gentiles among whom new Churches have been established, see 2986.

1008. 'Requiring the soul of man' is avenging profanation. This is clear from what has been stated in the previous verse and in the present one, for the subject is the eating of blood, which means profanation. Few know what profanation is, still less what the penalty for it may be in the next life. Profanation takes many forms. A person who totally denies the truths of faith does not profane them any more than gentiles do who live outside of the Church and outside of all knowledge of them. That person profanes however who does know the truths of faith, and still more one who acknowledges them, bears them on his lips, proclaims them, and persuades others of the truth of them, while at the same time he leads a life of hatred, revenge, cruelty, robbery, and adultery, and confirms such behaviour in himself by many statements which he scrapes together from the Word. He profanes by perverting the truths of faith, and so immerses them in those foul deeds. This is the person who profanes, and these are the things that above all else spell death to a person. That they spell death becomes clear from the fact that in the next life unholy things are completely separated from holy, the unholy being in hell, and the holy in heaven. When this type of person enters the next life, every idea within his thought contains holy things clinging to unholy, as it was during his lifetime. There he is unable to produce one idea of what is holy without the unholy that clings to it being seen clear as daylight; for such perception of another person's ideas exists in the next life. So in every detail of his thinking profanation manifests itself, and because heaven has such a horror of profanation he is inevitably forced down into hell.

[2] The nature of ideas is hardly known to anyone. People imagine that there is nothing complex about them, when in fact every idea within thought contains countless elements variously linked together so as to produce a certain form and consequent picture image of the person, the whole of which is perceived and even seen with the eyes in the next life. Take this merely as an example: When the idea of a place comes to mind - whether of a region, or a city, or a house - the idea and an image of all the things the person has ever done in that place crop up at the same time, and spirits and angels see them all. Or, if the idea of somebody whom he has hated presents itself, the idea of all he has thought, said, and done against that person arises at the same time. The same applies to ideas of all things, but when these present themselves every single detail that he has conceived of and impressed upon himself regarding a particular matter becomes apparent. For instance, if he has been an adulterer, when the idea of marriage crops up, all the muck and filth of adultery, even of thought about it, does so too, likewise all the arguments used to confirm adulterous practices, whether based on the evidence of the senses, or on rational grounds, or on the Word. And the way in which he has adulterated and perverted the truths of the Word crops up too.

[3] Furthermore, the idea of one thing merges into the idea of the next and colours it just as a tiny quantity of black placed in water darkens the whole volume of water. Consequently a spirit is recognized by his ideas, and what is remarkable, each one of his ideas bears his own image or likeness. When such an idea is presented visually it is so ugly that it is horrible to look at. All this makes clear the nature of the state of people who profane holy things, and the image they present in the next life. But people who in simplicity have believed statements made in the Word can never be said to profane holy things, not even if they have believed statements which are not literally true; for what is said in the Word is expressed in accordance with appearances, about which see 589.