8541. SPIRITS AND INHABITANTS OF THE PLANET JUPITER - continued

As regards their worship of God, the most important aspect of it is their acknowledgement of our Lord as the Supreme One who governs heaven and earth. They call Him the one and only Lord; and because they acknowledge and worship Him during their lifetime they therefore seek Him after death, and find Him. He is none other than our Lord. When asked whether they know that the one and only Lord is a Person they replied that they all know Him to be a Person, because He has been seen as a Person by many on their planet; that He informs them of the truth, and keeps them in being; and that He imparts eternal life to those who believe in Him. They went on to say that He has revealed to them how they ought to live and how they ought to believe, and that what He has revealed is passed down from parents to children. In that way teachings are spread to all the families and so to an entire clan descended from the same father. They said in addition that those teachings seem to them to have been inscribed on their minds, a conclusion they come to because they can perceive instantly and recognize automatically whether what others say about the life of heaven with a person is true or not.

1183. The specific meaning of 'Erech, Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar' is not so clear because, with the exception of Calneh in Amos 6:2, these names are not mentioned anywhere else in the Word; but they are different forms of such worship. As for the land of Shinar however in which these forms of worship existed, it is clear that in the Word it means external worship which has within it that which is unholy. This is clear from its meaning in verse 2 of the next chapter, also in Zechariah 5:11, and especially in Daniel, where the following words appear,

The Lord gave Jehoiakim king of Judah into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babel, and part of the vessels of the house of God; and he took them away into the land of Shinar, into the house of his god, and he brought the vessels into the house of the treasury of his god. Daniel 1:2.

This reference means that holy things were profaned. 'The vessels of the house of God' are holy things, 'the house of the god of the king of Babel in the land of Shinar' the unholy into which the holy were brought. Although these are historical events they nevertheless embody those arcana within them, as do all the historical narratives of the Word. The matter is made clearer still by the profanation of the same vessels, referred to in Daniel 5:3-5. Unless those events had represented holy things they would never have taken place.