In chapter 4 of the Book of Amos, verses 1-3 are talking about people who pervert the truths of the church. They will fall into falsities in outermost things.

In the Bible, fish represent "lower" things than mammals, so we can interpret the fishhooks in verse 2 as meaning being caught and held fast in natural or lower things.

Verses 4-6 are about acts of worship such as tithes and sacrifices. These look similar to genuine worship, but are only external sorts of things. We can tell because ‘teeth’ (in verse 6) represent ultimates or outermost things (see Secrets of Heaven 6380). It follows that “cleanness of teeth” would mean outermost things that look good but only imitate genuine worship. The Lord exhorts, “Yet you have not returned to me.”

Verses 7-8. Some things true will remain, when where there are too many false ideas, the truths don't get through. This can be seen where the Lord says, “I made it rain on one city; I withheld rain from another city... where it did not rain the part withered.” Again the Lord exhorts, “Yet you have not returned to me.”

Verse 9. Afterward all things of the church are falsified, shown by blight attacking the gardens, vineyards, fig tree and olive trees. The last three represent spiritual, natural and celestial things, or all the things of spiritual life. “Yet you have not returned to me,” says the Lord.

Verses 10-11. The Lord explains the devastating things he allowed to happen: plague in Egypt, death of young men by swords, stench in the camps, Sodom and Gomorrah. This is because they are profaned by sensual knowledges. Profanation means the mixing of good and evil together. (See Secrets of Heaven 1001[2]).

This extends to all things of the church, with the church being the Lord’s kingdom on earth (Secrets of Heaven 768[3]).

With profanation “as soon as any idea of what is holy arises, the idea of what is profane joins immediately to it,” (Secrets of Heaven 301).

Now there is hardly anything left. “Yet you have not returned to Me,” says the Lord again.

Verses 12-13: Because people adamantly remain in their profane ways, they are warned, “Prepare to meet your God!”. This is the God powerful and mighty, “who forms mountains, and creates the wind,” and even more close to home, “Who declares to man what his thought is.” As intimately a knowing as that is, the Lord’s love for all humanity is contained in His exhortations for them to turn themselves to Him.

See, for example, Luke 6:44-45, and True Christian Religion 373.

8603. 'And Moses, Aaron, and Hur' means levels of Divine Truth that follow one another in order. This is clear from the representation of 'Moses' as Divine Truth that goes forth directly from the Lord, dealt with in 7010; from the representation of 'Aaron' as Divine Truth that goes forth from the Lord in an indirect way, dealt with in 7009; and from the representation of 'Hur' as Divine Truth that goes forth again in an indirect way, but through the latter. Thus there are levels of truth that follow one another in order.

[2] What is meant by levels of truth that follow one another in order must be stated briefly. All things without exception in the entire natural world spring in order from others on a more internal level; they derive from them and follow in order after them. But the interior things do not connect with the exterior by gradually merging into them; rather, they are distinct and separate, and are joined through extensions from themselves like fibres, which act as channels of communication. Some idea of the nature of things which derive from others and therefore follow in order from them may be conveyed by considering fruits such as lemons, apples, and the like. Their most external parts are their surrounding skins, their interiors are the surrounded flesh or pulp, and their yet more interior parts are the seeds; and the seeds have casings around the outside, then on the actual seeds membranes, under which lies an inner pulp containing the initial form, the soul so to speak, from which again spring new trees and fruit.

[3] All these things follow one another in order; but they are distinct and separate, yet at the same time are joined together. The communication of interiors with exteriors is effected in a wondrous fashion through fibre-like passageways. When those interiors and exteriors are first formed they are very closely connected; but in the course of time they are separated. For before the initial form, the inmost part within the seed, can expand into forms like its parents it must be opened in stages following one another in order. When it is opened and starts to grow, the pulpy parts surrounding it adapt themselves, serving first as its 'soil', and after that as its fertilizing sap. After this phase, which is its time in the womb, it is born; at that point it is left to the soil of the earth, in which it is sown as a seed.

[4] All this enables one to form some idea of the nature of things that derive from and follow one another in order. As is the nature of them in the vegetable kingdom, so it is also in the animal kingdom, yet in a far more perfect way. In the animal kingdom there are exterior things, interior, and inmost, which in like manner follow one another in order, are distinct and separate from one another, and yet at the same time are joined together. But they are different in that forms in the animal kingdom have been created to receive life. Consequently just as forms receiving life follow one another in order, so do the resulting kinds of vitality. For the forms or substances receiving life are the subjects ¹ , and the things which result from changes and modifications of those forms are the forces, which should be called vitalities because they are life-forces. From all this one may now see what is meant by levels of Divine Truth that follow one another in order. For everything constituting life has connection with truth, and the perfection it possesses with good, or in the contrary sense with falsity, and its imperfection with evil. Their transitions in order from one to the next are also called degrees.

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