19. Who loves us and washes us from our sins in His blood. This symbolically means, who out of love and mercy reforms and regenerates people by His Divine truths drawn from the Word.

It is apparent that to wash us from our sins is to purify us from evils, thus to reform and regenerate, for regeneration is a spiritual washing. However, "His blood" does not mean the suffering of the cross, as many believe, but the Divine truth emanating from Him, as can be seen from many passages in the Word, which it would be too tedious to present in their entirety here. We will present them in nos. 379 and 684 below. In the meantime, see what we have said and shown regarding the symbolic meaning of the Lord's blood and flesh in the Holy Supper, in The New Jerusalem and Its Heavenly Doctrine, (London, 1758), nos. 210-222, and in the same place regarding spiritual washing, which is regeneration, nos. 202-209.

226. And the first voice that I heard was like a trumpet speaking with me, saying, "Come up here." This symbolizes a Divine influx, resulting in an elevation of the mind and consequent clear perception.

When a voice is heard from heaven, it means Divine truth flowing in (see nos. 37, 50 above), thus a Divine influx. And a voice like a trumpet symbolizes a clear perception (see again no. 37 above). "Come up here," moreover, symbolizes an elevation of the mind, for in the spiritual world, the higher one ascends, the purer the light that he comes into, by which the intellect is progressively opened or the mind elevated. Consequently the statement also follows that John was then in the spirit, meaning that he was conveyed into a spiritual state, in which the things found in heaven clearly appear.

The voice sounded like a trumpet because the subject is the organization of the heavens for a last judgment. Moreover voices like trumpets are heard in heaven when assemblies and organizations are taking place. Consequently in the case of the children of Israel also, with whom everything was representative of heaven and the church, it was a statute that they make trumpets of silver, and that the sons of Aaron sound them to assemble the congregation; to decamp; on days of celebration; at festivals; at the beginnings of months; upon the offering of sacrifices; as a memorial; and to go to war (Numbers 10:1-10).

But we shall speak of trumpets and the sounding of them in our exposition of chapter 8, where the subject is the seven angels who were given seven trumpets.