Consider the beautiful but cryptic statements of John 1:1:

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."

God's love has always been and will always be infinite and perfect. That means the expression of God's love -- His truth -- has also always been and will always be infinite and perfect.

The Lord has shared this truth with us in various ways since the beginning of humanity. The earliest people received truth directly, flowing into the inner parts of their minds from heaven. Later, people understood it through nature seeing the Lord's love expressed in mountains, trees, rivers, and the sun, moon and stars. By using natural language as a container for spiritual language, the Lord expressed truth within the Bible inside its stories, laws and prophecies. When humanity reached its lowest point, God took on a human form and walked among us as Jesus. In this way, the Lord brought us Divine truths in an accessible and tangible way. By accepting and loving the Lord as Jesus we can open ourselves to His love.

Finally, the Heavenly Doctrine received through the pen of Emanuel Swedenborg are themselves a container for Divine Truth, both in speaking plainly about heaven and by unlocking the truth as it is contained in the Bible.

The Word itself is Divine Truth; the Lord's expression of love has and never will change.

401. And all green grass was burned up. This symbolically means, and thus every constituent of faith having life had perished.

To be burned up means, symbolically, to perish, as said just above in no. 400.

Green grass, in the Word, symbolizes the goodness and truth of the church or faith that is born first in the natural self. It has the same symbolic meaning as "the herb of the field." ¹ And because faith has life owing to goodness and truth, therefore "all green grass was burned up" means, symbolically, that every constituent of faith having life had perished. Every constituent of faith having life perishes, moreover, when there is no affection for goodness or perception of truth, as said just above.

Grass has this symbolic meaning also because of its correspondence. Consequently, people who separate faith from charity, not only in doctrine by also in life, in the spiritual world live in a desert where there is no grass.

Since a fruit tree symbolizes a person in respect to his affections for goodness and perceptions of truth, so green grass symbolizes a person in respect to that constituent of the church that is first conceived in him and also given birth, while grass that is not green symbolizes that constituent now perished.

In general, everything found in gardens, forests, fields and plains symbolizes a person in respect to some constituent of the church, or to say the same thing, some constituent of the church in him. That is because they correspond. That this is true of grass can be seen from the following passages:

A voice said, "Cry out!" And he said, "What shall I cry?"

"All flesh is grass... The grass withered, and the flower faded, because the wind... blew upon it. Truly the people are grass. The grass withered, and the flower faded, but the Word of our God shall stand forever. (Isaiah 40:6-8)

Their inhabitants... became the herb of the field, tender grass, the grass on the housetops, and a field scorched before the standing grain. (Isaiah 37:27, 2 Kings 19:26)

...I will pour... My blessing on your offspring; they will spring up among the grass... (Isaiah 44:3-4)

Also elsewhere, as Isaiah 51:12, Psalms 37:2; 103:15; 129:6, Deuteronomy 32:2.

That a green plant or something green symbolizes something living or alive is apparent in Jeremiah 17:8; 11:16; Ezekiel 17:24; 20:47; Hosea 14:8; Psalms 37:35; 52:8; 92:10.

The same thing said here in the book of Revelation came to pass in Egypt, namely that by hail and fire mingled, every tree and every herb of the field were burned up (Exodus 9:22-35).

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