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Divine Providence # 135

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135. We are allowed to talk with spirits (though rarely with angels of heaven), and many people have been allowed to for centuries. When it happens, though, they talk with us in our own everyday language and use only a few words. Further, the ones who have the Lord's permission to talk with us never say anything that would take away our freedom to think rationally; and they do not teach, either. Only the Lord teaches us, indirectly, through the Word, when we are enlightened (there will be more on this later [171-174]). I have been granted knowledge of this by personal experience. I have been talking with spirits and angels now for many years, and no spirit has dared, and no angel has wanted, to tell me anything, let alone teach me, about things in the Word or any aspect of theology based on the Word. Only the Lord has taught me, the Lord who was revealed to me and who since then has been and is constantly before my eyes as the sun in which he dwells, just as he is for angels. He has enlightened me.

  
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Thanks to the Swedenborg Foundation for the permission to use this translation.

Komentář

 

Two

  

The number "two" has two different meanings in the Bible. In most cases "two" indicates a joining together or unification. This is easy to see if we consider the conflicts we tend to have between our "hearts" and our "heads" -- between what we want and what we know. Our "hearts" tell us that we want pie with ice cream for dinner; our "heads" tell us we should have grilled chicken and salad. If we can bring those two together and actually want what's good for us, we'll be pretty happy. We're built that way -- with our emotions balanced against our intellect -- because the Lord is built that way. His essence is love itself, or Divine Love, the source of all caring, emotion and energy. It is expressed as Divine Wisdom, which gives form to that love and puts it to work, and is the source of all knowledge and reasoning. In His case the two aspects are always in conjunction, always in harmony. It's easy also to see how that duality is reflected throughout creation: plants and animals, food and drink, silver and gold. Most importantly, it's reflected in the two genders, with women representing love and men representing wisdom. That's the underlying reason why conjunction in marriage is such a holy thing. So when "two" is used in the Bible to indicate some sort of pairing or unity, it means a joining together. In rare cases, however, "two" is used more purely as a number. In these cases it stands for a profane or unholy state that comes before a holy one. This is because "three" represents a state of holiness and completion (Jesus, for instance, rose from the tomb on the third day), and "two" represents the state just before it.