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Genesis 2

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1 And the heaven and the earth and all things in them were complete.

2 And on the seventh day God came to the end of all his work; and on the seventh day he took his rest from all the work which he had done.

3 And God gave his blessing to the seventh day and made it holy: because on that day he took his rest from all the work which he had made and done.

4 These are the generations of the heaven and the earth when they were made.

5 In the day when the Lord God made earth and heaven there were no plants of the field on the earth, and no grass had come up: for the Lord God had not sent rain on the earth and there was no man to do work on the land.

6 But a mist went up from the earth, watering all the face of the land.

7 And the Lord God made man from the dust of the earth, breathing into him the breath of life: and man became a living soul.

8 And the Lord God made a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had made.

9 And out of the earth the Lord made every tree to come, delighting the eye and good for food; and in the middle of the garden, the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

10 And a river went out of Eden giving water to the garden; and from there it was parted and became four streams.

11 The name of the first is Pishon, which goes round about all the land of Havilah where there is gold.

12 And the gold of that land is good: there is bdellium and the onyx stone.

13 And the name of the second river is Gihon: this river goes round all the land of Cush.

14 And the name of the third river is Tigris, which goes to the east of Assyria. And the fourth river is Euphrates.

15 And the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to do work in it and take care of it.

16 And the Lord God gave the man orders, saying, You may freely take of the fruit of every tree of the garden:

17 But of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you may not take; for on the day when you take of it, death will certainly come to you.

18 And the Lord God said, It is not good for the man to be by himself: I will make one like himself as a help to him

19 And from the earth the Lord God made every beast of the field and every bird of the air, and took them to the man to see what names he would give them: and whatever name he gave to any living thing, that was its name.

20 And the man gave names to all cattle and to the birds of the air and to every beast of the field; but Adam had no one like himself as a help.

21 And the Lord God sent a deep sleep on the man, and took one of the bones from his side while he was sleeping, joining up the flesh again in its place:

22 And the bone which the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman, and took her to the man.

23 And the man said, This is now bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh: let her name be Woman because she was taken out of man.

24 For this cause will a man go away from his father and his mother and be joined to his wife; and they will be one flesh.

25 And the man and his wife were without clothing, and they had no sense of shame.

   

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True Christianity #470

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470. We Are Not Life, but We Are Vessels for Receiving Life from God

There is a generally held belief that there is life in us, that it belongs to us, and that therefore we are not only vessels for receiving life but we ourselves are life. This common belief derives from the way things appear to be, because we are alive, that is, we sense, think, speak, and act completely as if we had autonomy. Therefore the statement that we are not life, but are vessels for receiving life, cannot help but seem like something completely unheard of before, or like a paradox that goes against our sense-oriented thinking because it goes against the way things appear to be. I have blamed this misleading belief on the way things appear to be - the belief that we are in fact life, and therefore that life has been created as part of us and grafted onto us from birth. But the real reason for this misleading belief (which is based on the way things appear to be) is that many people today are earthly, and few are spiritual. The earthly self makes judgments based on appearances and resulting false impressions, when in fact these run directly counter to the truth, which is that we are not life but are vessels for receiving life.

[2] The fact that we are not life but are vessels for receiving life from God is demonstrated by the following clear points of evidence: All things that have been created are intrinsically finite. Human beings, because they are finite, could only have been created from finite things. Therefore in the Book of Creation it says that Adam was made from the ground and its dust [Genesis 2:7; 3:19]. In fact, he was named for the ground, since "Adam" means the soil of the earth. And every human being actually consists of nothing other than types of materials that are in the earth or are in the atmosphere from the earth. The elements that are in the atmosphere from the earth we absorb through our lungs and through the pores all over our bodies; we absorb the denser substances through foods made up of earthly elements.

[3] As for the human spirit, however, that too has been created from things that are finite. What is the human spirit but a vessel for the life that the mind possesses? The finite things of which it is made are spiritual substances. These substances exist in the spiritual world, but they have also been incorporated into our earth in a hidden way. If these spiritual substances were not present within material substances, seeds would not be loaded with hidden instructions and would not miraculously develop, without deviation, from the first shoot all the way to the production of fruit and new seeds. Worms would not be generated from emanations from the ground and from the gases exuded by plants with which the atmosphere is saturated.

[4] It is unreasonable to think that the Infinite could create anything other than what is finite; and that human beings, because they are finite, are anything other than forms that the Infinite is able to bring to life from the life he has within himself. Indeed, this is what is meant by the following: "Jehovah God formed the human being, the dust from the earth, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life" (Genesis 2:7). Because God is infinite, he is life in itself. This life is not something he can create and then transfer into a human being - that would make the human being God. The serpent or Devil, and from him, Eve and Adam, had the insane thought that this had actually happened. This is why the serpent said, "On the day you eat some of the fruit of this tree, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God" (Genesis 3:5).

[5] At the end of the earliest church, when it came to its final close, people latched onto the dreadful conviction that God had transfused and transferred himself into human beings. I know so because I have heard it from their own mouths. On account of their horrendous belief that they are gods, they remain profoundly hidden in an underground chamber. No one can get near it without collapsing as a result of inner dizziness. (The fact that Adam and his wife mean and describe the earliest church was made known under the previous heading [466].)

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