1. Angelic Wisdom about Divine Providence

Divine Providence Is the Form of Government Exercised by the Lord's Divine Love and Wisdom

To understand what divine providence is--that it is the way the Lord's divine love and wisdom govern us--it is important to be aware of the following things, which were presented in my book on the subject.

In the Lord, divine love is a property of divine wisdom and divine wisdom is a property of divine love (Divine Love and Wisdom 34-39).

Divine love and wisdom cannot fail to be and to be manifested in others that it has created (Divine Love and Wisdom 47-51).

Everything in the universe was created by divine love and wisdom (Divine Love and Wisdom 52, 53, 151-156).

Everything in the created universe is a vessel of divine love and wisdom (54-60 [55-60]).

The Lord looks like the sun to angels; its radiating warmth is love and its radiating light is wisdom (Divine Love and Wisdom 83-88, 89-92, 93-98, 296-301).

The divine love and wisdom that emanate from the Lord constitute a single whole (Divine Love and Wisdom 99-102).

The Lord from eternity, who is Jehovah, created the universe and everything in it from himself and not from nothing (Divine Love and Wisdom 282-284, 290-295). These propositions may be found in the work titled Angelic Wisdom about Divine Love and Wisdom.

99. The spiritual warmth and light that result from the emanation from the Lord as the sun form a single whole just as his divine love and wisdom do. Part 1 explains how divine love and wisdom form a single whole in the Lord. Warmth and light form a similar whole because they are emanations, and emanations constitute a whole by reason of their correspondence. The warmth answers to love, and the light to wisdom.

It therefore follows that since divine love is the divine reality and divine wisdom is the divine manifestation (see 14-16 above), spiritual warmth is divinity emanating from the divine reality and spiritual light is divinity emanating from the divine manifestation. This means that just as divine love is a property of divine wisdom and divine wisdom is a property of divine love because of this union (see 34-39 above), spiritual warmth is a property of spiritual light and spiritual light is a property of spiritual warmth. As a result of this kind of oneness, it follows that warmth and light are a single whole as they emanate from the Lord as the sun.

We will see later, though [125], that they are not accepted as a single whole by angels or by us.

282. PART FOUR

The Lord from eternity, who is Jehovah, created the universe and everything in it from Himself and not from nothing. People throughout the world know, and every wise person from an interior perception acknowledges, that there is one God who is the Creator of the universe. People also know from the Word that God, the Creator of the universe, is called Jehovah, so named from the verb to be, because He alone just is. ¹ That the Lord from eternity is that Jehovah - this we demonstrated in The Doctrine of the New Jerusalem Regarding the Lord by citing many proofs from the Word.

Jehovah is called the Lord from eternity because it was Jehovah who assumed a humanity in order to save people from hell. Moreover at that time He commanded His disciples to call Him Lord. ² Consequently in the New Testament Jehovah is called the Lord, as can be seen from considering the following statement.

[In the Old Testament:]

You shall love Jehovah your God with all your heart, and with all your soul... (Deuteronomy 6:5)

And in the New Testament:

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul... (Matthew 22:37)

The same substitution is found in other passages taken from the Old Testament and quoted in the Gospels.

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