7802. It is common on that planet for spirits to talk to inhabitants and instruct them, and also to chastise them if they have been behaving badly. Since this is a subject about which their angels have told me many things I would like to mention them in order. The reason why spirits there talk to people is that they concentrate much of their thought on heaven and life after death, and in comparison with this give little thought to life in the world. They know that they will be alive after death, living in a state of happiness that depends on the condition into which their internal man was brought in the world. Talking to spirits and angels was also common on our planet in ancient times, and for the same reason, that their thought was concentrated on heaven and little on the world. But in course of time that live contact with heaven was cut off, as people ceased to be internal and became external, that is, as man began to concentrate his thought on the world and little on heaven, and especially when he ceased to believe any longer in the existence of heaven or hell, or in the presence within himself of a person and spirit that lives after death. For the belief at the present day is that the body lives independently, not that it receives life from its spirit. Therefore unless people today were allowed to believe that they will rise again in their bodies they would have no belief at all in resurrection.

6627. THE BOOK OF EXODUS

EXODUS CHAPTER 1.

In preliminary sections to chapters of the Book of Exodus doctrinal teachings are to be presented, TEACHINGS ABOUT CHARITY first, and teachings about faith after that. This is being done in order that the points that have been dealt with in the explanatory sections but are scattered about may be set forth in connection with one another, and so in order that people may see, when it is properly set out, what the teaching of the Church is like or ought to be like if it is to accord with what is good and true in heaven.