Heaven and Hell #416

By Emanuel Swedenborg

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416. The immensity of the Lord's heaven may also be gathered simply from the fact that all children, whether born within or outside the church, are adopted by the Lord and become angels, and their number amounts to a quarter or a fifth of the whole human race.

It may be seen above (329-345) that every child - wherever born, whether within the church or outside it, whether of devout or irreverent parents - is accepted by the Lord at death. Every child is raised in heaven, is taught and is permeated with affections for what is good according to the divine design and thereby with firsthand knowledge of things true, and is then perfected in intelligence and wisdom, so to speak, and admitted into heaven to become an angel. You can gather what a vast multitude of heaven's angels has come from this source alone from the beginning of creation to the present day.

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