Spiritual Experiences #1200

By Emanuel Swedenborg
  
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1200. I was also prompted to wonder whether any people born at this day can be let into the innermost heaven, because hereditary evils have so multiplied. But in thought I seemed to have gotten the answer that those born on this planet today cannot come into the innermost heaven, although those from the most ancient Church on this planet had done so. They had, moreover, from other planets, whose inhabitants are innocent beings.

In the very inward and in the inward heaven there are also innocent beings, but not of that kind. The former innocent beings constitute the innermost part, so to speak, of the latter-or it should be called their center, like an axis or a nucleus. Nor can any heaven remain intact unless its center or innermost is innocence, and the rest are arranged as outer edges into which innocence springs forth from the center. For no one can be in the heavens without having something of innocence. Then the innermost heaven also communicates with the very inward one through its center, namely, its innocent beings, and so does the innermost, through the very inward one, communicate with the inward heaven.

From all this it can be understood what the communication is like from innermost beings, and from the Lord, according to the order established by the Lord.

  
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Thanks to the Academy of the New Church, and Bryn Athyn College, for the permission to use this translation.