In chapter 4 of the Book of Amos, verses 1-3 are talking about people who pervert the truths of the church. They will fall into falsities in outermost things.

In the Bible, fish represent "lower" things than mammals, so we can interpret the fishhooks in verse 2 as meaning being caught and held fast in natural or lower things.

Verses 4-6 are about acts of worship such as tithes and sacrifices. These look similar to genuine worship, but are only external sorts of things. We can tell because ‘teeth’ (in verse 6) represent ultimates or outermost things (see Secrets of Heaven 6380). It follows that “cleanness of teeth” would mean outermost things that look good but only imitate genuine worship. The Lord exhorts, “Yet you have not returned to me.”

Verses 7-8. Some things true will remain, when where there are too many false ideas, the truths don't get through. This can be seen where the Lord says, “I made it rain on one city; I withheld rain from another city... where it did not rain the part withered.” Again the Lord exhorts, “Yet you have not returned to me.”

Verse 9. Afterward all things of the church are falsified, shown by blight attacking the gardens, vineyards, fig tree and olive trees. The last three represent spiritual, natural and celestial things, or all the things of spiritual life. “Yet you have not returned to me,” says the Lord.

Verses 10-11. The Lord explains the devastating things he allowed to happen: plague in Egypt, death of young men by swords, stench in the camps, Sodom and Gomorrah. This is because they are profaned by sensual knowledges. Profanation means the mixing of good and evil together. (See Secrets of Heaven 1001[2]).

This extends to all things of the church, with the church being the Lord’s kingdom on earth (Secrets of Heaven 768[3]).

With profanation “as soon as any idea of what is holy arises, the idea of what is profane joins immediately to it,” (Secrets of Heaven 301).

Now there is hardly anything left. “Yet you have not returned to Me,” says the Lord again.

Verses 12-13: Because people adamantly remain in their profane ways, they are warned, “Prepare to meet your God!”. This is the God powerful and mighty, “who forms mountains, and creates the wind,” and even more close to home, “Who declares to man what his thought is.” As intimately a knowing as that is, the Lord’s love for all humanity is contained in His exhortations for them to turn themselves to Him.

See, for example, Luke 6:44-45, and True Christian Religion 373.

301. As regards the second arcanum, if they had been instructed in mysteries of faith they would have perished for ever, meant by the words 'Now by chance he will put out his hand and also take from the tree of life ¹ and eat, and live forever', the position is this: Once people have become reversed orders of life and are unwilling to rely on anything but self and the proprium as the source of their life and wisdom, they are given to reasoning as to whether any matter of faith which they hear about is so or not so. And because self, sensory evidence, and facts are the basis of their reasoning, they inevitably adopt a negative attitude. And when their attitude is negative they also speak blasphemy and practise profanation, and at length do not care whether or not they mingle together unholy things with holy. When man becomes such he stands so condemned in the next life that there is no hope of salvation for him, for the things that have been mingled through acts of profanation remain that way permanently. The moment some idea of what is holy enters in, so does the idea joined to it of what is unholy, and this makes it impossible for that person to live in any but a community of people who are condemned. Anything at all that has been joined to, and is present as, an idea within a person's thought is in the next life perceived very precisely even by spirits in the world of spirits, but more so by angelic spirits. It is perceived so precisely that from merely one idea they know his whole character. Getting rid of unholy things such as are joined on to those that are holy is not possible without hellish torment, which is so intense that if man knew about it he would beware of profanation as of hell itself.

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