Joel Chapter 1, the Internal Sense.

(From Swedenborg's work, "The Inner Meaning of the Prophets and Psalms")

(Verse 1) The Word has been perverted by false worship,

(2) when instead the Word should have been obeyed by everyone in the Church,

(3) and communicated to everyone who holds false beliefs that arise from evil loves.

(4) Instead, the spiritual things of the Church have been destroyed by sensualism.

(5) Now, remorse should be awakened, because of this loss of faith,

(6) a faith which has been destroyed by the lust of worshipping false gods,

(7) depriving the Church of spiritual truth and good.

(8) The Church should return to the Lord

(9) with inward mourning and contrition

(10) over the loss of good and truth in the natural and spiritual man -

(11) especially people who seek the good of the Church and who desire its genuine doctrine: for the Church is about to perish.

(12) Spiritual truth, its good, its knowledge, and its delights, which constitute the Church, are perverted.

(13) Only by repentance can communion with the Lord be renewed.

(14) The Church can only remove the evil and falsity by acknowledging and worshipping the Lord,

(15) for the end of the Church is near, when it will be judged.

(16) Good works are not being done, nor are there any people who delight in spiritual things.

(17) Natural good has been subordinated to evil, and the truth and good of the Word are rejected.

(18) Wherefore there is no good in the Church,

(19) and our hearts must be turned again to the Lord: for the love of self has corrupted all things in the church.

(20) Although truth is desired, it has been misappropriated to ourselves.

6277. 'The God feeding me' means that same Divine bestowing life on the good of spiritual truth from the natural. This is clear from the meaning of 'feeding' as bestowing life on ('feeding' or 'pasturing' is instructing, see 6044, and 'pasture' is that which sustains a person's spiritual life, 6078. But 'feeding' and 'pasture' dealt with in those paragraphs have reference to a flock, whereas 'feeding' here is used in reference to Jacob, to his being sustained with food and the necessities of life, by which much the same is meant in the internal sense since what sustains and revitalizes bodily life means in the internal sense that which sustains spiritual life and revitalizes it); and from the representation of Israel, [to whom 'me' refers here,] as spiritual good from the natural, dealt with in 5801, 5803, 5806, 5812, 5817, 5819, 5826, 5833. And as this good represented by 'Israel' is the good of truth, the expression 'the good of spiritual truth' is used here. In the genuine sense 'Israel' is the spiritual Church; and the good associated with that Church is the good of truth. For truth is used to teach its members what good is; and when they act in accordance with the truth they have been taught, that truth is called good. Such good is what is called the good of truth and is represented by 'Israel' .