365. We may gather from this that rich people arrive in heaven just as much as poor people do, one as easily as the other. The reason people believe that it is easy for the poor and hard for the rich is that the Word is misunderstood when it talks about the rich and the poor. In the spiritual meaning of the Word, "the rich" means people who are amply supplied with understandings of what is true and good, that is, people in the church where the Word is. "The poor" means people who lack these understandings but who long for them, or people outside the church, where the Word is not found.

[2] The rich person dressed in purple and fine linen who was cast into hell means the Jewish nation. Because they had the Word and were therefore amply supplied with understandings of what is good and true, they are called "rich." The garments of purple actually mean understandings of what is good, and the fine linen means understandings of what is true. ¹ The poor person who was lying in the gateway and who longed to feast on the crumbs that were falling from the rich person's table, who was carried up into heaven by angels, means the non-Jews who did not have understandings of what is good and true but who still longed for them (Luke 16:19, 31).

The rich who were invited to the great feast but who excused themselves also mean the Jewish nation, and the poor who were brought in to replace them mean the non-Jews who were outside the church (Luke 12:16-24, 14:16-24).

[3] We need also to explain who are meant by the rich of whom the Lord said, "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God" (Matthew 19:24). "The rich person" here means the rich in both senses, natural and spiritual. Rich people in the natural sense are people who have abundant wealth and set their hearts on it, while in a spiritual sense they are people who are amply supplied with insights and knowledge (for these are spiritual wealth) and who want to use them to get themselves into heavenly and ecclesiastical circles by their own intellect. Since this is contrary to the divine design, it says that it is easier for a camel to get through the eye of a needle. On this level of meaning, a camel means our cognitive and informational level in general, and the eye of a needle means spiritual truth. ²

Nowadays people do not know that this is the meaning of the camel and the eye of a needle because there has not yet been any access to the knowledge that teaches what is meant spiritually by the things that the Word says literally. There is spiritual meaning in the details of the Word, and natural meaning as well; because the Word was written in pure correspondences of natural realities with spiritual ones in order to effect a union of heaven and the world, or of angels with us, once the direct union had ceased. We can see from this exactly who are meant by the rich in the Word.

[4] We may gather from a number of passages that on the spiritual level "the rich" in the Word refers to people who enjoy insights into what is good and true and that wealth means those insights themselves, which are spiritual riches: see Isaiah 10:12-14; 30:6-7; 45:3, Jeremiah 17:3; 47:7 [Jeremiah 48:7?], Jeremiah 50:36-37; 51:13, Daniel 5:2-4, Ezekiel 26:7, 12; 27:1-36; Zechariah 9:3-4; Psalms 45:12; Hosea 12:9; Revelation 3:17-18, Luke 14:33, and elsewhere. On the poor in the spiritual sense as people who do not have insights into what is good and true but who long for them, see Matthew 11:5; Luke 6:20-21; 14:21; Isaiah 14:30; 29:19; 41:17-18; Zephaniah 3:12, 18 [13]. An explanation of the spiritual meaning of all these passages may be found in 10227 of Secrets of Heaven.

फुटनोट:

2242. That 'I will go down now, and I will see' means visitation becomes clear from the meaning of 'going down to see' as judgement, dealt with in Volume One, in 1311, and consequently as visitation. The final period of the Church in general and of the individual in particular is called visitation in the Word. It occurs prior to judgement, so that visitation is nothing else than an investigation into what such are like, that is, into the nature of the Church in general or of the individual in particular. Such investigation is expressed in the sense of the letter as Jehovah coming down and seeing.

[2] From this the nature of the sense of the letter is made clear, for Jehovah does not go down; indeed one cannot speak of the Lord going down because He always dwells in highest things. Nor does Jehovah look and see whether a thing is so; for one cannot speak of the Lord looking to see whether a thing is so because every single thing is known to Him from eternity. Yet the sense of the letter speaks of Jehovah going down to see because to man that is what He does appear to do. For man dwells among lowest things and when anything presents itself there he does not think about, nor does he even know, what the situation is with higher things and so does not know about how these flow in. He has no knowledge of these things because his thought does not extend beyond what is immediately about him, and therefore he cannot perceive what the Lord does as anything other than some such going down to see; and that perception is even more limited when he imagines that no one knows what he himself is thinking. Besides this, he has no other idea than that an actual coming down from on high is meant, and when said of God, from the highest. But it is not in fact a coming down from the highest but from the inmost.

[3] From this one may see what the sense of the letter is like, namely that it is shaped according to appearances, and that if it were not, nobody would understand and acknowledge the Word, nor thus accept it. But angels are not limited by appearances in the way that man is, and therefore since the Word as to the letter is for man, it is as to the internal sense for angels, and also for those men who in the Lord's Divine mercy have been allowed during their lifetime in the world to be as the angels.

[4] Visitation is mentioned in various places in the Word, where it either means the vastation of the Church or of the individual, or else deliverance, and thus the investigation into the nature of persons or things. It stands for vastation in Isaiah,

What will you do on the day of visitation? It will come from afar. To whom will you flee for help, and where will you leave your glory? Isaiah 10:3.

In the same prophet,

The stars of the heavens and their constellations will not give their light. The sun will be darkened in its going out, and the moon will not shed its light. And I will visit the world for evil, and the wicked for their iniquity. Isaiah 13:10-11.

'The stars and the constellations which will not give their light, and the sun which will be darkened, and the moon which will not shed its light' means that no love and no charity will exist, see 2120. And since this is vastation it is 'the day of visitation'.

[5] In Jeremiah,

They will fall among those who fall, and in the time of their visitation they will stumble. Jeremiah 8:12.

This stands for the time when they have been vastated, that is, when no charity and faith exist. In Ezekiel,

The visitations of the city have drawn near, and each man has his weapon of destruction in his hand. Ezekiel 9:1.

This too is a reference to vastation; consequently 'each man has a weapon of destruction'. In Hosea,

The days of visitation have come, the days of recompense have come. Hosea 9:7.

Here the meaning is similar. In Micah,

The day of your watchmen, your visitation, has come; now will be their confusion. Micah 7:4.

Here also it stands for charity that has been laid waste. In Moses, On the day of My visiting, I will visit them with their sin. Exodus 32:34.

This refers to the people in the wilderness after they had made themselves the golden calf. That visitation also means deliverance is evident from the following places, Exodus 3:16; 4:31; Jeremiah 27:22; 29:10; Luke 1:68, 78; 19:41-42.