9286. 'Three times you shall keep a feast to Me in the year' means enduring worship of the Lord and thanksgiving on account of deliverance from damnation. This is clear from the meaning of 'keeping a feast' or 'holding a feast' as worshipping the Lord with gladness of mind on account of deliverance from damnation, dealt with in 7093; and from the meaning of 'three times in the year' as a state complete right to its end, for 'three' means complete from the beginning to the end, 2788, 4495, 7715, 9198, and 'year' a whole period, 2906, 7839, 8070. At this point therefore complete and whole deliverance is meant; for 'the feast of unleavened bread' means purification from falsities, 'the feast of harvest' means the planting of truth in good, and 'the feast of ingathering' means the implanting of good from there. Thus complete deliverance from damnation is meant by these feasts; for when a person has been purified from falsities, and after this has been brought by means of truths into good, and is at length governed by good, he is in heaven with the Lord and has accordingly undergone complete deliverance.

[2] The consecutive stages of deliverance from damnation are like the consecutive stages of regeneration; for regeneration is deliverance by the Lord from hell and being led by Him into heaven. For a person who is being regenerated is first purified from falsities, after that the truths of faith he knows are planted in the good of charity, and finally that good itself is implanted in him. When all this has been done the person has been regenerated and he is then in heaven with the Lord. Therefore the three feasts in the year also meant worship of the Lord and thanksgiving on account of regeneration. Because these feasts were established on account of the everlasting remembrance of those things, the worship and thanksgiving are called enduring; for the most important things in worship should endure forever. The things which should endure forever are those which have been inscribed not only on the memory but also on the actual life that is led. When this is so they are said to reign universally with a person, see 5949, 6159, 6571, 8853-8858, 8865.

10655. 'You shall keep the feast of unleavened bread' means worship of the Lord and thanksgiving on account of deliverance from evil and from the falsities of evil. This is clear from the meaning of 'the feast' as worship and thanksgiving, dealt with in 7093, 9286, 9287; and from the meaning of 'unleavened bread' as things which have been purified from evil and from the falsities of evil, dealt with in 9992. Consequently 'the feast of unleavened bread' means worship and thanksgiving on account of deliverance from evil and from the falsities of evil. The fact that this was the meaning of that feast, see 9286-9292.

[2] As regards this feast, it should be recognized that the glorification of the Lord's Human, and so the remembrance of this and thanksgiving on account of it, is its proper meaning. The glorification of His Human and the subduing of the hells by the Lord have given mankind deliverance from evils and salvation. For the Lord glorified His Human by means of conflicts against the hells and the victories He always gained over them in those conflicts, the final conflict and victory being that on the Cross, when therefore He fully glorified Himself, as is also His own teaching in John,

After Judas went out Jesus said, Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in Him. If God is glorified in Him, God will also glorify Him in Himself, and will glorify Him at once. John 13:31-32.

In the same gospel,

Jesus lifted up His eyes to heaven and said, Father, the hour has come. Glorify Your Son, that Your Son also may glorify You. Now, Father, glorify Me in Your Own Self with the glory which I had with You before the world was. John 17:1, 5.

And in Luke,

Ought not the Christ to have suffered this and to enter into His glory? Luke 24:26.

'Glorifying the Son of Man' means the making Divine of the Human. All these things declared by the Lord had regard, it is self-evident, to His passion on the Cross.

[3] Through that final conflict, which was the passion of the Cross, He completely subdued the hells. This too is the Lord's teaching in John,

Jesus said, The hour has come that the Son of Man should be glorified. Now My soul is troubled. And He said, Father, glorify Your name. And a voice came from heaven, [saying,] I have both glorified it and will glorify it again. And Jesus said, Now is the judgement of this world, now will the prince of this world be cast outdoors. I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to Myself. This He said, indicating the kind of death He was about to die. John 12:23, 27-28, 31-33.

Hell as a whole is what the term 'the prince of this world' or the devil refers to. From these verses it is evident that by the passion of the Cross the Lord not only overcame and subdued the hells but also completely glorified His Human. From this comes salvation to the human race, for which reason also the Lord came into the world, as He also teaches in John 12:27. It was for the sake of the remembrance of this that the feast of unleavened bread or the Passover was primarily established; and it was why He rose again at that feast.

[4] The reason why on account of deliverance from evil and from the falsities of evil is also meant is that all deliverance from evil comes about through the subduing of the hells by the Lord and through the glorification of His Human; without these there is no deliverance. For a person is ruled by the Lord by means of spirits from hell and angels from heaven. Unless therefore the hells had been altogether subdued, and unless the Lord's Human had been altogether united to the Divine Himself, and had thereby also been made Divine, no one could have possibly been delivered from hell and been saved; for the hells would have always prevailed, because the human being has become such that left to himself his thought consists of nothing other than that which belongs to hell. From this it is evident why it is that the same feast means worship and thanksgiving on account of deliverance from evil and from the falsities of evil.

2625. 'At the appointed time' means when the Rational was such that it was receptive. This becomes clear from the meaning of 'time'. There are two things which appear to be indispensable while a person lives in the world because they exist as essential elements of the natural order - those two things being space and time. Living in the world or natural order therefore is living in space and time. But these two cease to have any existence in the next life. They do, it is true, appear to exist to some extent in the world of spirits, the reason for this being that spirits recently arrived from life in the body bring with them mental pictures of natural things. But subsequently they perceive that space and time do not exist in that life but states instead, and that states in the next life correspond to extensions of space and of time within the natural order - states in respect to Being corresponding to those of space, and in respect to Manifestation to those of time. Regarding space or place, see 1274, 1379, 1380, 1382.

[2] From this anyone may see what kind of mental pictures a person is able to have while in the world or natural order regarding things which belong to the next life and about many arcana of faith. He may see that such a person is unwilling to believe those things unless he can take them in by means of objects that exist in the world, indeed by sensory evidence. For he cannot do other than suppose that if he were to divest himself of his mental pictures that have been formed from space and time, more so to divest himself of space and time themselves, he would cease to be anything at all and so would have nothing left to him from which he could perceive with his senses or have thoughts of anything apart from that which was unintelligible to him. But in actual fact quite the reverse is the case: the life of angels is such that it is the wisest and happiest of all.

[3] This is the reason why people's ages mentioned in the Word do not in the internal sense mean ages but states, so that in this verse 'old age' does not mean old age. Nor does any number mean a number but some specific state, as in the case of 'a hundred years' mentioned further on. From this it now becomes clear that 'the appointed time' means the state when the rational was such that it was receptive.

[4] As regards the specific teaching presented here - that the Divine Rational received being and was given manifestation from the Lord's Divine spiritual united to His Divine celestial, when the days had been completed for him to cast off the human and when the Rational was such that it was receptive (meant in the internal sense by 'Sarah conceived and bore to Abraham a son in his old age, at the appointed time') - the following needs to be known:

The human has its beginnings in the inmost part of the rational, see 2106, 2194. The Lord advanced gradually towards the union of the Human Essence with the Divine Essence, and of the Divine Essence with the Human Essence, 1864, 2033, 2523.

He did so by His own power, 1921, 2025, 2026, 2083, through continuing temptations and repeated victories, 1690, 1737, 1813, and through receiving revelations repeatedly from His own Divine, 1616, 2500, till at length He cast out the whole human from the mother, 1414, 1444, 2574.

And in this way He made His Human - as to the Rational - Divine, as taught by the things that occur in this verse.

From all this it is evident how the explanation 'when the days had been completed for Him to cast off the human and when the Rational was such that it was receptive' is to be understood.

[5] Some idea of this matter may be had from what happens to people who are being regenerated. The celestial things of love, and the spiritual things of faith, are instilled into them by the Lord not all at once but gradually; and when by means of those things a person's rational has become such that it is able to be receptive, he is for the first time becoming regenerate, mostly by means of temptations in which he overcomes. While these experiences are taking place the days are being completed to cast off the old man and put on the new. Regarding man's regeneration, see 677, 679, 711, 848, 986, 1555, 2475.