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.

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788. 'The waters increased and raised the ark and lifted it above the earth' means that in such manner it wavered; and 'the waters grew stronger and increased greatly over the earth, and the ark went over the face ¹ of the waters' means that in such manner its waverings grew stronger. This does not become clear unless the nature of the state of this Church called Noah is stated beforehand. 'Noah' was not the Ancient Church itself but, as already stated, was like the parent or seed of that Church. But Noah together with Shem, Ham, and Japheth constituted the Ancient Church that followed immediately after the Most Ancient Church. Every member of the Church called Noah belonged to the descendants of the Most Ancient Church, and therefore as far as hereditary evil was concerned his state was little different from that of other descendants who did not survive. Those whose state was little different were unable to be regenerated and become spiritual as those could whose hereditary disposition was not like theirs. The nature of their hereditary disposition has been stated already in 310, but to enable people to have a better knowledge of it let the following be said.

[2] People who belong to the seed of Jacob, such as the Jews, cannot be regenerated so easily as gentiles. The reverse of faith is ingrained within them not only on account of the assumptions they have adopted since early childhood and subsequently confirmed, but also on account of their heredity. That it is also ingrained within them on account of their heredity becomes clear to some extent from the consideration that they are by disposition different from others, indeed have different customs and also different facial features from others, by which they can be singled out, such characteristics being theirs by heredity. And the same applies to their interior peculiarities, for customs and facial features are the imprints of the things within. This also is why converted Jews, more than anybody else, waver between truth and falsity. It was similar with the first people of this Church who were called Noah, for they belonged to the stock and seed of the most ancient people. These waverings are what are being described here, and in what follows further on where it is said that Noah was a man of the ground and that he planted a vineyard, and drank some of the wine, and became drunk, so that he lay naked in the middle of his tent, Genesis 9:20-21. That those people were few has been made clear to me from the consideration that the member (homo) of that Church is represented in the world of spirits as a tall slim man (vir) clothed in white, in a narrow room. Even so these were the people who preserved and possessed among themselves doctrinal matters concerning faith.

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