50. What the people of the earliest church meant when they spoke of the Lord's image involves more than can be put into words.

People have no idea whatever that the Lord governs them through angels and spirits, or that at least two spirits and two angels accompany each of them. The spirits create a link with the world of spirits, ¹ and the angels create one with heaven. We cannot possibly live without a channel of communication open to the world of spirits through spirits and to heaven through angels (and in this way to the Lord through heaven). Our life depends totally on such a connection. If the spirits and angels withdrew from us, we would be destroyed in a second.

[2] As long as we are unregenerate, we are governed in a completely different way than the regenerate. Before regeneration we have with us evil spirits whose grip on us is so strong that the angels, though present, can achieve hardly any results. All they can do is head us off from rushing into the worst kind of evil and divert us toward some form of good. They even use our own appetites to lead us toward good, and the illusions of our senses to lead us toward truth. Under these circumstances we communicate with the world of spirits by means of the spirits around us but not so much with heaven, since the evil spirits are in charge and the angels only deflect their influence.

[3] When we are regenerate, on the other hand, the angels are in charge, inspiring us with all kinds of goodness and truth and instilling a horror and fear of evil and falsity.

Angels do give us guidance, but they are mere helpers; the Lord alone governs us, through angels and spirits. Since angels have their assisting role, the words of this verse appear in the plural — "Let us make a human in our image." But since only the Lord rules and manages us, the next verse uses the singular — "God created the human in his image." The Lord states his role clearly in Isaiah:

This is what Jehovah has said, your Redeemer and the one who formed you from the womb: "I, Jehovah, make all things, stretching the heavens out on my own, spreading the earth out by myself." (Isaiah 44:24)

The angels themselves confess that they have no power but act only at the Lord's behest.

Note a piè di pagina:

1869. HOW much a single word of Scripture contains has been shown to me by a revelation of people's individual ideas. Surprising to say, ideas can be revealed so vividly in the other world that they actually become visible and take on a shape, as if they were images in a painting.

One individual whose ideas were revealed in this way was a person who had lived a life of charity, or mutual love, and had taken pleasure in the Word during his time in the world. When his thoughts were revealed, countless beautiful objects appeared, bringing with them a delight and pleasure that touched the heart. I learned that these visible manifestations have further inward layers that can be revealed, and when they are revealed, sights still more beautiful and delightful present themselves, bringing happiness itself with them. All angelic ideas are like this, because the Lord himself lays them open.

[2] Physical vision was used to illustrate this principle for a group of spirits who were amazed that a person's individual thoughts can be revealed this way in the other world. The sight of the eye is so weak and dim that it sees the smaller objects of the physical world simply as spots, dark and shapeless, although they hold within them too many parts to count. When the same objects are observed through a microscope, however, the inward parts come into focus, connected in a beautiful series and flowing from each other in an elegant pattern. These parts likewise could be laid open by an even stronger microscope. This showed what the case is with the inner eye, whose lines of sight are nothing but ideas: in themselves these ideas are about as hazy as anything can be in that realm — although human beings think otherwise. I will have more to say about people's ideas below, however, with the Lord's divine mercy [§§1971, 1980, 1981].