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Genesis 1:1

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True Christianity#364

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364. (a) The Lord flows into everyone with all his divine love, all his divine wisdom, and all his divine life. In the Book of Creation, we read that we were created in the image of God and that God breathed the breath of life into our nostrils (Genesis 1:27; 2:7). This means that we are not life, we are merely organs that receive life. God could not create another being like himself. If he could have done so, there would be as many gods as there are people. God could not create life or light either. God could, however, create people as forms that receive life, just as he created the eye as a form that receives light. God could not and still cannot divide his own essence - it is an indivisible oneness. Therefore since God alone is life, it follows without a doubt that God uses his life to bring us all to life. Without being brought to life, we would all have flesh that was no more than a sponge and bones that were no more than a skeleton. We would have no more life than a clock that moves because of its pendulum and a weight or a spring. Given this fact, it also follows that God flows into every human being with all his divine life, that is, with all his divine love and divine wisdom. (For these two things constituting his divine life, see above, 39-40). Divinity is indivisible.

[2] Furthermore, we can understand how God flows in with all his divine life just as we understand that the sun in our world flows with all its essence (heat and light) into every tree, every bush, and every flower, and even into every stone, both precious and common. Every object draws its own share from the general inflow. The sun does not divide up its heat and light and give part of it to this thing and another part to that one.

The same thing is true of the sun in heaven - the source from which divine love emanates in the form of heat and divine wisdom in the form of light. Love and wisdom flow into human minds the way heat and light from the worlds sun flow into bodies, bringing them to life depending on the quality of their form. Each form takes what it needs from the general inflow.

What the Lord says applies here:

Your Father makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. (Matthew 5:45)

[3] The Lord is omnipresent; and everywhere he is present, he is present with his entire essence. It is impossible for him to take out some of his essence and give part of it to one person and another part to another. He gives it all. He also gives us the ability to adopt as much as we wish of it, whether a little or a lot. The Lord says that he has a home with those who do his commandments, and that the faithful are in him and he is in them. In a word, all things are full of God. We each take our own portion from that fullness.

This is true of atmospheres and oceans, and also of everything that is universal. The atmosphere is the same on a small and a large scale. It does not limit itself to giving one aspect of itself to someone who is breathing, a second aspect to a bird that is flying, a third aspect to the sails of a ship, and a fourth aspect to the vanes of a windmill. Instead, each thing draws on certain aspects of the atmosphere and applies to itself as much as it needs.

It is the same as a barn full of grain. The owners draw from it the provisions they need for a given day. The barn does not determine what they receive.

  
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Thanks to the Swedenborg Foundation for the permission to use this translation.

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Apocalypse Explained#541

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541. And the sun was darkened, and the air, by the smoke of the pit, signifies that the light of truth from the Lord was made thick darkness by infernal falsities. This is evident from the signification of "the sun and the air darkened," as being the light of truth from the Lord being made thick darkness (of which presently) and from the signification of "by the smoke of the pit," as being by dense falsities from hell, thus by infernal falsities. (That "smoke" signifies dense falsities, and "the pit of the abyss" the hells where and from which are falsities, see above, n. 536-539.) "The sun and the air darkened" signifies that the light of truth from the Lord was made thick darkness, for the Lord in the angelic heaven is a sun, and Divine truth proceeding from the Lord as a sun produces all the light there, and illuminates both the sight and the understanding of angels; when therefore that sun is darkened there, the light of truth, which is from the Lord, is made thick darkness; it is darkened by falsities from hell. All denial of the Divine and of Divine things by those who are merely natural comes from falsities of evil making the light of heaven thick darkness; for such look at Divine things in thick darkness, and therefore they see them as thick darkness, and in consequence deny them. Moreover, the light of heaven when it flows in with those who are in the falsities of evil actually becomes in the spiritual world thick darkness. From this it is that the evil not only do not see or understand spiritual things, that is, the things that belong to heaven and the church, but in heart they deny them. (That the Lord appears in the angelic heaven as a sun, and that Divine truth proceeding from the Lord as a sun produces all the light of heaven, thus all the intelligence and wisdom the angels have, may be seen in the work on Heaven and Hell 116-125, and 126-140.) It is said also that the "air" was darkened, meaning the light of truth, for the air gives light from the sun. "Skies" [aetheres] have a similar signification in David:

Thy mercy O Jehovah, is in the heavens; and Thy truth is even unto the skies (Psalms 36:5; 57:10; 108:4).

"Mercy" signifies the Divine good of Divine love, and "truth" Divine truth; and as Divine truth is the light of heaven, as has just been said, it is said, "Thy truth is even unto the skies;" thus "skies" in the plural signify Divine light even to the highest heaven, where it is in the highest degree. ("Skies" have a similar signification in Psalms 77:17; Psalms 78:23, 24.)

  
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Thanks to the Swedenborg Foundation for their permission to use this translation.