167. If people realized how much was hidden in each verse, they would be dumbfounded. So much is hidden that it could never be told. This fact is scarcely visible in the letter.

To give some idea in a few words: In the world of spirits (since it is a representative world) the literal words, just as they are, are represented in a living way, arranged in beautiful display. Any live representation in that world is then perceived in all its finer detail by the angelic spirits in the second heaven. What the angelic spirits see is then perceived by the angels in the third heaven in great richness. ¹ These angels see the represented text filled with angelic ideas for which there are no words, and by the Lord's good pleasure, they see it in all its boundless variety. Such is the nature of the Lord's Word.

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459. There are three heavens. The first is where good spirits are, the second where angelic spirits are, and the third where actual angels are.

Spirits, angelic spirits, and angels are each as a group divided up into heavenly and spiritual types. The heavenly ones are those whom love has led to receive faith from the Lord, as those who were part of the earliest church did; they have already been described [§§32:2, 34, 202]. The spiritual ones are those whom religious knowledge has led to receive a feeling of charity from the Lord and then to act on it.

More on this subject follows at the end of the chapter [§§537-546].

32. Love and faith are first called the great lights, then love is called the greater light and faith the smaller light. It says that love will rule during the day and that faith will rule during the night. Because this information is unknown and less accessible than ever at this time — the end of an era — the Lord in his divine mercy has allowed me to lay open the true situation.

It is especially well hidden in these final days because the close of the age has arrived and almost no love exists, consequently almost no faith. ¹ The Lord himself predicted this event in words recorded in the Gospels:

The sun will go dark, and the moon will not shed light, and the stars will fall down from the sky, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken. (Matthew 24:29)

The sun here means love, which has gone dark. The moon means faith, which is not shedding light. The stars mean religious concepts (the powers and forces of the heavens), which are falling down from heaven.

[2] The earliest church acknowledged no faith besides love itself. Heavenly angels ² too have no idea what faith is if it is not a matter of love. The entirety of heaven gives itself over to love, because no other kind of life than that of love exists in the heavens. Love is the source of all their happiness, which is so immense that not a bit of it can be put into words or grasped in any way by the human mind.

People who dwell in love do love the Lord with all their heart, but they know, say, and perceive that all love comes from the Lord and from nowhere else, as does all life (which is the product of love alone) and so all happiness. Not the smallest measure of love, life, or happiness do they claim to possess on their own.

In the Lord's transfiguration, the great light — the sun — represented the fact that he is the source of all love, since

His face shone like the sun, while his clothes became like the light. (Matthew 17:2)

The face symbolizes the deepest levels of being, while clothes symbolize the things that issue from those levels. So the sun (love) means the Lord's divinity, and light (the wisdom that rises out of love), his humanity.

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