When Jesus died on the cross, there was an earthquake. Rocks were split. The centurion and his soldiers who had carried out the crucifixion orders were afraid.

In the heart of the temple, in the "holy of holies", in the very heart of Jerusalem, the sacred veil tore, from top to bottom.

The veil, "rent in twain"...

The veils in the tabernacle and later in the temple were important. They're described in great detail in Exodus and in 1 Kings. In Arcana Coelestia 2576, it says that, "Rational truths are a kind of veil or clothing to spiritual truths.... The veil represented the nearest and inmost appearances of rational good and truth....

And now, as Jesus dies on the cross, the veil tears. What does this mean?

Here's how Swedenborg describes the symbolism of this:

"...that once all appearances had been dispelled, the Lord entered into the Divine Itself, and at the same time He opened a means of access to the Divine Itself through His Human that had been made Divine." (Arcana Coelestia 2576)

Think about four watershed spiritual events:

1) The creation of the physical universe. (Current best guess: 13.8 billion years ago). Genesis 1:1-10

2) The beginning of life. (On earth, between 3.5 and 4.5 billion years ago.) Genesis 1:11-25

3) The beginning of spiritually conscious human beings. (Reasonable guess: 100,000 years ago). Genesis 1:26-31

4) The incarnation and resurrection of the Lord God Jesus Christ (2000 years ago).

God's love and wisdom have been flowing into the universe for a long time. Where you might expect entropy, instead we see a universe that seems to favor life and intelligence. Think what a fulfilling moment it must have been when God could tell that human minds were now responding to Him, after all that outpouring.

But the free response-ability has tragedy baked in, because we can also choose not to respond, and to go the opposite way.

As we humans grew more "sophisticated", God used new channels to reach us, notably prophets and spiritual leaders, and later the written word. And in those channels, from the earliest times, there are already prophecies that the Lord would one day come into the world in human form.

Why did He need to do that? He must have foreseen that people would need to have that human level of connection, in order for enough good and truth to exist for us to make the decisions that open us to salvation.

Let's go back to Swedenborg's description:

"... once all appearances had been dispelled the Lord entered into the Divine Itself..."

Throughout the Lord's life on earth, there was the appearance that he was a man, like us. He had a human body. He could be tired and hungry. He could be tempted (though unlike us, he always won). In his spiritual life, there were times when he felt keenly the appearance of his human separate from his Divine essence. At other times, that appearance thinned, and he felt his divinity more powerfully. As he grew up, and was baptized, and began his ministry, he must have been growing more and more fully aware of what was going on inside him -- the glorification of the human part of him. With the death of his body on the cross, the bodily human-ness was no longer in the way. That appearance was dispelled. A new connection was fully forged between the Divine and the human.

And then, there's the second part of Swedenborg's statement:

"at the same time He opened a means of access to the Divine Itself through His Human that had been made Divine."

The veil was torn. The old religion, which had placed ritual above real good, and where God was invisible, separated from human knowledge by a veil -- was torn. New light could reach people, through the new teachings of the Lord. We could respond to a God who, in His Divine Human, we now could understand and approach and love more deeply.

10758. Finally I talked to the spirits belonging to that planet about the beliefs which the inhabitants of our planet have about rising again, that they cannot conceive of people immediately after death entering the next life and appearing there as people complete with face, body, arms, feet, and all the senses outward and inward. Still less can they conceive of them wearing clothes and having homes and places to live in. The sole reason why this should be so is that the thought of the majority there is confined to the level of the physical senses, and therefore they think that things which they cannot see and touch have no existence; and also that few of them can be drawn away from things perceived by the outward senses to those on more internal levels and thereby be raised to the light of heaven. So it is that when they think of the soul or the spirit they can have no idea of a human being. Their idea is of a puff of wind, air, or breath that is formless yet has some vitality in it. This is the reason why they do not think they are going to rise again except at the end of the world, which they call the last judgement, when the body, though it has disintegrated into dust and been dispersed to the four winds, will be brought back and re-joined to its soul or spirit.

[2] I added that they are permitted to believe this because, as has been stated, their thought is confined to the level of the senses and therefore they are incapable of grasping anything other than this - that the soul or spirit cannot live as a person and in a human form unless it takes on the body which it carried around in the world. Consequently unless it were said that the body was going to rise again they would in their heart reject teachings about resurrection and eternal life as being unintelligible. But in spite of this that idea about rising again has its advantages, in that it leads people to believe in life after death, and the result of this belief is that when they lie sick on their bed and their thought is not confined, as it was previously, to worldly and bodily interests, thus to things on the level of the senses, they believe that they will be alive immediately after they have departed this life. They also talk then about heaven and about the hope of life there immediately after death, doing so in a way far removed from the teaching regarding a last judgement.

[3] I went on to tell them that I have at times been amazed that, when believers talk about life after death and about their own folk who are departing or have departed this life, and do not at the same time think about the last judgement, they believe that those folk will be or are living as people immediately after death. But as soon as thought about the last judgement enters in, that idea they have is turned into a material idea of their earthly body, which is to be joined again to their soul. For they do not know that inwardly every person is a spirit and that this is what possesses the life within the body; by itself the body has no life. Nor do they know that everyone's spirit is what gives the body its human form, consequently that it is who the person is primarily, and that it exists within a similar form, which however is not visible before the eyes of the body, but is visible before the eyes of spirits.

[4] Therefore also, when the sight of a person's spirit is opened, which is accomplished by the removal of physical sight, angels appear; and so it was that when they appeared to the ancients referred to in the Word, angels were seen as people. I have also talked at times to spirits whom I had known when they were living as people in the world. I have asked them whether they wished to be reclothed with their earthly body, as they had previously thought they were going to be. On hearing this the very idea of being joined to that body made them flee far away, struck with amazement that in the world blind belief devoid of all understanding had led them to think that way.