254. "For You created all things, and by Your will they exist and were created." This symbolically means that everything in heaven and the church has been created and formed out of the Lord's Divine love by His Divine wisdom, or out of Divine good by Divine truth, which is also the Word, and that so likewise are people reformed and reborn.

This is the spiritual meaning of this statement, because creating symbolically means to reform and regenerate by Divine truth, and the Lord's will symbolizes Divine good.

Whether one says Divine good and truth or Divine love and wisdom, the meaning is the same, as all good is connected with love, and all truth with wisdom.

In Angelic Wisdom Regarding Divine Love and Wisdom we showed many times that everything in heaven and the church spring from Divine love and wisdom, in fact that the world was created out of them; and we showed too that love and good are connected with the will, and wisdom and truth with the intellect. Thus it is apparent that the Lord's will means His Divine good or love.

[2] That to create in the Word means to reform and regenerate is apparent from the following passages:

Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. (Psalms 51:10)

You open Your hand, they are satisfied with good... You send forth Your Spirit, they are created. (Psalms 104:28, 30)

...a people yet to be created will praise Jah. (Psalms 102:18)

...behold, I am creating a new heaven and a new earth... ...rejoice forever in what I am creating; ...behold, I shall create Jerusalem an exultation... (Isaiah 65:17-18)

...Jehovah, who created the heavens..., who spread forth the earth..., who gives breath to the people on it, and spirit to those who walk on it. (Isaiah 42:5, cf. 45:12, 45:18)

...thus says Jehovah, your Creator, O Jacob, and your Former, O Israel: ...I have redeemed you; I have called you by your name... Everyone who is called by My name, for My glory I have created him. (Isaiah 43:1, 7)

On the day that you were created they were prepared... You were perfect in your ways from the day you were created, till perversity was found in you. (Ezekiel 28:13, 15)

The latter is said of the King of Tyre, who symbolizes people who possess intelligence through Divine truth.

...that they may see and know, and consider and understand..., that the hand of Jehovah has done this, and the Holy One of Israel has created it. (Isaiah 41:19-20)

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191. [193.] 54. Regarding some who have no spiritual life owing to their ignorance of truth, and the fact that life is infused into them by the Lord through angels:

I once felt a rather intense coldness from the soles of my feet to the knee. It was plain that the coldness was induced by cold spirits. I was told that they were ones who in the world had lived in absolute ignorance of God.

After they were raised up I heard them speaking, and from their speech I perceived in them scarcely any vitality. They spoke as though forcing inanimate statues to speak. I despaired over whether any life would long remain in them. They were like automatons or carved figures making sounds.

However, I heard shortly that they had been brought into a type of activity which appeared as a kind of gyration. Angels had been put in charge of infusing life into them, which they did with such care and attention that it can scarcely be described, nor did they permit themselves to be fatigued. In a word, they swung them back and forth - as is said in the Word of things sacrificed and of the Levites, that they were swung back and forth ¹ -the purpose of which was for them to receive spiritual life.

When this had gone on for some time, the spirits began to be vitalized and to be no longer as they were. Thus they began to hold some conversation with each other, saying that they were in heaven.

This effort was continued by the Lord through His angels throughout the night, and after that they reached the point that they could be introduced or incorporated into some gatherings of others, in which they were then perfected; for they were capable of receiving life, because they had nothing in them to resist it, as those do who confirm themselves in falsities in opposition to truths. How life was progressively infused into them was represented by colors - the first stage of that life by an increasingly white marble color; the second by an increasingly blue color containing the white; and the third by patches of glistening white clouds rising up.

I was afterward shown what their character was by an exhalation from them upon my face and the front parts of my breast. It was chilly, but verging on warmth. This was accomplished by the Lord alone through angels. They may be said to have been restored from no life to some life.

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