5757. 'We brought back to you from the land of Canaan' means has been submitted, as the result of religious belief. This is clear from the meaning of 'bringing back' as submitting, dealt with in 5624, and from the meaning of 'the land of Canaan' as their religious belief. 'The land of Canaan' has various meanings, and this is because it is the kind of thing that includes very many meanings. It means the Lord's kingdom and it means the Church, as a consequence of which it also means the member of the Church, for he is a Church. Having these meanings that land also means the celestial element of the Church, which is the good of love, and the spiritual element of it too, which is the truth of faith; and so on. Here therefore a religious belief which the Church possesses is meant; for the Church's religious belief is what causes a person to think that he should not lay claim to truth and good as his own. From this one may see why a single expression sometimes has many meanings; for when many meanings are included within an overall one, an expression can then convey a particular meaning as the train of thought in the internal sense may demand. As regards 'the land of Canaan' meaning the Lord's kingdom, see 1413, 1437, 1607, 3038, 3481, 3705; and as regards its meaning the Church, 3686, 3705, 4447. All the other meanings which that expression possesses flow from these two.

3481. I have quite often been in conversation with Jews in the next life. They appear in a forward position on the lower earth below the level of the left foot, and on one occasion I also spoke about the Word, the land of Canaan, and the Lord. I said that the Word contained very deep arcana which are not visible to men. This point they agreed with. After that I said that all the arcana there deal with the Messiah and His kingdom. This also they assented to. But when I told them that Messiah in Hebrew is the same as Christ in Greek they would not listen. And again when I said that the Messiah was the Most Holy One, that Jehovah was within Him, that none other was meant by the Holy One of Israel and by the God of Jacob, and that seeing that He is the Most Holy One none can be in His kingdom except those who are holy not outwardly but inwardly - who are not accordingly under the influence of the filthy love of the world, or of a superior attitude towards other nations, or of hatred for one another - they could not listen to it.

[2] After that I said that the Messiah's kingdom according to prophecy was going to last for ever, and those with Him would also inherit the land for ever. If His kingdom were of this world and they were brought into the land of Canaan it would last only for the few years that constitute the human life-span. Besides, all who had died since the expulsion of the Jews from the land of Canaan would not enjoy such blessedness. From this, I said, they could recognize that the land of Canaan represented and meant the heavenly kingdom; indeed they would recognize it all the more easily, in that they now knew they were in the next life and were going to live for ever, from which it was evident that this next life was the place where the Messiah had His kingdom. And, I continued, if they were allowed to talk to angels they could know that the whole angelic heaven was the Lord's kingdom.

[3] I added that by the new earth, the new Jerusalem, and the new temple described in Ezekiel nothing else could be meant than such a kingdom of the Messiah. To all these points they were unable to make any response apart from weeping bitterly at the prospect of being led into the land of Canaan by the Messiah only to die after so few years and leave behind the blessedness they were to enjoy there.