11. God is the essential person. Throughout all the heavens, the only concept of God is a concept of a person. The reason is that heaven, overall and regionally, is in a kind of human form, and Divinity among the angels is what makes heaven. Further, thinking proceeds in keeping with heaven's form, so it is not possible for angels to think about God in any other way. This is why all the people on earth who are in touch with heaven think about God in the same way when they are thinking very deeply, or in their spirit.

It is because God is a person that all angels and spirits are perfectly formed people. This is because of heaven's form, which is the same in its largest and its smallest manifestations. (On heaven being in a human form overall and regionally, see Heaven and Hell 59-87 [59-86], and on thought progressing in keeping with heaven's form, see 203-204 there.)

It is common knowledge that we were created in the image and likeness of God because of Genesis 1:26-27 and from the fact that Abraham and others saw God as a person.

The early people, wise and simple alike, thought of God only as a person. Even when they began to worship many gods, as they did in Athens and Rome, they worshiped them as persons. By way of illustration, here is an excerpt from an earlier booklet.

Non-Christians--especially Africans--who acknowledge and worship one God as the Creator of the universe conceive of that God as a person. They say that no one can have any other concept of God. When they hear that many people prefer an image of God as a little cloud in the center, they ask where these people are; and when they are told that these people are among the Christians, they respond that this is impossible. They are told, however, that Christians get this idea from the fact that in the Word God is called a spirit; and the only concept they have of spirit is of a piece of cloud. They do not realize that every spirit and every angel is a person. However, when inquiry was made to find out whether their spiritual concept was the same as their earthly one, it turned out that it was not the same for people who inwardly recognized the Lord as the God of heaven and earth.

I heard one Christian elder say that no one could have a concept of a being both divine and human; and I saw him taken to various non-Christians, more and more profound ones. Then he was taken to their heavens, and finally to a heaven of Christians. Through the whole process people's inner perception of God was communicated to him, and he came to realize that their only concept of God was a concept of a person--which is the same as a concept of a being both divine and human.

6110. 'For the famine was extremely serious' means desolation. This is clear from the meaning of 'famine' as an absence of good and of cognitions, dealt with in 1460, 3364, 5277, 5279, 5281, 5300, 5579, 5893, so that 'the famine was extremely serious' is desolation, 5360, 5376, 5415, 5576. As regards desolation, it should be recognized that truths and forms of good, together with cognitions of them, compose the spiritual life of those who are in heaven. They are the celestial and spiritual foods that nourish them; and these foods are given them every day by the Lord. When it is morning with them forms of good are supplied, and when it is midday truths are supplied; but when evening comes they lack them, and continue to lack them until it is twilight and then morning again. Their yearning when they lack them remains so strong that their desire for them is greater than starving people's desire for food on earth. This state is meant by 'the famine' and it is a kind of desolation, though not the kind experienced by those on the lower earth, 698, 699, 1106-1113.

[2] Scarcely anyone in the world can believe that the angelic heaven can have so great a yearning for truths and forms of good, and for cognitions of them. For people whose minds are set on nothing else than gain and glory, and who are given up to worldly pleasures, will be amazed to learn that those things constitute angelic life. 'What use they will say 'are cognitions of goodness and truth to me? What life can they give me? The things that bring me life and my life's delight are wealth, position, and worldly pleasures!' But let those who speak like this know that the life these things bring is that of the body, not that of the soul, and that the former kind of life perishes along with the body, whereas the latter kind remains for ever. Let them also know that people are ill-advised if while in the world they do not give any thought to spiritual life.

[3] Further as regards desolation, it exists on account of the yearning; for forms of good and truth are accepted in the measure that they are yearned for, and when the desires created by the yearning are fulfilled they produce feelings of happiness and bliss. In the next life therefore those who pass through desolation are refreshed immediately afterwards and realize their desires; everyone there is made more perfect by means of such alternating experiences. It is a fact worthy of note that the changing times of day in the natural world - morning, midday, evening, night, and morning again - are wholly representative of the changes that take place in the spiritual world, yet with one difference. The changes that occur in the spiritual world have an effect on the understanding and the will, establishing in them the basic elements of life, whereas the changes that occur in the world have an effect on and sustain things of the body.

[4] What is even more noteworthy is the fact that it is not the Lord who brings on the shades of evening and the darkness of night but those characteristics of angels, spirits, or men that are entirely their own. For the Lord as the Sun shines and flows in constantly; but because the evils and falsities that spring from what is his own are present in a man, spirit, or angel, they turn and direct him away from the Lord. In so doing they bring him into the shades of evening, and lead the wicked into the darkness of night. It is similar to the way things are with the sun in our world. It shines and flows in constantly, but the earth by rotating on its axis turns away from the sun and brings itself into shade and darkness.

[5] These features of the natural world come about because the natural world comes into being from the spiritual world and is also kept in being from there, as a consequence of which the entire natural system is a theatre representative of the Lord's kingdom, 3483, 4939. The purpose served by the changes that take place in the spiritual world is that all who are in heaven may constantly become more perfect. Such changes exist in the natural world for the same reason, for if they did not occur everything there would perish because of drought.

[6] It should be recognized however that in heaven there is no night, only evening, which is followed by the twilight that comes before morning; but in hell there is night. Changes take place there also, but they are of a contrary nature to those in heaven. In hell morning is the heat of evil desires, midday is the itch of false ideas, evening is anxiety, and night is torment. But through all these changes night predominates; merely variations of shade and darkness are what bring about those changes. In addition to this it should be recognized that in the spiritual world the changes which take place are not the same with one person as they are with another, also that the changes there do not divide into regular periods of time because they are variations of state that produce those changes. For instead of the periods of time that occur in the natural world there are states in the spiritual world, 1274, 1382, 2625, 2788, 2837, 3254, 3356, 4814, 4916, 4882, 4901.