The Bible

 

Joel 3

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1 For behold in those days, and in that time when I shall bring back the captivity of Juda and Jerusalem:

2 I will gather together all nations, and will bring them down into the valley of Josaphat: and I will plead with them there for my people, and for my inheritance Israel, whom they have scattered among the nations, and have parted my land.

3 And they have cast lots upon my people: and the boy they have put in the stews, and the girl they have sold for wine, that they might drink.

4 But what have you to do with me, O Tyre, and Sidon, and all the coast of the Philistines? will you revenge yourselves on me? and if you revenge yourselves on me, I will very soon return you a recompense upon your own head.

5 For you have taken away my silver and my gold: and my desirable and most beautiful things you have carried into your temples.

6 And the children of Juda, and the children of Jerusalem you have sold to the children of the Greeks, that you might remove them far off from their own country.

7 Behold, I will raise them up out of the place wherein you have sold them: and I will return your recompense upon your own heads.

8 And I will sell your sons, and your daughters by the hands of the children of Juda, and they shall sell them to the Sabeans, a nation far off, for the Lord hath spoken it.

9 Proclaim ye this among the nations: prepare war, rouse up the strong: let them come, let all the men of war come up.

10 Cut your ploughshares into swords, and your spades into spears. Let the weak say: I am strong.

11 Break forth, and come, all ye nations, from round about, and gather yourselves together: there will the Lord cause all thy strong ones to fall down.

12 Let them arise, and let the nations come up into the valley of Josaphat: for there I will sit to judge all nations round about.

13 Put ye in the sickles, for the harvest is ripe: come and go down, for the press is full, the fats run over: for their wickedness is multiplied.

14 Nations, nations in the valley of destruction: for the day of the Lord is near in the valley of destruction.

15 The sun and the moon are darkened, and the stars have withdrawn their shining.

16 And the Lord shall roar out of Sion, and utter his voice from Jerusalem: and the heavens and the earth shall be moved, and the Lord shall be the hope of his people, and the strength of the children of Israel.

17 And you shall know that I am the Lord your God, dwelling in Sion my holy mountain: and Jerusalem shall be holy and strangers shall pass through it no more.

18 And it shall come to pass in that day, that the mountains shall drop down sweetness, and the hills shall flow with milk: and waters shall flow through all the rivers of Juda: and a fountain shall come forth of the house of the Lord, and shall water the torrent of thorns.

19 Egypt shall be a desolation, and Edom a wilderness destroyed: because they have done unjustly against the children of Juda, and have shed innocent blood in their land.

20 And Judea shall be inhabited for ever, and Jerusalem to generation and generation.

21 And I will cleanse their blood which I had not cleansed: and the Lord will dwell in Sion.

   

From Swedenborg's Works

 

Apocalypse Revealed #54

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54. And when I saw Him, I fell at His feet as though dead. (1:17) This symbolically means that he experienced a failure of his own life owing to such a presence of the Lord.

A person's own life cannot endure the presence of the Lord such as the Lord is in Himself, indeed such as He is in the inmost constituents of His Word. For His Divine love is altogether like the sun, which no one can endure as it is in itself, because it would consume him.

This is the meaning of the declaration that no one can see God and live (Exodus 33:20, Judges 13:22).

This being the case, the Lord therefore appears to angels in heaven as the sun, at a distance from them, like the world's sun from people. That is because the Lord in that sun is present as He is in Himself.

But still the Lord moderates and tempers His Divinity so as to make it possible for a person to endure His presence. This He does by veilings. It was what He did when He revealed Himself to many people in the Word. Indeed, it is by veilings that He is present in everyone who worships Him. As He says in John,

He who... keeps (My commandments)..., in him (I) will make (My) abode. (John 14:21, 23)

And He says that He must be in them and they in Him (John 15:4-5).

It is apparent from this why, when John saw the Lord in such glory, he fell at His feet as though dead. And why, too, when three of the disciples saw the Lord in His glory, they were "heavy with sleep," and a cloud covered them (Luke 9:32, 34).

  
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Many thanks to the General Church of the New Jerusalem, and to Rev. N.B. Rogers, translator, for the permission to use this translation.

The Bible

 

Matthew 17:1-2

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1 After six days, Jesus took with him Peter, James, and John his brother, and brought them up into a high mountain by themselves.

2 He was transfigured before them. His face shone like the sun, and his garments became as white as the light.