The Bible

 

Genesis 1

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1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.

4 And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.

5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first Day.

6 And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.

7 And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.

8 And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.

9 And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so.

10 And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good.

11 And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so.

12 And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

13 And the evening and the morning were the third day.

14 And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years:

15 And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so.

16 And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.

17 And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth,

18 And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good.

19 And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.

20 And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.

21 And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

22 And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth.

23 And the evening and the morning were the fifth day.

24 And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so.

25 And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

26 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.

27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.

28 And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.

29 And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.

30 And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so.

31 And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.

Commentary

 

Resurrection, the first

  

'The first resurrection,' mentioned in Revelation 20:5, 6, does not mean a first resurrection, but the essence and primary part of resurrection, which is salvation and eternal life. There is only one resurrection to life. A second does not happen, and is not mentioned anywhere in the Bible.

(References: Apocalypse Explained 6; Apocalypse Revealed 851; Revelation 20:5-6)

From Swedenborg's Works

 

Apocalypse Revealed #820

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820. 19:11 Then I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse. This symbolizes the spiritual sense of the Word revealed by the Lord and the deeper meaning of the Word thereby disclosed, which is the coming of the Lord.

Seeing heaven opened symbolizes a revelation by the Lord and a disclosure then, which we will take up below. A horse symbolizes an understanding of the Word, and a white horse a deeper understanding (no. 298). And because this is the symbolic meaning of a white horse, and a deeper understanding of the Word is an understanding of the spiritual sense, therefore that sense is here symbolized by the white horse.

This is the coming of the Lord, because that sense makes it clearly apparent that the Lord embodies the Word, that the Word deals with Him alone, that He is God of heaven and earth, and that the New Church originates from Him alone.

The Lord told His disciples that they would see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with glory and power (Matthew 17:5; 24:30; 26:64; Mark 14:61-62; Revelation 1:7; Acts of the Apostles 1:9, 11). And the Lord said this also when He spoke with His disciples about the culmination of the age, which is the final period of the church when a judgment takes place.

Everyone who does not think beyond the literal sense believes that when the Last Judgment arrives, the Lord will appear in clouds of the sky, accompanied by angels and the blowing of trumpets. But this is not the meaning. Rather it means that the Lord will appear in the Word, as can be seen from the exposition above in nos. 24 and 642, and He appears clearly in the Word's spiritual sense. He appears not only as being an embodiment of the Word, that is, of Divine truth itself, or as being inmostly present in the Word and in everything springing from it, but also as being a single God, having the Trinity in Him, thus as being the only God of heaven and earth. Moreover, it appears also that He came into the world to glorify His humanity, that is, to make it Divine.

[2] The humanity that the Lord glorified, that is, the humanity that He made Divine, was the natural humanity, which He could not glorify or make Divine except by taking on a humanity in a virgin in the natural world, to which He then united His Divinity which He had from eternity. This union was achieved by temptations suffered by the humanity He had taken on, the last of which was His suffering of the cross and at the same time His fulfilling all of the Word, not only by His fulfilling all of the Word in its natural sense, but also by His fulfilling all of the Word in its spiritual sense, and also in its celestial sense, which, as we said before, deals with Him alone.

But on this subject see what we disclosed in The Doctrine of the New Jerusalem Regarding the Lord, and in The Doctrine of the New Jerusalem Regarding the Sacred Scripture.

Now because the Lord embodies the Word, and the Word became flesh (John 1:1-2, 14), and the Word became flesh in order that He might fulfill it, it is apparent that the Lord's appearing on the clouds of heaven means His coming in the Word. That the clouds of heaven symbolize the Word in its literal sense may be seen in nos. 24 and 642 above.

It is apparent that it is the Lord's appearing in the Word that is meant, because the white horse symbolizes a deeper understanding of the Word, and we are told that the name of Him who sat on the horse is "The Word of God," and that His name is "King of kings and Lord of lords" (verses 13, 16).

[3] It is apparent from this now that John's seeing heaven opened, and behold, a white horse, symbolizes the spiritual sense of the Word revealed by the Lord and the deeper meaning of the Word thereby disclosed, which is the coming of the Lord.

That the Word's spiritual sense has at this day been revealed, which no one in the Christian world has previously known anything about, may be see in Arcana Coelestia (The Secrets of Heaven), in which we expounded two of the books of Moses - Genesis and Exodus - in accordance with that sense. It may be seen also in The Doctrine of the New Jerusalem Regarding the Sacred Scripture, nos. 5-26; in the short treatise, The White Horse, from beginning to end, and from the numbers collected there from Arcana Coelestia regarding the sacred scripture; and furthermore in this exposition of the book of Revelation, in which not even one little verse can be understood apart from its spiritual meaning.

  
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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.