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

 

True Christian Religion #365

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365. (ii) The Lord flows in likewise in the case of every person with the whole essence of faith and charity.

This follows from the previous proposition, since the life of Divine wisdom is the essence of faith, and the life of Divine love is the essence of charity. Therefore, when the Lord is present with His own particular attributes, namely Divine wisdom and Divine love, He is also present with all the truths which make up faith and all the kinds of good which make up charity. For faith means every truth which the Lord enables a person to perceive, think and speak, and charity means every kind of good for which the Lord inspires an affection, and which the person consequently wills and does.

[2] I said above that the Divine love which radiates from the Lord as a sun is felt by the angels as heat, and the Divine wisdom from the same source is perceived as light. Anyone who is unable to pass beyond appearances in his thinking might hold the view that that heat is nothing but heat, and that light is nothing but light, such as are the heat and light radiated by the sun of our world. But the heat and light radiated by the Lord as a sun contain within themselves all the infinite possibilities in the Lord, the heat containing all the infinite possibilities of His love, the light all the infinite possibilities of His wisdom. Thus they also contain to an infinite degree all the good which makes up charity and all the truth which makes up faith. The reason is that that very sun is everywhere present in the form of its heat and light; and that sun is a circle most closely surrounding the Lord, and emanating from His Divine love and at the same time from His Divine wisdom. For, as has been said a number of times before, the Lord is in the midst of that sun.

[3] These statements now show plainly that there cannot be anything lacking to prevent a person drawing from the Lord, since He is omnipresent, all the good which makes up charity and all the truth which makes up faith. The fact that nothing of this is lacking is evident from a consideration of the love and wisdom of the angels of heaven; these they have from the Lord, and they are beyond description, passing the comprehension of a natural person, and they are capable of being increased for ever.

The infinite possibilities contained in the heat and light radiated by the Lord, even though they are perceived as simply heat and light, can be illustrated by various phenomena of the natural world. For instance, the sound of a person's voice and speech is heard as a simple sound, yet the angels on hearing it perceive in it all the affections which make up the person's love, and they also show which affections and of what kind they are. The fact that these things lie hidden within the sound one can even to some extent grasp from the sound of someone talking: for instance, whether it has in it a ring of contempt, or mockery, or hatred; and equally whether it has a ring of charity, good will, or cheerfulness, or other affections. The look the eye has when gazing at someone has something similar hidden in it.

[4] Another illustration might be the scents of a large garden, or the scents from broad expanses of flowering meadows. The fragrant odour they exhale is composed of thousands and myriads of various scents, yet they are still perceived as one. It is similar with many other things which, uniform as they appear externally, are still inwardly multifarious.

Sympathetic or antipathetic feelings are nothing but affections given off from the mind; they attract another the more strongly the more they resemble his, and repel him the more they differ from his. Although these feelings are countless and not felt by any bodily sense, they are still perceived by the sensory organs of the soul as one; and it is these which determine who are linked together and associated in the spiritual world. I have brought in these comparisons in order to illustrate what was said above about the spiritual light radiated by the Lord containing the whole of wisdom and the whole of faith; and to show that this is the light which allows the understanding to see and submit to analysis rational arguments, just as the eye sees and estimates the proportions of natural objects.

  
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Thanks to the Swedenborg Society for the permission to use this translation.