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.

From Swedenborg's Works

 

Arcana Coelestia #39

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39. Verse 20 And God said, Let the waters bring forth creeping things, living creatures; and let birds fly above the earth, upon the face 1 of the expanse of the heavens.

After the great lights have been kindled and lodged in the internal man, from which the external man receives its light, a person starts to live for the first time. Till then he can hardly be said to have lived, for he had imagined that the good he had done he had done from himself, and the truth he had uttered he had spoken from himself. And since man functioning from himself is dead - there being nothing in him that is not evil and false - therefore whatever he brings forth from himself is not living. So true is this that of himself he is incapable of doing any good deed that is in itself good. The fact that man cannot begin to think about good or to will it, and so cannot do good, unless the Lord is the source, is clear to everyone from the doctrine of faith, for the Lord says in Matthew,

He who sows the good seed is the Son of Man. Matthew 13:37.

Nor can good come from anywhere else than the one fount itself of all good, as yet again He says,

Nobody is good but one, God. Luke 18:19.

[2] Nevertheless when the Lord is revitalizing a person, or regenerating him, He does allow him, to begin with, to imagine that good and truth originate in himself, for at that point a person cannot grasp anything else, or be led to believe and finally perceive, that all good and truth come from the Lord alone. As long as he held the former opinion his truths and goods were comparable to 'a tender plant', then 'a plant bearing seed', and after that 'a fruit tree', which are inanimate. But once he has been brought to life by love and faith and believes that the Lord is at work in every good deed he does and in every truth he utters, he is compared first to creeping things from the water and to birds which fly above the earth, and then to beasts, all of which are animate and are called 'living creatures'.

Footnotes:

1. literally, the faces

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

From Swedenborg's Works

 

Divine Providence #254

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254. 1. Strict materialists justify their rejection of divine providence when they look at the religious practices of various peoples. There are some with no knowledge of God at all, some who worship the sun and the moon, some who worship images and statues. People who use this as a source of arguments against divine providence do not know the secrets of heaven, the innumerable secrets of heaven of which we know scarcely one. One of them is that we are not taught directly from heaven but indirectly (see 154-174 above). Since we are taught indirectly, and since the Gospel could not be brought to everyone in the whole world by missionaries, while some religion could be carried by various means even to people in the remote corners of the world, this has therefore been accomplished by divine providence. That is, people do not simply originate a religion by themselves, they learn from others (who learned it from the Word either directly or by transmission through others) that there is a God, that there is a heaven and a hell and a life after death, and that we must worship God in order to be blessed.

[2] On the way religion has been transplanted throughout the world from the ancient Word and then from the Israelite Word, see Teachings for the New Jerusalem on Sacred Scripture 101-103; and on the fact that if it were not for the Word no one would know about God, heaven and hell, or life after death, let alone about the Lord, see Teachings for the New Jerusalem on Sacred Scripture 114-118 of that work.

Once a religion has taken root, the Lord leads its people by the laws and principles of that religion. Further, the Lord makes sure that in every religion there are laws like those of the Ten Commandments, stating that we are to worship God, not to profane his name, to observe holy days, to honor our parents, not to murder, not to commit adultery, not to steal, and not to commit perjury. Any people that regards these laws as divine and lives by them because of its religion is saved, as stated in 253 above. Most of the peoples remote from Christianity regard these not as civil laws but as divine laws and keep them sacred. In Teachings about Life for the New Jerusalem Drawn from the Ten Commandments, from beginning to end, it shows that we are saved by living according to these laws.

[3] Another of heaven's secrets is that in the Lord's sight the angelic heaven looks like a single person whose soul and life is the Lord, and that the form of this divine person is human in every respect, not only as to its outer members and organs but also as to its inner members and organs, which are abundant, and even as to its skin, membranes, cartilage, and bones. In this person, though, all these components are not material but spiritual; and the Lord has arranged that even people whom the Gospel has not reached, people who simply have some religion, can have a place in that divine person who is heaven. They can make up the parts we call skin, membranes, cartilage, and bones, and they are as full of heavenly joy as anyone else. It makes no difference whether their joy is like that of angels in the highest heaven or like that of angels in the lowest heaven, since all the people who get to heaven attain the highest joy of their hearts. They could not bear anything higher or they would suffocate.

[4] It is like a farmer and a king. A farmer can have his highest joy when he is dressed in new clothes of plain wool and sits down at a table where there is some pork, a joint of beef, some cheese, and some beer and mulled wine. He would be profoundly uncomfortable if he were dressed up like a king in purple, silk, gold, and silver and confronted with a table where there was a feast of all kinds of rich delicacies and fine wine. We can see, then, that there is heavenly happiness for the last as well as for the first, all on their own level. So there is happiness for people outside Christendom, if they simply abstain from evils as sins against God because evils are against their religion.

[5] There are a few people who know nothing whatever about God. You may see in Teachings for the New Jerusalem on Sacred Scripture 116 that if they have lived moral lives, after death they are taught by angels and accept something spiritual in their moral life. Much the same is true of people who worship the sun and the moon and believe that God is there. That is all they know, so it is not charged to them as a sin. After all, the Lord says "If you were blind," that is, if you did not know, "then you would have no sin" (John 9:41).

There are many people, though, who worship images and statues, even in the Christian world. This really is idolatry, but not for all of them. For some, the statues serve to awaken thoughts of God. It is from an inflow from heaven that people who believe in God want to see God; and since some of them cannot raise their minds above the sensory level the way deeper, spiritual people can, they awaken their thought with a statue or image. If people who do this are not worshiping the statue as God, and if they live by the laws of the Ten Commandments for religious reasons, they are saved.

[6] We can see from this that because the Lord wants to save everyone, he makes sure that all of us can have our places in heaven if we live well.

Heaven is like a single person in the Lord's sight, and therefore heaven corresponds to the human overall and in every detail, with people there who are equivalent to our skin, membranes, cartilages, and bones: see Heaven and Hell 59-102 (published in London in 1758) and Secrets of Heaven 5552-5564 [Secrets of Heaven 5552-5569], as well as 201-204 above.

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