50. What the Most Ancient Church understood by 'the image of the Lord' exceeds everything one can say about it. Man is totally unaware of the fact that the Lord is governing him by means of angels and spirits, and that at least two spirits and two angels are present with everyone. By means of the spirits he is in communication with the world of spirits, and by means of the angels with heaven. Without this communication with the world of spirits by means of the spirits, and with heaven by means of the angels, and so by means of heaven with the Lord, a person cannot exist at all. His entire life depends upon that link, and if the spirits and angels were to withdraw he would perish instantly.

[2] As long as a person remains unregenerate he is governed in an entirely different way from when he is regenerate. As long as he is unregenerate, evil spirits reside with him, who have such dominion over him that angels, though present, can accomplish little more than simply distract him from plunging into utter evil and so divert him towards something good. Indeed they use his own unregenerate desires to divert him towards good, and his illusions of the senses to do so towards truth. At that point he is in communication with the world of spirits by means of the spirits who reside with him, but not in the same way with heaven, for the reason that evil spirits have dominion and angels simply forestall them.

[3] When however he is regenerate it is the angels who then have dominion, and they breathe into him every kind of good and truth, as well as a horror and dread of evils and falsifies. Angels do indeed lead, yet they are but servants, for it is the Lord alone who, by means of angels and spirits, governs a person. Now because this is done through the ministry of angels, it is said here, in the plural first of all, 'Let Us make man in Our image'. Yet because it is still He alone who rules and disposes, it is said in the following verse, in the singular, 'God created him in His image'. This the Lord also states plainly in Isaiah,

Thus said Jehovah, your Redeemer, He who formed you from the womb, I Jehovah make all things, stretching out the heavens Alone, spreading out the earth by Myself. Isaiah 44:24.

Angels themselves also profess that no power at all resides with themselves but that they act from the Lord alone.

5402. 'That there was corn in Egypt' means the intention to acquire truths to itself through factual knowledge, which is 'Egypt'. This is clear from the meaning of 'corn' as the truths known to the Church, or the truths of faith - 'an abundance of corn' being a multiplication of truth, see 5276, 5280, 5292; and from the meaning of 'Egypt' as factual knowledge, dealt with in 1164, 1165, 1186, 1462, and, in the genuine sense, facts known to the Church, see 4749, 4964, 4966. As is evident from the words that come immediately after them, the ones used here imply an intention to acquire these truths to itself. The expression 'facts known to the Church', which 'Egypt' stands for here, is used to mean all the cognitions of truth and good before they become linked to the interior man, that is, through the interior man to heaven, and thus through heaven to the Lord. The teachings of the Church and its religious observances, in addition to its cognitions about why and how these represent spiritual realities and the like, all exist as nothing more than known facts until a person sees from the Word whether they are truths, and having done so makes them his own.

[2] There are two ways of acquiring the truths of faith, one way being through religious teaching, the other through the Word. When religious teaching alone is the way by which a person acquires them, he pins his faith on those who have deduced such truths from the Word, and assures himself that they are indeed truths because others have said that they are. Thus he does not believe those truths on account of any faith of his own but on account of that possessed by others. When however he gathers those truths for himself from the Word and assures himself for that reason that they are truths, he believes them on account of their Divine origin and so on account of a faith received from the Divine. Initially everyone within the Church acquires the truths that constitute faith from religious teaching; indeed this is how he ought to acquire them because he is not as yet equipped with judgement of his own that will enable him to see those truths from the Word. At this time those truths are for him no different from factual knowledge. But once he does possess the judgement to see them on his own, and if he does not consult the Word to the end that he may see from there whether they are indeed truths, they remain with him as factual knowledge. If however he does consult the Word with an affection for and an intention to know truths, and having found them there acquires them from their own true source, he receives the truths of faith from the Divine and makes them his own. These and other matters like them are what the internal sense is dealing with here; for 'Egypt' is that factual knowledge, while 'Joseph' is truth received from the Divine and so truth obtained from the Word.