The Bible

 

Genesis 1:12

Study

       

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.

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

 

Arcana Coelestia #10809

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10809. After this they asked me in what way the Lord appears among angels from our planet. I said that He appears in the Sun as a Human Being, surrounded there by its fiery glow, the source of all the light that angels in heaven possess. The heat which radiates from there, I said, is Divine Good and the light which does so is Divine Truth, both coming from the Divine Love, which constitutes the fiery glow appearing around the Lord within that Sun. But that Sun, I added, appears only to angels in heaven, not to spirits below, since they are too far away to receive the good of love and truth of faith as angels in the heavens do. As for the worldly sun however, it does not appear to any in the next life, though it presents itself in their minds as a black, invisible object in the opposite direction from the Sun of heaven, which is the Lord. The reason why they had been allowed to question me about the Lord and His appearance before angels from our planet was that the Lord was then pleased to make Himself present among them and to restore to order things which, as they complained, the evil [spirits] there had overturned. To the end that I might see these things was also the reason why I had been taken to that part of the planet.

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