The Bible

 

Genesis 1:17

Study

       

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

From Swedenborg's Works

 

The Last Judgement #20

Study this Passage

  
/ 74  
  

20. Anyone who has learned about God's order can also understand that man was created so as to become an angel, because in him order reaches its ultimate stage (see 9 above). In this stage something of the wisdom of heaven and the angels can be formed, and it can be reconstituted and multiplied. God's order never stops half-way, and forms anything there without the ultimate stage; for it is not in its fullness and perfection unless it goes to the ultimate. But when it is there, then it takes shape and uses the means at its disposal there to reconstitute and extend itself, which it does by reproduction. The ultimate is therefore the seed-bed of heaven.

This too is what is meant by the description of man and his creation in the first chapter of Genesis:

God said, Let us make 1 man in our image, according to our likeness. And God created man in His image, in the image of God did He create him. Male and female He created them; and God blessed them, and God said to them, Be fruitful and multiply. Genesis 1:26-28.

Creating in the image of God and in the likeness of God means conferring on him the whole of God's order from first to last, and so making him an angel as regards the interiors of his mind.

Footnotes:

1. [Reading faciamus as AC for faciemus (We shall make).]

  
/ 74  
  

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

From Swedenborg's Works

 

Arcana Coelestia #15

Study this Passage

  
/ 10837  
  

15. Throughout heaven they do not know any other Father than the Lord, for They are one, as He Himself has said,

I am the way, the truth, and the life. Philip said, Show us the Father. Jesus said to him, Have I been with you so long, and yet you do not know Me, Philip? He who has seen Me has seen the Father. So why do you say, Show us the Father? Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father in Me? Believe Me that I am in the Father and the Father in Me. John 14:6, 8-11.

  
/ 10837  
  

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