Title: A Way Forward, Part 2

Topic: Second Coming

Summary: An important first stage in moving from hell to heaven, whether individually or as a cultrure, is to cry out to the Lord, even if we seemingly get no response. That is actually the Lord planting and building a desire in our hearts for something better than our current situation. This desire is a gift-much needed fuel for out journey.

References:
Exodus 2:23-25
2 Samuel 22:4-7
Psalms 30:1-3; 34:4-7; 107:17-22; 120:1-2; 130; 142
Lamentations 2:18-19
Jonah 2:1-2
Matthew 20:29-34
Luke 11:5-11
Revelation 1:7
Matthew 24:30
Zechariah 12:10
Daniel 7:13-15, 28
Isaiah 6:1-5
Genesis 42:6-7; 1:1-3
Hebrews 4:12-13
Matthew 5:26

This video is a part of the Spirit and Life Bible Study series, whose purpose is to look at the Bible, the whole Bible, and nothing but the Bible through a Swedenborgian lens.

4786. 'And his father wept for him' means interior mourning. This is clear from the meaning of 'weeping' as the extremity of grief and sadness, and so as interior mourning. In the ancient Churches the external practices by which, internal things were represented included those of wailing and weeping over the dead. Their wailing and weeping meant interior mourning, although their actual mourning was not interior. One reads the following, for example, about the Egyptians who had set out with Joseph to bury Jacob,

When they came to the threshing-floor of Atad which is at the crossing of the Jordan they wailed there with an exceedingly great and grievous wailing, and he mourned for his father seven days. And the inhabitants of the land, the Canaanites, saw the mourning at the threshing-floor of Atad, and they said, This is a grievous mourning by the Egyptians. Genesis 50:10-11.

And one reads about David weeping over Abner,

They buried Abner in Hebron, and the king lifted up his voice and wept at the grave of Abner; and all the people wept. 2 Samuel 3:32.