The Bible

 

Genesis 1:21

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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.

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

 

Apocalypse Explained #263

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263. Said, Come up hither. That this signifies elevation of the mind and attention is evident from the signification of ascending, when said of hearing from the Divine, as being elevation of the mind (concerning which see Arcana Coelestia 3084, 4539, 4969, 5406, 5817, 6007). The reason why it also denotes attention is that when the mind is elevated there is attention. For to a man's thought and will belong interior and exterior things; interior things are those of the internal man, exterior things are those of the external man. Interior things, which are those of the internal man, are in the spiritual world, therefore they are spiritual; but exterior things, or those of the external man, are in the natural world, and are therefore natural. Because the latter things are exterior, and the former interior, therefore, by ascending is signified elevation towards interior things, or elevation of the mind. (But concerning this elevation, see what is shown in the work, Heaven and Hell 33, 34, 38, 92, 499, 501; and in The Doctrine of the New Jerusalem 36-53.)

  
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Translation by Isaiah Tansley. Many thanks to the Swedenborg Society for the permission to use this translation.