The Bible

 

Genesis 1:22

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22 And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth.

From Swedenborg's Works

 

Divine Love and Wisdom #18

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18. Anyone can come to an inner assurance about the presence of infinite things in God--anyone, that is, who believes that God is a person; because if God is a person, he has a body and everything that having a body entails. So he has a face, torso, abdomen, upper legs, and lower legs, since without these he would not be a person. Since he has these components, he also has eyes, ears, nose, mouth, and tongue. He also has what we find within a person, such as a heart and lungs and the things that depend on them, all of which, taken together, make us human. We are created with these many components, and if we consider them in their interconnections, they are beyond counting. In the Divine-Human One, though, they are infinite. Nothing is lacking, so he has an infinite completeness.

We can make this comparison of the uncreated Person, who is God, with us who are created, because that God is a person. It is because of him that we earthly beings are said to have been created in his image and in his likeness (Genesis 1:26-27).

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

From Swedenborg's Works

 

Arcana Coelestia #2426

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2426. 'In case the evil clings to me and I die' means it would inevitably result in evil existing with him at the same time and that this being so he would be condemned. This is clear without explanation. What these words embody can be recognized from what has been stated and shown already in 301-303, 571, 582, 1001, 1327, 1328 - that the Lord is continually making provision to prevent the mixing together of evil with good. But to the extent a person is immersed in evil, he is further away from good. It is better to be immersed completely in evil than in evil and at the same time in good. For if a person is under the influence of evil and of good simultaneously he inevitably stands condemned for ever. It is the deceitful and the hypocritical within the Church who more than anybody else stand in danger of this. This then is the meaning in the internal sense of 'in case the evil clings to me and I die'.

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