8. The second state is when a distinction is made between the things that are the Lord's and those that are man's own. Those which are the Lord's are called in the Word 'remnants', and here they are chiefly the cognitions of faith which a person has learned since he was a small child. These are stored away and do not come out into the open until he reaches this state. Nowadays this state rarely occurs without temptation, misfortune, and sorrow, which lead to the inactivity and so to speak the death of bodily and worldly concerns - the things which are man's own. In this way what belongs to the external man is segregated from what belongs to the internal. Within the internal are the remnants, stored away by the Lord until this time and for this purpose.

117. As for the fact that there has been religion from the earliest times and that people all over the world have known about God and have known something about life after death, this did not come from the people themselves and from their own mental acuity, but from that former Word discussed in §§101-103 above, and later from the Israelite Word. Religious principles spread from these sources into southeast Asia, including its islands; through Egypt and Ethiopia into Africa; and from the coast of Asia Minor into Greece and from there into Italy.

But since there was no way the Word could be composed except in the language of representative imagery, in images of things characteristic of this world that corresponded to and therefore signified heavenly realities, the religions of many nations were turned into idolatries - in Greece into fables - and divine attributes and characteristics were turned into individual gods led by one highest God whom people called Jove, from “Jehovah.” It is common knowledge that [ancient people] were familiar with paradise, the Flood, sacred fire, and the four ages - from the first Golden Age to the last Iron Age - which serve in the Word to mean the four states of the church, as in Daniel 2:31-35.

It is also common knowledge that Islam, which came later and wiped out the preceding religious cultures of many nations, was drawn from the Word of both Testaments.