Divine Love and Wisdom #286
286. As for God's inability to create the universe and everything in it except as a person, this is something a discerning individual can grasp very clearly on the following basis. Inwardly, we cannot deny that love and wisdom, mercy and forgiveness exist in God. God, as the source of what is good and true, is their essence. Since we cannot deny this, we cannot deny that God is a person, since none of these things can exist apart from a person. The person is their subject, and to separate them from their subject is to say that they do not exist.
Think of wisdom, and posit it outside a person. Is it anything? Can you conceive of it as something ethereal or flamelike? No, unless perhaps you think of it as within these things; and if it is within them, it must be wisdom in a form like ours. It must be in every aspect of that form. Nothing can be lacking if wisdom is to be within it.
In brief, the form of wisdom is human, and because a person is a form of wisdom, a person is also a form of love, mercy, forgiveness--of whatever is good and true, because these act in complete unison with wisdom.
On the fact that love and wisdom cannot occur except in some form, see above, 40-43.
Twelve precious stones in the foundation of the New Jerusalem
The twelve precious stones in the foundation of the New Jerusalem signify every aspect of the doctrines of the New Jerusalem, in their order, from the literal sense of the Word -- as understood by people who directly approach the Lord and live according to the commandments of the Ten Commandments by shunning evil as sins.
These twelve precious stones signify the same thing as the twelve tribes of Israel, that is, all the goods and truths of the church and its doctrine in their order.
Similarly, the twelve apostles signify every aspect of doctrine concerning the Lord, and life conforming to His commandments. This is why the names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb were written in these twelve foundations.
In the same vein, the stones in the breast-plate of Aaron were inscribed with the names of the twelve tribes of Israel.
(References: Apocalypse Revealed 915; Revelation 21:19-20)
