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Genesis 1:7

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7 And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.

From Swedenborg's Works

 

True Christian Religion #364

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364. (i) The Lord flows into every human being with all His Divine love, all His Divine wisdom, and so with all His Divine life.

We read in the Book of Creation that man was created an image of God, and God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life (Genesis 1:27; 2:7). This description means that he is an organ of life, not life itself. For God could not have created another like Himself; if He could have done so, there would be as many gods as there are people. Nor could He create life, just as neither can light be created. But He could create man to be a form for life to act on, just as He created the eye to be a form for light to act on. Nor could God, nor can He, divide His essence, since it is one and indivisible. So since God alone is life, it follows indubitably that God uses His own life to give life to every human being. Without that quickening man would be as regards flesh nothing but a sponge, and as regards bones nothing but a skeleton, no more alive than a clock, which is kept running by a pendulum together with a weight or a spring. Since this is so, it also follows that God flows in with every person with all His Divine life, that is, with all His Divine love and Divine wisdom. These two make up His Divine life (39-40 above); for the Divine cannot be divided.

[2] However, the manner in which God flows in with all His Divine life can be grasped as somewhat resembling the way the sun of the world flows in with all its essence, which is heat and light, into every tree, into every shrub and flower, into every stone, ordinary as well as precious, so that each single object draws its ration from this common inflow; but the sun does not split up its light and heat, giving part to this object and part to that. It is much the same with the sun of heaven, which radiates Divine love as heat and Divine wisdom as light. These two flow into human minds, just as the heat and light of the sun of the world flow into human bodies, giving them life depending on the nature of their form; the form of each takes from the common inflow what it needs. The following saying of the Lord can be applied to this:

Your Father makes His sun rise upon the wicked and the good, and sends rain upon the righteous and the unrighteous, Matthew 5:45.

[3] Also, the Lord is omnipresent, and where He is present, there He is with His whole essence. It is impossible for Him to take anything away from that essence, so as to give a part to one and another part to another, but He gives it in its entirety, enabling a person to take a little or much. He says too that He has His dwelling with those who keep His commandments, and that the faithful are in Him and He is in them. In short, everything is full of God, and from that fulness each takes his own share. Everything held in common is like this, for instance, the atmospheres or the oceans. The atmosphere is the same on the smallest as it is on the largest scale. It does not assign a part of itself to a person's breathing, to a bird's flying, or to the sails of a ship, or the sails of a wind-mill; but each takes from it its own portion and uses for itself as much as is enough. It is also similar with a granary full of wheat; the owner each day takes from it his own rations, and it is not the granary that distributes them.

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

From Swedenborg's Works

 

Arcana Coelestia #8812

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8812. 'When it came to be morning' means a state when they were governed by good. This is clear from the meaning of 'morning' as a state of the good of love, dealt with in 8426. From these details - that Jehovah, that is, the Lord, came down onto Mount Sinai on the third day, and also in the morning of that day - it is plainly evident that this event was representative of some Divine reality in heaven which no one can come to know about except from the correspondence of such things as arise in the natural world with realities in the spiritual world, and therefore from the spiritual meaning of those things. This is so here so far as the meaning of 'morning' and 'the third day' are concerned. 'The third day' means the end of a former state, and it does so because 'three' means what is complete from start to finish, 8790; and 'morning' means a state of the good of love, because the sun - the sun in the next life which gives light to angels and the whole of heaven - is the Lord. The fire there is His Divine Love, which gives vital heat to all that lives, and the light there is Divine Truth which enlightens all who receive it. The sun there is altogether different from the sun in the world, whose fire is fire and not love, and whose radiating light is light and not truth.

[2] All this goes to show what kind of effects the fire and also the light coming from the sun in the world produce, and what kind of effects the fire and light coming from the sun of heaven produce. The sun in the world provides heat and light without life, whereas the sun in heaven provides heat and light together with life. The latter, being provided by the sun of heaven, are therefore called spiritual, because they hold life within them, whereas the former, which are provided by the sun of the world, are called natural and do not hold life within them. The life in living things that is recognized in their heat and indicated by it does not come from the heat of the sun in the world but from the heat of the sun in heaven. When the latter heat enters heat in the world it produces that effect; the body feels it as elemental heat, but this has vital heat in it, which has its origin in the love that is heat from the sun of heaven. The truth that vital heat springs from a source other than the sun in the world, and that it owes its origin to love and exists according to the amount and the character of that love within it, anyone is able to know provided that he is prepared to think about it properly. Anyone can know except those who do not acknowledge anything internal in the human being and attribute everything to natural forces.

[3] Since therefore heat from the sun in heaven, which is the Lord, is the good of love, and the light from it is the truth of faith, one may see what is meant by 'morning', and what by 'midday', 'evening', and 'night' in the next life. They are states of good and truth or love and faith, 'morning' being a state of the good of love, 'midday' a state of the truth of faith, 'evening and night' a deprivation of them, which is ignorance and blindness in insights that belong to faith, and also slowness and coldness in feelings that belong to heavenly love.

[4] Furthermore the situation with the sun of heaven is as it is with the sun in the world, in that it is motionless and does not bring about those states by any wheeling round of its own. Rather the things around it bring them about, just as a planet travelling round the sun and at the same time rotating on its axis produces changes. The appearance therefore is that those changes are attributable to the sun, but in reality they are not attributable to the sun, only to the planet going round it. So also in heaven. Changes of state there, to which morning, midday, evening, and night correspond, are not attributable to the sun there, for that sun is always radiating heat and light, that is, the good of love and the truth of faith. Instead those changes are attributable to the recipients, that is to say, to the angels and spirits, who move through a regular cycle of such changes as their life progresses. At one point it is morning, that is, they are filled with the good of love; at another it is midday, that is, they are enlightened with the truth of faith; and at yet another it is evening and night, that is, these gifts become vague and dull with them.

[5] The reason why the situation in the world is as it is in heaven, except for the difference that in the world the regular cycle consists of states belonging to the times of day, while in heaven it consists of states of life, is that all things in the world have been created in the image of those in heaven. For natural things arise from spiritual ones as effects from their causes. Consequently there is a correspondence of all things in the world with those in heaven, and therefore the whole natural order is nothing other than a theatre representative of the Lord's kingdom, 3483, 4939, 8211.

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