The beginning of John 1 illustrated how divine truth – which is the ultimate expression of the Lord’s love – is the actual creative force of the universe and of reality itself. That idea is reinforced here: "him" refers to Jesus, who was the physical embodiment of divine truth, which indeed made the world.

This verse offers another level, though. "World" represents the church, which is defined in the Writings as "where the Lord is known and where the Word is." By that definition a "church" can be as small as one person, or as large as billions of people worshiping through a wide variety of denominations. And the Writings tell us that the Lord has made sure that such a church always existed, from prehistoric times when the Lord offered "the Word" – His truth – to people directly up through today, when we have the Word in the form of the Bible.

But the world did not know him. At the time the Lord came among us as Jesus, people had turned away from the deeper meanings of the Word (which they then had in the form of the Old Testament), and had little to no concern for knowing the Lord. His church – the church among the Children of Israel – had turned away.

This might seem like a merely historic idea, something that happened then but has little to do with us now. But each one of us is a "church," and each one of us can know the Lord and the Word, or turn away. We all go through states when we are like the church at the time the Lord was born, and He can rebuild us now even as He rebuilt the church then. For that to happen, though, we need to turn to the Word – the Bible – and know the Lord.

(References: Apocalypse Explained 1093; Canons of the New Church 9; The Apocalypse Explained 294 [16])

5179. On one occasion I experienced an anxious feeling in the pit of my stomach, which told me that spirits of that kind were present. I spoke to them, telling them that it would be better if they went away, because their sphere which created the feeling of anxiety was not compatible with the spheres of the spirits who were residing with me. At that time I talked to them about spheres, to the effect that many spiritual spheres surround a person but that people neither know nor wish to know about the existence of them, for the reason that they deny the existence of everything that is called spiritual, some denying the existence of everything that cannot be actually seen or touched. So I went on to say that certain spheres from the spiritual world surround a person, spheres that are in keeping with the life he leads, and that by means of these he exists in the company of spirits whose affection is similar to his own. Those spheres, I added, were also what gave rise to very many things, the existence of which is denied by the person who attributes everything to natural forces or else is ascribed by him to some rather more hidden natural cause such as chance. For experience leads some people to feel quite convinced that some hidden force is at work which they call chance, though they do not know the origin of that force. The fact that its origin exists in a spiritual sphere and that it is the last and lowest degree of Providence will in the Lord's Divine mercy be described elsewhere, when I shall draw on experience to bear witness to it.