The Bible

 

Joel 2:16

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16 Gather the people. Sanctify the assembly. Assemble the elders. Gather the children, and those who nurse from breasts. Let the bridegroom go forth from his room, and the bride out of her room.

From Swedenborg's Works

 

The Last Judgement #4

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4. Further, to create means in the spiritual sense of the Word to form, set up and regenerate. So to create a new heaven and a new earth means to set up a new church in heaven and on earth. This can be seen from these passages:

A people yet to be created shall praise Jah. Psalms 102:18.

You send forth your breath, they are created, and you make new the face of the earth. Psalms 104:30.

Thus spoke Jehovah, your Creator, Jacob, your Fashioner, Israel. [Do not be afraid,] for I have redeemed you and called you by your name. You are mine. Everyone who is called after my name, and created to be my glory, I have fashioned him and I have also made him. Isaiah 43:1, 7 and elsewhere.

This is why a new creation is a person's reformation, since he becomes a new man, becoming spiritual instead of natural. Consequently a new creation is a reformed person. 1

Footnotes:

1. To create is to create anew or reform and regenerate (16, 88, 10373, 10634). Creating a new heaven and a new earth is setting up a new church (10373). The creation of heaven and earth in the first chapters of Genesis describes in the internal sense the setting up of a celestial church; this was the Most Ancient church (8891, 9942, 10545).

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