From Swedenborg's Works

 

Heaven and Hell #2

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2. The Lord is God of Heaven

First and foremost, we need to know who the God of heaven is, since everything else depends on this. Throughout the whole of heaven, no one is acknowledged as God of heaven except the Lord. Angels say what he himself taught, namely that he is one with the Father, that the Father is in him and he in the Father, that anyone who sees him sees the Father, and that everything holy emanates from him (John 10:30, 38; 14:9-11, 16; 16:13-15). I have often talked with angels about this, and their consistent testimony has been that in heaven they cannot divide the Divine into three because they both know and perceive that the Divine is one and that this "one" is in the Lord. They have also told me that when people arrive from earth with the idea of three divine beings they cannot be admitted to heaven. This is because their thinking vacillates between one opinion and the other, and in heaven they are not allowed to think "three" and say "one." 1

In heaven people actually speak directly from their thought, so that we have there a kind of thoughtful speech or audible thought. This means that if people have divided the Divine into three in the world and held a separate image of each one without gathering and focusing these three into one, they cannot be accepted. In heaven, there is a communication of all thoughts, so if people arrive who think "three" and say "one," they are recognized immediately for what they are and are sent away.

Still, it needs to be realized that in the other life any people who have not put "good" in one compartment and "true" in another - who have not separated faith from love - accept the heavenly concept of the Lord as God of the universe once they have been taught. It is different, though, with people who have separated their faith from their lives, that is, who have not lived by the guiding principles of true faith.

Footnotes:

1. [Swedenborg's footnote] In the other life, Christians have been examined to find out what kind of concept of God they had, and it has turned out that they had a concept of three gods: 2329, 5256, 10736, 10738, 10821. On the recognition in heaven of a trinity within the Lord: 14-15, 1729, 2005, 5256, 9303.

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

From Swedenborg's Works

 

Arcana Coelestia #4965

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4965. 'And Potiphar bought him - Pharaoh's bedchamber servant' means among facts of a more internal kind. This is clear from the meaning of 'Pharaoh's bedchamber servant' as facts of a more internal kind, dealt with in 4789. 'Buying' means that He availed Himself of them, 4397, 4487. Facts of a more internal kind are those that come closer to spiritual ideas, being facts that are applied to heavenly matters. For heavenly matters are what the internal man sees when the external man sees no more than the facts in the outward form these take.

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

From Swedenborg's Works

 

Arcana Coelestia #1729

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1729. 'To God Most High' means the Internal Man, which is Jehovah. This is clear from what has been stated several times above about the Lord's Internal Man being Jehovah Himself, so that the Lord is identical with Jehovah the Father, as He Himself says in John,

I am the way, and the truth, and the life. Philip said, Show us the Father. Jesus said to him, Have I been with you for so long, and yet you do not know Me, Philip? He who has seen Me has seen the Father. So why do you say, Show us the Father? Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father in Me? Believe Me that I am in the Father and the Father in Me. John 14:6, 8-11.

[2] It is the Lord's Human Essence that is called the Son of Man. This too, after the conflicts brought about by temptations, was united to the Divine Essence, so that the Human Essence as well became Jehovah. In heaven therefore they know no other Father Jehovah but the Lord - see what has appeared already in 15. With the Lord everything is Jehovah, not only His Internal Man and Interior Man, but also His External Man, including the body itself. He alone therefore has risen into heaven with the body as well, as is quite clear in the Gospels where His resurrection is described, and also from the Lord's own words,

Why do thoughts arise in your hearts? See My hands and My feet, for it is I Myself. Handle Me, and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see Me have. And when He had said this, He showed them His hands and feet. Luke 24:38-40.

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