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Heaven and Hell #86

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86. People in heaven are amazed that people here believe they are intelligent when they think of something invisible in the process of thinking about God, something that cannot be comprehended in any form, and that they call people who think otherwise unintelligent and even simpleminded, when the opposite is in fact the case. They assert that if people who regard themselves as intelligent on this account would examine themselves, they would find nature in the place of God - for some, the nature in front of their eyes, for others, a nature they cannot see with their eyes. They would find that they are so blind that they do not know what God is, what an angel is, what a spirit is, what the soul is that will live after death, what the life of heaven is for us, or many other things that are matters of intelligence. Yet all the people whom they call simple know these things in their own way. They have an image of God as a Divine Being in human form, an image of an angel as a heavenly person, a concept of their soul that will live after death as being like an angel, and a concept of the life of heaven for us here as living by the divine commandments. Angels refer to these people as intelligent and fit for heaven, but the others they call unintelligent.

[2] References to Passages in Secrets of Heaven Concerning the Lord and His Divine Human: The Lord had a divine element from his very conception: 4641, 4963, 5041, 5157, 6716, 10125. Only the Lord had a divine seed: 1438. His soul was Jehovah: 1999, 2004-2005, 2018, 2025. So the inmost of the Lord was the Divine itself, and its clothing was from his mother: 5041. The Divine itself was the very reality of the Lord's life, and his human nature then emerged and became the manifestation from that reality: 3194, 3210, 10270 [10269?], 10372.

[3] Within the church, where there is the Word and where the Lord is known through it, there must be no denial of the Lord's divine nature or of the holy emanation from him: 2359. People within the church who do not acknowledge the Lord have no union with the Divine; it is different for people outside the church: 10205. The essence of the church is to acknowledge the Lord's divine nature and his oneness with the Father: 10083, 10112, 10370, 10738 [10728?], 10730, 10816-10818, 10820.

[4] The Word has a great deal to say about the Lord's glorification: 10828. This is everywhere in the inner meaning of the Word: 2249, 2523, 3245. The Lord glorified his human nature but not his divine nature, because the latter was intrinsically glorified: 10057. The Lord came into the world to glorify his human nature: 3637, 4286 [4287?], 9315. The Lord glorified his human nature by means of the divine love that was within him from conception: 4727. The Lord's love for the whole human race was the Lord's life in this world: 2253. The Lord's love transcends all human understanding: 2077. The Lord saved the human race by glorifying his human: 4180, 10019, 10152, 10655, 10659, 10828. Otherwise, the whole human race would have perished in eternal death: 1676. On the Lord's states of glorification and humiliation: 1785, 1999, 2159, 6866. When "glorification" is attributed to the Lord, it means his human becoming one with the Divine, and "glorifying" means "making divine": 1603, 10053, 10828. When the Lord glorified his human, he laid aside the human he had received from his mother so completely that he was no longer her son: 2159, 2574, 2649, 3036, 10829 [10830?].

[5] The Son of God from eternity was the divine truth in heaven: 2628, 2798, 2803, 3195, 3704. The Lord also made his human nature divinely true from the divine good that was in him when he was in the world: 2803, 3194-3195, 3210, 6716, 6864, 7014, 7499, 8127, 8724, 9199. The Lord then arranged everything within himself in the heavenly form that accords with divine truth: 1928, 3633. Therefore the Lord is called the Word, which is divine truth: 2533, 2818 [2813?], 2859, 2894, 3393, 3712. Only the Lord possessed perception and thought from himself and above all angelic perception and thought: 1904, 1914-1915 [1919?].

The Lord made the divine truth that was himself one with the divine good that was in himself: 10047, 10052, 10076. This uniting was reciprocal: 2004, 10067.

[6] When the Lord left this world, he also made his human divinely good: 3194, 3210, 6864, 7499, 8724, 9199, 10076. This is what is meant by "going out from the Father" and "returning to the Father": 3194, 3210. This is how he became one with the Father: 2751, 3704, 4766. Since this union, divine truth emanates from the Lord: 3704, 3712, 3969, 4577, 5704, 7499, 8127, 8241, 9199, 9398. Examples of the way divine truth emanates: 7270, 9407. The Lord united his human to his divine nature by his own power: 1616, 1749, 1753 [1752?], 1813, 1921, 2025-2026, 2523, 3141, 5005, 5045, 6716. It therefore stands to reason that the Lord's human nature was not like the human nature of any other person, because it was conceived by the Divine itself: 10125, 10826. His union with the Father, who was the source of his soul, was not like a union between two entities, but like that between soul and body: 3737, 10824.

[7] The earliest people were not able to worship a divine reality but a divine manifestation, which is the divine human; so the Lord came into the world in order to become the divine manifestation from the divine reality: 4687, 5321. The early people acknowledged the Divine because it appeared to them in human form, and this form was the divine human: 5110, 5663, 6846, 10737. The infinite reality cannot flow into heaven among angels or into people on earth except through the divine human: 1646 [1676?], 1990, 2016, 2035 [2034?]. In heaven, no other Divine is perceived except the divine human: 6475, 9303, 9267 [9315, 9356], 10067. The divine human from eternity was the divine truth in heaven and the divine nature passing through heaven; so it was the divine manifestation, which later, in the Lord, became the divine reality in its own right, the source of the divine manifestation in heaven: 3061, 6280, 6880, 10579. What the state of heaven was like before the Coming of the Lord: 6371-6373. The Divine was not perceptible except as it passed through heaven: 6982, 6996, 7004.

[8] The inhabitants of all the planets worship the Divine in human form - therefore, the Lord: 6700, 8541-8547, 10736-10738. They are overjoyed when they hear that the Lord actually became a human: 9361. The Lord accepts everyone who is involved in what is good and worships the Divine in human form: 9359. It is impossible to think about God except in human form, and what is incomprehensible does not accord with any concept, so it does not accord with any faith: 9359, 9972. We can worship something of which we have some concept, but not something of which we have no concept: 4733, 5110, 5633 [5663?], 7211, 9267 [10067?], 10267. Therefore by most people worldwide the Divine is worshiped in human form; and this is the case because of an inflow from heaven: 10159. When people who are engaged in what is good in their behavior think about the Lord, they think about a divine human, and not about some human separated from the Divine. It is different for people who are not engaged in what is good in their behavior: 2326, 4724, 4731, 4766, 8878, 9193, 9198. The people nowadays who think about the Lord's human apart from the Divine are the ones in the church who are engaged in evil in their behavior and those who are in faith separated from thoughtfulness; also some reasons why they do not grasp what the divine human is: 3212, 3241, 4689, 4692, 4724, 4731, 5321, 6372 [6872?], 8878, 9193, 9198. The Lord's human was divine because he had his soul from the very reality of the Father; illustrated by the resemblance of a father in his children: 10270 [10269?], 10372, 10823. Also because it came from divine love, which was the very reality of his life from conception: 6872. The nature of every individual is determined by his or her deepest love; and each of us is his or her own deepest love: 6872, 10177, 10284. The Lord made his whole human nature divine - both its inward and its outward constituents: 1603, 1815, 1902, 1926, 2093, 2803 [2083?]. So, unlike any other person, he rose with his whole body: 1729, 2083, 5078, 10825.

[9] The divinity of the Lord's human is recognized in his omnipresence in the Holy Supper: 2343, 2359. It is also recognized in his transfiguration before the three disciples; 3212, and also from the Word of the Old Testament, where he is called "God": 10154; and where he is called "Jehovah": 1603, 1736, 1815, 1902, 2921, 3035, 5110, 6281, 6303, 8864, 9194, 9315. In the literal meaning, a distinction is made between Father and Son or between Jehovah and the Lord, but this is not the case in the inner meaning of the Word that angels attend to: 3035. In the Christian world, the Lord's human is not recognized as divine, a situation that has come about in order that the pope might be recognized as his vicar: 3035 [4738?].

[10] Some Christians in the other life were examined to determine what kind of concept of the one God they had, and it was discovered that they had a concept of three gods: 2329, 5256, 10736-10738, 10821. A trinity or divine trine in one person - and therefore a single God - is conceivable, but a trinity in three persons is not: 10738, 10821, 10824. A divine trine in the Lord is acknowledged in heaven: 14-15, 1729, 2005 [2004?], 5256, 9303. The trine in the Lord is the essential divine nature called the Father, the divine human called the Son, the emanating Divine called the Holy Spirit, and this divine trine is one: 2149, 2156, 2288, 2321 [2319?], 2329, 2447, 3704, 6993, 7182, 10738, 10822-10823. The Lord himself teaches that the Father and he are one: 1729, 2004-2005, 2018, 2025, 2751, 3704, 3736, 4766; and the holy Divine emanates from him and is his: 3969, 4673, 6788, 6993, 7499, 8127, 8302, 9199, 9228-9229, 9270 [9264?], 9407, 9818, 9820, 10330.

[11] The divine human flows into heaven and makes heaven: 3038. The Lord is everything in heaven, and is heaven's life: 7211, 9128. The Lord dwells among angels in what is his: 9338, 10125, 10151, 10157. So people who are in heaven are in the Lord: 3637-3638. The union of the Lord with angels takes place according to their acceptance of the quality of love and thoughtfulness from him: 904, 4198, 4206 [4205?], 4211, 4320 [4220?], 6280, 6832, 7042, 8819, 9680, 9682-9683, 10106, 10811 [10810?]. The whole heaven corresponds directly to the Lord: 551-552. The Lord is the common center of heaven: 3633. Everyone there turns toward the Lord, who is above the heavens: 9828, 10130, 10189. However, angels do not turn themselves toward the Lord; rather, the Lord turns them toward himself: 10189. There is no presence of angels with the Lord, but there is a presence of the Lord with angels: 9415. There is no union with the essential Divine in heaven, but there is with the divine human: 4211, 4724, 5633 [5663?].

[12] Heaven corresponds to the Lord's divine human, and heaven overall is therefore like a single person; and therefore heaven is called the universal human: 2996, 2998, 3624-3649, 3636-3643, 3741-3745, 4625. The Lord is the only person, and only those who accept something divine from him are human: 1894. To the extent that they do so accept, they are human beings and images of him: 8547. Therefore angels are forms of love and thoughtfulness in human form, which is [given] by the Lord: 3804, 4735, 4797, 4985, 5199, 5530, 9879, 10177.

[13] The whole heaven belongs to the Lord:

2751, 7086. He has all power in the heavens and on earth: 1607, 10089, 10827. Because the Lord rules the entire heaven, he also rules everything that depends on it - therefore everything in the world: 2026-2027, 4523-4524. The

Lord alone possesses the power to move the hells away from us, restrain us from evils and keep us in good, and thus to save us: 10019.

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

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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.