1255. The fact that by their births means insofar as they were able to reform can be seen from the symbolism of birth as reformation. When we are being reborn or regenerated by the Lord, each and every new thing that we receive is a birth. So in this case, since the ancient church is under discussion, the births mean insofar as its people were able to reform.

With regard to reformation of the nations, they did not all have the same kind of worship or the same teachings, because they did not all have the same disposition or the same upbringing and education from childhood on. The Lord never breaks the principles we first adopt as children but bends them. Any principles we possess that we have always invested with holiness, any that do not inherently oppose God's plan or the order of the physical world but are inconsequential, those principles the Lord leaves alone and allows to remain in us. This was true of many principles that the second ancient church adopted, which will be discussed below [§§1337, 1343], by the Lord's divine mercy.

3026. 'But go to my land and to the place of my nativity' means to the Divine celestial and spiritual things which the Lord acquired to Himself. This is clear from the meaning of 'land' as the celestial element of love, dealt with in 1413, 1607, and from the meaning of 'nativity' or 'generation' as the spiritual element of love, dealt with in 1145, 1255. Here, since the Lord is the subject, those Divine celestial and spiritual things are meant which He acquired to Himself by His own power, see 1813, 1921, 2025, 2026, 2083, 2500.

2026. That 'I will give to you' means that the things which exist in heaven and on earth are His follows from what has just been stated. In the sense of the letter 'giving to you' means that God or Jehovah would give to Him, as is also declared in the Word of the Gospel-writers about the Father giving all things in heaven and on earth to Him. But in the internal sense in which truth itself is presented in its purity, the meaning is that the Lord acquired it to Himself, because within Him and within every part of Him Jehovah was present, as has been stated. further light can be shed on this by the following analogy: It is as though the interior or rational man, or else thought, were to say that the bodily part of him would discover peace and quiet if it were to refrain from doing this or that. In this case the one who speaks is the same as the one spoken to, for the rational belongs to that person just as much as the bodily part. When therefore the former is spoken of the latter also is meant.

[2] Besides, the fact that things in heaven and on earth are the Lord's is clear from very many places in the Word, from many in the Old Testament as well as from the following in the Gospels, Matthew 11:27; 28:18; Luke 10:22; John 3:34-35; 17:2, and from what has been shown in Volume One, in 458, 551, 552, 1607. And because the Lord governs the whole of heaven He also governs everything on earth, for the two are so interconnected that whoever governs one governs all. For dependent on the heaven of angels is the heaven of angelic spirits; dependent on the heaven of angelic spirits is the world of spirits; and dependent in turn on the world of spirits is the human race. And dependent in like manner on the heavens is everything in the world and the natural order, for without influx from the Lord by way of the heavens nothing in the natural order and its three kingdoms can ever come into existence and remain in existence; see 1632.