1843. Your seed will be immigrants means that charity and faith would be rare, as can be seen from the symbolism of immigrants and of seed. Immigrants mean what is not native and so what is not acknowledged as belonging to the local area and therefore what is regarded as foreign. Seed, though, symbolizes charity and the faith that goes with it, as shown before, in §§255, 1025, and above at verse 3 [§1798:1]. The seed is described as immigrants, which are viewed as foreign, and what is foreign is what does not belong to the area, or come from it, so it follows that it is something rare. It also follows, then, that charity and the faith that comes of charity would be rare, since that is what the seed is. When it says that Abram's seed would be immigrants — that is, that charity and faith would be rare — it is speaking about a time before the end, when the shadows (falsity) would be immense.
[2] In Matthew 24:4-end, Mark 13:3-end, and Luke 21:7-end, which describe the close of the age, the Lord predicts that faith will be rare in the last days. Everything said there carries the idea that charity and faith will be scant in those days, until finally they disappear. John predicts the same thing in the Book of Revelation, as the prophets also do many times, not to mention the narrative parts of the Word. 1
[3] But by the faith that will perish in the final days nothing is meant but neighborly love. No other faith can possibly exist than the faith that grows out of love for others. People who do not love their neighbor cannot have the least faith. Love for others, or charity, is the actual base on which faith is planted. Charity is its heart, the source of its existence and life. As a result, the ancients compared love and charity to a heart, and faith to lungs, both of which reside in the chest. Charity and faith actually resemble the heart and lungs, too, because to imagine a life of faith without charity is like imagining we can live by our lungs alone, without our hearts. Anyone can see it is impossible. So the ancients called every impulse of charity a gesture of the heart, and every word of faith lacking in charity they called lip service, or a product of the lungs (by way of the breath that flows into speech). That is how they developed the habit of talking about goodness and truth as something that ought to "come from the heart."
Footnotes:
1. For a sampling of Scripture passages addressing the loss of charity and faith in the "last days," see Swedenborg's True Christianity 179, 635, 755, 761, 764. [LHC]
