731. Obliterating all substance that I have made from the face of the ground means that human self-sufficiency is obliterated, so to speak, when a person comes to life. This can be seen from earlier statements about selfhood [§§154-155, 164]. Our insistence on autonomy is thoroughly evil and false. As long as it maintains its grip, we are dead. However, when we suffer times of trouble, this sense of autonomy is shaken off; that is, it is loosened and mitigated by the truth and goodness we receive from the Lord. In the process, it is brought to life and yet seems to disappear. The fact that it becomes invisible and harmless is symbolized by being obliterated even though it is never obliterated but remains.

The situation is almost like that with black and white. When these two are modified in various ways by rays of light, they turn into beautiful colors, such as blues, yellows, and reds. Through these colors, and depending on the objects they appear in (flowers, for instance), they display themselves as lovely and appealing. Still, they remain inherently and fundamentally black and white.

But since the present verse deals at the same time with the final devastation of the people in the earliest church, obliterating all substance that I have made from the face of the ground also symbolizes those who perished. So does verse 23 below [§§807-811].

The substance that I have made is every trait (or every person) that had a germ of heaven in it (or who was part of the church). As a result, the current verse and verse 23 below use the word ground, symbolizing a person in the church in whom the seed of goodness and truth has been sown. Once evil and falsity had been dispelled, as noted, that seed grew and grew in the people referred to as Noah, although among the pre-Flood people who died it was killed off by tares. ¹

Footnotes:

407. The state of a church in general is such that over time it tends to ebb away from true faith and finally terminate without any faith. When faith is gone, the church is described as devastated or ruined. That is what happened in the earliest church among those called followers of Cain. It occurred also in the ancient church, which followed the Flood. It occurred also in the Jewish church, which was so utterly devastated at the time of the Lord's Coming that they did not know anything about him or the fact that he was coming to save them; still less did they know anything about faith in him. It occurred also in the early [Christian] church — the first church following the Lord's Coming — which today is in such complete ruins that no faith remains.

Even so, a nucleus of the church always remains in existence, unrecognized by those whose faith has been destroyed. A remnant of the earliest church, for example, survived until the Flood and continued on after it. That church remnant is called Noah.