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:

408. When a church has been so thoroughly devastated that no more faith remains, it makes a new start; a new light shines out. In the Word, this is called "morning." The reason why the new light or morning does not dawn before devastation is complete is that any manifestation of faith or charity is mingled with something profane, and as long as they are mingled, no light or charity can be introduced. Tares destroy all the good seed. ¹ When there is no faith, faith can no longer be profaned, because no one believes what is said anyway.

Those who do not acknowledge and believe something but only know it cannot profane it, as pointed out earlier [§§302-303].

Jews these days, for instance, because they live among Christians, necessarily realize that Christians acknowledge the Lord as the Messiah that they (Jews) waited and are still waiting for. But they cannot profane the idea because they do not acknowledge or believe it. The same is true of Muslims and the people of unbaptized nations who have heard of the Lord. This was why the Lord came into the world at a time when the Jewish church no longer acknowledged or believed anything.

Footnotes:

154. Nothing evil or false can possibly exist that is not our own and the product of our "autonomy." Human selfhood is wickedness itself, and consequently a human being is nothing but evil and falsity.

This fact has stood out whenever I have seen people's intrinsic characteristics presented visually in the world of spirits. ¹ The sight is as ugly as any a painter could paint — with variations, according to the nature of the particular personality involved. It is so hideous that the individual whose traits are being displayed shudders at herself or himself and wants to run, as if from the Devil. ²

When the Lord gives life to our intrinsic characteristics, though, they look lovely and beautiful — with variations, depending on the particular life involved and the heavenly quality the Lord can add to it. Those provided with charity, or enlivened by it, look like boys and girls with strikingly beautiful faces. Those for whom the quality is innocence look like toddlers, naked but decked out in different ways, with flower garlands around their chests or tiaras on their heads, living at play in diamond-bright air, attuned to the happiness that wells up from deep within.

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