82. Genesis 2:1. And the heavens and the earth were completed, and their whole army.

This means that we are now spiritual — so much so that we have become "the sixth day." Heaven is our inner and the earth our outer being. Their army is love and faith, and knowledge about love and faith. These things were symbolized earlier by the great lights and the stars.

Scriptural passages quoted in the preceding chapter demonstrate that the inner being is called heaven and the outer being is called earth. ¹ Let me add another from Isaiah:

I will render a man more rare than solid gold, and a human being [more rare] than the precious gold of Ophir. ² Therefore I will strike the heavens with terror, and the earth will quake out of its place. (Isaiah 13:12-13)

And another:

You will forget Jehovah your maker, who stretches out the heavens and founds the earth. But I will put my words in your mouth, and in the shadow of my hand I will hide you, to stretch out heaven and found the earth. (Isaiah 51:13, 16)

All of this makes it clear that both heaven and earth refer to humankind.

Although the earliest church forms the subject here, the Word in its inner depths is such that whatever it says about the church applies also to every individual in the church. If we were not each a church, we could not be part of the church. Likewise, anyone who is not a temple to the Lord cannot be what the Temple symbolizes: a church and a heaven.

This is why the earliest church is referred to as a human being in the singular.

Footnotes:

22. Genesis 1:5. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.

From this we now see what evening and morning mean. Evening is every preliminary stage, because such stages are marked by shadow, or by falsity and an absence of faith. Morning is all later stages, because these are marked by light, or by truth and religious knowledge.

Evening stands in general for everything that is our own, while morning stands for everything of the Lord's. As David says, for example:

The Spirit of Jehovah has spoken in me and his words are on my tongue. The God of Israel has said, the rock of Israel has spoken to me. He is like the morning light when the sun rises, like a morning when there are no clouds, when because of the brightness, because of the rain, the tender grass springs from the earth. (2 Samuel 23:2-3, 4)

Since evening is when there is no faith and morning is when there is faith, the Lord's coming into the world is called morning. The period in which he came, being a time of no faith, is called evening. In Daniel:

The Holy One said to me, "Up till [the day's second] evening, when it becomes morning, ¹ two thousand and three hundred times." (Daniel 8:14, 26)

Morning in the Word is similarly taken to mean every coming of the Lord, so that it is a word for being created anew.

Footnotes: