85. Lack of information is another reason why these secrets — that a person of heavenly character is the seventh day, that this explains the consecration of the seventh day, and that it was named "Sabbath" for the idea of rest — have continued to lie hidden. No one knows what a heavenly person is, and few what a spiritual person is. Inevitably, in their ignorance, people have considered a spiritual person the same as a heavenly one, when a rather large difference separates the two (see §81).

In regard to the seventh day, evidence that a heavenly person is the seventh day or Sabbath can be found in the identity of the Lord himself as the Sabbath. As he says, "The Son of Humankind is lord even of the Sabbath" (Mark 2:28), meaning that the Lord is the true human being and the Sabbath itself.

He calls his kingdom in the heavens and on earth the Sabbath, or eternal peace and rest. ¹

[2] The earliest church (the subject here) more than all later ones was the Lord's Sabbath.

In every subsequent church, the inmost part, closest to the Lord, has also been the Sabbath.

The same holds true for all regenerate people when they develop a heavenly nature, as they are then likenesses of the Lord. They are past the six days of conflict, or labor.

In the Jewish church, all these considerations were represented by the work days and by the seventh day, the Sabbath. That church had no customs that did not represent something about the Lord and his kingdom.

The ark represented the same kind of thing in its travels and its repose. Its travels in the wilderness represented conflict and trial; its repose, a time of peace. So when it set out on a journey, Moses said, "Rise, Jehovah, and let your enemies scatter, and let those who hate you run from your face;" and when it came to rest, he said, "Come back, Jehovah, to the countless thousands of Israel." This is from Numbers 10:35-36. Verse 33. of the same chapter portrays the ark as setting out from the mountain of Jehovah "to find rest for them."

[3] Isaiah uses the Sabbath to paint a picture of the heavenly person's quiet rest:

If you turn your foot back from the Sabbath by not doing your own desire on my holy day; if you refer to those things that belong to the Sabbath as pleasures honoring the holiness of Jehovah, and you honor [the Sabbath] by not going your own ways and not gaining your own desire or speaking a word [of your own]; then you will be a pleasure to Jehovah, and I will make you ride on the heights of the earth and will feed you with the inheritance of Jacob. (Isaiah 58:13-14)

Heavenly people act not on their own desire but on the Lord's pleasure, which is his desire. So they are blessed with inner peace and happiness (their being "lifted up on the heights of the earth") and at the same time with outer calm and enjoyment (their being "fed with Jacob's inheritance").

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