4572. Not so far from there are also spirits who infuse chills and through them paroxysms of icy fever. This too has been given me to know from live, palpable experience. They are very malicious there, more highly skilled than other spirits in the art of destroying others and the human race, striving after nothing else. They are constantly seeking new ways to harm others, and they practice these among themselves so as to know how, for they are able to induce swoons, do things that disturb the mind, and deprive people of their outward vitality so that they nearly fall as if sick when it comes over them, besides many other such things. In short, they are extremely wicked and can separate inward and outward matters in various ways, filling the outward with matters offensive to their humanity. As a result, when inward qualities come down into such, they are twisted into foul and deplorable [evils], for if the receiving forms are perverted, then that which comes down into them is perverted. In this way also inner qualities are disunited from outer ones, and when this happens, the person is no longer mentally sound, as also occurs in fevers.

[2] Their operation is chiefly into the stomach and also into the biles, both of the pancreas and of the liver; such things come from there, as does vomiting, which they stimulate an urge to do. They are indescribably obstinate, never desisting unless they are driven off.

[3] There are very hot places in hell, which I was also granted to experience for the sake of knowing about them. The spirits there are of the kind just mentioned who induce fevers. They are familiar with almost all of these places, and from them they emit that unclean, merely physical heat separate from life-giving heat. For in the other life they cleverly know how to transfer such things, and they also know where in the body to direct that heat. Such spirits are extremely destructive and obstinate; they never pause unless driven off by the Lord, and when they are driven off, the heat of fever immediately ceases. Therefore they who have been sick speak rightly when they ascribe the recovery of health to God and give thanks to Him, even though very many do this only from a habit acquired from infancy, and when left to themselves ascribe it to nature.

In many cases, the spiritual meaning of "own," both as a verb and as an adjective, is relatively literal. When people are described as the "Lord's own," however, it specifically means those people who know Him and have His Word. This has taken various forms since the dawn of humanity; in the prehistoric church known as the "Most Ancient Church" the Lord's truth -- the direct expression of His love -- flowed into people directly. In the Ancient Church the Lord's Word was recognized in nature and in the form of deeply representative stories, some of which were passed on to us in the early chapters of Genesis. Among the Children of Israel the Lord's Word was expressed through the Ten Commandments, the laws of Moses, the very history of the nation of Israel and the various psalms and prophecies. The early Christians had those stories along with the teaching and inspiration of Jesus himself. We now have the whole Bible, including the teachings of Jesus, and can understand the Bible's true meaning. Each of these churches, then, was at some point the Lord's own.