791. NOTE

After the completion of this book, the Lord called together His twelve disciples, who had followed Him in the world; and a day later He sent them all forth throughout the spiritual world to preach the Gospel, that the Lord God Jesus Christ is king, and His kingdom shall be for ever and ever, as foretold by Daniel (Daniel 7:13-14) and in Revelation (Revelation 11:15):

Blessed are they who come to the wedding supper of the Lamb, Revelation 19:9.

This happened on the nineteenth of June in the year 1770. This was meant by the Lord's saying:

He will send his angels, and they will gather together His chosen people from the bounds of the heavens on one side as far as the bounds of the heavens on the other, Matthew 24:31.

Man" is a tricky word to discuss, because the Hebrew of the Old Testament uses six different words that are generally translated as "man," with shades of meaning that are difficult to express in English. Swedenborg, meanwhile, uses two different words in the original Latin: "vir," which is a singular male person, and "homo," which usually has a meaning akin to "mankind" or "humanity" -- but is sometimes used for a singular male person as well. When used in the sense of "human" or "mankind," the meaning of "man" is based on the fact that the Lord is the perfect, divine human, and is in a way the archetype for our humanity. The Lord is, in His essence, love itself -- perfect, infinite, divine love, which is the source of all life. So in the ultimate sense, "man" represents the Lord's love and goodness. In less exalted uses, it represents the love and goodness that exists in churches, societies, and individual people. That's because the love we have, as individuals and collectively, is a reflection of the Lord's love, and our humanity is a reflection of the Lord's humanity.