4574. About the hells of the inwardly deceitful and outwardly good

The Tongue

There are those who had outwardly appeared good, gentle, and dutiful in the world, but whose pleasure, which they had concealed within, had been inflicting harm on the neighbor in every possible way. Such people, like (Losche Bryggaren emot mig boende) ¹ , are not recognized by others. In the other life they also hold themselves aloft for a long time because outwardly they had been gentle and good. They did this among the simple that do not go into higher matters. Those outwardly good elevate themselves by the path toward the right where those are who were of the same nature. But they want others, especially those who are of such a nature, to harm other people. They sit there on the right at the side and are delighted by such things.

Spirits of this kind, let into a hell there, were engulfed by a cloud, some cast headlong into it, and this again and again, always followed by others. They are wicked demons. Those elevated by the former ones are of that nature. When thinking about matters of faith, because they had thought and believed something such, they force others, on whom they are acting, to put their tongue between their teeth, so that they will bite it and cut it off. It has been granted me to experience their attempt [to do] this many, many times so that I would know what they are like. They would have been happy if they had been able to utterly destroy me, for without a tongue I would be deprived of the ability to eat and also to speak, thus to associate with people. This is why their greatest passion is the passion for such things, and why their enjoyment increases in proportion to the magnitude of the harm. For two days now I have seen many thousands swallowed down into their new hell.

Voetnoten:

When the Bible speaks of "Jehovah," it is representing love itself, the inmost love that is the essence of the Lord. That divine love is one, whole and complete in itself, and Jehovah also is one, a name applied only to the Lord. The divine love expresses itself in the form of wisdom. Love, then, is the essence of God -- His inmost. Wisdom -- the loving understanding of how to put love into action -- is slightly more external, giving love a way to express itself. Wisdom, however, is expressed in a great variety of thoughts and ideas, what the Writings collectively call divine truth. There are also many imaginary gods, and sometimes angels and people can be called gods (the Lord said Moses would be as a god to Aaron). So when the Bible calls the Lord "God," it is in most cases referring to divine truth. In other cases, "God" has reference to what is called the divine human. The case there is this: As human beings, we cannot engage the Lord directly as divine love. It is too powerful and too pure. Instead, we have to approach Him by understanding Him through divine truth. Divine truth, then, is the Lord in human form, a form we can approach and understand. Thus "God" is also used in reference to this human aspect, because it is an expression of truth.