A church cannot serve two masters. It cannot peacefully coexist with truths and falsities. To want to live with both and to seek a compromise will cause the church to be laid to waste. The church will perish, and the goods and truths of the Word will be taken away from it.

8196. 'And it came between the camp of the Egyptians and the camp of Israel' means that it came between the falsities of evil on the one side and the forms of the good of truth on the other. This is clear from the meaning of 'the camp' as forms of good and truths in their entirety, dealt with just above in 8193, and so in the contrary sense as evils and falsities, likewise in their entirety. 'The camp of the Egyptians' is consequently falsities of evil, since falsities that arise from evil are meant by 'the Egyptians', 8132, 8135, 8148, and 'the camp of Israel' is forms of the good of truth, since truths which spring from good are meant by 'Israel', 7957. The fact that 'coming between them' means preventing the inflow of falsities arising from evil is self-evident.