Gates" in ancient times had a significance that does not hold in the modern world. Cities then were enclosed by walls for protection; gates in the walls let people in and out to do their business, but were also the weak points in the cities' defenses. In the Bible, cities on one level represent the minds of individual people. On a broader level, they represent beliefs shared by a community. The gates, then, represent openings where the Lord can feed us an understanding of truth and a desire for good. They also represent points where the hells can invade and sway us with false ideas and evil desires. We are kept in balance during our lifetimes, with influences from both the Lord and from hell. Ideally, we will over our lifetimes continue to invite the Lord farther and farther in and drive the hells back until ultimately the Lord can occupy our minds completely. And that point our belief in Him and His power and love will hold the gates and deny evil any entrance. As individuals, we at that point become angels. As communities, we at that point become part of the Lord's church. And at that point the gates become an entry point, introductory truths that allow people to enter churches and start bringing the Lord into their lives.

17. All experience in heaven attests that the Divine that goes forth from the Lord and that affects angels and makes heaven is love; for all who are in heaven are forms of love and charity, and appear in ineffable beauty, with love shining forth from their faces, and from their speech and from every particular of their life. ¹ Moreover, there are spiritual spheres of life emanating from and surrounding every angel and every spirit, by which their quality in respect to the affections of their love is known, sometimes at a great distance. For with everyone these spheres flow forth from the life of his affection and consequent thought, or from the life of his love and consequent faith. The spheres that go forth from angels are so full of love as to affect the inmosts of life of those who are with them. They have repeatedly been perceived by me and have thus affected me. ² That it is love from which angels have their life is further evident from the fact that in the other life everyone turns himself in accordance with his love-those who are in love to the Lord and in love towards the neighbor turning themselves always to the Lord, while those who are in love of self turn themselves always away from the Lord. This is so, however their bodies may turn, since with those in the other life spaces conform to the states of their interiors, likewise quarters, which are not constant as they are in this world, but are determined in accordance with the direction of their faces. And yet it is not the angels that turn themselves to the Lord; but the Lord turns to Himself those that love to do the things that are from Him. ³ But more on this subject hereafter, where the quarters in the other life are treated of.

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