Jerusalem, on Mount Zion, signifies the doctrine of love to the Lord, and how it governs your life. Jerusalem first comes to our attention in 2 Samuel 5, when King David takes the city from the Jebusites and makes it his capital. In the next chapter he brings the Ark of the Covenant there, and later it is where Solomon builds the temple, and his own palace. From then on Jerusalem is the center of worship of the Israelitish church. It is the place where the Lord was presented in the temple as a baby, where He tarried to talk to the priests at age twelve, where He cleansed the temple, had the last supper, was crucified and then rose. It is a central place in both the old and new Testaments. The city was built on Mount Zion, the highest point of the mountains of Judea. A city, in the Word, represents doctrine, the organized knowledge of the truths of the church. Mountains represent love of the Lord and the consequent worship. If you put those things together, Jerusalem on Mount Zion signifies the doctrine of love to the Lord, and how it governs your life. This is why David was led to make Jerusalem the most important city of the land, and why all worship was conducted there. And this is also why Jeroboam was condemned for introducing idol worship in Samaria. In the Book of Revelation, John's vision of the city New Jerusalem descending from God is a prophecy of a new dispensation of doctrine coming from the Lord.

(Ссылки: Arcana Coelestia 4539, 8938; The Apocalypse Explained 365 [35-38])

494. 'He died' means that this kind of perception existed no more. This is clear from the meaning of the expression 'to die', which means everything that ceases to be what it once was, as in John,

To the angel of the Church in Sardis write, These things says He who has the seven spirits and the seven stars, I know your works; you are said to be alive, but you are dead. Be watchful, and strengthen what remains and is at the point of truth, for I have not found your works perfect in the sight of God. Revelation 3:1-2.

In Jeremiah,

I will hurl your mother who bore you into another land where you were not born, and there you will die. Jeremiah 22:26.

Here 'mother' stands for the Church. For the course of the Church is such, as stated, that it declines and degenerates, and the perfection of earlier days is lost, chiefly because of the increase in hereditary evil. For every parent adds further evil to that which he has inherited. All evil of their own doing residing with parents takes on a kind of intrinsic nature, and when such evil is frequent in its recurrence, it does become part of their nature. It is added to what they have inherited and is handed on to children and so to descendants. In this way hereditary evil becomes more and more enormous in descendants. This anyone may recognize from the evil inclination in children being just like that in their parents and grandparents.

[2] The opinion of people who imagine that no hereditary evil exists beyond that which, they assert, has been implanted in us from Adam, is utterly and completely false; see 317. In reality everyone is producing hereditary evil through the sins of his own doing, and adding this to what he acquired from his parents. In this manner it mounts up and remains in all his descendants. Nor is it ever moderated except in people who are being regenerated by the Lord. This is the chief reason why every Church degenerates, including the Most Ancient.