A company might have executives setting policy and strategy, engineers designing products, managers handling personnel and others handling various functions. They all do different things -- but if they're doing them with a shared underlying purpose, the company -- and the individuals in it -- will likely be successful. The Lord wants all human society to function in a similar way. We have different skills and individual loves, but if we all share a mutual love -- a love of serving others -- then society will function as one, will be a reflection of heaven and will be a good receptacle for the Lord's love. This can also happen within each of us, as we unify our talents and ideas around a central love. And in an abstract sense, it illustrates how a wide collection of varying ideas can be unified around a shared good intention. That is the kind of love pictured when “one” is used in the Bible, either as a specific number or in the sense of several people or objects “being one.” In more casual references -- when used to identify a specific person or object -- the meaning is relatively literal, and is connected to that person or object.

248. "Who was and is and is to come!" This symbolizes the Lord.

That it means the Lord is clearly apparent in chapter one, verses 4, 8, 11, 17, where the subject is the Son of Man, who is the Lord in relation to the Word. It openly says there that He is the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End, the First and the Last, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty. Moreover, in nos. 13, 29, 30, 31, 38, and 57 we explained the symbolic meanings of these attributions. Here now "Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come!" means the Lord.