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耶利米书 44:23

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23 你们烧香,得罪耶和华,没有听从他的话,没有遵行他的律法、条例、法度,所以你们遭遇这灾祸,正如今日一样。

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Jerusalem

  

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.

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

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Apocalypse Revealed #458

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458. So as not to worship demons. This symbolically means that thus they were caught up in the evils of their lusts, and acted in concert with their like in hell.

Demons symbolize lusts for evil arising from a love of the world. That is because people in hell who are caught up in those lusts are called demons, and people on earth who are caught up in them too, become demons after death. They also have an affiliation with those in hell. For everyone is affiliated with spirits in respect to his affections, so closely that the two are inseparable. It is apparent from this that to worship demons is to yield to those lusts from a love of them.

Someone, then, who invokes faith alone as the chief tenet of his religion or as his idol - he, because he does not search out any evil in himself that he calls a sin, and therefore does not determine to remove it by repentance, remains caught up in it. And because every evil is composed of lusts, and is nothing but a bundle of lusts, it follows that a person who does not search out any evil in himself and refrain from it as a sin against God, which is possible solely through repentance, after death becomes a demon.

[2] Demons symbolize just such lusts in the following passages:

They sacrifice to demons, not to God. (Deuteronomy 32:17)

(The children of Israel) no longer offered their sacrifices to demons, after whom they had played the harlot. (Leviticus 17:7, cf. Psalms 106:37)

Ziyyim will meet with 'iyyim, and the forest demon will encounter its companion. (Isaiah 34:14)

Ziyyim will sing there, and their houses will be full of 'ochim; the offspring of owls will dwell there, and forest demons will caper there. (Isaiah 13:21).

Ziyyim, 'iyyim, 'ochim, and the offspring of owls symbolize various lusts. Forest demons are the kinds of lusts exhibited by priapi and satyrs.

Babylon... has become a dwelling place of demons, and a prison for every foul spirit... (Revelation 18:2)

The demons that the Lord cast out embodied such lusts when they lived in the world - regarding which see Matthew 8:16, 28; 9:32-33; 10:8; 12:22; 15:22; Luke 4:33-37, 41; 8:2, 8:26-40; 9:1, 9:37-42, 9:49; 13:32.

  
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Many thanks to the General Church of the New Jerusalem, and to Rev. N.B. Rogers, translator, for the permission to use this translation.