664. And after three days and a half.- That this signifies when completed, thus the end of the old church, and the beginning of a new church, is evident from the signification of three days and a half, as denoting fulness or completion at the end of the old church, when there is the beginning of a new church, concerning which see above (n. 658). The reason why it is said, after three days and a half, is, that days, in the Word, signify states, here, the last state of the church. For all times, in the Word, as hours, days, weeks, months, years, and ages, signify states in the Word, as in this case, the last state of the church, when there is no longer any good of love or truth of faith remaining. Because days signify states, and since in the first chapter of Genesis the establishment of the Most Ancient Church is treated of which was accomplished successively from one state to another, therefore it is said there that there was evening and there was morning the first, the second, the third, the fourth, the fifth, and sixth days, unto the seventh, when it was completed (Genesis 1:5, 8, 13, 19, 23, 31), and the days there do not mean days, but the successive states of the regeneration of men at that time, and the consequent establishment of the church with them. So also elsewhere in the Word.

5368. 'Do what he tells you' means provided that obedience exists. This is clear from the meaning of 'doing what someone says' as being obedient. The meaning of this is that good becomes linked to truth in the natural provided that the natural conforms and is obedient. But something must also be said about such a conformity and obedience on the part of the natural. People absorbed solely in worldly interests, more so those absorbed in bodily interests, and more so still those absorbed in earthly ones cannot grasp what is meant by the need for the natural to conform and be obedient. They imagine that what is going on inside a person is the same throughout; thus they do not think of one part within him that commands and another part that obeys.

[2] Yet within him there is an internal man that ought to command and an external man that ought to obey. The latter is obedient when it does not have the world but heaven, not self but the neighbour, as its end in view, consequently when bodily and worldly matters are thought of as means and not as an end. Such are thought of as means and not an end when that person loves his neighbour more than himself, and the things of heaven more than those of the world. When this is so the natural is obedient, the natural being the same as the external man.