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.

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

6991. 'Is it not I, Jehovah?' means that these different conditions exist as a result of the influx of life from the Divine. This becomes clear from the fact that the kinds of conditions that are meant by 'the dumb', 'the deaf', and 'the blind', as well as by 'mouth' and 'the seeing', arise with a person as a result of the influx of life from Jehovah or the Lord. For from it arise both the ill things and the good that exist with every single person. Yet the ill arise from man, the good from the Lord. The reason why the ill things arise from man is that the life, that is, goodness and truth, which flows in from the Lord is turned by man into evil and falsity, thus into the opposite of life, which is called spiritual death. It is like light from the sun, which is converted into particular colours by the objects receiving it. In some objects it is converted into vivid and lively colours, in others into so to speak dead and dreary ones. Now since it appears as though the Lord, being the One who gives life, is also responsible for what is ill, that which is ill is attributed in the Word - owing to that appearance - to Jehovah or the Lord, as may be recognized from a large number of places. The same applies here to His making the dumb, the deaf, and the blind; because these conditions arise from the influx of life from the Divine it is said that Jehovah brings them about. But the internal sense presents and teaches the true nature of the matter, not the apparent nature of it.