The Lord's love is the sun of heaven, and it is natural for us to look above ourselves to the sun of this world in thinking about the Lord. It follows, then, that to be closer to the Lord we would climb into the highest places -- and indeed, people have been worshiping on mountains for ages. In fact, even steeples on modern churches are symbolic mountains. It makes sense, then, that a mountain in the Bible represents love to the Lord, the highest, purest love we human beings can experience. Mountains can also represent the desire for good that comes from the love of the Lord. Hills, meanwhile, represent a love of other people and a caring for them, and when "mountains" is used in the plural it generally represents both loves.

726. 'Keeping seed alive over the face ¹ of all the earth' means truths of faith. This is clear from the fact that by means of this Church the seed was kept alive, 'seed' being used to mean faith. The rest of the descendants of the Most Ancient Church destroyed celestial and spiritual seed by means of filthy desires and dreadful persuasions residing with them. But to guard against the extinction of celestial seed those called Noah were regenerated; and they were regenerated by means of spiritual seed. This is the meaning of these words. The expression 'kept alive' is used of those who receive the Lord's life, because life consists solely in those things that are the Lord's, as may become clear to anyone from the fact that no life in any sense resides in those things which are not part of eternal life, that is, which do not look to eternal life. Life that is not eternal is not life, but perishes in a very short space of time. Nor can Being (Esse) be attributed to things that come to an end, but to those that never come to an end. Life and Being (Esse) therefore reside solely in things that are the Lord's, or Jehovah's, for all Being (Esse) and living to eternity is His. By eternal life is meant eternal happiness. For these matters see what has been stated and shown in 290.

Mga talababa: