Is the Noah’s Ark story in the book of Genesis really about God destroying creation? A spiritual Bible interpretation of the story reveals its true meaning.

In this video, host Curtis Childs guides us through the revelations about the Old Testament parable that eighteenth-century philosopher Emanuel Swedenborg had during his spiritual experiences. Swedenborg’s perspectives transcend literal interpretations to provide a hopeful lesson about salvation. While it may seem like the Bible story is about God destroying creation, Swedenborg’s spiritual perspectives suggest that it symbolizes God’s still-ongoing efforts to save us from self-destruction.

906. Its length is as great as its breadth. This symbolically means that goodness and truth in the New Church are united, like essence and form.

The length of the city Jerusalem symbolizes the church's goodness, and its breadth symbolizes the church's truth. That the breadth of a thing symbolizes truth is something we showed from the Word in no. 861 above.

The length of a thing symbolizes goodness, here the goodness of the church, for the same reason that breadth symbolizes truth. The reason is that the sweep of heaven from east to west is meant by length, and the sweep of heaven from south to north by breadth, and angels who dwell in the eastern and western zones in heaven are impelled by the goodness of love, while angels who dwell in the southern and northern zones in heaven are impelled by truths of wisdom, as may be seen in no. 901 above.

[2] It is the same with the church on earth, for everyone impelled by the church's goods and truths from the Word is associated with angels in heaven, and he dwells with them in the interiors of his mind - those impelled by the goodness of love in the eastern and western zones of heaven, and those impelled by truths of wisdom in the southern and northern zones of heaven. No one is aware of this, indeed, but everyone nevertheless goes to his place after death.

This, then, is the reason that length, when describing the church, symbolizes its goodness, and breadth its truth. Obviously length and breadth cannot be used to describe the church, but they can be to describe a city which symbolizes the church.

The symbolic meaning is that goodness and truth in the New Church are united, like essence and form, because we are told that its length is as great as its breadth, and, as we said, its length symbolizes the church's goodness, and its breadth its truth.

They are united like essence and form, because truth gives formal expression to goodness, and goodness is the essence of truth, and the essence and the form are united.