In Revelation 9:3, this signifies that from hellish falsities people in the church become materially and sensually oriented. (Apocalypse Explained 543)
Apocalypse Explained #83
83. And I became dead, signifies that He was rejected. This is evident from this, that the Lord is said to be "dead" when faith in Him and love towards Him are no more; for with those who are in love towards Him and faith in Him the Lord lives, but with those who are not in love and in faith toward Him He does not live. With such He is said to be "dead" because He is rejected. This is what is here meant in the internal sense by the words "I became dead;" but in the sense of the letter it is meant that He was crucified. The Lord's being crucified has a like signification in the internal sense, namely, that He was rejected and treated thus by the Jews; for the Lord, when He was in the world, was Divine truth itself, and as Divine truth was altogether rejected by the Jews, therefore the Lord, who was Divine truth, suffered Himself to be crucified. Such things are signified by all that is related in the Evangelists concerning the Lord's passion; the particulars, even to every minutest particular, involve this. Whenever, therefore, the Lord speaks of His passion He calls Himself the Son of man, that is, Divine truth (See above, n. 63). That Divine truth was altogether rejected by the Jews is well known; for they accepted nothing that the Lord said, and not even that He was the Son of God. From this it may be known how those things that the Lord said to the disciples about the Jews' rejection of Him are to be understood. Thus in Luke:
The Son of man must suffer many things, and be repudiated by the elders and chief priests and scribes (Luke 9:22).
In the same:
The Son of man must suffer many things, and be repudiated by this generation (Luke 17:25).
In Mark:
It is written of the Son of man, that He should suffer many things and be set at naught (Mark 9:12).
In Luke:
Jesus took unto Him the twelve, and said unto them, Behold, we go up to Jerusalem, and all the things that are foretold through the prophets concerning the Son of man shall be accomplished. For He shall be delivered unto the Gentiles, and shall be mocked, and shamefully entreated, and spit upon; and after they have scourged Him, they shall put Him to death; but the third day He shall rise again (Luke 18:31-33).
The way in which the Jews treated Divine truth, which was from the Word, is signified by these particulars. "Jerusalem" here is the Jewish Church; "to be delivered unto the Gentiles, to be mocked, to be shamefully entreated, to be spit upon, to be scourged, to be put to death," are the wicked ways in which the Jews treated Divine truth; and as the Lord was Divine truth itself, because He was the Word (John 1:14), and as it was foretold in the prophets that Divine truth would be so dealt with in the end of the church, therefore it is said, "that all things may be accomplished that have been foretold through the prophets concerning the Son of man." So elsewhere in the same Gospel:
These are the words which I spoke unto you, while I was yet with you, that all things must needs be fulfilled which are written in the law of Moses, and in the Prophets, and in the Psalms, concerning Me (Luke 24:44).
That all things were accomplished when Jesus was crucified He Himself said, when He was upon the cross:
Jesus, knowing that all things were accomplished, that the Scripture might be fulfilled, said, I thirst (John 19:28).
He then said, "I thirst," because He longed for a new church that would acknowledge Him. (That to "thirst," in the spiritual sense, signifies to long for, and that it is predicated of the truths of the church, see Arcana Coelestia 4958, 4976, 8568.) These are also the things that were predicted by Daniel concerning vastation and desolation:
After sixty and two weeks shall the Messiah be cut off, but not for Himself; then the people of the Prince that shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary, so that its end shall be with a flood. At last upon the bird of abominations shall be desolation, and even to the consummation and decision it shall drop upon the devastation (Daniel 9:26-27).
"Desolation" and "vastation" signify repudiation and rejection of Divine truth with those that are of the church (See Arcana Coelestia 5360, 5376). That Divine truth, which is the Word, was so repudiated by the Jews, is also meant by these words in Matthew:
I say unto you that Elias is come already, and they have not acknowledged him, but have done unto him whatsoever they listed. Even so shall the Son of man suffer of them (Matthew 17:12).
By "Elias" the Word is signified (See Arcana Coelestia, preface to chapter 18 of Genesis, and in n. 2762, 5247), and also by "John the Baptist;" therefore he was called "Elias" (n. 7643, 9372). From this it can be seen what is signified by "Elias has come," and that "they have done to him whatsoever they listed," and that "the Son of man is to suffer of them." How the Jews explained and thus rejected the Word is clear from many passages in the Gospels, where the Lord makes this manifest. From this it can now be seen that "I became dead," signifies that He was rejected. Moreover, that the Lord, by the passion of the cross, also glorified His Human, that is, made it Divine, see New Jerusalem and Its Heavenly Doctrine, n. 294-295, 302, 305.
The New Jerusalem and its Heavenly Teachings #305
305. In this way the Lord made his human nature divine. The Lord's human nature is divine because it came from the underlying reality of the Father that was the Lord's soul (10269, 10372, 10823, which use as an illustration the way children resemble their fathers) and because it came from the divine love that is within him (6872). The nature of every individual is determined by the nature of his or her love; we are all our own love: 6872, 10177, 10284. The Lord was divine love: 2077, 2253. The Lord made every aspect of his human nature divine, both inner aspects and outer ones: 1603, 1815, 1902, 1926, 2093, 2803. So unlike anyone else, he rose from the dead with his whole body: 1729, 2083, 5078, 10825. The fact that the Lord's human nature is divine can be recognized from the omnipresence of that human nature in the Holy Supper (2343, 10826) and from his transfiguration in the presence of three of his disciples 1 (3212) as well as from various statements in the Word (10154), particularly his being called "Jehovah" in it (1603, 1736, 1815, 1902, 2921, 3035, 5110, 6303, 6281, 8864, 9194, 9315). A distinction is maintained between the Father and the Son or between Jehovah and the Lord in the literal meaning, but not in the inner meaning of the Word, which the angels have: 3035. The Christian world does not recognize the Lord's human nature as divine; the view that his divinity and his humanity are separate was arrived at in a council to support recognition of the pope as the Lord's vicar (as I learned from conversation with members of that council in the other life) 2 : 4738.
[2] The divine-human nature has existed from eternity, in the form of divine truth in heaven and therefore as the manifestation of divine presence; later, in the Lord, though, the divine-human nature became the divine underlying reality, the source of the manifestation of divine presence in heaven: 3061, 6280, 6880, 10579. What the state of heaven was like before the Lord came into the world: 6371, 6372, 6373. What was divine could not be perceived then and therefore could not be accepted unless it had passed through heaven: 6982, 6996, 7004. The Lord from eternity was the divine truth in heaven: 2803, 3195, 3704. This is "the Son of God born from eternity": 2628, 2798.
[3] The only divinity they perceive in heaven is the divine humanity: 6475, 9303, 9356, 10067. The earliest people were not able to worship the infinite underlying reality but they were able to worship the infinite manifestation of it, which is the divine humanity: 4687, 4692. The ancients acknowledged the Divine because it appeared in a human form, and this was the divine humanity: 5110, 5663, 6846, 10737. The inhabitants of all planets worship the Divine in a human form; they rejoice when they hear that God actually became a human being: 6700, 8541-8547, 9361, 10736, 10737, 10738. See my booklet "The Earthlike Bodies Called Planets in Our Solar System and in Deep Space". 3 If we do not think of God as being in a human form, we can have no definite idea of God, because what is incomprehensible does not take shape in the mind: 9359, 9972. We can worship only something of which we have some concept; we cannot worship something of which we have no concept: 4733, 5110, 5663, 7211, 9356, 10067. So most people throughout the world worship the Divine in a human form, and this happens because of an inflow from heaven: 10159. When people who are devoted to living good lives think about the Lord, they all think about him as having a divine-human nature and not as having a human nature separate from a divine one: 2326, 4724, 4731, 4766, 8878, 9193, 9198. Why the people in today's church who are consumed with leading an evil life, as well as the people who are devoted to faith apart from caring, think about the Lord's human nature as not being divine, and why they do not understand what the divine-human nature is: 3212, 3241, 4689, 4692, 4724, 4731, 5321, 6371, 8878, 9193, 9198.
Примітки:
1. For the transfiguration of Jesus before Peter, James, and John, the three disciples referred to here, see Matthew 17:1-9; Mark 9:2-10; Luke 9:28-36; 2 Peter 1:16-18. [SS]
2. The identity of this council is not made clear, but judging from the description in the passage cited here, Secrets of Heaven 4738, Swedenborg refers to the Council of Chalcedon held in 451. It established the "Chalcedonian Definition" that held in part: "Following the holy Fathers, we all with one voice confess our Lord Jesus Christ one and the same Son, the same perfect in Godhead, the same perfect in manhood, truly God and truly man, the same consisting of a reasonable soul and a body, of one substance with the Father as touching the Godhead, the same of one substance with us as touching the manhood, like us in all things apart from sin" (quoted in Frend 1984, 771). For discussion of this council, see Frend 1984, 742-785; Pelikan 1971, 1:256-266. [SS]
3. This book, referred to by the short title Other Planets in this edition, was originally published by Swedenborg in London in 1758. For a description of the delight of the inhabitants of other planets, and of spirits and angels from other planets, when they learn that God is human, see Other Planets 121. See also note 1 in Other Planets 7. [Editors]
