11. God is the essential person. Throughout all the heavens, the only concept of God is a concept of a person. The reason is that heaven, overall and regionally, is in a kind of human form, and Divinity among the angels is what makes heaven. Further, thinking proceeds in keeping with heaven's form, so it is not possible for angels to think about God in any other way. This is why all the people on earth who are in touch with heaven think about God in the same way when they are thinking very deeply, or in their spirit.

It is because God is a person that all angels and spirits are perfectly formed people. This is because of heaven's form, which is the same in its largest and its smallest manifestations. (On heaven being in a human form overall and regionally, see Heaven and Hell 59-87 [59-86], and on thought progressing in keeping with heaven's form, see 203-204 there.)

It is common knowledge that we were created in the image and likeness of God because of Genesis 1:26-27 and from the fact that Abraham and others saw God as a person.

The early people, wise and simple alike, thought of God only as a person. Even when they began to worship many gods, as they did in Athens and Rome, they worshiped them as persons. By way of illustration, here is an excerpt from an earlier booklet.

Non-Christians--especially Africans--who acknowledge and worship one God as the Creator of the universe conceive of that God as a person. They say that no one can have any other concept of God. When they hear that many people prefer an image of God as a little cloud in the center, they ask where these people are; and when they are told that these people are among the Christians, they respond that this is impossible. They are told, however, that Christians get this idea from the fact that in the Word God is called a spirit; and the only concept they have of spirit is of a piece of cloud. They do not realize that every spirit and every angel is a person. However, when inquiry was made to find out whether their spiritual concept was the same as their earthly one, it turned out that it was not the same for people who inwardly recognized the Lord as the God of heaven and earth.

I heard one Christian elder say that no one could have a concept of a being both divine and human; and I saw him taken to various non-Christians, more and more profound ones. Then he was taken to their heavens, and finally to a heaven of Christians. Through the whole process people's inner perception of God was communicated to him, and he came to realize that their only concept of God was a concept of a person--which is the same as a concept of a being both divine and human.

2354. 'Bring them out to us and let us know them' means their wish to show that it is false to acknowledge the existence of these, that is to say, of the Lord's Divine Human and His Holy proceeding. This is clear from the meaning of 'the two angels', dealt with above in 2320, and also from the feeling of anger with which these words were uttered, and which carries an expression of denial within it.

[2] Being described here is the initial state of the Church that has been vastated, that is, when faith starts to be no more because charity is no more. This state, as has been said, is one in which, because they are opposed to the good of charity, no faith exists with them, in particular no acknowledgement of the Lord's Divine Human and His Holy proceeding. All who lead a life of evil deny these at heart, that is to say, all who despise others in comparison with themselves, who hate all those who do not treat them with respect, who take delight in getting their revenge on such, and indeed in being cruel to them, and who think that acts of adultery do not matter. 'The Pharisees who openly denied the Lord's Divinity did better in their own day than such people today who, for the sake of the respect paid to them and for the sake of their own filthy gain, outwardly worship Him devoutly but inwardly conceal such unholiness. These, as they were progressively to become, are pictured in what follows as 'the men of Sodom', and after that in the overthrow of that city, verses 24-25.

[3] As stated frequently already, man has evil spirits and at the same time angels present with him. Through the evil spirits he communicates with hell, and through the angels with heaven, 687, 697. To the extent therefore that his life moves towards evil, hell flows in; but to the extent his life moves towards good, heaven and so the Lord flows in. From this it is clear that people who lead lives of evil are incapable of acknowledging the Lord. Instead they invent countless arguments against Him, for the delusions of hell flow in which are received by them. But those who lead lives of good do acknowledge the Lord, for they have heaven flowing into them, where love and charity reign supreme since heaven is the Lord's, who is the source from which everything of love and charity derives, see 537, 540, 547, 548, 551, 553, 685, 2130.