1. Teachings for the New Jerusalem on the Lord

The Entire Sacred Scripture Is about the Lord, and the Lord Is the Word

WE read in John,

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and nothing that was made came about without him. In him there was life, and that life was the light for humankind. And the light shines in the darkness, but the darkness did not grasp it. And the Word became flesh and lived among us; and we saw his glory, glory like that of the only-begotten child of the Father. He was full of grace and truth. (John 1:1-3, 5, 14)

In the same Gospel,

Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. (John 3:19)

And elsewhere in the same Gospel,

While you have the light, believe in the light, so that you may become children of the light. I have come into the world as a light so that anyone who believes in me will not remain in darkness. (John 12:36, 46)

We can see from this that the Lord is God from eternity and that he himself is that Lord who was born into the world. It actually says that the Word was with God and that the Word was God, as well as that nothing that was made came about without him, and then that the Word became flesh and that they saw him.

There is little understanding in the church of what it means to call the Lord “the Word.” He is called the Word because the Word means divine truth or divine wisdom and the Lord is divine truth itself or divine wisdom itself. That is why he is also called the light that is said to have come into the world.

Since divine wisdom and divine love are one with each other and have been one in the Lord from eternity, it also says “in him there was life, and that life was the light for humankind.” The life is divine love, and the light is divine wisdom.

This oneness is what is meant by saying both that “in the beginning the Word was with God” and that “the Word was God.” “With God” is in God, since wisdom is in love and love is in wisdom. This is like the statement elsewhere in John, “Glorify me, Father, together with yourself, with the glory I had with you before the world existed” (John 17:5). “With yourself” is “in yourself.” This is why it adds “and the Word was God.” It says elsewhere that the Lord is in the Father and the Father is in him [John 14:10], and that the Father and he are one [John 10:30].

Since the Word is the divine wisdom of the divine love, it follows that it is Jehovah himself and therefore the Lord, the one by whom all things were made that were made, since everything was created out of divine love by means of divine wisdom.

6978. They shall become blood in the dry [land]. That this signifies the falsification of all truth, and the consequent privation of it in the natural, is evident from the signification of “blood,” as being holy truth proceeding from the Lord, and in the opposite sense truth falsified and profaned (see n. 4735, how the case herein is was shown just above); and from the signification of “the dry [land],” as being the natural (of which also just above, n. 6976). That “blood” signifies the falsification of truth and its profanation, is especially evident in Nahum:

Woe to the city of bloods! It is all full of lying and rapine; the prey departeth not. The voice of a whip, and the voice of the sound of a wheel; and a neighing horse, and a jumping chariot; the horseman mounting, and the shining of a sword, and the flash of a spear; and a multitude of pierced, and a heap of carcass and no end of body; they stumble on their body. Because of the multitude of the whoredoms of the well-favored harlot, the mistress of witchcrafts, that selleth nations through her whoredoms, and families through her witchcrafts (Nah. 3:1-4).

That by the “city of bloods” is signified the doctrine of falsity, thus by “blood,” falsified and profaned truth is plain from all the words of its description in the internal sense, and not only in these verses which have been cited, but also in those which follow, the description of it being continued in the whole chapter; for the “city” is doctrine; its being “all full of lying and rapine” denotes being full of falsity, and of evil from falsity; “the voice of a whip and the voice of the sound of a wheel” denotes the defence of falsity by fallacies; “a neighing horse and a jumping chariot” denotes from a perverted intellectual and the like doctrine; “the horseman mounting, the shining of a sword, the flashing of a spear” denotes combat against truth; “the multitude of pierced” denotes innumerable falsities thence, and those who are in falsities; “a heap of carcass, and no end of body” denotes innumerable evils thence, and those who are in evils; “the whoredoms of a harlot” denote the falsifications themselves, and in like manner “witchcrafts.”