Readings
“You alone are the Lord; You have made heaven, the heaven of heavens, with all their host, the earth and everything on it, the seas and all that is in them, and You preserve them all. The host of heaven worships You.” (Nehemiah 9:6)
“The Lord is my strength and song, And He has become my salvation; He is my God, and I will praise Him; My father’s God, and I will exalt Him. The Lord is a man of war; The Lord is His name. ” (Exodus 15:2-3)
“Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and bear a Son, and they shall call His name Immanuel, which is translated, God with us.” (Matthew 1:23)
“For where two or three are gathered together in My name, I am there in the midst of them.” (Matthew 18:20)
“One who does not love does not know God, for God is love. ” (1 John 4:8)
“The Lord is heaven not only in a general way (for all who are there), but also specifically (for every individual who is there)... Given this fact, no one should become attached to the mistaken notion that the Lord lives among the angels in heaven or dwells with them the way a monarch dwells in a realm—an idea that crosses many minds when they first think about the matter. Visually, the Lord is above them there like a sun; though as far as the life of their love and wisdom is concerned, He is within them.” (Divine Providence 31)
“There can be no doubt among church people that the Lord is God of heaven, because He Himself teaches that everything of the Father’s belongs to Him (Matthew 11:27; John 16:15; 17:2) and that He has all power in heaven and on earth (Matthew 28:18). It says "in heaven and on earth" because the ruler of heaven rules earth as well, the one actually depending on the other. His "ruling heaven and earth" means our accepting from Him everything good that is intrinsic to love and everything true that is intrinsic to faith. It therefore means accepting all intelligence and wisdom, and thus all happiness in short, eternal life. This too the Lord teaches when He says, "Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; but whoever does not trust the Son will not see life" (John 3:36). Or again, He says, "I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in Me, even though he dies, will be alive, and whoever lives and believes in Me will not die to eternity" (John 11:25-26). Or again, "I am the way, the truth, and the life" (John 14:6).” (Heaven and Hell 5)
“If people are in heaven or in the church, they are in the Lord and the Lord is in them.” (Heaven and Hell 11)
“The Lord dwells in angels in what belongs to Himself, and therefore the Lord is the sum and substance of heaven. This is because the goodness from the Lord is the Lord within and among them, since what comes from Him is Himself. Accordingly, the goodness from the Lord, and not anything of their own, is heaven for angels. ” (Heaven and Hell 12)
“The reason the Divine in heaven (which in fact makes heaven) is love is that love is a spiritual union. It unites angels to the Lord and unites them with each other. It does this so thoroughly that in the Lord’s sight they are like a single being. Further, love is the essential reality of every individual life. It is therefore the source of the life of angels and the life of people here.” (Heaven and Hell 14)
“Since angels do not perceive an invisible Divine Being (which they call a formless Divine) but a visible divine being in human form, it is common practice for them to say that only the Lord is a person, and that they are people because of Him. They also say that each of us is human in proportion to our acceptance of Him. By "accepting the Lord" they understand accepting what is good and true that comes from Him, because the Lord is present in everything good and true that comes from Himself. Angels call this wisdom and intelligence. They say everyone knows that intelligence and wisdom are what make us human, not simply the outward form by itself.” (Heaven and Hell 80)
“Since heaven in its entirety and in its parts does reflect a person because of the Lord’s divine human, angels say that they are "in the Lord" and even that they are "in His body," meaning that they are in the very substance of His love. This is also what the Lord is teaching us when He says, "Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit on its own unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me; for without Me you can do nothing. Abide in My love. If you keep My precepts, you will abide in My love" (John 15:4–10). ” (Heaven and Hell 81)
“Since this is how the divine being is perceived in the heavens, it is instinctive in everyone who accepts any inflow from heaven to think of the Lord in a human guise. The ancients did so and even modern people do, both outside and inside the church. ” (Heaven and Hell 82)
“Heaven’s sun is the Lord; light there is the divine truth and warmth the divine good that radiate from the Lord as the sun. Everything that comes into being and manifests itself in the heavens is from this source. ... The reason the Lord in heaven appears as the sun is that He is the divine love from which all spiritual things come into being and, through the agency of our world’s sun, all natural things as well. That love is what shines like a sun. ” (Heaven and Hell 117)
“However, when the Lord appears in heaven (which happens quite often) He does not appear clothed with the sun but in an angelic form, distinguishable from the angels by the divine quality that shines from His face. He is not actually there in person since the Lord "in person" is always clothed with the sun but is present in appearance. It is commonplace in heaven for things to be seen as though they were present in the place where their appearance is focused or delineated, even though this is very far from the place where they themselves actually are. ... Then too I have seen the Lord outside the sun in an angelic form overhead, a little below the sun, and also nearby in a similar form – once even among some angels, looking like a fiery ray of light.” (Heaven and Hell 121)
“This kind of turning toward the Lord is one of heaven’s wonders, for many individuals can be together in one place, turning faces and bodies toward each other, and yet all of them will have the Lord in front of them.” (Heaven and Hell 144)
“We can see from this what the Lord’s presence is like in the heavens: it is everywhere, with every individual in the good and true qualities that emanate from the Lord. So He is in angels in what is actually His own ... Their sense of the Lord’s presence is in their deeper reaches. It is from these that their eyes see, so He seems to be outside them because there is a continuum. This enables us to see how we should understand the Lord’s being in them and their being in the Lord. ” (Heaven and Hell 147)
“Divine peace is within the Lord, arising from the oneness of His divine nature and the divine human nature within Him. The divine quality of peace in heaven comes from the Lord, arising from His union with heaven’s angels, and specifically from the union of the good and the true within each angel. These are the sources of peace. We may therefore conclude that peace in the heavens is the divine nature intimately affecting everything good there with blessedness. So it is the source of all the joy of heaven. In its essence, it is the divine joy of the Lord’s divine love, arising from His union with heaven and with every individual there. This joy, perceived by the Lord in the angels and by the angels from the Lord, is peace.” (Heaven and Hell 286)
“The human mind itself, even the most highly analytical and elevated mind, is finite; it cannot be rid of its own limitations. It will never have the capacity to see the infinity of God as it truly is, or God as He truly is. It can see God in a shadow from behind, as Moses was told to do when he begged to see God. He was put in a crevice in the rock and saw God’s back (Exodus 33:20–23). "God’s back" has as a general meaning the phenomena visible in the world and has as a specific meaning the things that are comprehensible in the Word. It is obviously pointless then to aim to find out what God is like in His own underlying reality or in His own substance. It is enough to acknowledge Him from finite, created things, in which He is infinitely present.” (True Christianity 28)
“The sole end of God’s divine love, when He created the world, was to connect people to Himself and Himself to people that He might thus dwell with people ... The one God who is invisible came into the world and assumed a human, not only that He might redeem people, but also that He might become visible, that thereby connection with people might become possible.” (True Christianity 786)
“This New Church is the crown of all the churches that have hitherto existed on the earth, because it is to worship one visible God in whom is the invisible like the soul in the body. Thus, and not otherwise, is a connection of God with people possible because people are natural, and therefore think naturally, and connection must exist in their thought, and thus in their love’s affection, and this is the case when they think of God as a human. Connection with an invisible God is like a connection of the eye’s vision with the expanse of the universe, the limits of which are invisible; it is also like vision in mid–ocean, which reaches out into the air and upon the sea, and is lost. Connection with a visible God, on the other hand, is like beholding a person in the air or on the sea spreading forth his hands and inviting to his arms. ” (True Christianity 787)
“The faith of the new church is in a God who is visible, accessible and with whom we can be linked, in whom is the God who is invisible, inaccessible and with whom we cannot be linked, just as the soul is in the body.” (True Christianity 647)
“We are to believe or have faith in God our Savior Jesus Christ because this is believing in a God who can be seen, in whom is what cannot be seen. Faith in a God who can be seen – who is both human and divine at the same time– goes deep within us. Although faith is earthly in its form, it is spiritual in its essence. Within us faith becomes both spiritual and earthly, in that everything spiritual has to be received in what is earthly to become anything to us... yet the Lord said that no one has ever heard the voice of the Father or seen what He looks like (John 5:37). He also said, "No one has ever seen God; the only begotten Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, has revealed Him" (John 1:18). "No one has seen the Father except the One who is with the Father. He has seen the Father" (John 6:46). Also, no one comes to the Father except through Him (John 14:6). And furthermore, if we see and recognize Him, we see and recognize the Father (John 14:7 and following).
Faith in the Lord God our Savior is a different kind of faith. Because He is both divine and human, we can turn to Him and see Him in our thoughts. This is not a faith with no object. It has an object from whom and in whom we have faith. If we have seen an emperor or a monarch, every time we remember that person an image of him or her comes to mind; in the same way, once we accept this faith it remains. The gaze of this faith can be compared to looking at a shining white cloud with an angel in its midst who is inviting us to enter it and be raised into heaven. This is how the Lord looks to people who have faith in Him. The Lord comes closer to us all as we recognize and acknowledge Him.” (True Christianity 339)