The Lord's Omnipresence and
Omniscience
All the angels of heaven and all the men on the earth who constitute the church are as one man, and the Lord is the life of that man.
Selection from
Apocalypse Explained
According to the spiritual sense
in which the arcana there predicted
but heretofore concealed are revealed.
Emanuel Swedenborg
(3) This you will see
confirmed in the work on Heaven and Hell, in the following articles: The
whole Heaven in the complex has relation to one Man (n. 59-67); Each
Society in the heavens has relation to one Man (n. 68-72); Consequently
each Angel is in a perfect Human Form (n. 73-77); Heaven as a whole and in
part has relation to Man, and this is from the Lord's Divine Human (n.
78-86); There is a correspondence of all things of Heaven with all things
of Man (n. 87-102; The same may be said of the Lord's church on the earth
(n. 57).
That heaven is like one man I have been taught by experience and am taught
by reason.
Experience: It has been granted me to behold a society
consisting of thousands of angels as one man of a medium stature, and
societies consisting of fewer angels in like form. This is seen, however,
not by the angels in that society, but by angels outside of that society
at a distance, and at the time when a society is to be purified of those
who are foreign to it. When this is done all who constitute the life of
that society are within that man, while those who do not are outside of
him; and these are removed, but the former remain. It is the same with the
whole heaven in the presence of the Lord. For this reason and no other
every angel and spirit is a man, in a form like that which a man on earth
has.
I have not seen but I have heard that the church on earth also before
the Lord is like one man; and that it is also divided into societies, and
that each society is a man; furthermore, that all who are within that man
are within heaven, while those who are outside of him are in hell; and the
reason has been stated, namely, that every man of the church is also an
angel of heaven, for he becomes an angel after death. Moreover, not only
does the church on earth together with the angels constitute the interiors
of that man, the church constitutes also the exteriors, which are called
the cartilaginous and bony parts; this the church constitutes, because the
men of the earth are provided with a body in which the lowest spiritual is
clothed with the natural. This is what constitutes the conjunction of
heaven with the church and of the church with heaven.
From reason: Heaven and the church are a man, in the greatest, the
lesser, and the least sum or complex, for the sole reason that God is Man,
and consequently the Divine proceeding, which is the Divine from Him, is
the same in every least and greatest respect, which is man. For it has
been said above that the Divine is not in space and extension, but causes
spaces and extensions to exist in the ultimates of His creation, in the
heavens apparently, in the world actually. Nevertheless spaces and
extensions are not spaces and extensions before God,* for He is in His
Divine everywhere. This is clearly manifest from this, that the whole
angelic heaven with the church is as one man before God; and so is a
society consisting of thousands of angels, although their habitations
appear extended through much space. The same is evident also from this,
that the whole heaven, also an entire society in heaven, can appear at the
good pleasure of the Lord, as a man, great or small, as a giant or as an
infant. But it is not the angels that so appear, but the Divine in them;
for the angels are only recipients of the Divine from the Lord, and it is
the Divine in them that constitutes what is angelic in them and thus
heaven. As angels are only recipients, and the Divine in them constitutes
what is angelic and heaven, it is clear that the Lord is the life of that
man, that is, of heaven and the church.
*The Latin has "the Lord", not "God."
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(Apocalypse Explained 1222)
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