He Came as a Thief in the Night

In Leviticus we read: "46 This is the law of the beasts, and of the fowl, and of every living creature that moveth in the waters, and of every creature that creepeth upon the earth: 47 To make a difference between the unclean and the clean, and between the beast that may be eaten and the beast that may not be eaten" (Leviticus 11:46-47).  As the Church teaches, contemporary believers do need to obey the 10 commandments, both within themselves and in terms of their outward behavior and utterance; but do not need to care what clothing materials they wear or what animals or birds they eat. Still less do they need to burn cows to ashes or sacrifice doves.  Nonetheless, the Lord said: "Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled" (Matthew 5:18). The correct way to construe this statement involves the spiritual meaning of the ceremonial and sacrificial laws which the Jews were told to observe. For instance, w...

 One begins with a favorite passage. In Arcana Coelestia we read: "The delight itself which is in the love of doing what is good without any end of recompense, is the reward which remains to eternity; for every affection of love remains inscribed on the life. Into this there is insinuated by the Lord heaven and eternal happiness" (9984). It is the will of our Father in Heaven that we should delight in doing good for goodness' sake without ulteriority. This He consistently taught in the Hebrew Testament, the Greek Testament, and the Latin Testament. Here it is in the Greek: "But love ye your enemies, and do good, and lend, hoping for nothing again; and your reward shall be great, and ye shall be the children of the Highest: for he is kind unto the unthankful and to the evil" (Luke 6:35). One can personally confirm the kindness which accompanied His presence with one who did not deserve it and had been and was living an evil life. There was no question that He mea...

As we know, God not only gives prophets teachings to share with the Church but also uses them as neon reprogrammable billboards to express matters like the spiritual health or unhealthiness of the Church. When we covered the meaning of bricks as spiritual falsehoods, we looked at how the Lord told Ezekiel to draw Jerusalem on a brick to represent their spiritual darkness; and then to play-act besieging the city with divine truth. He told other prophets to behave similarly. Jeremiah, for instance, got told not to marry: "2 Thou shalt not take thee a wife, neither shalt thou have sons or daughters in this place. 3 For thus saith the Lord concerning the sons and concerning the daughters that are born in this place, and concerning their mothers that bare them, and concerning their fathers that begat them in this land; 4 They shall die of grievous deaths; they shall not be lamented; neither shall they be buried; but they shall be as dung upon the face of the earth: and they shall be co...

In Isaiah we read: "Thus saith the Lord to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have holden, to subdue nations before him; and I will loose the loins of kings, to open before him the two leaved gates; and the gates shall not be shut; 2 I will go before thee, and make the crooked places straight: I will break in pieces the gates of brass, and cut in sunder the bars of iron: 3 And I will give thee the treasures of darkness, and hidden riches of secret places, that thou mayest know that I, the Lord, which call thee by thy name, am the God of Israel" (Isaiah 45:1-3). In the literal sense this passage appears to refer to the historical Cyrus, a monarch of the Persians. But as usual, we do not want the plinth but the statue; we do not want the literal sense but the spiritual sense of prophecy.  Spiritually, then, this passage involves the Lord's representing Himself with the personage Cyrus. The Word very frequently uses some personage such as Cyrus or Zerubbabel here to ...

The sharp, two-edged sword of the Word lays bare what is sinful and excusing of sin, inspires us to shun these, and implants what is good and true in their places. It is not an ordinary document but an intricate interface. Jeremiah 1:10 - King James Version (KJV) <10> See, I have this day set thee over the nations and over the kingdoms, to root out, and to pull down, and to destroy, and to throw down, to build, and to plant. Nations pertain to the heart and peoples to the mind. This verse confers authority over sins and errors, authority to rebuke and shun them; that in their places, in their nice clean empty places, the good and truth of the Lord may enter and marry. We are neither married nor given in marriage but as the angels of Heaven when the plate is clean and the cup is clean and the bread is hot and the wine is light and the divine love of the Lord marries the divine truth of the Lord in our souls. To root out has to do with loves; in this case evil loves. It is over nat...

 We have briefly touched on the meaning of nations and peoples, a very frequent double expression in the Word, as being either goods and truths or those in them; or contrarily sins and errors and those in them. The driving out of the nations of Canaan here, sometimes abbreviated Canaanites and Perizzites, involves the driving out of sins and errors from the Church and from the individual: "20 Behold, I send an Angel before thee, to keep thee in the way, and to bring thee into the place which I have prepared. 21 Beware of him, and obey his voice, provoke him not; for he will not pardon your transgressions: for my name is in him. 22 But if thou shalt indeed obey his voice, and do all that I speak; then I will be an enemy unto thine enemies, and an adversary unto thine adversaries. 23 For mine Angel shall go before thee, and bring thee in unto the Amorites, and the Hittites, and the Perizzites, and the Canaanites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites: and I will cut them off. 24 Thou shalt...