Jesus and the internal meaning to the Bible
The New Church -- like Jesus Himself -- teaches that the Bible has not just an external meaning but also an internal one, and that the Bible -- the scroll only the Lamb was worthy to open in Revelation -- is written "inside and on the back" (Luke 24:27, Revelation 5:1). The Bible itself teaches this doctrine in multiple places, both in the Old Testament and in the New. Jesus, for instance, says, "To you it has been given to know the mystery of the kingdom of God; but to those who are outside, all things come in parables" (Mark 4:10-11). This same doctrine appears in the Old Testament in Nehemiah 8:8, where "they read distinctly from the book, in the Law of God; and they gave the sense, and helped them to understand the reading". Here "the book, in the Law of God" refers to the words you read directly in the Bible's pages, and the "sense" refers to the inner meaning of those words. This same doctrine appears elsewhere in