And to the woman were given two wings of a great eagle

In Matthew 5:10 we read, "Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled". Blessed (say the Writings in harmony with the Lord) are those in an affection for good and those in an affection for truth. But let us look at this spiritual hunger and thirst, these affections for good and truth, from another angle. In <<Revelation>> Christ says, "I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of the water of life freely", which is the customary truth; and here is its associated good: "He that overcometh shall inherit all things" (21:7). You never have to look far for that bread and wine.

The Lord specifically uses the term "overcometh", which signifies victory, and indeed a series of victories, over temptation. It signifies, in modern parlance, gradual spiritual improvements in mental or external behaviour occasioned by ceasing to pour gasoline on the fires of evil lusts, yearnings, or cravings. Those who thus spiritually improve come to obey His commandments, not out of compulsion but because they have the law of love written on their hearts. They have put off the Old Man and put on the New, and have the right to enter the New Jerusalem, "and to the tree of life" (Revelation 22:14).

This victorious improvement in behaviour, be it in deed or thought, as if of ourselves but of the Lord, succeeds the anxious, despairing state of spiritual combat known in the Word as temptation. As we read in <<Secrets of Heaven" ,"Every temptation is attended by a kind of despair" (AC1787). And since we cannot even be regenerated without temptation, so can we not be born again without despair (AC8403:2). What is so special about despair that it should be thus instrumental in our regeneration by the Lord? In effect, we desperately need despair in order to acknowledge the Saviour (AC6144).

The acknowledgement of our Saviour is no light matter, for "through despair people are led in an effective and perceptible way to acknowledge that nothing true or good comes from themselves, and to acknowledge that what is their own has caused them to be damned; but that with the Lord's aid they are delivered from damnation, with salvation entering in through what is true and good" (AC6144). We cannot, in other words, "hunger and thirst after righteousness" or consequently "be filled" without temptation and its attendant discomforts. It is for this reason that Peter warns us not to "be surprised at the firey trial when it comes upon you to test you" (1 Peter 4:12).

These extraordinary discomforts arise from a wrestling match between conscience and evil, and not just any evil but "what is our own", the "flesh" part of the "flesh and the devil" formula. Why do we need this wrestling match in the first place, in other words? Because "perception and insight into bliss and happiness come in no other way than from a contrast with their opposites" (ibid). As we read in <<Divine Providence>>, "The Lord's Divine providence causes evil and its accompanying falsity to be of service in providing an equilibrium, contrast, and means of purification, and thus in promoting the union of goodness and truth in others" (DP21).

Now, how did God ensure that the human race would propagate? He gave them a strong drive to do so. And how has He provided that "evil and its accompanying falsity" would "be of service"? Because evil spirits "continually desire to infest the good" (AC7926). They desire, indeed, to destroy us utterly, but in the process of failing to do so they prove of supernatural assistance to our adoption as God's children. Does this by any chance make the staggering task of loving even those who have hurt us, both humans in this life and devils in hell, a little easier? In brief, to lack adversity is not to meet with progress, in spiritual as in natural matters.

Of course, there are those who scorn adversity, those who enter the wide gate and take the broad way, and we read of them in <<John>>, where "many therefore of his disciples, when they had heard this, said, This is an hard saying, and who can hear it?" (Matthew 7:13-14; John 6:60). Indeed, it says in the aftermath of this same sermon by our Lord, "From that time many of his disciples went back, and walked no more with him" (John 6:66). The fact that the lapsed disciples received specific mention in relation to the Lord's Sermon on Flesh and Blood is not coincidental but by design. How intricately rich with shining meaning is the Word of God!

For the lapsed disciples were not offended by the thought of eating Jesus' flesh and blood, nor by any ritual symbolism or striking language whatever, but by the challenging and lengthy spiritual warfare which leads to becoming better people inside and out, with an understanding to match it. We read in other words of such people in <<Proverbs>>, where Wisdom -- or God -- laments that "they hated knowledge, and did not choose the fear of the Lord" (1:29). "The fear of the Lord", as we know from New Church doctrine, involves "fear of failing to love" (DP136). It also involves fear of not keeping God's commandments, for those who love the Lord keep them (John 14:15).

Indeed, as we often hear here in the Psalms, "A good understanding have all those that do His commandments" (Psalm 111:10). This would tend to mean that those who "did not choose the fear of the Lord", meaning to love Him and the neighbour and to "keep His commandments to do them", would have in married association with this choice a hatred of knowledge, this following necessarily as Gomorrah from Sodom or as falsity from evil. Just such people become the angry, depreciating, contemptuous, envious, spiteful, malicious thoughts in your head which are not you but come from Hell, where their owners reside, the devils who hate you and want you to go to hell also.

The modern world knows about so-called 'intrusive thoughts', persistent evils which cause discomfort to those who experience them; and the Writings give us much context into the spiritual warfare involved in their incidence. As we read in <<Secrets of Heaven>>, evil spirits "hold the thought in one thing", as well as particularly attacking "even the smallest things that a man loves" (AC1820). If we love the Lord by keeping His commandments and more conventionally speaking, then evil spirits will attack our keeping His commandments. Put plainly, they will try to entice us to break them, angling at us first from one angle and then from another.

Actual examples will best serve the purpose of illustrating this enticement to break commandments. One method by which devils entice human consciousness involves the crafting of a fantasy, then inserted into our train of thought, which winds us up. For instance, we may suddenly find ourselves imagining a family member saying something nasty in response to an equally imaginary statement that we have made. In this way, without our even having said anything, nor our family member either, that evil spirit can wind you up and give you ample opportunity to cherish evilly unfounded and fantastic suspicions about our neighbour which, in effect, "bear false witness" (Exodus 20:16).

Or again, an evil spirit will subtly cause you to dwell only upon the faults of your family members or fellow Christians, endeavouring thereby to drive a wedge between you and them. But not only that, endeavouring also to get you to break the commandment to "Honour thy Father and Mother" (Exodus 20:12). How does the evil spirit expect to achieve this result? In precisely any way that you slip up and cherish evil thoughts about your father or mother or any authority figure or God and the Church, which the commandment severally represents in most various permutation. To what may one liken the spirit's "hold[ing] the thought in one thing" (AC1820)?

Even to a fisherman successively drawing back and casting a lure. Moreover, the act of thus "hold[ing the thought in one thing" has the added benefit, from the point of view of a devil, of contributing to the delicate process of winding you up, of leading you out of a state of ease and tranquillity and into a state of despair and agitation. As may be seen, someone who has been worked up into a tizzy can the more readily be enticed to break one of God's commandments. Suppose that someone has been nagging you all evening as continuously and compulsively as a chain smoker: do you not get the more wound up for the very persistence of the nagging?

Just so does <<Proverbs>> tell us, "A continual dropping in a very rainy day and a contentious woman are alike" (27:15). Let one be the first to say that women need not feel particularly singled out on this occasion, for men are equally up to the task of being "A continual dropping". In any case, everyone knows that being cooped up on a rainy day can drive people mad, so that the least repeated sound -- for instance, of a nagging voice or intrusive thought -- can swell them over time into a fever pitch of irritation. It is in precisely such a state of irritation that we may say something nasty to whomever is nagging us on the outside, or appropriate the evil thought on the inside.

In sum, devils want you to be someone who "worketh abomination, or maketh a lie", such as "shall in no wise enter in" to New Jerusalem (Revelation 21:27). As has been consistently shown, the relationship between good and truth as well as evil and falsity is everywhere to be found in the Bible. Here "worketh abomination" comprises the evil and "maketh a lie" the falsity. If someone does not get into Heaven, then in effect they did not hunger and thirst for righteousness; if they did not so hunger and thirst, then they died in their sins. Consequently, in their sins they remain, and their primary utility becomes the antagonising fructification of Heaven's trainees.

As we read in <<Revelation>>, "For without are dogs, and sorcerers, and whoremongers, and murderers, and idolaters, and whosoever loveth and maketh a lie" (Revelation 22:15). It is these people whose intrusive or evil thoughts haunt the "chambers of [your] imagery", besieging you by means of their knowledge not only of your thoughts but also of your cupidities, both of which they are able to see with more than sufficient clarity to aid them in winding you up to break the commandments of God (Ezekiel 8:12; SE3529). As the Proverb tells us, "Surely in vain the net is spread in the sight of any bird" (1:17). Now, a "bird" represents precisely "spiritual truth" (AC777).

That would mean that the birds who see the nets in question are precisely spiritual truths (and their associated goods) drawn from the Word and systemised in doctrine. It should come as no surprise, then, that New Jerusalem's dimensions, "Twelve thousand furlongs [in length, bread and height] symbolises all of the goods and truths of that church" (AR907). Nor is it surprising that "length symbolizes the goodness of love... breadth the truth emanating from that love, and height... goodness and truth together in every degree" (ibid). "The length and the breadth and height of it are equal" because "everything connected with that church springs from the goodness of love" (Revelation 21:16; AR907).

For the point of New Jerusalem's dimensions is not to convey some literal architectural measurement; such would have no significance whatever for the angels, who see only the inner sense only of the Word and not its proper names or ostensible amounts (AC1025). Rather, part of the point of <<Revelation>>'s description of New Jerusalem is to indicate the necessity for human acknowledgement that they need a Saviour, and that they need the very truths and goods of New Jerusalem for which they hunger and thirst: this so as effectively to understand what is going on and cooperate with their God, growing in righteousness and understanding.

Now, that very God has told us, "The Kingdom of Heaven cometh not with observation" (Luke 17:20). And also He has said, "The Kingdom of Heaven is within you" (Luke 17:21). Obviously it makes perfect sense that a conjunction of good, truth, and the Lord within us should comprise that very Kingdom of Heaven, for a literal New Jerusalem's 12,000 furlongs would not fit inside us. Not to belabour the point, but conjunction with good, truth, and the Lord will fit inside us, for we were precisely designed so that this triple conjunction would occur by our Creator. Neighbours, the process of being tempted as expounded here may seem a bit daunting!

But rest assured that "he who is in the combats of tempations, and overcomes, acquires to himself more and more a power over the evil spirits, or the diabolical crew, till at last they do not dare to tempt at all" (AC1717:2). In the exact proportion that we cease to appropriate the evils of the flesh and the devil does the Lord come into conjunction with us; and " The more of love there is for goods and truths, the more do the angels love to be with the man, and together with the angels, Heaven" (AC1740:3). As with individual New Church people, so with New Jerusalem as a whole, that lady in the wilderness whose offspring the dragon would feign swallow (Revelation 12:13-16).

Let us therefore "hunger and thirst for righteousness", that we may "do his commandments" and "have a right to the tree of life"; that we "may enter in through the gates of the city" (Revelation 22:14). For the exact state of our will and understanding, the bread and wine of our own personal choices in this life, that which in New Church terms we "write on the inner man", will situate us for all eternity, in countless unique situations as surely as latitude and longitude situate us on Earth. Not for nothing did Jesus institute the rite of the Holy Supper, for it represents nothing less than the warp and woof of everything that matters, including our several fates. May the birds or truths of New Jerusalem assist you in evading the nets strewn so plentifully around the examination room of this life.

Amen.