He Came as a Thief in the Night

As we have covered root, branch, and fruit, it is appropriate now to touch on Peter, James, and John, the disciples who represent basically the same things: with Peter being faith, James being charity, and John being the works of charity which proceed from the marriage of faith and charity; just as fruit depends on the root and the branch.  We read in Mark, on the occasion of the Lord's raising a 12 year old girl from the dead, that "he suffered no man to follow him, save Peter, and James, and John the brother of James" (Mark 5:37).  That the Word specifically mentions these three disciples in the context of someone's being raised from the dead is due to the fact that there is no resurrection from spiritual death to spiritual life without charity, faith, and good deeds. Many things are said to and about Peter, James, and John, and these all have something to do with what they represent. Since Peter represents faith, and faith can be either married to charity or separa...

On Monday, during the teaching on root, branch, fruit, and the supply chain of love, mention was made of something called predicate substitution. This is a useful matter to know about because it involves the nuts and bolts of the Word and how God wrote it. So we will first look at the verse which occasioned the mention of predicate substitution in the first place:  "But ye, O mountains of Israel, ye shall shoot forth your branches, and yield your fruit to my people of Israel; for they are at hand to come" (Ezekiel 36:8).  As you can see, God might have mentioned root, branch, and fruit here; but instead mentioned mountains, root, and fruit. This is because all of these words are correspondences, which are symbols greater than symbols hardwired into the structure of reality. If God wishes to substitute one correspondence pertaining to the heart with another so pertaining, then this He will do. Therefore, since mountain and root both mean love -- being predicates of the heart o...

In the Word of God we hear much about root, branch, and fruit. In Galatians we read of fruit the following: "22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, 23 Meekness, temperance: against such there is no law" (Galatians 5:22-23). It is evident that people do not produce such fruit separately from good deeds and faithfully doing their duty, whatever that may happen to be. It is as evident that fruit depends on some bough from which it hangs, and that the fruit-filled boughs depend on the root from which they draw nourishment; if there is no root, how can there be branches? And if there are no branches, how can there be fruit? We have already covered how those in the Parable of the Sower who were stony ground had no root in themselves; so that the seed perished. These people had no root in themselves because they had no love and no desire to become loving; and those without love and the hunger to be loving will automatically fa...

As we read in White Horse, "The historical narratives of the Word are representative, and their actual words have significances" (White Horse 12). We are therefore going to take a close look at this using some correspondences with which you have already been familiarized: stones and kings, both representing divine truths and in the latter case also sometimes reasonings -- eg "king of Assyria" -- when in the upright position; or spiritual falsehoods when in the reversed position. Since we have just gone over the correspondences of gold and silver, we will first look at an instance of gold and silver -- and also raiment -- in the reversed position; and then tie this in with the great heap of stones with which the Children of Israel covered him and all that he had. In the book of Joshua we read, in the episode in which the sin of Achan is the hidden cause of Israel's defeat in battle, the following: "20 And Achan answered Joshua, and said, Indeed I have sinned...

We have covered how there are approximately four types of fire and four types of water in the Word of God: love of God and the neighbor (fire) and the divine truth supportive of it (water); love of self and the world (fire-reversed) and infernal falsehood supportive of it, eg excuses for sin (water-reversed); transitional fire that is temptation of your heart to dislodge sin and make room for love, and the transitional water that is temptation of your mind to dislodge error and make room for truth; and permanent fire and water which involve forever wallowing in sin and error without any further will on one's part to improve or learn. Today we will be covering the incident where the Children of Israel arrive at the bitter waters of Marah during their sojourn in the wilderness; and this type of bitter water is transitional, a form of temptation involving a particular aspect of the mind. Let us look at the passage: " 23 And when they came to Marah, they could not drink of the wat...