He Came as a Thief in the Night

We are brought into states of hardness of heart and bloody-mindedness, and it is then that we support or oppose these joy-inhibiting sins and errors of the Old Human. We pass through fire and water and enter a wealthy place, baking or seething the manna for six days.  And thus we gather double for the 7th day, the Sabbath rest when innocence so fuses with the ideation which supports us in innocency as to marry us in this life to the Lord and His Church; for we will not marry and give in marriage to the Lord in the life after death (notwithstanding that there are purifying trials in the life after death). We will either sear our consciences or we will not. We will either blow out our lamps, those spiritual knowledges lit by the oil of love to feed the inner flame of love, or we will not. Multitudes, multitudes, in the valley of decision.  Thus is it written: "For in the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven" (Matthew...

In Nahum we read: "The mountains quake at him, and the hills melt, and the earth is burned at his presence, yea, the world, and all that dwell therein" (Nahum 1:5). The correspondence "mountain" means love to the Lord, and is associated with angels of the highest aka inmost Heaven; and may be abbreviated simply love. The correspondence "hill" means love to the neighbor, and is associated with angels of the second inmost Heaven; and may be abbreviated simply truth. Thus the expression of the Heavenly marriage (if upright) or the infernal adultery (if reversed)  "mountain and hill" expresses the relationship between good and truth or sin and error as well simultaneously as the love of God and the neighbor or the love of self and the world. We have a very similar usage in Revelation: "And every island fled away, and the  mountains were not found" (Revelation 16:20). One first notes that both the passage in Nahum and that in Revelation make...