He Came as a Thief in the Night

  "'[Go up] to a land flowing with milk and honey' means feelings of pleasure and delight derived from the good of faith and love. This is clear from the meaning of 'a land' as the Church, dealt with in the places referred to in 9325; from the meaning of 'milk' as spiritual good, which is the good of faith, dealt with in 2184; from the meaning of 'honey' as celestial good, which is the good of love; and from the meaning of 'flowing' as being full. And since these things are meant by 'a land flowing with milk and honey', feelings of pleasure and delight derived from the good of faith and love are also meant, see 5620. 'Feelings of pleasure and delight' derived from such good are spoken of because the good of faith and love brings real heavenly pleasure and delight. All good brings its own delight; for the word 'good' is used to denote that which is loved, and every feeling of delight owes its existence to love. The fee...

One wanted to explain the teaching method employed in this ministry out of transparency; and because the teachings taught to people here are not toys but can have a powerful and mind-altering effect. See ch. 7 of Romans for the Apostolic equivalent of what one now expresses in contemporary language. If the Word be taken seriously, for instance, then a switch flicks; and at that point, very strange and trying experiences may test people in a way that genuinely disturbs them.  These are temptations: opportunities to grow in love of God and the neighbor that afford us an accelerated course in identifying internal and external sins and errors and ceasing to feed them; opportunities, but they also suck. We teach that not everyone can presently be allowed by Providence to enter such states, because only people sufficiently committed to overcoming can do so safely while they are alive.  So this means that a given reader of these lectures may not experience the "sin becoming exceeding...

  People sometimes find it wacky that the Latin Word mentions aliens on other planets, even those of our solar system. But the point of the beasts with four faces in Ezekiel is not to convey a naturalistic anatomy; and the point of Earths in the Universe is not to provide us with an anthropology of alien civilizations. The very title, in its inclusion of "Earths", will immediately strike one instructed in correspondences as potentially having to do with Churches; whence one can pretty much expect to encounter spiritual meanings akin to those of the 7 angels of the 7 Churches. For the correspondence of "Earth" is with Church.  In Earths in the Universe we read of certain spirits from Mercury interacting with a man named Christian Wolf the following: "[They then desisted from asking him further questions, inquiring only, how this is called, and how that; and because he answered these inquiries also by material ideas, and by no spiritual ones, they retired from hi...