He Came as a Thief in the Night

"And We have placed in it gardens of palm trees and grapevines, and caused springs to gush forth in it" (Ya-Sin 36:34). In the Latin Testament, where correspondences built into the universe are taught, a garden is a human. Gardens of palm trees and grape vines are humans with divine truths, and the springs which gush forth in them are enlightenment concerning these by God; as by rivers of divine truth flowing through and nourishing the Eden of the inner human. "These quotations indicate that in comparing humans (or what humans have inside them) to a garden, the earliest people included the idea of the water or rivers that watered the garden. It is also apparent that they took the water and rivers to mean the things that would stimulate growth" (Arcana Coelestia 108). The water is to stimulate growth in the garden of palm trees and grape vines and divine truths and holy practices; as water is to clean the flesh in the rite of baptism and as the blood of the Lamb of H...

 One will put a number of verses side by side so that the correspondences and Heavenly marriages, upright and reversed, may be seen clearly and as equivalent to one another: Nahum 3:5  Nahum 3:5 - King James Version (KJV) <5> Behold, I am against thee, saith the Lord of hosts; and I will discover thy skirts upon thy face, and I will shew the nations thy nakedness, and the kingdoms thy shame. Face means interior, where the real extent of people's love and truth supportive of love lies. To discover someone's skirts involves revealing what they are really like on the inside. To show the nations thy nakedness -- since the correspondence nations reversed is evils and those who are evil -- involves revealing the extent of sin. To show the kingdoms thy shame -- since the correspondence kingdoms reversed involves falsehoods and those who subscribe to them -- involves revealing the extent of error. Here is the same thing in Jeremiah, with other words used to describe the sin and ...

Periodically one suggests engaging in motionless breath meditation in a posture comfortable to you and for perhaps ten to twenty minutes before praying and reading the Word. Certain heart and mind thoughtforms will recur in you habitually. These will arise amid the breath meditation out of the corner of the mind's eye while not immersing one in naive identification with the mental voice as being oneself; as would otherwise more easily obtain.  This feeling is not me. This thought is not me. Is this a love and wisdom thoughtform? Or a sin and error thoughtform? Is this nurturing or cruel, and is it supportive ideation of nurturance or cruelty? Does the Word identify this thought or feeling as evil or good true or false? Is Hell on the line or Heaven? If it is evil and ideation supportive of evil, bread of wickedness and wine of violence, it is to go out in the draught. If it is not shunned, relegating it to the draught or periphery, then it will defile the human.  For the human...

One happened upon a verse which had hitherto not really obtruded upon one's notice while rereading Ecclesiastes:  Ecclesiastes 9:1 - King James Version (KJV) <1> For all this I considered in my heart even to declare all this, that the righteous, and the wise, and their works, are in the hand of God: no man knoweth either love or hatred by all that is before them. "No man knoweth either love or hatred by all that is before them". Humans are not capable of the enormously-complex cost-benefit analysis of whether a given behavior is good or evil; neither do they ever assemble enough information to perform that cost-benefit analysis upon. Only the Holy and Omniscient One, the Divine Human, can determine whether a given behavior is good or evil. Only a God could possibly do so. That is the reason why the Serpent, who represents human pride in self-intelligence and sensory perception, says to Adam and Eve that they will "become as gods" if they eat of the fruit o...

 A careful reader of ch. 40 of Genesis will note the familiar language of eating and drinking, this time in the guise of servants who pertain to preparing and serving food and drink; and thus pertain to preparing and serving the good of love and the truths of faith supportive of our growing in the good of love. They are servants here because the exterior of humankind is to be subject to the "inner human" -- the one to whom Paul refers in Ephesians ch.3 --and not the inner human subject to the exterior. Paul ditto: Romans 7:22-23 - King James Version (KJV) <22> For I delight in the law of God after the inward man: <23> But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. The story of the butler and the baker has been explained in one of the most challenging parts of Arcana Coelestia ; it encodes the necessity of rejecting the will of the Old Man whom we are to put off even...

People who pay attention to their faces, their interiors, while God orchestrates their several regenerations will notice the recurrence of troughs; when one uses the word "trough", one means the nastiest 'visitors' -- thoughts and feelings -- which arrive in the inside of the cup, the mind, and the inside of the platter, the heart.  If you are genuinely being regenerated, then you will certainly notice that the troughs become milder over time. Utterly vile feelings and thoughts become gradually and perceptibly milder, in such a way that the process is obvious.  For instance, someone whose head regularly filled up with sexual fantasies involving violence, death, cannibalism, absence of consent, multiplicity of partners, etc, will perceptibly notice that the worst sexual scenarios become obviously milder to the mind's eye. It is the same with other classes of sin and error. If someone was extremely contemptuous of others or bitter about the past, they should -- if G...

When in the Sermon on Evil Thoughts Jesus distinguishes between what goes out in the draught and what defiles the human, He touches in passing on the waste products solid and liquid of human beings. That they are mentioned by name in the menaces of Rabshakeh against Jerusalem involves the denial of divine good and divine truth and of the Lord's capacity to save. It is like when the Pharisees and Sadducees referred to Jesus as having a devil, ie being possessed. The meaning is very similar to the menaces of Goliath to David, whose flesh he promised to feed to the beasts of the field and the fowls of the air. It is in both cases like calling God the devil, or the Church heretic, or good desires (beasts) evil or true ideation (fowls) false.  This has been related in order to give you a handle on how to understand these various references to the draught, dung, no one being left alive to piss against the wall etc. which occur in the Word.  The most important significance of dung an...