3. The Genuine Truth in the Word’s Literal Meaning, the Truth That Is Needed for a Body of Teaching, becomes Manifest only to Those Who Have Enlightenment from the Lord (Continued)

Something opposite to this happens to people who read the Word under a false body of religious teaching, especially if they use the Word to support their body of teaching and are pursuing their own glory or the wealth of the world. Under these circumstances the truths in the Word seem to be in the shadows of night and things that are false seem to be in the light of day. Such people read truths but do not see them. If they see the shadow of truths, they falsify those truths. The Lord was referring to people like this when he said they have eyes but they do not see; they have ears, but they do not understand (Matthew 13:14-15).

The light in which they view spiritual things related to the church becomes nothing but earthly as a result. The things their minds then see are like ghosts people sometimes see when just waking up in bed, or like the mistaken impression sleepwalkers have that they are wide awake.

from True Christianity, Volume 1, Section 232

3. The Genuine Truth in the Word’s Literal Meaning, the Truth That Is Needed for a Body of Teaching, becomes Manifest only to Those Who Have Enlightenment from the Lord

Enlightenment come from the Lord alone and affects people who love truths because they are true and who make them useful in their lives. Other people do not have enlightenment concerning the Word. Enlightenment comes from the Lord alone because the Word is from him, and therefore he is in it. Enlightenment comes to people who love truths because they are true and who make them useful in their lives, because these people are in the Lord and the Lord is in them. The Lord is truth itself, as I showed in the chapter on the Lord. Loving the Lord is living by his divine truths, that is, doing useful things with those truths, as we read the following words in John:

On that day you will recognize that you are in me and I am in you. The people who love me are the people who have my instructions and follow them. I will love them and will manifest myself to them. I will come to them and make a home with them. (John 14:20, 21, 23)

These are the people who are enlightened when they read the Word. For them the Word shines and becomes translucent.

The Word shines for those people and becomes translucent to them because the details in the Word have spiritual and heavenly meanings inside. These meanings are in the light of heaven. The Lord flows through these meanings and their light into the Word’s earthly meaning and its light in the people. As a result of this light, the people first acknowledge the truth with deep perception and then see it in their own thought. This happens whenever people have desire for truth because it is true. This desire, you see, leads to perception, and perception leads to thought. This process leads to the acknowledgement that is known as faith.

from True Christianity, Volume 1, Section 231

2. A Body of Teaching Has to Be Drawn from the Word’s Literal Meaning and Supported by It

The reason for this is that the Lord is present, teaching and enlightening, in the Word’s literal meaning. The Lord never works in an incomplete or partial way, and the literal meaning is where the Word is complete, as I have shown before. As a result, a body of teaching has to be drawn from the Word’s literal meaning.

You can draw a complete body of genuinely true teaching from the Word’s literal meaning. In that meaning the Word is like a clothed person whose face, forearms, and hands are exposed. All the teachings that related to our faith and life and therefore our salvation are exposed there. The other teachings are clothed. Even then, in many passages where the teachings are clothed they are still visible, as a woman with a thin piece of silk over her face can still see objects in front of her. In fat, as the truths in the Word are multiplied and organized by our love for them, they shine out and become more and more clearly evident.

You might think that we could gain a body of genuinely true teaching by exploring the Word’s spiritual meaning through the study of correspondences. In fact, a body of teaching is not gained through that meaning; it is only enlightened and corroborated by that meaning, for, as I said before in Section 208, people who know a few correspondences are capable of falsifying the Word by connecting and applying correspondences to support some preconceived idea already lodged in their mind.

For another thing, no one is given the spiritual meaning except by the Lord alone. The Lord safeguards that meaning as he safeguards the angelic heaven, for heaven dwells in it.

from True Christianity, Volume 1, Sections 229-230

1. The Word Is not Understandable without a Body of Teaching (Continued)

It stands to reason, then, that people who read the Word without a body of teaching are in the dark about every truth. Their mind is meandering and undecided, liable to go astray, and even susceptible to heresies. Such people will in fact embrace heresies if those heresies have gained any popularity or authority and their own reputation is therefore not in danger. To them the Word is like a lampstand that gives no light. In the shadows they think they see many things, but in fact what they see is practically nothing, because a body of teaching is the only oil lamp.

I have seen angels examining people like this and discovering that they were capable of using the Word to support whatever they want, especially things that feed their love for themselves and for others they are partial to. I saw them stripped of their clothing, an indication that they had no truths. In that world, clothes are truths.

from True Christianity, Volume 1, Section 228

1. The Word Is not Understandable without a Body of Teaching (Continued)

With the help pf a body of teaching, the Word is not only understood, it shines in our intellect–it is a lampstand with the lamps lit. Then we see much more than we had seen before and understand things we had not understood before. Things that are unclear or out of harmony we either pass by without noticing or we notice and explain in such a way that they harmonize with our body of teaching.

The Word is viewed on the basis pf a given body of teaching and explained along its lines. Our experience of the Christian world testifies to this. All Protestants see the Word through their body of teaching and use it to explain the Word. So do all Roman Catholics. Jews do likewise. A body of false teaching yields false beliefs, and a body of true teaching yields true beliefs. Clearly then, a body of true teaching is like an oil lamp in the dark and a signpost on a roadway.

from True Christianity, Volume 1, Section 227

1. The Word Is not Understandable without a Body of Teaching (Continued)

Jesus says, “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; if you keep knocking it will be opened” ( Matthew 7:7-8; 21:21-22). Without a body of teaching, people might believe that we are all going to receive whatever we ask of anyone. On the basis of a body of teaching, however, we know that it is whatever we ask of the Lord that we will be given. The Lord in fact teaches this: “If you live in me and my words live in you, ask for whatever you want and it will be done for you” (John 15:7).

The Lord says, “Blessed are the poor, for theirs is the kingdom of God” (Luke 6:20). Without a body of teaching, we might think that heaven is for the poor but not for rich. A body of teaching instructs us that this means the poor in spirit, for the Lord says, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of the heavens” (Matthew 5:3).

Furthermore, the Lord says, “To avoid being judged, do not judge. The judgment you use to judge others will be used on you” (Matthew 7:1-2; Like 6:37). Without a body of teaching we could be convinced that we should not judge that an evil person is evil. On the basis of a body of teaching, however, we are allowed to judge as long as we do it justly. For the Lord says, “Judge with just judgment” (John 7:24).

Jesus says, “Do not be called teacher, because your teacher is the One, the Christ. Do not call anyone on earth your father, for your father is the One in the heavens. Do not call governors, for your governor is the One, the Christ” (Matthew 23:8-10). Without a body of teaching we might think we were forbidden to call anyone teacher, father, or governor. From a body of teaching, however, we come to know that doing this is acceptable in its earthly meaning, although it is not acceptable in its spiritual meaning.

Jesus said to his disciples, “When the Son of Humankind sits on the throne of his glory, you too will sit on twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel” (Matthew 19:28). On the basis of these words we might conclude that the Lord’s disciples were going to judge people when in fact the disciples could not judge anyone. A body of teaching unveils the secret when it teaches that the Lord alone, who is omniscient and knows the hearts of all, is going to be the judge and is able to judge. His twelve disciples mean all the forms of goodness and truth that the church has received from the Lord through the Word. On this basis a body of teaching concludes that these forms of goodness and truth are going to judge everyone, as the Lord says in John 3:17-18; 12:47-48.

There are many other situations like these in the Word. From them it is perfectly obvious that the Word is not understandable without a body of teaching.

from True Christianity, Volume 1, Section 226 (Continued)

1. The Word Is not Understandable without a Body of Teaching,

because the Word’s literal meaning consists entirely of correspondences whose function is to allow spiritual and heavenly things to coexist in it and every word to be a container and a support for these spiritual and heavenly contents. Therefore in the literal meaning divine truths are rarely naked; instead they are clothed and are called apparent truths. There are many things in the literal meaning that are adapted to the grasp of simple people who do not lift their thoughts above the kind of things they see before their eyes. Some things seem like contradictions, although when the Word is viewed in its own spiritual light there is no contradiction. Furthermore, in some passages in the Prophets there are collections of names of people and places from which no meaning can be extracted. Since this is the nature of the Word’s literal meaning, it is clear that it cannot be understood without a body of teaching.

Examples may illustrate. We read that Jehovah relents (Exodus 32:12, 14; Jonah 3:9, 4:2); and we also read that Jehovah does not relent (Number 23:19; 1 Samuel 15:29). These passages cannot be reconciled without a body of teaching. We read that Jehovah inflicts parents’ sins on their children to the third and fourth generation (Number 14:18). Yet we also read that parents are not to die because of their children nor children because of their parents, but all die in their own sin (Deuteronomy 24:16). A body of teaching brings these passages out of disharmony into harmony.

from True Christianity, Volume 1, Section 226

The Church’s Body of Teaching Has to Be Drawn from the Word’s Literal Meaning and Supported by It

The preceding part of this chapter showed that the Word is complete, holy, and powerful in the literal meaning. Because the Lord is the Word and is the First and the Last, as he says in Revelation 1:17, it follows that the Lord is most present in the literal meaning. From it he teaches and enlightens us. These thoughts need to be put forward in the following sequence:

1. The Word is not understandable without a body of teaching
2. A body of teaching has to be drawn from the Word’s literal meaning
3. Nevertheless, the divine truth needed for a body of teaching becomes manifest only to those who have enlightenment from the Lord.

from True Christianity, Volume 1, Section 225

8. The Word Has Indescribable Power

Nowadays scarcely anyone knows that there is any power in truths. People think that the truth is just something spoken by someone in authority, so it needs to be done; they think the truth is only like a breath from someone’s mouth and a sound in someone’s ear. Actually, truth and goodness are the origin of all things in both worlds, the spiritual and physical. Truth and goodness are the means by which the universe was created and by which it is preserved. They are the means by which people were created. The two of them are everything to all things.

The Gospel of John openly states that the universe was created by divine truth: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God. All created things were made by it. The world was made by it” (John 1:1, 3, 10). David says, “The heavens were made by the Word of Jehovah” (Psalms 33:6). In each of these passages “the Word” means divine truth. Since the universe was created by divine truth, the universe is also preserved by divine truth, since preservation is an ongoing creation, just as continuing to exist is the same as perpetually coming into being.

We human beings were made by divine truth, because all aspects of us relate to intellect and to will. Our intellect is a vessel for divine truth just as our will is a vessel for divine goodness. Therefore the human mind, consisting as it does of those two primary faculties, is nothing less than a form of divine truth and divine goodness organized both spiritually and physically. The human cerebrum is that form. Since everything in human beings depends on their minds, all the things that constitute their bodies are just appendages that are activated and brought to life by these two primary faculties.

These points make it clear why God came into the world as the Word and became a human being. He did so to redeem humankind. God took on all power through a human manifestation that was divine truth. He took the hells that had risen all the way up to the heavens where the angels were, and he threw them down, brought them under control, and forced them to obey him. This was not done by a verbal “word”; it was done by divine Word, which is divine truth.

Then he opened a great chasm between the hells and the heavens so that no one from hell could cross. If any of them try, at the first step they feel tortured like a snake thrown on a sheet of red hot iron or on a swarm of ants. As soon as devils and satans catch a whiff of divine truth, they immediately dive headlong into the depths, hurl themselves into caves, and seal them up so completely that not a crack is left open. The reason is that their wills have evil desires and their intellects have false beliefs. They therefore have the opposites of divine goodness and divine truth. Because, as I say, everything in human beings depends on these two primary structures of life, divine truth affects devils and satans profoundly and violently from head to toe.

You can see from this that the power of divine truth is indescribable. Since the Word that the Christian church has is a three-leveled container for divine truth, it is obvious that this Word is what is meant in John 1:3, 10.

The power if the Word is indescribable. I could support this point with many pieces of evidence I have experienced in the spiritual world; but since these would stagger belief, I will forgo any listing of them here. You can see some of them mentioned in Section 209 above.

On the basis of the points just made, I will, however, make this assertion: A church that has divine truths from the Lord has power over the hells. This is the church the Lord was talking about when he said to Peter, “On this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it” (Matthew 16:18). The Lord said these words after Peter proclaimed that Christ was the Son of the living God (Matthew 16:16). The “rock” in this passage means this very truth. In fact, everywhere in the Word a “rock” means the Lord’s divine truth.

from True Christianity, Volume 1, Section 224

7. The Nazirites Represented the Power of the Word in Its Outermost Form

In the book of Judges we read about Samson. He was a Nazirite from his mother’s womb. His hair was the source of his strength. A Nazirite and a Naziriteship in fact mean “hair.” Samson himself showed that his hair was the source of his strength when he said,

No razor has come upon my head, because I am a Nazirite from my mother’s womb. If I am shaved, my strength will leave me and I will become weak and be like any other person. (Judges 16:17)

Without knowing what a “head” means in the Word, we cannot imagine why a Naziriteship that means “hair” would be instituted or why Samson’s hair would be the source of his strength. A head means the intelligence that angels and people have from the Lord through divine truth. Hair, then, means intelligence because of divine truth on the lowest or outermost level. Since this was the meaning of hair, it was a rule for the Nazirites that they were not to shave the hair on their head, because it was the Naziriteship of God on their head (Numbers 6:1-21).

There was also a rule that the high priest and his sons were not to shave their heads, or they would die and wrath would come upon the entire house of Israel (Leviticus 10:6). Hair was so holy because if its meaning (which comes from its correspondence) that even the hair of the Son of Humankind (that is, the Lord in his role as the Word) is described. It was as shining white as wool, like snow (Revelation 1:14). The Ancient of Days is described as having similar hair (Daniel 7:9).

Since hair means truth on the outermost levels and therefor means the literal meaning of the Word, we become bald in the spiritual world if we the despise Word. On the other hand, if we value the Word highly and hold it as sacred, we will have good-looking hair in that world.

This correspondence is the reason why forty-two youths were torn apart by two she-bears for calling Elisha Bald (2 Kings 2:23-24). Elisha represented the church’s teaching from the Word. The she-bears stood for the power of truth on the outermost levels.

The power of divine truth or of the Word exists in its literal meaning because at that level the Word is complete, and people and angels of each of the Lord’s kingdoms share in it together.

from True Christianity, Volume 1, Section 223