Heaven and its Wonders and Hell by Emanuel Swedenborg
page 59 of 570 (10%)
page 59 of 570 (10%)
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churches, whether sculptured or painted, are always depicted as men.
In respect to this insight from heaven they said that it is the Divine flowing into such as are in the good of faith and life. {Footnote 1} Unless man is raised above the sense-conceptions of the external man he has very little wisdom (n. 5089). The wise man thinks above these sense-conceptions (n. 5089, 5094). When man is raised above these, he comes into clearer light, and finally into heavenly light (n. 6183, 6313, 6315, 9407, 9730, 9922). Elevation and withdrawal from these was known to the ancients (n. 6313). 75. From all my experience, which is now of many years, I am able to say and affirm that angels are wholly men in form, having faces, eyes, ears, bodies, arms, hands, and feet; that they see and hear one another, and talk together, and in a word lack nothing whatever that belongs to men except that they are not clothed in material bodies. I have seen them in their own light, which exceeds by many degrees the noonday light of the world, and in that light all their features could be seen more distinctly and clearly than the faces of men are seen on the earth. It has also been granted me to see an angel of the inmost heaven. He had a more radiant and resplendent face than the angels of the lower heavens. I observed him attentively, and he had a human form in all completeness. 76. But it must be remembered that a man cannot see angels with his bodily eyes, but only with the eyes of the spirit within him,{1} because his spirit is in the spiritual world, and all things of the |
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