SPIRITUAL LIFE AND THE WORD OF GOD - { PT. 26 }

 { PT.  26 } - When such a man after death becomes a spirit he calls anyone a god who is especially powerful; and also himself strives for power that he man be called a god. All the evil have such madness lurking inwardly in their spirit. But when a man thinks from heaven, as he does when evils have been removed, he sees from the light in heaven that there is a God and that He is one. Seeing from light out of heaven is what is meant by influx. ( A.E., n. 954 ). When a man shuns and turns away from evils because they are sins he not only sees from the light of heaven that there is a God and the God is one, but also that God is a Man. For we wishes to see his God, and he is incapable of seeing Him otherwise than as a Man. Thus did the ancients before Abraham and after him see God; thus do the nations in lands outside the church see God from an interior perception, especially those who are interiorly wise although not from knowledges; thus do all little children and youths and simple well-disposed adults see God; and thus do the inhabitants of all earths see God; for they declare that what is invisible, since it does not come into the thought, does not come into faith. The reason of this is that the man who shuns and turns away from evils as sins thinks from heaven, and everyone there, has no other idea of God than that He is a Man; nor can he have any other idea, since the whole heaven is a man in the largest form, and the Divine that goes forth from the Lord is what goes forth from the Lord is what makes heaven; consequently to think otherwise of God than according to that Divine form, which is the human from, is impossible to angles, since angelic thoughts pervade heaven.