§228 angels’ power 117
e. Priests represented the Lord in respect to divine good, kings in respect to divine truth: 2015 ,
6148. So a priest in the Word means people who are attuned to the good of love for the Lord,
and priesthood means that good itself: 9806 , 9809. A king in the Word means people who are
attuned to divine truth, so kingship means what is true from the good: 1672 , 2015 , 2069 , 4575 ,
4581 , 4966 , 5044.
All preachers are appointed by the Lord and therefore enjoy the gift 226
of preaching. No one else is allowed to teach in church.
They are called preachers rather than priests. The reason they are not
called priests is that heaven’s priesthood is the heavenly kingdom, priest-
hood meaning the good of love for the Lord that characterizes the people
in that kingdom. In contrast, heaven’s kingship is the spiritual kingdom,
kingship meaning the truth from what is good that characterizes people
in that kingdom (see above, § 24 ).e
All the doctrines that govern the preaching focus on life as their end, 227
none on faith apart from life. The doctrine of the inmost heaven is more
full of wisdom than that of the intermediate heaven, and this in turn is
more full of intelligence than that of the outmost heaven. The doctrines are
in fact suited to the grasp of the angels of each heaven.
The essential of all the doctrines is the recognition of the Lord’s
divine human.
The Power of Heaven’s Angels
228
P
EOPLE who do not know anything about the spiritual world and its
infl ow into the natural world cannot grasp the fact that angels havepower. They think that angels cannot have power because they are spiri-
tual and so pure and insubstantial that they cannot even be seen by our
eyes. People who probe more deeply into the causes of things, though,
feel otherwise about it. They are aware that all the power we ourselves
have comes from our intellect and volition, since without these we can-
not move the slightest part of our bodies. Intellect and volition are our
spiritual person. This person is what animates the body and its members
at will, for the mouth and tongue say what it thinks and the body does