42 HEAVEN and HELL §78
It Is Owing to the Lord’s Divine Human
That Heaven, in Its Entirety and in Its Parts,
Refl ects a Person
78
THIS conclusion—that it is owing to the Lord’s divine human that
heaven, in its entirety and in its parts, refl ects a person—follows from
all the things that have been presented in the preceding chapters: ( 1 ) the
Lord is God of heaven [§§ 2 – 6 ]; ( 2 ) it is the Lord’s divine nature that makes
heaven [§§ 7 – 12 ]; ( 3 ) the heavens are made up of countless communities,
and each community is a heaven in smaller form and each angel a heaven
in smallest form [§§ 41 – 58 ]; ( 4 ) the whole heaven, grasped as a single entity,
refl ects a single individual [§§ 59 – 67 ]; ( 5 ) each community in the heav-
ens refl ects a single individual [§§ 68 – 72 ]; ( 6 ) therefore every angel is in per-
fect human form [§§ 73 – 77 ]. All these propositions lead to the conclusion
that because the Divine is what makes heaven, the Divine is human in form.
It may be seen with somewhat greater clarity that this is the Lord’s
divine human from the references to Secrets of Heaven at the close of this
chapter, since this collection provides a condensation. It can also be seen
from these references that the Lord’s human is divine, contrary to the
belief in the church that it is not. This may be seen as well from the
material about the Lord at the close of The New Jerusalem and Its Heav-
enly Teachings.79 The truth of this has been witnessed to me by an abundance of expe-
riences, some of which now follow.
None of the angels in the heavens ever sees the Divine in any form
except the human form. Even more remarkably, angels in the higher
heavens cannot think about what is divine in any other way. They are led
into the necessity of thinking this way because of the essential divine that
is fl owing into them and also because of the form of heaven, which deter-
mines how their thoughts reach out around them. In fact, all the thought
that angels have spreads out in heaven, and they have intelligence and
wisdom in proportion to this outreach. This is why everyone there
acknowledges the Lord, since the divine human exists only in him. I have
not only been told this by angels, I have been allowed to perceive it when
I was raised into a more inward sphere of heaven.