surround those prior atmospheres the way a nutshell surrounds a kernel
or the inner bark of a tree surrounds the wood. Finally, through these
atmospheres the globe of lands and seas was created. Here people, ani-
mals, and fish, and trees, bushes, and plants were created out of earthly
materials consisting of soils, stones, and minerals.
[ 4 ] “This is only a very general sketch of creation and its stages. The
particular and individual stages could not be explained without filling
volumes of books. They would all come to the following conclusion,
though: that God did not create the universe out of nothing. As you said,
nothing is made out of nothing. God created the universe through the
sun in the angelic heaven—a sun that comes from his underlying reality
and is therefore pure love together with wisdom. The universe, meaning
both worlds (the spiritual and the physical), was created out of divine love
through divine wisdom, as every single thing in it witnesses and attests. If
you consider phenomena in the universe in a coherent and sequential way
and set them in the light you already possess in your intellectual percep-
tions, you will see this clearly.
“You must keep in mind, though, that the love and the wisdom that
become one in God are not love and wisdom in the abstract. Think of
them as a substance in him. God is the absolute, the first, and the only
substance or essence that exists in itself and subsists of itself.
[ 5 ] “That everything is created out of divine love and wisdom is the
meaning of the following words in John: ‘The Word was with God, and
the Word was God. All things were made by it, and the world was made
by it’ (John 1 : 1 , 3 , 10 ). God there means divine love and the Word means
divine truth or divine wisdom. In that passage the Word is called light.
Light, when it is said of God, means divine wisdom.”
After this, as I was saying goodbye, sparkles of light from the sun in
that world came down through the angelic heavens into their eyes, and
passed through their eyes into the dwellings of their minds. Enlightened
in this way, they expressed agreement with what I had said. Afterward
they accompanied me out to the entrance. My companion from before
journeyed with me to the house where I was, and then went back up to
his community.
The second memorable occurrence.Early one day, after I had emerged 77
from sleep but was still not fully awake, I was meditating in the light of
the cloudless morning, when through the window I saw something like
lightning flashing and heard something like a peal of thunder. As I was
wondering what was going on, I heard from heaven that there were some
§77 god the creator & creation 103