gathered there with the purpose of fighting those who are from the
Lord’s new church that is called the New Jerusalem.
“At that spot they have been discussing the church and religion,
although they have no church, because they have no spiritual truth, and
they have no religion, because they have no spiritual goodness. They
have been discussing the church and religion with their mouths and
lips, but only with the purpose of using the church and religion to dom-
inate [others].
[ 2 ] “In early adulthood they learned to sanction faith alone and
learned something about God. When they were promoted to higher-
ranking positions in the church, they held on to what they had learned
for a while. Then they gradually ceased thinking about God or heaven,
and instead began thinking about themselves and the world. They did
not think about blessedness or happiness in eternity; they thought about
prominence and wealth in time. They moved the teachings they had been
attracted to in early adulthood out of the inner realms of their rational
mind—realms that communicate with heaven and are in heaven’s light.
They drove them instead into the outer realms of their rational mind—
realms that communicate with the world and are in the world’s light. In
the final stage they pushed those teachings down to the realm of their
physical senses. For them the teachings of the church became the exclu-
sive property of their lips; those teachings were no longer part of their
thinking on the basis of reason, let alone part of their feelings of love. As
a result, they do not now let in any divine truth that is part of the church
or any genuine goodness that is part of religion.
“The inner realms of their mind have become like beakers full of iron
filings mixed with powdered sulfur. If water is poured in the beakers, first
there is increasing heat and then there is fire, which breaks the beakers.
Likewise, when they hear living water, which is the genuine truth in the
Word, and it goes into their ears, they burst violently into flames and
expel it as something that is about to break their heads.
[ 3 ] “These are the people who looked to you like monkeys riding
backward on red horses and black horses with the reins around their own
necks. Those who have no love for the truth or the goodness from the
Word that belong to the church want to see the back, not the front, of a
horse. A horse means one’s understanding of the Word. A red horse means
an understanding of the Word that has lost its goodness. A black horse
means an understanding of the Word that has lost its truth. Those people
were uttering battle cries against riders on white horses because a white
§113 the lord the redeemer & redemption 159