of these is called the heavenly level, the middle is called the spiritual level,
and the lowest is called the earthly level.
There are people who deny that the Word is holy and that the Lord is
divine; in every case their minds think at the lowest level. Nevertheless,
because these people have learned the church’s spiritual teachings from
early childhood, they accept them, but they put them down below
earthly preoccupations, which are various things having to do with aca-
demics, politics, and the civic and moral arena. Because these preoccupa-
tions sit at the lowest level of their mind, the level that is closest to
speech, these people draw on the church’s spiritual teachings when they
speak in church and at public gatherings. Astoundingly, at the time they
do not even realize that they are speaking and teaching something they do
not believe. Nevertheless, when they are at home and feeling free, the
door that had closed off their inner mind opens up and then they laugh
at their own talk to the crowd. They say in their hearts that theological
teachings are attractive traps for catching doves.148 The inner and outer selves of people like that are like poisons with a
coating of sugar, and like the wild gourds that the servants of the
prophets gathered and put into a stew, but shouted when they ate it,
“There is death in the pot!” ( 2 Kings 4 : 38 – 41 ). These people can also be
likened to the beast from the earth that had two horns like the Lamb but
spoke like a dragon (Revelation 13 : 11 ). Later in the Book of Revelation
that beast is called the false prophet.
These people are like robbers spending time in a city where upright
citizens live. The robbers behave morally and speak rationally while they
are in town, but when they return to the woods they are wild animals. Or
they are like pirates who are humans on land but crocodiles at sea. The
pirates on land and the robbers in the city go around like panthers wear-
ing sheepskins.
These people are like monkeys dressed in human clothing, with a
mask of a human face in front of their own face. They can be likened to
a woman preparing to go out, who puts on perfume, makeup, and a
white silk dress embroidered with flowers; but when she comes home
again, she strips for several lovers and gives them her disease.
This is the nature of those who take holiness away from the Word and
divinity away from the Lord in their hearts, as years of experience in the
spiritual world have allowed me to know. In that world all are kept at first
in their outer selves; but afterward their outer selves are removed and they
shift to their inner selves. At that point their comedy becomes a tragedy.