truth itself, as I showed in the chapter on the Lord. Loving the Lord is liv-
ing by his divine truths, that is, doing useful things with those truths, as we
read in the following words in John:
On that day you will recognize that you are in me and I am in you. The
people who love me are the people who have my instructions and fol-
low them. I will love them and will manifest myself to them. I will
come to them and make a home with them. (John 14 : 20 , 21 , 23 )These are the people who are enlightened when they read the Word. For
them the Word shines and becomes translucent.
The Word shines for these people and becomes translucent to them
because the details in the Word have spiritual and heavenly meanings
inside. These meanings are in the light of heaven. The Lord flows through
these meanings and their light into the Word’s earthly meaning and its
light in the people. As a result of this light, the people first acknowledge the
truth with deep perception and then see it in their own thought. This hap-
pens whenever people have a desire for truth because it is true. This desire,
you see, leads to perception, and perception leads to thought. This process
leads to the acknowledgment that is known as faith.
Something opposite to this happens to people who read the Word 232
under a false body of religious teaching, especially if they use the Word to
support their body of teaching and are pursuing their own glory or the
wealth of the world. Under these circumstances the truths in the Word
seem to be in the shadows of night and things that are false seem to be in
the light of day. Such people read truths but do not see them. If they see
the shadow of truths, they falsify those truths. The Lord was referring to
people like this when he said that they have eyes but they do not see; they
have ears, but they do not understand (Matthew 13 : 14 , 15 ). The light in
which they view spiritual things related to the church becomes nothing
but earthly as a result. The things their minds then see are like the ghosts
people sometimes see when just waking up in bed, or like the mistaken
impression sleepwalkers have that they are wide awake.
I have been given the opportunity to talk to many people after death 233
who believed that in heaven they were going to shine like stars because
(so they said) they regarded the Word as holy, read it through many times
over, and collected many passages from it that they used to support the
dogmas of their faith. As a result, they became famous scholars and
believed they were going to become Michaels and Raphaels. Many of
them were examined to learn what love had driven them to study the
Word. Some of them were motivated to study by love for themselves so
§233 sacred scripture 305