Then people began talking to me from heaven, saying, “You know
what the harbor represents, and also the boats, and the boys and girls on
them. You don’t know what the sea turtles represent.”
They continued, “The sea turtles represent members of the clergy in
the spiritual world who keep their faith completely separate from goodwill
and its good works. Inwardly in themselves they assert that there is obvi-
ously no connection between faith and goodwill; instead the Holy Spirit
enters into us through our faith in God the Father on account of the Son’s
merit and purifies our inner levels, including our will. As they see it, the
human will is like an oval plane. When the action of the Holy Spirit comes
near that plane, it veers around it to the left without touching it at all. The
inner or higher part of the human character, then, belongs to God, while
the outer or lower part is all our own. Nothing that we do appears before
God—either good or evil. The good things we do don’t appear, because we
do them to earn merit; and the evil things we do don’t appear, because
they are evil. If our doings did appear before God, we would perish on
both counts. Therefore we are allowed to intend, think, speak, and do
whatever we want as long as we are careful before the world.”
[ 3 ] I asked, “Is it acceptable to them to think about God as not being
omnipresent or omniscient?”
The people from heaven said, “This is also acceptable as far as they
are concerned, because if people have developed faith and have been
purified and justified as a result, God doesn’t see through to anything
they think or intend. Such people keep in the inner core or higher region
of their mind or character the faith that they originally accepted when
they experienced the purifying operation of faith. Those spirits believe
that sometimes the purifying operation of faith can come to us again
without our knowing it.
“These beliefs are represented by the small headthey pull into the
front of their body or else insert into the large headwhen they are talking
to lay people. They don’t use their small head to talk to lay people. They
use the large one that looks like it has something of a human face on the
front of it. They base their conversation with lay people on the Word,
discussing love, goodwill, good works, the Ten Commandments, and
repentance. From the Word they quote practically everything it has to
say on these subjects. Then they insert the small head into the large one.
In their small head, they privately believe that all the things just men-
tioned don’t have to be done for God’s sake or for the sake of salvation,
but just for the sake of public and private benefit.
singke
(singke)
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