118 HEAVEN and HELL §228
what it intends. It even bestows energy at will. Our intention and dis-
cernment are governed by the Lord through angels and spirits; and since
this is true of our intention and discernment, it is true of all aspects of
our bodies because these latter come from the former. Believe it or not,
we cannot move a step without the infl ow of heaven.
I have been shown that this is true by a great deal of experience.
Angels have been allowed to activate my walking, my actions, my tongue,
and my conversation as they wished, by fl owing into my intention and
thinking, and I learned at fi rst hand that I could do nothing on my own.
They told me later that everyone is governed in this way, and that we
might learn this from the doctrine of the church and from the Word. We
actually pray that God will send his angels who may lead us, guide our
steps, teach us, and inspire us as to what we should think and say, and so
on—this even though we talk and believe quite differently in our private
thoughts apart from doctrine.
These things have been mentioned to illustrate the kind of power
angels have with us.229 In the spiritual world angels have so much power that if I were to
highlight everything I have seen, it would strain credulity. If anything
there is in the way and needs to be removed because it is opposed to the
divine design, they raze and overturn it simply by an effort of will and a
look. So I have seen mountains that were the abode of evil people leveled
and overturned, sometimes shaken from end to end as happens in our
earthquakes. I have seen cliffs split down the middle right to the bottom
and the evil people on them swallowed up. I have also seen angels scatter
some hundreds of thousands of evil spirits and cast them into hell. A vast
multitude is powerless against them. The skills and wiles and alliances of
evil spirits amount to nothing. Angels see everything and dispel it
instantly. But there is more about this in the story of Babylon destroyed.
They do have this kind of power in the spiritual world.
The Word, too, shows that angels have power like this in the natural
world when it is granted them. For example, they are said to have brought
death upon whole armies, to have brought about a plague that killed sev-
enty thousand people. We read of this latter angel:
The angel stretched out a hand against Jerusalem to destroy it; but
Jehovah, repenting of his evil, said to the angel who was destroying the
people, It is enough, now hold back your hand: and David saw the
angel who was striking the people. ( 2 Samuel 24 : 15 , 16 , 17 )among other passages.