§77 angels are human 41
h. All angels, being recipients of divine order from the Lord, are in a human form whose perfec-
tion and beauty are proportional to their receptivity: 322 , 1880 , 1881 , 3633 , 3804 , 4622 , 4735 , 4797 ,
4985 , 5199 , 5530 , 6054 , 9879 , 10177 , 10594. Divine truth is the means of order and divine good is
the essence of order: 2451 , 3166 , 4390 , 4409 , 5232 , 7256 , 10122 , 10555.
spiritual world while everything bodily is in the natural world. Like sees
like because it is of like substance. Further, the body’s visual organ, the
eye, is so crude that as everyone knows it does not even see the smaller
elements of nature without a lens, much less things that are above the
sphere of nature, as are all the realities of the spiritual world. These can
be seen by us, though, when we are released from bodily sight and the
sight of our spirit is opened. This happens instantly when it pleases the
Lord that we should see. It then seems to us exactly as though we were
seeing with our bodily eyes. This is how angels were seen by Abraham,
Lot, Manoah, and the prophets. This is how the Lord was seen by the
disciples after the resurrection. This is the same way, too, in which I have
seen angels.
Because this was how the prophets saw, they are called “seers” and
“ones whose eyes are opened” ( 1 Samuel 9 : 9 ; Numbers 23 : 3 [ 24 : 3 ]); and
the act of enabling them to see this way is called “opening the eyes.” This
is what happened to Elisha’s servant, of whom we read, “Elisha prayed,
‘Jehovah, open his eyes, I pray, so that he may see,’ and as Jehovah
opened the eyes of his servant, behold the mountain was full of horses
and fi ery chariots surrounding Elisha” ( 2 Kings 6 : 17 ).
Some honest spirits I talked with about this were distressed at heart 77
that there was such ignorance in the church about the state of heaven
and about spirits and angels. They kept insisting that I should take back
the message that they were not formless minds or ethereal breath but
human in form, and that they saw and heard and felt just as much as
people in this world do.h