I have seen angels examining people like this and discovering that
they were capable of using the Word to support whatever they wanted.
The angels also discovered that these people do in fact support whatever
they want, especially things that feed their love for themselves and for
others they are partial to. I saw them stripped of their clothing, an indi-
cation that they had no truths. In that world, clothes are truths.229 2. A body of teaching has to be drawn from the Word’s literal meaning
and supported by it.The reason for this is that the Lord is present, teach-
ing and enlightening, in the Word’s literal meaning. The Lord never
works in an incomplete or partial way, and the literal meaning is where
the Word is complete, as I have shown before. As a result, a body of
teaching has to be drawn from the Word’s literal meaning.
You can draw a complete body of genuinely true teaching from the
Word’s literal meaning. In that meaning the Word is like a clothed per-
son whose face, forearms, and hands are exposed. All the teachings that
relate to our faith and life and therefore our salvation are exposed there.
The other teachings are clothed. Even then, in many passages where the
teachings are clothed they are still visible, as a woman with a thin piece of
silk over her face can still see objects in front of her. In fact, as the truths
in the Word are multiplied and organized by our love for them, they
shine out and become more and more clearly evident.
230 You might think that we could gain a body of genuinely true teaching
by exploring the Word’s spiritualmeaning through the study of corre-
spondences. In fact, a body of teaching is not gained through that mean-
ing; it is only enlightened and corroborated by that meaning, for, as I said
before in § 208 , people who know a few correspondences are capable of
falsifying the Word by connecting and applying correspondences to sup-
port some preconceived idea already lodged in their mind.
For another thing, no one is given the spiritual meaning except by
the Lord alone. The Lord safeguards that meaning as he safeguards the
angelic heaven, for heaven dwells in it.
231 3. The genuine truth in the Word’s literal meaning, the truth that is
needed for a body of teaching, becomes manifest only to those who have enlight-
enment from the Lord.Enlightenment comes from the Lord alone and
affects people who love truths because they are true and who make them
useful in their lives. Other people do not have enlightenment concerning
the Word. Enlightenment comes from the Lord alone because the Word is
from him, and therefore he is in it. Enlightenment comes to people who
love truths because they are true and who make them useful in their lives,
because these people are in the Lord and the Lord is in them. The Lord is