Sunday, April 13, 2014

AC 10146 - the Lord's presence & the turning of the world

AC 10146
The Lord is indeed present with every person,
but He is present with the good in one way,
and with the evil in another;
with the good He is present in every particular they think
from the truths of faith,
and which they will from the good of love;
and He is so present that He Himself is faith,
and He Himself is love with them;
consequently He is as if dwelling in them,
according to the words of the Lord Himself in John:

The Spirit of truth shall abide with you,
and shall be in you,
and you shall know that I am in My Father,
and you in Me, and I in you.
He that has My commandments and does them,
he it is that loves Me;
and We will come unto him,
and make Our abode with him.
(John 14:17, 18, 20, 21, 23)

But with the evil the Lord is not present in every particular,
because they have no faith or charity;
but He is present in general,
by which presence they have the faculty of thinking and willing,
and also of receiving faith and charity;
but only insofar as they desist from evils.
Insofar as they do not desist from evils He appears absent;
and the degrees of His absence are according to
the absence of the truth and good of faith and of love.
Thus they who are in heaven are in the presence of the Lord,
but they who are in hell are in His absence. 

Nevertheless the fact is
that the Lord is not absent from a person,
but a person is absent from the Lord . . . .
This closely resembles the presence of the sun of this world
in respect to its light and heat;
the sun is equally present at all times;
but when the earth turns itself from the sun,
the light perishes, and shade comes on;
first the shade of evening,
and then the shade of night.
And when the earth does not look directly to the sun,
but obliquely, as in the time of winter,
the heat perishes, and cold comes on,
in consequence of which
all things of the earth become torpid and die.
This is also called the absence of the sun,
when nevertheless it is the absence of the earth from the sun -
not as to space, but as to the state of light and heat.

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