AR 510 [1, 2]
But after the three and a half days
the breath of life from God entered them,
and they stood on their feet.
(Revelation 11:11)
Three and a half days means,
symbolically,
at the end and then the beginning,
thus at the end of the church still existing
and the beginning of a new one,
here the beginning of the church
in people in whom the New Church
commences and grows . . ..
The breath of life from God
symbolizes spiritual life,
and standing on their feet symbolizes
natural life in harmony with spiritual life,
and thus one made living by the Lord.
This is the symbolic meaning
because the breath of life refers to
a person's inner being, called his inner self,
which regarded in itself is spiritual.
For it is a person's spirit that thinks and wills,
and to think and will is, in itself, a spiritual activity.
Standing on the feet symbolizes
a person's outer being, called his outer self,
which in itself is natural.
For it is the body that says and does
what the spirit in it thinks and wills,
and to speak and act is a natural activity.
. . . Everyone
who is reformed is reformed first
in respect to his inner self,
and afterward in respect to his outer self.
The inner self is
reformed,
not by simply knowing and understanding
the truths and
goods by which a person is saved,
but by willing and loving
them,
and the outer self by saying and doing
what the inner self
wills and loves.
To the extent the outer self does this,
then,
to the same extent the person is regenerated.
He is not
regenerated prior to that
because before then his inner self
is
not present in the effect,
but subsists only in the cause,
and
unless a cause has an effect,
it dissipates.
It is like a house
founded on a field of ice,
a house that sinks to the bottom
when
the sun melts the ice.
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