116. I have been granted to see peoples born on islands who were rational as regards civic matters, but who knew nothing at all of God. In the spiritual world they look like apes and lead a life almost like that of apes. But because they were born human beings, and so into the ability to receive spiritual life, they are instructed by angels and given new life through concepts of God as a man.

What a person is like on his own is clearly apparent from people in hell, who have among them some clerics and learned who are unwilling even to hear of God and therefore cannot even mention God. I have seen them and spoken with them. And I have also spoken with some who responded with the fire of anger and wrath when they heard someone speaking about God.

[2] Consider, then, what a person would be like if he was told nothing of God, when some people are as described who have heard about God, written about God, and preached about God. Many of the Jesuits are of that character.

They are of such a character because they are prompted by a will that is evil, and, as we said before, this steers the intellect and expels any truth that it has in it from the Word.

If people could have known on their own of the existence of God and life after death, why have they not known that a person remains a person after death? Why have they supposed that his soul or spirit is like a puff of wind or the ether, which has no eyes with which to see, or ears with which to hear, or mouth with which to speak, until it is united to and combines with its corpse and skeleton?

Imagine then a doctrine for use in worship hatched from rational sight alone. Would it not be people themselves who were worshiped, as has been the case from days of old and is the case today by those who know from the Word that God alone is to be worshiped? No other worship can come of a person’s native self, not even worship of the sun or moon.

4. Lest people remain in doubt, therefore, that such is the nature of the Word, the Lord has revealed to me the internal meaning of the Word, one that in its essence is spiritual, which is present in the outward, natural meaning, like a soul in its body. That meaning is the spirit which gives life to the letter. Consequently it is that meaning which can testify to the Divinity and holiness of the Word, and convince even the natural man, if he is willing to be convinced.

The Word Contains a Spiritual Meaning, One Previously Unknown

[4 repeated.] This will be discussed according to the following outline:

1. What the spiritual meaning is.

2. The presence of this meaning in each and every particular of the Word.

3. That this is what causes the Word to be Divinely inspired and holy in every word.

4. That this meaning has been previously unknown.

5. And that it is granted after this only to someone who possesses genuine truths from the Lord.