92. The fact that appearances of truth, which are truths clothed, may be seized on from the Word as naked truths, and that when affirmed, they become falsities, may be seen from the many heresies that have existed in the Christian world, and which exist still.

Heresies themselves do not condemn people. An evil life does. And so do affirmations from the Word of the falsities found in any heresy and defended by the reasonings of the natural self.

Everyone, indeed, is born into the religion of his parents, is introduced into it from early childhood, and afterward holds to it, nor is he able to extricate himself from its falsities owing to his dealings in the world.

But to live an evil life, and to affirm falsities to the point that they destroy genuine truth — that is what condemns.

For someone who remains in his religion and believes in God, and in the case of Christianity believes in the Lord, considers the Word holy, and lives in accordance with the Ten Commandments religiously — such a one does not swear to falsities. Consequently, when he hears truths and in some measure perceives their truth, he is able to embrace them and so be extricated from falsities. Not so someone who has affirmed the falsities of his religion, for falsity once affirmed remains and cannot be rooted out. That is because once falsity is affirmed, it is as though the person has sworn to it, especially if it is connected with his self-love and consequent conceit in his own wisdom.

105. We need to explain, however, how the presence of the Lord and heaven and conjunction with them is possible in all lands by means of the Word.

The whole of heaven is, in the Lord’s sight, like a single person. So, too, the church. To be shown that it also actually appears as a person, see the book Heaven and Hell 59-86.

In that person, the church where the Word is read, and where the Lord is consequently known, is like the heart and lungs — the celestial kingdom being as though the heart, and the spiritual kingdom the lungs.

[2] As the heart and lungs are the two founts of life in the human body, and all the rest of the organs and viscera subsist and have life from them, so also do all people in the world subsist and have life from the conjunction of the Lord and heaven with the church through the Word — all those who have any religion, who worship one God and live rightly, who are therefore included in that grand humanity, and who relate to its organs and viscera surrounding the thoracic cavity which contains the heart and lungs. For the Word in the church, even if possessed by relatively few, is life to all the rest from the Lord through heaven, as the organs and viscera of the entire body have life from the heart and lungs. They also have a similar communication.

[3] This, too, is the reason that Christians among whom the Word is read constitute the breast of that grand humanity. They are also at the center of all, with Roman Catholics round about them. Around them are Muslims who acknowledge the Lord as a very great prophet and as the Son of God. After them come Africans. And the outmost periphery is composed of nations and peoples from Asia and the Indies. Regarding the arrangement of these peoples, something more may be seen in the short work The Last Judgment 48.

All those who are in that grand humanity also face toward the middle where the Christians are.