The Prophetical Books: 1. Internal Meaning of Isaiah, Chapter 1 (1)

1-8 The church has been vastated by evil of life, (3)

9 so that there is little of a residue. (3)

10-15 Therefore their external worship is of no avail. (3)

16-19 Exhortation that they should repent of the evil of life, and thus they will receive good. (3)

20-23 They falsify the Word. (3)

24-27 The Lord when He comes will destroy them, and will establish the church with others; (1, 11)

28-31 This when nothing of the church remains with them. (3)

96. We said that it is harmful to affirm the apparent truth of the Word to the point of destroying the genuine truth that lies concealed within, and that is because each and every particular in the Word’s literal sense communicates with heaven and opens it, in conformity with what we said in nos. 62-69 above.

So then, when a person uses that sense to justify worldly loves in opposition to heavenly loves, the inner meaning of the Word is falsified. And as a result, when that outer meaning or literal sense, whose inner meaning is false, communicates with heaven, it then closes heaven. For the angels who are present in the Word’s inner meaning reject the falsified meaning.

It is apparent from this that inner falsity or truth falsified takes away communication with heaven and closes it.

This is why it is harmful to affirm some heretical falsity.

96. [repeated]. The Word is like a garden, one rightly called a heavenly paradise, which contains delights to the tongue and to the eye and nose — delights to the tongue in its fruits and delights to the eye and nose in its flowers — with trees of life at its center by gushing springs of water. But surrounding the garden is a forest of trees.

A person guided by Divine truths in accordance with doctrine resides in the center where the trees of life are and experiences in fact the delicacies and delights of the garden.

In contrast, a person not guided by truths in accordance with doctrine, but who focuses on the literal sense alone, resides on the periphery and sees only the forest and its trees.

But someone caught up in the doctrine of a false religion, who has affirmed in himself the falsity of it, resides not even in the forest, but in a sandy plain round about, devoid even of grass.

That such are the states after death of the people described is something we will establish in its proper place.

61. I have been granted to see many people after death who believed they would shine like stars in the sky, because, as they said, they had held the Word holy, read it often, took much from it, used it to affirm the dogmas of their faith, and because of that were celebrated in the world as learned. They believed that on that account they would be Michaels and Raphaels.

[2] But many of them were examined to discover what love prompted them to study the Word, and some were found to have done so out of a love of self, in order to appear great in the world and be worshiped as leaders of the church, and some out of a love of the world, in order to gain riches. When they were examined to discover what they knew from the Word, they were found to know nothing of any genuine truth from it, but only the kind of truth that we call truth falsified, which in itself is false. Moreover, they were told that this was the case with them because they had themselves and the world as their goals — in other words, what they loved — and not the Lord or heaven. And when self and the world are the goals, then when people read the Word, their minds remain fixed on themselves and the world, and as a consequence they think continually in terms of their own self-interest, which is in darkness as regards anything having to do with heaven. A person in this state cannot be withdrawn by the Lord from his self-interest and so be raised into the light of heaven, and so neither can he receive any influx from the Lord through heaven.

[3] I have also seen people like this admitted into heaven; but when they were found there to be without truths, they were cast down. Yet even so the conceit remained in them that they were deserving of heaven.

A different experience befell people who had studied the Word out of an affection to know the truth because it was true, and because it fostered useful life endeavors, not only their own, but also the neighbor’s. I have seen them raised into heaven and so into the light that surrounds Divine truth there, and they were raised at the same time into angelic wisdom, and into its felicity, which is eternal life.