Heaven and Hell - Swedenborg Foundation

HEAVEN AND HELL 63
are born out of the church, and who are ignorant of the Lord
because they do not have the Word, will be described hereafter.
84. That the men of old time had an idea of the Divine as
human is evident from the manifestation of the Divine to
Abraham, Lot, Joshua, Gideon, Manoah and his wife, and
others. These saw God as a man, but nevertheless adored him
as the God of the universe, calling him the God of heaven and
earth, and Jehovah. That it was the Lord who was seen by
Abraham he himself teaches in John 8:56; and that it was he
who was seen by the rest is evident from his words:
No one hath seen the Father, nor heard his voice, nor seen his
form (John 1:18; 5:37).
85. But that God is man can scarcely be comprehended by
those who judge all things from the sense conceptions of the
external man, for the sensual man must needs think of the
Divine from the world and what is therein, and thus of a
Divine and spiritual man in the same way as of a corporeal and
natural man. From this he concludes that if God were a man
he would be as large as the universe; and if he ruled heaven and
earth it would be done through many others, after the manner
of kings in the world. If told that in heaven there is no
extension of space as in the world, he would not in the least
comprehend it. For he that thinks only from nature and its
light must needs think in accord with such extension as appears
before his eyes. But it is the greatest mistake to think in this
way about heaven. Extension there is not like extension in the
world. In the world extension is determinate, and thus
measurable; but in heaven it is not determinate, and thus not
measurable. But extension in heaven will be further treated of
hereafter in connection with space and time in the spiritual
world. Furthermore, everyone knows how far the sight of the
eye extends, namely, to the sun and to the stars, which are so
remote; and whoever thinks deeply knows that the internal
sight, which is of thought, has a still wider extension, and that
a yet more interior sight must extend more widely still. What