Afterlife: A Guided Tour of Heaven and Its Wonders - Swedenborg ...

AFTERLIFE
to them. The Lord does appear in a divine angelic form,
which is a human form, to people who acknowledge and
trust in a visible Divine Being, but not to people who
acknowl edge and trust in an invisible Divine Being. The
former can see the Lord’s divine [form], but the latter
cannot.
Since heaven in its entirety and in its parts does reflect
a person because of the Lord’s divine human, angels say
that they are “in the Lord” and even that they are “in his
body,” meaning that they are in the very substance of his
love. This is also what the Lord is teaching us when he
says, “Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot
bear fruit on its own unless it abides in the vine, so neither
can you unless you abide in me; for without me you can do
nothing. Abide in my love. If you keep my precepts, you
will abide in my love” (John 15:4–10).
Since this is how the Divine Being is perceived in the
heavens, it is instinctive in everyone who accepts any
inflow from heaven to think of the Lord in a human guise.
The ancients did so and even modern people do, both
outside and inside the church. Simple people see him in
thought as an ancient one, in glory.
But this instinct has been stifled by all the people who
have distanced themselves from the heavenly inflow by
pride in their own intelligence and by evil lives. The ones
who have stifled it by pride in their intelligence prefer an
invisible God, while the ones who have done so by evil
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