Apocalypse Explained, volume 1 - Swedenborg Foundation

APOCALYPSE EXPLAINED 139which is exhibited, in a form visible before the eye, that which themind wills and thinks. This is why those external things herementioned, “works,” “toil,” and “endurance,” signify willing,thinking, and consequent doing, or what is the same, loving,believing, and consequent presenting in act. But still these thingsare not comprehensible, unless it is also known that man has twofaculties, called will and understanding, and that these two facultiesare called by the one term “mind”; also that man has an internaland an external—an internal in the light of the spiritual world, andan external in the light of the natural world. (The will and theunderstanding are treated of in Doctrine of the New Jerusalem, n.28–35; and the internal and the external man, n. 36–52.) Whenthis is understood, it may be known that by “works,” in thespiritual sense, is meant everything that man wills and loves, and by“toil” everything that man thinks or believes, and by “endurance”everything that man does from these.[2] But leaving these matters, as being, perhaps, too little knownabout and therefore too obscure to be clearly apprehended, let usadvance to this point only, that by “works,” in the spiritual sense,are meant all things that are of man’s will or love; and this, for thereason that in what follows as to the seven churches, it iseverywhere said first, “I know thy works”; as in these verses:To the angel of the church of the Smyrneans write: These thingssaith the first and the last, I know thy works, and affliction, and poverty(Rev. 2:8–9);To the angel of the church in Pergamum write: These things saithhe that hath the two-edged sword, I know thy works, and where thoudwellest (Rev. 2:12–13);To the angel of the church in Thyatira write: These things saiththe son of God, I know thy works and charity (Rev. 2:18–19);To the angel of the church in Sardis write: These things saith hethat hath the seven spirits of God, I know thy works, that thou art saidto live (Rev. 3:1);