2012. One learns this even better in the case of spirits, because [in the spiritual world] communications take place by spiritual methods, so that one can find out their feelings, and the effects these have on them. Spiritual mental images enable one to look into those feelings, so to speak, and to perceive them. Certain spirits had been angry, and when their anger was covertly removed by a spiritual method, yet there still remained an element of indignation that this had been done and they could not grow angry. Then, by a spiritual method, a little blandishment of their [self-]love was slipped in, a little praise, upon which their angry state of mind was bent into agreeableness, and that anger withdrew. From this case one may infer how, in other respects, the Lord does not break man's longings [Is. 42:3], but bends them, and even at times permits a person to be led along by strong desires that are nevertheless, in a wonderful manner, eventually bent to what is good. 1748, 20 May.
2012[a]. Evil is ascribed to the Lord
Nothing is more common in the Word than that evil such as anger, vengeance, and the like, are ascribed to Jehovah, when yet this is not at all the reality. But the reason for this is that when a person does not know anything beyond the fact that Jehovah rules the universe, not knowing how He permits evils, and countless other such matters, then from this simple, very general and vague idea nothing else follows than the thought that Jehovah does do evil, as we read in many passages of the Word.
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