True Christian Religion (Ager) n. 613

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613. He who knows the relation between heaven and hell, and how the one is removed from the other, can know how man is regenerated, and also what the regenerate man is. That this may be understood it shall be made known briefly that the faces of all who are in heaven look toward the Lord, while all who are in hell turn their faces from the Lord; therefore when hell is looked at from heaven, only the occiput and back appear; and those there even appear inverted, like the antipodes, feet upward and heads down, and this although they walk upon their feet and turn their faces around; for it is the contrary direction of their minds' interiors that produces this appearance. These remarkable facts I report from my own observation. They made clear to me how regeneration is effected, namely, just as hell is removed and thus separated from heaven. For, as stated above, as to his first nature which he has by birth, man is a hell in miniature, and as to the other nature which he acquires by the second birth, he is a heaven in miniature. And from this it follows that the evils in man are removed and separated in the same manner as heaven and hell in their large form are separated, and that evils, as they are removed, turn themselves away from the Lord, and gradually invert themselves, and that this takes place in the degree that heaven is implanted, that is, that man is made new. To this may be added, for the sake of illustration, that every evil in man is in conjunction with those in hell who are in like evil, and on the other hand that every good in man is in conjunction with those in heaven who are in like good.


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