Chapter 10 (part 11)

At the same time it made one fire out of the combination of the human life-fire and the divine love-fire, and therewith was constituted a true sacrifice of sin and restitution, because the sin was sacrificed to the fire of divine wrath, to be consumed therein." ( Communion , i. 32.) "The sacrifices of the children of God, especially the first fathers after Adam, were nothing but symbols, wherein was represented how the (animal) soul was sacrificed within the wrath-fire of God and transformed therein into a love-fire; that is to say, that she was to enter into a state of death and dying in regard to self-will, and that thus her false willing would be consumed, and that she would issue into a clear light, through the fire p. 223 and by means of the in-spoken grace, and enter into a new birth; not dark, but clear and radiant. Furthermore was it to signify how the poison introduced within the soul by the serpent would have to be eliminated, like the separation of smoke from the fire, so that the latter appears as a clear shining splendour, and no longer imprisoned (latent), as is the case in wood (before it is ignited). Thus the children of God represented to themselves the process of regeneration by means of the sacrifice through fire, and imagined the bruiser of the serpent's head within the fire; how in the fire of the soul He would transform the wrath-fire of God into a fire of light and love, and how the enmity would become separated from the soul, and the soul be transformed into an angel by means of the death of Christ and the entering of the love of God into that fire." ( Baptism , i. 2, 10.) Thus the faithful "Israelites" (the children of light) received, within the blissful covenant and in the flesh of the sacrifice symbolically, the flesh and blood of the Christ. "The soul, that is to say, the mouth of faith within the soul, took in the sweet divine grace at the time of the sacrifice, not as a substance, but in power (spiritually) and in the foreknowledge of future fulfilment, when those powers were to become manifest in the flesh. Thus the body ate of the blessed bread and flesh, wherein was the power of grace, i.e. , the imagination of the covenant. Thus the 'Jews' ate of the flesh of Christ and drank His blood symbolically, for the power had then not yet become flesh and blood; but they enjoyed therein the word of grace that afterwards became human." ( Communion , i. 34.) "The animal flesh which was sacrificed to the Lord and afterwards eaten was sanctified for man, because the imagination of God entered therein, and therefore Moses called it a holy flesh, and there was also a holy bread." ( Communion , i. 33.) Footnotes 198:1 This does not mean to say that any extracosmic God worried or "studied" about finding a method by which he might save mankind; but the "Heart" of God moved, because its own love caused it to move. "God is threefold in His personal aspect, and willed to move three times, according to each of these aspects, but not in eternity. At first there moved the centre of nature in the Father, for the purpose of creating the angels, and through them the world. The second time the quality of the Son moved, whereby the Heart of God became Man, and this will never take place again in eternity; but whenever it now takes place, it will occur merely through this only (universal) Man (Divinity in Humanity), who is God, manifesting Himself through and in many.