God speaks to us

That ‘God spoke to Noah’ means the Lord’s presence with the member of the Church becomes clear from the internal sense of the Word. The Lord speaks to everybody, for whatever good and truth a person wills and thinks comes from the Lord. With everyone there are at least two evil spirits and two angels. The former activate his evils whereas the latter instill goods and truths. Every good or truth that angels instill is the Lord’s; in this way the Lord is constantly speaking to man, though quite differently from one person to the next. To people who allow themselves to be carried away by evil spirits the Lord speaks as though He were not present, or so far away that He can hardly be said to be speaking. But to those who are being led by the Lord, the Lord speaks as one who is quite present. This becomes clear enough from the fact that nobody can possibly think of anything good and true except from the Lord.

[2] The Lord’s presence is relative to the state of love towards the neighbour and of faith present in a person. It is in love towards the neighbour that the Lord is present, for He is present in all good, and not so much in so-called faith that is devoid of love. Faith devoid of love and charity is something severed or disjoined. Wherever conjunction exists there has to be a conjoining agency, which is exclusively love and charity. This may become clear to anyone from the fact that the Lord has compassion on everybody, loves everyone, and wishes to make everyone eternally happy. A person therefore who is devoid of the kind of love that leads him to have compassion on others, to love them, and to wish to make them happy, cannot be joined to the Lord because he is not at all like Him, and is in no sense the image of Him. Looking to the Lord by means of that which goes by the name of faith while hating the neighbour amounts not only to standing a long way off, but also to having between himself and the Lord a hell-like chasm into which the person would fall if he wished to go any nearer. For it is hatred towards the neighbour that constitutes that intervening hell-like chasm.

[3] The Lord is present with a person the moment he starts to love the neighbour. It is in love that the Lord is present, and to the extent that a person has love the Lord is present. And to the extent that the Lord is present He speaks to man. No one knows anything other than that he thinks from himself. Yet he possesses not one single idea of thought, not even the shred of an idea, from himself. Rather that which is evil and false he possesses through evil spirits from hell, and that which is good and true through angels from the Lord. Such is influx, the channel by which a person’s life comes and by which consequently his soul interacts with the body. All these considerations make clear what ‘God spoke to Noah’ means. ‘Saying to someone’ means one thing, as in Gen. 1:29; 3:13, 14, 17; 4:6, 9, 15; 6:13; 7:1, while ‘speaking to someone’ means another. Here speaking to Noah’ means His being present, for the subject now is the regenerate person, who has had charity conferred on him. (AC 904)

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The nature of the Word

the Word of the Lord is such that wherever it treats of one person, it treats of all men, and of every individual, with a difference according to the disposition of each: this being the universal sense of the Word (AC 838)

The Nature of Persuasions

All these [affections for what is false, affections for what is evil, pleasures, bodily and earthly things] are within such persuasions; and not only in the persuasions in general, but also in the most individual or least things of the persuasions, in which things corporeal and earthly predominate. If man should know how much there is within one principle and one persuasion of what is false, he would shudder. It is a kind of image of hell. But if it be from innocence or from ignorance, the falsities therein are easily shaken off. (AC 803.2)

Importance of knowing the truth

What is more pleasing than to live after the flesh, and yet be saved if only one knows what is true, though he does nothing of good? Every cupidity (lust, evil desire) that a man favors forms the life of his will, and every principle or persuasion of falsity forms the life of his understanding. These lives make one when the truths or doctrinals of faith are immersed in cupidities. Every man thus forms for himself as it were a soul, and such after death does his life become. Nothing therefore is of more importance to a man than to know what is true. When he knows what is true, and knows it so well that it cannot be perverted, then it cannot be so much immersed in cupidities and have such deadly effect. What should a man have more at heart than his life to eternity? If in the life of the body he destroys his soul, does he not destroy it to eternity? (AC 794.2)