Apocalypse Explained: 151-200

This is an excerpt from Emanuel Swedenborg's *Apocalypse Explained* (1757–59), a verse-by-verse spiritual commentary on the Book of Revelation within the tradition of Swedenborg's distinctive Christian mystical theology. The passage argues that the "Son of Man" in Revelation refers to God's Divine Human form — the incarnate Christ — and that this form is the essential foundation of the church, because the Divine in its absolute, formless state is too transcendent to be grasped by human thought or feeling. Swedenborg contends that human cognition inherently requires a human shape to anchor its conception of God, and that those who worship an abstract, formless divinity inevitably drift toward pantheism or atheism, while those who worship the Divine in human form have their thoughts "determined" toward God and, after death, turn toward the Lord who appears as a sun in the spiritual world. A distinctive claim is that this need to conceive of God humanly is not cultural but innate — implanted in all people universally, with cross-references to Swedenborg's accounts of inhabitants of other planets who also worship a divine human form. The second section interprets "eyes as a flame of fire" as symbolizing both divine providence flowing from divine love and divine wisdom communicated to those in charity, with an extended argument that physical sight is entirely derivative of the soul's interior understanding rather than a property of the eye itself. Readers interested in Swedenborg's systematic spiritual hermeneutics, his doctrine of the Divine Human, or his correspondence theology (where every physical thing mirrors a spiritual reality) will find this a dense but representative passage.

Apocalypse Explained: 151-200

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