Apocalypse Revealed (Coulsons): AR 678

Apocalypse Revealed (Coulsons) n. 678

678. 'And an evil and hurtful sore was produced' signifies interior evils and untruths destructive of everything good and true in the Church. By the 'sore' here nothing else is signified but the evil arising from a life in accordance with this main point of doctrine, that faith alone justifies and saves without the works of the law, because it follows on 'in the men having the mark of the beast and adoring his image', by which that faith is signified and a life in accordance with it. Therefore by 'an evil and hurtful sore' are signified evils and untruths destructive of everything good and true in the Church. By 'hurtful' is signified what is destructive, and evil cannot but destroy good, and untruth truth. 'A sore' signifies those things because the sores of the body arise from the corruption of the blood or from another interior malignity. Likewise 'sores' understood in the spiritual sense: these arise from the lusts and their delights that are the interior causes. The evil itself, which is signified by the 'sore and appears in the externals as delightful, conceals within it the lusts from which it arises and is inflamed. [2] It should be known well that the interior things of the human mind are in a successive order and in a simultaneous order with every one. They are in a successive order going from the higher or prior things to the lower or posterior things thereof, [and] they are in a simultaneous order in the ultimates or last things, but in these they are from interior to exterior things as from a centre to a circumference. That this is the case has been shown many times in ANGELIC WISDOM CONCERNING DIVINE LOVE AND WISDOM (n. 173-281), where it treats of degrees; from which it is plain that the ultimate is the complex of all the prior things. From this it follows that all the lusts of an evil are in a simultaneous order inwardly in the evil itself that a man perceives with himself, every evil that the man perceives with himself being in the ultimates. And therefore when a man rejects an evil from himself, he also rejects its lusts at the same time, yet not of himself but from the Lord. A man can indeed of himself reject an evil, but not its lusts; and therefore when he is willing to reject the evil by fighting against it he will look to the Lord, for the Lord operates from inmost things to ultimates, for He enters through the man s soul and purifies him. These things have been said that it may be known that 'a sore' signifies an evil appearing in ultimates or extremes, arising from an internal malignity. This comes to pass with all who persuade themselves that faith alone saves, and on that account do not reflect upon any evil with themselves, nor look to the Lord. [3] 'Sores' and 'wounds' signify evils in the extremes arising from interior evils that are lusts, in the following passages also:-

From the sole of the foot even to the head there is no soundness; the wound, the scar, and the recent plague, not pressed out, not bound up, not mollified with oil Isa. i 6, 7.

Mine iniquities have gone over my head, [my] wounds have festered, they have wasted away because of my foolishness Ps. xxxviii 4, 5 [H.B. 5, 6].

In the day that Jehovah shall bind up the breach of His people, He shall heal the wound of [their] plague Isa. xxx 26.

If thou wilt not obey the voice of Jehovah, by taking care to do His precepts, Jehovah shall smite thee with the sore of Egypt, with hemorrhoids and scabies and the itch; and an evil sore upon the knees and upon the thighs, from which thou canst not be healed, from the soul of the foot even unto the top of thy head Deut. xxxviii 15, 27, 35.

Nothing else is signified by:-

The sore of blisters flourishing on man and beast in Egypt Exod. ix 8-11;

for the miracles done there were significant of the evils and untruths in which they were. And because the Jewish nation was in the profanation of the Word, and this was signified by leprosy, therefore the leprosy was not only in their flesh, but also in their garments, houses and vessels; and the kinds of profanation are signified by the various hurtful symptoms (mala) of leprosy, which were:-

Tumours, the sores of tumours, white pimples and ones becoming red, abscesses, burnings, skin eruptions, scuffs, etc. Lev. xiii 1 to the end.

For the Church with that nation was a representative Church in which internal things were represented by means of the corresponding external things.

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