8200. 'And Moses stretched out his hand over the sea' means the exercising of power by God's truth over hell. This is clear from the meaning of 'stretching out the hand' as an exercising of power, dealt with in 7673, 8183; from the representation of 'Moses' as God's truth, dealt with often; and from the meaning of 'the sea', in this case the Sea Suph, as hell, dealt with in 8099, 8137, 8138.a The expression 'the exercising of power by God's truth' is used because God's total power is exercised through the truth that emanates from the Lord. This truth created all things, according to the following in John,
All things were made through the Word, and without Him nothing was made that was made. John 1:3.
'The Word' is the Lord in respect of Divine Truth. Through this Truth all things in heaven and in hell are arranged into order. It is the source of all order on earth too; and all miracles were accomplished through it.
[2] In short, Divine Truth holds all power within itself, so completely that it is power itself. There are some in the next life who possess truth in fuller measure than others. This gives them power which is so great that they can pass through hell without any risk to themselves. At the presence of these people those in hell flee this way and that. There are also some who use the truth from God to exercise power magically. These and the former will be spoken of at the ends of chapters, in which in the Lord's Divine mercy the hells will be the subject.b People who contemplate the causes of things from the standpoint of external and worldly matters inevitably see the truth from God as something that exists merely on a thought-level and has no real existence beyond that. That truth however is the supreme essential entity from which all things in both worlds - the spiritual world and the natural world - derive their existence.
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