233. It has been granted me to talk with many after their death, who believed that they were to shine like stars in heaven, because, as they claimed, they had regarded the Word as holy, had often read it through, and had gathered from it many things by which they had confirmed the dogmas of their faith, and in consequence had become celebrated as learned men, for which reason they believed that they were to be Michaels and Raphaels. But many of them were examined in respect to the love from which they had studied the Word; and it was found that some of them had studied it from love of self, that they might be worshiped as leaders in the church, and some from love of the world, that they might gain riches; and when these had been examined in respect to their knowledge of the Word, it was found that they had learned from it nothing of genuine truth, but only such truth as may be called truth falsified, which in itself is putrid falsity, for in heaven it has a putrid odor. To these it was said that this was the case with them because self and the world had been their ends when they read the Word, and not the truth of faith and good of life. And when self and the world are ends, the mind in reading the Word sticks fast in self and the world, and in consequence their thought is always from what is their own; and man's own is in darkness respecting everything that pertains to heaven and the church; and in such a state it is impossible for man to be lifted up by the Lord and raised into the light of heaven, and therefore to receive any influx from the Lord through heaven. I also saw these persons admitted into heaven, and when found to be destitute of the truths they were cast down, and still their pride in their own merit remained with them. It was otherwise with those who had studied the Word from an affection for knowing the truth because it is truth, and because it subserves the uses of life, not only their own but also the uses of the neighbor; these I have seen raised up into heaven, and thus into the light in which Divine truth there is; and I have seen them exalted at the same time into angelic wisdom, and into its happiness in which the angels of heaven are.