Why the Lord willed to be born and assume the Human on our earth and not on another earth is said to be for the sake of the Word. In the literal sense we understand that the Word could be written and when written, published throughout the whole earth. Thus, it could be preserved for man's future use. And, even those who have gone to the other life without knowledge and of a belief in the Lord's birth on our earth could be taught the Word, there in the spiritual world, that the Lord God is a Man (cf. AC 9351). The Word was the means of the revelation of the Lord and of His love for mankind. However, we need to bring our thoughts out from their natural understanding and into spiritual understanding. For the natural sense of the Word, when it is not confirmed by the internal sense, will lead us into various suppositions from which we cannot come to any rational answers and faith in suppositions is not a true faith, but a faith in what man says and not what the Lord teaches.

If there is one thing that the Third Testament teaches to those who first read it, it is that there is an internal sense to the Word. It is only later, after one desires to see, that is, to understand what the Word genuinely teaches, that a man begins to realize that there are correspondences taught in the Word of the Third Testament. You might be wondering why this is so important. Yet, it is so important that the Word of the Third Testament teaches that we need to learn and know these so that we can understand and know the internal or genuine sense. Without this man will only form doctrine according to himself and not from the Lord and he would come only into an external Church - a representative Church.

What is one of the first things that a man needs to learn from the Word? It is that man must know that there is a God, a Heaven, and a hell, that there is a life after death and, how he must live in this world in order to enjoy eternal happiness in Heaven. The means of teaching this in the Word are varied. They are through imagined histories, through true histories, prophecies, psalms, and through other means such as parables. However, in none of the histories or stories is there taught spiritual subjects even in the Word we just mentioned, it its literal sense. It is not the historical events told in the Old or the New Testaments or even the Third Testament that teaches about these spiritual and Heavenly things about the Lord, Heaven and hell, although some of the histories and stories recorded may teach Christian principles and in that respect they are guides to help us. This, in itself, may be of use in leading man to search the Word for internal or spiritual truths. However, in today's lesson there is a danger if the literal sense is perused and insisted on as the genuine truth, which a man does so often who is not enlightened. The literal sense is only an apparent truth. If we accept the literal story here in our lessons about other men on other earths in the universe and assume that there are human beings on other planets or earths because that is what is here taught in the literal sense, then we will not come to understand and believe that the things taught there reveal things about the Lord, His Church on earth, His Kingdom in Heaven, but about a supposed natural history of other humans on other planets in the universe.

We know what it means to be born in the natural sense. However, do really know what it is to be born in the spiritual sense? When we read in the Word an infant is born the Word says that in the internal sense it signifies that truths of faith are given or are manifested to a man and in an even more internal sense when referring to the Lord's birth it signifies Truth coming from God manifested to mankind (cf. AC 4070, 4094). To be born signifies to come forth (cf. AC 3264), and also to be conjoined in act. Who is to come forth? Of course, any Christian knows it was the Lord who is the God of Heaven and earth that came and was born and became an infant as is all mankind. The Lord came forth, that is, He was revealed to mankind. The Word is revealed to man, to the human of man on earth, for the purpose of conjoining man with the Lord. It is not just a natural mental assent to know the truth that conjoins, but it is a spiritual conjoining of a man's will, with the Lord, and thus, it is for a man to act from the Lord, yet 'as if' from himself. One knows from the Old Testament that the Lord appeared to various men, but that it was in an assumed human and was not His own Human, for no man can see God, but He did appear to some through the body of an angel. At that time or state the Lord could not become born as a man in the natural form in this world. So, He assumed the form of a man, that is, of an angel. However, when this form disappeared or left the person's presence there was nothing remaining except what the man had appropriated or learned and, so, had received into his understanding wherein he could follow as those chosen did - Abraham, Moses, and the Prophets. Such knowledge only reaches a man's external understanding and does not come into his will, for the Word Itself or Truth Itself had not yet become revealed in the flesh.

The Human of the Lord was not made natural until He was revealed through His birth and had assumed the human of mankind on 'our earth'. What is the purpose for the Human that the Lord Himself has assumed and, so, became born on earth? Wasn't it that mankind be saved? It was only because in the human of man that He could subjugate the hells and bring all things into order as it was in the beginning. The Lord had a Human before He had come into this world. It was a Celestial and Spiritual Human and this is called the 'former' Human and was before He put on the Natural Human. In this 'former' Human of the Lord the evils could not approached Him or could He subjugate them in hell, for nothing evil can stand before God. Here, one must recall that when mankind began to sin that he was shut out of Paradise and could on longer be in Jehovah's presence. Thus, order could not be established with man or on earth until the Lord came. For such order to be established, the Lord needed to become Human in the Natural as He was in both the Celestial and Spiritual degrees of a man's existence. The Human of the Lord was also the Divine Truth, for Divine Truth is the Existere of God and Divine Good is the Esse of God. When the Lord assumed the form of man as He did through angels, He became visible and was conjoined to man through the understanding. However, when the Divine and, so He became Life Itself in the Natural degree. The Truth became Divine Truth.

You can begin to understand that the spiritual sense of being born and of assuming the Human on earth has nothing to do with this terrestrial earth that we live on, but with the external of a man, which is called the natural man. The natural is inferior to the spiritual, which is called the internal of a man. So, 'earth', here, signifies all the inferior corresponding things of the superior things - the spiritual and celestial things - internal things or Heaven, that are the Lord's and from the Lord. Thus, it can be concluded that Heaven, the Celestial and Spiritual, is the recipient of the Divine and that the earth is to be the recipient of spiritual and celestial things of Heaven. These together, that is, a man's external and his internal make the Church in man the true Church. The Church exists, which is in man and is not in any terrestrial world, thus the man, as an earth, is the vessel for the spiritual truths and celestial goods. In Arcana Coelestia 6679 we learn that wherever there is an earth there are men. Wherever the Church is, there is the man. Ask yourself the question: when is man a man? Man is not a man unless he or she has the Church within in his will and the understanding. Man is a man only from the Lord. Man is therefore an 'earth' and a 'Heaven' in microcosm since he is both spiritual and natural.

Before a man's regeneration he is only external, having been a form of only natural material and he has a natural life which is external, his internal having been closed and having no visible connection between the spiritual and celestial things - no connection between man's natural and external and his spiritual and internal. Nonetheless, because man was made as a receptacle of God's good and His truth, he can become a man in the likeness and image of the Lord, who, of course, is the only Man. However, he was not a man before the Lord had become a Man in this world, for the Lord is the Way, the Truth, and the Life that teaches and leads man to become regenerated, thus He comes to dwell within in man's will and understanding. Man, then, is conjoined with the Lord in whom the Lord dwells within, and this conjunction is called in man a 'married land,' the earth being his external and Heaven his internal. All this is within man and thus is not meant on any terrestrial earth. Here, we recall from the Word internal sense is revealed in the Third Testament that the Paradise, in which the Most Ancient Church man is said to live, signifies the man's mind as a garden. This is because the dwelling place of the Lord, that is, of Truth is within man in His will and understanding. Thus, also, when the Lord came on this earth, the Divine lived within Jesus and He was pleased, that is, that He willed to be born, which is to be manifested before us as the Divine Human. Therefore, the Lord as a man, as we are, can become conjoined with us in act and not in just word. For, the Lord to be born means Truth Coming from God and assuming worldly clothes 'as it were', which are meant the externals of the human.

Therefore, the Lord was here born on 'our earth', that is, He was 'brought forth' in man as the true Church, and so, He could subjugate the hells within a man and bring the Heavens to order which, as the Lord teaches, is within man. Remember, Heaven within man is man's internal or spiritual life. When the Lord 'put on' the human of mankind He became Life Itself in the flesh, that is, in the natural degree, which the word 'earth' in the Word signifies. We have said that 'earth' signifies the Church in a man and also the internal or the spiritual man because the Lord has become born in the natural. The external man, before his regeneration, is a receptacle of the internal, and so, can receive truths and goods from the Lord, thus, he can become a man in the image of Jehovah. Moreover, when these are within man, the understanding and the will are coupled and 'as it were' married in him and the man becomes 'as it was' a true Church, and the Church is within that man. The external man is also called the Church, because Heaven, where the Lord dwells with a man is within, but it is not called a Church when the Lord does not dwell within man. Thus, in the true Church, after the Celestial Church on earth had been closed to man and until the Lord's New Church was established, there were only representative Churches with and in man, and were not true Churches. (cf. AC 1177). It is to this natural Church - the Israelitish - that is but a representative of a Church, which had reached its end, that is, its vastation and consummation and not to any other that the Lord was born, which is now revealed from Heaven in the Third Testament. The Lord united the external with the internal of man as He united His Natural with the Divine, becoming the Divine Human and, thus, established a True Church within man, that is, on our earth. This Church comes from internal goods and truths, that is, from Heaven. The other prior Churches on earth come from man's own understanding and, thus, at best were only representative Churches.

We read from the Word we read:

So far we have seen that it was for the sake of the Word that the Lord came to live on earth with man. Again, here the literal sense teaches four reasons. First, the Word could be written on our earth. It could be published throughout the whole earth. Next, it could be preserved for posterity, and fourth, it could be manifested even to those in the other life (cf. 9351). If the Word could be written on 'our earth' that is, on a man's understanding and will, then it could be written within any human being who accepts it as the Truth and who then wills or act in charity by following the truth 'as if' from his self, though from the Lord. If one understands the 'earth', here, in the Word as a terrestrial globe in the universe, he will soon be led in his reasoning to error. For common sense teaches that if humans, no matter where they are, can develop the art of printing and publishing, and if these are the uses that lead men to become regenerated and to be conjoined to the Lord and Heaven, then why only on 'our earth' and not on 'other earths'?

Whether you say 'Word' or 'Lord', it is the same. The Word is the revelation of the Divine recorded for man and comes through many different styles, such as historical events, stories, and various other ways, all of which will not regenerate man unless the Truth from the Lord is seen or understood within these various means. Moreover, if the truth is not committed to one's heart, that is, to one's will for reception, then all scientifics and knowledges are of no use in a man's regeneration. We need to understand, here, the spiritual sense of the writings of the Word.

In Arcana Coelestia 9386, 'to write' signifies to imprint on one's life. In the internal sense to write on 'earth' means to instruct man and thus, to lead him into Heaven, not only to lead him in spiritual, but in his natural life as well. When the Word is written on our heart, that is, when it is accepted as the Lord's Truth, it is contained within our external or natural will. Indeed, the understanding and the will are vessels for truths and goods. As new truths are learned and accepted into a man's will, the external takes on a new form and the vessel becomes formed to receive new truths. It is 'as if' it were published throughout the whole 'earth', that is, throughout the external and internal of a man (cf. AC 9351). The contrary is true when the Word is rejected and falsities and evils are accepted. The Word becomes manifest to man. It is revealed to all who become obedient to the truth or the Word, which means to the Lord. A man wills to do good, and so truths are perpetually revealed to the man even in the next world in Heaven. Man's spiritual life is sustained by these truths and this is because the truth is written or committed into his will.

The principle reason that the Lord came to earth was for the sake of the Word, which was for Divine Revelation, that is, in order to reveal Himself. >From Divine Truth all things exist. The Word, that is, the Lord now could exist within man in his natural state. This is because Divine Good and Divine Truth are united in Him, who had become the Divine Human during His first Advent, and therefore, everything that relates to Him - His Kingdom and His Church in all the earth is in all of man and not just in his spiritual and celestial entities. You remember that these had been closed in a man's natural life by his sins. The Word could be written, which is to commit to the will, and is for the reception of the spiritual sense of the Word in man, even as the spiritual Church had enjoyed (cf. 9386). For to 'write' spiritually signifies perpetual memory (cf. AC 8620), and to imprint on one's life (cf. AC 9386) is for the remembrance of the Church in man. And, when committed to the heart or to one's will, that is, when acknowledged in the spiritual sense then truth could be published to others. The Word is to be told and brought to the whole man, to his internal and external. It is to be proclaimed to the whole Church - the external and the internal of man. The Church in man subsists from the truths proclaimed and, so, is preserved, which sustains man, even in the other life. This truth is that God has become Man in the Natural. In His Natural, He became a reciprocal of Divine things. For it is through the natural of man that Divine things in the Natural of the Lord could be contained. And, thus, could ascend again as the Divine Human as God in one Person, the glorified Lord Jesus Christ the God of Heaven and earth. The medium between the Divine and the world or between the natural degree of a man was the Word in man that the Truth. It was the only means that man could have life and could come into Heaven.

We read from the Word again:

The revelation of Truth is first understood on earth, that is, by man only in appearances. So, the Word first comes to man through his understanding. >From his understanding alone he knows nothing of its internal or spiritual sense. In fact, truths and falsities are mixed in the natural and a man is apt to accept false things just as well before he will accept true things. Here, before the Lord's glorification, the Word is called truth Divine and not the Divine Truth. As the Truth Divine, the Lord could go through temptations. He could become victorious over the hells and subjugate them. Unless this had occurred, unless the Word had become born on earth, that is, had come forth in act and not just in one's understanding, it could not have taught a man that God is Man, that there is a Heaven, that there is life after death, or how a man is to live. You might be thinking, didn't the Ancient Church Word and the Old Testament teach this? They did teach this, but man was not able to hear or see (understand) spiritually, that is, to obey from the Lord and, in fact, man obeyed according to his self. Here again, we see a difference between 'our earth' or Church and 'other earths' or Churches. We, the Lord's New Church, say that doctrine comes from the Lord and that He is Doctrine. Other Churches took doctrine from their external or natural understanding of the Word. We know that the evils were with men and they had destroyed the life that the Lord gave them. Now, since the Lord glorified Himself, He is, now, present in the sense of the letter of the Word and teaches those who hear and believe Him. We can see this evidenced in the Word of the Divine Human - the Third Testament - that has descended again in Word. Thus, who hear and believe the glorified Lord is present in the Word in the spiritual sense receive true life from the Lord, which is a man's eternal happiness.

The point is that unless the Word is revealed to man, he will not know truth or the Lord, for the Word does not make the Church, but the understanding of the Word does. This understanding must come from the Lord in man, that is, from Doctrine coming from the spiritual sense out of the celestial. We read again from Arcana Coelestia: