Swedenborg Arcana Caelestia Vol. I (1750)

'Until the evening, when there is morning, two thousand three hundred'" (8:14, 26). Similarly, morning is taken for every coming of the Lord in the Word, so it is the voice of a new creation.

23. That "day" is taken for time itself is nothing more common in the Word, as in Isaiah: "The day of Jehovah is near. Behold, the day of Jehovah comes. I will shake the heaven, and the earth shall tremble out of its place, in the day of the burning of My anger. The time of it is near to come, and its days shall not be prolonged" (13:6, 9, 13, 22). And in the same prophet: "In the days of antiquity, its antiquity. It shall come to pass in that day that Tyre shall be given to oblivion for seventy years, according to the days of one king" (23:7, 16). Because "day" is taken for time, it is also taken for the state of that time, as in Jeremiah: "Woe to us, because the day has declined, because the shadows of the evening have stretched themselves" (6:4). And in the same prophet: "If you have made void My covenant of the day, and My covenant of the night, so that there should not be day and night in their season" (33:20, 25). Also: "Renew our days as of old" (Lamentations 5:21).

24. Vers. 6. And God said, "Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, and let it distinguish between the waters and the waters." After the Spirit of God, or the Lord’s mercy, brought into the light the knowledges of truth and good, and gave the first light—that the Lord is, that the Lord is the very Good and the very Truth, and that there is no good and truth except from the Lord—then He distinguishes between the internal man and the external, thus between the knowledges that are in the internal man and the scientifics that are of the external man. The internal man is called the "expanse"; the knowledges that are in the internal man are called the "waters above the expanse"; and the scientifics of the external man are called the "waters under the expanse." Before a person is regenerated, he does not even know that there is an internal man, much less what the internal man is, thinking they are not distinct because he is immersed in bodily and worldly things; he has even immersed the things of the internal man into these, and from distinct things, he has made one confused, obscure thing. Therefore, it is first said that there should be an expanse in the midst of the waters, then that it should distinguish between the waters and the waters—not distinguishing the waters from the waters. Soon it is so: vers. 7, 8. And God made that expanse, and distinguished between the waters which were under the expanse and the waters which were above the expanse; and it was so; and God called the expanse "Heaven." Thus, the second thing a person notices when being regenerated is that he begins to know that there is an internal man, or that the things in the internal man are good and true, which are the Lord’s alone. And because the external man, when being regenerated, is such that he still thinks the good he does he does from himself, and the truth he speaks he speaks from himself—and because he is such, he is led by the Lord through these things (as if they were his own) to do good and speak truth—therefore the distinction from those things under the expanse precedes, and the distinction from those above the expanse follows. It is also a celestial mystery that a person is led by his own things (both by the fallacies of the senses and by his desires) and is bent by the Lord to those things which are true and good, and thus that every single moment of regeneration proceeds from evening to morning, as from the external man to the internal, or from earth to heaven. Therefore, the expanse, or internal man, is now called Heaven.