new church life: jan uary/february 2016
large buildings, temples and cities. They worshiped together in families, with
the parents of each family providing spiritual guidance and nurture. (Divine
Providence 215, Apocalypse Explained 799)
Nuclear families would join together to form extended families, clans and
tribes. The family connections provided a social structure that represented
the spiritual structure of different kinds of love and wisdom in heavenly
communities.
In fact, the varieties of love and wisdom that make up the communities
of heaven were actually embedded in their family structures, so that “those
who lived in the most ancient times live today in the heavens, arranged by
households, by families and by tribes, in much the same way as they had lived
on earth, with hardly any missing from their households.” (Married Love 205;
compare Secrets of Heaven 2739)
They lived this way so that “the church on earth might represent the
Lord’s Kingdom, where all are distinguished into communities; and these
communities into greater ones; and these again into still greater ones.” (Secrets
of Heaven 1259)
Later, after Israel escaped from Egypt, they continued to live by families
and tribes, so that they could represent the structure of heaven.
Thus every separate family within a tribe meant a specific kind of good, and
therefore the good of one specifically, distinct from another’s good. But the
household of the fathers within a family meant an individual type belonging to
one specific kind. The reason why all these kinds of good were meant by the tribes,
families and households into which the children of Israel were divided was in order
that they might represent heaven; for the varieties of good there are divided into
general, specific and individual. (Secrets of Heaven 7833)
I suspect that when Moses put everyone in Israel into small groups of 10,
and also larger groups 50, 100 and 1,000 (Exodus 18), they were divided up
along family and clan lines, to represent the structure of heaven in a similar
way.
The Lord’s Concern for the Spiritual Family
When the Lord came into the world, the symbolic or representative church
ended. Although the Lord was very supportive of families, His primary
focus was on the spiritual family. He repeatedly told people to keep the
commandment to “Honor your father and mother,” yet He also said, “Anyone
who loves father or mother above Me is not worthy of Me, and anyone who
loves son or daughter above Me is not worthy of Me.” (Matthew 10:37)
He even said you must hate your family: “If anyone comes to Me and
does not hate his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters,
yes, and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple.” (Luke 14:26) We aren’t
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