Yes, it can be difficult to read the Word at first. But remember that it wasn’t
so long ago that the Bible was used in every American school as a primary
reader for grade one. It can be read and understood simply by the young and
the simple, but if they persist, and make the effort to acquire the skill, and to
practice it regularly, the Word can easily be read with understanding. God
wrote the Word for the sole purpose of communicating with us. He certainly
wouldn’t have written it in such a way as to make it impossible for most people
to read.
The Word was written to be a means of conjunction and communication
between God and man. God, being infinite, cannot actually be conjoined
with finite man. However, we have been created in such a way that we can
receive the truth into our minds. Truth is from God, and He can therefore be
conjoined with us by means of what is His in us, that is, the truth in our minds.
We learn the truth from the Word, and compel ourselves to obey it. The
Lord then changes our loves so that we come to love doing what is true, and
that Divine truth becomes a part of our essential character. The Lord can then
draw nearer to us because there is genuine truth from Him in our minds, and
the associated good love in our heart.
But it is not just the Lord who is more closely conjoined with us when
we read the Word, but the angels in heaven as well. Angels and spirits draw
nearer to us when we are thinking and doing things that they love. This also
means that evil spirits draw nearer to us when we are doing things that they
love. But when we read the Word, and we are thinking about the historical
characters and the things that they did, the angels who are with us see within
the characters and stories to the Divine principles that are hidden there, and
they are inspired to worship the Lord.
Every word, even to the smallest iota of all, in the Word, involves spiritual and
heavenly things; and that the Word is in this manner inspired, so that when it is
read by man, spirits and angels immediately perceive it spiritually according to the
representations and correspondences. (Arcana Coelestia 2763:2)
These are the arcana contained in these words and in those which follow;
but they are delivered in an historical form in order that the Word may be read
with delight, even by children and by simple-minded persons, to the end that
when they are in holy delight from the historical sense, the angels who are with
them may be in the holiness of the internal sense; for this sense is adapted to
the intelligence of the angels, while the external sense is adapted to that of
men. By this means there is a consociation of man with the angels, of which
the man knows nothing at all, but only perceives a kind of delight from it that
is attended with a holy feeling. (Ibid. 3982:3)
In the book of Revelation, John reports that the angel said to him: “He
who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To him who
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