Arcana Coelestia (Elliott) n. 6698

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6698. I have in addition talked to spirits about how a person may come to believe that the universe contains more than one terrestrial world from the fact that the visible universe is lit by such a countless number of stars and is so vast, and yet is solely a means serving the ultimate end of creation, that end in view being the heavenly kingdom in which the Divine can dwell. For the visible universe exists as the means for planets to come into being and have people on them from whom the heavenly kingdom may be formed. How can anyone ever think that so vast a means has been created for an end so small and limited as it would be if only one planet were inhabited and heaven were formed from this alone? What use would this be to the Divine, who is Infinite, to whom thousands, indeed tens of thousands of planets, and all of them full of inhabitants, would be little and scarcely anything? Furthermore the angelic heaven is so vast that it has correspondence with every detail in the human being; tens of thousands correspond to any one of the members, organs, or viscera. I have also been allowed to know that heaven cannot possibly exist complete with all its correspondences unless it draws on inhabitants from a large number of planets.


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