It is generally known that God’s Holy Word consists of historical and prophetic parts. What is less well known is that the Sacred Scriptures contain levels of meaning that transcend the literal sense of the words used in their stories.
According to scientist/theologian Emanuel Swedenborg, this multileveled style of divine writing in God’s Holy Word was created so that angels could comprehend spiritual meanings, as men and women on earth read and comprehended the natural or terrestrial words of each story. As a simple example, when men and women read the word “arise” they understand it to simply mean, “get up.” However angels understand such a term to mean something deeper, like “elevate your heart and mind.”
This dynamical writing serves as a divine medium to unite heaven and earth—or angels with humanity.
Swedenborg states that one of the reasons for the historical style of the Holy Word is that it is God’s wise strategy to initiate infants and young children into forming a mental affection for the biblical stories. A child’s developing mind and imagination finds the fantastic parts of the Bible delightful and enchanting—like Adam and Eve, the talking serpent, giants, dragons and miraculous events.
The historical parts of Scripture affect children’s minds just like myths and fairy tales do. That is, the fantastic nature of these stories tends to “stick” in young minds. (The stories of “Sleeping Beauty” and “the Forbidden Fruit in the Garden of Eden” are equally forged into our minds.) Swedenborg stated that the difference between mythology and Scripture was that mythology contained two levels of meaning while God’s Holy Word had three! This multileveled approach to storytelling is why seemingly “silly” stories have such a strong influence on the human psyche.
The multileveled writing style of Holy Scripture actually allows a communication to begin to open up between children on earth and heaven’s angels. This communication is also delightful to the angels because it allows them to operate within a child’s sphere of innocence.
This is why it is so important that children are exposed to God’s Holy Word.
