1885. These two types of visions are unusual, however. They were demonstrated to me simply for the purpose of teaching me what they are like. All the sights you find reported, by the Lord's divine mercy, at the beginning or end of each chapter in these first two volumes are ordinary ones. They are not visions but sights that I have seen for many years now in full physical consciousness.

605. Inner Meaning

THE present subject is the formation of the new church called Noah. Its formation is depicted by the ark that took in living things of every kind. But before that new church could come into being, it was necessary — as it always is — for the people in the church to suffer further trials, portrayed by the rising, tossing, and long ride of this ark on the flood waters. Their eventual transformation into truly spiritual people and their deliverance are depicted by the ebbing of the water and other later details.

No one who sticks exclusively to the literal meaning can see this message. The main reason is that all the elements link together to create a story and present the kind of picture that we expect from a narrative. The people of that time, though, had a manner of writing — most pleasing to themselves — that cloaked everything in symbols, and they would assemble these into a history. The more consistent the thread of the story, the better it suited their way of thinking. The people of those long-ago times, you see, did not spend so much time with bare facts as people today do but engaged in deep thought, which led to the fertile kind of results seen here. This was the wisdom of our ancestors.