The chief aim and effort of the Lord’s Divine Providence is that a man shall be in what is good and in what is true at the same time; for thereby man is man, since he is then an image of the Lord.  But because, in his life in the world, he can be in what is good and in what is false at the same time, and also in what is evil and what is true at the same time, nay, even in evil and at the same time in good, and thus be a double man, as it were, and because this division destroys God’s image and so destroys the man, therefore the Lord’s Divine Providence in all its workings seeks to prevent this division.  Furthermore, because it is better for man to be in what is evil and in the same time in what is false than to be in good and at the same time in evil, therefore the Lord permits it; not as one willing it, but as one unable to prevent it consistently with the end, which is salvation.

—­Divine Providence, n. 16

DEATH AND THE RESURRECTION

“I laid me down and slept: 
I awaked:  for the Lord sustained me.”

—­Psalm, III, 5

“Now that the dead are raised, even Moses showed at the bush, when he called the Lord the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob:  for He is not a God of the dead, but of the living; for to Him all are living.”

—­Luke, XX, 37, 38

IMMORTAL BY ENDOWMENT

Man has been so created that as to his inward being he cannot die; for he can believe in God, and also love God, and thus be united to God in faith and love; and to be united to God is to live to eternity.

—­Heavenly Doctrine, n. 223

FROM WORLD TO WORLD

When the body is no longer able to perform its functions in the natural world, a man is said to die.  Still the man does not die; he is only separated from the bodily part which was of use to him in the world.  The man himself lives.  He lives, because he is man by virtue, not of the body, but of the spirit; for it is the spirit in man which thinks; and thought together with affection makes the man.  It is plain, then, that when a man dies, he only passes from one world into the other....  The spirit of man after separation remains awhile in the body, but not after the motion of the heart has entirely ceased.  This takes place with a variation according to the diseased condition of which the man dies.  As soon as the motion ceases, the man is resuscitated.  This is done by the Lord alone.

—­Heaven and Hell, nn. 445, 447

UNHURT BY DEATH