233.  It has been told me from heaven, that in the Lord from eternity, who is Jehovah, before His assumption of a Human in the world, the two prior degrees existed actually, and the third degree potentially, as they do also with angels; but that after the assumption of a Human in the world, He put on over these the third degree, called the natural, thereby becoming Man, like a man in the world; but with the difference, that in the Lord this degree, like the prior degrees, is infinite and uncreate, while in angel and in man they are all finite and created.  For the Divine which, apart from space, had filled all spaces (n. 69-72), penetrated even to the outmosts of nature; yet before the assumption of the Human, the Divine influx into the natural degree was mediate through the angelic heavens, but after the assumption it was immediate from Himself.  This is the reason why all churches in the world before His Advent were representative of spiritual and celestial things, but after His Advent became spiritual-natural and celestial-natural, and representative worship was abolished.  This also was the reason why the sun of the angelic heaven, which, as was said above, is the first proceeding of His Divine Love and Divine Wisdom, after the assumption of the Human shone out with greater effulgence and splendor than before the assumption.  And this is what is meant by these words in Isaiah: 

     In that day the light of the moon shall be as the light of the sun,
     and the light of the sun shall be sevenfold, as the light of seven
     days (30:26).

This is said of the state of heaven and of the church after the Lord’s coming into the world.  Again, in the Apocalypse: 

     The countenance of the Son of man was as the sun shineth in his
     strength (1:16);

and elsewhere (as in Isaiah 60:20; 2 Sam. 23:3, 4; Matt. 17:1, 2).  The mediate enlightenment of men through the angelic heaven, which existed before the coming of the Lord, may be compared to the light of the moon, which is the mediate light of the sun; and because after His coming this was made immediate, it is said in Isaiah,

     That the light of the moon shall be as the light of the sun (30:26);

and in David: 

     In His days shall the righteous flourish, and abundance of peace
     until there is no longer any moon (72:7).

This also is said of the Lord.

234.  The reason why the Lord from eternity, that is, Jehovah, put on this third degree by the assumption of a Human in the world, was that He could enter into this degree only by means of a nature like human nature, thus only by means of conception from His Divine and by birth from a virgin; for in this way He could put off a nature which, although a receptacle of the Divine, is in itself dead, and could put on the Divine.  This is meant by the Lord’s two states in the world, which are called the state of exinanition and the state of glorification, which are treated of in The Doctrine of the New Jerusalem Concerning the Lord.