Now it came to pass when Adoni-Zedek king of Jerusalem heard how Joshua had taken Ai and had utterly destroyed it–as he had done to Jericho and its king, so he had done to Ai and its king–and how the inhabitants of Gibeon had made peace with Israel and were among them, that they feared greatly, because Gibeon was a great city, like one of the royal cities, and because it was greater than Ai, and all its men were mighty. Therefore Adoni-Zedek king of Jerusalem sent to Hoham king of Hebron, Piram king of Jarmuth, Japhia king of Lachish, and Debir king of Eglon, saying, “Come up to me and help me, that we may attack Gibeon, for it has made peace with Joshua and with the children of Israel.” Therefore the five kings of the Amorites, the king of Jerusalem, the king of Hebron, the king of Jarmuth, the king of Lachish, and the king of Eglon, gathered together and went up, they and all their armies, and camped before Gibeon and made war against it. And the men of Gibeon sent to Joshua at the camp at Gilgal, saying, “Do not forsake your servants; come up to us quickly, save us and help us, for all the kings of the Amorites who dwell in the mountains have gathered together against us.” So Joshua ascended from Gilgal, he and all the people of war with him, and all the mighty men of valor. And the LORD said to Joshua, “Do not fear them, for I have delivered them into your hand; not a man of them shall stand before you.” Joshua therefore came upon them suddenly, having marched all night from Gilgal. So the LORD routed them before Israel, killed them with a great slaughter at Gibeon, chased them along the road that goes to Beth Horon, and struck them down as far as Azekah and Makkedah. And it happened, as they fled before Israel and were on the descent of Beth Horon, that the LORD cast down large hailstones from heaven on them as far as Azekah, and they died. There were more who died from the hailstones than the children of Israel killed with the sword. (Joshua 10:1-11)

Because the historical parts of the Word are representative, and contain an internal sense, equally as the prophetical parts, therefore this is the case also in regard to what is related of the five kings of the Amorites, and of the battle of the sons of Israel with them. For the nations that were driven out of the land of Canaan signified the evil who were to be cast out of the kingdom of the Lord, and the sons of Israel signify those to whom it is granted to possess the kingdom. The land of Canaan signified heaven and the church, and therefore the kingdom of the Lord; hence the five kings of the Amorites signified those who are in falsities of evil, and desire to destroy the truths of the good of the church. It was for this reason, that they were slain by hailstones from heaven, that is to say, they perished and were destroyed by their own falsities of evil; for the evil themselves perish by their own evils and falsities, by means of which they desire to destroy the truths and goods of the church. (Apocalypse Explained 503{6})

The conquest of Canaan, by Joshua and the sons of Israel under the direction of the Lord, represents the subduing of those forces that have become well established within the human psyche or spirit. And this is due to drawing conclusions about life from what appears to our senses and not being in touch with spiritual truths. From birth, we are devoid of a genuine spiritual understanding and as we advance through natural states of development through to adulthood, we gather all kinds of principles and beliefs that we look to live our lives from. In fact, what we do is build up a philosophy for our life and this philosophy is witnessed in how we engage with others, the events and conditions of our life and in how we look at ourselves from an internal perspective. So, we gather together a whole raft of beliefs about God, about ourselves, about others, about the mental, social and physical worlds that we experience as our own. But without genuine spiritual truths to guide us, what happens is that most of the material that makes up these worlds which we call our ‘own’, is constructed around fallacies concerning the true nature of life. And so it is that most spiritual traditions teach that the conditions of our natural birth result in people valuing things which have no spiritual value, and discounting those which are of an eternal nature. These traditions also teach that this inversion, where what is natural and material is valued over what is spiritual and eternal, is only reversed through the cultivation of a spiritual practice.

Now such a practice, as far as Spiritual Christianity is concerned, revolves around us being engaged in taking truths and using them to reflect on the internal life of our minds. The reason that we are asked to do this is so that we can gain self-knowledge. This self-knowledge is a knowledge of the quality of what passes through our minds in terms of its thoughts and its affections and unless we make an effort to be aware of this, we remain unconscious to what is present. So the practice of Spiritual Christianity involves observing the quality of these things in the light of truths from the Word for it is from this that we learn to discern what is in keeping with a genuine spiritual or heavenly life, and what is opposed to it. Now the nature of this practice is found in many places within the doctrines for Spiritual Christianity and one such example we find in the work Divine Providence 83(5&6),

So long as evils continue in the lusts of their love, and the consequent enjoyments, there is no faith, charity, piety or worship except in mere externals, which to the world seem real, and yet are not. These may be compared to water issuing from an impure fountain, which no one can drink. Man continues in the first state as long as he thinks from religion about heaven and about God, and yet gives no thought to evils as sins; but he comes into the second state, or the state of reformation, when he begins to think that there is such a thing as sin; and still more when he thinks that this or that is a sin, and when he examines it in himself to some extent, and refrains from willing it.

Man’s third state, which is a state of regeneration, takes up and continues the former state. It begins when man refrains from evils as sins, and it progresses as he shuns them, and is perfected as he fights against them; and as he from the Lord conquers them he is regenerated. With one who is regenerated the order of life is reversed; from being natural he becomes spiritual.

The issue for many is seeing the need to reflect in this way and then seeing the need to respond affirmatively to what truths teach. Because truths, when they reveal something, provide opportunities for us to have our sense of self extracted from the natural patterns of thought and affection that have built up over the course of our lives and that are destructive to the life of the spirit. So in the story and events of the journey of the sons of Israel from Egypt to Canaan or the Promised Land, we have a parable which when understood as to its spiritual application, offers us an incredibly detailed account of the shifts in our mental states as we pass through this process of being natural to becoming spiritual. And it has to do with learning to use the Word as a guide to building a spiritual practice.

When the Israelites were in the wilderness journeying towards Canaan, we have a representation of what’s involved in our initial experience of spiritual life. This is a state of life in which our sense of spirituality is based on the external plane of actions, speech and behaviour – of how things appear externally to the world and to others. This is what matters when we’re in this state and it is notable that when we are in this state of external concerns of how things appear, then our attention is not really given to the more internal things of the mind. This external level of religion and spiritual life is what is represented by the Israelites and the things that occurred outside of Canaan.

But when Joshua leads the sons of Israel across the Jordan into Canaan itself, we have represented there a significant shift in our understanding of what constitutes a genuine spiritual life. It’s a time when we begin to see that giving our attention to cleaning up our outer life is only a preparation for a much deeper work. And so it is that here within the boundaries of Canaan that this new state is pictured, where the internal things that are connected with the life of the mind begin to come into the focus of our attention or awareness. This is a time that can be very disconcerting, a time of disruption. Because until this shift of focus occurs people, more often than not, think that they’re doing okay, that they have things together and have done all the things that are necessary or are doing all the things that are required of them, as far as the spiritual life is concerned. But if inner work has not been done whereby we have seen our evils, acknowledged them as sins, and sought the Lord in order to have them removed, then remaining in the external appearance that ‘everything is okay’ results in a false sense of security which is based on placing our importance on natural life and those things that belong to the external or natural man.

An externally ordered life in this state only serves to cover over deeper evils and falsities that are rooted in selfishness. These things are embedded within aspects of our ego or proprium and have been developed over the course of our whole life. The movement of the Israelites into Canaan and having to confront the peoples there, is representative of our own moving into reflecting on our internal life, the life of our mind, and seeing these evils coming into awareness. Seeing that they are in fact enemies of the spiritual life which seek to rob us of what the Lord has for us as our rightful inheritance.

So as a parable, everything in the land and all that occurs as the Israelites are making their way through it, represent things within the sphere of our own minds as we look to the Word of God to lead and guide us. Joshua is the Word, or Divine truth that leads us in the fight against all forms of selfishness. The sons of Israel are those specific truths that we have acquired from the Word, things that the Lord is now able to call upon and gather together from within our minds to fight against every form of self-interest that opposes the advance of the kingdom of God. And our resisting of selfish motivations and orientations that have become entrenched in our patterns of feeling and thinking over the course of our lives, is appropriately illustrated by battles. For here we have what is of the Lord as represented by the Israelites, those spiritual principles and truths from the Word, coming up against that which is opposed to them – the evils and falsities, the false perspectives, the things that separate us from others and from the Lord.  And these are represented by the Canaanite and Amorite tribes who populate the land.

The Canaanite represents heredity tendencies to evils found within every human being, which can become embedded in our character through acting on selfish impulses. And around them we have the Amorites who are those thinking structures and false perspectives that look to defend and self-justify these evils. They are the rationalisations that we make when we are feeling a particular way and act from a negative emotion, and then after move into a mode of justifying our behaviour. So the negative emotion and impulses are like the Canaanites and the defending of it with our rationalisations are Amorites.

Now in the previous story of the Gibeonites we saw how they deceived the sons of Israel into forming a covenant with them so as to protect themselves and to avoid having them to have to face the Israelites in battle and risk being utterly destroyed, as the Israelites had done to Jericho and Ai. Now the spiritual meaning of that story rests in the idea that there are things in us that serve motives of self-interest which can be used for higher purposes. In the case of the Gibeonites we saw that this tribe represented a lower level motivation in the mind that manifests in us as an interest in spiritual knowledge and interest in spiritual knowledge and Scripture and spiritual teachings can be motivated either by self-interest or a genuine interest in living a spiritual life. And this is why the Gibeonites could be aligned either with the Canaanites or with the sons of Israel.  For an interest in spiritual knowledge doesn’t necessarily make us spiritual people. We can have a natural interest in spiritual knowledge, and it goes no further, or we can have an interest in spiritual knowledge that looks to cleaning up our interior life.

So spiritual knowledge, if used properly, assists us to reflect on our lives so that we can live from what is higher, from the Word and therefore a switch of allegiance of the Gibeonites represents a shift in the way that spiritual information affects us. In their entering into a covenant with Israel we have an illustration of the use of spiritual knowledge from the Word to support a life of personal self-examination and reflection and subsequent repentance. This is in stark contrast to the use of such knowledge as represented by the Gibeonites when they were allied with the Canaanites and the Amorites. When allied with the Canaanites we have represented a state that looks to the acquisition of spiritual knowledge so that it can be used to give merely the external appearance of spirituality when internally, the ruling motivation remains one of it to promote one’s own interests. And so in this state we use that knowledge to convince ourselves that we are spiritual, but that we don’t actually have to do any reflection and work. That’s how this level of the Gibeonites works when it is aligned with the Canaanites and Amorites.

Now this is a state which can only be seen in hindsight, when we’ve actually journeyed beyond it to some degree because when we use truths to reflect on our life then we begin to see how this Gibeonite-Canaanite relationship stands and how it was with us. When we’re in this mode of life we are completely oblivious to the quality of our motivations, we’re not reflecting on them, and we feel that we are sincere in our spiritual pursuits. Thus, any challenge to the contrary results in us feeling affronted and that our integrity is being attacked – but this is part of the process. For when the things that are operating in our life that don’t quite fit with our idea of being spiritual begin to be exposed, then we feel this sense of injustice arising within us. These are powerful emotions, a deep sense of injustice, a sense of being misunderstood or of being treated unfairly. This is what begins to occur when this change of alliances for the Gibeonite’s begins to happen. We actually begin to see that there are things in us that don’t match the image which we carry around of ourselves and project to the world.

We need to understand that to progress in the spiritual life, this innocence of injustice which is tied to a false perspective of who we see ourselves as, has to be brought out and dealt with. This is not something that is found in some people and not in others. This tendency exists within all of us as the ego or proprium and once we start pursuing a spiritual life then we can be sure that it will make its presence known to us, or rather the Word will highlight it for us.  The question is – What will we do when that occurs?

In our story today we are presented with five kings who form an alliance to come against the Gibeonites once they see that they have made a covenant with Israel and pose as a threat.

Now it came to pass when Adoni-Zedek king of Jerusalem heard how Joshua had taken Ai and had utterly destroyed it–as he had done to Jericho and its king, so he had done to Ai and its king–and how the inhabitants of Gibeon had made peace with Israel and were among them, that they feared greatly, because Gibeon was a great city, like one of the royal cities, and because it was greater than Ai, and all its men were mighty. Therefore Adoni-Zedek king of Jerusalem sent to Hoham king of Hebron, Piram king of Jarmuth, Japhia king of Lachish, and Debir king of Eglon, saying, “Come up to me and help me, that we may attack Gibeon, for it has made peace with Joshua and with the children of Israel.”

The city of the Gibeonite sis described as a royal city and their men as mighty men. In the Amoritse and the Canaanitse this was a dire situation that needed to be put right. The rising of these five kings is the rising of five ruling principles that are raised up and connected with Adoni-Zedek who leads this. These are interrelated principles that have to do with our sense of self-righteousness. They come up to attack the Gibeonites and this illustrates the drawing out of those feelings of injustice which are grounded in the sense of our self that is based in selfishness, in the proprium or ego. As such, it is a false sense of injustice that erupts from a false perspective that sees truth, or the revealing of these things, as an enemy. And so, there is a resistance to it. We don’t want to see it. We don’t want to have anything to do with it. We don’t want it to damage the self-image which we carry around concerning ourselves that informs us that we are good people, that we have good in us and that that good is our own. This good person which we see ourselves as is a construction of the ego. It takes spiritual knowledge and attributes it to itself as its own. ‘I am a good and upright person who is kind and loving and wouldn’t do harm to anyone’. These are the ideas that sit with Adoni-Zedek.

The fact is – the Lord alone is good and we, apart from the Lord, are effectively nothing. The Lord is everything and all we can produce apart from the Lord is what is evil and false. And what sits beneath this projection of a false sense of self is knowledge that what the Word says we should be is good, loving, compassionate people. Now the thing to realise is that when this idea enters into the natural mind the ego or the proprium appropriates it to itself. It doesn’t want to be exposed. So it takes this idea from the Word that we need to be good, loving and compassionate people and it convinces us that we are, when we haven’t done any self-reflection to actually see what the state of our inner life is.

And so, a funny thing begins to happen when we begin to use spiritual knowledge to reflect upon the quality of our thoughts and affections. We begin to see that the image that the proprium promotes is not a true picture: we find that we may be kind and amenable to others on the outside but inside we are filled with judgments and criticisms, we feel that others don’t meet our expectations, we often feel slighted, we take offense, we say what we know we shouldn’t say, and the list goes on and on and on.

Without observing these things in ourselves, they remain, and the Lord can do nothing. He gives us truths so that we can reflect and see these things, and so we enter into the battle. The doctrines for Spiritual Christianity teach that the spiritual man is in constant conflict. That this is what the spiritual life is and is what we sign up for when we enter spiritual work. For when we begin to see these things, our first reaction is denial. We ignore it, we dismiss it. We look for allies to convince us that we are right, whether those are internal mental rationalisations, or we go to others to seek affirmation that we are in the right. We fashion together all kinds of justifications and excuses to blunt the contradictions that are arising and making their presence felt within our awareness. This tendency to deny what’s arising for us, to keep our self-image intact, is captured in this quote from True Christian Religion 564(3),

The merely natural man can see good and evil in others, and also rebuke others; but not having looked into and examined himself, he does not see any evil in himself, and if any is discovered by another, he cloaks it by means of his rationality; as a serpent hides his head in the dust. 

So, it’s perhaps easier to see when we feel offended or unjustly treated when we’re engaged with other people but if we can get some distance from these emotions, then we would see that these feelings are certainly not flowing in from a heavenly source. This is difficult though as when we are caught up in those negative emotions, we can’t see it, we can’t see what it is. We feel we have suffered an injustice because something has been taken from us and it needs restoring and so have every right to respond and defend our self-image’s credibility. Now whenever such feelings arise and we lash out in defence or perhaps depending on our personality, we withdraw into our hurts, and we find ourselves obsessing about what others have done and how unfair and unjust it is, then what we are feeling is Adoni-Zedek rising up within us – and it needs to be fought against. That’s what this story teaches us. It’s a state where our mind begins to obsess with the injustice and the unfairness of things.

This king’s name, Adoni-Zedek, means Lord of righteousness and because of his opposition to Israel, he represents the opposite of true righteousness. Therefore, he conveys the self-righteousness and feelings of indignation that come up for us when we feel that we have suffered an injustice. He is those things which arises in us with the aim ‘to put things right’ when our precious self-image takes a blow from being confronted with truths that call the false image that we carry of ourselves into question. Adoni-Zedek gathers to himself four other kings, and this represents how interconnected negative powers within the mind and those emotions that we feel are brought out and able to be exposed to the scrutiny of the Word.

So we see from this story that when such feelings arise an opportunity is created for real work to be done. The key is to recognise that when we feel those feelings associated with being unfairly or unjustly treated, that what is offended and what feels that offense – are the spiritual associations that are linked into the hells. These associations and the emotions they carry attempt to seduce us, to have us buy into what they offer. And so we move out of the safety of the Lord’s ground and onto the ground of the Canaanitse and Amoritse. The proprium or the ego seeks only one thing and that is to capture us in negative emotions and negative forms of thinking. The Lord seeks to deliver us from these but if we want that deliverance, then we need to reflect on the quality of what passes through our mind, and we need to do it in a military kind of way. We need to do it knowing that we’ve got a fight on our hands.

So the work that arises from this story is to see, from truths, when we experience that our ego or our proprium is caught up obsessing with feelings of unfairness or injustice. Because if we can do that, then we will get a good sense of the states of Adoni-Zedekis within us. And there will be many opportunities for seeing this power within our life. For not a day passes where some aspect of this king arises from out of our proprium as it fights to keep the self at the centre and pushes the Lord out.

But if we are able to see when these emotions arise, and to get space to truly look at them from what the Lord gives us in His Word, then possibilities open up for deliverance, for overcoming. It becomes possible to move away from being in a state of denial so that truths can shine their light on the real issues for us in terms of our spiritual growth and development. We will be able to call on Joshua as the Gibeonites did for the Word to come. It will march through the night, it will seem distant, but it will arrive, and it will deliver us from the powerful forces that seek to destroy the heavenly life being present for us.

And the LORD said to Joshua, “Do not fear them, for I have delivered them into your hand; not a man of them shall stand before you.” Joshua therefore came upon them suddenly, having marched all night from Gilgal.

And it came to pass when all the kings who were on this side of the Jordan, in the hills and in the lowland and in all the coasts of the Great Sea toward Lebanon–the Hittite, the Amorite, the Canaanite, the Perizzite, the Hivite, and the Jebusite–heard about it, that they gathered together to fight with Joshua and Israel with one accord. But when the inhabitants of Gibeon heard what Joshua had done to Jericho and Ai, they worked craftily, and went and pretended to be ambassadors. And they took old sacks on their donkeys, old wineskins torn and mended, old and patched sandals on their feet, and old garments on themselves; and all the bread of their provision was dry and moldy. And they went to Joshua, to the camp at Gilgal, and said to him and to the men of Israel, “We have come from a far country; now therefore, make a covenant with us.” Then the men of Israel said to the Hivites, “Perhaps you dwell among us; so how can we make a covenant with you?” But they said to Joshua, “We are your servants.” And Joshua said to them, “Who are you, and where do you come from?” So they said to him: “From a very far country your servants have come, because of the name of the LORD your God; for we have heard of His fame, and all that He did in Egypt, and all that He did to the two kings of the Amorites who were beyond the Jordan–to Sihon king of Heshbon, and Og king of Bashan, who was at Ashtaroth. Therefore our elders and all the inhabitants of our country spoke to us, saying, ‘Take provisions with you for the journey, and go to meet them, and say to them, “We are your servants; now therefore, make a covenant with us.” This bread of ours we took hot for our provision from our houses on the day we departed to come to you. But now look, it is dry and mouldy. And these wineskins which we filled were new, and see, they are torn; and these our garments and our sandals have become old because of the very long journey.” Then the men of Israel took some of their provisions; but they did not ask counsel of the LORD. So Joshua made peace with them, and made a covenant with them to let them live; and the rulers of the congregation swore to them. And it happened at the end of three days, after they had made a covenant with them, that they heard that they were their neighbours who dwelt near them. Then the children of Israel journeyed and came to their cities on the third day. Now their cities were Gibeon, Chephirah, Beeroth, and Kirjath Jearim. But the children of Israel did not attack them, because the rulers of the congregation had sworn to them by the LORD God of Israel. And all the congregation complained against the rulers. Then all the rulers said to all the congregation, “We have sworn to them by the LORD God of Israel; now therefore, we may not touch them. “This we will do to them: We will let them live, lest wrath be upon us because of the oath which we swore to them.” And the rulers said to them, “Let them live, but let them be woodcutters and water carriers for all the congregation, as the rulers had promised them.” Then Joshua called for them, and he spoke to them, saying, “Why have you deceived us, saying, ‘We are very far from you,’ when you dwell near us? “Now therefore, you are cursed, and none of you shall be freed from being slaves–woodcutters and water carriers for the house of my God.” So they answered Joshua and said, “Because your servants were clearly told that the LORD your God commanded His servant Moses to give you all the land, and to destroy all the inhabitants of the land from before you; therefore we were very much afraid for our lives because of you, and have done this thing. “And now, here we are, in your hands; do with us as it seems good and right to do to us.” So he did to them, and delivered them out of the hand of the children of Israel, so that they did not kill them. And that day Joshua made them woodcutters and water carriers for the congregation and for the altar of the LORD, in the place which He would choose, even to this day. (Joshua 9:1-27)

The reason ‘drawing water’ means instruction and also consequent enlightenment, as in later verses of this chapter, is that ‘water in the internal sense means the truths of faith, 2702. Thus ‘drawing water’ is nothing else than receiving instruction in the truths of faith and so being enlightened, as is also the meaning elsewhere in the Word, as in Isaiah,

With joy you will draw water from the springs of salvation, and [you will say] or that day, Confess Jehovah. Isa. 12:3, 4.

‘Drawing water’ stands for receiving instruction, having intelligence, and being wise. In the same prophet,

To the thirsty bring water, O inhabitants of the land of Tema. Isa. 21:14.

‘Bringing water to the thirsty’ stands for giving instruction. In the same prophet,

The wretched and the needy are seeking water, and there is none; their tongue is parched with thirst. Isa. 41:17.

‘Those seeking water’ stands for those desiring instruction in truths, ‘and there is none’ stands for the fact that nobody had any. In addition ‘drawers of water’ in the Jewish Church represented those who constantly seek to know truths but to no other end than just knowing them, and who consequently pay no attention to their purpose. Such persons were rated among the lowest of all. The Gibeonites mentioned in Josh. 9:21, 23, 27, represented them.

(Arcana Coelestia 3058)

People who have assumed that righteousness and merit lay in their good works and so have attributed the power of achieving salvation to themselves, not to the Lord and to His righteousness and merit, and who in thought and life have confirmed themselves in this idea, have their assumptions converted in the next life into delusions in which they seem to themselves to be cutting wood. This is exactly how it appears to them. I have spoken to them. When they are doing their work and are asked whether they are not tired out, they reply that they have not yet done enough work to be able to merit heaven. While they are cutting pieces of wood it seems as though something of the Lord is underneath the wood, so that the wood appears as merit. And the more something of the Lord seems to be in the pieces of wood the longer they remain in that condition. But when this delusion starts to fade they are getting nearer the end of vastation. At length they become such that they too are able to be admitted into good communities, though they still waver for a long time between truth and falsity. Because they have led a conscientious life the Lord takes great care of them, and is sending angels to them time and again. These are the people who in the Jewish Church were represented by ‘hewers of wood’, Josh. 9:23, 27. (Arcana Coelestia 1100)

The spiritual man knows truths but is often not in the belief of them. This might seem like a strange statement because we often associate belief with what we know but there is an external kind of knowing and there is an internal kind of knowing. So regardless of what we profess with our mouths, it’s actually how we live that reflects what we believe, and so reflects this internal knowing or understanding.

And what we’ve seen in our exploration of the book of Joshua, is that there is this constant theme of falling into the belief that we have life in ourselves, and that this belief is the root of every evil and falsity within the human condition. The Word therefore has to constantly remind us that all life flows in from the Lord and that although it may feel as if it is us – this is an appearance. So, when the doctrines for Spiritual Christianity speak of not believing appearances to be real, it has to do with not running with how things feel and instead believing what the Word teaches concerning how things are. This is something central to the tribe of Hivites called the Gibeonites which we are now going to explore in depth.

Spiritual life doesn’t truly begin until we make a shift from being focused on outer life to giving attention to the inner life of our mind. The Lord is faithful and is supportive of this in that He provides countless ways for people to begin to work in conjunction with Him but the specific teachings which Spiritual Christianity offers, allows us to go into a deeper understanding of the inner meaning of the Word and to see how it applies to the life of our own mind.

And why is this inner meaning or access to the inner meaning of the Word so important?

There are many reasons, but two of them are as follows. Firstly, the inner meaning found in the Bible is the clearest and most accurate guide to the mental processes involved in a person’s spiritual development or regeneration. And even more importantly, is that the Word is from the Lord, and because the Word is from the Lord, it is the Lord.

This inner meaning, when it shines forth in a person’s mind, is the Lord’s very presence with them. It is the spiritual Sun which is able to fill us with the warmth of heaven’s loves and delight us with eternal truths. So, where we see the Lord described as the Sun in the doctrines for Spiritual Christianity, it is referring to the Word as to its interior meanings when it is made the core and center of our life, just as it is with the inhabitants of heaven. For the spiritual Sun is what warms and enlightens angelic consciousness.

The key to accessing the inner meaning of the Word lies in the attitude that we bring to it. If we are willing to be led by the Word, which is what it means to be led by the Lord, to examine our life so that those things that are within which prevent the loves of heaven being more prominent in our lives can be removed, then the Word is able to be opened to us. We can gain insights from it and in doing so, we are able to see that it is the Lord who lies within. And thus, that it is the Lord who enlightens our minds and lights our path.

One of the features of the story from the book of Joshua today is this need to constantly consult the Word as the guide to what is good and true. For it is the Word alone that is able to enlighten us as to what is genuinely good and true, and what is not. But that can only happen for us if we are in an attitude that is looking to live from the Word to live a genuine spiritual life.

So we come to the story of the deception of the Gibeonites. Here we see that they were motivated by a spirit of self-preservation. The story as it stands in its literal sense also reveals that a division was taking place among the Canaanites into two groups. Those who are openly opposed to the presence of the Israelites, and the Gibeonites who are of the Hivites who have assessed the situation and deemed that the best course of action was to find a way of making a covenant with Israel. Now the doctrines for Spiritual Christianity teach that in the Word the land of Canaan, and all that is within it, is representative of the church and all its states of development towards what is good or towards what is evil depending on the context. And it’s essential that when we read and speak of the church, that we don’t think of churches in the natural world, of organisations, but instead keep our attention on those things which belong to the inner world of the human mind. Here in each of our minds is a vast land in which there exists whole vistas of thoughts and affections all interrelated like nations, peoples, tribes, families, and individuals. And these various bodies of thoughts and affections are organised in our minds according to what we value or love most of all, and it is this which makes up our sense of self. The ideas and affections that fit best with who we feel we are, these are closest to us, that is, they are those things that our thoughts and our affections gravitate towards most often. Our sense of self is intimately related to the things that our thought and affections return to time and time again. Then there are also those things that grab our attention every now and again but they don’t stay in our focus for long. These are not so close to our sense of self. They are more distant to the loves which rule our states. So we can know something of our inner life and the beliefs which we truly subscribe to, by getting a sense of what we invest our mental energy into as far as our thinking and affectional states are concerned.

What we see with the Israelites taking possession of the land of Canaan is a representation of how our minds are reordered by the Lord as truths represented by the sons of Israel advance in us through a willingness to live from them. All the different tribes encountered there in the land are representative of things found within our own minds where they take the form of psychological and spiritual realities that stand opposed to the heavenly life. These are structures of thought in us that are formed by the love of self and the love of the world and these can stand in defiance of the word like those tribes who gather an open opposition to the progression of Israel. And then there are structures of thought that look legitimate on the surface, but on closer examination aren’t what they appear to be like the Gibeonites in this story.

So, I don’t doubt that there are things that we can put our finger on in our own lives which we know are just plain selfish and are opposed to what is heavenly. And hopefully in seeing these things we can work with the Word, with the Lord, so that they can be removed to the extremities of our thinking and so changes can take place in our life which lead to more of the Lord’s love and wisdom being able to be expressed. Likewise, there will be things in our lives that we recognise as being loving and wise and so from the Lord. These things are truly useful and contribute to the overall health and well-being of others.

But then there are those areas that we are just not sure about.

The story of the Gibeonites brings into focus this grey area of appearances versus what is real, or how things seem on the surface as opposed to what the Word teaches as to how things really are. The word used to describe the Gibeoniteactivity is interesting for we read that they are said to have worked craftily.

… when the inhabitants of Gibeon heard what Joshua had done to Jericho and Ai, they worked craftily, and went and pretended to be ambassadors.

And this word craftily from the Hebrew is the same word used to describe the nature of the serpent in the garden that tempted the woman. This quality of craftiness or subtlety belongs to the lower thinking and feeling level of our minds. It’s what sits close to the physical senses. It’s a level where appearances are strong. So much so that without guidance from Divine revelation, we are prone to draw conclusions about life that are just plain false and the degree to which these are confirmed or believed, to that degree we are shut down from experiencing the inflow of heavenly life.

The thing with the Gibeonites is that from all appearances they looked okay. But we see in Joshua’s response to them that there is this sense that all might not appear to be as it seems.

And they went to Joshua, to the camp at Gilgal, and said to him and to the men of Israel, “We have come from a far country; now therefore, make a covenant with us.” Then the men of Israel said to the Hivites, “Perhaps you dwell among us; so how can we make a covenant with you?”

The Gibeonites appear to be something from a distance when in fact they reside right in the midst of the land as one of the Canaanite tribes that the Lord had commanded Israel to destroy. This appearance of being distant conveys the idea that what is presenting is not something that we really need worry about. There is a level of disconnection or perhaps even denial of just how close to us the evils and falsities represented by this tribe actually are.

So once again, this deception of the Gibeonites brings us back to the theme that runs throughout the book Joshua of believing what our senses tell us in preference to what the Word teaches. From the spies sent out from Shittim to the destruction of Jericho and Ai, we see illustrated the battle which we have of letting go of the belief that we have life in ourselves. This belief gives rise to claiming merit to what is of the Lord to oneself. It is the root of all evil and falsity which needs identifying and acknowledging and confessing. It is what we need to find in ourselves as we walk the spiritual path because this single belief invites hellish influences into our life. For if we truly acknowledged as a matter of our very life, and not just as a matter of the head, that all life is from the Lord alone then nothing evil or false could touch us. Yet as simple as this sounds, in practice we really do struggle to integrate this truth into our life; to be able to separate ourselves from believing the feeling that we have life in ourselves as something that is true. It is a powerful appearance, a powerful deception. So, it can be difficult to admit that for much of our daily life we actually function from this false belief. In fact, if we aren’t reminding ourselves on a constant basis that all life flows in from the Lord by engaging in the work of self-examination and repentance, then we can’t help but live our lives it. For without a spiritual practice which involves working consciously in an effort to live from spiritual principles, we remain oblivious to its subtle workings.

Now it’s interesting that the doctrines for Spiritual Christianity describe the Gibeonites as representing a state or love of knowledge for its own sake. And what that means is that there is no interest in how to use it or how it can be applied for the benefit of others. It’s knowledge for knowledge’s sake. Therefore, in the spiritual life, the Gibeonites represent the subtle deception of a lower form of mental activity that manifests as a drive to gather spiritual knowledge, to investigate doctrines and spiritual teachings. But it does this without giving any thought as to how this knowledge can be applied to life. The Gibeonites in us can manifest as a love to read and study the Word and the doctrines for Spiritual Christianity, or books on spiritual subjects, or as delight in conversations about spiritual matters but the problem is, is that it doesn’t take things any further. This is the deception they represent. And what we can see from this story in the Word is that this kind of activity is in fact a subtle form of evil that is very close to us all, within our very midst. Yet we cannot, or often cannot see it. Hence the appearance of it being represented as something distant, as something we don’t have to worry about.

Now most people in the church, including the voices of the people in the church within us, would say that reading and studying the Word is a good thing. But if this is done without looking to use what we know to work on our life so that we are creating opportunities for the Lord to be more closely linked to us, then we are open to being deceived that this activity somehow represents a legitimate spiritual pursuit. The gathering of spiritual knowledge becomes a substitute for living a spiritual life. And this subtle deception is what the Gibbonites are. The exterior trappings of

old wineskins torn and mended, old and patched sandals on their feet, and old garments on themselves; and .. the bread of their provision was dry and mouldy.

These all were the signs that a long journey had been undertaken when in fact nothing of the kind had occurred. Similarly, the collection of knowledge and doctrines in the memory of being able to exhibit an understanding of spiritual things as represented by the asses on which these things were carried. These all give the appearance of someone progressing in the spiritual life, taking a spiritual journey. Yet if there has been no application of these things to the inner life of the mind, to the thoughts and affections, then nothing really spiritual is being presented at all. It’s all merely external appearances.

The response of the sons of Israel in assessing the legitimacy of the Gibeonites in the literal sense is telling and it holds a critical lesson for us all. Despite their doubts about the story the Gibeonites gave of having travelled from afar, the Scripture states in verse 14 that the men of Israel checked over their provisions to see if they did indeed show signs indicating a long journey. And then it says

 the men of Israel took some of their provisions; but they did not ask counsel of the LORD.

And in the literal version of this it translates to:

that they did not inquire of the mouth of the Lord.

Now the mouth of the Lord is the Word. And the lesson is that the Word alone shows us the true nature of the things within the mind because it’s able to cut through the false rationalisations and justifications which preserve the life and activity of those things that support selfish states. Hence, we are constantly admonished to go back to it, to go back to the Word. Not even relying on the knowledge in our memory but to take this knowledge and consistently go back to the Word and to examine what it is we profess to know versus what we actually know and live from.

So this lesson teaches us that no matter how far we think we have come in the spiritual life we are always, always susceptible to the deception of appearances. And so we need to keep engaged with the truths of the Lord’s Word so that He can lead and guide us.

Now the Lord is well aware of our susceptibility to the appearances of the senses. And so, with our spiritual welfare in mind He allows for a covenant to be struck between the Israelites and the Gibeonites. In the end the Gibeonites are cursed to forever serve in the house of God as drawers of water and hewers of wood.

And that day Joshua made them woodcutters and water carriers for the congregation and for the altar of the LORD, in the place which He would choose, even to this day.

Thus, they are given a use to serve for even the delight of seeking knowledge for its own sake can serve a use so long as it remains a servant in support of heavenly things. As long as it serves to support a person involving themselves in self-examination and repentance, then the knowledge drawn can be the servant to higher principles and loves. All spiritual knowledge is given to be used to support people in their regeneration. The nature of that support though can only be opened up to us when we are in an effort to live from those truths. For it is the application of the Word to life, to the life of our minds, to the life of our thought and affections, which enables the Lord to open the Word as to its deeper meaning. And when this happens – we see Him shining forth from within it. 

Now the LORD said to Joshua: “Do not be afraid, nor be dismayed; take all the people of war with you, and arise, go up to Ai. See, I have given into your hand the king of Ai, his people, his city, and his land. “And you shall do to Ai and its king as you did to Jericho and its king. Only its spoil and its cattle you shall take as booty for yourselves. Lay an ambush for the city behind it.” So Joshua arose, and all the people of war, to go up against Ai; and Joshua chose thirty thousand mighty men of valour and sent them away by night. And he commanded them, saying: “Behold, you shall lie in ambush against the city, behind the city. Do not go very far from the city, but all of you be ready. “Then I and all the people who are with me will approach the city; and it will come about, when they come out against us as at the first, that we shall flee before them. “For they will come out after us till we have drawn them from the city, for they will say, ‘They are fleeing before us as at the first.’ Therefore we will flee before them. “Then you shall rise from the ambush and seize the city, for the LORD your God will deliver it into your hand. “And it will be, when you have taken the city, that you shall set the city on fire. According to the commandment of the LORD you shall do. See, I have commanded you.”

Now Joshua built an altar to the LORD God of Israel in Mount Ebal, as Moses the servant of the LORD had commanded the children of Israel, as it is written in the Book of the Law of Moses: “an altar of whole stones over which no man has wielded an iron tool.” And they offered on it burnt offerings to the LORD, and sacrificed peace offerings. And there, in the presence of the sons of Israel, he wrote on the stones a copy of the law of Moses, which he had written. Then all Israel, with their elders and officers and judges, stood on either side of the ark before the priests, the Levites, who bore the ark of the covenant of the LORD, the stranger as well as he who was born among them. Half of them were in front of Mount Gerizim and half of them in front of Mount Ebal, as Moses the servant of the LORD had commanded before, that they should bless the people of Israel. And afterward he read all the words of the law, the blessings and the cursings, according to all that is written in the Book of the Law. There was not a word of all that Moses had commanded which Joshua did not read before all the assembly of Israel, with the women, the little ones, and the strangers who were living among them.

(Joshua 8:1-8 & 30-35)

Evils cannot be removed unless they appear. This does not mean that man must do evils in order that they may appear, but that he must examine himself,-not his deeds alone but also his thoughts, and what he would do if he did not fear the laws and disrepute, especially what evils he regards in his spirit as allowable and does not account as sins; for these he still does. It is to enable man to examine himself that an understanding has been given him, and this is separated from the will to the end that he may know, understand, and acknowledge what is good and what is evil, also that he may see what his will is, that is, what he loves and what he longs for. In order that man may see this there has been given to his understanding higher and lower thought, or interior and exterior thought, to enable him to see from the higher or interior thought what the will is doing in the lower and exterior thought; this he sees as a man sees his face in a mirror; and when he sees it and knows what sin is, he is able, if he implores the Lord’s help, to cease willing it, to shun it, and afterwards to act against it, if not freely, still to coerce it by combat, and finally to turn away from it and hate it; and then, and not before, he perceives and also feels that evil is evil and that good is good. This, then, is examining one’s self, seeing one’s evils, acknowledging them, and afterwards refraining from them. But as there are few who know that this is the Christian religion itself (because such only have charity and faith, and they alone are led by the Lord and do good from Him), so something shall be said of those who do not do this and nevertheless think that they have religion. They are these:

1) Those who confess themselves guilty of all sins, and do not search out any one sin in themselves.

(2) Those who neglect the search from religious reasons.

(3) Those who for worldly reasons think nothing about sins, and are therefore ignorant of them.

(4) Those who favor them and in consequence are ignorant of them.

(5) To all such sins are not apparent, and therefore cannot be removed.

(6) Lastly, the reason, hitherto hidden, will be made evident, why evils cannot be removed unless they are sought out, discovered, acknowledged, confessed, and resisted. (Divine Providence 278{2})

We move on into chapter eight today and here we find this second attack on Ai only this time the sons of Israel are victorious because that self-interest represented by Achan has been rooted out. For when self-interest is taken out of the way the Lord is able to empower us to conquer over those things in our life that are represented by Ai.

The character of Achan actually means troubler, a troubler of the sons of Israel and we all have elements of Achan within us. We all have the instinct that flows out of our lower nature to put the self first and to attribute what is good and true to ourselves. This is the nature of the ego or the proprium and it is something that needs to be uprooted and taken out. And the only way that this can actually happen is if we are willing to do the work of self examination as outlined in the quote above from Divine Providence. Because when we live from a belief that there is something intrinsically good about ourselves, we are denying the truth that the Lord alone is good. And if we live in a denial of a truth, then the Lord can’t be in that. So the Lord is with us to the degree that we take truths and we live from them because the Lord makes His presence in the truths that we live from. And this is a really important point. He can only be in us to the degree that we are living in the truth that He alone is good.

So in chapter seven we saw that the sons of Israel were able to overcome the power of Jericho and as you might recall Jericho is the idea that we can save ourselves or that we deserve heaven because somehow we are better than others. Jericho was conquered through a life of obedience to the Word of the Lord and then the city of Ai was next and by comparison, it was a small city. It should have been a straightforward military venture and yet we find that the sons of Israel were defeated and suffered losses. Joshua was perplexed by this defeat, he just could not see why what had happened had happened. And we saw that the defeat was directly attributed to Achan’s disobedience for by taking the things he was commanded not to take from Jericho he undermined the strength of the sons of Israel. Now the Israelites as a fighting force represent the truths and principles of the Lord’s Word that we fight from and so what we see in the defeat at Ai is that when self-interest is active and credits itself with the good things that belong solely to the Lord as represented by those things that Achan took from Jericho, then the Lord can’t help us because he can’t be present in what is false. So when we are in states of self-interest and we justify those states then we become subject to the evils and falsities represented by Ai – and they defeat us.

Now we know from what the doctrines for Spiritual Christianity teach that we are more often than not blinded to our own evil tendencies. And this is seen in the story in that none of the sons of Israel knew what Achan had done. They were blind to the character of this man whom they held to be one of their own and who dwelt in their very midst. And this is true of us also. We are blind to the true character of our ego or proprium for we unconsciously love the things that are associated with it. We even at times consciously seek to promote the things of that lower realm unaware of its tendency to undermine our spiritual progress and life. Such tendencies are so well hidden that the Lord is left with little option but to allow us to continue on our ways even when it means we are going to suffer some sort of mental trauma or defeat.

Now people may wonder at this. How could a loving God allow such things to happen? How could He permit us to endure these perplexities in life, to suffer in life? Well, the Lord’s love for people looks to their eternal welfare not to their temporal comfort and to allow what is destructive of the heavenly life to remain within us would not be loving behaviour. It wouldn’t be loving because these things will eventually destroy us. And it’s unfortunate but it’s true that we are more often than not oblivious to the selfish attitudes that we carry and that govern much of our behaviour and so until we are willing to practice self-examination as outlined the Divine Providence quote, we won’t take any action to have things changed or become different.

So these crises in our life occur because it’s not until we see the effect of the evils and falsities that we are holding on to, either on ourselves or on others around us, that we begin to take stock and examine ourselves just as the defeat at Ai caused Joshua to seek the Lord in order to find out what went wrong.

Now we can get hung up about the word evil but the associations that we take from natural reasoning about evil need to be put aside. Evil is simply what separates us from the loves of heaven. Anything that separates us from love to the Lord and love to our neighbour is described by the term evil. The word evil in Hebrew means to separate, to break a connection or to shatter. And so self-interest, promoting self, promoting the ego or proprium, all of these things are what separates us from the loves of heaven flowing in and this is why they are described as being evil. They prevent the Lord’s fullness being present in our life. And so evil simply is a word that points to the need to set aside our tendencies to hang on to things that do us no good, that keep us out of the life of heaven now. The only way anyone can see what the nature of the proprium is though, is through the truths of the Lord’s Word and by applying them to one’s inner life, to one’s thoughts and one’s affections. It can’t be done any other way. We need to examine our life to get a sense of the inequality of the things that we are living from but when things are going smoothly, we’re not so inclined to do this.  However, when are things starting to come apart, then we become open to investigating why what is happening is happening. For the sin of Achan to be discovered, the sons of Israel had to suffer that defeat. And the principle is the same with us. Difficulties, trauma, depressions, anxieties, all these things are related to the inner life of the mind, that is the spiritual life. And these things are given energy by false beliefs, and the evils that they stem from, which we are holding onto to protect selfish desires and delights. That’s just a fact, a fact that is taught on almost every page of the doctrines for Spiritual Christianity. But when we bring our affections and thoughts before the Word, we can then have insight into what troubles us for Achan, if we remember, means troubler. To find the troubler in the midst of sons of Israel Joshua sought the Lord and so this reinforces to us that we must be constantly engaged with Divine truths in the work of self-examination and repentance. And this simply means that we need to be looking to use truths to get a sense of the false beliefs and attitudes which we are holding on to so that these can be identified and called out for what they and consequently so that the Lord as the Word might be much more present for us as something that we can live from. This kind of self-reflection is illustrated in Joshua investigating the state of the sons of Israel. When he did that investigation, he did it by tribe, by family, by household, penetrating deeper and deeper and deeper until Achan was identified, rooted out and dealt with. And then the way is open for Ai to be conquered, which brings us to the sons of Israel preparing to take a take Ai for the second time.

Ai was a city of some twelve thousand people, and it was set in an elevated position. So strategically it was an important defensive position for the Canaanites and from a spiritual perspective, what is higher corresponds to what is deeper, more internal. And so what we see in Ai in the negative sense of this principle is that in this elevated position are false reasonings that defend deeper set evils than what were found in Jericho, which is on a lower plane. So Jericho was conquered by the sons of Israel and then they moved on to Ai, moving deeper into this work of self-examination. And it was in the probing of these deeper levels of mental life as represented in the first assault on Ai, that ended in the defeat of the sons of Israel so that Achan was able to be exposed. So once our self-interest has been exposed and we have acknowledged it, then victory over what is represented by Ai is assured.

Now there’s an interesting thing in the Lord’s instructions to the Joshua as he says that they are allowed to take the things in Ai for themselves. They were able to take the plunder and they were able to keep it for themselves, which is a contrast to what occurred in Jericho.

Now the LORD said to Joshua: “Do not be afraid, nor be dismayed; take all the people of war with you, and arise, go up to Ai. See, I have given into your hand the king of Ai, his people, his city, and his land. “And you shall do to Ai and its king as you did to Jericho and its king. Only its spoil and its cattle you shall take as booty for yourselves. ”

Whilst it’s permissible to take the things of Ai, it is not permissible to take the things of Jericho. Why this difference? What is the difference here? Well, it comes down to what these two cities represent within us. Jericho has to do with our beliefs about meriting or deserving salvation. Salvation as far as Spiritual Christianity is concerned is about being delivered from the destructive tendencies of our proprium so that we can be set free from them, and the things of heaven put in their place. Now Jericho as a Canaanite city represents beliefs tied to the idea that we can save ourselves and so that we don’t need the Word as the agent of our salvation. A belief that we don’t need the Word must find its expression in practical terms in a lack of interest in reading it and studying it for if we truly believe that the Word is the means of our salvation from the dominance of our proprium, then we will be taking time to value it through regularly engaging with it. Saying we believe it but not doing anything that reflects that belief is not a true belief. All true beliefs that we hold to find their expression in action. So what is able to destroy the false beliefs and evils represented by Jericho is the teaching that the Lord’s Word alone is our Saviour. When this is truly acknowledged through engaging with it, that is reading it and studying it and living from it, then the walls of Jericho come down and they are rendered into dust. For any notion that we can save ourselves must be destroyed completely if we are to make any progress in the spiritual life and it can only be destroyed if we are engaging with the Word. All that happens if we are not engaged with the Word and using it for for self-examination and repentance is that we are cloaking ourselves with the Babylonian garment that Achan took. The proprim will do anything to prevent us engaging with the Word to protect its nature and self-interest. It only has interest in saving itself.

So we have to come to see that we are totally dependent on the Lord for our salvation and spiritual life and this is the continual story of the sons of Israel taking the land of Canaan. Being brought back to the realisation that the Lord alone, the Word alone, is our Saviour because of what it reveals for us – for the Divine revelation it offers us through its Divine truths. These are the Lord present with us. The command not to take anything from Jericho is given to instruct us that we are forbidden to claim any feeling, thought or action of goodness as our own or attribute to ourselves any notion that we have the power to do anything of ourselves to live a genuine spiritual life. The power we have to do all of this is from the Lord. It is from the Word, and we are instructed that we are to do good and we are to think truthfully as if of ourselves but always acknowledging that this ability is from the Lord’s Word.

Now Ai is a different proposition. The name Ai means what is overturned from a root word that interestingly means to encircle for attack or protection so it’s a good description of how the proprim works. Of Ai the doctrines for Spiritual Christianity say that as a city it corresponds to a structure of thought specifically, worldly knowledge. Such knowledge isn’t bad in and of itself but depending on the state of mind and possession of it, it can be used for either good or evil. A quick illustration of this can be seen in the factual knowledge of the Word itself in the literal sense. We find scholars who are not interested in the Bible as Divine revelation but are only interested in its accuracy as a historical record. When they can’t find worldly knowledge or facts to back up the historical record in the Bible or facts that seem to contradict what’s in the Bible, they confirm themselves in their own belief that the Bible is nothing more than a human invention because it doesn’t mirror their understanding of what the historical record should be. Yet those who acknowledge the Bible primarily a spiritual document don’t see its truth lying in its historical accuracy, the truth is found instead in its ability through historical accounts to convey and illustrate the realities of the psycho-spiritual world of the human mind. So debates may rage over its historical accuracy but for those who are spiritually focused such debates are a meaningless waste of time. Its truth lies in the power of the Word to transform a person’s life for good. And if it can do this then it is supremely true.

So the biblical historian and the spiritual seeker view the accuracy and the order of the facts found in the Word from very different positions. For the historian it’s important that they conform to what is known of history, so these known facts are like the knowledge of Ai taken by someone who does not believe in the spiritual content of the Bible. They are seen as something that disproves the truth of the record that’s found in the Bible. But for a spiritual seeker it’s not important. What’s important is the Bible’s ability to convey things to do with the spiritual life and so historical accuracy is secondary to the spiritual objective.

So for those who hold to the spiritual doctrine that the Word teaches, it is permissible to order natural knowledge to conform to and illustrate these principles of doctrine. This means that lower things can be taken and ordered in a way that they are able to serve what is higher. And this principle is represented in our text today by it being permissible now for the sons of Israel to take the things of value from Ai which are the worldly knowledges and reorganise them according to spiritual principles instead of from the natural reasoning which the world offers. Because the world will offer those same facts in a way that looks to disprove the existence of Divine and spiritual things, same facts, same literal text but used differently. Ai as a defensive Canaanite city is the residual knowledge and reasoning that has come from the world. The sons of Israel going in and taking what belongs to it, is the taking of that knowledge and having it reordered so that it can serve spiritual ends.

And so what about this battle plan and its execution? If Ai is worldly knowledge and Canaanites are what are opposed to heavenly or spiritual life, then Ai when occupied by Canaanites represents the organization of worldly knowledge to support and defend worldly and selfish loves rather than spiritual loves and goals. So the sons of Israel arriving at Ai to destroy it is a point in the spiritual life where we will undergo conflict by which deeper, more embedded patterns of selfish thinking and feeling can be drawn out into consciousness so that they can be dealt with. And Joshua’s plan illustrates the process and shows us that if we are to understand how the spiritual life progresses then we need to get in touch with the deeper meaning of the Lord’s Word. That it is our map and compass of the interior life. And it is this kind of spiritual knowledge about what takes place within the mind that Divine revelation concerns itself with because these are things we cannot discover for ourselves. They have to be revealed to us and that is why we need Divine revelation. So where the Canaanites represent the evils and falsities that arise from the reasoning of self-interest and their cities are the defensive arguments which the mind puts up to defend the proprium, so the sons of Israel represent the truths of the Lord’s Word and the principles that support a genuine spiritual life.

We all know that established patterns of thinking and feeling are resistant to change but the attack on Ai provides wonderful insights into how truths are able to work on these internal structures of our minds to set us free. For when we use truths in the work of self-examination this is like the sons of Israel taking a position around the city and just as they are under the command of Joshua, so we too need to take our lead from what the Word teaches. For Joshua represents the Lord as the Word. He represents this because he receives from Jehovah what is needed to be done and conveys it to the people. Just as the Word has received from the Lord what is of Him and what needs to be done and is conveyed by means of the Word to us. So when these truths are brought into contact with our established patterns of false thinking from selfish desires then things begin to get stirred up and this may well be experienced by a person as rising anxiety levels or states of depression that can often occur without any apparent reason or obvious signs as to why. This is because as when we work with truths then what is opposed to them seems to become active in us although in actual fact these things have always been there present for us, it’s just that now the light of truth is allowing us to see them.

In the account of Ai’s defeat its inhabitants are drawn out as the sons of Israel appear to flee.

And he commanded them, saying: “Behold, you shall lie in ambush against the city, behind the city. Do not go very far from the city, but all of you be ready. “Then I and all the people who are with me will approach the city; and it will come about, when they come out against us as at the first, that we shall flee before them. “For they will come out after us till we have drawn them from the city, for they will say, ‘They are fleeing before us as at the first.’ Therefore we will flee before them.

And if we reflect a little on our own experience of spiritual work, we will see that this is often how it is for us. As states of inner conflict get more pronounced, we can become confused and unsure, and doubts enter in and this is illustrated by the sons of Israel fleeing from before the people of Ai. It’s like the truth that we have learnt and worked with seems at those times to be powerless to arrest those old unwanted patterns of being and we begin to be dominated by them once again.

However, if we have been faithful in our willingness to learn from the Word, to apply it to our lives, to reflect on our inner states and so seek the Lord so that we have the power to enter into a practice of repentance, then what happens is that as far as our interior lives are concerned – a change is possible. And sometimes it may seem as though this change can occur very quickly but what we must remember is that prior to the shift there has been a long period of work that has gone on and defeats that have seemingly been suffered. But it’s all leading towards the Lord delivering us and so what may appear to be a defeat in the short term, is merely a process of being strengthened and prepared for that shift to occur in the longer term.

So as the negative emotional content represented by the people of Ai pour out of the city in attempt to destroy those sons of Israel, the truths that are perceived to be their enemies, the states of Ai within us are being put in a weakened position. They’re being made vulnerable, and this is like the realisation that hits us that these negative emotions, these states of suffering that we are experiencing, really have no basis in reality. That they are conjured up things to do with false perceptions and so when this is seen, a shift begins to occur in the mind. Those truths that we have been working with leading up until this moment now appear to come out of hiding, as if they have been waiting in ambush for the city of Ai to be weakened to the point where it will not be able to stand. And so in those states we find that we become more conscious of these truths and they can begin to take a more active role. For we see that the mental fortifications and defensive justifications that we had built up are no longer able to repel what is true and this is represented by the sons of Israel now being able to enter in and destroy the city of Ai.

“Then you shall rise from the ambush and seize the city, for the LORD your God will deliver it into your hand. “And it will be, when you have taken the city, that you shall set the city on fire. According to the commandment of the LORD you shall do. See, I have commanded you.”

With the defences now exposed all that they have been employed to defend, all the people of Ai, are put to the mouth of the sword. They are destroyed utterly. And this is a symbolic representation of how truths of the Lord’s Word are able to subdue every false thought and selfish intention.

And it came to pass when Israel had made an end of slaying all the inhabitants of Ai in the field, in the wilderness where they pursued them, and when they all had fallen by the edge of the sword until they were consumed, that all the Israelites returned to Ai and struck it with the edge of the sword. ²⁵ So it was that all who fell that day, both men and women, were twelve thousand—all the people of Ai. (24 & 25)

And so in the closing passage of chapter 8 we find the sons of Israel go about and they build an altar made from stones that are untouched by man by any iron tool.

Now Joshua built an altar to the LORD God of Israel in Mount Ebal, as Moses the servant of the LORD had commanded the children of Israel, as it is written in the Book of the Law of Moses: “an altar of whole stones over which no man has wielded an iron tool.”

And this captures the importance that in our worship of the Lord in living a spiritual life, we are not to fashion truths from the Word to suit ourselves but that we are to come before the Lord in humility of heart. To take His truths as they are presented even when they are hard to bear and use them so that we can engage in this battle to which our salvation is so closely tied. If we are prepared to do that then we find that there is a rereading of the law. It is affirmed. The Word is affirmed for us, and we see it in a new light and we find a renewed recommit in our faithfulness to Him. 

And they offered on it burnt offerings to the LORD, and sacrificed peace offerings. And there, in the presence of the sons of Israel, he wrote on the stones a copy of the law of Moses, which he had written… And afterward he read all the words of the law, the blessings and the cursings, according to all that is written in the Book of the Law. There was not a word of all that Moses had commanded which Joshua did not read before all the assembly of Israel, with the women, the little ones, and the strangers who were living among them.

And the sons of Israel sinned a sin in the accursed things. And Achan, the son of Carmi, the son of Zabdi, the son of Zerah, of the tribe of Judah took of the accursed things. And the anger of Jehovah glowed against the sons of Israel. And Joshua sent men from Jericho to Ai, which is near Beth-aven, on the east of Bethel, and spoke to them, saying, Go up and spy out the land. And the men went up and spied out Ai. And they returned to Joshua, and said to him, Do not let all the people go up. Let about two thousand men, or about three thousand men, go up, and they shall strike Ai. Do not cause all the people to labor there, for they are few. And about three thousand men of the people went up there. And they fled before the men of Ai. And the men of Ai struck about thirty six men of them, and pursued them before the gate to Shebarim. And they struck them in the descent. And the heart of the people was melted, and became as water. And Joshua tore his clothing, and fell on his face to the earth before the ark of Jehovah until the evening, he and the elders of Israel. And they threw dust on their heads. And Joshua said, Oh Lord Jehovah, why have You at all caused this people to cross over the Jordan to give us into the hands of the Amorites, to destroy us? And, Oh that we had been willing, and that we had dwelt beyond the Jordan! Oh Lord, what shall I say, after Israel has turned its back before its enemies? And the Canaanites, and all the ones living in the land shall hear, and shall come around against us, and shall cut off our name out of the earth. And what shall You do for Your great name? And Jehovah said to Joshua, Get up! Why do you fall on your face this way? Israel has sinned, and they also have transgressed My covenant which I commanded them, and have also taken of the cursed things, and have also stolen, and also deceived, and also put it among their stuff. And the sons of Israel have not been able to stand before their enemies; they have turned the back before their enemies because they have become cursed. I will not be with you again if you do not destroy the cursed things from among you. Rise up, sanctify the people, and you shall say, Sanctify yourselves for tomorrow. For so says Jehovah, the God of Israel, A cursed thing is among you, Israel; you are not able to stand before your enemies until you take away the cursed thing from among you. And you shall be brought near in the morning, by your tribes. And it shall be, the tribe which Jehovah takes shall draw near by families. And the family which Jehovah takes shall draw near by households. And the household which Jehovah takes shall draw near by men. And it shall be, he who is taken with the accursed thing shall be burned with fire, he and all that he has, because he has transgressed the covenant of Jehovah and because he has committed folly in Israel. And Joshua rose early in the morning, and brought Israel near by its tribes. And the tribe of Judah was taken. And he brought the family of Judah near; and he took the family of the Zerahites. And he brought near the family of the Zerahites by men, and Zabdi was taken. And he brought near his household by men, and Achan, the son of Carmi, the son of Zabdi, the son of Zerah, of the tribe of Judah, was taken. And Joshua said to Achan, My son, now give glory to Jehovah, the God of Israel, and give thanks to Him, and please tell me what you have done. Do not hide it from me. And Achan answered Joshua, and said, Truly I have sinned against Jehovah, the God of Israel, and this I have done: When I saw among the spoil a goodly robe of Shinar(Babylon), and two hundred shekels of silver, and a wedge of gold, one of fifty shekels in weight, then I lusted after them, and took them. And behold, they are hidden in the earth, in the middle of my tent, and the silver under it. And Joshua sent messengers, and they ran to the tent; and behold, it was hidden in his tent, and the silver under it. And they took them out of the middle of the tent, and brought them to Joshua, and to all the sons of Israel, and laid them out before Jehovah. And Joshua, and all Israel with him, took Achan the son of Zerah, and the silver, and the robe, and the wedge of gold, and his sons, and his daughters, and his oxen, and his ass, and his flock, and his tent, and all that he had. And they made them go up to the valley of Achor. And Joshua said, How you have troubled us! Jehovah shall trouble you today! And all Israel threw stones at him, and they burned them with fire, and they stoned them with stones. And they raised over him a great heap of stones to this day. And Jehovah turned back from the heat of His anger. On this account the name of that place is The Valley of Grief until this day. (Joshua 7:1-26)

Profanation and hence the taking away of good and truth are signified in the spiritual sense by the deed of Achan, who took of the accursed things a mantle of Shinar(Babylon), two hundred shekels of silver, and a wedge of gold, and hid them in the earth in the midst of his tent, and who therefore was stoned, and all the things were burned; as is related in Joshua:

Jehovah said unto Joshua, Israel hath sinned, they have transgressed My covenant which I commanded them; and they have taken of the accursed thing, and have stolen, lied, and have put it among their vessels (Josh. 7:10-11, 21, 25);

by “accursed things” were meant falsities and evils, which were in no wise to be mixed up with holy things; the “mantle of Shinar(Babylon), shekels of silver, and wedge of gold” are in the spiritual sense species of falsity; “hiding them under the earth in the midst of the tent” signified a commixture with holy things. (That a “tent” denotes what is holy may be seen above, n. 414, 1102, 1566, 2145, 2152, 3312, 4128, 4391, 4599.) These things were signified by Israel’s “stealing, lying, and putting it among their vessels;” for “vessels” are holy truths (see n. 3068, 3079, 3316, 3318)

… a “thief” denotes the evil of merit; for he who takes away from the Lord what is His, and claims it for himself, is called a “thief.” As this evil closes the way and prevents good and truth from the Lord from flowing in, 

(Arcana Coelestia 5135{6&12})

And the sons of Israel sinned a sin in the accursed things. And Achan, the son of Carmi, the son of Zabdi, the son of Zerah, of the tribe of Judah took of the accursed things. And the anger of Jehovah glowed against the sons of Israel.

So verse one here sets the context for what is to follow. We are given an insight into what it is that sits behind this defeat at Ai. We learn there that there is something terribly wrong in the midst of Israel. Achan has taken of the accursed thing and this has an effect on the whole of Israel. In violation of the Lord’s direct command, he took spoil out of Jericho. And of that spoil that he took, he took that which was to be set aside for the Lord, for all the metals, if you recall, were to be set aside for the tabernacle, for the worship of the Lord. And so he took what was the Lord’s to himself and he hid it within his tent under the earth. Not only did he take the silver and the gold, but he took a Babylonian (Shinarian) garment and a Babylonian mantle. And we are told that he took them because he saw them and he desired them, he lusted after them. Now this desire, and in particular acting on this desire, brought danger to the whole of the Israelite nation, to the whole camp of Israel and the consequences were dire. They were dire for the thirty six men that lost their lives as they fled from before the men of Ai who struck them down them in their descent. And of course, for Achan and his family, the consequences were clear enough.

And Joshua, and all Israel with him, took Achan the son of Zerah, and the silver, and the robe, and the wedge of gold, and his sons, and his daughters, and his oxen, and his ass, and his flock, and his tent, and all that he had. And they made them go up to the valley of Achor. And Joshua said, How you have troubled us! Jehovah shall trouble you today! And all Israel threw stones at him, and they burned them with fire, and they stoned them with stones.

All because Achan lusted after the spoil of Jericho. Now it’s interesting that the name Achan means “troubler“, so it’s appropriate, and it comes from a root Hebrew word which means “to pervert or to make crooked.” And so what he represents is a deep-seated tendency within our proprium to claim what is of the Lord for ourselves. And when we get a hold of this, then the story begins to fit together.

Achan is an Israelite, like all the other Israelites around him. He is in the midst of the sons of Israel, he doesn’t stand out for all intensive purposes. He looks no different to anyone else. He blends in well as does the tendency to claim what is of the Lord for ourselves and thus like Achan, this tendency is difficult to see as it is in the midst of what the sons of Israel represent which are the truths that teach what spiritual life is all about. And so Achan as this tendency to claim what is of the Lord for ourselves, surrounds itself with what looks legitimate, belonging to the spiritual life. It goes unnoticed because it sits within our efforts to do good and to think what is true as we look to love the Lord and love our neighbour.

Now we recall that Jericho when it is filled with Canaanites, illustrates the idea that we can save ourselves, that we are good enough and that we can merit what is of heaven. And so this city and all the beliefs that were tied to it, had to be destroyed. But still there is this desire that sits at a much deeper level that claims what is of the Lord for itself and it is much more difficult for us to detect. It’s a desire that is intoxicating and it brings delight and pleasure at a certain level. The doctrines for Spiritual Christianity teach that whatever brings us delight and pleasure we call good, even when it is evil. And so we need the Lord’s Word to point out and illustrate these tendencies for us for we are mostly blind to them. We need to be able to see that what feels good isn’t necessarily good and that it is only through self examination by the light of truth that can illuminate where these false delights exist for us.

So Achan violated the command of the Lord and he took the gold and the silver, which was to be given over for the Lord and he also coveted a Babylonian garment. Now the garments of Babylon represent the false reasonings and justifications which we make that delude us into thinking that we’re okay as we are, that we don’t need to change. The garments of Babylon have to do with the love of self and the promotion of self interest. There are countless ways that we can promote our own interests and make them look, at least to those around us and perhaps to ourselves, as something legitimate. The doctrines for Spiritual Christianity state that we are engaged in this type of self deception often so if Achan is to be brought out into the open and identified, then we need to accept that this in fact true. That what it teaches concerning the proprium is true regardless of how we might feel. Forms that this garment of Babylon might take are delight in gossip while clothing it with a false projection that we are concerned for the person’s welfare, or saying something hurtful, uncharitable and justifying it by saying that we’re only pointing out to the person the truth they need to hear, or lying to protect our self image and reputation in the eyes of others. These activities and behaviours are the Babylonian garment. It is a garment because it conceals the truth of what is hidden within. So all desires, thoughts and behaviours that work at justifying forms of selfishness which promote ourselves over others and promote our views over the views of others, is what is meant by the Babylonian garment.

Achan‘s taking of the gold and silver also represents claiming merit – in fact claiming merit is really how this whole campaign started. Right from Shittim where the spies were sent out through to Jericho and now up to Ai, it has all been about this tendency to claim merit, to get a sense that we can save ourselves and that we don’t need to do the work of self examination and repentance. The doctrines for Spiritual Christianity call this faith alone. And believing that the good which we do is from ourselves and that the truths that we think make us better, richer and more prominent or more spiritual than others – is what is meant by spiritual theft. And what faith alone and spiritual theft lead to, at both an individual level and an organisational level, is a tendency towards self righteousness, pride and vanity. These things needs rooting out because they dwell within our tent, they dwell within the proprium and until they are seen and dealt with, we will suffer because of them.

So how is what Achan represents rooted out? Well there has to be a willingness to work with spiritual truths in our life. So it is an ongoing process in working with what truths show us to examine the quality of our thought and feeling life. But Achan at this stage of the campaign is hidden. However, the city of Ai stands there before us and we can see that we have to go up and confront this aspect within ourselves for Ai represents worldly knowledge and false ideas, its meaning is one of an overturned heap carrying with it the idea of things which are inverted. We find this idea of inversion throughout the doctrines for Spiritual Christianity in that before we have truths and begin to work from truths, we are immersed in darkness and self love and so in this sense we are an inversion of the heavenly image and likeness. We put more emphasis and value on the things of the world than we do on what is spiritual. But Ai now stands before us as an invitation to explore these tendencies which the Word tells us that we have and and so we can follow the Lord’s Word and begin to examine them.

So we need to take truths and begin to use them to assess how we think and to look at the beliefs that we are actually living from. Not what we profess with our mouths, but how we actually conduct ourselves. What beliefs do our behaviours actually find their source in? We can only make this examination from the Lord’s Word, from the truths that He has given us. And so the process, if we are willing to engage with it, if we’re willing to look at the Ai in our own lives, when we begin to consider that perhaps we look to worldly wisdom at times over heavenly wisdom, when we begin to do that, then this process commences. And the manifestation of Achan is pending.

Now on the surface, Ai seems of little consequence. Victory should have been a breeze in the estimation of the sons of Israel. Compared to Jericho, it’s a minor obstacle. But what it teaches us is that what may appear small on the surface could well go back to something much more malignant, lying deeper underneath. So in terms of the spiritual life and our work of self examination and repentance, we shouldn’t take what appears to be small evils and small false ideas lightly because they often are linked to something much bigger. We need to bring everything into the light of the Lord’s Word, into the light of His truths, this is what the work of self examination is all about. And it’s what moves us from a natural Christianity into a spiritual Christianity, its what moves us from faith alone into a living faith where faith is united with the good of practice.

Spiritual life involves times of being up and times of being down. And if anything, Jericho is an uptime but Ai is a downtime. We alternate between being in the things of the Lord and the things of self. And this cyclic kind of alternation is very much a feature of the spiritual life. Cycles of night and day, cycles of seasons, of segments of the day, of being in victory and being in defeat. This is the cycle of life. But the idea as far as our regeneration goes is to come into a place of peace through our work with the Word and through dealing with what these cycles bring up for us. So that we can come into a place where we are in a much more steady state, a state of inner peace, despite what is happening around us on the outside of our life. This is what the Lord wants to bring us to, a state of constancy despite the alternations. So the fact that there are these emotional highs and lows teaches us that in all extremes of emotion, however we clothe it, there is something of self, and this is why the extremes of emotion are experienced. It’s very difficult for us to give attention to what aspect of self might be present when we’re on a high but it is much easier to give reflection when we’re on a downer. And so we have to go through these alternating states in order for the Lord to lift us out of those things that hold us bound in those selfish desires and false beliefs. This is the aspect of self that is represented by Achan.

Now Joshua’s response to the defeat is interesting in contrast with the Lord’s words to him. Joshua’s response was that he was down on himself and you can see here that there is a sense of self pity and real struggle, a sense of being paralyzed, a sense of not being able to do anything.

And Joshua said, Oh Lord Jehovah, why have You at all caused this people to cross over the Jordan to give us into the hands of the Amorites, to destroy us? And, Oh that we had been willing, and that we had dwelt beyond the Jordan! Oh Lord, what shall I say, after Israel has turned its back before its enemies? And the Canaanites, and all the ones living in the land shall hear, and shall come around against us, and shall cut off our name out of the earth. And what shall You do for Your great name?

Joshua is wallowing in the dust. He is crying out, remonstrating before the Lord about what’s going to become of them now. The Canaanites are going to hear of this and they are going to become easy prey, they will cut off our name out of the earth. Joshua‘s deep sorrow about what has happened mirrors our own states of defeat when we’re feeling down and the sense of self pity that rises up. There is a sense of ‘woe is me’ that comes about, a sense that we haven’t met the expectations that the Lord has for us. We fall into states of negative self talk – ‘I’m no good. I’ll never make it. Why has the Lord chosen me to lead this life?’ etc. It’s different for us all, but the flavour of it is the same, it’s to keep us down. And all of this negative thinking and feeling is straight out of the hells. It’s not from the Lord for the Lord is only ever wanting to lift us up. And so in verse 10 and 11, we read,

And Jehovah said to Joshua, Get up! Why do you fall on your face this way? Israel has sinned, and they also have transgressed My covenant which I commanded them.

You see sorrow, if we wallow in it, is just as destructive to the spiritual life as anything else described in this chapter. What the Lord goes on to say is that Israel is on the verge of being cut off. And so what is it that they have to do? Well, not wallow in feeling sorry – but do something. The Lord tells us what must be done, we have to undergo a process of self examination. The tribes have to be brought before Joshua: the households, the families, man by man. They have to be looked into and investigated because this is the only way that Achan can be uncovered. There has to be a process of self examination and a willingness to do what the Lord commands in terms of dealing with it – this is what is called repentance. And so all that belongs to Achan has to been exposed and taken and destroyed.

And Joshua, and all Israel with him, took Achan the son of Zerah, and the silver, and the robe, and the wedge of gold, and his sons, and his daughters, and his oxen, and his ass, and his flock, and his tent, and all that he had. And they made them go up to the valley of Achor. And Joshua said, How you have troubled us! Jehovah shall trouble you today! And all Israel threw stones at him, and they burned them with fire, and they stoned them with stones.

Now often when we read the Word, we come across a story like this and to the natural man, the natural mind, there is a sense of injustice that arises. How is it that his sons, his daughters and his livestock were stoned along with Achan for it seems that what was innocent has been destroyed along with the guilty party? This is a good example of how the natural man thinks that it knows better than the Lord, that it is above the Word’s judgement. For whatever we understand from the Word as far as truths go and their application to our life, we need to follow them. We need to put down our own tendencies to rationalise things, to justify our behaviour and patterns of thinking and feeling which we know aren’t quite right. For anything that is born of the state of self merit which claims what is of the Lord as its own and which Achan represents, and anything that serves his livelihood, does not serve the Lord and needs to be done away with. All these things need to be set aside so that what is of the Word can be put in its place instead. So the states of the sons of Israel within us, those truths which serve the Lord and teach us about spiritual life, need need to take the foundational principles about spiritual life as represented by the stones and destroy Achan and all that belongs to him. And these stones remain in place as reminders to us each time Archan tried to rear its head again. The heap of stones act as reminder to us of how we need to be constantly remembering the Word by going to it, drawing truths from it for our life and putting them into practice by using them to self examine. They remind us that it is only the truths which the Word offers that have the power to liberate us from our suffering.

And they raised over him a great heap of stones to this day. And Jehovah turned back from the heat of His anger. On this account the name of that place is The Valley of Grief until this day.

As we continue with our walk through the book of Joshua we come now to that well-known story of the fall of the city of Jericho, and really everything has been building to this point. Jericho in this particular instance represents the idea that we can save ourselves. In a positive sense, it represents the idea that the Lord alone can save us but when it’s populated by the idolatrous nations of the Canaanites then it becomes the opposite. And so it carries with it this idea of ‘I can do it’ and within that, is the attribution of what is good and and what is true to myself, as things that belongs to me. In fact we see ourselves really as autonomous and independent from the Lord and so everything that we have we possess as if it is our own. But we know that everything is from the Lord and this journey that the children of Israel have taken is really bringing them to this place where they can see that it is the Lord, and the Lord alone, who can save them. The Lord is what is good and true and the Lord dwells in what is true within us and so it’s by means of these truths that what is represented by Jericho can be destroyed. For when see that the Lord is indeed the Word, that He is these truths, then we will no longer attribute what is good and true to ourselves.

This journey, if you recall, began with the spies being sent out from Shittim. We saw that these spies are part of that initial phase of life that involves looking into the inner world of our thoughts and affections and so they represent the first stages of self-examination. They went in to Jericho to gather information about the general lay of the land and while they were there they were taken in by Rahab the harlot who represents an affection for what is true. She is that state with us that is able to take in and protect what is of the Lord even in the midst of our own selfish approach to life and so the Lord uses this affection which Rahab represents, to protect what is of Himself whilst the city of Jericho is brought down into the dust.

And we saw also that the children of Israel were led by the ark of the Covenant as they crossed the Jordan River. That is, they were led by the truth that is the Lord’s Word. And so it is that we too need to be led by truths, we have to bring ourselves into obedience to the Lord’s Word understood in the light of the teachings of Spiritual Christianity. Outside of Jordan, through the wilderness, they walked by obedience through external compulsion, through a fear of God but now as they cross over into the land of Canaan there is a shift in state. For now there is a desire to follow the Lord. This represents our own progression. We have to come to a place where we willingly want to follow the Lord, to operate from self compulsion and not from external fears.

So we read in the Arcana Coelestia 8505 that prior to regeneration a person acts from obedience but after regeneration from an affection and desire for what is good and true. And so we’ve seen the children of Israel arrive at a place called Gilgal where the reproach Egypt, this acting from obedience, is rolled away. For when we live just by mere external obedience what we find is is that we struggle to overcome the things within because we are not acknowledging that the Lord is truly the one who can save us. But at Gilgal there is a circumcision where the things of self and the world are cut off so that the deeper heavenly loves are able to become much more established in life. And this is where the power of religion is then to be found, through this cutting off of the belief in self sufficiency, doing away with pride in one’s own intelligence and in any sense of confidence in the good that we think we possess. And with this comes the cessation of manna as the form of food for we are then able to eat from the grains the land, we are able to take in sustenance from being able to extract spiritual ideas and principles from the Word. All this builds to this point now which is this place called Jericho, the ultimate destruction of our reliance on self. So the reading today is from Joshua chapter 6 verses 1 to 27.

And Jericho was closed, and was shut in from the face of the sons of Israel; no one going out, and no one coming in. And Jehovah said to Joshua, See I have given Jericho and its king, mighty warriors, into your hand. And you shall go around the city, all the men of battle, going around the city once; so you shall do six days. And seven priests shall bear seven trumpets of rams’ horns before the ark. And on the seventh day you shall go around the city seven times, and the priests shall blow with the rams’ horns. And it shall be, when they make a long blast with the ram’s horn, and when you hear the sound of the ram’s horn, all the people shall shout with a great shout. And the wall of the city shall fall down flat; and the people shall go up, each man in front of him. And Joshua the son of Nun called the priests and said to them, Take up the ark of the covenant, and let seven priests bear seven trumpets of rams’ horns before the ark of Jehovah. And he said to the people, Pass on, go around the city, and he who is armed shall go on before the ark of Jehovah. And it happened, when Joshua spoke to the people, the seven priests bearing seven trumpets of rams’ horns before Jehovah passed on and blew with the rams’ horns. And the ark of the covenant of Jehovah went after them. And he who was armed went before the priests blowing the rams’ horns. And the rear guard after the ark, going on and blowing with the rams’ horns. And Joshua had commanded the people, saying, You shall not shout, nor cause your voice to be heard, nor shall there go from your mouth a word until the day I say to you, Shout! Then you shall shout. And the ark of Jehovah went around the city, going around one time. And they came into the camp, and remained in the camp. And Joshua rose early in the morning, and the priests bore the ark of Jehovah. And seven priests bearing seven trumpets of rams’ horns were walking before the ark of Jehovah, going on, and were blowing with the rams’ horns. And he who was armed went before them. And the rear guard went behind the ark of Jehovah, going on and blowing with the rams’ horns. And they circled the city on the second day one time, and returned to the camp. So they did six days. And it happened on the seventh day, they rose early, at the dawning of the day, and went around the city seven times in the same way. Only on that day they circled the city seven times. And it happened at the seventh time the priests blew with the rams’ horns. And Joshua said to the people, Shout! For Jehovah has given you the city. And the city shall be devoted to Jehovah, it and all that are in it. Only Rahab the harlot shall live, she and all who are with her in the house, because she hid the messengers that we sent. And you shall certainly keep clear of the devoted things, that you not become accursed by taking from the devoted things, and shall make the camp of Israel become accursed, and trouble it. And all the silver and gold, and vessels of bronze and iron, they are holy to Jehovah; they shall come into the treasury of Jehovah. And the people shouted, and blew with the ram’s horns, and it happened, when the people heard the sound of the ram’s horn, the people shouted a great shout. And the wall fell under it; and the people went up into the city, each man in front of him; and they captured the city. And they destroyed all that was in the city, from man even to woman, from young even to aged, and to ox, and sheep, and ass, by the mouth of the sword. And Joshua said to the two men who had spied out the land, Go into the house of the woman, the harlot, and bring the woman out from there, and all whom she has, as you have sworn to her. And the young men, the spies, went in and brought out Rahab, and her father, and her mother, and her brothers, and all whom she had; yea, they brought all her family, and set them outside the camp of Israel. And they burned the city with fire, and all that was in it. Only they gave the silver and the gold, and the vessels of bronze, and of iron, to the treasury of the house of Jehovah. And Joshua kept alive Rahab the harlot, and the house of her father, and all whom she had. And she lives in the midst of Israel to this day. For she hid the messengers whom Joshua sent to spy out Jericho. And at that time Joshua adjured, saying, Cursed be the man who rises up before the face of Jehovah and builds this city of Jericho. He shall lay its foundation in his first-born, and he shall set up its doors in his youngest son. And Jehovah was with Joshua, and his fame was in all the land. (Joshua Chapter 6:1-27)

The sounding of the trumpets by the priests signified the proclamation of Divine truth from Divine good; the shouting and acclamation of the people signified consent and confirmation; compassing the city signified a survey of falsity and evil and their dispersion by the influx of Divine truth from the Lord; this influx was signified by carrying the ark about it. The priests were seven in number, and the city was compassed seven days, and seven times on the seventh day, to signify what is holy, and the holy proclamation of Divine truth, “seven” signifying holiness, and in the contrary sense profaneness, and as there was holiness on the one part and profaneness on the other, there were seven priests with seven trumpets, and the city was compassed seven times.

The gold, the silver, and the vessels of brass and iron, were put into the treasury of the house of Jehovah, because these signified the knowledges of spiritual and natural truth and good, “gold and silver” the knowledges of spiritual truth and good, and “the vessels of brass and iron” knowledges of natural truth and good, which with those who profane are changed into direful falsities and evils; but as they continue to be knowledges, although applied to evils, they are serviceable to use with the good by application to what is good, and therefore these things were put into the treasury of the house of Jehovah. This also is what is meant by the “pounds” [minae] that were taken away from the evil and given to the good; likewise by the “unrighteous mammon;” also by “the gold, silver, and raiment,” that the sons of Israel took away from the Egyptians and afterwards devoted to the tabernacle; and also by “the gold and silver” that David gathered from the spoils of enemies, and left to Solomon for building the temple.

(Apocalypse Explained 700d {16 &17})

The Lord wants us to be truly happy. He wants happiness for every single member of the human race but we’re born with a whole raft of tendencies towards what is evil and false and these are tied up in our heredity. And so the happiness that the Lord wants to bring us into is this land of Canaan, a land flowing with milk and honey. It is the heavenly life, states of true joy and happiness. But that land is occupied by these idolatrous nations. We’ve looked at some of these already, but in general they can be called the Canaanites. They represent our inherited tendencies towards what is evil and false, towards selfishness, towards living for oneself. And with that comes the greatest falsity – that we have life in and of ourselves. This is one of the biggest things that needs to be overcome in the spiritual life. And so what we find is that throughout this journey that the Israelites undertook, they’re constantly being confronted with enemies. These enemies for us, are those things that are tied into false beliefs and particularly negative traits and emotions, they look to pull us down and to pull others down as well. These false patterns of thinking and feeling are structures, like strongholds within our mind and in the Word this is what cities represent. So we can look at the city of Jericho as a stronghold within the mind that is based upon the belief that we can save ourselves when it is occupied by the Canaanites. Now there are two things that need attending to in order to pull down and dismantle this city. There is the wall of defensiveness which are those reasonings that we put up to defend what’s within that city and then there are the things which dwell within that city are protected by the wall of argument, the wall of justification for how we feel, how we think and how we behave when we act from these false beliefs and negative states.

So what this story about Jericho is teaching us is how the Lord goes about pulling down what is of the hells within the natural mind. We see in the story that in terms of coming up against this city and the destruction of its walls, that the Israelites just marched around it according to the Lord’s command until He gave the signal that He was going to demolish it. And so as we grow in the spiritual life and we develop an affection for what is good and for what is true, and we begin to really live from that, what we find is that what once roamed the land becomes more contained. That the evils and falsities, the desires that are of the world and of self, begin to be shut up and closed in. Because as we gain knowledge of truths, we begin to see what constitutes the heavenly life and so in contrast what is not of the heavenly life or what doesn’t promote it. So those things in a sense become bounded and until nothing can move into it or out of it and the state of Jericho becomes a city that is shut up. And so this life that the sons of Israel have led and the things they’ve gone through up to this point, represents our own progression. We recognise that this enemy that is occupying the internal landscape of our thought and feeling life, has to fall.

This cessation of traffic has to do with a spiritual discipline. It’s tied to self-examination and self-observation, of learning to notice when our thoughts and feelings are not aligned with what the Lord’s Word teaches. These things have to be brought into captivity by means of the Lord’s Word. In fact, in 2 Corinthians we have a wonderful statement there from Paul which says,

For walking about in the flesh we do not war according to the flesh.

That is, we do not war or battle according to what is natural. For the weapons of our warfare are not fleshly or natural but powerful to God for the demolition of strongholds. For the demolishing of arguments and of everything which lifts itself up against the knowledge of God and for the bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ or to the Lord’s Divine truth. So we see that it is the Word that is the means by which this conquering takes place.

And Jericho was closed, and was shut in from the face of the sons of Israel

The face represents what is internal, it gives expression to what is within the mind. And so in the Scriptures we have this statement a lot – before the faces. And this tells us that it’s when the interior things of the Word begin to make themselves known, that there is power for things to be closed down. That things that once harassed us and harangued us can now begin to be shut down so that the Lord can deal with them. So what does the Lord command of the children of Israel? Well, the first thing is that they have to march around this city. And so the first thing we see here is that there has to be the application of truths to the examination of the things within our life. From the application of the Word to work on ourself, that is through self-examination, we then are given a perception or an insight into what those false ideas we hold on to are, what these strongholds in our life support.

As we looked at earlier, the greatest falsity that we subscribe to is the idea that we can save ourselves, that we can claim goodness to ourselves and that through this, that we can merit heaven. This is the root of every evil in the human condition. For when we are troubled internally and when we enter states of negative emotion, this can be tracked back to just one thing – that we are claiming what is of the Lord’s for ourselves. This is of course, far from what the Lord’s Word teaches for it clearly states that it is the Lord alone who has merit because He alone is holy and righteous and so we have to move away from this self-sufficiency that dominates our life. These things have to be put down. The thinking that exalts itself against God has to be brought into obedience and into the captivity that the Lord provides for us through His Word. So we see that the sons of Israel don’t attack the walls of the city, all they do is they walk around its fortifications. And what this process is within us is the examination of our own walled cities in the light of what truths teach. Because when we truly see that it is the Lord alone who is our Saviour then those walls, those defences that we set up and justify selfishness with, can no longer stand. Falsity or evil cannot stand before the Lord’s Word, it just can’t do it.

However, although it is the Lord alone who brings down the defences of the proprium, He doesn’t work apart from our understanding of truths. And this is why it is so important that we study the Lord’s Word and that we engage with the principles of Spiritual Christianity by applying them to our life. This is a lifelong commitment. Our development and growth and the things of the Lord goes to eternity, it never ends. And so as we are engaged in that process, the Lord can work with us but if we aren’t building our understanding of truths, and if we aren’t taking those and living from them so that they can lead us into good, then the Lord cannot do what He wants to for us. He cannot bring us into the happiness and joy of the loves of heaven. The Lord works by means of His Word within us. He doesn’t just come down and sort it all out for us in a moment but instead He requires us to be a part of this eternal work and so to do what He asks of us. If we would do that, then He is empowered within our life to bring about the heavenly ends that He desires for us. And so we see this process communicated to us in this story which we are looking at here. The instructions are given by the Jehovah to Joshua and then Joshua commands the people. And the instructions are important because they teach us how the Lord goes about doing the work of pulling down our false strongholds.

And Jehovah said to Joshua, See I have given Jericho and its king, mighty warriors, into your hand. And you shall go around the city, all the men of battle, going around the city once; so you shall do six days. And seven priests shall bear seven trumpets of rams’ horns before the ark. And on the seventh day you shall go around the city seven times, and the priests shall blow with the rams’ horns.

We see the number seven recurs time and time again. Seven priests, seven trumpets of rams horns, around the city on the seventh day, seven times. This number seven represents what is holy, complete and full. And it is a number that is really a description of the Lord as He is in His Divine Human, in His fullness of power as the Word. And the fact that events had to take place after a six day period is also significant for the number six represents temptation and struggle. The temptation and struggle in letting go of our ownership over our life, in giving it up and acknowledging the Lord as the true owner.

Now the trumpets are rams’ horns and of course lambs represent innocence. And so here we have the full maturing of innocence formed in the rams’ horns with the horn itself being a symbol of the power of truth. For the blowing of the rams’ horns offers a proclamation of the Lord’s Word in our life and it is this which brings about the consequent destruction. The rams’ horns signify a structure of Lord’s Word in us that has taking form through the maturing of innocence and then given support so that these truths might be spoken into life as signified by the breath. This is that innocence and willingness to be led by the Word and so the rams’ horns form and provide a channel for the Lord’s Word to be trumpeted out and heard within our life.

And it shall be, when they make a long blast with the ram’s horn, and when you hear the sound of the ram’s horn, all the people shall shout with a great shout. And the wall of the city shall fall down flat; and the people shall go up, each man in front of him. And Joshua the son of Nun called the priests and said to them, Take up the ark of the covenant, and let seven priests bear seven trumpets of rams’ horns before the ark of Jehovah.And he said to the people, Pass on, go around the city, and he who is armed shall go on before the ark of Jehovah. And it happened, when Joshua spoke to the people, the seven priests bearing seven trumpets of rams’ horns before Jehovah passed on and blew with the rams’ horns. And the ark of the covenant of Jehovah went after them. And he who was armed went before the priests blowing the rams’ horns. And the rear guard after the ark, going on and blowing with the rams’ horns.

There are seven priests carrying these rams horns and spiritually speaking priests are those states within us that are obedient and dedicated to serving the Lord’s Word. But in front of these priests there are the armed men ready to fight, which are like the truths that have been fitted out for the task of self-examination and from that, repentance. And so these all proceed forward from the Ark in this particular order. For the Ark sits at the centre because the Ark is the Word, the Divine Truth itself. The priests before the Ark, are our willingness to be led by the Word so that the trumpet, as that which proclaims the Divine truth, can be heard loud and clear in our life. And then before the priests are the armed men so that the blast of the trumpet that is proclaiming the truth is going on behind them as they march forward, for it is these truths that are involved in the examination of our thoughts and our affections so that we can see their true quality. And what comes behind the Ark then is what is termed the rear guard. In the Hebrew, this translates into those who gather up which carries with it the idea of those who harvest. So it is the application of truths that are at the forefront and those who gather up are at the rear, like those faculties within us that can gather into our understanding the things that may be gained from putting truths into practice. And it is these two things, our growing understanding of the practice of truth and our growing ability to put things into practice, that the Lord is going to use to pull down the wall of self love and defensiveness.

The next thing that the people were told was that they were not to make a sound until Joshua commanded them to shout.

And Joshua had commanded the people, saying, You shall not shout, nor cause your voice to be heard, nor shall there go from your mouth a word until the day I say to you, Shout! Then you shall shout

They were not to voice anything but were to remain silent until Joshua gave the command. Joshua is the Word that fights for us and who shows the level of obedience that is required. Not to make a sound here speaks of not speaking from self, not rationalising things but only to speak from the Lord’s Word and to think in accordance with the Word. This is what brings down Jericho. If we try and rationalise things and figure it all out and think that we can do it ourselves, we fall back into self sufficiency where nothing can happen. But if we truly are reliant on the Lord’s Word, if we are living from it, if we are in that effort, if we are engaged in the disciplines of self-examination and repentance – then we will hear the Lord’s Word speaking to us. The shout will be commanded and the walls of Jericho will come down.

And the people shouted, and blew with the ram’s horns, and it happened, when the people heard the sound of the ram’s horn, the people shouted a great shout. And the wall fell under it; and the people went up into the city, each man in front of him; and they captured the city. And they destroyed all that was in the city, from man even to woman, from young even to aged, and to ox, and sheep, and ass, by the mouth of the sword.

The children of Israel go up into the city once the walls come down. For when the false rationalisations that we use to justify selfish attitudes are seen for what they are, they lose their stronghold with us and fall down. The truths then that are represented by the sons of Israel are able to be employed and to move in to the city that has been built up within these walls of falsity, so that they might destroy everything within it. Man, woman, young and aged, ox, sheep, ass everything, everything that is living in it is put to the sword. Of course the sword is the Lord’s truth. And so every evil and false affection that is represented by all those living, both animal and human in that city must be put to the sword. Truths must be brought against those affections that are not of the Lord so that they can be examined and tested and set aside. This is the laying down of our own life and doing away with what is selfish so that the Lord’s Word might be promoted as what has authority in our life.

And they burned the city with fire, and all that was in it. Only they gave the silver and the gold, and the vessels of bronze, and of iron, to the treasury of the house of Jehovah. And Joshua kept alive Rahab the harlot, and the house of her father, and all whom she had. And she lives in the midst of Israel to this day.

However, there is one delivered from this city, one household and that is the household of Rahab. And as we saw a few articles ago, Rahab is that affection that is trapped within our selfishness which the Lord can use to protect truths until this day of liberation might come about. It’s a long process but it is a process that every single person must pass through if they are to enter into the land of Canaan. So only Rahab is said to live and Rahab was an ancestor of the Lord. And so she is saved that all might be saved. And so her story offers us a beautiful picture of the Lord’s provision and providence at work.

The other thing that could be taken from the city were the things that were of precious metal, the gold, the silver and also the brass and the iron. These things could be taken out because even when we live a selfish life and testify or profess a religion, we are able to draw precious things out of the Lord’s Word into our memory. While these remain trapped within selfishness, they are powerless really to do anything for us but as we begin this work of self-examination and repentance, so those things of the Lord’s Word that we have taken in can be released and freed and put into service. So the things of gold represent the golden things in the Lord’s Word, things that teach us how to love the Lord and the silver things represent the things that teach us how to love our neighbour. These things can be taken out because now the affections have been purified, they’ve been put to the sword. And we gain strength even at a natural level of life as represented by the brass and iron.

And so all things are beginning to be put into order. The things that are of the Lord are being extracted out from being bound up within that city of Jericho and are being brought back into their rightful place. This mirrors what the Lord is wanting to do with each and every one of our lives. He’s wanting to put it all in order. And so we see that this city is burnt to the ground, destroyed, for evil has its own destruction within itself and so it is laid flat and never to be rebuilt. Once the Lord takes us and helps us to overcome those things that dominate our life, so then, we are not to go back. We are to hold steadfastly to His Word. We are to continue in the effort of spiritual life and work so that He might be fully present with us and lead us on into what lies ahead. The power of the Word to win this victory is affirmed in the final verse where it says,

And Jehovah was with Joshua, and his fame was in all the land.

Jehovah was with Joshua, Jehovah, the Divine good, is with the Divine truth for this is the Word when it is applied to our life. And when this happens then the fame of the truth of the Lord’s Word is in all the land, that land being ourselves when we see that it is the Lord who win these victories for us. For this seeing and acknowldging of the Lord as the only true source of life is His name being glorified throughout the land of our life.

And it happened, when all the kings of the Amorites beyond the Jordan, toward the sea, and all the kings of the Canaanites which were by the sea, heard how Jehovah dried up the waters of the Jordan before the sons of Israel, until they crossed over, their heart was melted. And there was not any more spirit in them before the sons of Israel. At that time Jehovah said to Joshua, Make for yourself flint knives, and again circumcise the sons of Israel, the second time. And Joshua made flint knives for himself, and circumcised the sons of Israel at the hill of the foreskins. And this is the reason Joshua circumcised: All the people who had come out of Egypt, who were males, all the men of war, had died in the wilderness, in the way, as they came out of Egypt. For all the people who had come out were circumcised. And all the people who were born in the wilderness, in the way, as they came out from Egypt, had not been circumcised. For the sons of Israel had walked forty years in the wilderness, until all the nation, the men of war who had come out of Egypt were consumed, those who did not listen to the voice of Jehovah, to whom Jehovah had sworn to them not to show them the land which Jehovah swore to their fathers, to give to us, a land flowing with milk and honey; these were consumed. And He raised their sons up in their place. Joshua circumcised them, for they had been uncircumcised; for they had not been circumcised in the way. And it happened, when all the nation had finished being circumcised, they remained in their places in the camp until they revived. And Jehovah said to Joshua, Today I have rolled the reproach of Egypt off of you. And he called the name of that place Gilgal to this day. And the sons of Israel camped in Gilgal, and prepared the Passover on the fourteenth day of the month, at evening, in the plains of Jericho. And they ate the old grain of the land on the morrow of the Passover, unleavened bread and roasted grain, in this same day. And the manna ceased on the next day after they ate of the old grain of the land. And there was no more manna to the sons of Israel, but they ate the produce of the land of Canaan in that year. And it happened, when Joshua was beside Jericho, that he lifted up his eyes and looked. And, behold! A Man stood in front of him, and His drawn sword was in His hand. And Joshua went to Him and said to Him, Are You for us, or for our foes? And He said, No, for I now come as the Commander of the army of Jehovah. And Joshua fell on his face to the earth and worshiped. And he said to Him, What does my Lord speak to His slave? And the Commander of the army of Jehovah said to Joshua, Take your shoe off your foot, for the place on which you are standing is holy. And Joshua did so. (Joshua Chapter 5:1-15)

Here is a marvel: When angels in heaven conceive the idea of purification from natural things that are filthy, something akin to circumcision is represented very speedily in the world of spirits, for in the world of spirits angelic ideas come over as representatives. In the Jewish Church there were some representative religious ceremonies which had those same origins and there were others which did not. The spirits with whom that swift circumcision was represented in the world of spirits were people who wished to be allowed into heaven, but before they were allowed in this representation took place. This explains why Joshua was commanded to circumcise the people after they had crossed the Jordan and were about to enter the land of Canaan. The people’s entry into the land of Canaan represented nothing else than the admission into heaven of those who have had faith.

This is why circumcision was commanded a second time, described in Joshua as follows, Jehovah said to Joshua, Make swords of flint for yourself; circumcise the children of Israel a second time. And Joshua made swords of flint for himself, and circumcised the children of Israel on the hill of foreskins. And Jehovah said to Joshua, This day I have rolled away the reproach of Egypt from you. And he called the name of that place Gilgal (rolling away). Josh. 5:2, 3, 9. ‘Swords of flint’ means the truths which they were to be provided with to enable them to correct and cut back filthy loves, for without cognitions of truth no purification is possible. That ‘stone’ or ‘flirt’ means truths has been shown already, in 643, 1298, and that ‘a sword’ has reference to truths by which evils may be corrected is clear from the Word. (Arcana Coelestia 2039 {7 & 8})

So we come today to the fifth chapter of the book of Joshua. And this chapter is a chapter of consolidation, a chapter of preparation, a chapter of purification. And it’s the chapter that precedes the battle that the Israelites are going to have to engage in against the walled city of Jericho. Everything described in this chapter is needful prior to them being able to go up and follow the Lord’s command in order to take Jericho. So we saw last time that the crossing of the River Jordan was this state of moving beyond the literal sense of the Word into its spiritual sense, where the things of senses fall away. That our mind moves from being caught up in the things of person, place and time – into seeing what is spiritual, what lies within the Word. It’s very life. We saw that the Lord indeed is the Word and is the one who leads and guides us.

Today we will look more closely at this idea of consolidation and preparation. This occurs with the Israelites who are camping at Gilgal which means ‘a rolling off‘ so we will to see what it is that is rolled off that enables the Israelites to move on. It also speaks in the Text of the reproach of Egypt being removed and in this we get this sense that Gilgal then is a time to meditate on the new state of life that one is coming into, on the state of seeing the Word in a new way. A time of becoming established in these new truths that are able to support a genuine spiritual life. Also involved at this place called Gilgal is purification. And this is vital to enable us to move forward, to move into the deeper things of the Lord’s Word so that the more interior things within us that need dealing with can be exposed and cut off. We see there that with this new understanding of the Word comes a host of new responsibilities, particularly in terms of the application of the Word to the life of the mind, to the realm of our thoughts and our affections.

Now this is a different state to the one the Israelites had under Moses which was a state of obedience. That state was dominated by worldly and self-interest. It was a time of compliance, a time where they were fed with manna in the wilderness, something that to most if not all of them, was distasteful. And just as the Israelites were fighting with having to work through and follow the command of the Lord, so too this obedience is required of us in having to compel ourselves to work with the Word. To use its truths examine the quality of our thoughts and affections so that the loves of self and the world are able to be brought into order. And in fact the Israelites followed Moses in obedience out of fear of consequences which reflects what lies in the mix of our own initial motivations to engage in spiritual work. Fear of perhaps not being good enough to get into heaven, or of meeting the Lord’s standards, or our own.

But Joshua is a new state. It’s a state where a love for the things of the Word has been developed within us so we can move into the land. The manna is finished and we now fed from a will for what is good and true. The Lord is able to sustain us in a new way. In this state of Gilgal there is a second circumcision that is to take place because the sons of Israel that were born in the wilderness had not been circumcised. And so prior to moving on further into taking the land, which as we’ve seen previously represents states of heaven, there is a need for purification. This is a cutting off of what obscures the loves of heaven from having a much more and much stronger and deeper impact in our lives, in the experience of our life. So circumcision reflects a time of a new beginning as does also the Israelites moving in and eating of a Passover. And it is as they go through that process that Joshua, the commander of the host appears and he represents the new understanding of the Lord’s power and providence to bring us through, for it is the Divine Human alone that fights for us.

This chapter opens with a statement regarding the kings of the Amorites and the kings of the Canaanites – that their hearts melted and that there was no spirit left in them because they had seen what the Lord had done in the parting of the waters so that the children or the sons of Israel could cross over. Now in the book of Joshua we have at the beginning of each chapter the statement “and it came to pass” but in the Hebrew this can literally be read as “and he is becoming.” And this is a great statement regarding the Word and its operation in our life. For in relation to us the Lord is becoming. He is becoming more real for us. As we advance in the things of the Word, in his goods and his truths, and we see their application to our life, so He is becoming. Each step of the children of Israel through the book of Joshua is the Lord coming into being in the reality of our life and experience. It is our perception moving from being caught up in those historical elements of the literal sense of the Word and beginning to see the glory of the internal sense shining forth. And so we enter into a new state of life. And that state of life is such that the principles of evil and falsity – their hearts melt and there is no spirit, there is no life left in them. Because now this state is one of having a new will developed through the Lord’s Word, for through obedience to that Word being established within our life a desire or will for what is good and what is true emerges. That is why those old states of life that have been built up from the loves of self and the world tremble and quake. Because there is a realisation at a very deep level that the Lord is in command. That it is the Lord who fights for us and that it is the Lord who wins the victory.

The kings of the Amorites, as we’ve seen previously, represent the false ideas and perspectives that support the love of self and the world. And the loves of self and the world are represented by the kings of the Canaanites, as the principles that are established in our old form of life. So with this crossing of the sons of Israel, which represents the truths of the Lord’s Word becoming more organised and gathered together, a way forward opens. And that way is a way whereby those things that once assailed us that flow out of the love of self and the love of the world, can begin to be put down and no longer exert their dominance in our life.

The Canaanite is the love of self and this ‘love of self‘ is a common term used in the doctrines for Spiritual Christianity. It is a love of what the Lord gives us, a sense of ourselves but it’s a love so strong that we begin believing that the appearance that we have life in ourselves – is the reality. And the doctrines for Spiritual Christianity teach very clearly that our life, that our sense of self, is but an appearance, a very real and necessary appearance but an appearance nonetheless. For the Lord alone is the only self, the Lord alone is the supreme Self. And everything that has a sense of self derives that from the Lord for He alone has life in Himself. Everything else derives their life from Him but we are born into a powerful appearance that that life is our own. And when we believe the appearance to be real we are partaking from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil because it is in believing the appearance to be real, that all evils and falsities flow from. If we truly grasped that the self that we have is an appearance, then there would be no reason to be defensive of ourselves. It would put to rest every negative emotion that we have in our experience. We would realise that there is nothing to defend, that the Lord alone is the source of all life, and that it is to Him that we need to be connected. But when the appearance is believed to be true, then we are separated from the Lord because the Lord cannot dwell in what is false. He can use it to bring us closer to Himself, but he can’t dwell within it. And so we see that “evil” in the Old Testament, in the Hebrew, means to separate, to shatter, to break apart, a disorganised mass … disconnected.

So the Lord looks to put things back together and He does it by means of His Word. As we learn truths from the Word, the Lord begins to gather and reorganise the things within our mind that are from Him. As this happens they begin to form a mirror through which the Lord can be reflected back into our consciousness so that we can see what is good and what is true. But that mirror and that gathering together can only occur as we remove those evils and falsities that arise from the appearances of the senses. And this story of the Israelites moving into the land of Canaan, is about that removal – of what obscures the Lord’s love, of what obscures His warmth and our connection to Him. And so the Lord give us His Word so that we may hear and see what it is that needs to be removed and what it is also that He requires of us in that.

At that time Jehovah said to Joshua, Make for yourself flint knives, and again circumcise the sons of Israel, the second time. And Joshua made flint knives for himself, and circumcised the sons of Israel at the hill of the foreskins.

In verse 2 we see the Lord saying to Joshua to make knives of flint or if you like knives of rock, truths fashioned for the purpose of cutting away what is of the flesh, to circumcise the sons of Israel. We can look at this as the Lord asking that the rock that is the Word be fashioned into a use, into a spiritual knife of flint. This bespeaks the idea of self-examination and reflection so that those things that obscure the Lord can be cut away and that we can enter into the reality and power of His life. But it is not enough just to acknowledge intellectually that our life is not our own because if we look we will see, if we use the Word as a knife of flint, that the reality of our life is one in which we operate from a belief that the self or our life is our own. Every negative emotion, every uncharitable deed, thought and affection arises from this belief and if we are willing to use the Word to reflect on our life on a daily basis, then we will see what is operating aside from what we intellectually subscribe to. And this is done so that what we know and how we live might be brought together and made into one. So the making of flint knives for the circumcision has to do with taking the Word and using it in the effort to examine ourselves and to move into a life of repentance, of having our mind transformed.

Now this is a second circumcision we are told, for the sons of Israel who were born in the wilderness were uncircumcised and so there was a need to have them circumcised.

And all the people who were born in the wilderness, in the way, as they came out from Egypt, had not been circumcised. For the sons of Israel had walked forty years in the wilderness, until all the nation, the men of war who had come out of Egypt were consumed, those who did not listen to the voice of Jehovah, to whom Jehovah had sworn to them not to show them the land which Jehovah swore to their fathers, to give to us, a land flowing with milk and honey; these were consumed. And He raised their sons up in their place. Joshua circumcised them, for they had been uncircumcised; for they had not been circumcised in the way.

In our first first phase of spiritual life, as represented by the sons of Israel being under the leadership of Moses, there is an external compliance with truths out of a fear of consequences, a fear perhaps that if we don’t comply we won’t be granted entry into heaven, or meet the grade of the what the Lord asks of us or our own personal idea of what a ‘good person’ should be. And in that struggle and temptation represented by the wilderness there are new truths born but because worldly and self-centred concerns still dominate our life, these truths in terms of their true quality as yet are unseen. We are too engrossed in our own stuff. But as we move through this process of the wilderness those old truths that we used to live our life by or rather that old understanding of truth that we lived from, begins to die off. It no longer really sustains us or is able to carry us on and with the crossing over into the land of Canaan, a new body of ideas starts to take their rightful place.

But in order for this working army, this body of ideas, to become powerful there is a need for a cutting away. To use the Word to cut away elements of selfishness and worldliness so that our perception can become more attuned to the Lord’s Word and to what lies within it. Because as we are prepared to cut away what is of self in the world so in a sense the old understanding that is trapped in the literal meaning of the Word is also cut away and then the spiritual meaning begins to show itself. It comes through in the light that comes from the Lord and it shines within the mind. It is given so that we can move from external obedience and compliance in terms of our outward behaviour to actually dealing with the root causes which are the affections and thoughts that underlie it and thus begin to see these things, these kings of the Amorites and the Canaanites, cut away.

And so the truths of the Lord’s Word cause their heart to melt, takes the spirit out of them. They no longer are able to dominate our life like they once did. However, in this cutting away there is a pain that cannot be avoided and it is connected with the attachment which we have to what is of self in the world. But it’s a pain that must be endured if we are to move on and see the Lord as He is in His Word. For the separation of what is evil and false from what is good and true and the giving up of the idea that our life is our own is a painful process because we have lived our lives from these things for so long. They have become so much a part of who we think we are. But here the Lord wants to make us new, to renew us and give us a new sense of self which is based on the truths of His Word. A sense of self that is grounded in the principles of a spiritual Christianity. So that we live and we follow the Lord, we follow the Ark of the Covenant. It is only by taking those principles and seeing how they really apply to our life that the Lord’s love and wisdom can become established. And this is how a true spirit of charity is developed and grows, how we become a use fitted for the Lord’s purposes in the things of the Spirit.

Now after the sons of Israel who were born in the wilderness had been circumcised, they remained in Gilgal until they were revived.

And it happened, when all the nation had finished being circumcised, they remained in their places in the camp until they revived. And Jehovah said to Joshua, Today I have rolled the reproach of Egypt off of you. And he called the name of that place Gilgal to this day.

This new phase of life is something truly remarkable, a miracle given our state of separation from the Lord. But the Lord is compassionate, merciful and kind and He looks to bring us through. He never leaves us nor forsakes us no matter how painful and difficult things appear. The Lord is always fully present, He never goes anywhere and by means of reconnecting with His Word we will see that. So they wait at Gilgal until they are healed and made whole. And this is described as the reproach of Egypt being removed for as we saw earlier, Gilgal means a rolling off and so it is that the Lord says that He rolls off the reproach of Egypt.

But what is it this reproach of Egypt? It is our vulnerability due to a lack of truths in our life. It is that early phase of life that has lasted right up until this point. Fourty years through the wilderness and now the reproach of Egypt is being rolled off. Why? Because up until this point we lacked an understanding of the Lord. Of His nature, of His Word, of its internal sense. And so while we desired the good and true things that the Lord promises we were often caught out and found ourselves powerless to see those things affected in our life. And so the reproach of Egypt is where what is lower keeps dominating, cracking through and deflating us and bringing us to points of frustration and despondency. Activating an internal thought of life that says ‘You’ll never make it! Why bother? Why keep going? This is the reproach of Egypt. And here through the revelation of the internal sense of the Word what we have is instruction and vision as to what the Lord will bring about if we persevere. Because as we move through the literal sense of the Word and become established in its internal sense, then and only then can that reproach be rolled off. Because we have established principles within us that are woven into the very fabric of our thought and affection. This allows us to enter into a conscious awareness of the Lord’s presence with us where we are much more secure, peaceful and trusting that we are in a process in which the Lord is leading and guiding it every step of the way.

And so once this work of purification is affected we find an evening state described for happens afterwards is that a Passover is prepared.

And the sons of Israel camped in Gilgal, and prepared the Passover on the fourteenth day of the month, at evening, in the plains of Jericho. And they ate the old grain of the land on the morrow of the Passover, unleavened bread and roasted grain, in this same day. And the manna ceased on the next day after they ate of the old grain of the land. And there was no more manna to the sons of Israel, but they ate the produce of the land of Canaan in that year.

So there is a shift in state. We no longer eat the food of reluctant obedience, we now have a will that is fashioned by the Lord within a new understanding which comes forth as a desire and a delight in what is good and true. A new way of being sustained. And that is the old grain of the land that the sons of Israel are now able to partake of. The word old actually means transition, a shift reflecting this change of state. As this process comes near to its completion something begins to happen in terms of our perception of the word – the Commander of the army appears to Joshua.

And it happened, when Joshua was beside Jericho, that he lifted up his eyes and looked. And, behold! A Man stood in front of him, and His drawn sword was in His hand. And Joshua went to Him and said to Him, Are You for us, or for our foes? And He said, No, for I now come as the Commander of the army of Jehovah. And Joshua fell on his face to the earth and worshiped. And he said to Him, What does my Lord speak to His slave? And the Commander of the army of Jehovah said to Joshua, Take your shoe off your foot, for the place on which you are standing is holy. And Joshua did so.

Now Joshua is our understanding of the Word as it is applicable to life. But something new is beginning to happen. The Lord is beginning to be seen as the Word, as the Divine Human itself. For here is this Commander of the army to whom Joshua bows down and he reveals that he doesn’t have an agenda in terms of taking sides for what the Lord is interested in is the salvation of all people, of bringing them all to heaven. And that is all the Lord is interested in. And so this represents a perception that arises from the Word, reinforcing and strengthening the Lord as the Commander. The Lord’s care and providence is over all things and as this begins to be reflected in our life and in our understanding, so everything begins to change. And we are prepared for that battle where the children of Israel have to go up and confront what is represented by Jericho. And we will explore that next time.

And it happened, when all the nation had completely crossed over the Jordan, Jehovah spoke to Joshua, saying, Take twelve men for you out of the people, one man of each tribe. And charge them, saying, Take twelve stones from this place, from the middle of the Jordan, from the place where the feet of the priests were fixed. And you shall carry them over with you and lay them down in the lodging place which you stay in it tonight… And the sons of Israel did as Joshua commanded, and took up twelve stones out of the middle of the Jordan, as Jehovah had spoken to Joshua, according to the number of the tribes of the sons of Israel, and crossed over with them to the lodging place, and laid them down there; And Joshua set up twelve other stones in the middle of the Jordan, in the place where the feet of the priests bearing the ark of the covenant stood firm. And they are there until this day. (Joshua 4:1-3 & 8-9)

As the waters of Jordan signified truths that introduce they were commanded to take up out of the midst of it twelve stones, and carry them over to the first place where they passed the night, and this because “stones” signify truths, and “twelve stones according to the number of the tribes of Israel” signified the truths of the church. Joshua set up those stones in Gilgal to the east of Jericho, because Gilgal signified the doctrine of natural truth, which is serviceable for introduction into the church. From these few things it is clear what things of heaven and the church were represented by this miracle, also that the “ark,” because of the law in it, signified the Lord in relation to Divine truth, therefore it is called “the ark of the Covenant of the Lord of the whole earth,” as meaning conjunction with the Lord through Divine truth, since conjunction, which is signified by “covenant,” is effected through Divine truth, and that is what constitutes heaven and the church, which are signified in particular by “the whole earth;” in fact, through Divine truth all things were made and created, according to the Lord’s words (John 1:1-3, 10; Ps. 33:6), “the Word” there meaning Divine truth. (Apocalypse Explained 14)

Today we come to that point of the Israelites journey when they have to cross the Jordan River. This represents a significant change of state in the establishment of the church within the human mind. Perhaps, we just need to remind ourselves of what is meant by the church of this context. The term “church“, really means where goods and truths are present and active. In other words, the term church means spiritual consciousness, and this can be applied to the individual, or to a collective group of individuals who look to the Word for their life. This spiritual consciousness that the doctrines for Spiritual Christianity describes in its use of the term church, is the organisation of goods and truths that comes about through living one’s life in accordance with one’s understanding of truths from the Word.

All the historical aspects of the Word, including the Prophets, contains a spiritual meaning that has nothing to do with the history of Israel as a nation, or the fortunes or misfortunes of its people. This inner level of meaning deals solely with the development of spiritual consciousness and its establishment and progress within our life. To read the Word spiritually means not to pay any attention to the historical meaning of the literal sense, but to move beyond it to what lies within. For when the literal meaning takes our attention it binds our thinking in a stream of natural associations which are tied to history and personalities of the past and in this way, prevents us from seeing the spiritual meaning within. The literal level of the text should be thought of as a body through which its spirit is able to be expressed on the material plane of consciousness and by the spirit of the Word we mean the Love and Wisdom of God.

The teachings for Spiritual Christianity concern themselves with making us aware that this deeper level of spiritual meaning exists in the Word and they instruct us how it is to be accessed. But we should be aware that the term “spiritual” when used in respect to the spiritual meaning of the Word refers to something specific. The term “spiritual” in the context of Spiritual Christianity concerns itself with love towards the neighbour. This is an important point for us because within our culture the term spiritual has such a broad spread of meaning that it’s become something quite vague and for all intensive purposes, virtually meaningless. Thankfully, the doctrines for Spiritual Christianity provide us with a clear definition of this term and we see from them that it refers to those things concerning the preparation of the mind so that it can express love of wisdom from the Lord more readily in its external actions in the world. So when we talk about the spiritual meaning, we are talking about that level of meaning that has to do with the application of truths to the regeneration of the human mind, by means of which the desires or motivations of the will are purified.

So Spiritual Christianity is spiritual because its focus and life is drawn from a new understanding of the Sacred Scriptures which provides those who are willing to follow its teachings with a new level of spiritual awareness. Again the term spiritual in the phrase “spiritual awareness” refers to that inner work that makes it possible to see and love what is of the Lord in others. To love what is of the Lord in others is what it means to love the neighbour and so loving the neighbour is loving what is genuinely good and true. Our ability to do this comes from the Lord and is the Divine activity in our minds that occurs when we approach the Word with the new understanding that the principles for Spiritual Christianity gives to us. Difficult as it may be for the natural man to grasp, it is clear from the doctrines for Spiritual Christianity themselves that the Lord is indeed the Word and the Word is the Lord. And in the specific context of Logopraxis, by the Word we mean the Sacred Scriptures, these being the Old and New Testament’s, and in a more general sense, we also mean the doctrines for Spiritual Christianity as these are drawn from the Word and in that sense are inseparable from it. And so it is, that in the work True Christian Religion 6(1&2) we have this remarkable statement….

At the core of Sacred Scripture there is nothing but God or the divine that comes from God…This is what lies at the heart of Scripture. What God himself is like at the heart of the Word is something that cannot be seen by any created person or thing [for it is] where God exists [in] his own underlying reality, and his own essence. Although the inmost divine quality is covered over with elements adapted to the comprehension of both angels and people in the world, it nevertheless shines through like light through crystalline forms. Its radiance varies depending on the condition of that mind that we have formed for ourselves either from God or on our own. For all those who have formed their state of mind from God, Sacred Scripture is like a mirror in which they see God, though each in a different way. The mirror is made of truths that they learn from the Word and become steeped in through living the life according to them. A first conclusion from this is that Sacred Scripture is the fullness of God.

The implications of this statement and others like it in the doctrines are profound in terms of our understanding of the Lord and where He is found. They also draw a distinction between the beliefs of natural forms of Christianity whose focus is on the literal sense of the Word and Spiritual Christianity whose focus is on the internal sense of the Word. Natural Christianity, because its attention is fixed in the literal sense, defines its faith around the historical personage of Jesus Christ; Spiritual Christianity on the other hand looks to the Scriptures themselves as God with us and sees in them the Divine presence in our midst. With the gift of the doctrines for Spiritual Christianity we are provided with the means whereby our focus can be shifted away from the historical personage confined within the limitations of time and space, and onto the presence of the Lord found in the spiritual meaning within the Word. For here in the Word, is the Divine ever present with us. We need go no further than the Word in search of God, for here will we find that new church within in, which fullness of God resides.

If we could grasp this, then we would see that the Word becomes a mirror that is able to reveal the Lord to us. Now by the Lord we don’t mean the historical person Jesus Christ, but rather what is of the Divine Love and Wisdom or what is good and true, for this is what the term Jesus Christ describes. Angels, the doctrines for Spiritual Christianity teach, when hearing the name of a Biblical personality have no concept of it being a person in the world. For them, a name immediately brings to mind qualities or the states of love and wisdom they represent. But when the natural man hears a name from the Bible, for example the name Joshua, the thought is first anchored to what we know of him as a historical figure. Then if we have some idea of what he represents we can make a conscious effort in translating and thinking about the text in the light of this. Joshua we now know means Jehovah Saviour, and as the Word is the means by which the Lord saves us we understand by Joshua the Word in action within our minds as the Divine truth. This shift in perception changes everything in the story for we are then able to see that it is no longer dealing with events and figures in the natural world but with the inner realities of our mental world.

Angelic consciousness doesn’t have to go through this slow process of translating and extracting meaning. It is in the light of heaven and so when it hears a name, the thoughts and perceptions that arise are immediately centred on the inner meaning that the name points to. This is because nothing of the natural world enters angelic consciousness in relation to spiritual things. It thinks in spiritual terms, which is to say that angelic consciousness thinks in terms of states of goodness and truth or love and wisdom, and their expression in uses. This has implications for when the name of Jesus Christ is heard. Given that angelic consciousness have no conception whatsoever of the natural world, when it hears the name Jesus Christ or Lord it can have no conception of a historical person in the world. Such a fixed reference point is for the man of the natural world due his natural mindedness. Angelic or spiritual thought as a general rule just doesn’t go there, so the name Jesus Christ in the minds of angelic consciousness gives rise to thoughts concerned with the full manifestation of Divine love and wisdom which is recognised in the heavens as God’s presence. It sees the Lord in everything around it for those in a state of angelic consciousness have senses which are spiritual and perceive, without a second thought, everything in terms of states of good and truth.

The holiness and sanctity of the Word lies within the literal sense in its spiritual meaning, for this is the Divine Itself and in its innermost meaning, which is beyond the comprehension of any finite creature, is God in his Being and Essence. This revelation of God in the Sacred Scripture is what the doctrines for Spiritual Christianity are all about and we are repeatedly told that the Word concerns itself solely with the things of the church, understood as spiritual consciousness, and doesn’t deal with history or figures of history. As such, states of angelic consciousness are available to us through the principles of Spiritual Christianity and its teachings but we need to constantly remind ourselves of these truths when it comes to reading and studying the Word. Our struggle to get beyond the historical meaning of the Word is what the crossing of the Jordan River by the Israelites is all about. If our thinking gets caught up in the historical elements we will not see its spiritual application or meaning. In other words, we will not see its application in terms of our regeneration and it is in seeing this, that we see the Lord.

Similarly, in the New Testament, if our minds get caught up in the historical details and personalities in the stories we won’t see their relevance to us now. Natural thinking in relation to spiritual things closes the mind down because the natural senses can only detect what belongs to lowest level of consciousness. Spiritual truths are needed to open the eyes of our understanding as far as spiritual matters are concerned, which is why we need the doctrines for Spiritual Christianity. These were revealed to give us the truths to open our minds to the fact that the Lord is in the Sacred Scriptures and that the Word is in fact the Lord.

Without these truths we lack what’s needed to push back the natural associations triggered by the literal sense of the Word. These natural associations that see things in terms of history, forms a formidable barrier to having our perceptions shift from crossing over from the historical literal meaning of the Word and into its spiritual meaning. This is illustrated by the Jordan River in flood, forming an obstacle to the sons of Israel being able to cross into Canaan. For it is the false perspectives drawn from the senses which latch onto the literal meaning of the Word and prevents its inner spiritual meaning from shinning forth to view. Without spiritual truths we will remain outside the border of that personal spiritual Canaan that lies within the Word. If, as we read from True Christian Religion, the Lord is in the inmost of the Sacred Scripture then so is heaven, for heaven is nothing else than the presence of the Lord.

The ideas in the doctrines for Spiritual Christianity bring God and heaven into the very present realities of life. In other words, they make the Lord visible, not in a physical sense but in the sense that we can understand life in the light of His providence or care all around us. Heaven is not a place, heaven or true happiness is a state of life that is based on the goods and truths we have made one with our life. These goods and truths are the Word and therefore it follows that the Word or the Sacred Scriptures is heaven. But do we see the implications of this? Or are we standing on the far side of Jordan, knowing there is a heaven but being unable to see its reality in the present because the Word remains a closed book to us?

The story of this crossing illustrates the fundamental truth that within the principles of Spiritual Christianity, the Lord has provided us with all that we need to make this crossing from a natural to a spiritual understanding of the Word and so into heaven now. In other words, the opportunity is here now – for our crossing to begin while we are living on the natural worldly plane of existence. We don’t go to heaven when we die for heaven comes to us when we are prepared to die to self and live from the Word. We have looked now at a number of principles which are necessary preconditions to making this crossing. Ideas like we have to give up our ownership of what is good and true which was represented by Shittim. We have to be willing to be led by the Word and not by our own intelligence and prudence, represented by the sons of Israel following the Ark of the Covenant carried by the priests. We need to acknowledge that the Lord speaks through Joshua or the Word when it is applied to life, for as we have seen this is what Joshua represents. And we need to constantly remind ourselves of these principles so that they remain active and able to govern the life of our thoughts and affections.

This need is represented in our story by the command to create a memorial of twelve stones. Notice that two piles of twelve stones were put in place. One at Gilgal and the other in the midst of the river where the priests stood. What this teaches us is of the need to constantly remind ourselves that all the truths we need to live life as the Lord intends us to live it are to be found in the Word. Stones correspond to truths and twelve is a number that means what is full and complete. All doctrine or teaching relating to the spiritual life is represented by the stones set up on the dry ground. The parallel stack of stones set up in the midst of the river is there to remind us that all doctrine pertaining to the spiritual life is to be found in, and so is to be drawn from, the literal sense of the Word. That this second set of stones is built up at the point of where the feet of the priests stood in the river teaches that the internal sense of the Word is opened to all those who are in the desire and effort to understand truths and live from them. This is due to the fact that priests are charged with teaching truths that lead to the good of life and so within our own minds the term priest refers to an inner desire from the Lord to examine our life and make the changes that we need to make in the light of the truths which we are learning from the Word.

As we look to put these principles into practice so we will find that the stream of false ideas that flows when we are reading the Word and caught up in its literal meaning will be cut off. The Jordan’s waters will cease to flow and we will find that we can cross over and see the power of the Lord manifesting and shining forth in the spiritual meaning of the Word. It will open up for us. When this occurs the literal meaning falls away and is no longer something that prevents us entering into spiritual realities but rather becomes something vital in support of our ongoing spiritual growth and development. This shift is seen in the placement of the stones as a memorial of the Lord’s power through this miracle which enabled the Israelites to cross over. From within the boundaries of Canaan the Jordan River represents the natural truths of the Word and forms the most external border of the land. This corresponds to the written Word of the Sacred Scriptures, which when understood in the light of those truths found in the doctrines for Spiritual Christianity, opens up for us what it means to lead a genuine spiritual life and by means of that, enter into the life of heaven – now.

And Joshua set up twelve other stones in the middle of the Jordan, in the place where the feet of the priests bearing the ark of the covenant stood firm. And they are there until this day.

And Joshua said to the sons of Israel, Come near here and hear the Words of Jehovah your God. And Joshua said, By this you shall know that the living God is among you. And He shall certainly dispossess from before your [face] the Canaanites, and the Hittites, and the Hivites, and the Perizzites, and the Girgashites and the Amorites, and the Jebusites. Behold, the ark of the covenant of Jehovah of all the earth shall pass over before you into the Jordan. (Joshua 3:9-11)

Evils and falsities are meant by the nations mentioned here, evil begotten by falsity that springs from evil being meant by ‘the Canaanite, falsity from which evil arises by ‘the Hittite’, evil and consequent falsity by ‘the Amorite’, that which is idolatrous but has some kind of goodness in it by ‘the Hivite’, and that which is idolatrous but has some kind of truth in it by ‘the Jebusite’. (Arcana Coelestia 8054)

Today we going to begin to look at what the Canaanites, mentioned in the third chapter of Joshua, represent within us. To do this we will draw from a number of sources to gain a better sense of the Canaanites within the psycho-spiritual dimension of our minds. Our primary source will be the Word and the doctrines for Spiritual Christianity but we can also add what is known of these peoples historically, as to how they lived and in particular what is known concerning their religion. Why do this? Intelligence gathering is an important undertaking in military campaigns, as we saw earlier with Joshua in preparing for the Israelite campaign by sending out the spies. It represents an essential element in the spiritual life which involves acquiring spiritual intelligence through the discipline of self examination with a view to gaining a little insight into the quality of the states of our own inner life.

The Word is given so that we can see our way forward in our spiritual life. In the Gospels we find the Lord healing the blind. For us the Lord is the Word (spiritual teaching) and it is only as we take the Word as the basis for our spiritual life that our blindness to our destructive inner states of life can be healed. Everything in the Word is given for our spiritual welfare. Nothing there is to be taken historically, God is not interested in giving us a history lesson. What He is interested in is leading us into spiritual wholeness and that requires giving us a way of reading the Word which opens our minds so that we can see what lies within. Now this knowledge is not given to us on a platter because if it was we wouldn’t value it. To acquire this knowledge requires intelligence, but not the kind that is measured as IQ, this is the intelligence of the world. Spiritual intelligence is to value what is true because it is true. If a person values what is true, that is, if they are spiritually intelligent, then they will see that the Word is vital to their life and that it must be worked with and applied to the inner life and activity of their thoughts and affections.

The Word, in giving us the names of these tribes of Canaanites that the Lord says he is going to evict from the land, provides us with what’s needed to further build our spiritual intelligence. If we can get more of a handle on what these tribes represent then we will know what to look for within. However, it should not be lost on us that prior to engaging with these tribes, we must first cross the Jordan River. In fact without crossing our own psycho-spiritual Jordan, we can’t come into contact with what is represented by the Canaanites.

The general teaching of the Jordan is this. The doctrines for Spiritual Christianity describe the Jordan River in this case as “falsities from evils”. This is a common term used in the Text so it’s important that we get a sense of what it means for us. The Jordan River as a raging torrent represents what prevents us from entering into the land and facing the enemies of the heavenly life, the inner states of genuine love. The river, as falsities that flow from evils, represents the torrent of thought that flows from the negative emotions that we entertain within our life. These lower emotions are evils because they are concerned with self and the world and when active separate us from others. But most crucially they separate us from the Lord in the sense that when negative emotions get hold of us and the torrent of thoughts that flow from them flood into our minds, we are much less able to remember the Word or principles of spiritual life. We loose touch with that side of ourselves that remembers our connection to the Lord and get carried away in the lower world of our own self centredness.

How can we possibly see the enemies within, when our thoughts are occupied with negative thinking that flows from harbouring negative emotions? It requires discipline. And what this story of the Jordan River teaches is that it is very important that we use truths to stem the flow of negative thinking which flows from negative states of emotion – as soon as we are aware that they are active. Here we have a task for our spiritual work, for we can set ourselves a work task to be aware of when our thoughts are flowing from negative emotions. When we see ourselves caught up in negative patterns of thinking regarding others, we can then remind ourselves of what the story of the Jordan River teaches. When we remember the story in the midst of the torrent we will find we are given power that is able to stem the flow of thoughts. We remember that what belongs to spiritual life is unable to exist in the midst of negative emotions and uncharitable thoughts.

This remembering of ourselves in connection with what the Lord teaches as the Word, is what it means to step into the waters. This is because higher and lower level thinking cannot exist together in the same psychological or perceptual space. If we are conscious of spiritual principles which remind us that negative thinking is opposed to the spiritual life and is not healthy, that we in fact have a choice and are free not to think from what is lower, we will find that our state will shift. That we will move from being in the negative torrent, and that a way is made for us to cross over and face what is usually protected by the negative streams of thought that exist as our habitual response to those things in life that tend to unsettle us.

In Joshua 3:10 we have mentioned the names of seven tribes that are in the land of Canaan that the Lord says He will evict from the land. These are the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Hivites, the Perizzites, the Girgashites, the Amorites, and the Jebusites. These names are general descriptions of the quality of those mental states that negative emotions and thinking, as represented by the Jordan River, protect and keep alive within us. If we work to stem the flow of our negative thinking we then open the way for the truths of the Word, as represented by the sons of Israel, to penetrate deeper into our life to defeat these evils and falsities belonging to the loves of our proprium. We have something of their meaning described for us in the work Arcana Coelestia 10638…

Behold, I am driving out from [before] your face the Amorite, and the Canaanite, and the Hittite, and the Perizzite, and the Hivite, and the Jebusite’ means the moving away then of evils and the falsities arising from them. This is clear from the meaning of ‘driving out from [before] the face’ as moving or shifting something away from the interiors composing thought and affection (for ‘driving out’ means moving or shifting something away, while ‘the face’ means interior things, see in the places referred to in 9546; and the interiors of a human being are the things present in his understanding and will, or thought and affection, so that ‘driving out from the face’ means moving [evils and falsities] away from these); and from the representation of the nations in the land of Canaan as evils and falsities,…[2]…When it says that if he [Moses] observed what Jehovah commanded He would drive out those nations from [before] his face the meaning is, If they carried out the chief commands laid down by eternal truth evils and falsities would be moved or shifted away. Those commands are what come next in the internal sense, the main ones being that they should acknowledge no other God than the Lord, that He is the Source of everything good and everything true, and also that salvation and eternal life come from Him. And when people who believe these things and love the truth of them are reading the Word everything evil and false is shifted away from them, because at that time the Lord enlightens them and leads them. At that time also what they think does not originate in themselves, nor does their affection for the Word originate in themselves but in the Lord. Consequently no evil at all or falsity of evil comes in, for the Lord moves them away. These are the ones who understand the Word, have an affection for the truths derived from it, and also love to live in accord with them.

The meanings of the Canaanite tribes given here are general but more can be seen of their nature or quality as mental states from the meaning of their names. This can be done by going back to the root words in the Hebrew language and seeing their connection to other words that are related to them. The term Canaanite traces its root from a word meaning “what is low” and so we are immediately reminded that what is low spiritually equates to what is most external and belongs to the love of self. It also carries the meaning of “merchandising” or “wares that are traded”, and this brings us back to the idea of the love of the world. What is also interesting about this root is that it is related to other roots that share a common meaning being that of “domination” and the doctrines for Spiritual Christianity teach that the love of self is the love of dominating others. Other meanings related to this word are those of, extortion, force, envy and to vilify which is to defame someone, or to speak ill of them or cast dispersions on their character.

These qualities speak to the negative things in the human proprium or ego, and even the history of Canaan in the Word adds weight to these qualities. The story from Genesis chapter 9 tells us that when Noah came out of the ark with his sons after the flood, that he planted a vineyard and got drunk. His son Ham saw him lying naked and looked to expose him to ridicule him to his brothers Shem and Japheth. But Ham’s brothers would have none of it and placing a garment on their shoulders, they choose to cover their father’s nakedness by walking into where Noah was backwards and covering him with the garment. The actions of Ham, of exposing others, drew a curse on Canaan his son which means spiritually that this kind of behaviour produces nothing but what is accursed as we’ve also just seen illustrated in the meaning of root word for Canaanite. For these reasons the term Canaanite carries the general meaning of evils.

Other states spring as offspring from this general condition of the proprium and these are described by the names of the other tribes which we can briefly mention now. The word from which we get Hittite is Cheth or Heth, which is the name of the father of the Hittites, Heth being a son of Canaan. This word means “to subdue” and carries the meaning of breaking up; of fear and breaking down courage, it means what is frightening and is used in the Word to describe a state of panic or anxiety. The common theme that runs across its related root words is that of piercing and we get meanings like to cut, to tear off, to frighten. We can see from this that it is closely related to states of worry that cut and tear at our courage which leads to a feeling of being broken and in fear, because such states break our connection to the Lord and remove us from a sense of His presence and hence results in the creation of states of anxiety.

The word Hivites carries within it the meaning of “walls” for protection. It is used of walled villages and means to hide or conceal. Words related to this root carry meanings of covering over, transgression, to confuse, scurry, to be secretive, darken and bind or restrain. This relates to ideas of defensiveness and self protection in a negative sense of hiding transgressions through being secretive and causing confusion.

Perizzite means to “open up” or “break through”. The meaning it shares with related roots is one of breaking and spreading or dispersing which is what false perspectives that we carry do to truths when they dominate our thinking, particularly in regard to others. Hence we find that the Perizzite in the doctrines for Spiritual Christianity is said to mean falsities that arise from evils.

There is however very little information in the Text regarding the Girgashites. The best authorities relate this word tentatively back to a root wood which means a “scabby skin disease”. This could possibly be connected to ideas of old emotional wounds that have not properly healed and are easily opened when we suffer hurt or a state of being easily offended.

In the Word, the Amorites are often mentioned in connection with the Perizzites and are the particular evils from which the falsity represented by the Perizzites flow. The Amorites were hill dwellers and represent the pride of self love and from the meaning of this root we get a sense of self righteousness. We also get a sense of all talk and no action or saying the right things but not living a life in accordance with what is being professed.

Finally we come to the Jubusites. In the Prophets, the Jubusites are described as having an Amorite as a father and a Hittite for a mother. It would appear then in the sense that it occurs last in the series of names, to be linked to actions in which all other qualities are found. The root means “to tread down on an object” or “trampling”. It shares the meaning with other roots of to act negatively, with related words that mean, to tread down; deceive, shatter, despise and scatter. Again, all elements pointing to the negative behaviours that issue forth from the proprium when it is self absorbed instead of centred on the things of the Lord as the Word.

So those are the seven tribes and we’ll leave it there for now. But hopefully this gives you a sense of the importance of looking beyond the historical elements of the Word. And how that when we know that there is a spiritual meaning within it, and that this inner meaning relates to our inner world, that what we have in the Word, in these stories, are invaluable tools for advancing the spiritual life within us. They are tools by which we can gain spiritual intelligence. This is the intelligence that sees truths and desires to live from them. Not just to know them and know about them, but actually to travel across the Jordan River. For it is spiritually intelligent to be watchful of and look to the stem the flow of the torrent of the negative emotions and thoughts, so that we can cross over and have the Lord remove these from what is central to our loves and thinking. If we would work to do this do, then the Lord as the Word can begin to have a much more positive influence over our life.

And Joshua said to the sons of Israel, Come near here and hear the Words of Jehovah your God. And Joshua said, By this you shall know that the living God is among you. And He shall certainly dispossess from before your [face] the Canaanites, and the Hittites, and the Hivites, and the Perizzites, and the Girgashites and the Amorites, and the Jebusites. Behold, the ark of the covenant of Jehovah of all the earth shall pass over before you into the Jordan.

And Joshua said to the people, Sanctify yourselves, for tomorrow Jehovah will do wonders among you. And Joshua spoke to the priests, saying, Take up the ark of the covenant and go before the people. And they took up the ark of the covenant and went before the people. And Jehovah said to Joshua, This day I will begin to make you great in the eyes of all Israel, so that they shall know that as I was with Moses, I am with you. And you shall command the priests bearing the ark of the covenant, saying, When you come to the edge of the waters of the Jordan you shall stand still in the Jordan. And Joshua said to the sons of Israel, Come near here and hear the Words of Jehovah your God. And Joshua said, By this you shall know that the living God is among you. And He shall certainly dispossess from before you the Canaanites, and the Hittites, and the Hivites, and the Perizzites, and the Girgashites and the Amorites, and the Jebusites. Behold, the ark of the covenant of Jehovah of all the earth shall pass over before you into the Jordan. And now, take for yourselves twelve men out of the tribes of Israel, one man for each tribe. And it shall be, when the soles of the feet of the priests bearing the ark of Jehovah, Lord of all the earth, come to rest in the waters of the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan shall be cut off, the waters which come down from above. And they shall stand in one heap. And it happened, as the people pulled up stakes from their tents to cross over the Jordan, and as the priests bore the ark of the covenant before the people, and as those bearing the ark came into the Jordan, and the feet of the priests bearing the ark were dipped in the edge of the waters (and the Jordan was full, over all its banks all the days of harvest), that the waters stood still, those coming down from above rose up into a heap, very far above the city Adam, which is beside Zaretan; and those going down by the sea of the Arabah, the Salt Sea, were completely cut off. And the people passed over opposite to Jericho. And the priests bearing the ark of the covenant of Jehovah stood firm on dry ground in the middle of the Jordan. And all Israel crossed over on dry ground until all the nation had completely passed over the Jordan. (Joshua 3:5-17)

The miracle [involving the parting of the Jordan] signifies the introduction of the faithful into the church, and through the church into heaven. “The sons of Israel” mean here in the spiritual sense the faithful, who after enduring temptations, which are signified by their wanderings in the wilderness, are brought into the church; for “the land of Canaan,” into which the sons of Israel were brought, signifies the church, and “Jordan” signifies the first entrance into it and “the waters of Jordan” signify truths that introduce into it, which are such as those of the literal sense of the Word, for those are what first introduce. But here “Jordan” and its waters signify the falsities of evil which conduct towards hell, since the land of Canaan was then filled with idolatrous nations, which signify evils and falsities of every kind, which constitute hell; for this reason these were to be driven out, that there might be a place for establishing the church. Because “the waters of Jordan” then signified the falsities of evil, they were parted and removed, to give a passage to the sons of Israel, who were to represent the church. Now as the Lord alone removes and scatters the falsities of evil that are from hell, and by His Divine truths introduces the faithful into the church and into heaven, and as the ark and the law inclosed in it represented the Lord in relation to Divine truth, it was commanded that the ark should go before the people and thus lead them. This is why it came to pass that as soon as the priests bearing the ark dipped their feet in the waters of Jordan those waters were divided and went down, and the people passed over on dry land, and after this was done the waters returned. Then these same waters signified truths that introduce; for Jordan was the first boundary of the land of Canaan, and that land, when the sons of Israel had entered into it, represented the church, and that river introduction into it. (Apocalypse Explained 700 12 &13c)

We should now be well acquainted with the idea that the whole population of Israel represents the full complex of the goods and truths that are from the Word and as such are those things that form the basis of spiritual life and consciousness within us. The truths of the Word when understood in the light of the teachings for Spiritual Christianity are designed to give form to the spiritual mind on the level of awareness in which we find our-selves in our life in the world. Without them we are blind, deaf, mute, lame and maimed in spiritual matters. So where the people represent what populates the mind, the land upon which they stand, move and have their being represents the ground of the human mind itself.

Lands have boundaries and divisions and in those boundaries and divisions of lands that we find in the Word, we are able to see the boundaries and divisions that exist within the human mind. In our story today we see that there are divisions within the mind that are represented by rivers. These streams of thought move in different ways depending on the mental landscape that shapes them, even as the character of a river is formed by the physical landscape it flows through. Narrow rigid forms between hard rock surfaces create conditions for raging torrents and this mirrors the rigid forms of thought that carry powerful flowing emotions. Wider more expansive land forms see larger more peaceful flows which mirror wide open states of love that allow for gentler movements and responses.

The natural boundary of the Jordan River forms separates the land into two broad areas, the wilderness on one side and Canaan on the other. The things without, or beyond the Jordan, represents those things belonging to the more external parts of the mind, those within the boundary of the river represents what is relatively more internal. What is more internal, when we talk about the mind, is what is more the “real” person, being the actual states of life that we live in. With the children of Israel outside Canaan or beyond the Jordan, at this stage we have represented a state where the goods and truths of the Word are found in the exterior part of the mind and reside there as something belonging to the memory. As yet they don’t make up the actual internal life of a person. We can see that the more internal aspects of the state described in our story today is filled with Canaanites or what is of the loves of self and the world. Our story then is the story of how goods and truths of the Word battle their way from being something external and of our memory, to becoming our very being and life.

So it is that for a long time our knowledge of spiritual things resides in the external level of the mind, in its memory, where it remains prior to moving into the more interior psychological space, as represented by Canaan. Here it is used to confront the enemies of the spiritual life that dwell there. We have seen that certain acknowledgements must take place in regard to truths before this shift can begin to happen. We must pass through that state called Shittim, which is the acknowledgement that the Lord alone has power to deliver us from the evils and falsities that populate our minds, or our inner land of Canaan.

In verse 5 we are taught that the Word continually seeks to move us forward. It instructs us on every page, in every statement,

To sanctify yourselves for tomorrow Jehovah will do wonders among you.

To sanctify ourselves is to be in the effort to receive the Lord’s love and wisdom into our life. This involves taking the goods and truths of the Word and using them to purify our emotional and intellectual life. This is an ongoing work and is the key responsibility that we need to attend to if we want to live a genuine spiritual life. Everywhere in the Word and in the doctrines or Spiritual Christianity the Word or Jehovah speaks and is constantly saying to each one of us, “sanctify yourselves” and enter into the work which makes a life of charity its goal.

The use of the word “tomorrow” means that the Lord is constantly looking to take us further inward into a richer and more fulfilling experience of heaven by means of the Word. Those who are engaged in this work realise that it is indeed Jehovah Himself as the Word, that works miraculous changes in their midst. This is the “tomorrow” spoken of. It is not a day as such but is a state that is initiated in every moment that we affirm the place of the Lord as the Word at the centre of our life.

Joshua is the understanding of the Word that comes into being when there is a desire to apply it to our inner life. When we desire to apply it to life, and are willing to face our evils and falsities, then there is awakened within us a faculty that serves in the function of the priests to whom Joshua is said to speak. Joshua or the Word speaks to the priests, in other words the priestly faculty within us is that which hears what the Word is saying. We all can read the Word, but we don’t always hear what it is saying. This is why the Lord often used the phrase in the gospels,

He who has ears to hear, let him hear (Matthew 11:15).

In those times when the Word really speaks to us, in the sense that we not only hear it, but have “ears to hear,” that is, we find ourselves compelled to respond to it, then in that desire and subsequent effort to respond we are experiencing what are called “the priests” active within us. Priests, we saw last time, have to do with things of love in the spiritual life. These manifest as the desire to have all that is within us conform to the pattern of a heavenly mind as revealed in the Word and the doctrines for Spiritual Christianity.

So, the Word speaks to us when what is of the “the priests” in us hears it. We can know when it is heard because we will be inspired to elevate the ark of the covenant or have the Word take a much more central role in governing and leading us in our life. So it is that the Ark of the Covenant becomes the reference point for the whole nation of Israel to follow and so when the Word is truly valued in our midst we find that every natural truth that we have in our minds from the Word begins to become reorganised. Hence, bringing about a change or movement in our understanding of it as it leads us to the edge of sense of self, as represented by the edge of the Jordan River.

Taken on an inward level, because the priests are what hear the Word in a way which inspires us to act in regard to spiritual matters, we can perhaps see that the “inner priests” of our mind are closely related to the faculty of conscience. A genuine spiritual conscience is one that is built up through the practice of truths from which there is a developed sensitivity to what is opposed to a genuine spiritual life. The priests are those who receive this command to take up the ark, and so they have to do with something connected to our new will. This new will is that which is within us that carries the Word on a personal level and keeps us conscious of its presence and of our need to work with it in every situation that life confronts us with.

We read in verse 7 that after the priests had been commanded by Joshua concerning the ark of the covenant , Jehovah then said to Joshua,

this day I will begin to make you great in the eyes of all Israel, so that they shall know that as I was with Moses, I am with you.

Whenever it says in the Word that “Jehovah speaks” we are talking about influx into the mind that is experienced by a person as an insight, or a sense of something being required of them in response to it. Remember, Joshua is our understanding of the Word, so Jehovah speaking to Joshua is what we are able to receive from the Lord through the Word. This makes complete sense when we see that the priests who hear Joshua represent our desire to do, and that this is activated by obeying truths. For when we obey truths we find that insights and perceptions arise to guide and direct our life, which is what is meant by the voice of Jehovah speaking to Joshua, or through the Word.

There is an important principle being illustrated here, one that is repeated throughout the Word and it is this – we only receive further insights as we put the truths we currently have into practise. What this means is that we cannot see our way forward if we will not work with what truths are highlighting in our lives in the present moment. We experience this law as a recurrence of issues and problems in our life. We are inclined to avoid facing the unpleasantness, pain and suffering that comes with letting go of the old and entering into the new, especially when it involves facing uncharitable attitudes that we hold which go against how we like to think of ourselves. The spiritual law is straight forward. Influx flows into our effort to do what the Word asks of us. This spiritual law means that it is only as we act upon truths in accordance with the order of our life, can the Lord then implant more and so lead and guide us further in the life of heaven. When Jehovah says of Joshua that he shall become great in the eyes of Israel it means that the new phase of life which involves acting upon the understanding of truths that we have, must become the dominant aspect of our approach to spiritual life.

The next instruction, which we find is in verse eight, it says,

the priests were to stand in the Jordan, when they came to its edge.

So we see that if we follow the Word we will be brought to the edge of our inner Jordan River. In other words, we will be brought face to face with what is in us that prevents us from entering into the heavenly life as represented by the land opposite. We need to move forward sincerely in response to the Lord’s Word and because we can only do this from a very basic understanding of spiritual realities, we will have feelings of being unsure or insecure. But even a basic understanding, when sincerely responded to, has great power. The faith of a grain of mustard, the Lord tells us, can move mountains (Matthew 17:20). In the case of our story today, the feet of the priests can stop the raging torrent of the falsities from evil which block our way and thus make it clear for the truths and goods that we have acquired from the Word to become established in the more internal dimension of our life, as represented by the sons of Israel crossing over.

The simple desire to be obedient is represented by the feet of the priests carrying the ark entering the Jordan River. This desire coupled with the simplest of truths, such as those found in the Ten Commandments, is the firm footing on which the spiritual life ultimately stands. Moving from knowing to practise in the spiritual life is achieved by continually looking to the Word for guidance, for as Scripture declares we,

have not passed this way before.

The life of spiritual practice is always new, inviting us ever onward and inward into areas that we have not yet been. And while we may never “have walked this way before” we can certainly rest in the knowledge that the Word has gone before us and knows every step that we need to take, and so can lead us safely on our inner journey into wholeness. The Ark of the Covenant is to go before the people, and when we are willing to be lead by the Word in this way then it makes the way clear for us and draws with it all the goods and truths of the Lord’s Kingdom that are stored in our external man, bringing them across the Jordan into our very heart and life.

And Joshua rose up early in the morning. And they pulled up stakes from Shittim and came to the Jordan, he and all the sons of Israel. And they stayed there before they crossed over. And it happened, at the end of three days, the officers passed into the midst of the camp. And they commanded the people, saying, When you see the ark of the covenant of Jehovah your God, and the priests, and the Levites bearing it, then you shall pull up stakes from your place and shall go after it. Only, keep a distance between you and it, about two thousand cubits by measure. You shall not come near it, so that you may know the way in which you are to go. For you have not crossed over this way yesterday and the day before. And Joshua said to the people, Sanctify yourselves, for tomorrow Jehovah will do wonders among you. (Joshua 3:1-5)

[The ark of the covenant is called] the ark of the covenant because it contained the law. And the law, which in a broad sense means the Word, signifies the Lord as to the Divine Truth, which is the Word, thus the Divine Truth or Word which is from the Lord, and in which the Lord is, because all Divine Truth proceeds from Him. When this is received by man, conjunction with the Lord takes place, and it is this conjunction that is signified by covenant…[2]…Man, from freedom, can think and will what is evil, and also think and will what is good. So far, therefore, as a man from that freedom, which belongs to his love, and thus to his life, thinks falsities and wills evils, which are contrary to the truths and goods of the Word, so far he is not conjoined to the Lord; but so far as he thinks truths and wills goods, which are from the Word, so far he is conjoined to the Lord, and the Lord causes those truths and goods to be of His love, and thus of His life. From these things it is evident that this conjunction is reciprocal, namely, of the Lord with man, and of man with the Lord; such is the conjunction meant in the Word by covenant. (Apocalypse Explained 701)

We now reach the point where the sons of Israel begin their advance towards entry to the Promised Land. It begins with Joshua rising up early in the morning, and with the children of Israel moving towards the Jordan, where they camped before they crossed over. This movement out from Shittim, as the ground from which the advance towards the Promised Land is made, is one every person who is to embark on the journey of inner spiritual growth and development must make. We have seen that Shittim represents the acknowledgement of the truth that the Lord alone is righteousness and so deserving of merit. What this means is that a person comes into a state of conviction that the truths of the Word are the only thing that have power to fight for us against the hellish influences, which keep us ego-centric in attitude and our outlook.

This acknowledgement, of course, must be one of the heart or life. A recognition from the heart or life is different from a merely intellectual acknowledgement because it comes with a sense of conviction that compels us to do something with the spiritual principles that we know. Alternatively, claiming merit arises when there is an intellectual relationship to spiritual teachings without a sense of them having implications for our life. Strictly speaking it dominates when we are more concerned about how we appear to others externally and hence don’t give any real attention to the internal things of the Word and their application to our real life, which is the mental and emotional life of our minds with its beliefs, desires, values and attitudes. Claiming that we possess some form of goodness or rightness (righteousness) is always accompanied with attitudes of self-righteousness and self conceit, and in this lurks a pride in one’s own intelligence. This being the case, we should be able to see that any sense of goodness that we hold in regard to ourselves is something that flows out of the hells and as such is a form of denial that the Lord alone is righteousness and worthy of merit.

We don’t actually have to look that hard to see when we are caught up in states that deny the Lord or what is the same thing, when we don’t accept what the truths of the Word teach in this area. Self merit manifests in a lot of different ways. It can be seen in a sense of our own righteousness which is really an attitude or need to always be right. It can be seen in defensive behaviours and a need to constantly justify ones position. This defensiveness can either be passive or active, going silent when offended or always being on the attack. If we find ourselves constantly battling to get our own way or we respond with attitudes that are dismissive of the views of others, then this is a cue that we need to look into what is governing our responses to life.

Shittim represents the putting aside of such attitudes or at least a willingness to acknowledge and work with the Lord to have these attitudes changed or removed. Such attitudes are embodied, and so well pictured in the Pharisees of the New Testament who stood against the Lord at every turn. They represent those aspects within our proprium that continually object to the demands which truth makes on our life and so take a stand against the Divine truth in favour of what is evil and false. From this, arises a false self image that is absorbed in the loves of the self and the world.

But once the Word is acknowledged as being righteousness itself, a new state of understanding represented by Joshua arises and a new state of life begins to come to the fore. This new state is called “the morning,” and with the morning and the rising of Joshua so too the sons of Israel or the truths of the Word that have gathered and camped in our memory begin to be reorganised bringing us to the Jordan River and so to the boundary of Canaan, or to the possibility of a new life grounded in the loves of heaven.

In our story the Jordan River stands as a boundary preventing the children of Israel from advancing into the promised land. At this point, there is nothing to do but to stop and wait, and so we read that the sons of Israel lodged there before they passed over.

Verse two states that they lodged there for three days and then after the three days we are told that the officers passed into the midst of the camp. And then in verse three, that they commanded the people saying,

…when you see the ark of the covenant of the Lord your God and the priests and the Levites bearing the ark of the covenant then you shall be removed from your place and go after it.

As an obstacle, the Jordan River represents what prevents the things of the Lord and the church advancing in our life. When we truly acknowledge that the Lord or the Word alone is goodness and truth, we are also in a state of acceptance that in and of ourselves we are nothing but what is evil and false. This acknowledgement opens up our ability to see the things that are an obstacle to the loves of heaven, making their presence more fully felt in our life. The first stages of this shift are described by the sons of Israel halting at the Jordan River.

The land, like Jericho, is filled with Canaanites and the Canaanites represent the self-interest of the proprium. Now, when are working with the Word it is useful to keep in mind that the things within it have a dual application depending on their context. So, as we saw with Jericho last time, so too Jordan has a dual meaning. For when it stands opposed to the sons of Israel, preventing them entering the land, it has a negative meaning in that it represents the false perspectives and beliefs which we hold and these of course shut out the light and love of heaven from our life.

If things are to progress then the false perspectives and beliefs which we carry that are opposed to the life of heaven have to be removed. Our way of seeing things has to shift and for that to happen we have to have our minds reorganised in accordance with heavenly principles.

The sons of Israel represent the knowledge we have of the Word with its stories and prophesies. Those called “officers” represent higher principles that can direct and organise the things found in the literal sense of the Word so that they are able to be used to illustrate more internal realities. So, they bring us into a fuller sense of the internal or deeper meaning of these things and can be used as a guide to dealing with the inner things of the mind. And so it is that we see that after three days, the officers of the people are said to pass into the midst of the camp whereupon they commanded the people.

The Word is given to support us in our spiritual growth or regeneration and so the principles that we find in the doctrines for Spiritual Christianity are what are represented by the “officers.” Our knowledge of the Word is organised in accordance with our understanding of doctrine. Whatever focus we bring to the Word determines how we understand it. If our focus is on externals, our attention will be given to how we appear to others and we will fail to see the contradictions that exist within ourselves. We will see the Word as something that supports our point of view, and in those places where it highlights evils and falsities our attention will be on others and not on ourselves. Whereas if we view the principles of the doctrines for Spiritual Christianity as the basis for examining the life of our own mind, then the stories of the Word begin to be organised in a way that supports this kind of inner work. We see that the evils and falsities are within us and it is here that our attention will be directed. This shift in our understanding of the Word is critical to entering the land.

This process or shift in how we regard the Word must reach its completion before we can move on and this is represented by the “three days” passing before the officers went through the midst of the camp. Internally by three days is not meant three days but the completion of this state of transition. The number three in Scripture always represents what is complete or what has run its full course and three days signify all the states that have to be passed through in order for our understanding of the Word to be organised so that it can support the inner work of our spiritual transformation or regeneration.

The “officers” being said to pass through the camp of the sons of Israel represents our taking hold of the principles of Spiritual Christianity and using them as the basis for building up our understanding of the Word. What they commanded the people highlights the universal truth that has to be present if we are to undergo the process of being regenerated. For the universal truth that the doctrines teach is that the spiritual life involves a commitment to following the ark of the covenant of the Jehovah our God.

The ark was a box made of shittim wood overlaid with gold. It contained the tables upon which were written the Ten Commandments and these can be summarised as all the Divine laws that pertain to loving the Lord and loving our neighbour. The term covenant means an agreement that brings two or more parties into a relationship with one another. Thus, covenant spiritually means conjunction or joining together.

So we can ask ourselves- What is this covenant? and Who or what are the parties involved? One of the mistakes people make when they read the Word in regards to the Lord making a covenant with his people, is that they think of people naturally or as referring to individual human beings, or of a collection of people forming a nation, such as the nation of Israel. But people and nations mentioned in the Word don’t refer to natural people or nations of the world; rather they refer to states of good and truth or evil and falsity in the human mind. If we saw this then we wouldn’t make the error of thinking that the Lord makes his covenant with us as individuals.

The fact is – the Lord can never be joined to us as there is nothing in what we are as finite human beings that is capable of receiving Him. The Lord is only able to unite with what is of Himself. So when we read of the Lord setting up a covenant with the sons of Israel we are dealing with something that represents a spiritual reality. When we see that the sons of Israel are nothing other than truths of the Word, then we can see that the covenant that’s established is between the Lord as goodness and the truths of the Word, the latter as represented by the sons of Israel that are in accord with this. The Word Itself is the covenant. This is given to us by the Lord and is from Him and is Him. It is never ours although the Lord has made it so that it can be “as if” it is ours. Clearly we can take the Word into our mind and life but even though it is in us, in this sense it is never ours.

This is why the Word is so important, for it is the sole means by which a person is able to have a sense of being in the life of heaven. In fact there is a remarkable statement in Arcana Coelestia 1878 which says that the Word is in fact heaven.

…the Word is so holy in the heavens that the Word is so to speak heaven to those who are there.

It is the Word that gives us a sense of being connected to the Lord and if we have worked to have our life built on it, this sense of connection never leaves us but makes heaven within us. For when the Word is in our minds the Lord is there also and because the Lord is in the Word and the Word is in us, we then are in the Lord and so we have established within us a sense of connection with the Divine. A sense of a covenant.

To see the ark being lifted by the priests and the Levites is to see or understand that the Word contains all of heaven, which is everything of love and wisdom. Priests represent the Lord’s love going forth to save what is truly human in people, while the Levites that bear the ark of the covenant are all the truths that serve the Lord’s love for the salvation of the human race. Each day we are given an opportunity to prepare our minds through studying the Word and the principles of Spiritual Christianity. To open our perception that we might see how the ark is borne by love to the Lord and love towards our neighbour.

When we look to the Word to deliver us from evils we find that those things represented by the priests that carry the ark are active, and when we are building up our understanding of spiritual things so we find those things represented by the Levites are active within us. The will and the understanding when centred on the Word and its application to life is represented by both the priests and the Levites bearing the ark – to see this is to understand spiritual principles and their operation in our life.

Our response must ever be to follow the precepts of the Word as best we can. If we do this then the Ark of the Covenant goes before us. It initiates the shifts in state and as we shall see, brings us to the Jordan River so that we may view the evils and falsities which infest our life. And it is by coming to such a place that we shall see that it is the Lord alone who saves us.

Now as the Lord alone removes and scatters the falsities of evil that are from hell, and by His Divine truths introduces the faithful into the church and into heaven, and as the ark and the law inclosed in it represented the Lord in relation to Divine truth, it was commanded that the ark should go before the people and thus lead them. (Apocalypse Explained 700c {13})