Earths In Our Solar System Which Are Called Planets, and Earths In The Starry Heaven Their Inhabitants, And The Spirits And Angels There eBook

108.  I did not, however, speak with those spirits who are on the side that looks this way, and who are savage and almost brutal; but the angels informed me of their character, and the origin of their so brutal nature:  it is this; they are greatly delighted with robbery, and more especially with eating the prey.  The delight they have in thinking about eating the prey was communicated to me, and was apperceived to be exceedingly great.  That there have also been inhabitants of a like brutal nature, on our Earth, appears from the histories of various nations; also from the inhabitants of the land of Canaan (1 Sam. xxx. 16); and likewise from the Jewish and Israelitish nation even in the time of David, in that they made yearly excursions, and plundered the nations, and rejoiced in feasting on the booty.  I was informed, further, that the greater part of those inhabitants are giants, and that the men of our Earth reach only to their navel; also, that they are stupid, not seeking to know anything about heaven or eternal life, their only care being about their land and their cattle.

109.  As they are of this character, even when they come into the other life, they are greatly infested there by evils and falsities.  Their hells appear near the earth, and do not communicate with the hells of the evil of our Earth, because they are of an entirely different genius and disposition; hence also their evils and falsities are of an entirely different kind.

110.  But those of them who are such that they can be saved, are in places of vastation, and are there reduced to the last degree of despair; for evils and falsities of this kind cannot otherwise be subdued and removed.  When they are in the state of despair, they cry out that they are beasts, that they are abominations, that they are hatreds, and thus that they are damned.  Some of them, when in such a state, even cry out against heaven; but for this they are forgiven, because it proceeds from despair.  The Lord restrains them from indulging in vituperation beyond fixed limits.  When they have passed through extreme suffering, the corporeal [principles] with them being then as it were dead, they are finally saved.  It was also said of them that, during their life on their earth, they had believed in a certain supreme Creator without a Mediator; but when they are saved, they are also instructed that the Lord is the only God, Saviour, and Mediator.  I have seen some of them, after they had passed through extreme suffering, taken up into heaven; and when they were received there, I have apperceived such a tenderness of joy from them as drew tears from my eyes.

THE SPIRITS AND INHABITANTS OF THE MOON.