254. I have been told how the Lord spoke with the prophets through whom the Word was given. He did not speak with them as He did with the ancients, by an influx into their interiors, but through spirits who were sent to them, whom the Lord filled with His aspect, and thus inspired the words which they dictated to the prophets. So it was not influx but dictation. As the words came forth immediately from the Lord, therefore, each one of them was filled with the Divine and contains within it an internal sense, which is such that the angels of heaven perceive the words in a heavenly and spiritual sense, while men do so in a natural sense. Thus has the Lord conjoined heaven and the world by means of the Word. How spirits are filled with the Divine from the Lord by aspect has also been shown. A spirit filled with the Divine from the Lord does not know otherwise than that he is the Lord, and that it is the Divine that is speaking; and this continues until he has finished speaking. Afterwards he perceives and acknowledges that he is a spirit, and that he spoke from the Lord and not from himself. Because this was the state of the spirits who spoke with the prophets, they said that it was Jehovah who spoke; the spirits even called themselves Jehovah, as can be confirmed not only from the prophetical but also from the historical parts of the Word.