643. And if any one shall desire to hurt them, he must thus be killed.- That this signifies that they perish, according to their attempt to inflict evil, is evident from the signification of desiring to hurt, as denoting the attempt to inflict evil, for to desire is to attempt; and from the signification of being killed, as denoting to perish, in the present case, as to spiritual life, which perishes solely from evils and the falsities of evil, for thence comes spiritual death, as may be seen above (n. 315, 589). The reason why "if any shall desire to hurt them" is here repeated, is, that it means that every one perishes according to the will, or according to the attempt to inflict evil, for the will makes the life of every one. The reason why every one perishes according to the desire to hurt the two witnesses, who are the two olives and the two lampstands, that is, the good of love and of charity, and the truth of doctrine and of faith, is, that they are in an opposite will, and the will that is in opposition to the good of love and the truth of doctrine is hell in proportion to the amount of such opposition, and it is therefore said that he must in this manner be killed, that is to say, perish as far as he desires to hurt them.
[2] Moreover, every man and every spirit is under the Lord's protection, the evil equally as the good; and no evil can happen to him who is under the Lord's protection, for it is the Lord's will that no one should perish or be punished. Every one is under the protection of the Lord, so far as he abstains from doing evil, but in the measure that he does not abstain, so far does he remove himself from the protection of the Lord; and in the measure that he thus removes himself, so far he is hurt by evil spirits from hell. For [infernal] spirits have a constant desire to do evil to others, and so far as any are beyond (extra) the Divine protection of the Lord, that is, so far as they do evil, they come into the power of those who injure them by punishing and depriving them of such things as pertain to spiritual life. In a word, so far as any one desires to injure the goods of love and the truths of doctrine, so far "he is devoured by fire and is killed," that is to say, he is so far possessed by evils and the falsities of evil, and so far spiritually dies, and this takes place not from the Divine but from the very evil which he does.
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