When the Lord was in the world, he spoke by correspondences, and thus both spiritually and naturally at the same time. This Swedenborg thought to be apparent from the Biblical parables, in which he supposed every single expression to contain a spiritual sense. However, people of Jesus’ time only understood the natural literal level of his teaching. According to Swedenborg, correspondences were not disclosed to the primitive early Christians, because they were too simple to understand them. Thus Jesus said, “There is so much more I want to tell you, but you can’t bear it now.” (John 16:12).