1. THE LAST JUDGMENT AND BABYLON DESTROYED

The Last Judgment and Babylon Destroyed, Showing That at This Day All the Predictions of the Book of Revelation Have Been Fulfilled, Drawn from Things Heard and Seen

“Judgment Day” Does Not Mean the End of the World

1. If people have no knowledge of the Word’s spiritual meaning, ¹ they cannot help but understand the Last Judgment to mean the end of everything visible to the eye in this world, since it says that at that time both heaven ² and earth will pass away and that God will create a new heaven and a new earth. ³ They find further support for this interpretation in the fact that it says all people will then rise from their graves and that the good will then be separated from the evil, and so on [Matthew 25:31-46; 1 Thessalonians 4:15-17; Revelation 20:11-15].

That, however, is what a literal reading of the Word says, because the literal meaning of the Word is earthly ⁴ and resides on the lowest level of the divine design ⁵ (though even there absolutely everything contains some spiritual meaning). As a result, people who understand the Word only in its literal meaning can be led to various conclusions, as has indeed happened throughout the Christian world ⁶ -resulting in any number of heresies, for each of which people find biblical support.

[2] Still, since no one has as yet realized that there is spiritual meaning throughout the Word and in every detail, or has even realized what spiritual meaning is, people who have held this opinion of the Last Judgment are to be forgiven. However, let them now know that the heavens we see above us are not going to pass away, and neither is this earth that we are living on. No, both of them are going to survive. And let them now know that the “new heaven” and “new earth” mean a new church ⁷ both in heaven and on earth. I speak of a new church in heaven since there is a church there just as there is on earth, because the Word and sermons exist in heaven as on earth and angels have a divine worship that is similar to ours. The difference, though, is that everything there is in a more perfected state because it exists in a spiritual world ⁸ rather than an earthly one. So all the people there are spiritual people and not earthly, the way they were in this world. On this subject, see my book about heaven, ⁹ especially where it discusses our union ¹⁰ with heaven through the Word (Heaven and Hell 303-310) and deals with divine worship in heaven (Heaven and Hell 221-227).

Footnotes:

5. 1. What the spiritual meaning is. The spiritual meaning is not the sense that shines from the literal one when one is studying the Word and interpreting it in order to confirm some dogma of the church. This sense is the Word’s literal sense. Rather its spiritual meaning is one not apparent in the literal one. The spiritual meaning lies within the literal one, like the soul within the body, like thought within the eyes, and affection within the face, which operate in concert, like cause and effect.

That spiritual meaning is what principally causes the Word to be spiritual, not only for people, but also for angels. Consequently that meaning is the means by which the Word communicates with the heavens.

212. As to heaven's form and how it works and flows, this is incomprehensible even to angels. It can be brought to some measure of conceptualization by comparison with the form of all the elements of the human body as explored and examined by someone who is both wise and experienced; for as explained above in the relevant chapters, heaven as a whole resembles a single person (59-72) and everything in the human [body] corresponds to the heavens (87-102). We can see in a general way how incomprehensible and intricate this form is simply by looking at our nerve fibers, which serve to weave absolutely everything [in us] together. There is no way their nature and how they work and flow in the brain can be presented to our eyes, for the countless things involved are so intricate that viewed en masse they look like a soft, undefined lump. Yet actually each and every function of our volition and understanding flows into act through them with perfect definition. We can see how these fibers rejoin in the body by looking at the various plexuses — cardiac, mesenteric, and others — and the nodes called ganglia where many fibers from all over the body come together, combining within these nodes and then exiting in different arrangements to various functions, a pattern that is repeated over and over again. Further, there are similar arrangements in all our viscera, in each member and organ and muscle. Anyone who probes these and other wonders with the eye of wisdom will be utterly stunned; and yet these are the few things that the eye can see, and what it cannot see is more amazing still because it is more inward in nature.

It is abundantly clear that this form corresponds to heaven's form if we consider the way our volition and discernment work in it and according to it, because whatever we intend flows spontaneously into act and whatever we think travels along the fibers from their beginnings to their ends, giving rise to our senses. Further, since this is the form of our thought and intentions, it is the form of our intelligence and wisdom.

It is this form that corresponds to heaven's form. We can learn from this that it is this kind of form that determines the way all the affection and thought of angels reaches out, and that they enjoy intelligence and wisdom to the extent that they are in this form. It may be seen above (78-86) that this form of heaven comes from the Lord's divine human.

These matters have been included so that it may also be known that heaven's form by its very nature can never be fathomed even in a general way and is thus incomprehensible even to angels, as already stated.