1. In the twenty-fourth chapter of Matthew, we find the Lord talking to his disciples about the close of the age, the last time of the church. ¹ At the end of his prophecies concerning the sequence of states of its love and faith ² he says:

Immediately after the suffering of those days, the sun will be darkened and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken. And then the sign of the Human-born One will appear in heaven, and then all the tribes of the earth will lament. And they will see the Human-born One coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And he will send his angels with a trumpet and a loud voice, and they will gather his chosen ones from the four winds, from one end of the heavens all the way to the other end. (Matthew 24:29-31)

When people understand these words according to their literal meaning, they can only believe that all these things are going to happen just as this meaning describes them, at that end of time called the Last Judgment. This does not mean only that the sun and moon will be darkened and that the stars will fall from heaven, that the sign of the Lord will appear in heaven, and that he will be seen in the clouds with angels blowing trumpets. It also includes matters prophesied elsewhere, statements that the whole visible world is going to be destroyed and that afterward a new heaven and a new earth will come into being.

Many people in the church these days are of this opinion. However, people who believe such things are not aware of the hidden depths that lie within the details of the Word. There is in fact spiritual meaning in these details, for they intend not only the outward and earthly events that we find on the literal level but spiritual and heavenly events as well. This holds true not just for the meaning of phrases but even for each word. ³

The Word is in fact written in pure correspondences ⁴ so that there may be deeper meaning in the details. Questions about the nature of this meaning can be resolved by all the things I have set forth about it in Secrets of Heaven. A selection of these may be found also in my explanation of the white horse in the Book of Revelation. It is in this deeper sense that we are to understand what the Lord said in the passage just cited about coming in the clouds of heaven. The sun that will be darkened means the Lord in respect to love, ⁵ the moon means the Lord in respect to faith. ⁶ The stars mean insights into what is good and true, or into love and faith. ⁷ The sign of the Human-born One in heaven means the appearing of divine truth. The wailing tribes of earth mean all the elements of what is true and good, or of faith and love. ⁸ The Lord's coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory means his presence in the Word, and revelation. ⁹ The clouds refer to the literal meaning of the Word ¹⁰ and the glory to the Word's inner meaning. ¹¹ The angels with a trumpet and a loud voice mean heaven, which is where divine truth comes from. ¹²

This enables us to see what these words of the Lord mean. They mean that at the end of the church, when there is no longer any love and therefore no longer any faith, the Lord will open the Word by disclosing its deeper meaning and will reveal the heavenly contents hidden within it. The particular hidden contents to be disclosed in the pages that follow have to do with heaven and hell and with our own life after death.

Church people these days know practically nothing about heaven and hell or their life after death, even though there are descriptions of everything available to them in the Word. In fact, many who have been born in the church deny all this. In their hearts they are asking who has ever come back to tell us about it.

To prevent this negative attitude - especially prevalent among people who have acquired a great deal of worldly wisdom - from infecting and corrupting people of simple heart and simple faith, it has been granted me to be with angels and to talk with them person to person. I have also been enabled to see what is in heaven and in hell, a process that has been going on for thirteen years. Now I am being allowed therefore to describe what I have heard and seen, in the hopes of shedding light where there is ignorance, and of dispelling skepticism.

The reason this kind of direct revelation is taking place today is that this is what the Coming of the Lord means.

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1408. The events described here and in what follows took place in history as they are recorded, yet the historical events as described are representative, and every word carries a spiritual meaning. This is so in all of the historical parts of the Word, not only in the Books of Moses but also in those of Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings, all of which books contain nothing else than historical narratives. But although they are historical narratives in the sense of the letter, in the internal sense there are arcana of heaven lying hidden there. These arcana cannot possibly be seen as long as the mind keeps its eye fixed on the historical details, nor are they disclosed until the mind removes itself from the sense of the letter. The Word of the Lord is like a body that has a living soul within it. The things that belong to the soul are not apparent as long as the mind is fixed on those of the body, so much so that it scarcely believes it possesses a soul, even less that it will be alive after death. But as soon as the mind departs from bodily things, those belonging to the soul and to life show themselves; and in this lies the reason not only why bodily things must die before a person can be born anew or be regenerated, but also why the body must die so that he can enter heaven and behold heavenly things.

[2] The same applies to the Word of the Lord Its bodily parts are the things that constitute the sense of the letter, and when the mind is fixed on these the internal things are not seen at all. But once the bodily parts so to speak have died, the internal for the first time are brought to view. All the same, the things constituting the sense of the letter are like the things present with man in his body, namely the facts belonging to the memory which come in through the senses and which are general vessels containing interior or internal things. From this one may recognize that the vessels are one thing and the essential elements within the vessels another. The vessels are natural, and the essential elements within the vessels are spiritual and celestial. In the same way the historical narratives of the Word, as with each individual expression in the Word, are general, natural, indeed material vessels that have spiritual and celestial things within them. These things never come into sight except through the internal sense.

[3] This may become clear to anyone simply from the fact that many matters in the Word have been stated according to appearances, indeed according to the illusions of the senses, such as that the Lord is angry, punishes, curses, slays, and many other such statements, when in fact the internal sense contains the reverse, namely that the Lord is never angry or punishes, still less curses or slays. All the same, no harm at all is done to people who in simplicity of heart believe the Word as they find it in the letter so long as they are leading charitable lives, the reason being that the Word teaches nothing other than this - that everyone ought to live in charity with his neighbour and to love the Lord above all things. People doing this are in possession of the internal things, and thus with them the illusions acquired from the sense of the letter are easily dispersed.

10623. 'Visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the sons and on the sons of sons' means the rejection and condemnation of evils and of a long line of falsities arising from them. This is clear from the meaning of 'visiting' as the casting out and condemnation of evils, dealt with below; from the meaning of 'the fathers' as forms of good, and in the contrary sense evils, dealt with in 3703, 5902, 6050, 10490; and from the meaning of 'the sons' as truths, and in the contrary sense falsities, dealt with in 1147, 10490, so that 'the sons of sons' means a long line of falsities arising from evils. By the casting out and condemnation of evils and of the falsities arising from them the casting out and condemnation of those ruled by such evils and falsities should be understood; for evils and falsities have no existence other than within their subjects ¹ , that is, within people. It should be recognized that the falsities of evil are meant by 'the sons' because the fathers from whom they spring mean evils. What falsities of evil and falsities not of evil are, see in the places referred to in 10109.

[2] A person unacquainted with the internal sense of the Word may easily be led to believe that Jehovah visits the iniquity of the fathers on the sons and on the sons of sons, consequently that the sons are going to pay the penalty for their fathers' evils. But this is not the meaning of those words, as is plainly evident from the Divine law that fathers shall not die because of sons, nor sons because of fathers, but each because of his own evil, Deuteronomy 24:16. From this law it is evident that those words are to be understood differently from their literal meaning. The fact that those who are ruled by evils and the long line of falsities arising from them are meant by the fathers, their sons, and their sons' sons, is clear from the internal sense, in which evils and falsities are meant by fathers and sons. Angels - who also see a meaning in the Word when someone in the world reads it - do not understand anything other than this here by fathers and sons. For in heaven, where angels live, there is no knowledge, as there is among people on earth, of what a father is or of what a son is; for nobody there acknowledges anyone to be his father or anyone to be his son. There are no births there as there are in the world. When therefore father and son are mentioned in the Word angels think of spiritual births, which are those of goodness and truth or else of evil and falsity. Consequently they understand forms of good or else evils by fathers, and truths or else falsities by sons, since good is the father of truth and evil is the father of falsity.

[3] The reason why 'being visited' means being cast out and condemned is that this is what follows after evils reach their closing stage and comes before actual condemnation, meant in the Word by the last judgement. For visitation is the examination of a person to discover his true character. But this takes place in the next life, in particular when the individual person goes there from the world, and in general with all at the end of the Church, as stated immediately above in 10622. Regarding visitation, see what has been stated and shown in 6588, 6895, 10509.

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