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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4807. CHAPTER 38

In the preliminary section of the previous chapter, in 4661-4664, an explanation was begun of what, in Matthew 25:31-end, the Lord said about judgement on the good and the evil, who are there called the sheep and the goats. What the internal sense of those words is has not yet been explained, but comes up for explanation now in the preliminary sections of this and a couple of chapters ¹ following it. From these explanations it will be clear that by a last judgement in this parable He did not mean a last phase of the world, when - for the first time - the dead will rise again and will be gathered before the Lord and will be judged, but that He meant the last phase of a person passing over from the world to the next life, this point being his time of judgement. This is the judgement He meant. But none of this is seen from the sense of the letter, only from the internal sense. The reason the Lord spoke in the way He did is that He spoke using representatives and meaningful signs, as He has done everywhere else in the Old Testament Word and in the New. For to speak using representatives and meaningful signs is to speak simultaneously to the world and to heaven, that is, both to men and to angels. This kind of speech, being universal, is Divine and therefore proper to the Word. Consequently, those who are in the world and are interested only in worldly matters grasp nothing else from the words spoken by the Lord regarding a last judgement than the idea that everyone's resurrection will take place at one and the same point in time, when the Lord will sit on a throne of glory and address those gathered together there in the words used in the parable. But those who are interested in heavenly matters know that each person rises again at the point in time when he dies, and that the Lord's words in the parable carry the teaching that everyone will be judged according to what his life is, thus that everyone brings his judgement with him because he brings his life with him.

Footnotes:

8261. 'Then Moses and the children of Israel sang this song to Jehovah' means that those belonging to the spiritual Church ascribed glory to the Lord because of their deliverance. This is clear from the meaning of 'singing a song' as ascribing glory, dealt with below - ascribing it to the Lord, since 'Jehovah' is used in the Word to mean the Lord, 1343, 1736, 2921, 3023, 3035, 5041, 5663, 6280, 6281, 6905, 6945, 6956; and from the representation of 'Moses and the children of Israel' as those who belong to the spiritual Church. For Moses together with the people represents that Church - Moses its head, since he also represents Divine Truth, and the people or the children of Israel the Church itself. For the representation of 'the children of Israel' as those who belong to the spiritual Church, see 6426, 6637, 6862, 7035, 7062, 7198, 7201, 7215, 7223. The fact that they ascribed glory to the Lord because of their deliverance is evident from what was shown in the previous chapter. There it was shown that those belonging to the spiritual Church were saved solely through the Lord's Coming into the world, and that until then they had been held back on the lower earth, where they were molested by spirits steeped in falsities arising from evil and were delivered by the Lord after He had made Divine the Human within Himself. For the salvation of those belonging to the spiritual Church solely through the Lord's Coming into the world, see 2661, 2716, 2833, 2834, 6372; and for their being held back until then on the lower earth, and their deliverance by the Lord once He had made Divine the Human within Himself, 6854, 6914, 7035, 7091(end), 7828, 7932, 8018, 8054.

[2] The reason why 'singing a song' means ascribing glory, so that 'a song' means an ascription of glory, is that in the Ancient Church, and subsequently in the Jewish Church, songs were prophetic. Their theme was the Lord, in particular His coming into the world, His destruction of the devil's crew, which was prowling around then more than at any other time, and His deliverance of faithful believers from attacks by them. And because the prophetic words of the songs contained such exploits in the internal sense, an ascription of glory to the Lord was therefore meant by them, that is, praise of Him from gladness of heart was meant. For gladness of heart is expressed primarily through singing, the gladness in singing being so to speak a spontaneous eruption into sound. So it is that in songs Jehovah, that is, the Lord, is called Mighty Man, Man of War, God of Hosts, Conqueror, Might, Fortress, Shield, and Salvation; and the devil's crew, which was destroyed, is called the enemy, who was struck, swallowed up, drowned, and cast into hell.

[3] Even in former times those who had no conception of an internal sense thought that when in their external sense songs referred to things of a worldly nature - such as enemies, battles, victories, defeats, drownings - those things were the real meaning. But people who knew that all prophetic utterances embodied realities of a heavenly and Divine nature, and that these were represented within things of a worldly nature, also knew that those utterances were referring to the damnation of the faithless and the salvation of the faithful by the Lord when He came into the world. And in those times when these people who had knowledge of this contemplated it, and were consequently affected by it, they experienced an inner gladness, whereas the others' gladness was purely outward. At the same time the angels too who resided with people ascribed glory to the Lord. Therefore those who sang and those who listened to songs experienced heavenly gladness as a result of the holy and blissful influence from heaven, gladness in which it seemed to them as though they were transported into heaven. Such was the effect the songs of the Church had among the ancients. Such also is the effect they have at the present day, for the affections of spiritual angels are especially stirred by songs which refer to the Lord, His kingdom, and His Church. The songs of the Church had that effect because, for one thing, they inspired gladness of heart, which then burst from within right out into the outermost fibres of the body, making them quiver with a glad and at the same time holy feeling, and, for another thing, because in the heavens glory is ascribed to the Lord by choirs, thus by very many harmonizing with one another. Hence also angelic speech is harmonic; it falls into rhythmic measures. Regarding choirs, see 2595, 2596, 3350, 5182, 8115; regarding angelic speech, that it falls into rhythmic measures, 1648, 1649, 7191(end). So it was that when the ancients who belonged to the Church ascribed glory to the Lord they did so through songs, psalms, and various kinds of musical instruments. For the ancients who belonged to the Church experienced a joy surpassing all other joys when they called to mind the Lord's Coming and the salvation of the human race by Him.

[4] The fact that prophetic songs contained internally an ascription of glory to the Lord is clear from songs in the Word, as in Isaiah,

I Jehovah have called You in righteousness, and I will hold Your hand; I will guard You, and give You to be a covenant of the people, ¹ a light of the nations, to open the blind eyes, to bring the bound out of the prison, out of the dungeon-house him who sits in darkness. Sing to Jehovah a new song, His praise, O end of the earth! Let the wilderness and its cities lift up their voice. Let the inhabitants of the rock sing. Let them give glory to Jehovah. Jehovah will go forth as a Mighty Man, as a Man of Wars He will arouse zeal; He will prevail over His enemies. Isaiah 42:6-9ff.

This refers, as is self-evident, to the Lord, to His future coming to deliver those in spiritual captivity. Therefore it says, 'Sing to Jehovah a new song' and 'Let the inhabitants of the rock sing'. A similar example occurs in the same prophet,

I have given You as a covenant of the people - to restore the land; to share out the devastated inheritances; to say to the bound, Go out; to those who are in darkness, Reveal yourselves. They will feed along the ways, and on all slopes will their pastures be. Sing, O heavens! And be exultant, O earth! And resound, O mountains, with song! For Jehovah has comforted His people, and will have mercy on His afflicted. Isaiah 49:8-10, 13ff.

This too refers to the Coming of the Lord and the deliverance of the bound.

[5] In David,

Sing to Jehovah a new song; bless His name; declare His glory among the nations. All the gods of the peoples are idols, ² but Jehovah made the heavens. Glory and honour are before Him; strength and beauty are in His sanctuary. Give to Jehovah glory and strength; give to Jehovah the glory of His name. Say among the nations, Jehovah reigns; the world also is firmly established, and will not be moved. Jehovah comes He comes to judge the earth. Psalms 96:1-end.

In the same author,

Jehovah caused me to come up out of the pit of vastation, out of the muddy clay, and He set my feet upon a rock. And He put into my mouth a new song, praise to our God; many will see and be confident. Psalms 40:2-3.

From these quotations too it is clear that 'a song' means an ascription of glory to the Lord because of deliverance. For songs included both gladness of heart and exaltation of the Lord - gladness of heart because of the Lord's Coming and salvation then, and exaltation because of victory over spiritual enemies. Gladness of heart coupled with exaltation of the Lord is what is meant by an ascription of glory.

[6] The fact that gladness of heart was meant by 'songs' is evident in David,

Confess Jehovah with the harp, make melody to Him on a ten-stringed lyre. Sing to Him a new song, play skillfully with a loud note. For He gathers the waters of the sea together as a heap; He places the depths in storehouses. Psalms 33:2-7.

In Isaiah,

The joy of timbrels will cease, the noise of merry ones will cease, the joy of the harp will cease. They will not drink wine with singing. Isaiah 24:8-9.

And in Amos,

I will turn your feasts into mourning, and all your songs into lamentation. Amos 8:10.

The fact that exaltation of Jehovah, that is, the Lord, was effected by means of songs may be seen in David,

David the servant of Jehovah, who spoke to Jehovah the words of this song. [I will love You,] O Jehovah, my strength. Jehovah is my rock (petra), and my fortress, and my deliverer; my God, my rock (rupee) in which I trust, my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my refuge. On Him who is to be praised, on Jehovah I will call; then I shall be saved from my enemies. Psalms 18:1-3.

In the same author,

Jehovah is my strength and my shield; therefore with song I will confess Him. Jehovah is their strength, and the saving strength of His anointed. Psalms 28:7-8.

In the same author,

Your salvation, O God, will bring me on high. I will praise the name of God with a song and will magnify Him with confession. Psalms 69:29-30.

[7] The fact that the Lord was the theme in their songs is also clear in John,

The twenty-four elders sang a new song, saying, You are worthy to take the book, and to open its seals; for You were slain, and have redeemed us to God by Your blood. Revelation 5:9-10.

Also in the same author,

I saw seven angels, and those who were singing the song of Moses, the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb, saying, Great and marvellous are Your works, O Lord God Almighty! Just and true are Your ways, O King of saints! Who would not fear You, O Lord, and glorify Your name? Revelation 15:1-4.

'The song of Moses and of the Lamb' is a song which in this chapter is called 'the song of the Lamb' because an ascription of glory to the Lord is the theme in it.

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