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.

Footnotes:

8816. 'And all the people who were in the camp trembled' means a holy quivering by those about to receive. This is clear from the meaning of 'trembling' as a holy quivering; and from the meaning of 'the people who were in the camp' as those about to receive Divine Truth. Various places in the Word say that when Jehovah comes down the earth quakes and mountains collapse, as in Psalms 77:17-18; 97:4-5; 104:32; and elsewhere. By this the violent shaking of all things at the presence of the Divine is meant; for the Divine is such that no person can bear His presence unless he is in a kind of cloud and so in a suitable condition to receive Him. The Divine is like the fire within the sun; if this were to fall naked on people it would instantly devour them. But reception of Him depends on how far good exists with someone. Those governed by good do indeed start to quiver at the presence of the Divine; but it is a holy quivering that comes before reception. Those however who are ruled by evil are terrified at the presence of the Divine and therefore flee, at which time they are enveloped by their falsities as if by a dark cloud, and are hidden. These falsities are meant by the caves in the rocks they then take themselves into. From all this one may see what 'all the people who were in the camp trembled' means.

920. In this verse the worship of the Ancient Church in general is described, that is, by 'the altar and its burnt offerings', which were the chief features of all representative worship. First of all however the nature of the worship of the Most Ancient Church must be mentioned, and from that how worship of the Lord by means of representatives arose. For the member of the Most Ancient Church there was no other worship than internal such as is offered in heaven, for among those people heaven so communicated with man that they made one. That communication was perception, which has been frequently spoken of already. Thus, being angelic people, they were internal men. They did indeed apprehend with their senses the external things that belonged to the body and to the world, but they paid no attention to them. In each object apprehended by the senses they used to perceive something Divine and heavenly. For example, when they saw any high mountain they did not perceive the idea of a mountain but that of height, and from height they perceived heaven and the Lord. That is how it came about that the Lord was said to 'live in the highest', and was called 'the Most High and Lofty One', and how worship of the Lord came at a later time to be celebrated on mountains. The same applies to all other objects. For example, when they perceived the morning they did not perceive morning time itself that starts the day but that which is heavenly and is a likeness of the morning and of the dawn in people's minds. This was why the Lord was called the Morning, the East, and the Dawn. Similarly when they perceived a tree and its fruit and leaves they paid no attention to these objects themselves but so to speak saw man represented in them. In the fruit they saw love and charity, and in the leaves faith. Consequently the member of the Church was not only compared to a tree, and also to a tree-garden, and what resided with him to fruit and leaves, but was even called such.

[2] Such is the character of people whose ideas are heavenly and angelic. Everyone may know that a general idea governs all the particular aspects, and this applies to all objects apprehended by the senses, both those which people see and those they hear. Indeed they pay no attention to such objects except insofar as these enter into the general idea a person has. Take the person who has a cheerful disposition; everything he hears and sees seems to him to contain joy and laughter. But for one who has a sad disposition everything he sees and hears seems to be sad and dismal. The same applies to every other kind of person, for their general affection is present within each individual part and causes each individual part to be seen and heard in the general affection. Other features do not even show themselves but are so to speak absent or insignificant. This was so with the member of the Most Ancient Church. Whatever he saw with his eyes was for him heavenly, and so with him every single thing was so to speak alive.

[3] From this the nature of that Church's Divine worship becomes clear, namely that it was internal and not at all external. When however the Church went into decline, as it did among its descendants, and that perception, or communication with heaven, began to die out, a different situation started to emerge. In objects apprehended by the senses they no longer perceived, as they had done previously, that which is heavenly, but that which is worldly. And the more they perceived that which is worldly the less perception remained with them. At length among their final descendants, who came immediately before the Flood, they apprehended nothing at all in such objects except that which was worldly, bodily, and earthly. Thus heaven became separated from mankind and communicated with it in none but an extremely remote way. Man's communication now changed to a communication with hell, and from there he obtained his general idea from which, as has been stated, stem the ideas belonging to every individual part. In this situation, when any heavenly idea came to them, it had no value for them. At length they were not even willing to acknowledge the existence of anything spiritual or celestial. Thus man's state came to be altered and turned upside down.

[4] Because the Lord foresaw that the state of mankind was to become such as this, He also provided for the preservation of doctrinal matters concerning faith so that from them people might know what was celestial and what was spiritual. These matters of doctrine were gathered together from the members of the Most Ancient Church by the people dealt with already called Cain and those called Enoch. This is why it is said of Cain that a sign was placed upon him to prevent anyone killing him, and of Enoch that he was taken by God. Concerning these two, see Chapter 4:15 - in 393, 394 - and Genesis 5:24. These matters of doctrine consisted exclusively in things that were meaningful signs and so things of a seemingly enigmatic nature. That is to say, they consisted in earthly objects which carried spiritual meanings, such as mountains, which meant heavenly things and the Lord; the morning and the east, which also meant heavenly things and the Lord; various kinds of trees and their fruits, which meant man and the heavenly things that are his; and so on. These were the things that their matters of doctrine consisted in, which had been gathered together from the meaningful signs of the Most Ancient Church. Their writings too were consequently of this nature. Now because they wondered at, and to themselves seemed to detect, that which was Divine and heavenly in such matters of doctrine, and also because of the antiquity of these, they began and were allowed to make such things the basis of their worship. This was the origin of their worship on mountains, in groves, and among trees, also of their pillars in the open air, and later on of altars and burnt offerings which ended up as the chief features of all worship. Such worship was begun by the Ancient Church, and from there spread to their descendants and to all the nations round about. These and many other matters as well will in the Lord's Divine mercy be dealt with later on.