18. And the ruler of the kings of the earth. This symbolically means, from whom originates all truth from good in the church.

This follows from the preceding, because "a faithful witness" symbolizes the Lord in respect to Divine truth, and "the firstborn" the Lord in respect to Divine good. Thus "the ruler of the kings of the earth" means, symbolically, that from Him originates all truth from good in the church. This is symbolically meant by "the ruler of the kings of the earth" because in the spiritual sense of the Word, kings mean people who possess truths from good, and abstractly, truths from good themselves, and the earth means the church.

That these are the symbolic meanings of kings and earth may be seen in nos. 20 and 285 below.

16. (i) Which of the Reformed it was who suffered the Last Judgment. The Last Judgment took place only on those of the Reformed who in the world had claimed to believe in God, read the Word, listened to sermons, attended the sacrament of the Lord's Supper and had not neglected the customary practices of the church's worship; but who had none the less regarded as permissible acts of adultery, various kinds of stealing, lies, revenge, hatred and such things. While claiming to believe in God, they thought nothing of sinning against Him. While reading the Word, they paid no attention to the rules of conduct it contains. While listening to sermons, they did not heed them. They attended the sacrament of the Lord's Supper without putting a stop to the wickedness of their former life. They did not neglect the customary practices of worship, but did not improve their conduct. So they lived externally as if devoted to religion, while internally there was no religion in them. These are the people meant by the dragon in chapter 12 of Revelation. It says there that the dragon was seen in heaven, that it fought in heaven with Michael and pulled down a third of the stars from heaven. These things were said because their declared belief in God, their reading of the Word and their outward show of worship enabled such people to be in touch with heaven. The same people are meant by the goats in chapter 25 of Matthew; they were told, not that they had behaved wickedly, but they had failed to do good. All these fail to do good deeds that are really good, because they do not shun evils as sins; and even if they do not do evil actions, they still think them permissible and so do them in spirit, and physically too if they can.