115. 1. Redemption was actually a matter of gaining control of the hells, restructuring the heavens, and by so doing preparing for a new spiritual church. I can say with absolute certainty that these three actions are redemption, because the Lord is bringing about redemption again today. This new redemption began in the year 1757 along with a Last Judgment that happened at that time. The redemption has continued from then until now. The reason is that today is the Second Coming of the Lord. A new church is being instituted that could not have been instituted unless first the hells were brought under control and the heavens were restructured.

Because I have been allowed to see it all I could describe how the hells were brought under control and how the new heaven was built and put into the divine design, but that would be the subject of a whole work. In a little work published in London in 1758 I did lay out how the Last Judgment was carried out.

Gaining control over the hells, restructuring the heavens, and establishing a new church was redemption because without those actions no human being could have been saved. In fact, they follow in a sequence. The hells had to be controlled first before a new angelic heaven could be formed, and that heaven had to be formed before the new church on earth could be instituted, because people in the world are so closely connected to angels from heaven and spirits from hell that at the level of the inner mind they are one. This point will be taken up in the last chapter of this book, which specifically covers the close of the age, the Coming of the Lord, and the New Church [753-791].

768. The Lord's Coming Is Not His Coming to Destroy the Visible Heaven and the Inhabitable Earth and to Create a New Heaven and a New Earth, As Many Have Supposed Because They Have Not Understood the Word's Spiritual Meaning

In the churches in existence today, there is a strongly held opinion about the Second Coming. They believe that when the Lord comes for the Last Judgment, he will appear in the clouds of heaven with angels and the sound of trumpets. He will gather together all the people who are living on the earth and also the people who have died. He will separate the evil among them from the good, as a shepherd separates the goats from the sheep. Then he will cast the evil (the goats) into hell, and lift the good (the sheep) into heaven. At the same time he will create a new visible heaven and a new inhabitable earth. He will send a city down onto this new earth, which will be called the New Jerusalem. Its structure will follow the description given in Revelation 21 That is, it will be made of jasper and gold. The foundations of its walls will be made of precious stones of every kind. Its height, breadth, and length will be equal, at twelve thousand stadia each. All the elect will be brought together into this city, including people who were still alive and also people who had died at any time since the world began. The elect will then return to their bodies and experience everlasting joy in that magnificent city, their heaven.

This is the belief concerning the Lord's Coming and the Last Judgment that is dominant in the Christian churches of today.