2418. Stay not in all the plain. That this signifies that he should not linger in any of these doctrinal matters, is evident from the signification of a “plain,” as being everything of a doctrinal nature, concerning which presently. How the case stands with his not lingering in any of these doctrinal matters shall be stated at verse 26, where Lot’s wife is treated of in that she looked back behind him. That in the Word a “plain” signifies all things of a doctrinal nature, is evident in Jeremiah:
He that layeth waste shall come upon every city, and no city shall escape, and the valley shall perish, and the plain shall be destroyed (Jeremiah 48:8); where “city” denotes false doctrine; and the “plain” all things that belong to that doctrine.
In John:
When the thousand years are finished, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison, and shall go forth to seduce the nations, Gog and Magog, to gather them together to war, the number of whom is as the sand of the sea; and they went up upon all the plain of the earth, and compassed the camp of the saints about, and fire came down from God out of heaven, and consumed them (Revelation 20:7-9); where “Gog and Magog” denote those who are in external worship without internal, thus worship become idolatrous (n. 1151); the “plain of the earth,” the doctrinal things of the church, which they lay waste; the “camp of the saints,” the goods of love and of charity; their being “consumed by fire from God out of heaven” means the same as when this is said of the men of Sodom and Gomorrah, in verse 24. Again: the doctrinal things of charity are called the “cities of the mountain,” and the doctrinal things of faith the “cities of the plain,” in Jeremiah 33:13.
