271. Since it has been predicted that at the end of the present church too darkness will arise, due to its failure to know that the Lord is the God of heaven and earth, and due to the separation of faith from charity, it has now pleased the Lord, so that this should not result in the loss of a genuine understanding of the Word and so the loss of the church, to reveal its spiritual sense, and to demonstrate that the Word in that sense, and from this in the natural sense, contains countless means whereby the light of truth coming from the Word, which is almost extinguished, may be restored. Many passages in Revelation predict that the light of truth will be almost extinguished at the end of the present church; and this too is the meaning of these words of the Lord:

Immediately after the affliction of those days the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will fall from the sky, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken. And then they will see the Son of Man coming in the clouds of heaven with glory and power, Matthew 24:29-30.

The sun there means the Lord in respect of love, the moon the Lord in respect of faith; the stars, the Lord in respect of knowledge of truth and good. The Son of Man means the Lord in respect of the Word, a cloud, the literal sense of the Word, glory, the spiritual sense of the Word, and the way it is visible through its literal sense; powers mean its strength.