429. Verse 4. And I heard the number of those sealed, signifies the quality of those who are in good who are separated from the evil. This is evident from the signification of "number," as being the quality of the thing treated of (of which presently); also from the signification of "those sealed," as being those who are in good, distinguished and separated from others (of which just above, n. 427. "Number" and "measure" are mentioned in many passages in the Word, and it is believed that these mean simply number and measure; but "number" and "measure" in the spiritual sense mean the quality of the thing treated of. The quality itself is determined by the numbers expressed, as here by the "hundred and forty-four thousand," and afterwards the "twelve thousand" out of every tribe. What is signified by these numbers will be told in the following article. Number signifies the quality of the thing treated of for the reason that the Word is spiritual, and therefore each and every thing that it contains is spiritual, and spiritual things are not numbered or measured, but still they fall into numbers and measures when they come down out of the spiritual world or out of heaven where the angels are into the natural world or upon the earth where men are; and likewise in the Word, when they come down out of its spiritual sense in which the angels are into the natural sense in which men are; the natural sense of the Word is the sense of its letter. This is why there are numbers in that sense, and why the numbers there signify things spiritual, or such as pertain to heaven and the church. That the spiritual things of heaven, such as the angels think and speak about, also fall into numbers, has often been shown to me. When they spoke with each other, what they said was determined into pure numbers, which were seen upon paper; and they afterwards said that this was what they had said determined into numbers, and that these numbers in series contained everything they had said; I was also taught what they signified and how they were to be understood; this will be spoken of frequently in what follows. (But respecting writings in pure numbers out of heaven, see in the work on Heaven and Hell 263; that all numbers in the Word signify the things of heaven and the church, see above, n. 203, 336[1-10])

5598. 'And our generation' means regarding the truths of faith there. This is clear from the meaning of 'generation' as the birth of truth from good or faith from charity, dealt with in 1145, 1255, 4070, 4668. The reason 'generation' has this meaning in the internal sense is that in heaven no other kind of birth is meant than what is called regeneration, which is effected by means of the truth of faith and the good of charity. By this kind of generation or birth the children of men become the children of the Lord; these are they who are called 'the born of God' in John 1:13. The variations that exist in the offspring of good from truth and truth from good within that kind of generation are what determine the brotherly or blood relationships and the relationships by marriage that exist in heaven.

[2] In heaven unending variations exist; but those variations are effected by the Lord in such a way that they resemble families in which there are brothers, sisters, sons-in-law, daughters-in-law, grandsons, granddaughters, and so on. In general however all are organized into the kind of form that makes one united whole. They are like the variations within the human body, in which no one member is exactly the same as any other; indeed no one part within any member is the same as any other part. Even so, all those varying parts are organized into the kind of form in which they act as a single whole, and each fits in directly or remotely with the activity of another. Seeing a form such as this in the human being, one may deduce what the form must be like in heaven, with which there is a correspondence - a most perfect one - of everything in the human being.