2125. The character of members of the Christian Church at the present day was demonstrated to me visually by means of representations. Enveloped by a dark cloud there appeared spirits so black that I shuddered. After that others not so terrifying made their appearance; and then it was indicated to me that I was about to witness something. First of all I saw children who were being combed by their mothers in so cruel a fashion that blood was running down. This represented the nature of young children's upbringing nowadays. Afterwards a tree appeared, which seemed to me to be the tree of knowledge. A large viper, the sort to strike terror, then seemed to climb up it. It appeared to extend up the whole length of the trunk. As the tree disappeared, along with the viper, a dog appeared, and at that point a door was opened into a room where there was a yellow light like that produced by coals burning. Two women were there. I perceived that it was a kitchen, but what I saw in it I am not allowed to mention. I was told that the tree which the viper climbed up represented the state of members of the Church as they are at the present time - that instead of love and charity they have deadly hatred that is hedged around by presences of honesty and by deceptions. They also have unmentionable thoughts about the things of faith. But what I saw in the kitchen represented that hatred and the nature of those thoughts in their further developments.

Seven, as in Revelation 15:1, signifies everything in an universal sense. The number 'seven' was considered holy, as is well known, because of the six days of creation, and the seventh, which is the celestial self, where peace, rest, and the Sabbath is. The number seven occurs so frequently in the rites of the Jewish church and is held holy everywhere.

So times were divided into seven, longer and shorter intervals, and were called weeks, like the great intervals of times till the coming of the Messiah, in Daniel 9:24-25. The time of seven years is called 'a week' by Laban and Jacob, as in Genesis 29:27-28. So wherever the number seven occurs, it is considered holy and sacred, as in Psalm 119:164, and in Isaiah 30:26.

As the periods of a person's regeneration are distinguished into six, prior to the seventh, or the celestial self, so the times of vastation are also distinguished, until nothing celestial is left. This was represented by the many captivities of the Jews, and by the last Babylonian captivity, which lasted seven decades, or seventy years. This was also represented by Nebuchadnezzar, in Daniel 4:16, 22, 29. It also refers to the vastation of the end times, in Revelation 15:1, 7-8. They should 'tread the holy city under foot, forty and two months, or six times seven,' as in Revelation 11:2 and Revelation 5:1. So the severity and increments of punishment were expressed by the number seven, as in Leviticus 26:18, 21, 24, 28 and Psalm 79:12.

(Odkazy: Apocalypse Explained 5, 7-8, 15; Arcana Coelestia 395; Daniel 9, 9:24, 9:25; Psalms 119)