3056. 'At evening time' means a more obscure state at that time. This is clear from the meaning of 'time' as state, dealt with in 2625, 2788, 2837, and from the meaning of 'evening' as obscurity. For in the Word evening means the state which precedes the final period of a declining Church, the period called night, or else it means the initial state of a rising Church, the state called morning, see 2323. In both cases evening means that which is obscure, but here it is the obscurity which precedes the morning.

In most places in the Word, "ten" represents "all," or in some cases "many" or "much." The Ten Commandments represent all the guidance we get from the Lord in life; the ten horns on the beast of Revelation represent all power of falsity; the ten virgins with lamps in Matthew 25 represent all people of the church.

Yet in other places, ten, or especially a "tenth," signifies representing remnants, or tiny scraps of goodness preserved for the future. These can be the remnants of a church -- a few good people that can be built up into a new church. Or they can be tiny subconscious memories of love and joy which the Lord stores in each of us in early childhood, feelings He can use later to draw us toward a life of goodness and affection.

These two meanings seem nearly opposite, but they're actually not. Love is whole and indivisible, so that the tiniest feeling buried inside someone contains all the elements of the love it can become. In a similar way, a remnant of a church that has preserved that church's knowledge has everything it needs to grow into a new church. In a sense, then, those remnants are indeed "all," they're just a version of "all" that is still in a state of potential.