796. And there was given unto him authority to work forty-two months, signifies its destruction even until nothing of truth and good remained. This is evident from the signification of "authority to work," as being the act of destroying goods and truths; for "a mouth speaking great things and blasphemies," mentioned just above, signifies doctrine, and instruction, preaching, and reasoning therefrom, utterly destroying the goods of the Word and its truths; so the act of destroying these is signified by "there was given unto him authority to work." The above is evident also from the signification of "forty-two months," as being complete vastation and consummation (See above, n. 633), thus destruction, until nothing of truth and good remains. "Forty-two" has also the same signification in 2 Kings 2:24, where it is told how forty-two boys were torn in pieces by two bears (See above, n. 781).

[2] This and the following verse treat of the destruction of the church, which is altogether destroyed as its truths are turned into falsities and its goods into evils. That the doctrine of faith separated from the life does this can be seen from the fact that the doctrine of faith is the doctrine of the church, and the doctrine of life, which is called moral theology, is an outside doctrine, that is, serviceable to the church at its pleasure, but is regarded as having nothing of salvation in it because it has nothing of faith in it; yet faith when separated from life is not alive, and what is not alive, but is dead, can save no one.

[3] It is supposed that man from the doctrine of faith separate is able to believe that there is a God, that there is a heaven and a hell, that there is a life after death, that the Word is Divine, and therefore that what the Word contains is to be believed. These things man can indeed know and can think, and can even in some degree understand from the light of reason, and yet he cannot have such a faith in them as will remain long after death; for the faith that is of the life remains, but not faith separated from the life; and everyone has life to the extent that he abstains from evils, and shuns and turns away from them because they are contrary to the Word, thus contrary to the Lord. Faith from such a life awaits a man after death, because it is from the Lord, and thus is the Lord's with man. Thence it is clear that from faith alone man cannot even believe that there is a God; how then can he believe the rest? From this it follows that the doctrine of faith separated destroys the church in respect to all its goods and truths. That this is so has been made abundantly evident to me from the state of such persons after death with whom I have talked. The followers and defenders of faith separate, who have cleansed the outside only of the cup and the platter and not the inside, when they have fulfilled their time reject all things they have said and believed in the world to be of their faith; and they acknowledge as gods either themselves or others who excel in power and in the arts known in hell; and they even laugh at the truths of the Word which in the world they had called holy.