To “generate” something is to create it, and that idea underpins the meaning of a “generation” of people -- it is a group that was created together, at roughly the same time, from the same parents or group of parents. On a spiritual level, we can be “generators” by using what we know from the Lord to create ideas of how to be good, and also to create good actions based on those ideas -- what the Writings call things of faith and things of charity. In general, then, a “generation” in the Bible represents the spiritual ideas and activities created by a church -- with a “church” being anything from an individual believer to a group lasting thousands of years. “Generation” can also pick up specific meanings from context. For instance, when the Bible says the people of Israel were captive in Egypt for four generations, it means a state of temptation based on the meaning of “four.” When paired with “eternity,” meanwhile, “generations” represents ideas and actions surrounding love of serving others, with “eternity” representing things springing from love of the Lord. Finally, “generations and generations” is used in the Bible to represent forever.

6666. 'And the Egyptians made the children of Israel serve' means the aim to bring them under their control. This is clear from the meaning of 'making them serve' as bringing under their control, here the aim to do so because although they endeavour constantly to bring others under their control they never get the upper hand over those who are good; from the meaning of 'the Egyptians' as separated factual knowledge that is opposed to the Church's truths, dealt with in 6651; and from the meaning of 'the children of Israel' as the Church, dealt with in 6637. From these meanings it is evident that 'the Egyptians made the children of Israel serve' means the aim held by those who favour separated factual knowledge opposed to the Church's truths, to bring them [the Church] under their control.

[2] As regards the aim to bring others under one's own control, I have also been allowed to know what that aim is like among the evil belonging to hell. The nature of their endeavour and aim to bring under their control those who accept what is good and true defies description. For they employ every kind of malice, every kind of guile and deceit, every kind of trickery, and every kind of cruelty, the extent and nature of which are such that if merely a part were mentioned scarcely anyone in the world could believe it, so full of guile and artfulness are the methods they use, and so unspeakable too. In short those methods are such that no one at all, not even any angel, only the Lord, can stand up to them. The reason why such an endeavour and aim is present in them is that the whole delight of their life, thus their very life, consists in the doing of evil, on account of which nothing else occupies their minds, and consequently nothing else is intended by them. They cannot do anything good at all because it repels them; or if they do do anything good, it is for selfish reasons, thus only for themselves.

[3] Hells made up of people like this are growing immensely larger at the present day; and what is astounding, such people come mainly from among those within the Church on account of all the guile, trickery, hatred, revenge, and adultery that flourish there more than anywhere else. For in the Church of today guile is reckoned to be cleverness, and adultery to be honourable behaviour; and those who think anything different are laughed at. Since this is the situation at the present day within the Church, it is a sign that its last days are at hand, for according to the Lord's words recorded in Matthew 24:22, unless it came to an end 'no flesh would be saved'. Indeed all evil is infectious and like rottenness contaminates the whole, thus everyone in the end.