10282. 'Throughout your generations' means within all things of the Church. This is clear from the meaning of 'generations' - when the subject is the children of Israel, by whom the Church is meant - as those who belong to the Church, dealt with in 10212, and so in the abstract sense, without reference to persons, as things of the Church. This is called the abstract sense, without reference to persons, because things that are Divine and emanate from the Lord constitute the Church, not anything that is a person's own. Those things do indeed flow into and reside with the person; nevertheless they do not become the person's own, only the Lord's residing with that person. This being so, when angels talk to one another they speak of things without reference to actual persons. Neither therefore does the name of some person mentioned in the Word pass into heaven, but the reality that is meant by that person.

All names of persons and places mentioned in the Word serve to mean spiritual realities, see 1888, 4442, 5095, 5225.

Names do not pass into heaven, 1876, 6516, 10216.

2117. THE LAST JUDGEMENT

Few nowadays know what the Last Judgement is. They imagine that it is going to be accompanied by the destruction of the world; and this leads to conjectures that this earth, together with everything else in the visible world, is going to be destroyed by fire. They also conjecture that then for the first time the dead will rise again and appear for judgement, and the evil are to be cast into hell and the good to rise up to heaven. These conjectures are based on the prophetical parts of the Word where references are made to a new heaven and a new earth, and also to a New Jerusalem. Such people do not realize that the prophetical parts of the Word have a meaning altogether different in the internal sense from what appears in the sense of the letter, and that 'heaven' is not used to mean heaven, nor 'the earth' to mean the earth, but the Lord's Church in general, and as it exists with each individual in particular.