61. I have been granted the opportunity to talk with any number of individuals after their death who had believed they were going to shine like stars in heaven because, they said, they had revered the Word, had read it through time and again, and had gained much from their reading that served to support the dogmas of their faith. All this led to their being celebrated as scholars, which in turn led them to believe they would become Michaels and Raphaels.

[2] However, many of them were examined to find out what love had inspired their study of the Word, and it turned out that for some it was self-infatuation, a desire to look important in the eyes of the world and therefore be revered as leaders in the church, while for others it was worldliness and a desire for wealth. When they were asked what they had learned from the Word, it turned out that they knew nothing that was really true. All they knew was distorted truth, which is essentially false. They were told that this was because they themselves and the world were their goals - or were what they loved the most, which amounts to the same thing - and not the Lord and heaven. If ourselves and the world are our goals, then when we read the Word our minds are stuck on ourselves and the world. This means that our thinking is constantly focused on our self-importance, which is in darkness with respect to everything that has to do with heaven. People in this state cannot be lifted out of their self-infatuation by the Lord and thus raised up into heaven’s light, so they are not open to any inflow from the Lord through heaven, either.

[3] I have seen them let into heaven, but when it was found that they were lacking in truths, they were expelled. Even so, they retained the prideful conviction that they were worthy.

It worked out otherwise for individuals who studied the Word from a desire to know what was true because it was true and because it could be put to use in their lives not only for their own benefit but for the benefit of their neighbor. I have seen them raised up into heaven and therefore into the light of divine truth there; and at the same time they have been lifted up into angelic wisdom and into its happiness, which is eternal life.

855. And shall reign with Him a thousand years. This symbolically means that the people described were already in heaven when the rest who did not live again, that is, who did not accept the life of heaven, were still in the world of spirits.

To reign with Christ does not mean to reign with Him, but to be in His kingdom, or in heaven, as may be seen in nos. 284, 849 above. A thousand years does not mean a thousand years, but symbolically means for a while, as in no. 842 above.

The thousand years symbolizes nothing else than that period of time which intervened between the shutting up of the dragon in the bottomless pit and its being set loose, as is apparent because we are told that it was cast into the bottomless pit, shut up, and had a seal set on it for a thousand years, and then that it was set loose (verses 3 and 7). This same period of time is also symbolically meant here. Therefore that the people described would reign with Christ a thousand years means, symbolically, that they were already in heaven when the rest of the dead who did not live again, mentioned in verse 5, were in the world of spirits.

But this is not comprehended by people who do not know that numbers in the book of Revelation do not mean numbers but properties. I can testify that angels do not entertain a natural idea of any number, as people do, but a spiritual one. Indeed, they do not know what a thousand years is, but only that it is some interval of time, short or long, which can only be expressed as a while.