Joel Chapter 1, the Internal Sense.

(From Swedenborg's work, "The Inner Meaning of the Prophets and Psalms")

(Verse 1) The Word has been perverted by false worship,

(2) when instead the Word should have been obeyed by everyone in the Church,

(3) and communicated to everyone who holds false beliefs that arise from evil loves.

(4) Instead, the spiritual things of the Church have been destroyed by sensualism.

(5) Now, remorse should be awakened, because of this loss of faith,

(6) a faith which has been destroyed by the lust of worshipping false gods,

(7) depriving the Church of spiritual truth and good.

(8) The Church should return to the Lord

(9) with inward mourning and contrition

(10) over the loss of good and truth in the natural and spiritual man -

(11) especially people who seek the good of the Church and who desire its genuine doctrine: for the Church is about to perish.

(12) Spiritual truth, its good, its knowledge, and its delights, which constitute the Church, are perverted.

(13) Only by repentance can communion with the Lord be renewed.

(14) The Church can only remove the evil and falsity by acknowledging and worshipping the Lord,

(15) for the end of the Church is near, when it will be judged.

(16) Good works are not being done, nor are there any people who delight in spiritual things.

(17) Natural good has been subordinated to evil, and the truth and good of the Word are rejected.

(18) Wherefore there is no good in the Church,

(19) and our hearts must be turned again to the Lord: for the love of self has corrupted all things in the church.

(20) Although truth is desired, it has been misappropriated to ourselves.

4. Things which must shortly take place. This symbolically means that they must surely come to pass to keep the church from perishing.

"Which must shortly take place" does not mean that the things predicted in the book of Revelation are going to happen immediately or quickly, but that they will happen surely, and that unless they come to pass, the church will perish.

In the Divine view, and so in the spiritual sense, time does not exist, but instead of time, state. And because "shortly" has to do with time, it symbolically means certainty and that something will happen before its time. For the book of Revelation was written in the first century, and seventeen centuries have now gone by, from which it is apparent that "shortly" means, symbolically, what corresponds to it, which is certainty.

[2] Something quite similar is involved in these words of the Lord:

Unless those days were shortened, no flesh would be saved; but for the elect's sake those days will be shortened. (Matthew 24:22)

This, too, means that unless the church should be ended before its time, it would perish entirely. That chapter has as its subject the end of the age and the Lord's advent, and by the end of the age is meant the last state of the old church, and by the Lord's advent, the first state of a new church.

[3] We said that in the Divine view there is no time, but the presence of everything that has happened and will happen. Accordingly we are told in the Psalms,

...a thousand years in Your sight are like yesterday... (Psalms 90:4)

And in the same book:

I will declare the decree: Jehovah has said to Me, "You are My Son, today I have begotten You." (Psalms 2:7)

"Today" is the presence of the Lord's advent.

For this reason, too, a whole period in the Word is called a day, its first state being called dawn and morning, and its last state evening and night.