Time is an aspect of the physical world, but it is not an aspect of the spiritual world. The same is true of space: There is no space in heaven. This is hard for us to grasp or even visualize, because we live in physical bodies with physical senses that are filled with physical elements existing in time and space. Our minds are schooled and patterned in terms of time and space, and have no reference point to imagine a reality without them. Consider how you think for a second. In your mind you can immediately be in your past or in some speculative future; in your mind you can circle the globe seeing other lands and faraway friends, or even zoom instantly to the most distant stars. Such imaginings are insubstantial, of course, but if we could make them real we would be getting close to what spiritual reality is like. Indeed, the mind is like a spiritual organ, which may be why physicians and philosophers have had such a hard time juxtaposing its functions to those of the brain. What this means in the Bible is that descriptions of time -- hours, days, weeks, months, years and even simply the word "time" itself -- represent spiritual states, and the passing of time represents the change of spiritual states. Again, we can see this a little bit within our minds. If we imagine talking to one friend then talking to another, it feels like going from one place to another, even though we're not moving. The same is true if we picture a moment from childhood and then imagine something in the future; it feels like a movement through time even though it's instantaneous. Changing our state of mind feels like a physical change in space and time. The Bible simply reverses that, with marking points in space and time representing particular states of mind.

550. Verse 6. And in those days shall the men seek death, and shall not find it, signifies that they then wish to destroy the faculty to understand truth, but still are not able. This is evident from the signification of "in those days," as being then, namely, when the man of the church from internal becomes external, or from rational becomes sensual; also from the signification of "to seek death," as being a wish to destroy the faculty to understand truth (of which presently); also from the signification of "not to find it," as being not to be able to destroy. That "to seek death" here signifies a wish to destroy the faculty to understand truth, is evident from what precedes, because it is consequent upon it; for it was said that "the locusts should hurt the men only that have not the seal of God on their foreheads," and afterwards, that "it was given to them that they should not kill them, but that they should torment them," which signifies that they should do harm to the understanding of truth and the perception of good in those only who are not in truths from good from the Lord, but yet that these should not be deprived of the faculty to understand truth and perceive good (as may be seen above, n. 546, 547). From this it now follows, that the "death" which they seek and which they desire signifies the deprivation of the faculty to understand truth and perceive good, for the destruction of these is the destruction of the life properly human; for man would then be no longer a man but a beast, as has been said above; evidently then it is the loss of this life that is signified by "death." Such wish to destroy the two faculties of the truly human life, because sensual men, from the persuasion of the falsities of evil in which they are, have no wish to understand truth or perceive good, for they find delight in their falsities of evil, and thus in thinking from the enjoyment of falsity, and willing from the enjoyment of evil, and consequently they turn themselves away from truth and good because these are the opposites; by these some are made sad, some are made sick, and some reject them with anger, each according to the quality and amount of falsity of which he has persuaded himself; in a word, ¹ such a sensual man does not admit reasons from the understanding against the falsities of evil in which he is, thus he has no wish to understand and become rational, although he can become so because he is a man. This, therefore, is what is signified by "they shall seek death and shall not find it."

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