Apocalypse Revealed # 335
335. Then the sky departed like a book rolled up. (6:14) This symbolizes the people's separation from heaven and conjunction with hell.
The text says that the sky departed like a book rolled up because a person's inner intellect and thus thought is as the sky or a kind of heaven, for his intellect can be raised into the light of heaven and can think about God, love and faith, and eternal life on the same elevated level as angels. But if his will is not raised at the same time into the warmth of heaven, the person is not yet united with the angels of heaven, thus is not a kind of heaven. The reality of this may be seen in Angelic Wisdom Regarding Divine Love and Wisdom, Part Five.
Through this faculty of the intellect, the evil people who are the subject here could be associated with angels of the lowest heaven. But when the two were separated, their heaven then departed, like a book rolled up.
A book rolled up means a parchment rolled up, since their books were scrolls of parchment, and the comparison is made with a book, since a book also means the Word (no. 256). Consequently, when it is rolled up like a scroll, whatever it contains is not visible, and it is as though gone.
Something similar is accordingly said in Isaiah:
All the host of heaven shall waste away, and the heavens shall be rolled up like a book, and... it falls down as the leaf falls... from a fig tree. (Isaiah 34:4)
The host of heaven is the church's goods and truths from the Word (no. 447).
It can be seen from this that "the sky departed like a book rolled up" symbolizes separation from heaven and conjunction with hell. That separation from heaven means conjunction with hell, is apparent.
Zechariah 13
1
"In that day there will be a spring opened to the house of David and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, for sin and for uncleanness.
2
It will come to pass in that day, says Yahweh of Armies, that I will cut off the names of the idols out of the land, and they will be remembered no more. I will also cause the prophets and the spirit of impurity to pass out of the land.
3
It will happen that, when anyone still prophesies, then his father and his mother who bore him will tell him, 'You must die, because you speak lies in the name of Yahweh;' and his father and his mother who bore him will stab him when he prophesies.
4
It will happen in that day, that the prophets will each be ashamed of his vision, when he prophesies; neither will they wear a hairy mantle to deceive:
5
but he will say, 'I am no prophet, I am a tiller of the ground; for I have been made a bondservant from my youth.'
6
One will say to him, 'What are these wounds between your arms?' Then he will answer, 'Those with which I was wounded in the house of my friends.'
7
"Awake, sword, against my shepherd, and against the man who is close to me," says Yahweh of Armies. "Strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered; and I will turn my hand against the little ones.
8
It shall happen that in all the land," says Yahweh, "two parts in it will be cut off and die; but the third will be left in it.
9
I will bring the third part into the fire, and will refine them as silver is refined, and will test them like gold is tested. They will call on my name, and I will hear them. I will say, 'It is my people;' and they will say, 'Yahweh is my God.'"
