1. I. THE LAST JUDGMENT HAS BEEN COMPLETED

My earlier work on THE LAST JUDGMENT dealt with the following subjects:

The day of the Last Judgment does not mean the destruction of the world (The Last Judgment 1-5).

The reproduction of the human race will never cease (6-13).

Heaven and Hell are from the human race (14-22).

All people who have ever been born since the beginning of creation and have died are in heaven or in hell (23-27).

The Last Judgment is to be where all are together, and so in the spiritual world, not on earth (28-32).

The Last Judgment takes place when a church comes to an end; and this happens when there is no faith because there is no charity (33-39).

All the predictions made in the Book of Revelation are today fulfilled (40-44).

The Last Judgment has taken place (45-52).

On Babylon and its destruction (53-64);

on the former heaven and its abolition (65-72);

on the future state of the world and the church (73-74).

40. VII. ALL THE PREDICTIONS IN THE BOOK OF REVELATION ARE TO-DAY FULFILLED.

No one can know what is meant by and involved in the book of Revelation without knowing the internal or spiritual sense of the Word. The whole of its contents is written in a style similar to that of the prophetic books of the Old Testament, in which every expression has a spiritual meaning not to be seen in the literal sense. Moreover, the contents of Revelation can only be explained in their spiritual sense by those who know what happened to the church up to its end; and only in heaven can this be known. This is the subject of Revelation, for the spiritual sense of the Word everywhere deals with the spiritual world, that is, the state of the church both in the heavens and upon earth. That is why the Word is spiritual and Divine. The state of the church is there expounded in due sequence. This can serve to establish that the contents of Revelation could not be explained except by someone who had received a revelation of the successive states of the church in the heavens. There is equally a church in the heavens as on earth, and some remarks on it will follow.

8915. 'And the voice of the trumpet' means those same truths - Divine Truths from good - going through heaven. This is clear from the meaning of 'the voice of the trumpet' as the state of the angelic heaven which was round about the Divine, and as God's truth from there, dealt with in 8815, 8823. From this one may see what the Lord's words mean where He foretells the close of the age or final period of the Church, at which time,

The Lord will send angels with the loud voice of a trumpet, who will gather His elect from the four winds. Matthew 24:31.

People who do not know that all the Lord's words also have heavenly and Divine things stored within them, that is, that they hold in them an internal sense, will suppose that when the last judgement is imminent angels are going to appear and announce it, and also that they will gather the elect with 'the voice of a trumpet'. But 'the voice of a trumpet' is not used there to mean the sound of a trumpet but God's truth in its inward form spreading through heaven, and the proclaiming of it, see 4060 (end) as well as 8815, 8823.