'Wilderness' signifies something with little life in it, as described in the internal sense in Luke 1:80 'Wilderness' signifies somewhere there is no good because there is no truth. 'Wilderness,' as in Jeremiah 23:10, signifies the Word when it is adulterated.

(Riferimenti: Arcana Coelestia 1927)

10. It will be established in the next chapter [14-22] that the human race is the seed-bed of heaven. There it will be shown that heaven and hell are from the human race, which is thus the seed-bed of heaven. It needs to be said by way of preface that just as up to the present, that is, from the earliest time of creation, heaven has been formed from the human race, it will go on hereafter being so formed and enriched.

[2] It is possible that the human race might perish on planet; this happens if it utterly cuts itself off from the Divine. For then human beings no longer have a spiritual life, but only the natural kind of life animals have. People in that state could not form a community or be held in check by laws, since people lacking the influence of heaven, and consequently God's control, would be mad, rushing without restraint into every kind of wickedness and falling one upon another.

[3] But although the human race might by losing contact with the Divine perish upon one planet, an event, however, guarded against by the Lord, it would still exist on other planets. For there are in the universe as many as some hundreds of thousands of planets; on this see my short book ON THE EARTHS IN OUR SOLAR SYSTEM, CALLED PLANETS, AND THE EARTHS IN THE STARRY SKY. I have had word from heaven that the human race on this earth would have perished, so that not a single person would survive to-day, if the Lord had not come into the world and on this earth put on His Humanity and made it Divine. This would also have happened, if the Lord had not placed here a Word, which might serve as a basis and a link for the heaven of angels. On the Word as a link between heaven and men see HEAVEN AND HELL 303-310. The truth of this can only be grasped by those who think in a spiritual fashion, those, that is, who by their acknowledgment of the Divine in the Lord are linked with heaven; these are the only people who can think in a spiritual fashion.