440. And they had as king over them the angel of the bottomless pit, whose name in Hebrew is Abaddon, but who in Greek has the name Apollyon. (9:11) This symbolically means that those caught up in falsities springing from lusts, who by a total falsification of the Word destroyed the church, are in a satanic hell.

The angel of the bottomless pit as king does not signify that some angel is king there, but that falsity reigns in it. For a king in its genuine sense symbolizes someone who possesses truths owing to an affection for goodness, and abstractly truth itself (no. 20); and in an opposite sense, therefore, a king symbolizes someone who is caught up in falsities owing to a lust for evil, and abstractly falsity itself. The bottomless pit symbolizes the satanic hell where such people reside (nos. 387, 421). A name symbolizes the character of someone's or something's state (nos. 81, 122, 165).

Abaddon in Hebrew is someone who destroys, or a destroyer, and likewise Apollyon in Greek, and this is falsity of the most fundamental sort, which by a total falsification of the Word has destroyed the church.

Abaddon in the Hebrew text means destruction in the following places:

Your truth in destruction? (Psalms 88:11)

Hell is naked before Him, and destruction has no covering. (Job 26:6)

For it will be a fire that consumes to destruction... (Job 31:12)

Destruction and death say... (Job 28:22)

Elsewhere hell and the devil are called destruction or a destroyer (Isaiah 54:16, Ezekiel 5:16; 9:1, Exodus 12:13), but by using another term.

388. When He opened the seventh seal. (8:1) This symbolizes an examination by the Lord of the state of the church and consequent life of people who are in His spiritual kingdom - people who are governed by charity and its accompanying faith - here people caught up in faith alone.

That this is the symbolic meaning can be seen from the particulars of this chapter, understood in its spiritual sense. For the spiritual sense in this chapter and in those that follow up to chapter sixteen deals with the inhabitants of His spiritual kingdom, who, as we said just above in no. 387, are people governed by love for the neighbor and its accompanying intelligence. But because love for the neighbor is today called charity, and intelligence is called faith, and because the examination here does not fall on people governed by charity and its accompanying faith, as these are qualities belonging to people who are in heaven, therefore the examination is one that falls on people caught up in faith alone.

Faith alone is also faith divorced from charity, because there is no conjunction of the two (see no. 417 below).

To be shown that opening a seal symbolizes an examination of the state of life, or to say the same thing, an examination of the state of the church and the consequent life, see nos. 295, 302, 309, 317, 324 above.