1. In the twenty-fourth chapter of Matthew, we find the Lord talking to his disciples about the close of the age, the last time of the church. ¹ At the end of his prophecies concerning the sequence of states of its love and faith ² he says:

Immediately after the suffering of those days, the sun will be darkened and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken. And then the sign of the Human-born One will appear in heaven, and then all the tribes of the earth will lament. And they will see the Human-born One coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And he will send his angels with a trumpet and a loud voice, and they will gather his chosen ones from the four winds, from one end of the heavens all the way to the other end. (Matthew 24:29-31)

When people understand these words according to their literal meaning, they can only believe that all these things are going to happen just as this meaning describes them, at that end of time called the Last Judgment. This does not mean only that the sun and moon will be darkened and that the stars will fall from heaven, that the sign of the Lord will appear in heaven, and that he will be seen in the clouds with angels blowing trumpets. It also includes matters prophesied elsewhere, statements that the whole visible world is going to be destroyed and that afterward a new heaven and a new earth will come into being.

Many people in the church these days are of this opinion. However, people who believe such things are not aware of the hidden depths that lie within the details of the Word. There is in fact spiritual meaning in these details, for they intend not only the outward and earthly events that we find on the literal level but spiritual and heavenly events as well. This holds true not just for the meaning of phrases but even for each word. ³

The Word is in fact written in pure correspondences ⁴ so that there may be deeper meaning in the details. Questions about the nature of this meaning can be resolved by all the things I have set forth about it in Secrets of Heaven. A selection of these may be found also in my explanation of the white horse in the Book of Revelation. It is in this deeper sense that we are to understand what the Lord said in the passage just cited about coming in the clouds of heaven. The sun that will be darkened means the Lord in respect to love, ⁵ the moon means the Lord in respect to faith. ⁶ The stars mean insights into what is good and true, or into love and faith. ⁷ The sign of the Human-born One in heaven means the appearing of divine truth. The wailing tribes of earth mean all the elements of what is true and good, or of faith and love. ⁸ The Lord's coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory means his presence in the Word, and revelation. ⁹ The clouds refer to the literal meaning of the Word ¹⁰ and the glory to the Word's inner meaning. ¹¹ The angels with a trumpet and a loud voice mean heaven, which is where divine truth comes from. ¹²

This enables us to see what these words of the Lord mean. They mean that at the end of the church, when there is no longer any love and therefore no longer any faith, the Lord will open the Word by disclosing its deeper meaning and will reveal the heavenly contents hidden within it. The particular hidden contents to be disclosed in the pages that follow have to do with heaven and hell and with our own life after death.

Church people these days know practically nothing about heaven and hell or their life after death, even though there are descriptions of everything available to them in the Word. In fact, many who have been born in the church deny all this. In their hearts they are asking who has ever come back to tell us about it.

To prevent this negative attitude - especially prevalent among people who have acquired a great deal of worldly wisdom - from infecting and corrupting people of simple heart and simple faith, it has been granted me to be with angels and to talk with them person to person. I have also been enabled to see what is in heaven and in hell, a process that has been going on for thirteen years. Now I am being allowed therefore to describe what I have heard and seen, in the hopes of shedding light where there is ignorance, and of dispelling skepticism.

The reason this kind of direct revelation is taking place today is that this is what the Coming of the Lord means.

അടിക്കുറിപ്പുകൾ:

1540. THE INTERNAL SENSE

As has been stated, narratives in the Word that draw on true history began with the previous chapter. Down to that point, or rather down to Eber, they were made-up history. The continuation of the Abram story here means in the internal sense the Lord and in particular His life as it was at first before His External Man had been joined to His Internal to the point of their functioning as a unit, that is, before His external Man as well had become celestial and Divine. The historical details are what represent the Lord, while the actual words mean those things that are being represented. But because they are historical descriptions the mind of the reader. inevitably dwells upon them, especially nowadays when the majority, indeed almost everybody, does not believe in the existence of an internal sense at all, let alone within individual words. And perhaps they will still not acknowledge the existence of it even though it has been shown so clearly up to this point. There is the further reason that the internal sense seems to be so withdrawn from the sense of the letter that it is scarcely recognizable. Yet they can know of it merely from the consideration that historical records by themselves cannot ever constitute the Word, for there is no more of the Divine in them when they are separated from the internal sense than in any other historical narrative. It is the internal sense that makes it Divine. The fact that the internal sense is the Word itself is clear from many things that have been revealed, such as "Out of Egypt have I called My son" Matthew 2:15, besides many others like this. The Lord Himself also, after the Resurrection, taught the disciples what had been written concerning Himself in Moses and the Prophets, Luke 24:27, thus that nothing has been written in the Word which does not have regard to Him, to His kingdom, and to the Church. These are the spiritual and celestial things of the Word, but the sense of the letter consists for the most part of worldly, bodily, and earthly images which cannot possibly constitute the Word of the Lord. Nowadays people are such that they do not perceive anything except matters of this sort. They scarcely know what spiritual and celestial things are. It was different with the member of the Most Ancient Church or of the Ancient Church. If he were living today and reading the Word he would not pay any attention to the sense of the letter, which he would regard as nothing at all, but only to the internal sense. Members of those Churches are utterly amazed that anyone perceives the Word in any other way. All the books of the ancients therefore were written in such a fashion that they had a different import in the interior sense from what they had in the letter.

8267. 'And song is Jah' means that the source of the whole of faith and of the glory resulting from it is Divine Truth which originates in Him. This is clear from the meaning of 'song', in reference to Jehovah, as an ascription of glory to the Lord, dealt with above in 8261. But when used in reference to man, as it is here, it means glory existing as a result of faith, and so faith from which glory results; for the whole of the glory which man has exists as a result of faith in the Lord, since faith which really is faith has its origin in the Lord, so that the Lord is within faith and consequently glory itself is also present. A further reason why man's glory is a result of faith is that Divine Truth, the source and conveyor of faith, appears before angels' eyes as light, and also as the brightness and radiance of light. This radiance, along with the magnificent scenes in heaven that are products of the light, is called the glory, which is accordingly nothing other than Divine Truth, and so nothing other than faith. This then explains why 'song', in reference to man, means glory resulting from faith.

[2] 'Jah' means Divine Truth that emanates from the Lord's Divine Human. This is because Jah is derived from Jehovah, and the name Jah is used because it does not mean Being (Esse) but the Coming-into-Being arising from Being (Existere ex Esse); for Divine Truth is the Coming-into-Being (Existere), whereas Divine Good is Being (Esse), see 6880. This also is why the expression 'song is Jah' is used, for 'song' means faith that is a product of Divine Truth. 'Jah' again means Divine Truth in David,

Sing to God, praise His name; extol Him who rides on the clouds by His name Jah, and exult before Him. Psalms 68:4.

Praising and extolling God 'by His name Jah' is doing so through Divine Truth. Again in the same author,

In distress I called on Jah; Jah answered me in a broad place. Jehovah helped me. My strength and song is lain. I shall not die, but live, and declare the works of Jah. I will enter through the gates of righteousness, and confess Jah. Psalms 118:5, 13-14, 17, 19.

Here 'Jah' is the Lord in respect of Divine Truth. Jah has the same meaning in the exclamation Hallelujah, at Psalms 105:45; 106:1, 48; 111:1; 112:1; 113:1, 9; 115:17-18; 116:19.