14. When the Lord speaks to his disciples about the close of the age, which is the last time of the church, at the end of his predictions about the sequence of changes of state he says,

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

[2] Spiritually understood, this does not mean that the sun and moon will be darkened, that the stars will fall from heaven, and that a sign of the Lord will appear in heaven and he will be seen in the clouds accompanied by angels with trumpets. Rather, the particular words are here used to mean spiritual events that have to do with the church, spiritual events about its state at its end. The underlying reason is that in the spiritual meaning the sun that will be darkened is the Lord as an object of love; the moon that will not give its light is the Lord as an object of faith; the stars that will fall from heaven are the knowledge of what is good and what is true that will come to an end; the sign of the Son of Humanity in heaven is the manifestation of divine truth; the tribes of the earth that will wail are a complete lack of true belief and of good actions that come from love; the coming of the Son of Humanity in the clouds of heaven with power and glory is the Lord’s presence in the Word, and a revelation - the clouds being the literal meaning of the Word and the glory being the spiritual meaning of the Word. The angels with a trumpet and a loud voice mean heaven as our source of divine truth; and the gathering of the chosen people from the four winds, from one end of the heavens to the other, means a new kind of church, specifically its love and faith.

[3] It is obvious from the prophets that this does not mean the darkening of the sun and the moon and the falling of the stars to earth, because things like this are said there about the state of the church when the Lord will come into the world. It says in Isaiah, for example:

Behold, the fierce day of Jehovah is coming, a day of blazing wrath. The stars of the heavens and their constellations will not shine their light. The sun will be darkened in its rising, and the moon will not make its light shine. I will execute judgment upon the world for its malice. (Isaiah 13:9-11; 24:21, 23)

In Joel,

The day of Jehovah is coming, a day of darkness and gloom; the sun and the moon will be darkened and the stars will withhold their light. (Joel 2:1-2, 10; 3:15)

In Ezekiel,

I will cover the heavens and darken the stars. I will cover the sun with a cloud, and the moon will not give its light. I will darken all the bright lights and bring darkness upon the land. (Ezekiel 32:7-8)

The day of Jehovah means the Coming of the Lord, which happened when there was no longer anything good or true left in the church, and there was no knowledge of the Lord.

6971. 'And do not hear the voice of the former sign' means that if they did not obey what was declared by the Word, then instead of being spiritual and rational they would become people who were not spiritual or rational. This is clear from the meaning of 'hearing' as obeying, dealt with in 2542, 3869, 5017; from the meaning of 'the voice' as what is declared by the Word, dealt with below; and from the meaning of 'the former sign' as an indication that instead of being spiritual and rational they would become people who were not spiritual or rational. The truth of this may be seen from the meaning of 'the serpent' that was made out of Moses' rod when it was thrown onto the earth - the event to which 'the first sign' refers here - as a person who thinks on a sensory and bodily level, 6949, and so is not spiritual or rational. For a person who is sensory- and bodily-minded is not rational, and so is not spiritual either, because he thinks things that are false and desires those that are evil. One who behaves like this is not rational, still less spiritual, for an acceptance of and belief in what is true, together with a life of goodness, since these two come from the Divine, constitute true spirituality within rationality, whereas an acceptance of and belief in what is false, together with a life of evil, are the opposite. For the fact that wholly sensory- and bodily-minded people are like this, see 6844, 6845, 6948, 6949.

[2] Those people become wholly sensory- and bodily-minded who have first had a knowledge of things that belong to the spiritual world but after that have rejected them, and then have adopted fundamental ideas of falsity that are contrary to truths and focused their lives solely on worldly, bodily, and earthly values. They have consequently come to believe that life is meant to be filled with pleasures of every kind, saying, 'What more does a person have while he is alive? When we die, we die; as for the possibility of life after death, has anyone ever come back to talk about it? We have no knowledge of anything that will go on living when the life goes out of a person.' If anyone using rational arguments induces those people to give any thought to eternal life, they think that nothing worse will happen to them than to anyone else, and they immediately go back to living in the way they had done previously. With such people the passageway for the light of heaven to flow in is closed, and at the natural level of their minds the light of heaven is turned into thick darkness, while the light of the world there becomes brightness, 6907, a brightness that shines ever more brilliantly, the more that the light of heaven is darkened. This is why such people do not see the evil in their lives as anything other than goodness, or consequently the false ideas as anything other than true. Here then is the reason why a person becomes sensory- and bodily-minded. In short, once the way is opened for the light of heaven to flow in and then closed, a person is impelled to look downwards, and not upwards. This is done in keeping with Divine order so as to prevent truths once accepted and remaining in a person's inner self from being contaminated by falsities and thereby rendered profane.

[3] The same applies to gentiles who fall away from their religion, though their lot is better than that of people within the Church since what they possess are not truths from the Word, not genuine truths therefore but truths coupled with many misconceptions, which cannot be profaned in the way genuine ones can.

As regards the meaning of 'the voice' as that which is declared by the Word, it should be recognized that frequent use is made of the expression 'the voice'. It is also linked to other things that have nothing to do with a voice, such as the linking of it here to 'the sign' - 'If they do not hear the voice of the former sign they will believe the voice of the latter sign' - and also elsewhere, for example in Nahum,

The voice of the whip and the voice of the sound of the wheel. Nahum 3:2.

And in David,

The rivers have lifted up their voice, more than the voices of many mighty waters. Psalms 93:3-4.

[4] The fact that 'the voice' means a declaration, in the good sense a declaration by the Word, when it is called 'the voice of Jehovah', is clear in David,

The voice of Jehovah is powerful; the voice of Jehovah is glorious; the voice of Jehovah breaks the cedars; the voice of Jehovah flashes forth flames of fire; the voice of Jehovah causes the wilderness to shake; the voice of Jehovah causes the hinds to calve, and strips the forests bare. Psalms 29:3-5; Psalms 7-9.

And elsewhere in the same author,

. . . to Him who rides above the heavens of heavens of old. Behold, He will put forth His voice, a mighty voice. Psalms 68:33.

Here 'voice' stands for Divine Truth, and so for the Word and a declaration made by it. For what more is meant by 'voice', see 219; and for its use in reference to truth, 3563.