Earth" is a general word that can be thought of as a container for other more specific words, as ground, field, or garden. Each of these means a person in an ascending series as that person learns truths from the Bible, thinks about them, and tries to apply them to life. The series represents the way of becoming good and wise. "Earth" and "ground" are terms that can go either way, as in the parable of the sower (Matthew 13:4-8) there was both good ground and bad ground, but "field" and "garden" mean minds that are regenerating towards good. "Earth" in the Bible can mean a person or a group of like-minded people as in a church. But it refers specifically to the external of the person's mind, or of the general thought of the group. If heaven and earth are mentioned together, then both the internals and externals of the mind are meant – something to note when reading the creation story.

In Revelation the word "earth" is used both as a ground level as we use it in its natural sense and also as the sense of a group. The action in this book takes place in the great middle zone of the spiritual world, where people first go and where they are sorted out. There are both evil people and good there, and sometimes at the end of a church the evil can have great influence before a great judgment comes. This level of the spiritual realm is called the "earth" to which the dragon was cast down (Revelation 12:9) and to which the stars fell (Revelation 12:4). The "earth" that swallowed the dragon’s flood means those still-sincere people within the church who discounted the flood of the dragon's falsities (Revelation 12:15).

37. As for the statement that 'the lights will be for signs, and for set times, and for days, and for years', this contains more arcana than can be presented at this point, though no arcanum at all is visible in the sense of the letter. For now only this can be said: Change in spiritual and celestial things takes place both on general and on particular scales, and is comparable to changes that take place through the day and through the year. Changes through the day are from morning to midday, from then on to evening, and through the night to the morning. Changes in the year similar, from spring to summer, from then on to autumn, and through winter to spring. These bring changes in temperature and amount of daylight, and so in the fertility of the earth. Compared to such changes are the changes that take place in spiritual and celestial things. Life without changes and variations would lead to sameness, and so no life at all. Good and truth would not be recognized and identified, let alone perceived. In the Prophets such changes are called 'ordinances', as in Jeremiah,

[Thus] said Jehovah who gives the sun for light by day and the ordinances of the moon and of the stars for light by night, These ordinances will not depart from before Me. Jeremiah 31:35-36.

And in the same prophet,

Thus said Jehovah, If I have not established My covenant of day and night, the ordinances of heaven and earth . . . Jeremiah 33:25.

But these things will in the Lord's Divine mercy be dealt with at Genesis 8:12.