5606. There are four kinds of people there just as in the world. 1) Those who give their attention to the uses in the Word, and certainly see other things but do not give attention to them. They serve as a plane [for reception]. It is read in this way by heavenly angels. 2) There are those who draw the doctrinal points of the Word from it. Spiritual angels understand the Word in this way. 3) There are those who are delighted only by its holy outward aspect without understanding it. These are those who are in the lowest heaven. 4) And there are those who merely give attention to its literal meaning, and these are those who give attention only to the words there, like the critics and those who write about various things. The former are on the threshold to heaven, the latter are in its very remotest parts.

The sun in the Bible represents the Lord, with its heat representing His love and its light representing His wisdom. “Daytime,” then, represents a state in which we are turned toward the Lord, receiving His love and being enlightened by His truth. And “nighttime,” obviously, represents states in which we are turned away from the Lord, left cold and blind to the truth. The most common word used for it in the New Christian theology is “obscurity.” The darkness is not absolute, of course. The light of the moon represents the understanding we can have based on facts and our own intelligence. But while the moon reflects some of the sun's light, it offers almost no heat, so this kind of understanding is a cold one, without the warmth of love. And at its darkest and coldest, night represents a state of judgment. This happens when a person -- or a church -- becomes so mired in evil and falsity that there is no light or heat. The Lord can then step in, separate the good from the evil, consign the evil to hell and begin rebuilding based on the remnant that is still good. Drastic as that sounds, it is something that we all go through repeatedly in various aspects of our loves, so that we can be rid of what is evil and let the Lord rebuild us as angels.