105. I need to explain, though, how the presence and union of the Lord and heaven happens in all lands by means of the Word.

In the Lord’s sight, the whole heaven is like one human being, and so is the church (see Heaven and Hell 59-86 on the fact that they actually look like a human being to him). In that human being, the church (that is, the church where the Word is read and the Lord is therefore known) functions as the heart and as the lungs - the [church’s] heavenly kingdom as the heart and the [church’s] spiritual kingdom as the lungs.

[2] Just as all the other members and organs are maintained and live from these two founts of life in the human body, so too all the people in the various countries of the world who have any religion, worship one God, and live good lives are maintained and live from the union of the Lord and heaven with the church through the Word. By virtue of their faith and life, they are in that human being and reflect its members and organs that are outside the chest cavity where the heart and lungs are. This is because even though the Word in the church may be among relatively few, it gives life from the Lord through heaven to the rest [of the world], just as the heart and lungs give life to the members and organs of the whole body. In fact the sharing is similar.

[3] This is why Christians who read the Word form the chest of that human being. They are at the center, with the Catholics around them; the Muslims who recognize the Lord as the greatest prophet and as a Son of God are around them. Next come the Africans. And the outermost circle is made up of nations and peoples in Asia and in India. There is some further information about this arrangement in §48 of Last Judgment.

All the people in that human being face toward the central area where the Christians are.

3486. The preliminary section of the previous chapter, paragraphs 3353-3356, explained what the Lord has said and foretold in Matthew 24:3-7 about the close of the age or end of the days of the Church. Here, in the Lord's Divine mercy, let the next section be explained, that is to say, verses 8-14 of the same chapter in that gospel, where it is said,

All these are the beginning of sorrows. At that time they will deliver you up to affliction, and will kill you, and you will be hated by all nations for My name's sake. And at that time many will stumble, and betray one another, and hate one another. And many false prophets will arise and will lead many astray. And because iniquity is multiplied the charity of many will grow cold. But he who endures to the end will be saved. And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole inhabited earth as a testimony to all nations; and at that point the end will come.