18. 'The face ¹ of the deep' is that person's desires and resulting falsities, of which he consists and in which he is completely absorbed; and because he has no light at all he is like the deep, or something thoroughly obscure. Throughout the Word such people are also called 'the deep' and 'the depths of the sea' which are dried up or laid waste until a person's regeneration starts, as in Isaiah,

Awake as in the days of antiquity, the generations of long ago. Was it not You that did dry up the sea, the waters of the great deep; making the depths of the sea a road for the redeemed to go across? Let the ransomed of Jehovah return. Isaiah 51:9-11.

Furthermore, when looked at from heaven, this kind of person resembles a darkened mass with no life to it. The same expressions embody within them in general the vastation in man, described many times by the Prophets, which precedes regeneration. For before a person can know what truth is, or be moved by good, the things that hinder and offer resistance must be removed. Thus the old man must die before the new one can be conceived.

Footnotes:

2120. Every single detail of what the Lord has said in Matthew 24:7, 29; Luke 21:25, about the last times - about the sea and the waves roaring then, about the sun being darkened, the moon not giving its light, the stars falling from heaven, nation rising up against nation and kingdom against kingdom, and so on - means the future state of the Church, when its Last Judgement takes place. By 'the roaring of the sea and of the waves' is meant that nothing other than heresies and controversies within the Church in general and in the individual in particular will reverberate in this fashion. 'The sun' is used to mean nothing other than love to the Lord and charity towards the neighbour; 'the moon' to mean faith; and 'the stars' cognitions of faith which in the last times will be so darkened; their 'not giving their light' and 'falling from heaven', that they will disappear. The Lord has also spoken in a similar way in Isaiah 13:10. Also, by 'nation rising up against nation and kingdom against kingdom' is meant nothing other than evils clashing with evils, and falsities with falsities. And so on. There were many hidden reasons why the Lord spoke in this fashion. That seas, sun, moon, stars, nations, and kingdoms have such meanings I know for certain, and have shown in Volume One.