1. I. THE LAST JUDGMENT HAS BEEN COMPLETED

My earlier work on THE LAST JUDGMENT dealt with the following subjects:

The day of the Last Judgment does not mean the destruction of the world (The Last Judgment 1-5).

The reproduction of the human race will never cease (6-13).

Heaven and Hell are from the human race (14-22).

All people who have ever been born since the beginning of creation and have died are in heaven or in hell (23-27).

The Last Judgment is to be where all are together, and so in the spiritual world, not on earth (28-32).

The Last Judgment takes place when a church comes to an end; and this happens when there is no faith because there is no charity (33-39).

All the predictions made in the Book of Revelation are today fulfilled (40-44).

The Last Judgment has taken place (45-52).

On Babylon and its destruction (53-64);

on the former heaven and its abolition (65-72);

on the future state of the world and the church (73-74).

64. On the state of those who come there from earth henceforward. Since the Last Judgment has now been completed and by this means all has been reduced to order by the Lord, those who were inwardly good being taken up into heaven and those who were inwardly wicked being cast down into hell, it is not allowed henceforth that there should be, as formerly, any communities below heaven and above hell, nor that they should have any contact with others. But as soon as people arrive there, as happens to every person after he dies, they are completely separated and after spending some time in the world of spirits they are taken to their appointed places. Those therefore who profane what is holy, those, that is, who claim for themselves the power of opening and closing heaven and of remitting sins, powers which belong to the Lord alone, and those who put papal bulls on the same level as the Word, with power as their aim in view, these people from now on are immediately taken to the black sea, or to the chasms where are the hells of those who commit profanation. But I was told from heaven that those whose religious belief makes them like this pay no attention to life after death, because at heart they deny there is any; they think only of life in the world. As a result they treat as a matter of no importance the kind of fate which awaits them when they die, laughing at it as if it were a trifle, although it is one which will last for ever.

40. VII. ALL THE PREDICTIONS IN THE BOOK OF REVELATION ARE TO-DAY FULFILLED.

No one can know what is meant by and involved in the book of Revelation without knowing the internal or spiritual sense of the Word. The whole of its contents is written in a style similar to that of the prophetic books of the Old Testament, in which every expression has a spiritual meaning not to be seen in the literal sense. Moreover, the contents of Revelation can only be explained in their spiritual sense by those who know what happened to the church up to its end; and only in heaven can this be known. This is the subject of Revelation, for the spiritual sense of the Word everywhere deals with the spiritual world, that is, the state of the church both in the heavens and upon earth. That is why the Word is spiritual and Divine. The state of the church is there expounded in due sequence. This can serve to establish that the contents of Revelation could not be explained except by someone who had received a revelation of the successive states of the church in the heavens. There is equally a church in the heavens as on earth, and some remarks on it will follow.