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).

73. XI. THE FUTURE STATE OF THE WORLD AND THE CHURCH.

The future state of the world will be exactly the same as it has been up to now; for the mighty change which has taken place in the spiritual world does not cause any change in the external appearance of the natural world. So just as before there will be politics, peace-treaties, alliances and wars, and all the other general and particular features of society. When the Lord said:

There will be wars, and then nation will rise up against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; and there will be famines, plagues and earthquakes in various places. Matthew 24:6-7.

He did not mean such events in the natural world, but corresponding ones in the spiritual world. For the Word in its prophecies is not concerned with kingdoms on earth or the peoples on it, so not with their wars either; nor is it concerned with famine, plague and earthquakes on earth, but with the events in the spiritual world which correspond to them. The nature of these has been explained in ARCANA CAELESTIA, a collection of references to which may by seen at the end of the chapter. ¹

[2] The future state of the church, however, will not be the same. It may seem much the same in outward appearance, but inwardly it will be different. In outward appearance the churches will be divided from one another as before, their teachings will differ as before, and so will the religious systems of the heathen. But people in the church will henceforward have more freedom in thinking about matters of faith, and so about the spiritual matters which have to do with heaven, because of the restoration of spiritual freedom. For now everything in the heavens and the hells has been restored to order, and it is from there that all thought is influenced about Divine matters or against them; from the heavens when thought favours what is Divine, from the hells when it opposes it. But people will be unaware of this change of state, since they do not reflect on it, nor indeed do they know anything about spiritual freedom or influence from the spiritual world. However, in heaven this is perceived, and people after their deaths can do so too. It is because people have had their spiritual freedom restored that the spiritual sense of the Word has now been disclosed, and by this means Divine truths of a more inward kind have been revealed. For in their previous state people would not have understood them, and if anyone did so, he would have profaned them. It may be seen in HEAVEN AND HELL 597-603) that people's freedom depends upon an equilibrium between heaven and hell; and that people can only be reformed, if they enjoy freedom.

Footnotes:

5360. 'And the seven years of famine began to come means the subsequent states of desolation. This is clear from the meaning of 'years' as states, dealt with in 482, 487, 488, 493, 893; and from the meaning of 'famine' as an absence of cognitions of truth and good, dealt with in 1460, 3364, and consequently a desolation. The reason 'famine' means that absence of them, or a desolation, is that celestial and spiritual food consists in nothing else than goodness and truth. These are the food with which angels and spirits are fed and which they long for when they are hungry and thirst for when they are thirsty, and to which also material kinds of food therefore correspond. Bread corresponds to celestial love, wine to spiritual love, as does everything else which is a form of 'bread', meaning food, or of 'wine', meaning drink. When therefore these kinds of nourishment are lacking a famine exists, which in the Word is called desolation and vastation, desolation being when there is a lack of truths, vastation when there is a lack of forms of good.

[2] Such desolation and vastation are spoken about in many places in the Word, where they are described as a desolation of the earth, kingdoms, cities, nations, or peoples. The same condition is also referred to as an emptying out, a cutting off, a bringing to a close, a wilderness, or a void, while the actual state is called the great day of Jehovah, the day of His wrath and vengeance, the day of darkness and thick darkness, of cloud and obscurity, the day of visitation, also the day when the earth will be destroyed, and so the last day or judgement day. But because people have not understood the internal sense of the Word they have imagined up to now that this is a day when the earth will be destroyed, at which point the resurrection and the judgement will begin to take place. Such people do not know that 'day' in this case means a state, and 'the earth' the Church, so that 'the day when the earth will be destroyed' means a state when the Church will pass away. In the Word therefore, when this passing away is referred to, a new earth is also mentioned, by which a new Church is meant, regarding which new earth together with a new heaven, see 1733, 1850, 2117, 2118 (end), 3355 (end), 4535. That final state of a Church which comes before the state of a new Church is meant and described in the Word, strictly speaking, by vastation and desolation. But desolation and vastation are also used to describe the state which comes before a person's regeneration; and that is the state meant here by 'the seven years of famine'.