2. The Lord is God of Heaven

First and foremost, we need to know who the God of heaven is, since everything else depends on this. Throughout the whole of heaven, no one is acknowledged as God of heaven except the Lord. Angels say what he himself taught, namely that he is one with the Father, that the Father is in him and he in the Father, that anyone who sees him sees the Father, and that everything holy emanates from him (John 10:30, 38; 14:9-11, 16; 16:13-15). I have often talked with angels about this, and their consistent testimony has been that in heaven they cannot divide the Divine into three because they both know and perceive that the Divine is one and that this "one" is in the Lord. They have also told me that when people arrive from earth with the idea of three divine beings they cannot be admitted to heaven. This is because their thinking vacillates between one opinion and the other, and in heaven they are not allowed to think "three" and say "one." ¹

In heaven people actually speak directly from their thought, so that we have there a kind of thoughtful speech or audible thought. This means that if people have divided the Divine into three in the world and held a separate image of each one without gathering and focusing these three into one, they cannot be accepted. In heaven, there is a communication of all thoughts, so if people arrive who think "three" and say "one," they are recognized immediately for what they are and are sent away.

Still, it needs to be realized that in the other life any people who have not put "good" in one compartment and "true" in another - who have not separated faith from love - accept the heavenly concept of the Lord as God of the universe once they have been taught. It is different, though, with people who have separated their faith from their lives, that is, who have not lived by the guiding principles of true faith.

Footnotes:

4230. When the end of the old Church and the start of the new is at hand, that is the time of the Last Judgement. For such a time is meant in the Word by the Last Judgement, see 2117-2133, 3353, 4057. That time is also meant by the coming of the Son of Man. It is that very coming which is being referred to now, and the coming which the disciples asked the Lord about when they said,

Tell us, when will those things take place; what especially will be the sign of Your coming and of the close of the age? Matthew 24:3.

There now remains to be explained therefore that which the Lord has foretold about the actual time of His coming and of the close of the age, which is the Last Judgement.

[2] But in this present foregoing section to a chapter the contents of only verses 32-35 are covered, which verses are these,

But from the fig tree learn a parable. When its branch now becomes tender and leaves sprout forth, you know that summer is near. So also yourselves - when you see all these things, know that He is near at the doors. Truly, I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place. Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will not pass away

The internal sense of these words is as follows.

8915. 'And the voice of the trumpet' means those same truths - Divine Truths from good - going through heaven. This is clear from the meaning of 'the voice of the trumpet' as the state of the angelic heaven which was round about the Divine, and as God's truth from there, dealt with in 8815, 8823. From this one may see what the Lord's words mean where He foretells the close of the age or final period of the Church, at which time,

The Lord will send angels with the loud voice of a trumpet, who will gather His elect from the four winds. Matthew 24:31.

People who do not know that all the Lord's words also have heavenly and Divine things stored within them, that is, that they hold in them an internal sense, will suppose that when the last judgement is imminent angels are going to appear and announce it, and also that they will gather the elect with 'the voice of a trumpet'. But 'the voice of a trumpet' is not used there to mean the sound of a trumpet but God's truth in its inward form spreading through heaven, and the proclaiming of it, see 4060 (end) as well as 8815, 8823.