1810. This is how your seed will be symbolizes the heirs of the Lord's kingdom, which can be seen from the symbolism of seed as love and the faith that comes of it or, to put it another way, people who have love and faith, whether they are angels or people on earth. This symbolism of seed has often been mentioned and proved before [§§255, 256, 1025, 1447, 1610, 1798:1].

This verse as a whole is saying that the Lord's kingdom is so vast and populous that no one could ever believe it. The only word for it is immeasurable. Its boundless reach will be discussed elsewhere, with the Lord's divine mercy, ¹ and is symbolized here by the words of the current verse: "‘Look, please, toward the sky and count the stars, if you can count them.' And he said to him, ‘This is how your seed will be.'"

The same words also symbolize the countless points of goodness and truth that go into each angel's wisdom and understanding, which yield such happiness.

Footnotes:

415. The Vastness of Heaven

The vastness of the Lord's heaven follows from many of the things that have been presented above, especially from the fact that heaven is from the human race (see 311-317), not only that portion of it born within the church but also the portion born outside it (see 318-328). This means that heaven includes everyone who has lived a good life since the very beginning of our planet.

Anyone familiar with the continents and regions and nations of this world may gather what a multitude of people there are on our whole globe. Anyone who goes into the mathematics of it will discover that thousands and thousands of people die on any given day, making hundreds of thousands or millions every year; and this has been going on since the earliest times, thousands of years ago. All of these people have arrived in the other world, called the spiritual world, after their decease, and they are still arriving.

I cannot say how many of these are or are becoming angels of heaven. I have been told that most of the earliest people became angels, because they thought more deeply and spiritually and were therefore enveloped in heavenly affection; while for later ages it was not so many because as time passed we became more externally minded and began to think more on the natural level, which meant that we were enveloped in more earthly affection.

This enables us to gather at the outset that heaven is huge simply from the inhabitants of this planet.