1839. Look — terror of immense shadows was falling on him means that the shadows were frightening; and shadows are falsities. This can be seen from the symbolism of shadows as falsities (discussed just below).
Conditions in the church before the end but when the sun was about to set are portrayed as terror of immense shadows, but conditions after sunset are portrayed as darkness and more in verse 17 below. 1
[2] The Lord describes it this way in Matthew:
The sun will go dark, and the moon will not shed its light, and the stars will fall down from the sky, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken. (Matthew 24:29)
It is not the world's sun that will go dark, but the heavenly radiance of love and charity. It is not the moon that will, but the spiritual luster of faith. It is not the stars that will fall down from heaven, but knowledge of goodness and truth in religious people, this knowledge being the powers of the heavens. And it is not in heaven that these things will happen, since heaven is never dark, but on earth.
[3] The terror of immense shadows that was falling on him is his shrinking in horror from such enormous devastation. The more devoted a person is to the heavenly qualities of love, the more horror that person feels on seeing the end approach — the Lord most of all, since he was moved by divine and heavenly love itself.
[4] The symbolism of shadows as falsities can be seen from quite a few passages in the Word. In Isaiah, for instance:
Doom to those who put shadow for light and light for shadow! (Isaiah 5:20)
The shadow stands for falsity and the light for truth. In the same author:
One will gaze on the land, and look — shadow, distress; and the light has been shadowed over. (Isaiah 5:30)
The shadow stands for falsity. The shadowing of the light stands for the disappearance of truth.
[5] In the same author:
Look — shadows cover the earth, and darkness, the peoples. (Isaiah 60:2)
In Amos:
The day of Jehovah is one of shadow and lack of light. Is the day of Jehovah not shadow and lack of light? And is there not darkness and lack of radiance on it? (Amos 5:18, 20)
In Zephaniah:
The great day of Jehovah is near. A day of wrath is that day, a day of anguish and distress, a day of devastation and ruin, a day of shadow and darkness, a day of cloud and gloom. (Zephaniah 1:14-15)
The day of Jehovah stands for the last days and the final stage of the church. The shadow and darkness stand for falsity and evil.
[6] The Lord himself also refers to falsity as shadow, in Matthew:
If your eye is bad, your whole body is dark, so if the light that is in you is shadow, how immense the shadow! (Matthew 6:23)
The shadow stands for the type of falsity that overcomes people who possess religious knowledge. [How immense the shadow] means how much more benighted they are than nations who lack that knowledge.
[7] Again in the same author:
The children of the kingdom will be cast out into outer shadow. (Matthew 8:12; 22:13)
Outer shadow stands for the more heinous misconceptions of people in the church, because these people block the light and introduce false thinking that opposes truth, which people outside the church are incapable of doing. In John:
In him was life, and the life was the light of humankind; the light, however, appears in the shadows, but the shadows have not comprehended it. (John 1:4-5)
The shadows stand for falsity within the church.
[8] Falsity outside the church is also called shadow, but shadow in which light can shine. This shadow is mentioned in Matthew:
The people sitting in shadow have seen a great light; and on those sitting in the vicinity and gloom of death, light has risen. (Matthew 4:16)
The shadow stands for the false ideas that result when knowledge is lacking — the kind of shadow that people outside the church experience.
[9] In John:
This is the judgment: that the light came into the world but people loved shadow more than light, since their deeds were evil. (John 3:19)
The light stands for truth and the shadow for falsity. The light also stands for the Lord because all truth is from him, and the shadow stands for the hells because all falsity is from them. In the same author:
Jesus said, "I am the light of the world; whoever follows me will not walk in shadow." (John 8:12)
[10] In the same author:
Walk, as long as you have light, to prevent the shadows from overtaking you, because whoever walks in the shadow does not know where to head. I have come into the world as the light, so that no one who believes in me should stay in shadow. (John 12:35, 46)
The light stands for the Lord, the source of everything good and true. The shadow stands for falsity that the Lord alone dispels.
[11] The lies being spread during the [church's] final days, called shadows here, or at least referred to in the phrase "terror of immense shadows," were represented and symbolized by the shadows that fell on the whole earth from the sixth hour to the ninth [during the Crucifixion], and by the fact that the sun was shadowed over at the same time, which represented and symbolized the dying out then of love and faith (Matthew 27:45; Mark 15:33; Luke 23:44-45).
Footnotes:
1. The Latin words here translated "shadow" and "darkness," tenebrae and caligo, respectively, are virtually identical in meaning. To preserve the distinction Swedenborg is drawing between the two words, tenebrae is translated as "shadows" and caligo as "darkness" throughout this chapter (but not elsewhere). For more about Swedenborg's use of caligo in this chapter, see note 1 in §860 below. [LHC]
