1861. And see? A furnace of smoke, symbolizes the thickest falsity. And a torch of fire symbolizes feverish cravings. This can be seen from the symbolism of a furnace of smoke as thick falsity and from that of a torch of fire as feverish cravings.

This verse speaks of a furnace of smoke because some people look exactly like a smoky furnace. They are those (especially in the church) who know truth and yet do not acknowledge it but deny it at heart and live a life opposed to truth. They themselves look like the furnace, while the distortions billowing out of their hatred look like the smoke; and the hateful urges that create the distortions look exactly like torches of fire from such a furnace. This can be seen from representative scenes in the other world, described from experience in §§814, 1528. It is the urges of hatred, vengefulness, cruelty, and adultery (particularly when deceit is mixed in with all of these) that look like and actually turn into such torches.

[2] The following passages show that furnaces, smoke, and fire have this symbolism in the Word. In Isaiah:

Everyone is a hypocrite and an evildoer, and every mouth is speaking stupidity, because wickedness blazes like fire; bramble patch and brier patch it consumes, and it ignites the thickets of the forest, and they float up with the rising of smoke. In the wrath of Jehovah Sabaoth, the earth has gone dark and the people have become like food for the fire; a man does not spare his brother. (Isaiah 9:17, 18, 19)

The fire stands for hatred; the rising of the smoke from it, for hateful distortions. Hatred is depicted in the words "a man does not spare his brother." When angels examine people like this, they look exactly as they are portrayed here.

[3] In Joel:

I will give portents in the heavens and on earth: blood and fire and pillars of smoke. The sun will turn to shadow, and the moon, to blood, before the day of Jehovah comes, great and fearsome. (Joel 2:30-31)

The fire stands for hatred; the pillars of smoke, for falsity; the sun, for neighborly love; the moon, for faith.

[4] In Isaiah:

The land will become burning pitch. By night and day it will not be quenched; forever its smoke will go up. (Isaiah 34:9-10)

The burning pitch stands for dreadful urges, the smoke, for falsity.

[5] In Malachi:

Look: the day is coming, blazing like a furnace! And all the proud and everyone doing evil will be stubble, and the coming day will light them on fire. It will not leave them root or branch. (Malachi 4:1)

The blazing furnace stands for the same kinds of things. The root stands for neighborly love and the branch for truth, of which none will be left.

[6] In Hosea:

Ephraim acquired guilt through Baal; he will be like chaff [that] is storm-driven off the threshing floor, and like smoke from a smoke hole. (Hosea 13:1, 3)

Ephraim stands for a person with understanding who becomes like this.

[7] In Isaiah:

The strong will become tow, ¹ and their work will become an ember, and they will both kindle equally, and no one to quench them. (Isaiah 1:31)

This stands for the fact that people who love themselves, or what is the same, hate their neighbor, are kindled by their cravings in this way.

In John:

Babylon has become a dwelling place for demons. Those seeing the smoke of its conflagration were shouting. The smoke goes up forever and ever. (Revelation 18:2, 18; 19:3)

[8] In the same author:

He opened the pit of the abyss, so smoke went up from the pit, like the smoke of a large furnace. And the sun and the air went dark with the smoke of the pit. (Revelation 9:2)

In the same author:

From the mouth of the horses went out fire and smoke and sulfur. By these a third of all human beings were killed — by the fire and by the smoke and by the sulfur that went out from their mouth. (Revelation 9:17-18)

In the same author:

Whoever worships the beast will drink ² of the wine of God's anger, mixed with pure wine in the goblet of his anger, and will be tortured with fire and sulfur. (Revelation 14:9-10)

In the same author:

The fourth angel poured out his bowl onto the sun, and it was granted to him to scorch humanity with fire. Therefore humans burned with great heat and blasphemed the name of God. (Revelation 16:8-9)

In the same vein, Revelation 19:20; 20:14-15; and 21:8 say that various beings were thrown into the lake of fire, a lake burning with sulfur.

[9] In these passages, fire stands for cravings, or urges. The smoke stands for distorted thinking, which will reign supreme in the final days. What happens with cravings and distortions in the other life is what John saw when his inner eyes had opened. Spirits see the same things, as do souls after death.

This indicates what hell fire is: pure hatred, revenge, and cruelty (self-love, in other words), which turns into scenes like these. When our nature is like this, then as long as we live in our bodies, angels who inspect us closely see us in exactly this way, no matter how different we look on the surface. That is to say, our hatreds look like fiery torches and the false thoughts they inspire look like smoky furnaces.

[10] Here is what the Lord said about such fire in Matthew:

Every tree not making good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. (Matthew 3:10; Luke 3:9)

The good fruit means love for others. If we divest ourselves of this love, we cut ourselves down and throw ourselves into this kind of fire. In the same author:

The Son of Humankind will send his angels, who will gather together out of his kingdom all the stumbling blocks, and those who do wickedness. And they will send them into a fiery forge. (Matthew 13:41-42, 50)

Likewise. In the same author:

The king says to those who are on his left, "Go away from me, you cursed ones, into eternal fire prepared for the Devil and the Devil's angels." (Matthew 25:41)

Likewise.

[11] The fact that they would be sent into eternal fire or fiery Gehenna and that their worm does not die and their fire is not put out (Matthew 18:8-9; Mark 9:43-49) stands for something similar. In Luke:

Send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger into the water and cool my tongue, because I am tormented in this flame. (Luke 16:24)

Likewise.

[12] People who do not know the secrets of the Lord's kingdom imagine that the Lord is the one who sends the ungodly down into hell, or into the kind of fire with which hatred blazes, as noted; but the true case is radically different. It is we ourselves and devilish spirits themselves who hurl themselves there. Since it seems as though the Lord sends them, however, it was phrased that way in the Word, in keeping with appearances and even with sensory illusions — especially in the eyes of Jews. They had no interest at all in understanding anything but what agreed with their senses, no matter how mistaken those senses were. As a result, the literal meaning is full of such appearances, especially in the prophetic parts.

[13] In Jeremiah, for example:

This is what Jehovah has said: "Render judgment in the morning and snatch spoil from the hand of the oppressor, so that my fury does not go forth like fire and burn (and no one to quench it) because of the wickedness of their deeds." (Jeremiah 21:12)

Rendering judgment is saying what is true. Snatching spoil from the hand of the oppressor is doing good deeds that embody love for others. The fire stands for the hellish punishment experienced by people who do not act that way — that is, who live by the lies that hatred spawns. In the literal meaning, this kind of fiery fury is attributed to Jehovah, but in the inner sense it is exactly the opposite.

[14] Likewise in Joel:

The day of Jehovah: before it, fire consumes all, and after it, a flame blazes. (Joel 2:1, 3)

In David:

Smoke went up from his nose, and fire from his mouth consumed all. Embers sent flames from him, and darkness was under his feet. (Psalms 18:8-9)

In Moses:

A fire has kindled in my anger, and it will burn all the way to the lowest hell, and it will consume the earth and its produce and torch the foundations of the mountains. (Deuteronomy 32:22)

The fire stands for hatred, and the smoke, for falsity, which exist inside us. They are attributed to Jehovah, or the Lord, for the reasons given. It also appears to the hells as though he does these things, but the case is exactly the opposite; they are the ones who do it to themselves, because fiery hatred burns inside them. This shows how easy it is for us to succumb to delusions when we do not know about the Word's inner meaning.

[15] It was the same with the smoke and fire that the people saw on Mount Sinai when the law was issued. Jehovah, or the Lord, appears to each of us as we are. To heavenly angels he looks like the sun; to spiritual angels he looks like the moon; to all good people he appears as the light, in various pleasing, delightful ways; but to the evil he appears as smoke and a devouring fire. Jews had no neighborly love at the time the law was issued but were ruled by self-love and materialism; evil and falsity held complete sway in them. Jehovah, or the Lord, therefore appeared to them as smoke and fire, while at the same instant he appeared to angels as the light and sun of heaven.

[16] Moses makes it clear that he looked this way to Jews because of their character:

The glory of Jehovah resided on Mount Sinai. And the appearance of Jehovah's glory was like a consuming fire on the head of the mountain, before the eyes of the children of Israel. (Exodus 24:16-17)

In the same author:

Mount Sinai was smoking — all of it — because Jehovah came down on it in fire, and the smoke of it went up like the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mountain trembled violently. (Exodus 19:18)

And in another place:

You came near and stood below the mountain when the mountain was burning with fire all the way to the heart of the sky; shadow and cloud and darkness. And Jehovah spoke to you from the middle of the fire. (Deuteronomy 4:11-12; 5:22)

Again:

It happened when you heard the voice from the middle of the shadow and the mountain was burning with fire that you came near to me and said, "Why should we die? For this big fire will consume us. If we continue to hear the voice of Jehovah our God any more, we will die." (Deuteronomy 5:23, 24, 25)

[17] It would be the same if anyone else living a life of hatred and the garbage it generates were to see the Lord; such a person could not help seeing him in terms of hatred and its loathsome by-products, which absorb the goodness and truth he radiates and turn them into malevolent fire, smoke, and darkness.

The same passages also reveal what the smoke of a furnace and a fiery torch are — the thick falsity and foul evil that took over the church in its final days.

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