4235. And the angels of God ran to meet him. That this signifies enlightenment from good, is evident from the signification of the “angels of God,” as being something of the Lord; here, the Divine which was in the Lord; for in the Lord was the Divine Itself which is called the “Father.” The very essence of life (which in man is called the soul) was therefrom, and was Himself. This Divine is what is called in common speech the Divine nature, or rather the Lord’s Divine essence. (That something of the Divine of the Lord is signified in the Word by the “angels of God,” may be seen above, n. 1925, 2319, 2821, 3039, 4085.) By “the angels of God running to meet him” is signified in the proximate sense the influx of the Divine into the natural, and the consequent enlightenment; for all enlightenment is from the influx of the Divine. As the subject treated of is the inversion of state in the Lord’s natural, in order that good might be in the first place, and truth in the second; and as the subject treated of in this first part of the chapter is the implantation of truth in good therein (n. 4232), and as this could not be effected without enlightenment from the Divine, therefore the first thing treated of is the enlightenment effected by the good into which truth was to be implanted.

2118. By the Last Judgment is meant the last time of a church, and also the last state of each person’s life. As regards the last time of the church, it was the Last Judgment of the Most Ancient Church, which was before the flood, when their posterity perished; whose destruction is described by the flood. The Last Judgment of the Ancient Church, which was after the flood, was when almost all who were of that church became idolaters, and were dispersed. The Last Judgment of the Representative Church, which succeeded among the posterity of Jacob, was when the ten tribes were carried away into captivity, and were dispersed among the nations; and when later, after the Lord’s coming, the Jews were driven out of the land of Canaan, and were scattered throughout the world. The Last Judgment of the present church, which is called the Christian Church, is what is meant by John in Revelation by the “New Heaven and the New Earth.”