3. The generally held view in Christendom is that on the day of the Last Judgment the whole visible sky and the whole inhabited earth will be destroyed and their place will be taken by a new heaven and a new earth. At that time people's souls will recover their bodies, and they will thus resume a personal life as before. This view has become an article of faith because the Word has been understood only in its literal sense, as was inevitable before its spiritual sense was disclosed. Another reason was that many people have been induced to believe that the soul is merely the breath a person breathes out, and that spirits, and likewise angels, are gaseous substances.

So long as the nature of souls, spirits and angels was so little understood, it was impossible to imagine the Last Judgment in any other way. But when it comes to be understood that a person exists as a person after death, just as he was in the world — the only difference being that he is then clothed in a spiritual body in place of his former natural body, and the spiritual body is as visible to those who are spiritual as the natural body is to those who are natural — then it comes to be understood that the Last Judgment will not take place in the natural, but in the spiritual world. In that world all human beings who have ever been born and have died are gathered.

23. IV. ALL PEOPLE WHO HAVE EVER BEEN BORN SINCE THE BEGINNING OF CREATION AND HAVE DIED ARE IN HEAVEN OR IN HELL.

This is the consequence, first of the statements and demonstrations of the last chapter, showing that heaven and hell are from the human race. Secondly, from the fact that after his life in the world everyone lives for ever. Thirdly, it follows that all people who have ever been born from the creation of the world and have died are either in heaven or in hell. Fourthly, since all who will be born hereafter will also come into the spiritual world, it follows that this is in size and nature beyond comparison with the natural world in which people on earth live. In order to make the perception of all these statements more exact and their truth more obvious, I should like to explain and describe them one by one.