25. The Lord has disclosed the Word’s spiritual sense at the present day because a doctrine of genuine truth has now been revealed. And this doctrine, and no other, accords with the Word’s spiritual sense.

This sense is moreover symbolized by the Lord’s appearing on the clouds of heaven with glory and power (Matthew 24:30-31), in a chapter dealing with the end of the age, meaning the ultimate end of the church.

An opening of the Word in respect to its spiritual sense was also promised in the book of Revelation. This sense is there meant by the white horse, and by the great supper to which all are summoned (Revelation 19:11-18).

The spiritual sense will for a long time not be acknowledged, and that solely because of people caught up in doctrinal falsities, especially falsities regarding the Lord, who therefore do not give entrance to truths. That is meant in the book of Revelation by the beast and the kings of the earth that were gathered to make war against Him who sat on the white horse (Revelation 19:19). The beast means Roman Catholics, as in chapter 17:3 there, and the kings of the earth mean those Protestant Reformed who are caught up in doctrinal falsities.

60. The opposite is the case with people who read the Word in the light of a false religion’s doctrine, and still more with people who use the Word to defend that doctrine and have an eye then to their own glory and to the world’s riches. In their case the Word’s truth exists, so to speak, in the dark of night, and falsity in the light of day. They read something true, but do not see it, and if they see some shadow of it, they falsify it. These are the people of whom the Lord says that they have eyes but do not see, and ears but do not understand (Matthew 13:14-15). For nothing so blinds a person as his own self-interest and affirmation of falsity. A person’s self-interest is his love of self and his consequent conceit in his own intelligence. And an affirmation of falsity is thick darkness masquerading as light. Their light is a merely natural one, and their sight like that of one seeing apparitions in the dark.