89. The exact meaning of the pit of the abyss is “dragon faith” — that is, faith that originates in the idea of three gods, lacks any notion that Christ’s human nature was divine, and is hailed as the faith that alone justifies us, regenerates us, brings us to life, sanctifies us, and saves us. To convince me completely of this to the point of absolute certainty, I have been allowed to look down into that abyss and talk to the people who are there. I have also seen the locusts that come out of that pit. From this eyewitness experience I have given a description in Revelation Unveiled of the pit and the abyss. Because nothing is better for establishing certainty than an eyewitness account, I will copy my account of that experience here, as follows.

The pit, which is like the opening to a furnace, is found in the southern region. The abyss below it stretches far toward the east. There is light in the pit and the abyss, but if light from heaven is let into them, they become very dark. For this reason the pit is closed at the top.

In the abyss you see temporary housing that looks as if it is made of brick, with holes in the walls. It is divided into many little cells. Each cell contains a table with paper and some books on it, and a person sitting at it. All of these are people who, in the world, had become adamant supporters of justification and salvation by faith alone. They characterized goodwill as an act of mere earthly morality, and good works as just things we do in our civic lives to earn ourselves rewards in the world. If people do them for the sake of their salvation, however, these writers condemn that, some of them very harshly, on the grounds that such actions are tainted with human reason and will.

All the people in the abyss were learned and well-educated when they were in the world. Some are theoretical philosophers and Scholastic philosophers; these are the ones accorded the highest esteem by others in the abyss.

What happens to them over time is as follows. When they are first sent there, they sit in the little cells at the front. As they lend reinforcement to faith and exclude works of goodwill they leave the first locations and move to cells that are farther east. This relocating happens again and again until they reach the end, where people use the Word to support those teachings. Because by that point they cannot help but falsify the Word, their housing disappears and they find themselves in a desert.

There is another abyss below the first. It contains people who had become similarly adamant about justification and salvation by faith alone, but who in their spirits had also denied the existence of God and at heart had laughed at the holy teachings and practices of the church. The only things people do there are argue, tear each other’s clothes, climb on tables, kick at each other, and attack each other with insults. Because they are forbidden to harm each other, they hurl threats and shake their fists at each other.

57. I foresee that many people who are now steeped in the absurdities of this faith are going to say, “How can the intellect grasp theological teachings at all? Isn’t something spiritual a thing that is by definition transcendent? Go ahead, though, and see if you can open up the mysteries of redemption and justification so that human reason may see them and finally satisfy its curiosity!”

Anticipating this challenge, I will indeed open up these mysteries, as follows.

As everyone surely knows, there is one God; there is no God other than him. God is love itself and wisdom itself, or goodness itself and truth itself. God himself came down in the form of divine truth, which is the Word, and took on a human manifestation for the purpose of removing the hells, and therefore damnation, from the human race. He accomplished this through battles with and victories over the Devil, that is, over all the hells that were then attacking and trying to spiritually kill every person who came into the world. Afterward he glorified his human manifestation; he did this by uniting divine truth to divine goodness within himself. In this way he returned to the Father from whom he had come forth.

Once we realize this, we understand the following statement in John: “The Word was with God, and the Word was God. And the Word became flesh” (John 1:1, 14). And in the same Gospel, “I came forth from the Father and have come into the world. Again, I leave the world and go to the Father” (John 16:28). From the points just made it should also be clear that if the Lord had not come into the world, no one could have been saved, and that the people who are saved are the people who believe in him and live good lives.

This is the face of faith. It appears before our [inner] sight when we have allowed the Word to bring us into the light of day. It is the face of the faith of the new church. (See the faith of the new heaven and the new church in universal form and in a specific form below, §§116, 117.)