112. Since it was foretold that at the end of the present church darkness would again arise, when the Lord was no longer known or acknowledged as the God of heaven and earth, and when faith was divorced from charity, therefore to keep a genuine understanding of the Word from perishing as a consequence, it has pleased the Lord to reveal now the spiritual sense of the Word and to show that the Word in that sense, and so in the natural sense, has the Lord and the church as its subject, and indeed these alone; and to do much else by which to restore the light of truth from the Word that has been almost extinguished.

[2] That the light of truth would be almost extinguished at the end of the present church is something foretold in many places in the book of Revelation. It is also meant by these words of the Lord in Matthew:

Immediately after the tribulation of those days the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light; the stars will fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken. And then...they will see the Son of man coming on the clouds of heaven with...glory and power. (Matthew 24:39, 30)

The sun there means the Lord in relation to love; the moon the Lord in relation to faith; the stars the Lord in relation to concepts of goodness and truth; the Son of man the Lord in relation to the Word; the clouds the literal sense of the Word; and glory the spiritual sense and its shining through in the literal sense.

70. The Word Exists in All of the Heavens, and Is the Source of the Angels’ Wisdom

No one has known before that the Word exists in the heavens, nor could it have been known as long as the church remained unaware that angels and spirits are people, like people in the world, and that they have the same kinds of things that people do, in every respect, the sole difference being that angels and spirits are spiritual, and everything they have comes from a spiritual origin, while people in the world are natural, and everything they have comes from a natural origin. As long as this fact remained hidden, they could not know that the Word exists also in the heavens, and that angels read it there, and so do spirits below the heavens.

However, lest this remain hidden forever, I have been given to be in the company of angels and spirits, to speak with them, and to see their surroundings, and afterward to report much of what I have heard and seen. This I have done in the book Heaven and Hell (London, 1758); and it can be seen from it that angels and spirits are people, and that they have in abundance everything that people in the world have.

That angels and spirits are people may be seen in the aforementioned book, Heaven and Hell 73-77 and 453-456; that they have the same things as people have in the world, nos. 170-190; that they also hold Divine worship and hear sermons in the temples they have, nos. 221-227; and that they have written materials and also books, nos. 258-264, including the Word, no. 259.