THE APOCALYPSE EXPLAINED
ling in a new Christian heaven those whose hearts are open to this will.
All the while that this true understanding of the Divine Human presence was descending from heaven into the world of spirits and executing the judgment there, Swedenborg was on earth recording both the judgment and the interior significance of the vision to John, in his "Apocalypse Explained." The judgment he describes as being effected during the year 1757. In that year and the one or two following he was preparing this work for the press in four large volumes. At first the method pursued is that of the Arcana, giving the high internal explication of each verse and word, with abounding citations from other parts of the Word in confirmation, with their internal meaning. And as in the Arcana, though true doctrine is drawn from the Word in contrast with the false doctrine condemned, but little is said of the new church by which the true is to be held, and that little speaks of it as probably, like the first Christian, to be established among the Gentiles. When however he comes to the fourteenth chapter, he finds the woman encompassed with the sun and with the moon at her feet, to
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