The Swedenborg Library Vol 1/Chapter 18

by Emanuel Swedenborg

XVIII.

THE LAST GENERAL JUDGMENT..

HOSE who have been unacquainted with the spiritual sense of the Word, have always understood that everything in the visible world will be destroyed on the day of the last judgment; for it is said that heaven and earth are then to perish, and that God will create a new heaven and a new earth: in which opinion they have also confirmed themselves, because it is said that all men are then to rise from their graves, and that the good are to be separated from the evil, with more of similar purport. But it is so expressed in the literal sense of the Word, because this sense is natural. . . But as no one has hitherto known that in the whole and in every part of the Word there is a spiritual sense, nor even what a spiritual sense is, therefore they who have embraced this opinion concerning the last judgment are pardonable. Yet they may now know that neither the visible heaven nor the habitable earth will perish, but that both will remain forever; and that by a new heaven and a new earth is to be understood a new church, both in heaven and on earth. It is said a new church in heaven, for there is a church in heaven as well as on earth; for there also are the Word and preachings, and Divine worship like that on earth; yet with the difference, that all these things are in a more perfect state there, because they are not in the natural but in the spiritual world. . .

COMING IN THE CLOUDS.

It is believed that at the time of the last judgment, the Lord will appear in the clouds of heaven with the angels in glory, and awaken from the sepulchres all who have ever lived since the beginning of creation, clothing their souls with bodies; and that when they are thus summoned together, He will judge them—those who have done well, to eternal life or heaven, those who have done wickedly, to eternal death or hell.

The churches derive this belief from the sense of the letter of the Word; nor could it be removed so long as men did not know that there is a spiritual sense within every thing related in the literal sense of the Word, and that this sense is the Essential Word, to which the sense of the letter serves for a foundation and a basis; and that without such a letter as it has, the Word could not have been Divine, nor have served in heaven as in the world for the doctrine of life and faith, and for conjunction.

He therefore, who is acquainted with the spiritual things to which the natural expressions of the Word correspond, has the means of knowing that by the Lord's advent in the clouds of heaven, is not to be understood that He will thus appear, but that He will appear in the Word; for the Lord is the Word, because He is the Divine Truth; the clouds of heaven in which He is to come, are the sense of the letter of the Word, and the glory is its spiritual sense; the angels are the heaven from which He will appear, and moreover they are the Lord as to Divine Truths.

Hence the meaning of these words is now evident, namely: that when the end of the church takes place, the Lord will reveal the spiritual sense of the Word, and thus the Divine Truth such as it is in itself; therefore that this is the sign that the last judgment is at hand.

WHERE THIS JUDGMENT TAKES PLACE.

The last judgment must occur in the spiritual and not in the natural world. . . For no one is judged from the natural man, nor, therefore, during his life in the natural world; for man is then in a natural body. But everyone is judged in the spiritual man, and therefore when he comes into the spiritual world; for man is then in a spiritual body. It is the spiritual in man which is judged, not the natural [or material], for no blame or criminality can be imputed to it, since it does not live of itself, but is only the servant and passive instrument of the spiritual man. Hence also it is, that judgment is executed upon men when they have put off their natural and put on their spiritual bodies.

In the spiritual body, moreover, man appears such as he is in respect to love and faith; for every one in the spiritual world is the image of his own love not only as regards the face and body, but even as regards the speech and actions. Hence it is that the true character of all is known, and their instantaneous separation effected whenever the Lord pleases. From what has been said, it is plain that judgment is effected in the spiritual but not in the natural world, or on the earth.

The natural life in man has no potency, but his spiritual life in the natural, since what is natural of itself is void of life; and the life which appears in it is from the life of the spiritual man, and therefore it is the spiritual man who is judged; and being judged according to his deeds, means that man's spirit is judged; for every one after death is such as his life in the world has been.

THE REASON WHY.

Every one after death is bound to some society, even when he first comes into the spiritual world; but a spirit in his first state is ignorant of this, for he is then in externals and not yet in internals. When he is in this state, he goes hither and thither, wherever his desires impel him; but still he is actually where his love is, that is, in a society composed of persons who are in a love like his own. When a spirit is in such a state he appears in many other places, in all of them also present as it were with the body; but this is only an appearance. Therefore as soon as he is led by the Lord into his own ruling love, he vanishes instantly from the eyes of others, and is among his own in the society to which he was bound.

This peculiarity exists in the spiritual world, and is a wonder to those who are ignorant of its cause. Hence it is, that as soon as spirits are congregated and separated, they are also judged; and every one is presently in his own place—the good in heaven and in a society there among their own, and the wicked in hell and in a society there among their own. From these things it is evident that the last judgment can occur nowhere but in the spiritual world, both because every one there is in the likeness of his own life, and because he is with those who are in similar life, and is thus in society with his own.

But in the natural world it is not so. The good and the evil may dwell together there, the one ignorant of what the other is, and the life's love of each producing no separation between them. Indeed it is impossible for any one in the natural body to be [altogether] either in heaven or in hell. Wherefore in order that man may go to one of them, it is necessary that he put off the natural, and be judged in the spiritual body. Hence it is, as said above, that the spiritual man is judged, and not the natural.

WHEN IT TAKES PLACE.

The last judgment takes place at the end of the church. The principal reason is, that then the equilibrium between heaven and hell, and man's essential liberty along with it, begin to perish; and when man's liberty perishes he can no longer be saved, for he cannot then be led to heaven in freedom, but is hurried into hell apart from freedom. For no man can be reformed without free-will, and all man's free-will is the result of the equilibrium between heaven and hell.

That the equilibrium between heaven and hell begins to perish at the end of the church, may appear from this: that heaven and hell are from mankind, and that when many go to hell and few to heaven, evil on the one part increases over good on the other; for evil increases in proportion as hell increases, and all evil is derived to man from hell, and all good from heaven. Now since evil increases over good at the end of the church, all are then judged by the Lord; the evil are separated from the good, all things are reduced to order, and a new heaven is established, with a new church upon earth; and thus the equilibrium is restored. It is this, then, which is called the last judgment.

It is knovvn from the Word that the end of the church is when faith no longer exists in it; but it is not yet known that faith is not, if charity is not; therefore something shall now be said upon this subject. It is foreshown by the Lord that there is no faith at the end of the church: "When the Son of Man comes shall He find faith on the earth" (Luke xviii. 8); and, moreover, that there is then do charity: "In the consummation of the Age iniquity will abound, the love of many will grow cold, and this gospel will be preached in all the world; and then shall the end come" (Matthew xxiv. 12, 14). The consummation of the Age is the last time of the church. The state of the church successively decreasing in regard to love and faith, is described by the Lord in this chapter, but by mere correspondences; and therefore the things therein predicted by the Lord cannot be understood without a knowledge of the correspondent spiritual sense in each expression. . .

THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH.

There is no faith if there is no charity. It is supposed that faith exists so long as the doctrinals of the church are believed; or that they who believe, have faith; and yet mere believing is not faith, but willing and doing what is believed, is faith. When the doctrinals of the church are merely believed, they are not in a man's life, but only in his memory, and thence in the thought of his outer man; nor do they enter into his life until they enter into his will, and thence into his actions. Then for the first time does faith exist in man's spirit; for man's spirit, the life of which is his essential life, is formed from his will, and from so much of his thought as proceeds from his will; the memory of man, and the thought derived from it, being only the court-yard by which introduction is effected. Whether you say the will or the love, it is the same, since every one wills what he loves and loves what he wills; and the will is the receptacle of love, and the intellect whose province it is to think, is the receptacle of faith.

A man may know, think and understand many things, but those which do not accord with his will or love he rejects when left to himself to meditate from his own will or love; and therefore he also rejects them after the life of the body, when he lives in the spirit. For that alone remains in man's spirit which has entered into his will or love; other things after death being viewed as foreign, which he turns out of doors and regards with aversion because they are not of his love. But it is another thing when man not merely believes those doctrinals of the church which are derived from the Word, but wills and does them too. Then faith exists; for faith is the affection of truth from the act of willing it because it is truth; the act of willing truth for its own sake being the spiritual essence of a man, and divested of the natural which consists in willing truth not for its own sake, but for the sake of self-glory, fame and gain. . .

That within the church at this day faith is so rare that it can scarcely be said to exist at all, was made evident from many of the learned and simple whose spirits were explored after death as to what their faith had been in the world, and it was found that every one of them supposed faith to be mere believing, and persuaded themselves that it was so; and that the more learned of them placed it entirely in believing with trust or confidence that they are saved by the Lord's passion and intercession, and that hardly one among them knew that there is no faith if there is no charity or love; nay, that they did not know what charity to the neighbor is, nor the difference between thinking and willing. For the most part they turned their backs upon charity, saying that charity does nothing, but that faith alone is effective. When it was replied to them, that charity and faith are one, like the will and the intellect, and that charity has its seat in the will and faith in the intellect, and that to separate the one from the other is, as it were, to separate the will from the intellect, they did not understand it. Whence it was made evident to me that scarcely any faith exists at the present day.

This also was shown them to the life. They who were in the persuasion that they had faith, were led to an angelic society where genuine faith existed; and when they were made to communicate with it they clearly perceived that they had no faith, which afterwards they confessed in the presence of many. The same thing was also made apparent by other means to those who had made a profession of faith and had thought they believed, without having lived the life of faith which is charity; and they all confessed that they had no faith, because they had nothing of it in the life of their spirits, but only in some thought extrinsic to it while they lived in the natural world.

Such is the state of the church at this day [1757], that in it there is no faith because there is no charity. And where there is no charity there is no spiritual good, for that good exists from charity alone. It was declared from heaven that there is still good with some, but that it cannot be called spiritual but natural good, because essential divine truths are in obscurity; and divine truths introduce to charity, for they teach it and regard it as their end and aim; whence no other charity can exist than such as accords with the truths which form it. The divine truths from which the doctrines of the churches are derived, respect faith alone; on which account they are called the doctrines of faith, and have no respect to life. But truths which regard faith alone and not life, cannot make man spiritual; for so long as they are external to the life they are only natural, being merely known and thought of like common things. Hence it is that spiritual good is not given at the present day, but only natural good with some.

Moreover every church at the commencement is spiritual; for it begins from charity, but in the course of time turns aside from charity to faith; and then from being an internal church it becomes an external one; and its end is when it becomes external, since it then places every thing in knowledge, and little or nothing in life. . .

STATE OF THE CHURCH REVEALED.

Since there is an internal or spiritual sense to every word in the Apocalypse, and since that sense contains the arcana of the state of the church in heaven and on earth; and since those arcana can be revealed to no one but to him who knows that sense, and to whom at the same time it has been granted to consort with the angels, and to speak spiritually with them; therefore, lest the things which are therein written should be hidden to men, and should hereafter be disregarded because not understood, its contents have been disclosed to me; but they are too numerous to be described here. . .

He who knows not the internal or spiritual sense, never can divine what is meant in the Apocalypse by the dragon, and by the battle of Michael and his angels with it; what by the tail with which the dragon drew down a third part of the stars from heaven; what by the woman who brought forth the male-child which was caught up to God, and whom the dragon persecuted; what by the beast ascending from the sea, and the beast ascending from the earth, which had so many horns; what by the whore with whom the kings of the earth committed whoredom; what by the first and second resurrection, and by the thousand years; what by the lake of sulphur and of fire, into which the dragon, the beast and the false prophet were cast; what by the white horse; also what by the former heaven and the former earth which passed away; and what by the new heaven and the new earth in place of the former; and by the sea which was no more; or what by the city New Jerusalem descending from heaven, and by its measures, wall, gates and foundation of precious stones; what by the various numbers; besides other things which are the veriest mysteries to those who know nothing of the spiritual sense of the Word.

All the things contained in that book in the heavenly sense, are now fulfilled. I will here deliver some general account of the last judgment, the Babylon destroyed, the first heaven and the first earth which passed away, the new heaven, the new earth and the New Jerusalem; in order that it may be known, that all its predictions are now accomplished. (L. J. n. 1, 28-44.)