"Once also some spirits discoursed with me by nothing but visual representatives, such as flames of various colors, luminous appearances, clouds ascending and descending, different kinds of small houses and stage-scenes, articles of furniture, persons variously clothed and many other things: all of which were representative of spiritual ideas from which alone their meaning might be known."
Sometimes the thoughts or wisdom of angels in a superior heaven are let down through the minds of those in a lower degree, and presented outwardly to them under these symbolic forms in their own spiritual atmospheres. It is thus, indeed, that the whole creation is a grand representative mirror, a visible symbol of the wisdom and glory of God. It was thus that John saw in the world of spirits, into which his senses had been opened, the magnificent panorama of spiritual symbols constituting the Apocalypse, and to which Swedenborg has given us the key.
God has spoken to man through the Book of Revelation just as angels speak to each other by means of these visual representations. Apocalypse means the unveiling of something which is hidden. The projection outwardly of something which is concealed interiorly, is the same idea in a spiritual
