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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
