133. [134] THE LAST JUDGMENT ON THE PROTESTANTS OR REFORMED. Before the Last Judgment which was a general one, less general judgments preceded which might be called preparatory, by which those who were more exteriorly evil were cast into hells. It should be known that between the judgment effected by the Lord when He was in the world, and that of the judgment which is now effected, spirits who had outwardly lived a moral life, and had confessed God with the lips but not interiorly or in heart, had ascended upon mountains and hills and had there made for themselves, as it were, heavens, where by various arts, which are very numerous in the spiritual world, all of them unknown in our world, they had ascended on mountains; so that the world of spirits which is mediate between heaven and hell had been filled up with such heavens, and thereby the communication of the Lord and heaven with the human race had been intercepted. This also was the reason why the spiritual things of the Word and of doctrine therefrom were not disclosed until after the Last Judgment, for by the latter the world of spirits was purified and communication with man opened. If the spiritual things of the Word and of doctrine therefrom had been disclosed before, they would not have been received nor understood; and if they had been received and understood, still hell, which then prevailed, would have secretly snatched them away from men's hearts and have profaned them. Those fictitious heavens are meant in Revelation by the heaven and earth which passed away. These could pass away, but our visible heaven, which is the firmament of all things, was so created that it cannot pass away, for if this should pass away, the angelic heavens would also pass away. It would be as when the foundation is taken away from a palace, or the base from a column, whereby the house and the column would fall. For there is a connection of all things from the first to the last, from the Lord Himself to His last work which is the visible heaven and the habitable earth. The case would be similar if the human race were to perish, for thus, for a like reason, the angelic heavens would also fall to ruin.