7795. 'So that My wonders may be multiplied in the land of Egypt' means in order that they may receive corroboration that they have had no faith but are ruled by evil. This is clear from the meaning of the wonders and signs that were performed in Egypt as stages of vastation and consequent corroborations that they are ruled by evil, dealt with in 7633. For all those wonders were signs of an equal number of stages in the vastation undergone by those within the Church who had been acquainted with such things as are matters of faith and yet had led an evil life. And since these are the ones who molest the upright in the next life their state now is what is meant here, 7465. 'Multiplying these wonders means the consecutive stages of those states. The reason why there are so many stages is that they serve to corroborate for the evil that they are ruled by evil and also to enlighten the good regarding the state of those within the Church who have led an evil life, 7673. If these reasons had not stood in the way the evil could have been damned without delay and let down into hell without going through so many consecutive changes of states.
[2] The fact that the evil pass through so many states before they are damned and let down into hell is completely unknown in the world. People think that a person is either damned or saved immediately, and that this is done without his having to go through anything. But the truth of the matter is different from that. Justice reigns there; no one is damned before he himself knows and is inwardly convinced that he is ruled by evil and cannot by any means have his being in heaven. His evils are also made plain to him, as accords with the Lord's words in Luke,
Nothing has been hidden that will not be revealed, or concealed that will not be made known. Therefore whatever you have said in the dark will be heard in the light; and what you have spoken in the ear in bedchambers will be proclaimed on the housetops. Luke 12:2, 3, 9; Matt 10:16; Mark 4:11.
And what is more, that person is also warned to refrain from evil. But when he cannot do so because he is ruled by evil the power to do ill through falsifications of truth and semblances of good is taken away from him. It is removed in stages, one after another; and eventually damnation follows, and being let down into hell, which happens when he comes into the evil of his life.
[3] The evil of a person's life is evil constituting his will and consequently his thought. That is, it is what he is like inwardly, and would be like outwardly if laws did not stand in the way, or the fear that he might lose wealth, position, reputation, and even life. The life of his will and thought is what follows everyone after death, not his outward life, unless it emanates from his inward life. For outwardly a person feigns the opposite of his inner self; therefore when after death he undergoes vastation of externals, what he has been like in both will and thought made evident. This state is what every evil person is reduced to through the stages of vastation; for all vastation in the next life moves from externals to internals. All this shows what justice is like in the next life and what kind of experiences an evil person goes through before he is damned.
From this it is evident that 'multiplying My signs in the land of Egypt' means in order that they may receive corroboration that they have no faith but are ruled by evil. Regarding the absence of faith in those ruled by evil, see above in 7778.
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