271. As it was foretold that again at the end of this church darkness would arise from not recognizing the Lord as the God of heaven and earth, and from the separation of faith from charity, lest in consequence of this the genuine understanding of the Word and with it the church should perish, it has pleased the Lord to reveal at this time the spiritual sense of the Word, and to make manifest that the Word contains in that sense, and from that sense in the natural sense, things innumerable, by means of which the almost extinguished light of truth from the Word may be restored. That the light of truth would be almost extinguished at the end of this church, is foretold in many places in the Apocalypse. This is the meaning also of these words of the Lord:
Immediately after the tribulation of those days the sun shall be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken; and then they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with glory and power (Matt. 24:29, 30). By "the sun" here the Lord in respect to love is meant; by "the moon" the Lord in respect to faith; by "the stars" the Lord in respect to knowledges of truth and good; by "the Son of man" the Lord in respect to the Word; by "a cloud" the sense of the letter of the Word; by "glory" the spiritual sense of the Word, and its shining through the sense of the letter, and by "power" its potency.
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