24. "Know therefore, that by 'the former heaven and the former earth' which John saw had passed away (Rev. 21:1), nothing else is meant but those black expanses where the draconians and Babylonians have fixed their dwelling places and called them heavens. So long as those expanses remain, the communication of men with the angelic heavens, thus also in a measure with the Lord, is intercepted; and when that communication is intercepted, then every truth and good of the Word is falsified and adulterated. Thus appears the abomination of desolation with us; but with the inhabitants of the earth it does not appear by any signs, wherefore they induce a belief in falsities, and by confirmations from the natural man they encircle that belief with a fatuous light, from which falsities are believed to be truths."