65. The First Heaven, and How It Was Done Away With
It says in Revelation, “I saw a great throne and the one who sat on it, from whose face earth and heaven fled away. And no place was found for them” (Revelation 20:11), and later, “I saw a new heaven and a new earth; the first heaven and the first earth had passed away” (Revelation 21:1).
I explained in the first chapter above [§3], and also in what followed, that the new heaven and the new earth and the passing away of the first heaven and the first earth refer not to the heaven we can see and the earth that we live on but to the angelic heaven and the church. In its essence the Word is spiritual and therefore deals with spiritual things; and spiritual things have to do with heaven and the church. In the literal meaning, these are expressed by means of earthly things because earthly things serve as the foundation of spiritual ones; and the Word would not be a divine work if it did not have this kind of foundation, because it would not be complete. The earthly, which is the outermost level of the divine design, brings about completion, so that the inner things, which are heavenly and spiritual, stand firmly on it the way a house stands on its foundation.
[2] However, since people have thought about what it says in the Word on the basis of what is earthly rather than what is spiritual, they have understood the heaven and the earth mentioned in these and other passages to mean nothing but the heavens in the physical world and this planet. That is why everyone expects these to disappear and be destroyed, followed by the creation of new ones. So that people will not keep expecting this forever, though, century after century without it occurring, the spiritual meaning of the Word has been revealed to make known the meaning of many things in the Word. These meanings cannot get through to our comprehension as long as we think in purely earthly terms about what is said, and this includes the meaning of the first heaven and the first earth that will pass away.
