5. That is enough at present about the new heaven; now for the new earth. The new earth means a new church on earth, since whenever one church comes to an end the Lord raises up a new one. You see, the Lord makes sure that there is always a church on earth, because the church is the means by which the Lord is joined to the human race, and heaven is joined to the world. This is because the church is where the Lord is known and where we find the divine truths by which we are joined to heaven and the Lord. (See the booklet Last Judgment 74 on the fact that a new church is being established at the present time.)
"A new earth" means "a new church," as we learn from a spiritual understanding of the Word, because in the spiritual meaning "earth" does not mean the land itself, but the people there and their worship of God. That is the spiritual equivalent of "earth. " Then too, when we find a mention of "the earth" [or "the land"] in the Word with no further regional specification, it means the land of Canaan, and the land of Canaan was where the church had been ever since the earliest times. As a result, all the particular places there and thereabout that are mentioned in the Word, including mountains and rivers, have come to represent and symbolize inner realities of the church-what we speak of as its spiritual side. That is why, as just noted, "the land" in the Word refers to the church-because it means the land of Canaan, and the same holds true for "the new earth" here. This is what has led to the common practice in the church of referring to heaven as "the heavenly Canaan. " 1
In the spiritual meaning of the Word, "the land of Canaan" means the church, as has been shown in various passages of Secrets of Heaven, including the following: The earliest church (the church before the Flood) and the ancient church (the church after the Flood) were in the land of Canaan: 567, 3686, 4447, 4454, 4516, 4517, 5136, 6516, 9325. All the specific places then came to represent the kinds of things we find in the Lord's kingdom and the church: 1585, 3686, 4447, 5136. That is why Abraham was commanded to go there-because symbolic religious practices would be instituted among his descendants through Jacob and a Word would be written whose most outward sense would be made up of the representations and symbolisms found in that place: 3686, 4447, 5136, 6516. That is why "the land" and "the land of Canaan" in the Word mean the church: 3038, 3481, 3705, 4447, 4517, 5757, 10568.
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1. The term "the heavenly Canaan" was indeed a common trope in the homiletic literature of Swedenborg's time and earlier. Though Swedenborg is not alluding to the following works specifically, examples of this use include A Clowd of Faithfull Witnesses, Leading to the Heavenly Canaan (1607, 1618), a commentary on part of the Book of Hebrews by an English Puritan divine named William Perkins (1558-1602); and A Cluster of Sweetest Grapes for Saints, Brought from the Heavenly Canaan (1664) by the German clergyman Christopher Jelinger (around 1602-1685). The expression may derive from an allusion to Canaan inHebrews 11:13-16. [RS, SS]
