2117. The Last Judgment
FEW today know what the Last Judgment is. Most think it will come with the end of the world. As a result, they speculate that the whole wide world, along with everything visible in it, will be destroyed by fire. The dead will then rise for the first time and be presented for judgment, they believe, and evil people will be thrown into hell, while good people will go up into heaven.
These theories come from scriptural prophecies that mention a new heaven and earth and a new Jerusalem as well. The theorizers do not realize that the meaning of scriptural prophecies in an inner sense differs radically from their evident meaning in the literal sense. They fail to see that heaven does not mean the sky, or the earth, the earth, but the Lord's church as a whole and as it exists with every individual in particular.
