LJC 3 - Common Worldly Opinion and Spiritual Reality

LJC 3

It is a common opinion in the Christian world,
that the whole heaven we see,
and the whole earth inhabited by people
will perish at the day of the Last Judgment,
and that a new heaven and a new earth
will exist in their places;
that the souls of people will then receive their bodies,
and so that a person will again be a person as before.
This opinion has become a matter of faith,
because the Word has not been understood
otherwise than according to the sense of its letter;
and it could not be understood otherwise,
until its spiritual sense was disclosed,
also, because by many
the belief has been acquired
that the soul is only a breath exhaled by a person;
and that spirits, as well as angels,
are of the substance of wind.
While there was such a deficiency
of understanding concerning souls,
and concerning spirits and angels,
the Last Judgment could not be thought of
in any other manner.
But when it comes to be understood,
that a person is a person after death,
just as he was a person in the world,
with the sole difference
that then he is clothed with a spiritual body,
and not as before with a natural body;
and that the spiritual body appears
before those who are spiritual,
even as the natural body appears
before those who are natural,
it may then also be understood,
that the Last Judgment will not be in the natural,
but in the spiritual world;
for all the people
who were ever born and have died,
are together there.