23. II. The signs and visitations before the Last Judgment.
There was seen above those who had formed to themselves seeming heavens as it were a storm cloud, which appearance was from the presence of the Lord in the angelic heavens above them, especially from His presence in the lowest heaven, lest any of them on account of the conjunction should be carried away and perish with them. The higher heavens moreover were brought down nearer to them, by which the interiors of those upon whom the judgment was about to come were disclosed; on which disclosure, they appeared no longer like moral Christians, as before, but like demons. They were tumultuous and strove among themselves about God, the Lord, the Word, faith, and the church; and because their lusts for evils were then also set free, they rejected all these things with contempt and ridicule, and rushed into every kind of enormity. Thus the state of those heavenly inhabitants was changed. Then at the same time all their splendid appearances, which they had made for themselves by arts unknown in the world, vanished away; their palaces were turned into vile huts; their gardens into stagnant pools; their temples into heaps of rubbish; and the very hills upon which they dwelt, into gravel heaps, and into other similar things, which corresponded to their wicked minds and lusts. For all the visible things of the spiritual world are correspondences of the affections of spirits and angels. These were the signs of the coming judgment.