n e w c h u r c h l i f e : m ay / j u n e 2 0 1 7
We might then conclude that
since the Last Judgment (1756-
7) on the former Christianity, on
Islam, and on the churches and
religiosities that existed among the
gentiles, people in this world have
been living in a new age – the Age
of the New Church. We have been
launched into a process akin to
what most individuals can expect
when, with the death of their body,
they enter the world of spirits and
embark on a journey that leads
them eventually to their eternal
spiritual home.
Turning then to the states of
people after their natural death, we
find that they are led through three
successive states in the world of spirits before they come into heaven, that is, if
they are good people, and two states if their final lot is in hell.
• There is the first state of exteriors.
• There is the second state of interiors.
• There is a third state, a state of instruction, for those being prepared for
heaven.
We have been launched
into a process akin to
what most individuals
can expect when, with
the death of their body,
they enter the world
of spirits and embark
on a journey that leads
them eventually to their
eternal spiritual home.
Let us now, in a general, suggestive and speculative fashion, review some
of the things that the Lord reveals about the successive states of a person after
death in the world of spirits and how these may have some parallel in the states
of this natural world that its people have passed through in the last 250 years,
states that we may be in right now, and states that are yet to come.
1. The first state:
• Novitiate/new spirits, when fully awakened, find themselves in a
situation that closely resembles the state in which they were when they
died.
• They usually do not realize that they are no longer in the natural world.
This is true even of the celestial.
• Outwardly they appear to themselves as before they died.
• They tend to take up an occupation, also the interests and hobbies that
they pursued in the world.
• They live a similar external civil and moral life to that in the world.
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