§416 the vastness of heaven 237
heaven is to grow young. People who have lived in love for the Lord and
in thoughtfulness toward their neighbor are forms like this, or beauties
like this, in the other life. All angels are forms like this, in infi nite variety.
This is what makes heaven.
The Vastness of Heaven
415
T
HE vastness of the Lord’s heaven follows from many of the things
that have been presented above, especially from the fact that heavenis from the human race (see §§ 311 – 317 ), not only that portion of it born
within the church but also the portion born outside it (§§ 318 – 328 ). This
means that heaven includes everyone who has lived a good life since the
very beginning of our planet.
Anyone familiar with the continents and regions and nations of this
world may gather what a multitude of people there are on our whole
globe. Anyone who goes into the mathematics of it will discover that
thousands and thousands of people die on any given day, making hun-
dreds of thousands or millions every year; and this has been going on
since the earliest times, thousands of years ago. All of these people have
arrived in the other world, called the spiritual world, after their decease,
and they are still arriving.
I cannot say how many of these are or are becoming angels of heaven. I
have been told that most of the earliest people became angels, because they
thought more deeply and spiritually and were therefore enveloped in heav-
enly affection; while for later ages it was not so many because as time passed
we became more externally minded and began to think more on the natu-
ral level, which meant that we were enveloped in more earthly affection.
This enables us to gather at the outset that heaven is huge simply
from the inhabitants of this planet.
The immensity of the Lord’s heaven may also be gathered simply 416
from the fact that all children, whether born within or outside the
church, are adopted by the Lord and become angels, and their number
amounts to a quarter or a fi fth of the whole human race.