Devil. The Lord did this by gaining control over the hells and establish-
ing a new heaven.
Otherwise we could not have been saved, because the spiritual world
is so closely connected to the earthly world that they are inseparable. The
main connection between the two worlds is through our inner levels—
our souls and our minds. For good people, that connection is with the
souls and minds of angels; for evil people it is with the souls and minds
of hellish spirits. We are so united to the angels or the hellish spirits that
if they were taken away from us we would fall down as dead as a piece of
wood. Neither could the angels or the hellish spirits continue to exist if
we were taken away from them. This makes it clear why redemption was
brought about in the spiritualworld and why heaven and hell had to be
restructured before a church could be established on earth. This sequence
is clear in the Book of Revelation: after the new heaven was made, the
New Jerusalem, which is the new church, came down from that heaven
(Revelation 21 : 1 , 2 ).119 If the Lord had not brought about redemption, angels could not
have continued to exist in a state of integrity either. To the Lord, the
entire angelic heaven along with the church on earth is like a single
human being. The angelic heaven constitutes the inner level of that per-
son; the church constitutes the outer level.
To be more specific, the highest heaven forms the head of that per-
son; the second and the lowest heavens form the chest and the midsection
of that person’s body; and the church on earth constitutes the person’s
body from below the waist to the feet. The Lord himself is the soul and
life of the whole person.
If the Lord had not brought about redemption, that person would
have been destroyed. The loss of the church on earth destroys that body
from the waist down; the loss of the lowest heaven destroys the diges-
tive area; the loss of the second heaven destroys the thorax. Then the
head loses consciousness because it has no relationship with the body.
[ 2 ] Analogies will illustrate this. It is like someone’s feet becoming
gangrenous and the gangrene climbing progressively higher, reaching the
genitals and then the abdominal organs, and finally attacking the region
of the heart. As we know, at that point the person succumbs to death.
This can also be illustrated by analogy with diseases of the internal
organs below the diaphragm. When they fail, the heart begins to palpi-
tate and the lungs begin to heave desperately. In the end the heart and
lungs stop functioning.