lowest heaven, they also attacked the middle heaven and harassed it in a
thousand ways. If the Lord had not preserved it, it would have been
destroyed.
This kind of attack by the hells is meant by the tower built in the
land of Shinar whose top reached all the way to heaven. The confusion
of their languages thwarted those people’s efforts; they were scattered
and the city was called Babel (Genesis 11 : 1 – 9 ). The meaning of the tower
and of the confusion of their languages is explained in Secrets of Heaven,
published in London.
[ 2 ] The reason why the hells had risen so high was that by the time the
Lord came into the world the whole planet had completely alienated itself
from God by worshiping idols and practicing sorcery; and the church that
had existed among the children of Israel and later among the Jews had
been utterly destroyed by their falsifying and contaminating the Word.
After death both of the above groups arrived in the world of spirits.
Over time they grew in numbers there to such an extent that they could
not have been driven out thereafter if God himself had not come down
and used the power of his divine arm to deal with them. The Lord in fact
did so, as I have described in Last Judgment,a little work published in
London in 1758. While the Lord was in the world, he accomplished their
overthrow.
The Lord is again doing something similar today since, as I said,
today is his Second Coming, an event foretold throughout the Book of
Revelation and in Matthew 24 : 3 , 30 ; Mark 13 : 26 ; Luke 21 : 27 ; and Acts
1 : 11 , as well as other places.
A difference is that during his First Coming the hells were swollen
with idol-worshipers, sorcerers, and falsifiers of the Word. During this
Second Coming the hells are swollen with so-called Christians—some
who are steeped in materialist philosophy, and others who have falsified
the Word by using it to sanction their made-up faith about three divine
persons from eternity and about the Lord’s suffering as the true redemp-
tion. The dragon and his two beasts in Revelation 12 and 13 mean the so-
called Christians just mentioned.
[ 3 ] The second reason why the Lord’s redemption affected angels as
well is that the Lord restrains not only all people but also all angels from
evil, and keeps them focused instead on what is good. No angels or peo-
ple are good on their own. Everything good comes from the Lord. When
the angels’ footstool (meaning the world of spirits) was stolen, it was as if
the platform under someone’s chair was suddenly removed.
§121 the lord the redeemer & redemption 173