All these details need to be understood spiritually, as we can see from
the fact that the New Jerusalem means a new church that is going to be
established by the Lord, as I showed in Revelation Unveiled 880.
Since “Jerusalem” here means a church, it follows that all the things
that are said about it as a city—about its gates, wall, foundations under
the wall, and their measurements—contain a spiritual meaning, since the
attributes of a church are spiritual.
In Revelation Unveiled 896 – 925 I have shown what these things
mean. It is unnecessary, therefore, to demonstrate their meaning once
more. It is enough for us to know that there is a spiritual meaning within
all the details of this description like a soul within a body. Without that
meaning we would understand nothing about the church from the
details written here: for example, the city being made of pure gold; its
gates, of pearls; its wall, of jasper; the foundations of its wall, of precious
stones; the wall being 144 cubits high, which is the measure of a human
being, that is, of an angel; and the city being twelve thousand stadia in
length, width, and height; and so on.
People who know correspondences and who therefore recognize the
spiritual meaning understand these details. For example, the wall and
its foundations mean the teachings of that church that are based on the
literal meaning of the Word; and the numbers 12 , 144 , and 12 , 000 mean
everything about that church, that is, all that is good and true in it
combined.
The Lord spoke to his disciples about the close of the age (or the last 198
time of the church); at the end of his predictions about the stages and
changes it would go through he said the following:
Immediately after the affliction of those days the sun will be darkened
and the moon will not give its light; the stars will fall from heaven and
the powers of the heavens will be shaken. Then the sign of the Son of
Humankind will appear in heaven and all the tribes of the earth will
wail. They will see the Son of Humankind coming in the clouds of
heaven with power and great glory. He will send out angels with a great
sound of a trumpet, and they will gather his chosen people from the four
winds, from one end of the heavens to the other. (Matthew 24 : 29 , 30 , 31 )
In the spiritual meaning, these statements do not indicate that the sun
and the moon will be darkened, the stars will fall from heaven, the sign of
the Lord will appear in heaven, and people will see him in the clouds and
§198 sacred scripture 277