Arcana Coelestia volume 7 - Swedenborg Foundation

ARCANA COELESTIA 38995360. And the seven years of famine began to come. That thissignifies the following states of desolation is evident from thesignification of “years” as being states (see n. 482, 487, 488, 493,893); and from the signification of “famine” as being a lack of theknowledges of truth and good (n. 1460, 3364), consequentlydesolation. That a famine denotes such a lack, or desolation, isbecause celestial and spiritual food are nothing else than good andtruth. These are what angels and spirits are nourished by, and whatthey hunger for when hungry, and thirst for when thirsty; andtherefore also material food corresponds thereto—as bread tocelestial love, and wine to spiritual love, as well as everything thatpertains to bread or food, and to wine or drink. When thereforethere is a lack of such things, there is a “famine,” and in the Wordthis is called “desolation” and “vastation”—“desolation” whentruths fail, and “vastation” when goods fail. This desolation andvastation is treated of in many passages of the Word, and is theredescribed by the desolation of the earth, of kingdoms, of cities, ofnations, and of peoples, and is also termed a “pouring out,” a“cutting off,” a “consummation,” a “desert,” and a “void”; and thestate itself is called the “great day of Jehovah,” the “day of hiswrath” and “vengeance,” a “day of darkness,” and “thick darkness,”of “cloud” and of “obscurity,” a “day of visitation,” also the “daywhen the earth shall perish,” thus the “last day” and the “day ofjudgment”; and because men have not understood the internalsense of the Word, they have hitherto supposed that it meant a daywhen the earth will perish, and that then for the first time will therebe a resurrection and a judgment, not being aware that by a “day”in such passages is signified a state, and by the “earth” the church,and thus by a “day when the earth will perish,” a state when thechurch will come to its end; therefore when this perishing isdescribed in the Word, a “new earth” is also described, by which ismeant a new church. (In regard to the “new earth” and “newheaven,” see what is said above, n. 1733, 1850, 2117, 2118, 3355,4535.) That last state of a church which precedes the state of a newchurch, is properly meant and described in the Word by“vastation” and “desolation.” By the same words is described alsothe state that precedes man’s regeneration, which state is heresignified by the seven years of famine.