Page:The Doctrines of the New Church Briefly Explained.djvu/26

20 spiritual sense, that Divine prediction: "The sun shall be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven."

This (according to the belief and teachings of the New Church) was "the consummation of the age" foretold in the Gospels,—the end of the first Christian Dispensation or Church. This was the day which the Lord foresaw and foretold, when "the abomination of desolation spoken of by Daniel the prophet," would be seen "standing in the holy place;" the day when "false Christs and false prophets" (fundamental and congenital false religious doctrines) should arise, deceiving, "if it were possible, even the elect."

And is it strange that, at such a juncture, a wise and loving Father should have vouchsafed to men a further revelation of Himself and the things of his kingdom? It would have been far more strange if He had not. Especially as the same inspired prophecy which proclaims the great darkness that was to fall upon the church, foretells also a glorious illumination that was to follow—another coming of the Lord himself "with power and great glory." And this second coming of the Son of Man, we observe, was to be "in the clouds of heaven;" which, in the symbolic language of Scripture, means a coming or revealing of Himself in the heavenly sense of the Word, through the obscurity or cloud of the letter.