2. The following are some passages in the Word where it speaks of the end of heaven and earth:

Lift up your eyes to heaven and look on the earth beneath. The heavens will vanish away like smoke and the earth will grow old like a garment. (Isaiah 51:6)

Behold, I am going to create new heavens and a new earth, and the former ones will not be remembered. (Isaiah 65:17)

I will make new heavens and a new earth. (Isaiah 66:22)

The stars of heaven fell to the earth, and heaven receded like a scroll that is rolled up. (Revelation 6:13, 14)

I saw a great throne and the one who sat on it, from whose face earth and heaven fled away. And no place was found for them. (Revelation 20:11)

I saw a new heaven and a new earth; the first heaven and the first earth had passed away. (Revelation 21:1)

In these passages the “new heaven” does not mean the sky that we see with our eyes but heaven itself, where humankind is gathered in. Ever since the beginning of the Christian church a heaven has been gathered from the whole of humankind. The people in it were not angels, though, but spirits, ¹ of various religions. This is the heaven meant by the first heaven that would pass away. There will be further detail about their situation in what follows [§§65-72]. I mention it here only so that the reader may know what is meant by the first heaven that would pass away.

Anyone who thinks with any rational enlightenment can perceive that this is not referring to the sky that has stars in it, the vast firmament of creation, but to heaven spiritually understood, where angels and spirits live.

Footnotes:

303. CONJUNCTION OF HEAVEN WITH MAN BY MEANS OF THE WORD.

Those who think from interior reason can see that there is a connection of all things through intermediates with the First, and that whatever is not in connection is dissipated. For they know, when they think about it, that nothing can have permanent existence from itself, but only from what is prior to itself, thus all things from a First; also that the connection with what is prior is like the connection of an effect with its effecting cause; for when the effecting cause is taken away from its effect the effect is dissolved and dispersed. Because the learned thought thus they saw and said that permanent existence is a perpetual springing forth; thus that all things have permanent existence from a First; and as they sprang from that First so they perpetually spring forth, that is, have permanent existence from it. But what the connection of everything is with that which is prior to itself, thus with the First which is the source of all things, cannot be told in a few words, because it is various and diverse. It can only be said in general that there is a connection of the natural world with the spiritual world, and that in consequence there is a correspondence of all things in the natural world with all things in the spiritual (see 103-115); also that there is a connection and consequently a correspondence of all things of man with all things of heaven (see 87-102).