“Oh, no!” said my father, “the temptations of the Lord always occur in the world of spirits. Evil spirits do not move around upon the temples and mountain-tops of the natural world. The Lord’s spiritual senses were opened into this world, which is the scene of his trials, his temptations, his combats with hell; and will be the scene of his final glorification and ascension.” “These ideas are all new to me,” I said, “but very rational.” “You will now see,” my father continued, “how this imaginary heaven of the Jews, with its proud and worldly magnates, appears in the genuine light of heaven. An invisible angel accompanies us, who is commissioned to let in the heavenly light upon these scenes, to show you the internal and real character of this church.” Thereupon a ray of white light seemed to shoot down from the zenith. A black cloud immediately arose from the Salt Sea, and spread itself like a canopy over the whole land. Fearful thunderings and red lightnings issued from the bosom of this terrible cloud. The whole country around became a desolation—a dreary waste full of stone-heaps and pitfalls. The holy city sank into the earth; and in its place there rose a great lake, black as a mountain tarn unruffled by the wind. Floating in the midst of it was the gorgeous temple converted into a huge wooden house or Noah’s ark, from the innumerable windows of which looked out the hideous faces of wild beasts and the heads of enormous serpents. I was at first terrified at these sights; but my father observed: “This is a representation, a pictorial prophecy of a reality yet to come, before Christ has finished his conquering work in the world of spirits. These people do not see the things we see. This heavenly light has come into our minds that we may discover what their interior life really is,—devoid of all spiritual vitality; desolate, dark, lurid; full of evil beasts and unclean birds and creeping things.” This sphere of ecclesiastical pride and presumption is not peculiar to the Jewish Church or nation. It is predominant in all religions, churches and individuals, when the religious instincts are satisfied and delighted with grandeur, power, numbers, fashion, wealth and glory. “What will be the effect,” I inquired, “of this disastrous judgment in the world of spirits, upon the Jewish nation in the natural world?” “There will be fearful dissensions and conflicts; wars within and without; the city and the temple will be destroyed; the country made desolate; the people scattered as exiles and vagabonds among all nations. Their descendants, coming into the world of spirits, will recede toward the circumference among the pagans. A new church springing up among other nations, will take the central place, and give rise upon earth, after great struggles, to a purer religion and a nobler civilization. “You will now see, in symbolic representation, the three great classes into which the Church will be dissolved at its judgment.”