New Church Life May/June 2017 | Page 21

         • They resume personal friendships, religious affiliations, etc., that they had in the world. 1A. The possible equivalent in the history of this world for, perhaps, the first 150 years after the Last Judgment, maybe up to World War I: • The first Christian dispensation and other churches and religiosities continued much as they had before the Second Advent. • Civil affairs and moral behavior within nations and as between nations continued much the same as before the Last Judgment. • For the most part, it was as if the New Christian Age had not come. This would appear to be the situation that is predicted by the Lord in a passage such as Last Judgment 73. • I am speculating that a teaching such as this must have its “primary ” application in the first state of the New Age and, perhaps, a lessening application as the New Christianity spreads from the few to the many. 2. The first state transitioning to the second state: • Without the spirit noticing the fact, a new freedom begins to emerge and the person’s way of living begins to change. (Recall that in the spiritual world where outward things do not appear that are unrelated to the person’s state, people do not reflect unless the Lord gives them to reflect.) • Spirits may begin traveling about, perhaps quite uncharacteristically as compared with their life in this world, and they begin to enter into all kinds of new situations and meet all kinds of new people, i.e. perhaps participate in gymnasiums, etc. • Spirits employ spiritual speech, the speech of ideas. Potentially they can communicate with anyone now. There can be an interchange of knowledge, ideas, etc., which far surpasses anything experienced in this world. They enter also into other means of communication involving all kinds of representations, and they begin to become perceptive of human spheres as these represent a spirit’s affections, thoughts and uses/abuses. • Spirits begin to become increasingly independent of previous personal, religious and other ties. • About this time they may begin to be given to reflect on their experiences in the world of spirits and they finally realize they are in a new world. • They begin to ask, “Where is heaven?” Most think that they are quite worthy and ready to enter it, but they are not. As in those Conjugial 201