112. It was foretold that, at the end of the present Church, darkness would arise from want of a rational conception and acknowledgement of the Lord as the God of heaven and earth, and from the separation of faith from charity. Lest therefore the genuine understanding of the Word should perish, it has pleased the Lord now to reveal the spiritual sense of the Word, and to show that the Word in that sense and from that in the natural sense, treats of the Lord and of the Church, and indeed of these alone; and to make many other revelations by means of which the almost extinct light of truth from the Word may be restored. That the light of truth would be almost extinguished at the end of the present Church is foretold in many passages of the Revelation, and is also meant by these words of the Lord in Matthew:
Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken:
And then ... they shall see the Son of Man coming in the clouds of heaven with glory and power. Matt. xxiv 29, 30.
The sun there means the Lord as to love; the moon, the Lord as to faith; the stars, the Lord as to the cognitions of good and truth; the Son of Man, the Lord as to the Word; a cloud, the sense of the Letter of the Word; glory, the spiritual sense and its transparence in the sense of the Letter.