ent
Church succeeded the Most Ancient; the Israelitish or Jewish Church
followed the Ancient; after this came the Christian Church. And this, it
is foretold in the Apocalypse, will be followed by a new church,
signified in that book by the New Jerusalem descending from heaven. The
reason why a new church is provided by the Lord to follow in place of a
former devastated church may be seen in _Doctrine of the New Jerusalem
about Sacred Scripture_ (nn. 104-113).

329. (iv) _Thus all are predestined to heaven, and no one to hell._ In
the work _Heaven and Hell_ (London, 1758) we showed at nn. 545-550 that
the Lord casts no one into hell; the spirit himself does this. So it
happens with every evil and impious person after death and also while he
is in the world, with the difference that while he is in the world he can
be reformed and can embrace and avail himself of the means of salvation,
but not after departure from the world. The means of salvation are summed
up in these two: that evils are to be shunned because they are contrary
to the divine laws in the Decalog and that it be acknowledged that God
exists. Everyone can do both if he does not love evils. For the Lord is
constantly flowing into his will with power for shunning evils and into
his understanding with power to think that God there is. But no one can
do the one without doing the other; the two are joined together like the
two tables of the Decalog, one relating to God and the other to man. In
accordance with what is in His table the Lord enlightens and empowers
everyone, but man receives power and enlightenment so far as he does what
he is bidden in his table. Until then the two tables appear to be laid
face to face and to be sealed, but as man acts on the biddings in his
table they are unsealed and opened out.

[2] Today is not the Decalog like a small, closed book or document,
opened only in the hands of children and the young? Tell someone farther
along in years, "Do not do this because it is contrary to the Decalog"
and who gives heed? He may give heed if you say, "Do not do this because
it is contrary to divine laws," and yet the precepts of the Decalog are
the divine laws themselves. Experiment was made with a number in the
spiritual world, who at mention of the Decalog or Catechism rejected it
with contempt. This is because in the second table, which is man's, the
Decalog teaches that evils are to be shunned, and one who does not do so,
whether from impi