THE PROGRESSION OF A CHURCH TOWARDS ITS END, AND THE END ITSELF, ARE DESCRIBED IN VERY MANY PLACES IN THE WORD 1. A successive decreasing of good and truth and increasing of evil and falsity in a Church is termed in the Word its "being laid waste" and "becoming desolate". 2. Its final state, when there is nothing of good or truth remaining, is there termed "consummation" and "being cut off". 3. The end itself of a Church is the "fullness [of time]". 4. The same things also are meant in the Word by "evening" and "night". 5. And also by these things in the Prophets and in the Gospels: then shall the sun be darkened, the moon shall not give her light, the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken.* 6. Then the Church exists no longer except in name; nevertheless, there is this "remnant" in it, that a man, if he wishes, can know and understand truths, and can do goods.** * See Isa. xiii 10; Ezek. xxxii 7; Joel ii 10, 31; iii 15; Amos viii 9; Matt. xxiv 29; Mark xiii 24; Luke xxi 25, 26; Rev. vi 12, 13 viii 10, 12. ** In the margin of N. by another hand are the words: "But now hardly one in the whole of Christendom wishes to know."