217. The Providential History of Salvation, Part 1

Book 2: A Model for the Family Ideal and World Peace
Part 2: The Path to Exemplary Families and Global Harmony
Chapter 4: The Providential History of Salvation from the Viewpoint of the Principle, Part 1

This speech was given by the Reverend Sun Myung Moon at a Divine Principle Seminar for Christian clergy on February 27, 1996, and then by Dr. Hak Ja Han Moon between July 20 and October 29 on a speaking tour for Koreans residing in the United States, at the founding rally for the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification and on a global speaking tour to inaugurate the Family Federation for World Peace in 185 nations.

Distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, today I sincerely thank God that you and I can meet as we face this era of great, historic change.

Religion and the purpose of the providence of salvation

God is the absolute One, the unique, unchanging, and eternal One. His Will is the same. If the human beings Adam and Eve had become one body under the love of God, everything would have been complete and ideal. God's origin, purpose and process of creation are absolute, as well as cause, effect and direction.

The human ancestors Adam and Eve entered into chaos after they fell due to their ignorance. This ignorance and chaos expanded from the individual level to the levels of family, nation and world. It has been the task of religion and God's providence of salvation to liberate us from this sphere of the Fall.

In the Last Days the Messiah comes and teaches clearly the absolute, unique, unchanging and eternal cause, direction and effect, from God's viewpoint. He will cleanse the world of ignorance and chaos and return it to the original bosom of God. This is the completion of the Will of God.

If this does not happen, then in the Last Days all religions, systems of thought, "-isms" and nations will pass away. Humankind is now facing the twenty-first century and will enter the new historic era of the third millennium in just a few years. At this important moment, I would like to deliver this speech “The Providential History of Salvation from the Viewpoint of the Principle” so that we can resolve to prepare ourselves for the new era.

To bring about completion and the ideal relationship between God and humankind, centering on true love, God required that human beings fulfill a condition of responsibility in order to attain unity with Him. Therefore, God needed to give the commandment to the first ancestors. In other words, God knew that they were in the growth period, on the way to reaching physical and spiritual maturity, so He established the commandment as the condition for His children to inherit the most precious thing, true love.

Originally, true love was to be gained through life experience and understood through internal realization. True love is not something that can be learned through words, a written text, or schooling. It is experienced completely only in the context of living our lives. Created as newborn infants, Adam and Eve were to grow and perfect themselves gradually through experiences of the heart of true children, true brother and sister, true husband and wife, and true parents, encompassing their whole lives. Only after experiencing the true love of God in its entirety can one fulfill the purpose of creation and become an ideal human being.

All people desire their object partner of love to be many times more valuable, even infinitely more valuable, than themselves. In the same way, God desires that humankind, His object partner of love, become infinitely valuable. When human beings perfect themselves, then those persons come to possess godlike value by participating in God's divinity and perfection.

God is absolute; however, He cannot realize the ideal of true love alone. That is because love always requires an object partner, a beloved. At this point, we need to understand the relationship between God's true love and humankind's true love, and how they begin and are brought to fruition. What would have happened if God had not chosen human beings as His absolute object partners of true love, and instead had sought to realize true love in some other way? In that case, God and human beings would have pursued the ideal of true love with different motivations, directions and purposes. God would have had to achieve the ideal of love through an object partner higher than humankind, and, by the same token, humankind's ideal of love would have had no direct relationship with God.

True husband and wife perfect God's absolute ideal of love

God, as the subject partner of true love, did establish humankind as the object partner of true love. Accordingly, God can fulfill the ideal of true love only through humankind. The fulfillment of God's purpose of creation is the ideal world where God and humankind are united through absolute love. Human beings were created as the greatest object partners of God's love. They alone in all creation have the potential to embody the full nature of God, and they are born as the visible bodies of the invisible God. When people mature, they become perfect temples of God—visible, substantial bodies in which God can freely and peacefully dwell.

God's overall ideal of absolute true love is realized and perfected through humankind in a vertical parent-child relationship. God created Adam first; he was to be the son of God and, at the same time, the substantial body of God. Later, God created Eve as the object partner of Adam so that Adam and Eve could fulfill the ideal of horizontal love in conjugal love. Eve was to be the daughter of God, and as a bride she was to realize substantially the ideal of the horizontal love of God.

The place where Adam and Eve are harmonized perfectly, consummating their first love by marrying under the blessing of God, is precisely the place where God meets His substantial Bride. This is because God's ideal of absolute love descends vertically and joins where the ideal of conjugal love between Adam and Eve is realized horizontally. In this way, the true love of God and the true love of humankind join in perfect communion at a single point, although they come from different directions, one vertical and the other horizontal.

God's act of creation was necessary, and we cannot imagine creation without a purpose. There was only one reason God needed the creation: to realize the ideal of true love. God developed life in pairs, from the simplest and lowest levels up to the human level, subject and object and positive and negative, to form reciprocal relationships under the ideal of love. The creation's ideal of love and God's ideal of ultimate love are not separate or different. The Principle of Creation is at work to complete the absolute love of God through the realization of true love between men and women in the human world. This is the reason why, in the beginning, God created one man and one woman, Adam and Eve.

God's purpose of creation called for Adam and Eve to obey the commandment from God, who is the subject of true love, and complete their maturation as a true man and a true woman. Beyond that, they were to become a true couple united in the true love of God, and then, by having sons and daughters through true love, they would have become true parents and lived in happiness. Had Adam and Eve matured in true love, they would have fulfilled God's desire to dwell on the earth in a substantial body, and when they perfected themselves as a true couple, the ideal of God's absolute love would have been fulfilled.

By Adam and Eve having children of goodness and becoming true parents, God would have established substantially the position of parents eternally and achieved His ideal, which was to create an infinite number of citizens for the kingdom of heaven in heaven by means of multiplying myriad generations of loving descendants in the physical world.

Adam and Eve, our first ancestors, fell away from God. When they were expelled from Eden, they had not yet had children. Having driven them out, God had no basis to follow after them to bless their marriage. The entire human race has thus descended from our fallen ancestors. Humanity has multiplied without any direct relationship whatsoever with the love of God.

Human perfection includes the responsibility to love

Ladies and gentlemen, could the Fall have been the result of eating the fruit of a tree? The Fall of Adam and Eve was an immoral sin against the ideal of the true love of God. The fact that Adam and Eve needed to obey the commandment shows that they fell in a stage of immaturity, that is to say, during their period of growth. The archangel, symbolized by a serpent, tempted Eve to eat of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, and she fell spiritually. She later tempted Adam, who was also too immature to eat of the fruit, and they then fell physically.

The only possible sin that could have been fatal in the garden of Eden, where Adam and Eve were in communication with God and living in joy, was the sin of illicit love. The first consummated love of the human ancestors, because it was supposed to have been the perfection of the love of God Himself, was to have marked the beginning of a celebration that would continue throughout history, filled with the never-ending intoxication of joy and blessing for God, Adam and Eve and the universe. It was supposed to have been a joyous occasion through which the love, life and lineage of God would have been established within humankind. 

However, instead Adam and Eve covered their lower parts and hid themselves among the trees, trembling in fear. By disobeying heavenly law, they established an immoral relationship as the basis for false love, false life and false lineage. As descendants of Adam and Eve, all human beings are born with original sin. The Fall gave rise to conflict between the mind and body within every person, thereby causing our societies to be filled with tainted love and with people who do things that contradict the desire of their original minds.

According to the ideal of love, sexual relations in the animal and plant kingdoms are for reproduction only. Human beings are the sole exception.

Humankind enjoys freedom in the conjugal relationship of love, which is humanity's special privilege as the lords of all creation. God gave the blessing and infinite joy of love to His sons and daughters. However, the true freedom that God allowed requires human responsibility. When an individual insists upon and practices freedom of love without responsibility, how much confusion and destruction takes place! Achieving the highest ideal of human love is possible only when one takes responsibility for love.

We can think of this responsibility in three ways. The first is for one to become the master of true love, truly free and thanking God for the freedom of love, wherein one knows how to cultivate and control oneself. This responsibility for a love relationship is not to be taken merely because of law or social convention. Instead, a person needs to establish responsibility through his or her own self-control and self-determination within a life-committing, vertical relationship with God.

The second is one's responsibility toward the object partner of love. By nature, people do not want their spouse's love to be shared with others. Horizontal conjugal love, which differs from the vertical love between parents and children, loses its potential for perfection the moment it is divided. This is because the Principle of Creation requires husband and wife to become one in absolute love. Each spouse has the responsibility given by love to live absolutely for the sake of the other.

The third responsibility of love is toward children. The love of parents is the basis for children's pride and happiness. Children want to be born through the total and harmonious unity of their parents in true love, and they want to be raised in that kind of love. The most precious responsibility of parents is not only to rear their children externally; it is also to offer them life elements of true love that can bring their spirituality to complete fruition. This is why the family is so valuable. The daily experience of the heart of true children, true brothers and sisters, true spouses, and true parents cannot be acquired in any place other than a true family.

The Messiah is the true person who brings the seed of new life

If Adam and Eve had become a couple of true love centered upon God, God could have dwelled in them as His substantial body. Adam and Eve thus would have become true parents who substantially embodied God and thereby could have become the origin of the love of goodness, a life of goodness and a lineage of goodness.

Due to the Fall, however, Adam and Eve became the substantial body of Satan and ended up becoming the original fallen couple, fallen parents and fallen ancestors. Their union became the root of fallen love, fallen life and fallen lineage. Because human beings originated from this root, humankind has descended from the adulterous Satan, who is the enemy of God, and inherited this lineage of fallen parents. 

Ladies and gentlemen! How great God's pain must have been when, due to the Fall of humankind, our ancestors destroyed His ideal of true love! People were to have been the sons and daughters of God; yet they do not know God as their original Parent. Yet, even though His sons and daughters serve Satan, God has worked for the providence of salvation. Because He is an absolute Being, and the ideal of creation is also absolute, He has carried out the providence of salvation even amid great sadness. God's providence of salvation is the providence of restoration, which means to recover the lost purpose of creation, centered on true love. The providence of salvation is also the providence of re-creation.

Based on this understanding, the root of the providence of salvation is the re-creation of the seed of the original child, the person who will fulfill the ideal of creation. That which God abhors, the life and lineage that began with the false love of the adulterer Satan, must be cleansed. The essence of the providence is the task of setting up the birth of the True Parent, the Savior united with the true love, life and lineage of God.

Since the ancestors of humankind  failed to fulfill their responsibility, inherited the immoral lineage of Satan, and came under the dominion of Satan, God could not directly intervene and return human beings to their original position. Furthermore, God can neither unconditionally accept humankind, who chose to go to the side of the evil archangel, nor punish them. Rather, God uses the strategy of placing a central figure on the side of the good archangel. Then, by being struck first, that figure fulfills an indemnity condition to recover what was lost. Satan strikes first and, as a result, must take the losing position. The First World War, Second World War and Third World War—the Cold War—are good examples of this: that is, the side that struck first lost.

From the overall perspective of the providence of restoration, the foundation of cooperation between mother and son is very important. This was so at the time of Jacob, Moses and Jesus. God was working His providence to separate people from satanic life and lineage by establishing the foundation of cooperation between a mother, who needed to fulfill the responsibility of Eve, the originator of the Fall, and the second son of the family.

God cannot directly relate to the first son, because he stands in the position of having a direct blood relationship with Satan, who, through the Fall, was the first to dominate humankind. By having the second son, who represents the side of goodness, fulfill a condition, God has been restoring the lineage of goodness. Then God has had the first son, representing the side of evil, take a position subordinate to the second son.

In the family of Adam, God carried out the providence of recognizing the second son, Abel, and having him subordinate the first son, Cain. Even though Eve had fallen, as a mother she could have made an effort to foster unity between the two brothers. In the end, however, Cain murdered Abel, and the providence of salvation was not fulfilled in Adam's family; it was prolonged. There was also a required formula of cooperation between mother and son at the time of Noah, but that formula of meaningful cooperation was not realized until the time of Rebekah and Jacob.

The Fall was committed by three beings: Adam, Eve and the archangel. The archangel seduced Eve, causing the spiritual fall, and later fallen Eve seduced Adam, causing the physical fall. As a result, they turned their backs on God, and the fallen archangel became Satan. Since the providence of salvation is the providence of restoration, the Principle of Restoration can be carried out only by going in a direction 180 degrees opposite to that of the Fall. 

God lost Adam, who had the seed of true love and true life. So God needed to find a son with the new seed, free from satanic accusation. Just as God created Adam first at the time of the creation, God must prepare a son first who has no relationship to the Fall, according to the providence of restoration which is the providence of re-creation. This is the basis for the idea of the coming of the Messiah. The Messiah rejects the sinful lives of those with a fallen lineage under the dominion of Satan. He comes as a true person who engrafts fallen people into the seed of new life. The Messiah has his roots in God and comes as the second Adam, who wipes away all that was committed by the first Adam. This is the reason God cannot send a superman Messiah who will work only through miracles.