Cheon Seong Gyeong: Episode 21

Cheon Seong Gyeong Book 1: God
Chapter 4: The God Who Needs Liberation
Section 1: God's Sorrow and the Providence of Restoration, 29-42

(29) The absolute God must have His own view of history, and His view of history is revealed in His providence. As He pursues the course of His providence, there are some people who follow the providence and others who do not.  In short, there are two kinds of people: those who lead a life of faith and those who do not.  The Will of God is seen in His striving to bring all the cultural spheres, east, west, north and south, into one world.  His ideal is definitely one.  God's Will, and His purpose in having us pursue it, is not to lead us on the path to destruction but to guide us on the way to liberation and peace.  Therefore, He must be directing human history toward the final destination of peace, the world of unity.

(30) What if you and I loved each other based on God's love and in alignment with God's Will? How beautiful it would be! It is our cherished hope to constitute such a family, such a clan, people and nation.  What if we belonged to such groups, where we were welcomed, where we could breathe, and where we could interact, giving and receiving with the heart of subject partners? Would it not be exciting? Suppose you, in the position of a subject partner, could expand yourself to the infinite world, shrink yourself to the minutest of worlds, and bring these two worlds together in harmony? Suppose by doing that, you could make God's heart beat with excitement—would that not be marvelous? If you were like that, God would follow you wherever you go.  If you were to hide out somewhere, God would be in trouble.  At such a height of awareness, unity becomes possible.

(31)  Even if the external providence is completed, unless we also complete the internal providence that goes along with it, the whole purpose cannot be fulfilled.  This is the viewpoint of the Principle.  Then, which is more important: the internal or the external? Between the two, the internal is more important.  This is because the internal issues are for God, while the external issues are for human beings.  From this point of view, we cannot help but regard God's Will as of paramount importance.  God's Will is to raise up one person who is internally united with Him, and through that person to form an internally united family, through that family an internally united tribe, and through that tribe an internally united people and nation.  This is God's plan.

(32) Salvation is the process of changing the sinful world into a sinless world.  We need to understand that this is what salvation means; it is restoration. Originally, God's Will was not salvation. Therefore, we have to return to God's original Will.  The purpose of the Messiah's coming is to fulfill God's Will. Then what is God's Will for the Messiah? It is to save humankind from Satan, the devil, and then eventually to cast him out. Satan is on this earth today, ready to accuse you whenever you commit sin. He must be expelled. Satan has violated and devastated humankind.  God intends to save all people by eliminating him from the planet Earth forever.

(33) If anything is important to God, surely it is to fulfill the Will. And to fulfill the Will, nothing is more important than fulfilling God's ideal of creation. But God cannot fulfill the Will and the ideal of creation by Himself. The fulfillment of the Will is not only up to Him; its success or failure depends ultimately on His counterparts. These counterparts were Adam and Eve. Before God created them, He made all things of creation. After He created Adam and Eve He made them the center of the creation. God desired that these central beings become the fruits of victory. However, whether those human beings would fulfill this could not be determined by God, but only by each person.

(34) Since human beings were born from fallen, that is, false, parents, they cannot relate directly with God, no matter how great their effort. That is to say, they have no base upon which to build an internal relationship with the Creator of heaven and earth. However, we human beings have a bond with God, who created us not to fall but to attain perfection according to the standard of the Principle of Creation.  Based on this bond, God had us fulfill our responsibility again through a second course, the providence of restoration. Its purpose is to raise us up to the position we had prior to the Fall. As a result of the Fall, human beings had plummeted into a realm devoid of the Principle. In other words, we fell into a world outside of the Principle where God, even though He wanted to, could not intervene.

(35) Human beings are trapped in a pit of bitter sorrow that has nothing to do with God.  It stands to reason that they cannot escape from it unless they make God their subject partner and the driving force of their life.  God knows that originally, according to the Principle of Creation, He and human beings should be joined in a parent-child relationship.  Therefore He tries to bring them back to the position of His children.  But it is not an easy task.  Compared to the process of creation, the course of restoration is far more difficult.  God has had to walk a path of tribulation many times more difficult.  God has been working through history to provide a ladder for human beings, who fell into the realm devoid of the Principle, and pull them up.

(36) After the Fall of Adam's family, God started His providence centered on Abel.  Because the parents made a mistake, God began the providence with the children.  The purpose of His providence is to fulfill the Will.  What, then, is the purpose of the Will? It is to complete the ideal of creation, the purpose of creation.  Completing the purpose of creation means to realize the ideal of unity in love. This ideal of unity in love was not realized in Adam's family.  This is what we call the Fall. Thus, the Fall was not only the Fall of the Will but also the Fall of heart. In order to restore, that is, to recreate this, God called Abel and began His work. Abel's will was not to have remained separate from God's Will; they were to have become the same. But was Abel's viewpoint the same as God's? Of course, Abel's position as an individual was different from that of God, who deals with the Will in its entirety. Nevertheless, as he proceeded for the Will, he should have moved in the same direction as God with respect to the Will.  In this regard, Abel was supposed to unite with Cain to complete the providence of salvation. The challenge for him was to become one with Cain.

(37) To this day, fallen human beings have not attained eternal value.  Their value is nothing that the world can approve of, either on earth or in heaven.  Therefore, fallen human beings still have the mission to restore the value of their life on the individual level, and going beyond that to the world level, and finally to recover eternal life in heaven.  In this way God established His providential Will, and to this day He has been seeking to fulfill his purpose to have all human beings realize their life to the fullest value.  Where is the conclusion in this? It will not end with you as an individual, or even with the world.  We must recover life of such value that God can rejoice in it through the unity of heaven and earth, life in which the entire world can rejoice and in which every individual can rejoice.  Only then will God's providence of salvation finally come to an end and Satan's world come to an end, and relative concepts of morality would come to an end.  All fallen human beings have the responsibility to pioneer this course, to recover the original value of life.

(38) The struggle to eliminate the original sin started in Adam's family.  Providential history began with the separation of Cain and Abel in Adam's family. God loved Abel and had him offer a sacrifice. In making that offering, he had to be absolutely obedient to God's Word. If Satan came against him, he would have to overcome Satan's opposition as well. Abel prevailed over all the challenges in his environment and properly made his offering with the utmost devotion in accordance with God's desire.  In doing so, Abel surpassed fallen Adam by being absolutely obedient to God's word.  Next, Abel was supposed to become a substantial being that would have nothing to do with Satan for eternity and be permanently one with God.  Then he would have attained the position to receive God's love totally.  He would have been liberated from the evil sovereignty and would have entered the sovereignty of goodness.

(39)  When will the day come when a special human being emerges who will substantially manifest as the Lord and realize God's Will? Unlike any other created being in heaven and on earth, the Lord will fully manifest anew on a higher plane all of God's hidden internal character. It has been God's objective to welcome this one astonishing and exciting day. Having determined it, God has toiled endlessly throughout history to accomplish it through the providence of restoration.

(40) In order to save human beings, God has suffered through a history of unceasing indemnity, filled with incredible hardships.  Although God has the power to reclaim human beings by destroying the devil, He will not do that.  It is God's original Will to raise human beings in true love and have them build families, tribes, peoples, nations and the world with love. Therefore He has to keep forever the heart that He had prior to the fall. Even though, through their fall, Adam and Eve left God's heart, God cannot force them to return to Him.  It is because they already had formed a love relationship with the devil.  A love relationship, once engaged, determines ownership; it determines the right of inheritance.  It determines the right to live together, the right to share the same position, and the right to participate in each other's work.  With respect to all these rights, Adam and Eve came totally under Satan's ownership.

(41) As a consequence of the Fall, God was unable to have a day of joy, the ancestors of humankind were unable to have a day of joy, and all things that God created for Himself and for human beings were unable to have a day of joy.  It is only natural that if their owners are sad and suffering, those who follow them cannot experience joy either.  Because God and human beings fell into a place of sorrow, the things of creation could not avoid the same fate.  In the Bible, Romans 8 says that the whole creation is groaning.  Not only is the creation groaning; all people are also groaning.  God, who is the subject partner of humankind and of the creation, is also groaning.  Human history started not in joy but in sorrow.  God's providence is His effort to restore this sorrowful history to a joyful history.  That is salvation.

The providence of restoration leading toward the original world

(42) God has been toiling throughout the providence for the sole purpose of realizing His Will.  What is the final destination of God's Will? It is where God and human beings live together, sharing joy and sorrow.  When we fulfill God's long-cherished hope and Will, and when we come to have a relationship with Him such that He and we can eternally share each other's joys and sorrows, then God will become our true Father and we will become His true children. When this happens, we will desire what God desires and we will live in harmony with all creation, offering glory to God and forever singing hymns in praise of His wisdom, benevolence and grace. God, humankind and all creation are waiting for the coming of this day.  The Will is the ideal of God's creation, and it is also the everlasting ideal for fallen human beings.  Hence, once the Will is fulfilled, God and human beings will become one body.  Then, we will rejoice when God rejoices, and God will rejoice when we rejoice.  God's desire will be our desire and our desire will be God's desire—the two will be one, in harmony.  We will give God the joy of the eternal ideal, and we too will experience eternal joy.