Cheon Seong Gyeong: Episode 22

Cheon Seong Gyeong Book 1: God
Chapter 4: The God Who Needs Liberation
Section 1: God's Sorrow and the Providence of Restoration, 43-54

(43) God should have become the owner of this world.  If human beings had established a relationship of love with God and formed the family of His children, they would have gone on to form a tribe, a nation and world.  Needless to say, that would have been the world governed by God and the nation governed by God, families governed by God and individuals governed by God.  However, due to the Fall, everything, from the individual to the family, the tribe, the people, the nation and the world, is opposing God.  This is the fallen world that has resulted from fallen history.  If God were to leave the world as it is, He would not be able to establish the world of eternal love that He desires, in accordance with the ideal of creation.  Furthermore, for God to restore His authority as the Absolute Being, He must consummate the ideal of creation that He originally intended.  He keeps this standard, even as He has been rectifying the world's evils and leading this world toward the ideal world He originally planned.  This is God's providence for the fallen world.

(44) To this day, God's hope is that human beings will connect with all things of creation and with Him.  That is why God has been working to raise up fallen people from the servant's position to the adopted child's position, the direct child's position and the parent's position.  This is in order to sever our painful connection with the Fall and enable all things, human beings, and God to form relationships of total oneness.  Then God's joy becomes our joy, and our joy becomes the joy of all things.  God wants to proudly present His sons and daughters to the natural world and even to the world of angels, and to live for their sake.  We human beings are not in the original state in which God created us to live.  Yet we still have an emotional nature, experiencing emotions such as sadness and joy.  In particular, we can feel joy and sorrow by relating with our counterparts.  It is human nature to be proud of our joy.  When our counterpart's joy becomes our own, we want to show it off.  The same is true of God.  God feels delight when He sees us filled with joy, and we human beings are happy when we experience God rejoicing with us over our joy.  That is the joy of giving and receiving.

(45) It is not possible to return to the original world by human effort alone.  Therefore God is working to raise us up--this is the providence of restoration.  The providence of restoration would be easy if we human beings cooperated, but up till now we have not cooperated with God’s providence.  despite this situation, God managed to expand His providence from the individual to the family, tribe, people, nation and world.  The internal and external difficulties God has encountered in the course of this are beyond description.  From an external perspective nations and peoples may have suffered, but in front of God they cannot speak of it.  This is even more so for individuals.  Except for a handful of human beings, there has been no one, either on earth or among those who lived and then went to the spirit world, who can declare in front of God that they suffered in order to cooperate with Him.  This is an undeniable fact.  Given that people are like this, God Himself took responsibility to lead them.  He personally took up the fight, and He labors hard to this day.

(46) For six thousand years God has been working hard for the sake of the multitudes of humankind.  After six thousand years of toil, we hear that we are now in the Last Days.  What, then, are the Last Days? In this world, there are people who live in the position of a true servant, people who live in the position of a true adopted child, and people who live in the position of a true child.  Upon the foundation of the birth of a group of people who are in the position of true children, the True Parents will come.  This is the concept of the Second Coming.  That is why the Bible speaks of the day when the bride has made herself ready for Jesus.  One Father and one Mother must appear on earth.  The Marriage of the Lamb is the moment when we can finally start building on earth our lost original home.  In order to build that home, we must have the Parents and we must have brothers and sisters.  Upon this foundation we can propagate children, and from them will unfold the original tribe, people, nation and world.  Then, finally, the existing evil world will be vanquished.  This is how the providence of restoration progresses toward the world of goodness.

(47) Due to the Fall, human beings fell into the realm devoid of the Principle.  Angels are God’s servants; in comparison to them, how far did human beings plummet? They plummeted into a realm lower than that of angels, lower than servants.  They were to be princes and princesses, and as such, the lords of the angels, but they fell to a position lower than servants.  Hence they have to climb back up.  From the position of a servant of servants, they must climb to the positions of a servant, an adopted child, a stepchild, and a child of direct lineage; and then through the mother to reach the position of the father.  This is restoration.  The providence of salvation is to bring human beings back to the standard of health they enjoyed before they became sick.  That is why the providence of salvation is the providence of restoration.  The providence of restoration is not carried out at random.

(48) In order to recover the world defiled by the fall, God has been leading the providence of salvation by building relationships with human beings through the angels that remained on His side.  God has been pursuing the providence of Salvation in order to once again relate to human beings, even though they betrayed the glorious God through the fall and fell to such a miserable state, lower than the things of creation.  Human beings are under Satan's dominion and subject to his accusation, yet God has worked to bridge the gap between Himself and us so that He might govern us.  He has continued this work through the Old Testament Age and the New Testament Age, even to this day.

(49) Why has God endured a path of suffering through the many millennia of the providence of restoration? Is it simply because He has a kind heart? Why has God continued His providence of salvation for the tens of thousands of years of human history without becoming exhausted? It is not because He is all-knowing and almighty.  It is because He is on the path of love, seeking His beloved sons and daughters.  Love has the great power to triumph over all the tribulations in its way.  With love, we feel as if a thousand years are but one day.

(50) God's true love is such that He gives and forgets what He has given, and gives and forgets again.  Because of this, God has been able to continue the providence of salvation until now.  Centering on true love, God continues to lead history by repeatedly investing and forgetting how much He invested, liven in the world today, God keeps on giving.  He continues investing, through individuals and through organizations.  God created the universe based on His essential love.  In recovering the universe after it fell, God has to unceasingly maintain that original standard of investment in order to realize the ideal of true love.  Otherwise, He cannot regain His authority as the Absolute Being.

(51) Even though people commit sin, God does not just say, "Hey, you! Why did you sin?" He knows well the situation of people who sin.  He cares for them more than for Himself.  To sorrowful people He comes with a heart of sorrow; to suffering people He comes with a heart of suffering; and to people feeling wronged He comes with a heart of indignation.  Yet, how much have you empathized with the heart and circumstances of God? Lie comes into our life empathizing with our situation.  Moreover, He comes to us with a heart that affirms, "Although you betrayed me, I am still your Father.” Because He has such a heart, He has been reaching out to us for six thousand years.

(52) Children inherit their parents' flesh and blood.  That is why when their mother sheds tears, they should be able to connect with her and weep with her.  When their father sheds tears in sorrow, they should naturally be able to sympathize with him.  And yet, how difficult it has been for God to raise and nurture His children to feel that way toward Flint! No matter how much God weeps, human beings ignore His tears.  No matter how sorrowful He is, human beings do not feel His sorrow.  This is because human beings were born from the flesh and blood of Satan.  Satan rejoices to see God in sorrow and exults when he sees His ruin.  With human beings linked to such a being, God has to go through so much trouble to guide them and teach them the direction of the path they must forge! God could not have led the providence if He did not have a heart to live for the sake of others and a heart that is caring and compassionate, whether for a single individual or for a hundred, a thousand, ten thousand or more.

(53) A dismal history of pain and sorrow began on the earth from the day of the human Fall.  This was not God's original plan or purpose.  God did not want a world like this, nor did we want to be born in such a world.  Therefore, God wants to eradicate this miserable, sorrowful and painful history.  He is taking steps to deal with this fallen world, with the purpose of restoring the world that He originally hoped to create, a world of peace, happiness, freedom and goodness.  This is the way of restoration and the way of salvation. 

Why God established religions

(54) God has been seeking to recover His relationship with fallen human beings and the lost ideal garden.  Through the course of restoration, He is striving to rebuild the garden where once, prior to the Fall, He joyfully related to Adam and Eve.  From that state of joy, He wants to create and build a world through which He can realize His ideal.  This is the history of the providence of salvation that God has been leading, and this is the history of restoration we must pass through.  Therefore, as you go through the course of restoration, surrender yourself to the ways of Heaven.  Examine yourself objectively from that standpoint and then reflect seriously about where you stand and the situations in which you struggle.  God established religions out of His love.  It is through religions that God has been trying to teach human beings their proper position and give them direction.  Throughout history God has been looking for us, seeking, through the path of religion and based on our faith, to bring us back to Him.