Cheon Seong Gyeong: Episode 24

Cheon Seong Gyeong Book 1: God
Chapter 4: The God Who Needs Liberation
Section 1: God's Sorrow and the Providence of Restoration, 68-78

(68) The providence of salvation is the providence of restoration. The providence of restoration is the providence of re-creation. How is the providence of re-creation carried out? During the creation, what did God create first? He created the world of angels first. Then He made all things. Then He created Adam and Eve. These were the three stages of His creation. History likewise has developed to this day through this three-stage principle. That is because all of history has been within the realm of the work of re-creation. In order to save fallen human beings, God has had to pursue a course based on the work of re-creation.

(69) Through the providence of salvation, God seeks to restore the form of the original ideal.  Hence the providence of salvation is the providence of restoration.  Then, by what sort of providence does God carry out the providence of restoration? It is by the providence of re-creation.  For the providence of recreation, we must reinvest on God's behalf the same kind of love that He has invested repeatedly to form relationships of love with human beings.  That is the only way we can become His ideal creations.  For this reason the Bible says: "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.  This is the greatest and first commandment.  And the second is, you shall love your neighbor as yourself.”(Matt.  22:37) There is also a third commandment: You shall love all things of creation as you love your mother and father, your spouse and your children.  These are the first, second and third commandments.  Practice these, and you will achieve everything.  You will enter the realm of God's ideal that combines vertical love with horizontal love.  This leads to the actualization of that ideal.

(70)  Even as Satan strives to subvert and destroy God's Will, God strives to advance the process of re-creation with each victory He wins over him.  This cannot be done randomly.  Paying indemnity cannot be done in a haphazard way.  God has to go back to the point where the process of creation started.  This is what you learn when you study the entire providence of salvation, namely that God has been conducting the providence of salvation by the providence of restoration through indemnity.  Evaluating the whole of history, we find that first it is the providence of salvation, second it is the providence of restoration through indemnity, and third it is the providence of re-creation.  Accordingly, we can say that the providence of salvation is the providence of restoration.  It is the providence to bring human beings back to their original position.  If a patient who is hospitalized and on the verge of death is revived, he says, "I am saved!" In the same way, salvation means to return to the original position or state.  Furthermore, the providence of salvation is the providence of restoration through indemnity.  You cannot go back to the original point without investing; you have to pay indemnity.

(71) God's providence of salvation is the providence of restoration, and the providence of restoration is carried out through indemnity.  The providence of restoration cannot be done for free.  Sins that were committed must necessarily be indemnified.  Paying indemnity means to separate from Satan.  When you commit sin, you fall into the realm of Satan's possession.  When you pay indemnity you can separate yourself from Satan and return to your original position.  How much sin have fallen people committed throughout the long course of history to this day? How can we indemnify all the sins committed by all evil people? Although most people do not know it, good people have been paying that indemnity by being sacrificed.  It is the same for national sins.  The sins that nations committed in the past are being paid for by the sacrifice of some of its good people.  Unless they make sacrifices, no indemnity is paid.  Looking further, this is the path along which humankind has developed, all the way up to the world level.  In the process, numerous good people sacrificially offered themselves.  They paid indemnity for all the sins committed by humankind so that the world could return to its proper state.

(72) Throughout human history, it was by paying indemnity that a separation was made between good and evil, a separation was made between happiness and sadness, and a separation was made between the way that brings blessings and the way that brings punishment. It is the same throughout the world. Therefore, God's providence of restoration must also proceed by indemnity. There are no exceptions. Indemnity became necessary as a result of the Fall. Those who live their lives without realizing that they are fallen people are living as though they are on the path of the Fall every day.  Because of the Fall, God became the God of sorrow, even as He leads the course of the providence of restoration.  And God became the God of pain. Yet sorrow and pain were not the end of it; He lost every precious thing that He cherished.  To restore that which He lost, God must go the way of pain; to recover them He must again suffer in sorrow.  This is what God must endure as He strives to reclaim what He has lost.

(73) The Fall caused God to lose what was most precious to Him.  It is not the case that the Fall only affected human beings, with God having nothing to do with it.  God and human beings are in a parent-child relationship.  That relationship is in order to realize the ideal of love—the ideal of oneness between them based on love. However, because human beings separated from God, that ideal of unity in love cannot be found.  That is what God lost, and that is what He needs to recover.  However, just following the course of indemnity is not enough to recover the ideal of oneness in love that God is seeking.  To recover this ideal, there needs to be a program for re-creation.  Human beings need to be remade based on a blueprint, just as a blueprint is needed for manufacturing a product in a factory.

The role and mission of the Messiah

(74) God's purpose in calling the Israelites to the land of Canaan was to have them complete a victorious foundation as one people.  Upon that foundation, they were to build a kingdom in Canaan under Heaven's sovereignty and prepare the foundation for the coming of the Messiah. The people of Israel were to attend the Messiah as the central person who would rule over their country. Then they were to defeat Satan's world and complete God's providence of restoration together with the Messiah. Although that was their mission, the people of Israel and their religious leaders did not know it. In those days, there were those among them who thought that when the Savior came, they would automatically become the nation that could rule the world. They did not grasp that they had to complete the history of restoration by first gaining victory on the level of a people and then on the level of the nation before they could achieve a victorious worldwide foundation.

(75) Unless individuals attain perfection, they cannot form families with a new and higher awareness.  And without such new families, a new people and a new nation cannot emerge.  Therefore the Unification Church has come forth with a focus on bringing about the perfection of individuals through True Parents.  God longs to complete the restoration of the individual.  It has taken six thousand years, until today, to substantiate one perfect man.  God has been toiling with the goal to bring forth that one perfect man; this has been the whole purpose of His providence of restoration, transcending time.  Then, by centering on the one perfect man, God's intention is to recover one woman and form the model for the perfection of the family.  This is the messianic teaching.  God desires to conclude the providence of restoration by setting up the bridegroom and the bride according to this messianic teaching.  By doing so, God plans to lay the foundation for all of human life.  The way of life and the teaching that the Messiah brings are the eternal standards that all human beings need to follow.

(76) Another formula in God's providence of restoration is that before sending the Messiah, He works to set up one central religion and one central nation.  God called the Israelites and Judaism.  God planned to send Jesus upon that foundation and then expand that realm of goodness by having all humankind unite with him.  In this way He would restore the world and realize the ideal of the kingdom of heaven.  If the Israelites and Judaism, which God had prepared over four thousand years, had received Jesus, united with him and upheld the one Will in a sacrificial way, then Jesus would have united the Arab world and Asia, connected them to the Western world, and spread the Will quickly to the ends of the earth.  In that way, Jesus could have established the kingdom of heaven on earth under God's sovereignty.

(77) Adam possessed the seed of true love and true life.  After God lost Adam, He had to recover the Son, a man having the new seed.  This Son has to be a man having no condition for Satan to accuse.  Just as God made Adam first at the time of creation, in the providence of restoration, which is the providence of re-creation, God has to first set up a Son who has nothing to do with the Fall.  This is the root of the messianic teaching.  The Messiah is the true man with the new seed of life.  He guides people of the fallen lineage to deny their life and then engrafts his new seed onto them.  Even though the Messiah is rooted in God, as the second Adam he must clean up what Adam did.  This is the reason God cannot send the Messiah as a superman having God's almighty power.

(78) The Savior is God's representative who can dissolve the bitter sorrow in God's heart, the sorrow that was brought by the first human beings' failure to fulfill God's love in accordance with His Will.  Because they never realized God's love, all people are in despair and filled with bitter sorrow.  The Savior is the one who dissolves this bitter sorrow and brings God's love to fulfillment.  He comes to help people attain this original love.  The Savior does not come to feed those who are hungry physically.  He comes to liberate God.  A man is liberated when he has a wife of true love. When a man has a wife who loves him and remains with him eternally, there is no imprisonment. He is free. Does God, the original central being, enjoy that kind of freedom? He is a sorrowful God, who, while searching for love and investing His love, had to forget how much He invested, only to invest again.