Authors
Lord, Savior, and Messiah
True Parents stand before fallen humanity as the embodiments of God's true love. True Parents are the central people who will accomplish the work of the Returning Lord and carry out God's providence of salvation. They have the mission of the Savior and Messiah, to guide humanity from false love and, evil lineage to true love, true life and true lineage, and to unite all religions and all peoples.
True Parents come to build the original world. In that world, people will establish a new culture by inheriting the tradition of families that are centered on True Parents. Since they will be united with God and engage with one another by giving and receiving perfect love, people will not need a savior. Since they do not have original sin, every family parents, husband and wife, and child will be able to live eternally with God. This is the ultimate destination toward which God has been leading the providence through history. When it comes to pass, the purpose of God's providence of restoration will be fulfilled and the ideal world that humankind desires will be realized.
1. The goal of the providence of restoration is for God to settle on earth. Yet, the foundation for the fulfillment of that goal on earth was lost. Regardless, God takes responsibility to restore what was lost and to fulfill it. He has led the providence of restoration in pursuit of this goal.
The purpose for which God sent the Messiah is to find the perfected husband and wife. This purpose is the same, whether in the Old Testament Age or the New Testament Age. Just as the realm that Jesus established in the New Testament Age had to fulfill the Old Testament Age, the realm that True Parents established in the Completed Testament Age must fulfill the New Testament Age. Thus, the realm of the Completed Testament Age includes the fulfillment of the Old and the New Testament Ages.
Jesus came to fulfill the Old Testament Age, and if he had, all could have been united. This unity should have occurred in the New Testament Age with Jesus as the center. However, because it did not happen, the fulfillment was prolonged to the era of the Second Coming.
That is why the Completed Testament Age that begins with the Second Coming must fulfill the Old and New Testament Ages. The Lord at the Second Advent will fulfill everything. His coming inaugurates the fulfillment of the historical eras of the Old Testament, the New Testament, and the Completed Testament Ages. (250-325, 1993/10/15)
2. When Adam and Eve fell and inherited the enemy's love, life, and lineage, they destroyed everything that God had intended for them. At the time of Jesus, had the spiritual world and the physical world, represented by the leaders of Judaism and Israel, united with him on the national level, there would have been no need for the Second Israel. Jesus should have united the spiritual world and the physical world, as well as Israel and even the Roman Empire.
However, because this did not happen, after a prolongation of 2,000 years, now I have to go one level higher. I have to break down all the barriers, including the walls that were erected by the failure of Jesus' family, as well as by the failure of Adam's family. I have to break down the barriers that have blocked good cooperation between the spiritual world and the physical world, and the barriers in the spiritual world that have confined people to paradise (a realm lower than the highest heaven) and even to hell.
To enable this to happen, God is proclaiming, “Sun Myung Moon is the Savior! He is the Messiah! He is the Lord at the Second Advent!” Once you meet the True Parents, you do not need a Savior, a Messiah, or a Lord at the Second Advent. They are all included in the True Parents. (471-213, 2004/10/03)
3. True Parents are the Savior. They have come to save the world. Since the false parents gave birth to a world of false love, True Parents need to save the world with true love. The Messiah also brings unity among the religions. When the religions are united centering on true love, they will form one great family.
The world is advancing to establish this great family; only in this way, can there be true peace.
All religions are advancing to bring about peace, which comes from unity. Furthermore, the First Israel, which is the Jewish nation, and the Second Israel, which is Christianity, must pass beyond the First Adam and the Second Adam and advance centering on the Third Adam, to rectify all of their failures on the family level, the national level and the world level. Once the True Parents stand firmly on that foundation, they will finally recover all that was lost in the earthly world, as well as what was lost in the spirit world.
The True Parents are the king and queen among those who can save the world. They are the king and queen among messiahs. They are the king and queen of the Old Testament Age, the New Testament Age, and the Completed Testament Age and the representatives and the embodiments of the invisible God. The True Parents were born for the sake of God, not for themselves. That is why even God exists for the True Parents. God and True Parents are one in true love. (399-178, 2002/12/23)
4. At his coming to earth, the Messiah, and Savior must liberate all humankind from hunger and the tribulations in their nations. Yet, among the things he must liberate them from, which is the most important? The first is to liberate them from false love. The Savior is the liberator of love, the liberator of life, and the liberator of the lineage.
People are suffering because their lineage has changed from God's to Satan's. If all humankind had the same lineage, stemming from God, everyone would be siblings, loving one another centered on God.
However, their lineage was changed. Thus, the core mission of the one who comes as the Messiah and Savior is to liberate all people by changing their lineage. (194-011, 1989/10/15)
5. Had we human beings not fallen, we would know God. Knowing Him in our hearts, we would naturally know how to live, regardless of what the world says. Our bodies would unite with our minds; they would not struggle with each other. Our mind and body meet at the wrong angle as a result of the Fall. To align them properly, the religious world teaches us to strike our bodies.
That is why people do all kinds of penance: fasting, serving others before themselves, living a sacrificial life, and even shedding their blood for heaven. Unless we put ourselves through such painful situations, we cannot return to our original position. Not only must we align mind and body within ourselves as individuals, but we must also do so on the family, national, and world levels. The Messiah comes as the model to teach the world how to align at every level, centered on true love. (178-190, 1988/06/04)
6. People will not believe that I am the Returning Lord, the Messiah, and the True Parent just because you or I say it is so. My authority to stand as the Lord should be based on actual achievements. Until I overcame Satan's world and established a foundation with certifiable evidence upon which I could stand, there was no basis for people to realize that I was the Messiah and True Parent.
I endured numerous ordeals and difficulties as I strove to establish a foundation on which I could stand and be recognized as the Messiah and True Parent in both Heaven and on Earth. I had to lay such a foundation so that people would acknowledge me as the Messiah and the True Parent throughout the entire cosmos. Unless I could do that, I could not make that claim. That is why I have done so many things in my lifetime. I did things that no individual could dream of doing. I did what even nations cannot do. (396-265, 2002/11/10)
7. I could not just come to the decision “I am the Messiah” on my own. I could not carry out the Messiah's mission based on my personal views. Rather, all my circumstances led me to the self-awareness that I had been called to fulfill the responsibility of being the Messiah. There was no other way I could go. The potential for the Fall began from the moment when in the Garden of Eden Adam and Eve came to have self-awareness. It is the same with restoration.
I could not meet the standard of the Messiah just by words. Nor could I meet it just because God blessed me to be the one. Although God had blessed me, I still had to establish the necessary foundation by substantiating His blessing. This meant that I had to reach the level where I could live with God and be in the realm where God and I were relating as equals. When I had secured this in reality, I could receive the inheritance and the title of “Messiah.” I could inherit everything from God by reaching the level of equal participation, equal position, and living together with Him. He had to recognize me by saying, “Certainly you are the True Parent; certainly you are the Messiah.”
I had to become like a lighthouse that gives out light to ships at night. As a lighthouse lights up the darkness so that ships can find their way with certainty, the Messiah must be able to shine a bright light into a world engulfed in darkness, a light that shines, no matter how dark it is. (396-023, 2002/11/02)
8. All things belong to God. I am saying that God is the Owner of all things. Yet, Satan thus far has been acting as if he were the owner. In a relationship of love where there is a sense of equality and balanced participation, the two parties cede control to each other. Blessings and the authority of inheritance are also involved. Therefore, after the first human beings formed a love relationship with Satan, all things ended up belonging to Satan's realm. Satan usurped God's throne and sat on it. He invaded even the environment around God Himself, ruling over everything.
There was no way God could liberate Himself from this situation. Nor could anyone else liberate Him, even after the passing of thousands of biblical years. That is why God underwent so many hardships to restore human beings to the standard that He had envisioned for the original family.
With my birth, for the first time in human history, everything in God's environment that Satan had defiled could be cleaned up. I cleaned up that environment front and rear, and right and left, and by establishing the measures and formulas to defend God from Satan's realm.
Consequently, Satan had no choice but to retreat. Anyone who objects to this will meet with difficulties. I am saying that True Parents have succeeded in doing all of this. We have established a victorious realm on the individual level and the family level. (290-103, 1998/02/03)
9. I devoted my entire life to abolishing hell and the middle realms in the spirit world and opening the gates to the kingdom of heaven. I took it as my destiny to resolve this problem. Even if I do not talk about this, I should be able to command people on the foundation that those in my surroundings recognize me and attend to me. Even without my saying that I was the True Parent, people received messages directly from the spirit world that I was the True Parent, the Messiah, and the Returning Lord, and they testified about this.
There can be plenty of messiahs, true parents, and saviors on the individual level, but the individual level alone is not sufficient. Heaven and earth should publicly recognize that I am the Messiah on the cosmic level. The spirit world should testify, “He is the Messiah and our True Parent.” True Parents should stand on the victorious foundation of uniting the spirit world. (396-265, 2002/11/10)
10. After representing his nation, the Messiah comes as Abel to the world. Hence, once he has met the national-level condition to indemnify the history in which Cain killed Abel, on that foundation he finally can come to the world in the position of the True Parent.
Had those of the Jewish faith and nation united to support Jesus and to establish the national foundation by rectifying the history in which Cain murdered Abel, Jesus could have stood in the position of the True Parent. In the history of restoration, after siblings become one, the Parents can emerge.
On the national level, Judaism and the people of Israel should have become one to support Jesus, and the leaders of Judaism and the chief priests should have united to support Jesus. Then they would have restored the Cain-Abel relationship on the national level, and on that national foundation, the Messiah could have emerged.
That was Jesus. Had the people of Israel united with the Messiah, it would have resolved on the national level the division between Cain and Abel that stemmed from Adam in the Garden of Eden. Then the Messiah could have married and become the True Parent and, with the new, God-centered family structure, emerged on the world level. (074-083, 1974/11/14)
11. After World War II, the United States brought the entire world under the realm of the elder son, thereby establishing the authority of the firstborn son. However, in addition to that, the authority of the Parents and the authority of God's kingship have to be established. For this, the United States will have to attend True Parents.
The United States established the right of the firstborn son but does not yet know the True Parents.
To restore God's kingship, the United States must attend the Lord at his Second Advent, the True Parents. That is why One Nation under God is not enough. Now that the True Parents have come, we have to build One World under God, One Universe under God, and One Cosmos under God. When such a world emerges, the kingdom of heaven on earth will be realized.
In the free world, people do not have the concepts of One World under God, One Universe under God, and One Cosmos under God. In the Last Days, when God's Will is to be realized, True Parents will come to earth and establish one world, one universe, and one cosmos under God by restoring the authority of God as the Parent and God as the King.
Jesus was unable to complete restoration on the national level in Israel and to realize the ideal of One Nation under God. Therefore, I came to the United States, the summit of the world, to restore his ideal of one nation under God. However, this ideal does not include the spirit world. It does not include even the whole of the physical universe, not to mention the cosmos. It is not One Unified Spiritual World and Physical World under God.
That is why the Lord at the Second Advent must come to realize that world. Had Jesus established One Nation under God and united even the Roman Empire, he could have established one world. Had he united also the spirit world, he could have established One Cosmos under God. Since this work was not completed, it remains to be fulfilled. No one has known about this; only God and the Returning Lord know it. (311-116, 1999/08/29)
12. The Messiah comes as the Father. If he comes as the older brother, his siblings will fight him. Only when he comes as the Parent can he bring an end to conflict.
Thus, the title “True Parents” is wonderful because when people have their True Father and True Mother, there can be true love among them. From True Parents, centering on true love, true children can be born. Then a true family can emerge, and when it expands horizontally, it can become a true tribe, people, nation, world, and the true cosmos, in which God can dwell. There is no disputing this logic.
True Parents never existed in the past, nor will there ever be another set of True Parents. What joyful news it is that the one and only True Parents to ever exist in history have emerged at this time! There can be no greater news than this, ever! It is especially great when you enter a parent-child relationship with True Parents and bond with their lineage; this enables you to inherit their authority without any sense of shame. They will guide you beyond yourselves to the infinite world.
You have no idea how remarkable it is that you know the name “True Parents.” God created human beings with this as His vision for them. True Parents' love makes the connection from true families to the true world, the true kingdom of heaven on heart, and the true kingdom of heaven in heaven. (266-250, 1995/01/01)
13. Based on the foundation of True Parents' victory, we are going beyond the Fall and entering the age when we can proclaim the era of liberation and complete freedom in the new kingdom of heaven on earth and in heaven. This is the proclamation that the time has come when we can enter the realm that has nothing to do with the Fall.
That is why the spiritual world and the physical world will have to unite. Unless you know the spirit world, you will fall away. God, together with all the world-level religious founders, saints and sages, and great people in the spirit world have resolved to work for the unity of these two worlds. Those dwelling in paradise and even in hell have resolved to support this, and they have declared this Liberation.
I am therefore working to bring this same understanding and determination to people on earth. With the coming of earth's true owner, the one who is the Savior, Messiah, and Returning Lord, everything is completed.
Centering on the name of the True Parents, everyone can cross over into the new world of liberation and live together with God, united in love. We have entered the era in which God can descend from His throne and live with His children on earth, where He will personally involve Himself with their lives.
Completion of the providence
God must continue His providence of restoration through history until He restores through indemnity of fallen Adam and Eve and installs the True Father and True Mother of all humankind the True Parents. The True Parents come as the sole, central model of God's ideal. They extend their hands to save fallen people and show them the direction in which to go. They come at the time when the history of God's providence bears fruit, when history can be made straight and begun anew.
Looking at all the efforts of the True Parents, we see that they have rectified historical failures, are uniting a divided world soothe, emerged based on this, and are building the kingdom of heaven. True Parents are the supreme and ultimate hope of humankind who complete the providence of restoration. Thus, when they emerge and are welcomed by the world, the hope of history can be fulfilled. The era when True Parents emerged in the world is the starting point for concluding fallen history. (574-187, 2007/09/04)
14. True Parents are God's hope. They were God's hope at the beginning of the Creation and during the eons of time during which He created everything. They were the ultimate goal of God's efforts throughout history, even as He led the providence of restoration through indemnity. Unless True Parents appear in this world, history cannot be set right. God is the center of every perfected entity based on the ideal of love. This is true for the individual, the family, the tribe, the people, the nation, and the world.
By centering on the perfected Adam, God wanted to establish the foundation of His object partners and expand it to every level on earth. However, because of Satan, everything was frustrated. Therefore, when the True Parents come, they must build their foundation on every level, from the individual to the family, tribe, people, nation, world, and cosmos. Then, once there is unity with True Parents on every level, all human beings can be one with God in the kingdom of heaven. This is the purpose of the providential history of salvation. (268-163, 1995/03/31)
15. Had there been no Fall, we would not have needed such terms as True Parents, the providence of salvation, the providence of restoration, the providence of re-creation, the providence of resurrection, and so on. Yet, due to the Fall, the providence of salvation became necessary and humankind came to need a Savior.
The Savior is the central person who represents God to human beings and reconciles human beings to God. He comes to correct all the mistakes of history.
What he must do is eliminate Satan. God cannot do it Himself. Satan is the archangel who was supposed to be under Adam's dominion, but he subjugated Adam instead. Therefore, it is up to Adam to recover his original position, and it is for this purpose that the Savior must come. By presenting the Principle and attending to God, the Savior must make Satan surrender voluntarily and return to his original position. That is the only way to achieve a foundation for peace that accords with God's ideal of creation. (214-260, 1991/02/03)
16. The providence of restoration is the providence of re-creation. When God re-creates, He needs to do it through the original Principle of Creation. The center of the original Principle of Creation is one perfected man and one perfected woman, who become husband and wife and follow the path of love. Without building that bridge of love, no one can go to God. This is the way based on the ideal of creation.
To fulfill this, God has sought to recover the one man, Adam. Yet until now, He could not. From the day of the Fall to this day, God has worked through religion to seek Adam according to the principles of re-creation. That is why world-level religions need to uphold the teaching that their lord, who possesses the true way, will come to earth again and guide all humankind to the world of peace, the ideal world. This is not accomplished by a group of people; the standard is one central person, perfected Adam. (195-130, 1989/11/07)
17. Adam and Eve were to have been perfected by uniting with their Heavenly Parent. Had they united with their Heavenly Parent, all their descendants likewise could have stood in their parents' realm of victory. This should have unfolded through eight levels: the individual, family, tribe, people, nation, world, cosmos, and God. When Adam and Eve fell, it was only the two of them, so the Fall occurred on the individual level. Now, however, the realm of the Fall has expanded throughout heaven and earth.
Just two individuals, Adam and Eve, fell, but the result has spread not only to the physical world but also to the spiritual world, from earth to heaven. Only by finally achieving that realm of victory on every level will the liberation of humankind be possible.
Multitudes of religious believers have been making indemnity conditions in their efforts to escape the realm of the Fall. However, since they are descendants of the Fall, they can't escape on their own. Adam and Eve, the first human ancestors, caused this situation when they fell.
Therefore, good first ancestors must come and pioneer a path to escape the situation. Unless these new key figures succeed in overcoming the Fall, no one will be able to escape from it.
It is the Returning Lord and his Bride, the True Parents, who can accomplish this.
True Parents must also bring perfection on all levels, from the individual to the family, tribe, people, nation, world, and cosmos.
And finally, they must liberate God. (251-019, 1993/10/15)
18. Human beings originally were created as God's children, but because they inherited Satan's lineage, they came under the rule of Satan. That is why to this day humankind has been treated as the enemy's children. Accordingly, True Parents must recover these children for God and, in the process, become the ancestors of humankind. They have to clean up everything that became defiled throughout human history and put Satan in a place where he cannot make accusations.
They must pave paths that Satan cannot accuse, whether traveling from the physical world up to the spiritual world or from the spiritual world down to earth. True Parents have to travel back and forth and overcome all the conditions that Satan can accuse. Satan has been able to make accusations due to the mistakes made by the ancestors of humankind.
Therefore, True Parents, coming as the true ancestors of humankind, must completely pave the way from the past, to the present, to the future. (019-205, 1968/01/07)
19. From the beginning of human history to this day, God and Satan have been at war with each other.
God cannot stop it, nor can Satan. That war began due to the Fall of Adam and Eve. How, then, can this situation be resolved? God intends to re-create them. The course of restoration is the course of re-creation.
Unless they are re-created, there can be no solution. That was His purpose for inaugurating religion: to recreate Adam and Eve. Among numerous religions throughout the world, Judaism, Christianity, and the Unification Church are at the center. They comprise three stages, culminating at the time of the Second Coming in the Last Days when True Parents will emerge.
True Parents know all the secrets of God, Satan, and humankind. Satan's world is full of chaos. Above and below, right and left, and front and rear, nothing is in its proper order. At the Second Advent, True Parents will come to earth and begin to clean this up. Starting from themselves as individuals, they will clear the way to recover the family, tribe, people, nation, world, and even the spirit world. Then God's ideal of creation, which humankind has long awaited, will appear in the mainstream of history.
Hence, the challenge faced by the Unification Church is how to establish ourselves as the mainstream. We must build the highway so that everyone can travel along it and arrive at the ideal world, the kingdom of heaven. In that ideal world, nothing can hinder anyone on the path; even Satan cannot be there. It is simply a clean and pure world. It is a world where all people can fulfill their purpose in life. It is a world where all are free, both in the spiritual world and in the physical world. That world is our original homeland.
Due to the Fall, people have been in misery. Until the True Parents appeared on earth, no one has been able to solve this problem. Only through their coming can everything be set straight again. (315-139, 2000/01/30)
20. The path we have taken as True Parents has not been level and smooth. We have had to make the way smooth across the gorges and canyons. During this time, God has been with us every step of the way.
This is why we can say that God is our Father and Mother.
Jesus' disciples and Christian believers are supposed to take responsibility for the bitter sorrow that our Heavenly Parent has been carrying for tens of thousands of years, as well as for the pain of Jesus, who should have become the True Parent by finding his Bride on earth. Yet none of these believers are determined to liberate our Heavenly Parent, or even Jesus, who was to have been the Parent on earth.
Most of them just want to receive blessings by believing in Jesus. When they go to the next world, they will find themselves in trouble.
All the while, God has shed tears like a waterfall. Knowing this, we, the True Parents, undertook the work of liberating God as our mission. (357-055, 2001/10/26)
21. The Returning Lord establishes the True Parents of humankind, and they recover the realm of true love. Then they go on to establish the position of the True Parents of Heaven and Earth. This is how they are to complete the providence to restore humankind.
The True Parents of Heaven and Earth must begin with a family in which they, as God's filial son and daughter, attend God, honor Him, and glorify Him, even better than the family of Adam and Eve would have done had they reached perfection.
The True Father, the Messiah, who is centered on true love, is the head of the family, which is the ideal core of humankind. He is to begin history anew by connecting human beings to true life and true lineage as they form blessed families, thus establishing the kingdom of heaven on earth and in heaven. (315-213, 2000/02/02)
22. The event at which, for the first time in human history, God's chosen Bridegroom and Bride gathered is that glorious and honored event that Christians speak of as the Marriage Supper of the Lamb.
This was the event at which the Bridegroom and Bride, enraptured with eternal love, praised their eternal life with God and its value forever. On that occasion, they gathered representing myriads of people; this was the coming together of God and original human beings.
Yet, reaching the position of a bride and groom was not their ultimate goal as the original human beings.
It is just one position on their course to perfection. Parents are the beginning of life. The life of the original human beings began in the presence of the Heavenly Parent, and all human beings must find a way to return to their Parent, God.
Those who start as parents, the root of new life, must start from the same position in which God stood when He gave life to the first human beings. From that position, they should grow in the realm of God's protection and then emerge as the Bridegroom and Bride. Thereafter, by becoming parents they can return to the Heavenly Parent.
That is why I am saying that the positions of the Bridegroom and Bride are not the ultimate ideal.
Likewise, your final destination as human beings is the place where you attend God as your Parent and become His true sons and daughters. Certainly, that should be the summit of your home, the place you all should desire to reach.
Based on this view, the Unification Church presents the ideal of True Parents. By going through the process of becoming bridegrooms and brides, you also can arrive at the position of original sons and daughters. God created human beings, but they fell. So you should be restored and reach perfection, and by attending God as the True Parent you should attain oneness with Him in eternal value, in eternal life, and eternal love. All of you need to start anew.
This is the reason Parents must come to earth and guide humankind toward this goal following the path of restoration. God's purpose for leading the providence of salvation for humankind thus far has been to arrive at this destination. (068-133, 1973/07/29)
23. There must be a true man and a true woman who attend God and unite with each other. They must establish a conjugal relationship that cannot be broken, no matter what. And then they must give birth to true sons and daughters. That man and woman are the True Parents. They are centered on God, are a true husband and wife to each other, and give birth to true sons and daughters, thus establishing the four-position foundation.
True Parents are God's true Son and true Daughter. They are to be the center of humanity and the universe. A nation that centers on them will become a central nation. On the other hand, a nation that lacks that center will come to ruin, and a world that lacks that center will drift into oblivion. For this reason, the culture that is centered on the True Parents will advance throughout the world. The culture that starts from that center will never perish.
Therefore, all families should make True Parents their center and attend God as True Parents do. All the people of the world should live by the example of True Parents, by their value system, and in line with their views on national and world affairs. The values they present will become widely held throughout the nation and the world, and eventually, all humankind will share these values and adopt them as their own.
Humankind has proceeded in hope for the time of the Last Days and is now heading for that one gate.
True Parents hope to establish the God-centered true family, tribe, people, nation, world, and cosmos. If we all do this together, we can restore even God's love. (019-205, 1968/01/07)
Dr. Sun Myung Moon