Wars break out due to such factors as conflicts of political and economic interests and clashes of ideology. Yet these are merely external causes. There are also internal causes of wars, just as there are internal and external motives for every human action.
Human actions are decided by the free will of the individual, who is trying both to respond externally to the situation with which he is confronted and to follow his internal tendency toward the Will of God and the advancement of His providence of restoration. Therefore, the good or evil of a human action should not be judged only by external motives.
The same can be said of the world wars, which have resulted from the worldwide collision between the actions of numerous individuals arising from their free will.
Accordingly, we cannot grasp the providential significance of the world wars by focusing only on conflicts of political and economic interests, ideological clashes and other such external causes.
What are the internal, providential causes of the world wars?
First, the world wars have resulted from Satanโs last desperate struggle to preserve his sovereignty. Since the Fall of the first human ancestors, Satan has been building defective, unprincipled imitations of Godโs ideal world. Aiming to restore the ideal world of His Principle, God has been in pursuit, gradually expanding His dominion by reclaiming it from the unprincipled world under Satanโs bondage (cf. Parallels 7.1). Accordingly, in the course of the providence of restoration, a false representation of the ideal appears before the emergence of its true manifestation. The biblical prophecy that the antichrist will appear before the return of Christ is an illustration of this truth.
Human history under Satanโs evil sovereignty will end with the Second Advent of Christ. Then it will be transformed into the history of humanity abiding in the realm of Godโs good sovereignty. At that time, Satan will put up a last-ditch fight. When the Israelites were about to leave Egypt in the national course to restore Canaan, Satan worked through the Pharaoh to wage a bitter struggle to keep them in bondage. By virtue of this, Godโs side was entitled to strike him with three supernatural signs. Similarly, in the Last Days, Satan has been putting up his last struggle to undermine Godโs side as it has prepared itself to embark upon the worldwide course to restore Canaan. Godโs three counterattacks to Satanโs aggressions have manifested themselves as the three world wars.
Second, the three world wars have occurred in order to fulfill the worldwide indemnity conditions to restore the three great blessings. Upon creating human beings, God gave them three blessings: to reach individual perfection, multiply as an ideal family and have dominion over the creation (Gen. 1:28). By fulfilling these blessings, our first ancestors were to build the Kingdom of Heaven on the earth.
Since God Himself created human beings and blessed them, He did not annul these blessings just because they fell. God had to allow fallen people to build an unprincipled world that has imitated the three blessings, though defectively, under Satanโs leadership.
Accordingly, at the consummation of human history, unprincipled worlds have emerged which have realized defectively the outward form of the three blessings: an individual championing Satanโs causes, multiplication of satanic children, and the conquest of the world under Satanโs domination. To fulfill the worldwide indemnity conditions to restore Godโs three great blessings, three world conflicts must break out by which God can prevail over these satanic worlds through the three stages of formation, growth and completion.
Third, the three world wars have occurred so that all humanity may overcome on the world level the three temptations by which Satan tempted Jesus. As Jesusโ disciples, Christians are to follow the course of their Teacher and overcome the three temptations which he confronted in the wilderness as individuals, families, nations and at the world level.
Fourth, the world wars have taken place to fulfill the worldwide indemnity condition to restore Godโs sovereignty. Had the first human beings not fallen but reached perfection by passing through the three stages of the growing period, they would have realized the world of Godโs sovereignty. Similarly, worldwide restoration must pass through three stages.
The restoration of this world requires that it first be divided into Cain-type and Abel-type worlds, and that there be three final wars in which the heavenly, Abel-type world prevails over the satanic, Cain-type world. This is a condition to restore through worldwide indemnity Cainโs murder of Abel.
After that, the world of Godโs sovereignty can be established. Accordingly, the world wars are the final global conflicts in human history, restoring horizontally through indemnity the purpose of all the wars that have been waged for the restoration of Godโs sovereignty in the vertical course of the providence.
Sun Myung Moon