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The Messiah
The ultimate solution to the problem of sin and Satan’s ownership over man comes with the ‘messiah’, or ‘savior’. According to the Principle the savior is a couple.
God would have joined the first human beings in marriage after they had reached a certain level in their spiritual development and then their offspring - mankind - would have developed in an entirely different way, if the first parents had not come in touch with sin.
To start again, the situation prior to the fall has to be recreated first. The family of the savior takes the place of the first human family millions of years ago.
The purpose of Jesus’ coming was to establish such a family.
According to the Principle, Satan controls the cosmos and mankind. Given that fact, even the birth of the messiah, let alone his mission, is a critical event that has to be prepared.
The Principle explains a few of the events that took place in Jewish history in preparation of Jesus’ coming. But the probably most extensive, public explanation of this preparation is found in a speech of Sun Myung Moon called ‘The Way of Restoration’1. He explains there in great detail the importance of certain Biblical events in ‘changing mankind’s blood lineage’. These resulted in the foundation upon which Jesus could be born as the ‘son of God’ in a world full of Satan’s descendants.
According to the Principle the death of Jesus was a big setback in God’s work of recreation. Basically, only a limited realm of spiritual liberation could be created by Jesus and part two of the work of recreation had to be left to a second messiah, who would come on the foundation of the first one.
First, certain conditions that were lost due to Satan’s victory in killing Jesus, had to be rebuilt. All this took 2000 years until present day. For most members of the movement Sun Myung Moon and his wife are the True Parents of mankind, replacing the fallen parents. The marriage ceremonies of the unification movement are the crucial point where couples cease to be descendants of Satan and become free to make their way to heaven. The blessing is also ‘considered the moment of rebirth into God’s lineage’.
The details are a bit more extensive, but this is the general hang of it.
A detail that often gets lost here is that the Blessing is the point where technically the need for the savior ends. From that moment on it depends on the individuals/couples efforts to make their way to heaven. From now on they are governed by the laws of the cosmos as if they had not fallen.
For the blessed couples, the need for a messiah ends at this point.
The Central Line of Restoration
From the explanations above it follows that the central history, as seen by the movement, is Jewish and Christian history. The coming of the first messiah, Jesus, occurred on the foundation of the Jewish religion and the preparation of the nation of Israel 2000 years ago. As Jesus was rejected by the people of his time, Christianity played the central role in the preparation for the second appearance of a messiah in the present time.
However, according to the Principle, all other religions play a vital role in elevating the spiritual standard of their followers in preparation for the final appearance of the lost ideal. In the end, religion will disappear and mankind will relate directly and freely to God in spirit, without need of mediation.
1 “The Way of Restoration”, Sun Myung Moon, 1972, Paris, France as printed in “God’s Will and the World”, HSA-UWC, 1985, Accord Inc., New York, USA
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