Physical Salvation, as I Understand it

Physical Salvation, as I Understand it

Dr. Andrew Wilson, HJI

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The concept of physical salvation is described in the Divine Principle as “fulfill the purpose of the providence of restoration” and build “the Kingdom of Heaven on earth.” (p. 113) For the individual believer, that fulfillment means that we will live in inseparable oneness with God, experience God’s heart in its full intensity, and possess a divine nature. We will fulfill the Three Great Blessings in a world where all people fulfill the Three Great Blessings. That will be the world of God’s original design.

Physical salvation is different from spiritual salvation, in that it is not only individual but also corporate. Yes, we should grow to realize our full potential individually as God’s sons and daughters. Yet, no matter how well we do in realizing the Three Blessings for ourselves and our families, if the world still remains in darkness, our individual lives will be hell. Tribal messiahship, after all, is about creating communities where our children can thrive.

Until the coming of the True Parents, the fundamental obstacles to physical salvation were:

1. The existence of Satan, who opposed God’s providence; he was attached to human beings through lineage and innumerable evil spirits who resonated with his prideful and rebellious heart.

2. Adam and Eve did not provide a basis in humankind for God and human beings to manifest God’s original love, which requires establishing the four-position foundation. Hence the need for a Second Adam and Second Eve.

3. Human growth was set back, and our spirituality was dulled. Few people grew beyond the formation stage, and the Fall at the top of the growth stage set the upper limit. People with mature bodies behave like adolescents spiritually.

4. History proceeded in tangles, from which human beings inherited innumerable traumas and disabilities. In speaking of history in Wolli Wonbon, Rev. Moon likened it to a “tangled skein of thread,” whose innumerable knots and tangles would have to be untangled and laid out straight from end to end. They are the tangles of religious conflict, of East-West discord, of systemic sins such as slavery, of mass murder, of ancestral sin and grudges.

In my understanding, True Parents overcame the first three obstacles. They brought Lucifer to surrender in 1999, and with the Holy Wedding of 1960 and the children of their marriage, they established the four-position foundation. They broke through the top of the growth stage, so that through the Blessing we can enter the completion stage. With Lucifer’s surrender, and especially with the establishment of Foundation Day in 2013, these obstacles are dissolved and need no longer impede our growth to realizing God’s original design.

When it comes to the tangles of history, one of the deepest is the suffering state of women, of which the Bible states, “Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you.” (Gen. 3:16) Patriarchy emerged immediately after the Fall, when Adam blamed his wife, “The woman whom you gave me, she gave me the fruit from the true, and I ate it.” (Gen. 3:12). Eve’s spirit was further crushed when her son Cain murdered Abel. Ever since then, women have struggled to find self-worth, and most accepted subordination to men. Father remarked on this problem: “In biblical history women had no rights and the men assumed the major role in God's dispensation, but this was an extreme situation.” (May 1, 1977)

Women’s unequal status began to be addressed in the West in 1920, when the 19th Amendment gave women the right to vote. Yet patriarchy remains entrenched in cultures around the world, not least in Asia. True Mother’s efforts to establish her messianic status and value as the only-begotten daughter, on a par with True Father’s messianic status as the Lord of the Second Advent, and to establish that God is Heavenly Parent— Heavenly Mother as well as Heavenly Father, is addressing the root of this issue. She is paying a terrible price for it.

Nevertheless, much of the work to clear away the tangles of history remains as our portion of responsibility. Many members contributed to that objective by entering into international and interracial marriages. But much more remains to be done, to heal and restore all the misshapen fruits of history that have come down to us. All of us have a portion of responsibility to realize the world of God’s original design.

Now is the time to build the world of the original design, to live as children of God and citizens of God’s world. What does that mean for us?

First, our lives are no longer devoted to the providence of restoration, which required us to sacrifice personal expression and time with our family for the sake of God’s Will. Since the Will has been completed, we can live in an ordinary way, the “original ordinary” that would have existed in Adam and Eve’s life had there been no fall.

We are entering the post-messianic era. The days of being soldiers in the Messiah’s army are over, and we can pursue civilian pursuits. We can spend time healing from old traumas. We can focus on loving our children, whom we neglected. We can pursue hobbies and interests, our “Isaacs” that we put aside, when we enlisted in the cause as heavenly soldiers.

God doesn’t want our offerings; God wants to live with us and participate in the joys of life. Our orientation changes from living for God to living with God. We can experience “the active God” in our lives: God involved in everything we do, providing opportunities for love, for growth, and for realizing potentials hitherto undreamed of. We can relate to God as our Mother, our Father, our Sister, our Brother, our Lover, and the God in me, in my unique expression of divinity.

Let me share something of the spiritual information that I have received about the current situation in the spirit world as it moves, full speed ahead, towards realizing the world of God’s original design, now that restoration is completed.

First, God wants to dwell in the original world as if the Fall never happened. There should be no trace of the Fall anywhere. As a first step to healing from the wounds of the Fall, the original three in the Garden—Adam, Eve and Lucifer—have repaired their relationships, with Lucifer now having received his own angelic spouse. Adam even calls Lucifer his “buddy,” the way he did in the Garden when they were young. Eve has forgiven Lucifer. Lucifer is working on forgiving himself.

Second, the True Parents position is transitional, to be replaced by Adam and Eve as the proper Foreparents of humanity. Father has been appraised of this and accepts it.

Third, Jesus has stepped back from being the Messiah, and Father in the spirit world has stepped back from being the Messiah. They will never stop loving humankind and offering help as resources. But they are no longer bound to their positions. That means that Jesus, and Father, are now liberated to pursue happiness for themselves and their families. They can straighten out all the complications that came with their messianic missions. Jesus has found happiness with Mary Magdalene, whom he’s always loved, as his wife. Father is able to reconcile with the women in the spirit world with whom he fathered children while on earth.

Jesus, and Father, both recognize that the idea that God wants humanity to be saved by a singular masculine messiah is erroneous; they call it the “messianic delusion.” The messianic delusion includes the mistaken Christian beliefs that Jesus is God and Jesus is part of the Trinity. It’s a delusion, because it creates dependency and distance, and it’s erroneous, because it doesn’t give adequate space for women’s needs, and women’s value.

God’s original design has no place for a messiah. Humankind is just one great family of God. Human beings can contact God directly, and God can contact us directly. On this point, there’s no distinction between Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, communists, Unificationists; God is empowered to embrace everyone, on their own terms.

Now that Jesus and True Father have both stepped back from their positions as messiahs, the path to realizing God’s dream is open wide. However, there’s still the matter of setting up a “soft landing” for Unificationists and for Christians. It may be difficult for members who are devoted to True Father, True Mother, or to Hyun Jin Nim or Hyung Jin Nim. Yet True Parents love the members who devoted themselves to the providence and feel responsible for them. The soft landing should be full of love and appreciation.

Furthermore, Father would like nothing more than that Mother lay down the torch of her messianic identity and simply tend to her family and to the members. But she cannot settle, because she has to struggle against entrenched patriarchy in Asian societies, going back to Confucius and even before him, that continues to look at women as less than men.

God is aiming to co-create with us the original world of the Three Great Blessings. “Salvation” is a word from the past, when people depended on a male messianic figure to get out of the mire of evil and connect with God. But today, there are no longer any objective impediments to connecting with God. It’s just a matter of people changing their mindset. Living with God, taking responsibility to build God’s dream with our own hands, we will someday retire the word “salvation” from our vocabulary.