Perfect Restoration of Cain and Abel Brotherhood and the Ideal World of Creation
Michael Jenkins
Father Sun Myung Moon
Address at the Crowning Ceremony for Cosmic Unity, February 14, 2005
Chung Pyung Training Center, Republic of Korea
Respected guests from home and abroad, ladies and gentlemen!
This is a time of great transition in history. At this moment, the bright sun of the fifth year of God’s Kingdom of Cheon Il Guk is causing flowers of life and love to bloom for all humankind and all things in the universe. God’s grace and blessing are upon us.
Ladies and gentlemen, my entire life of eighty-some years has been consistently devoted to upholding God’s will for the salvation of humankind. After holding over ten thousand meetings and public speeches to teach the words of truth, today my lifelong ministry is reaching its fulfillment.
Generally we think of history in terms of people and events as they happen. However, there is another way to understand history, from the vertical perspective of God’s providence. Today you have all participated in the Peace King Crowning Ceremony of Cosmic Unity. This was an event unprecedented in history. History will record this day in eternity.
Today we are receiving God’s abundant grace. We are beginning the second four-year course in the providence of Cheon Il Guk, which runs from 2005 to 2008. In commemorating this significant day, I would like to inform you about the heavenly laws that we must know and practice in this age. The theme of my speech is "Perfect Restoration of Cain and Abel Brotherhood and the Ideal World of Creation."
God’s Providence in Adam’s Family Ladies and gentlemen, if Adam and Eve, our human ancestors, had not fallen, God’s original intention for them was to perfect themselves and establish a realm of unity of heart with God. They were to have been God’s children and God ’s absolute object partners, relating only with Him. However, when they fell, they joined themselves in blood ties to Satan, and they fell to a lowly status where they were compelled to deal with Satan as well as God. I am describing the situation immediately after the Fall, when Adam and Eve only carried the original sin and had not yet done anything good or evil. At that point, they were in a mid-way position, where they had to deal with both God and Satan.
God then worked to separate Adam’s family, caught in this mid-way position, from Satan. God began with the children of fallen Adam and their descendants. He placed Cain, the eldest among Adam’s three sons, on Satan’s side according to the order of the Fall, and Abel, the second son, on the side of heaven. God worked this providence of salvation based on the law of restoration through indemnity.
Since Satan had a claim on fallen Adam and Eve based on his connection by blood, God divided their children in this way and had them set up indemnity conditions on their own, with the goal of restoring them both to the side of heaven. Satan, for his part, knew that God had a claim on human beings as their original Creator. Therefore, He could not just seize the fallen people for his side unless they made evil conditions that would allow him to invade them.
In this way God and Satan carried out an invisible struggle in the lives of Cain and Abel over the conditions they would make to restore the lineage of true love. This invisible struggle has expanded ever since through the history of Adam’s descendants.
We know from the Bible the tragic outcome. Cain the elder son killed Abel the second son. He should have naturally submitted to his favored brother, but he did not. How intense was God’s grief and bitter His sorrow! Here were His children, whom He had created based on His heart of original true love. Yet now Satan had taken them away. True love, the very principle of heaven, was removed from this world. Heaven’s lineage, which should have been passed down throughout the generations for eternity, was destroyed in one moment.
God created Adam and Eve as His children. When they grew to maturity He intended to give them the marriage blessing, so that they could establish the way of true love. God was longing for a family that He alone could love. However, to God’s deep sorrow, he could not embrace His children, Adam and Eve, in true love. Nor could he embrace His grandchildren, Cain and Abel, in true love. God’s sorrow over this has persisted throughout history.
God, Adam and Eve, and their children were supposed to form a family of three generations. Had they established it, the Human Fall would never have occurred. Satan, who has tormented human beings and ravaged human history for tens of thousands of years, would never have existed. Humankind would be one great family. God would be the head of every family, living as three generations. Nonetheless, in the end the second and third generations of God’s first family, Adam’s family, failed to fulfill the conditions set up for them. They failed in the limited responsibility that was given them as their portion, in accordance with the principles of creation. Here was the beginning of humankind’s tragic history.
Yet, God could not give up on His creation. He began His providence of restoration through indemnity in order to find at all costs His children whom Satan had abducted. God is a Lord of principles, fundamental rules and laws. If God abandoned the realm of three generations that was lost in Adam’s family, it would have been tantamount to abandoning His entire work of creation.
Accordingly, God waited 130 years after Cain’s murder of Abel and raised Adam’s third son Seth as a new central figure. Seth had to fulfill the responsibility that Abel did not, which was to establish the realm of the elder son and also to restore God’s lineage. From that time forth, God called descendants from Seth’s lineage to establish appropriate conditions of indemnity as He advanced His restoration providence to separate humankind from Satan.
God was to rule the cosmos with absolute authority as the true Father, true Teacher, and true Lord of humankind. Yet Adam’s family trampled on God’s ideal of creation and drove God into the back alleys of history. Today, all of you must understand clearly how the history of separating good from evil centering on Cain and Abel has providentially affected human history. You should be aware of the significance it has for us, as we begin the fifth year of Cheon Il Guk.
As the Lord of true love, God created human beings as His children based on the standard of absolute faith, absolute love and absolute obedience. This is the principle for all created beings. When God created, He completely and absolutely invested Himself, absolutely affirming His creation. This is why we human beings, as God’s object partners, should offer our absolute faith, absolute love and absolute obedience to God, who is our Subject partner.
The same principle applies to the relationship between Cain and Abel, even though they represent the side of evil and good, respectively. It is a heavenly law that Cain, who stands in the position of an object partner, should go before God through Abel. Cain should attend Abel as he would his father, master or teacher. Abel, for his part, should maintain an absolute standard. His position is to represent God. Like God, he should embrace and love Cain as he would his own child, with absolute faith, absolute love and absolute obedience. By having a character worthy of trust and respect, Abel should induce Cain to submit to him naturally.
This is the heavenly principle for resolving the countless Cain and Abel conflicts that have appeared in the history of God’s providence. Whenever this path was not followed, the conflict, bloodshed and war only continued unabated. With each failure, God had to go through the ordeal of seeing His providence prolonged. The thousands of years of human history bear living testimony to this principle. God’s Providence in Noah’s Family and Abraham’s Family I do not have time to explain in detail all the events that have occurred in the history of the providence to complete the restoration of the realm of the elder son and restore God’s lineage. After Seth in Adam’s family, and following a period of 1,600 years, the providence moved to Noah’s family. God called Noah as the central figure and worked through his family to restore through indemnity the failure of Adam’s family. However, this providence also ended in failure, due to the mistake of Ham, Noah’s second son who stood in the position of Abel.
God waited 400 more years and then called Abraham. He was the eldest son of Terah, an idol-maker who symbolized the satanic world. Abraham’s life was a story of making conditions to restore the realm of the elder son and the lineage. Through the three generations of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, God worked a providence to restore in a short time the three historical generations of Adam’s family, Noah’s family and Abraham’s family. Finally, Jacob established the conditions for the restoration of the realm of the elder son and the lineage. By going into exile and living like a gypsy, he was victorious in achieving the condition of separation from Satan. Based upon that success, Jacob triumphed in wrestling with the angel and was blessed with the name "Israel." The relationship between Esau and Jacob was the same as that between Cain and Abel. Through the principled way of absolute faith, absolute love and absolute obedience, and the successful cooperation between mother and son, Jacob was finally able to recover the realm of the elder son by bringing his father Isaac and elder brother Esau into natural submission to him.
In Jacob’s family, Joseph, who was the son of Rachel, the wife on God’s side, entered Egypt and was successful in his course of restitution. Later on he brought his eleven brothers, who stood in the position of Cain, into natural submission to him; thus he was victorious in the role of Abel. Having become the prime minister of Egypt, he brought Jacob’s family to live with him. What if Joseph had also invited Esau’s family to Egypt? Then the historical struggle between Cain and Abel would have come to an end. Later difficulties, such as the Israelites’ forty years of wandering in the wilderness under Moses, would never have arisen. God’s Providence through Jesus
Four thousand years after the failure of Adam and Eve, Jesus finally appeared out of the lineage that stemmed from the victorious foundation of Jacob’s family. God raised the ten northern tribes and two southern tribes into a united nation of Israel, and God prepared Judaism. God set up Israel and Judaism in another Cain and Abel relationship to create the environment for receiving the substantial Messiah. God raised Israel in the position of Cain representing the political realm, and raised Judaism in the position of Abel representing the religious sphere. The relationship between John the Baptist and Jesus was also that of Cain and Abel.
If Israel and Judaism had clearly understood the teachings of the Old Testament, which were given as a guide for the 4,000-year providence of restoration, they would have united internally and externally. Led by John the Baptist, they would have attended Jesus as the King of kings and True Parent. Jesus would then have been able to build the Kingdom of heaven, God’s ideal of creation, within his lifetime. Furthermore, if John the Baptist had clearly understood and fulfilled his responsibility as Cain, how could Jesus have died on the cross? Yet despite receiving direct revelations and visions from heaven, and despite hearing Jesus’ guidance that Jesus was himself the Lord and Abel, in the end John the Baptist could not surmount the challenge to live by absolute faith, absolute love and absolute obedience.
Furthermore, Jesus came as the second Adam. His family was to have been the true ancestors of humankind, passing on the lineage of purity, pure blood, pure love and pure harmony. Therefore, God intended to give Jesus His marriage blessing, in order that he might form a true family that would become the root of Heaven’s true lineage for all the ages.
However, with his death on the cross, once again God was driven to the darkest grief, His hopes crushed. God had sent Jesus, His only begotten Son, to recover the lost position of Adam. God had given Jesus His seal as the second Adam, hoping that he would bring the 4,000-year history of the providence of restoration to its final conclusion. Instead, once again God’s will was frustrated. Once again, the core that God had established as the central axis of history was pulled out from its root.
From that time on, God’s providence of restoration began to accelerate. Still, God never deviates from the track of the principles and laws that He established at the creation. He cannot lead the providence arbitrarily or capriciously. Consequently, after losing Jesus, who was to have become the eternal Abel for humankind, God had to patiently endure another 2,000 years of history. During that time He prepared the environment and conditions that would no longer permit failure, and on that foundation God finally sent to this earth the person who is speaking to you now, with His seal as the Second Advent of the Lord. The Manifestation of the True Parent
Even so, my life course has never been smooth. Satan is a creature so shrewd and cunning that he could trample even on the heart of the omniscient and omnipotent God. For the past eighty-plus years, my life has run the gamut of ups and downs. Yet by establishing all the indemnity conditions necessary for each stage of the providence, I gained victory at the great transition point of the twentieth century. This was when the conflict and struggle between Cain and Abel that had begun in Adam’s family expanded into the global struggle between communism and democracy. On the foundation of overcoming that final level of struggle, in the year 2001 I was able to declare the era of Cheon Il Guk, the time of true love under the sovereignty of Abel, and to offer God His kingship.
On that victorious foundation, in Jerusalem in 2003 I offered Jesus his coronation as the King of Peace of the First Israel. In 2004, crowning ceremonies were held in America, the Second Israel, in Korea, the Third Israel, and finally on the global level. Thus I was elevated as the King of Peace transcending religions and nations, in the capacity of the True Parent of humankind. Standing upon these providential victories, now in 2005 the world’s six billion people have entered the second stage in the three-stage process of building the Kingdom of the Cheon Il Guk.
Today, humankind is mandated to fulfill three great goals. These are to change our lineage in order to complete the registration providence, to transfer the realm of ownership, and to inherit the realm of heart. You know that a lamb is obedient to its master even at the moment he puts a knife to its throat. With the absolute obedience of a lamb you should offer your life to the True Parent, who comes as the substantial King of Peace and your eternal Abel. You should fulfill your responsibility and your course as representatives of the entire realm of Cain.
Let us consider: where do we stand today in the course of providential history? Though imperceptible to the human eye, we are at a point of great transition. Now that we have entered the third millennium, Heaven’s providence is moving toward completion with tremendous speed. Over the years I have established many organizations and institutions to advance God’s providence. Among them, I highlight the Interreligious and International Federation for World Peace and the Peace UN (the Interreligious and International Peace Council) that I founded recently. Their mission is to embrace the satanic realm and, in the position of Abel, liberate the Mongolian Peoples Federation for World Peace, which stands in the position of Cain, representing Satan’s realm. Thereby they are to bring the world into oneness, so that conflict and struggles between Cain and Abel will no longer stain history. America, which represents the sphere of the world’s religions, should stand as Abel to love and embrace the United Nations, which stands as Cain. Thus will America and the UN fulfill their responsibility for the cause of world salvation.
Ladies and gentlemen, the True Parents are our ultimate Abel. The position of Abel is designated by Heaven. It is a position assigned by fate that cannot be evaded, even in death. Every Abel is called to plant the seeds of true love, even at the cost of his or her life. Every Abel must take the path of absolute faith, absolute love and absolute obedience before God. This is because the inverse purpose of this path is to bring Cain to natural submission.
It is our destiny to live in attendance to the True Parents as our eternal Abel. They are the vertical axis, coming as the incarnation of the incorporeal God. The True Parents are the Savior of humankind, the Messiah, and the Second Coming of the Lord. They are the King and Queen of Peace in the Kingdom of heaven on earth and in heaven.
The Kingdom of heaven on earth and in heaven now being set up by the True Parents is the ideal kingdom, the ideal of creation, which God has longed to see since the beginning of the universe. It is the central kingdom of peace. It will complete the Era After the Coming of Heaven, which opened to humankind in the months prior to 2005, the fifth year of Cheon Il Guk. It is a world of liberation and complete freedom. Here, all walls and borders that have divided people for thousands and tens of thousands of years are abolished, irrespective of their reasons and justifications. Here all humankind lives as one family transcending religion and nationality, and attends the True Parents as their True Teacher and True King. Our Attitude in the Time of Great Transition
Now that you know you live amidst such tremendous heavenly blessings, what should you do? How can you prepare yourself to receive these blessings? First and foremost, you should thoroughly rearrange your life. Begin by discovering the absolute realm of unity between your mind and body. This is how you can perfect yourself as an individual embodiment of truth, unblemished, clear, clean and shining. Your life should be free of debts. In other words, you should achieve a revolution through atonement. Next, you should be able to live eternally without any shame in your conscience. This calls for a revolution of conscience. Then practice a life of true love, of living for the sake of others, that you may not feel indebted in heart before True Parents or any person. In other words, carry out a revolution of heart.
The second thing you need to do is create heaven in your family life. The family is the palace of love. Perfect the four great realms of heart and the three great kingships in your family. Make your family a place that cultivates sons and daughters of filial piety, loyal citizens, saints, and divine sons and daughters. Let it become the paramount place to deeply experience God’s heart. Let your family fulfill the promise of happiness that you and your spouse made to each other. Your ancestors will descend to your family and guide you on the path toward heaven. Turn your family into a blossom of true love and the very place where that flower bears fruit.
Ladies and gentlemen, from this time forth your life will not be simple. Wherever you are, whatever you do, hundreds and thousands of your ancestors will accompany you. They have suffered bitterly until now because they could not attend the True Parents on earth. But for the next four years they will live with you in order to attend the True Parents substantially through you. They will cooperate with you, their descendants on earth, and support you as their Abel. Their goal is to enter heaven with you.
Keep in mind that while it may be possible to deceive the all the six billion people of the world, you cannot deceive your ancestors. They will evaluate every aspect of your life. They will determine your reward and punishment based on heaven’s standard of good and evil. Whether you are joyful, angry, sorrowful or satisfied, you should not disappoint your good ancestors, who will be watching your every move with blazing eyes. The next four years will be a serious time. Jesus, Buddha, Muhammad, Confucius, all the good spirits in the spirit world and your own good ancestors are being mobilized to come down to the earth. They will devote all their efforts to build the Kingdom of heaven on earth, in other words, to complete the Kingdom of Cheon Il Guk.
Let us fulfill our responsibilities as Cains and as Abels. With God above us and below us, in front of us and behind us, and to our right and left, let us live with absolute faith, absolute love and absolute obedience, the standard that existed before creation. If we can unite and fulfill the way of embracing, forgiving and loving, then the Era After the Coming of Heaven will be the literal Peace Kingdom, where all attend the True Parents and peace and prosperity reigns.
Now, carrying with us this heavenly message, we must depart to spread the seeds. Each of us should become the creators of this new world, as we go out to plant the seeds of true life and true love and represent heaven’s family. Do not be so foolish as to scatter your seeds into the air, to be carried off by the winds of secular vanity and immorality. Seek the humblest and lowest position. Plant your seeds in the deepest and richest fertile soil. Break down the walls between races, abolish the national borders and bear the fruit of cross-cultural, interracial marriages that go beyond religion and nation. Let us do mighty works to uphold God’s true lineage eternally. The providence of interracial, cross-cultural marriage shall elevate the Mongolian race and all humankind through the true love of the eternal God.
In the Bible, as Lot’s wife was leaving Sodom, she looked back, disobeying heaven’s decree, and was turned into a pillar of salt. Today you have received the heavenly decree. The heavenly decree is always a double-edged sword, bringing both blessing and judgment. The choice is yours. Without a doubt I have revealed tremendous secrets of heaven to you today. There is no turning back; the arrow has left the bow. There is no room for negotiation or compromise. The completion and perfection of God’s providence alone awaits us at the finish line.
Let us make every effort to recover the three generations of God’s family that were lost at the beginning with Adam. Let us complete, on this earth in our lifetime, a new heaven and new earth, filled with true love and free from the struggle between Cain and Abel. Let us complete the Peace Kingdom, where we shall all live as one family. Let us pledge to live in the eternal Peace Kingdom in attendance to the True Parents.
Thank you very much.