Fulfillment of Predestination Requires Human Responsibility

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Cheon Seong Gyeong 1594

The significance of tomorrow, the tenth day of the month, is that this number ten allows us to pass into the year 2000 from the year 1999. Then God can restore unhindered the physical world vertically from the individual to the family, tribe, people, nation and world, and connect it to the spirit world. This can happen based on the love of the ideal of Adam’s family, the original ideal of creation, untainted by the Fall. God’s original will to recover the world of cosmic unity could be fulfilled, together with liberation, at the June 14 ceremony of the Congratulatory Declaration of the Cosmic Victory of the Parents of Heaven and Earth, greeted with cheers from the liberated realm of heaven and earth. This could then form the foundation for the Declaration of the Realm of Liberation and Unification of the Cosmos by the Parents of Heaven and Earth, which has been made today. With this declaration, fortune has turned in favor of the unification of North and South Korea

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The holy wine ceremony is carried out in the reverse order of the Fall of Adam and Eve. Before you can get married, you need to be engaged. Then there is the holy wine ceremony. Only then can you attend the holy wedding ceremony. You could not become the original Adam and Eve because of the Fall. Through the engagement ceremony, you present yourselves before God and True Parents, who are trying to reclaim their children, saying, “We will become a better Adam and Eve, who are better than your fallen children.” Adam and Eve were still in the state of engagement. Through the engagement, a new world is created. You must therefore understand that the holy wine ceremony establishes the conditions that restore all these relationships. (120-167, 1982.10.13)

Predestination

The doctrine of predestination provides an explanation for the fact that people have different fortunes, moral endowments, are born into different circumstances, and respond differently to religion. It ascribes these differences to the hand of God—who is omnipotent and controls all, and who is omniscient and sees the future. Someone who degenerates into a sinner does so because God eases him into sin. Someone who becomes a hero of faith can be so because God strengthens him. Absolute predestination holds that a person’s eternal destiny—to salvation or damnation—is predetermined before his birth. It is already written down in God’s ledger— along with the span of the person’s life and the day of his death.
A believer who recognizes the hand of destiny never regards the occasions in life as accidental. Everything that happens, happens for a reason. An apparently chance meeting may have been decreed long ago. A sudden death or a stroke of good luck are not random events, but happen by God’s decree. Since all human plans and designs only bear fruit if they are within God’s will, Muslims commonly say, inshallah, “if it is the will of God.” Day by day we can examine every event to discern the hand of God, and make every effort to conform our lives to the flow of his destined Will.
How is predestination reconciled with human free will? One answer that is consistent with absolute predestination counsels us to accept human ignorance as the context within which we strive in freedom. The omniscient God who knows everything through eternity already knows the outcome of our life, however as we can never possess such foreknowledge, we should still make our best effort. Then there are qualified doctrines of predestination, for which human freedom enters into the calculation of destiny. Such doctrines describe God as apportioning blessings and hardships as he wills, and then permitting us limited freedom to make the best of our lot. Father Moon, who rejects absolute predestination, teaches such a form of qualified predestination: God predestines everyone to salvation, but requires human responsibility as a necessary condition to realize that destiny.

1. God’s Absolute Predestination
 
I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and I will show mercy to whom I will show mercy.
    Exodus 33.19
 
Lo! this is an admonishment, that whosoever will may choose a way unto his Lord; yet you will not, unless God wills. Lo! God is Knower, Wise. He makes whom He will to enter His mercy, and for evildoers has prepared a painful doom.
    Qur’an 76.29-31
 
We know that in everything God works for good with those who love him, who are called according to his purpose. For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the first-born among many brethren. Those whom He predestined He also called; and those whom He called He also justified; and those whom He justified He also glorified.
    Romans 8.28-30
 
The Lord is the Doer, cause of all:
what avail man’s designs?
As is the Lord’s will, so it happens.
The Lord is Almighty, without impediment to
His will.
All that is done is by His pleasure:
From each He is far, to each close.
All He considers, watches over, discriminates—
Himself He is sole and all.
Adi Granth, Gauri Sukhmani, M.5, p. 279
(Sikhism)
 
When Rebecca had conceived children by one man, our forefather Isaac, though they were not yet born and had done nothing either good or bad, in order that God’s purpose of election might continue, not because of works but because of his call, she was told, “The elder will serve the younger.” As it is written, “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.”
    Is there injustice on God’s part? By no means! For he says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.” So it depends not upon man’s will or exertion, but upon God’s mercy. For the scripture says to Pharaoh, “I have raised you up for the very purpose of showing my power in you, so that my name may be proclaimed in all the earth.” So then he has mercy upon whomever he wills, and he hardens the heart of whomever he wills.
    Romans 9.10-16
 
Thou knowest me right well;
my frame was not hidden from thee,
when I was being made in secret,
intricately wrought in the depths of the earth.
Thy eyes beheld my unformed substance;
in thy book were written, every one of them,
the days that were formed for me,
when as yet there was none of them.
Psalm 139.15-16
 
Allah’s Apostle, the true and truly inspired said, “Every one of you is collected in the womb of his mother for the first forty days, and then he becomes a clot for another forty days, and then a piece of flesh for another forty days. Then is sent to him the angel who breathes the soul into his body and is commanded to write down four words: his livelihood, his life span, his deeds, and whether he will be wretched or blessed (in religion). Verily, it may be that one of you will be performing the works of the people of Paradise, so that between him and Paradise there is the distance of only an arm’s length, but then what is written for him overtakes him, and he begins to perform the works of the people of hell, into which he will go. Or maybe one of you will be performing the works of the people of hell, so that between him and hell there is the distance of only an arm’s length, but then what is written for him overtakes him, and he will begin to perform the works of the people of Paradise, into which he will go.
    Forty Hadith of an-Nawawi 4 (Islam)
 
Richard:  These verses, which will be tempered by the readings from Rev. Sun Myung Moon tomorrow, which explain the crucial role of man’s portion of responsibility.
 

 
 
 

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