Tag: Reformation

The Period for the Preparation for the Second Coming of Christ began in 1517

Cheon Seong Gyeong 2476

    The society of the ideal world will be characterized politically by principles of interdependence, economically by mutual prosperity and ethically by universally shared values. The core content of the principle of interdependence is co-ownership based on God’s true love. The basic model of the society of interdependence is the family. By co-ownership, I do not mean ownership merely in relation to material possessions, but ownership based on God’s love.
    In the family, even though all property would be legally held in the parents’ names, in practice it would be jointly owned by the parents and children; that is, by the whole family. At the same time, the individual family members are allocated their own rooms, clothing and allowances. In this way, in the family, the whole purpose and the individual purpose are harmonized. When this ideal form of ownership of the family, based on such love, expands to the society, nation and world, it becomes the form of ownership of the ideal society. (271-76, 1995.8.22)

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I have undergone hardships throughout my life, but I never intended to indemnify history so that I could obtain a high position with many luxuries. I gave up the blessings that I could have enjoyed. I want to suffer together with you and rise to the high position where I can be respected by the whole nation together with you. You must know that my hope is to see the day of joy when this nation is liberated. (181-66, 1988.8.28)

Original Substance of the Divine Principle

The Principle of Restoration

The Period of Preparation for the Second Coming of Christ

The Period for the Second Coming of Christ is 1517 to 1918 (400 years).  This period is divided into three sub-periods.
The first sub-period is the Period of the Reformation, which started in 1517 with the proclamation of Martin Luther.  This period ended in 1648 with the Treaty of Westphalia.
The Renaissance was an external movement to restore the original human nature.  The Reformation was an internal movement for the revival of Hebraism.
See slides 1 to 5 below.

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Christianity Had Degenerated into a Dead Body of Clergy Trailing Empty Slogans

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God’s right of ownership was completely snatched away by this fallen world that inherited the devil’s love, life and lineage. Now the time has come for us to retrieve it, to become sons and daughters who can receive God’s true love and bring this world under control. Finally, as such, we need to redeem the blood ties in the family lost by Adam, Eve, Cain and Abel. On the foundation of all nations being liberated and welcomed, the right of ownership currently belonging to the devil and the satanic world, should be returned to God, the Owner of true love, through the number one man and woman, the number one son and daughter, the beloved of God.
    All peoples in the world need to go through the True Parents’ love. Without passing through that gate, there is no way back to the original homeland in the heavenly world. The only path open before them now leads to hell. We need to trace the path back. We need to fight and triumph over nations opposing us. By so doing, the Unification Church of today has inherited the victory of the global messianic realm, passed through the national messianic realm and traced down to the tribal messianic realm. Through the tribal realm of the satanic world, we now need to enter Satan’s family and change his world. (210-42, 1990.11.30

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When you think of the words True Parents you should remember that history will be reset through True Parents. The origin through which we can build a new world will come into existence, the internal standard through which Satan can be brought into submission will be determined, and Satan’s domination of the external world will be conquered. Only then can the central point be set and the liberation of God take place. Therefore, you should be thankful for this great blessing which has been bestowed upon you, which is the grace of being able to live in the same era as True Parents and act upon their orders. (43-144, 1971.4.29)

 

Christianity

4. History of Christianity: Triumphalism, Corruption and Renewal

Teachings of Rev. Sun Myung Moon

In the Middle Ages great corruption appeared in the Roman Catholic Church. It allowed itself to be shackled by its own power and self-serving dogmas while forgetting about God’s Will to bring salvation to the world… To save the world, Christianity should take the path of self-sacrifice, but instead the church glorified itself and its elite clung tenaciously to their positions.
    Yet, God is alive, and because His desire is to save the world, He could not leave the church as it was. He had to reform it. Hence, God inspired Martin Luther to launch the Protestant Reformation. He approved when Luther came forth to confront the church and its corruption. (69:102, October 21, 1973)

Christianity, the Second Israel, had to deal with the confused situation of the Renaissance and the humanistic philosophies of the Enlightenment. Enlightenment figures like Voltaire, Rousseau and Montesquieu believed that Christianity would collapse. However, pious people from Germany advanced Christianity by raising the Pietist movement, which focused on internal, mystical experiences with God. The Pietist movement influenced the English clergyman John Wesley, who raised the Methodist movement. The Quakers contributed to the development of Christianity by elevating the value of mystical experience even further.

    At the same time, due to the widespread influence of materialism, modern people forgot about loving God, lost their reason to love other human beings, and came to value material things above all else. Nevertheless, the time is coming when God will strike down all materialistic ideologies. He will surely do so, because human beings must ultimately return to their original position before the Fall. (4:18, February 16, 1958)

When ecclesiastic love waned, when waves of capitalistic greed surged across Christian Europe, when starving masses cried out bitterly in the slums, the promise of their salvation came not from heaven but from the earth. Its name was communism. Christianity, though it professed the love of God, had degenerated into a dead body of clergy trailing empty slogans. It was then only natural that a banner of rebellion would be raised, arguing that a merciless God who would allow such suffering could not exist. Hence, modern materialism was born. Western society became a hotbed of materialism; it was the fertile soil in which communism flourished. (Exposition of the Divine Principle,Introduction)
 
The first thing the Pilgrim Fathers built was a church. They invested all their effort to build it, giving everything they had. Next they built the road to the church. For the sake of God they worked day and night. They prayed, “God, we pledge ourselves to build a place where You can dwell, surpassing anyplace in the Old World. We pledge ourselves to establish Your ideal nation, surpassing any nation in the Old World.”34 The Pilgrims suffered a great deal, but the more they suffered, the more determined they were to build God’s Kingdom, a godly society transcending what existed in Europe.
    After their church, they built a school. For they resolved to educate their children well, surpassing what they could learn at schools in Europe. Last of all, they built their homes. Yet even these they built not for themselves, but dedicated them to God. Thus they created a society where God dwelt in the church, in the school, in the family, and even in the workplace. They surely lived a God-centered way of life, entrusting everything to God…
    George Washington, Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army in the Revolutionary War, was defeated in many battles. When he faced the heartbreaking winter at Valley Forge, I am sure George Washington prayed like this: “God, You led this people from Europe and brought us to America, where there is freedom of faith. You would not wish to deliver this people back into the hands of England, to suffer under its monarchy and the yoke of state-enforced religion. Please bless this nation to become the land that You desire to build, upholding freedom of faith and laying the foundation for Your ideal world.” In his prayer, George Washington must have pledged that he would lead his nation to become the land desired by God.
    Isn’t it true that very day your Congress is convened in prayer? America is not merely the land where Americans live; it is the nation blessed by God. In this respect, America is unique. Your money is imprinted with the inscription, “In God We Trust.” Does any other nation in the world do that? Americans promote the motto, “One nation under God.” Does this motto refer only to America? Ladies and gentlemen, the Kingdom of Heaven should occupy the whole world. It was for this reason that America was born: as a nation composed of all the peoples of the world, it should be the model for one worldwide nation. Why did America establish freedom of religion where the new Protestant faiths could thrive? For what purpose did America throw off the state religions of Europe? It was not just for America’s sake, but to save the world. To save the world!
    Americans, do not think that you are prospering because you yourselves are great. God did not bless this nation so that you can enjoy an affluent life. You should remember God’s original purpose in blessing America, to use this nation as His instrument for saving the world. (69:102, October 21, 1973)
 
Christianity in the Middle Age should have embraced all people regardless of class, and integrated them based on its religious ideals. However, it failed in doing so, and instead corrupted itself by becoming politicized. As a result,
God had to strike it.
    Had the Roman Papacy not become corrupt, and had it instantiated the teaching of living for the sake of others before seeking for its own benefit, with a sense of mission that it existed for the world and humankind, it would not have fallen down. However, due to its failure, God struck Catholicism externally through the Renaissance and internally through the Protestant Reformation.
    Then the Puritans sailed across the Atlantic Ocean to the new continent of America and built a new nation based on Christian ideals. America’s liberal democratic ideology that prevails throughout the democratic world is based on an integration of Roman political ideology, Christian religious ideas and Greek philosophy.
    However, for America to fulfill its responsibility… she should give up her idea of being Number One in the world. For the people of the United States this is the most essential thing. (5:22-23, November 9, 1958)
 
 
 
 
 

They Called for the Revival of the Spirit of Early Christianity


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2 Samuel 22

37 You clear the way for me,
    and now I won’t stumble.

Isaiah 36

36 Hezekiah had been king of Judah for fourteen years when King Sennacherib of Assyria invaded the country and captured every walled city 2 except Jerusalem. The Assyrian king ordered his army commander to leave the city of Lachish and to take a large army to Jerusalem.

The commander went there and stood on the road near the cloth makers’ shops along the canal from the upper pool. 3 Three of the king’s highest officials came out of Jerusalem to meet him. One of them was Hilkiah’s son Eliakim, who was the prime minister. The other two were Shebna, assistant to the prime minister, and Joah son of Asaph, keeper of the government records.

Exposition of the Divine Principle
3 Color Edition-The Red part

Chapter 5

The Period of Preparation for the Second Advent of the Messiah

The period of preparation for the Second Advent of the Messiah was the four-hundred-year period from the Protestant Reformation in 1517 to the end of World War I in 1918. With respect to the providence of restoration, this period is divided into three periods: the period of the Reformation, the period of religious and ideological conflicts, and the period of the maturation of politics, economy and ideology.

THE PERIOD OF THE REFORMATION (1517-1648)

The 130-year period of the Reformation began in 1517, when Martin Luther raised the banner of the Protestant Reformation in Germany, and lasted until the wars of religion were settled by the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648.  When the purpose of God’s providence through medieval society was not fulfilled, the direction of providential history shifted and God worked to establish anew the foundation for the Second Advent of the Messiah through the Renaissance and the Reformation. 

In the late Middle Ages, man’s original mind was repressed, its free development blocked by the social environment of feudalism and the secularization and corruption of the Roman church.  The social environment of the late Middle Ages blocked the path through which the original nature of the people could be restored. Fettered by such circumstances, medieval Europeans were prompted by the impulses of their innermost hearts to break down their social environment to open the way for the restoration of their original nature.

Medieval Europeans were to restore their original God-given nature by first severing their ties to Satan, who had defiled the society when the papacy failed its internal responsibility to restore the foundation of faith and sank into immorality. As people pursued the recovery of the internal and external aspects of their original nature, the thought of the age branched out into two movements to recover the heritage of the past, which we distinguish in relative terms as Abel-type and Cain-type. The Cain-type movement began as a revival of Hellenism, the culture and philosophy of ancient Greece and Rome. It gave rise to the Renaissance,7 whose core value was humanism. The Abel-type movement began as a revival of the Hebraic heritage of Israel and the early Christian Church. It gave rise to the Protestant Reformation, whose core value was faith in God.

1.1 THE RENAISSANCE

 It was explained above that the Renaissance grew out of the external pursuits of the original nature. The movement to revive the ancient heritage of Hellenism caught fire. Renaissance humanism thus rose to prominence. The Renaissance came to life in fourteenth-century Italy, which was the center of the study of the classical Hellenic heritage. Though it began as a movement imitating the thought and life of ancient Greece and Rome, it soon developed into a wider movement which transformed the medieval way of life. It expanded beyond the sphere of culture to encompass every aspect of society, including politics, economic life and religion. In fact, it became the external driving force for the construction of the modern world.

1.2 THE REFORMATION

As medieval Europeans sought to realize the external aspirations of their original nature, they also began to pursue its repressed internal aspirations. They called for the revival of the spirit of early Christianity, when believers zealously lived for the Will of God, guided by the words of Jesus and the apostles.

To raise funds to build St. Peter’s Basilica, Pope Leo X began selling indulgences, which Catholic doctrine affirmed would remit the penalty for sin due in the next life. When this indulgence was proclaimed in Germany in 1517, a movement to protest this abuse ignited a fuse which exploded in the Protestant Reformation under the leadership of Martin Luther (1483-1546), a professor of biblical theology at the University of Wittenberg. The flames of the Reformation grew strong and soon spread to Switzerland under the leadership of Huldrych Zwingli (1484-1531), to France as led by John Calvin (1509- 1564), and into such nations as England and the Netherlands. The wars of religion which swirled around the Protestant movements continued for more than one hundred years until 1648, when the Treaty of Westphalia ended the Thirty Years’ War.

View slides 1 to 19 below for an illustrated presentation of the above content:

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