Special to CosmicTribune.com, June 27, 2023

Following is the second in a series of excerpts from a new book, What I Saw at the Second Coming: The Big Story by R.J. Morton. Earlier: Part I

The following excerpt is from Chapter 13: ‘Christ on Earth: A Newsworthy Event?’

What would people think of God living on Earth with Adam and Eve?

In the hyper-secular society of the early 21st century, such is regarded as a myth relegated to the Genesis account of the Garden of Eden in the Bible. Even believers do not necessarily endorse an earthly bond between God and humanity.

The neo-Marxist “woke” revolution of the current era is rooted in erasing the very assumptions this concept is rooted in.

The separation or divorce between the human family and its Creator is a given. In polite society, one does not even speak of God or of Satan as actual beings with a stake in life on Earth.

From the perspective of believers, the coming of Jesus was a one-time event that ended badly after only 33 years. But his sacrifice and resurrection are regarded by Christians as the basis for eternal salvation albeit one that excludes planet Earth.

We are “saved” in Heaven after death but not on Earth.

The “Second Coming” is subject to a variety of interpretations most of which do not include restoring the Garden of Eden ideal on this planet even were humanity to survive the “last days”.

The 2,100 years after Christ in Christian history were marked by the canonization of the Holy Bible which included the Gospels on the short life of Jesus and epistles concerning the early church in the first century A.D. The Bible, other than its vivid and timeless prophecies, is silent on the momentous events more than a hundred years after the earthly life of Jesus as Christianity spread from the early churches described in the New Testament to all corners of the World.

Were the series of wars involving Jerusalem and the expansion of the new faith to Rome and then to Europe and on to America part of Divine Providence?

Yes, according to Sun Myung Moon’s Divine Principle which includes chapters on Providential Time Identity”.

Charts with time periods of 120, 40 and 21 demonstrate parallels between the periods from Adam to Abraham’s family, the Israelites’ slavery and exodus as the chosen lineage culminating in the birth of Jesus, and finally the 2,000 years through Augustine, Charlemagne, Martin Luther, the World Wars and the Second Coming. Thus, God’s providence of restoring His lost children took place with the same mathematical precision with which He created the universe, according to the Divine Principle.

In his worldwide ministry, Sun Myung Moon presented God, the Heavenly Father as aspiring to be the True Love partner of all people, His children. Because of the Fall and the violence done to God’s Love and ideal, the Messiah would be necessary to start the lengthy process of restoring the lost connection, lifeline and lineage. But God’s Providence writ large had always been delayed, time and again, by the failure of human responsibility necessitating the return of Christ on Earth.

As for the Second Coming, what would precede this apocalyptic event and what would it look like?

During the Christian era, missionaries delivered the Gospel throughout the world including the Far East. Thus, the stage was set, according to Sun Myung Moon.

That epochal event would occur naturally he said, like the first, beginning with the birth of a child.

For teaching this heresy, Sun Myung Moon was imprisoned and tortured in both North and South Korea where Christianity had emerged as the dominant cultural force in the 1940s and 1950s. But he continued to teach and preach to whomever would listen, always advising listeners to pray about what they had heard. A detailed and fascinating chronicle of his life-and-death experiences in war-torn Korea where competing spirit-filled churches were preparing for the Messiah was written exclusively by Seoul-based journalist Michael Breen (Sun Myung Moon, The Early Years, 1920-53). Breen relied solely on interviews with scores of sources who had come into contact with the young teacher.

He did not cite church sources or literature.

Sun Myung Moon taught that the goal of the Second Messiah, like the first, would be to become “True Parents”, who would be the origin of a new lineage on Earth, the Tree of Life, to restore the position of Adam and through him God’s sovereignty on Earth.

This would be the fulfillment of Jesus’ prayer, he taught:

“Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven.”

That phrase from the “Lord’s Prayer” implies the obvious: The physical world is not currently God’s home as born out in II Corinthians 4:4: “In their case, the god of this world has blinded the minds of those who do not believe to keep them from seeing the light of the glorious gospel of the Messiah, who is the image of God.”

As Sun Myung Moon elaborated:

In Buddhism and Christian thought, they think that God is omniscient and omnipotent and free to take life and give life and can pass judgment by giving punishments and blessings. They could never be so wrong. In this light, amongst the religions, the Unification Church embraces teachings of a higher dimension. Without doubt, it is a religion that labors to find solutions. …

Other than the Unification Church, there has never been a religion that is determined to liberate God.

. . . . Earlier: Part I

What I Saw at the Second Coming: The Big Story, Part I

  Part II: What I saw at the Second Coming: The big story