Chapter
the Consummation of human history
Section
I
Consummation of human history
Man has lived through all the centuries without knowing in what manner
human history started and where its goal lies. We remain ignorant of the
problems concerning the consummation of human history.
Many
Christians believe literally what is written in the Bible, in which it is
stated that in the Last Days the heavens will be kindled and dissolved and the
elements will melt with fire (II Peter 3:12); that the sun will be darkened and
the moon will not give its light and the stars will fall from heaven (Matt.
24:29); and that with the archangel's call and with the sound of the trumpet of
God, the dead in Christ will rise first, and those who are alive and remain
shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air
(I Thess. 4:16-17).
It
is one of the most important problems for Christians to decide whether
everything will be realized literally, as the Bible says, or whether it has
been stated in symbolic terms, as has proven to be the case in many parts of
the Bible. In order to solve this problem, we should first answer certain
questions about God's purpose for creating all things, the significance of the
human fall, and the purpose of the providence of salvation.
The fulfillment of God's Purpose of Creation and the
Fall of Man
1. The Fulfillment of God's Purpose of Creation
As
has been discussed in the "Principle of Creation", God's purpose in
creating man was to feel joy upon seeing His goal realized. Therefore, the
purpose of man's life is to return joy to God. In what manner, then, can man
return joy to God and manifest perfectly the original value of his existence?
All
creation was created to be the object of God's joy. However, man, as has been
clarified in the "Principle of Creation", was created to be the
substantial object to God, returning joy to Him through the action of his own
free will. Therefore, man cannot become the object of God's joy unless he knows
God's will and lives according to it by his own effort. Consequently, man was
created in such a way that he could know God's will and live by it forever,
experiencing God's heart-and-zeal as his own. We may call this status of man
the "perfection of individuality". Adam, Eve, and many prophets and
saints have been able to communicate with God directly because man was created
to enjoy such capabilities.
The
relationship between God and a man of perfected individuality can be compared
to that between our mind and body. Our body, as the temple of our mind, obeys
the command of our mind and acts upon it. Since God abides in the mind of a man
of perfected individuality, such a man will become God's temple and live
according to God's will. A man of perfected individuality becomes one body in
unity with God, just as our mind does with our body. Therefore, I Corinthians 3:16
says, "Do you not know that you are God's temple and that God's spirit
dwells in you?" and John 14:20 says, "In that day you will know that
I am in my Father and you in me, and I in you.". The man who has attained
one body with God, having His spirit dwell in him by perfecting his
individuality and thus forming a temple of God, comes to have deity and can by
no means commit sin; naturally, he cannot fall. A man of perfected
individuality is a man of perfect goodness.
If a
man of perfect goodness should fall, this would mean that goodness itself has
the potentiality of ruin. This is impossible. Moreover, if a man created by the
omnipotent God should fall after his perfection, we would have to deny God's
omnipotence. Therefore, a man of perfected individuality could never fall,
because, being the object of joy to God, who is the eternal subject of
absoluteness, man should likewise possess absoluteness and perpetuity.
If
Adam and Eve of perfected individuality, incapable of sin, had established a
home and society without sin by multiplying children of goodness according to
God's blessing (Gen. 1:28), this would have been the Kingdom of Heaven, which
would have been realized as a huge family centered on the same parents. The
Kingdom of Heaven is in the form of a man of perfected individuality. Just as
the members of a man's body work in a horizontal relationship with one another
according to the vertical command of the brain, so society should be organized
so that men may live in a horizontal relationship with one another according to
the vertical command of God. In such a society, people could not perform any
act, which would hurt their neighbors, because the whole society would
experience the same feeling toward those in trouble as God would feel in His
grief over them.
Regardless
of how pure and sinless the men of this society might be, if they had to live
in an undeveloped civilization similar to that of primitive people, this would
not be the kind of Kingdom of Heaven both God and man have long awaited. Since God
blessed man to be the dominator of all things (Gen. 1:28), men of perfected
individuality should have subdued the natural world through highly developed
science, and established an extremely pleasant social environment on earth.
This would be the place where the ideal of creation would be realized. It would
be nothing other than the Kingdom of Heaven on earth.
When
perfected man, after having lived in the Kingdom of Heaven on earth, goes to
the spirit world, the Kingdom of Heaven will be realized in the spirit world.
Therefore, God's purpose of creation is to establish the Kingdom of Heaven on
earth.
As
stated in the "Principle of Creation", man fell while he was in his
immaturity and still in the period of growth. Questions as to why the growth
period was necessary for man and why the first human ancestors fell during
their immaturity were answered in that chapter.
Man,
due to his fall, could not become the temple of God; instead, he became the
dwelling place of Satan and became one body with him. Naturally, man came to
have an evil nature in place of deity. So it has come about that men of evil
nature have established evil homes, societies, and an evil world, by
multiplying children of evil. This is the Hell on earth in which fallen men
have been living. Men in Hell have not been able to establish good horizontal
relationships with each other because their vertical relationship with God was
cut off. Accordingly, they came to indulge themselves in acts which injure
their neighbors, because they could not experience the pains and troubles of
their neighbors as their own.
Men
who live in Hell on earth transmigrate into Hell in the spirit world after they
leave their physical bodies. In this manner, man established the world of
Satan's sovereignty instead of the world of God's sovereignty. Thus we call
Satan the "ruler of this world" (John 12:31) or the "god of this
world" (II Cor. 4:4).
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