Pyeong Hwa Gyeong (148) Book 9. The Role of Nations in Realizing World Peace CHAPTER 2. God’s Plan Centered on the United States
2. God’s providence to restore the world to the ideal
For us to know about God’s plan, we first need to know His Will. God is an eternal, unchanging, unique and absolute Being. Therefore His Will must also be eternal, unchanging, unique and absolute.
God had a purpose and an ideal when He created human beings, and if that purpose had been achieved, the world would have become united through love; it would be a world where all humanity would live in harmony as brothers and sisters attending God as their Father, with all humankind as one great family.
In a word, our world would be united, with all people united centered on the Will of God. It would be a world where each individual’s body and mind were united, where families were united, where peoples and nations were united, where East and West were united, and where God and humankind were united.
To put it another way, the world where God’s purpose of creation is completed would be a world of unity. The task of building this unity remains extremely difficult, yet it is the most important task we face today.
Today’s reality is far removed from this ideal world, and this tells us clearly that something is wrong at a fundamental level. What would that be? Due to the Fall of the human ancestors, Adam and Eve, the Will of God could not be fulfilled.
Accordingly, the mind and body of every individual is divided, as are family and family, tribe and tribe, nation and nation, East and West, and God and humankind; we are all living in division and disharmony.
Human beings who are thus divided are in a disordered state, having even lost some of their faculties originally intended by God. This being the case, God’s purpose for the salvation of humanity is to send a doctor who can examine this dysfunctional humankind and prescribe a course of treatment, thus curing all people and restoring them to the state of health they enjoyed before they became sick.
Therefore, this providence of salvation can be said to be the providence of restoration. The person who comes as the doctor is the Messiah.
Then the question is, how does God prepare before sending the Messiah, and what does the Messiah come to do? We can clearly recognize through history that God sets up a central religion to achieve His Will, based on which He establishes a central nation of His chosen people, and then He continues to carry out His providence to save and restore the entire world through that central religion and central nation.
That central religion was none other than Judaism, and that central nation was the chosen nation of Israel. The mission of that religion and that nation was to receive the Messiah and complete the Will of salvation for the entire world.
It was the mission of that central religion and that central nation to take the lead in fulfilling God’s Will to save the entire world, even if it meant having to face difficulties and bear the cross of sacrifice.
Because He had such a clear and well-planned Will for four thousand years before sending Jesus as the Messiah, God established Judaism and prepared the people of Israel to receive him.
The providence of salvation for humankind, which is the Will of God and the will of the people, was supposed to have been completed through the Messiah, Jesus, leading to the creation of a united, ideal world.
|