Eschatology and Human History
Eschatology and Human History
- We dwell in ignorance of history, uncertain about its origin, the direction in which it is heading, and its final destination.
- Hence, we are ignorant about the Last Days of human history.
- To address this issue, we should first understand such fundamental matters as:
- The purpose of God’s creation.
- The meaning of the human Fall.
- And the goal of the providence of restoration.
The Completion of God’s Purpose of Creation and the Human Fall
- A person who has emotional sensitivity to the Heart of God, intuition and reason to comprehend His Will, and the requisite abilities to practice it has perfected his individual character.
- Had Adam and Eve reached perfection, being thereafter insusceptible to sin, they would have borne good children and founded a sinless family and society in complete concordance with God’s blessings.
- They would have founded the Kingdom of Heaven, which consists of one great family with the same parents.
- People of perfected character should advance science, harness the natural world, and create an extremely pleasant social and living environment.
- This will be the Kingdom of Heaven on earth.
- God’s primary purpose of creation is to build the Kingdom of Heaven first on earth.
- Due to the Fall, human beings could not become temples of God; instead, they united with Satan and became his dwelling places.
- They failed to cultivate the divine nature; instead, they acquired an evil nature.
- People with evil nature have propagated evil through their children, constituting evil families, evil societies and an evil world.
- This is the hell on earth in which we have been living.
- We have established the sovereignty of Satan.
God’s Work of Salvation
- God intended to create a world of goodness and experience from it the utmost joy.
- Yet due to the human Fall, the world came to be filled with sin and sorrow.
- If this sinful world were to continue forever in its present state, then God would be an impotent and ineffectual God who failed in His creation.
- Therefore, God will save this sinful world, by all means.
- To save a person suffering under the yoke of sin means to restore him to his original, sinless state.
- God’s work of salvation is the providence of restoration.
- What is the goal of the providence of restoration?
- It is the establishment of the Kingdom of Heaven, which in its totality is God’s good object partner and the fulfillment of His purpose of creation.
- Human history can be seen as the history of the providence through which God has been trying to save fallen people and work through them to restore the original, good world.
The Last Days
- The Last Days is the time when the evil world under satanic sovereignty is transformed into the ideal world under God’s sovereignty.
- Hell on earth will be transformed into the Kingdom of Heaven on earth.
The Last Days and the Present Days
- We can deduce that today is in fact the Last Days by examining the various circumstances of the present age.
- We can recognize in these circumstances the restoration of the three great blessings, which God has purposed in His providence of restoration.
- The first blessing God gave to Adam and Eve was perfection of individual character.
- We see four signs of the restoration of the first blessing.
- First, we can observe that the spirituality of fallen people is being restored.
- A second sign that the first blessing is being restored in the present era can be seen in the historical trend toward the recovery of the freedom of the original mind.
- A third sign of the renewal of the first blessing is the restoration of true human value.
- A fourth sign that the first blessing is being renewed in the present age is the restoration of original, true love in fallen people.
- From this we can see that the present time is the eve of the Last Days, when we can restore God’s first blessing and reach perfection of individual character.
- God’s second blessing was for Adam and Eve to attain True Parenthood and bear and raise good children, forming a family, society and world where goodness reigns.
- All races and peoples are increasingly coming to stand side by side as brothers and sisters under the love and guidance of Jesus Christ, thereby restoring the second blessing of God.
- In the present era, the world has been coalescing into one cultural sphere based on Christian ideals.
- At present, our world is divided into two: the democratic world, which seeks to create societies on God’s side, and the communist world, which has been establishing regimes on Satan’s side.
- This process of separation has culminated in the establishment of two opposing powers on the global level. These two sovereignties, with contrary purposes, can by no means peacefully coexist.
- Today we are at the point of intersection, when these two worlds are confronting each other in the final battle. This is yet more evidence that the present era is the Last Days.
- The third blessing means gaining dominion over the natural world.
- Internal dominion denotes dominion of the heart. A person who reaches perfection and comes fully to resonate with God in heart will experience God’s Heart as his own reality.
- God’s providence of restoration through religion, philosophy, ethics and so forth, has gradually elevated the spirituality of fallen people toward God.
- In the modern world, there is evidence that people are regaining the worthiness to govern the creation through heart.
- Modern people have built an extremely comfortable and pleasant living environment through the economic progress that has accompanied scientific development.
- Fallen people have thus been restoring their dominion over the universe, advancing toward the re-establishment of God’s third blessing. Observing this, we are assured that the present era is the Last Days.
The Last Days, the New Truth and Our Attitude
- Fallen people have been overcoming their internal ignorance by enlightening their spirituality and intellect
- with “spirit and truth” through religion.
- “Truth” may be divided into two types: internal truth as taught by religion, which helps people overcome internal ignorance,
- and external truth as obtained through science, which helps people overcome external ignorance.
- Accordingly, we can discern two aspects within the intellect: the internal intellect, awakened by internal truth, and the external intellect, awakened by external truth.
- Religions develop as the internal intellect pursues internal truth, while science advances as the external intellect pursues external truth.
- God assists ignorant, fallen people to elevate their spirituality and enlighten their intellect through spirit and truth. By these means, God conducts His providence to restore people to the original state before the Fall.
- Spirit and truth are unique, eternal and unchanging.
- However, the degree and scope of their teaching and the means of their expression will vary from one age to another,
- as they restore humankind from a state of utter ignorance.
- For modern, intellectual people to be enlightened in the truth, there must appear another textbook of higher and richer content, with a more scientific method of expression.
- We call this the new truth.
- A new dispensation begins when the old dispensation is about to end. Accordingly, the beginning of the new overlaps the conclusion of the old.
- Those who live in this period suffer internally from anxiety, fear and confusion due to the absence of a guiding ideology or philosophy.
- They suffer externally from strife and battles fought with fearsome weapons.
- The providence of the new age does not begin on the ashes of the old age.
- On the contrary, the new age sprouts and grows amidst the final phases of the old age and comes into conflict with that age.
- Jesus, for example, who inaugurated the New Testament Age, came at the close of the Old Testament Age in such a way as to bewilder the faithful adherents of the Mosaic Law.
- He was ostracized by the Jewish people and eventually crucified.
- We who are alive today are living in the Last Days.
- We should cultivate a humble heart and make the utmost effort to receive divine inspiration through prayer.
- We should not be strongly attached to conventional concepts, but rather should direct ourselves to be receptive to the spirit,
- in order that we may find the new truth which can guide us to the providence of the new age.