Religion vs Material - Clarifying our education

Every man started his existence in God. We know that human history has existed for hundreds of thousands of years1.

‘God has been crying for His son and daughter for tens of thousands of years, hundreds of thousands of years, millions of years2.’

‘There’s no Perfection in Ignorance3’

Nick Bikkal 1 SMM - 5/26/74 ‘The Whole and myself’.

2 SMM - 1/1/89 God’s Day Speech.

3 11/2/19- True Mother live in her speech. Several speeches.

A little self introduction In the late 1970s my mind went through a transformation. My thinking process changed. Over about two years I noticed that my thinking process shifted from the head to the heart. It was a clear battle within. Rather than fight it, I cherished the change, and the shift that was taking place inside me. I attribute this change in part to a calling I had earlier received in my younger life, during my teenage years.

I’m not perfect. I have much to accomplish yet to reach a standard anywhere near where our Heavenly Parents would like me to be. Nevertheless, I’ve been pushed to write about topics seldom touched on by Unification Movement leadership, in this case, the clear distinction between the Spirit World and the Physical World.

There are many people not spiritually, much less religiously inclined in our materialistic society. How do we reach out to them? First, we need to take a quick look at our own belief system and what we understand. Understanding both religion and the real world clearly is essential if we are to create God’s world.

Please read this with Heavenly Parents in mind.

A study of O-D-U separation Over the years our True Parents have given what at first glance seemed confusing or conflicting education.

In the Unification Movement among many, we study two core texts, the Divine Principle and the Unification Thought. Each is meant to teach us different aspects of life. The Divine Principle is the conclusion of religion, which includes the Bible and other Holy Texts. The Unification Thought is a text guiding us post-restoration in the building of Cheon Il Guk, the Kingdom of God. This is how I clarify within myself the application of each textbook. I’m sure others could elaborate.

To give witness to our Heavenly Parents’ love to people who are not inclined to believe in religion or are not spiritually inclined, requires us first to clarify our understanding of two worlds, the invisible world and the substantial world, and then unite them, the Origin - Division - Union process.

Much like Abraham had to purify the offering of his son by symbolically cutting him in half, we must clearly separate religion from science, keeping religion in the subject role in our minds.

An example of how the two Unificationist texts differ is the view of the Fall. The first clear difference is the actors involved. In the Divine Principle, following the Bible, we read of the process of the Fall consisting of a God-created angel seducing Eve who then seduced Adam.

Without getting cynical nor bashing religion, I must say that this makes for good religion but poor science. While saying this I will add that religion is all important and fundamental in our life, like it or not, want it or not. Einstein said science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.

Heavenly Father’s sorrow goes back not a mere 6,000 biblical years but even millions of years, as Father’s earlier quote mentions.

The Unification Thought on the other hand does not mention the angel even once, but does get into the Fall.

In a previous paper I gave clear evidence that the angel is not a God creation, but a human anthropomorphism that evolved long before even the Israelite culture came into existence. Mithraism then Zoroastrianism, which preceded Israel, worshiped their created angels long before the Israelis did. They were not God inspired.

The Middle Eastern cultures are the root of both the angel belief as well as the root of belief in the pantheon of gods that existed in that part of the world, and which later spread throughout Europe, preceding in time Heavenly Father’s Israelites and then Christian Bible. Indeed, moving away from the Middle East we see no gods in the Middle Eastern sense.

However, beyond the cultural spheres of the Middle East we see something more fantastic, more incredible, far more difficult to believe, much less understandable.

Cultures around the world have many traditions, tribal or racial lore going back in time, telling of gods or ancestors coming from far distant stars. From the far corners of the earth peoples tell very similar stories. They tell of giants, androgynes, very intelligent beings, advanced civilizations, etc. Furthermore, if we look at ancient megaliths around the globe from yesteryear we see similar styles of architecture. Was there once a global culture?

Engineers and geologists today agree that these structures could not possibly have been built with technology existing only a few thousand years ago. Symmetry, precision instrument cuttings, and other evidence point to missing pieces of our history puzzle; pieces hidden in our amnesiac subconscious.

As long as there’s denial of our history and roots, suppression of knowledge and collected evidence, which takes the form of lies and deception, we’re dealing with a dysfunctional application of science with an ulterior motive. 4

We are forced to look inside ourselves to decide whether to respect what our ancestors’ legacy have left us, our patrimony, etc, or follow what cold science dictates is correct. We have a theory, let’s fit the pieces into it, seems to be the modus operandi. We have seen the world of Caesar consciously throughout history steer away from God’s course of restoring our heart and God’s sole place inside mankind’s hearts. During these last days we are to bring to God’s altar all of history, using the best of sciences’s tools. The sciences under True Parents are making the offerings because all our combined ancestors participated in creating who we are today, and True Parents are the offering on behalf of us all; If not explicitly, at least symbolically we need to include all the world’s peoples from throughout history..representatives from the hundreds of thousands or even the millions of years that True Parents mentioned. We are their blood. They have but us to represent them.

Why is religion important? A question I was asked once was whether I believed the Bible is the inspired word of God.

How do I answer this question without bashing religion or being cynical? Clearly our True Parents based their life work on religion, even though Father said he didn’t like religion4. It gave him many problems, such as Christians expecting the messiah to come on the clouds. For this True Parents went through an otherwise unnecessarily miserable course. Jesus also unnecessarily went the course of crucifixion.

When Jesus was crucified, Father said, a curtain came down between religion and the physical world5. Deeper myths, symbolism and figures of speech entered our beliefs. This became another root for wars and divisions within and among religions and the established churches. Religion lost its compass. 4 See ‘Missing True Parents Words’ below. 5 Divine Principle 1996. Pg 246.

Important about religion is not if it’s God’s inspired word or not, but that people believe regardless of content; warts and all notwithstanding. That is faith. The difference between religion and myth is in whether God works to restore man’s heart and minds. Myths don’t have such intentions. With this in mind we see that it’s necessary for truth to be clearly expressed.

Sadly, it is this blind and uneducated belief that has given Heavenly Parent a lot of heart aches. Heavenly Father was going to offer True Parents the best foundation He could upon their arrival. So He did. Who was ready? Literally no one believed, especially not the prepared, chosen people. In the end this was also Jesus’s fate.

The Bible was created by ancients’ personal interpretation of reality. This was how the Bible stories and concepts started. Are the Bible stories true? Does it matter? God has used them for thousands of years with the intent of redirecting peoples’ hearts toward Him. True Parents have clarified the basic truths, but sadly they couldn’t speak everything.

Roots of the Bible Interestingly, the Bible has strong Sumerian and Mesopotamian roots. These ancient stories tell of strange events; happenings that today we’d consider pure fantasy or fiction. However, in ancient days there were few literate people. Their writings were strictly controlled by the powers that be. A leader often had self aggrandizement in the back of his mind; he / she wanted to go down in history, and be remembered as a great leader, even god. This invariably took priority over simple fantastic story telling. The stories were not fantasy. They told of histories before their time, retold in those days’ languages. Through these writings these leaders sought the favors of the gods they worshipped.

These stories had probable real bases long before they were finally put down on clay tablets, papyrus or whatever. Much history until recently has still been passed down orally. We can’t reject them just because they don’t fit in a 21st century cultural mold. Today’s rejectors of old oral traditions give themselves and their skills 6

much self importance. What systematic logic is money buying today? Today, studying from the view of God’s childrens’ legacy, do we ignore stories of man of old because we have little evidence displayed in our museums to support their claim, nor because they do not fit our modern day theories, or do we dignify those who came before us, receiving with an open mind the heritage they were giving us? A place must be kept open for them. Ancient history is screaming to tell its story.

Bible from myth? God works with results6, the Principle states. It doesn’t matter that what we study or say or believe in is true or correct, as strange as this may sound. To Heavenly Father’s great regret, mankind even today in the 21st century still believes in many strange things. However, from whatever level an individual is at, Heavenly Father works with him / her budding heart, mindless of whether the person has love and passion for God, for spirits, for nature, or whatever. God works with all people, including people who worship angels and gods of all kinds. Our Heavenly Parent respects individual thoughts and beliefs; it goes under the category of creativity. We’re His children. However, Heavenly Father is sad, and as True Parents have often said, very lonely, and the Bible adds that He’s jealous.

There’s something that since my early Divine Principle days has grabbed my interest. As I said before, I’m not religious, I don’t accept things blindly. How did the early Bible scholars and writers put together stories that contain Principles of restoration without consciously knowing of restoration? Did True Parents formulate principles they intuitively saw were there, though not explicit? Would True Parents have discovered other Principles had they seen the Bible contain different stories? Does the Bible contain wisdom that ancients passed down? Did the ideas of restoration preexist Abraham or Noah?

6 DP pg 233 twice in the second paragraph.

Myths & prehistory Do Sumerian and Mesopotamian stories tell of local cultural myths? Do they tell of true events? Do other world cultures also tell of real long ago not center stage histories? Happily, we see evidence emerging today that hint that this could be so; long hidden ancestral cultural evidence is resurfacing, awakening our amnesiac memories. We’ve mentioned before, there’s an agenda hiding these truths. We can today only speculate what and why.

Universal Science of spirituality and material science A hybrid supra culture is budding. The world of pure science in academia has reached its limit. There’s also a deep understanding that religion isn’t / can’t fulfill its role to guide science. A veil still divides the two worlds. We need a new paradigm, the Heavenly Parents Holy Community.

Missing True Parents words Below is a question I asked and the answer I received from Gary Fleischer, webmaster of tparents.org; posted with his permission.

I have a question. How much do (True Parents) speeches get edited / censured? I clearly remember a speech which I thought was on or about 10/4/76 after the victory of the Washington Monument rally when Father asked American members if we were going to continue following the Japanese leadership. The Americans in unison shouted back a resounding ‘yes’ to which Father screamed back ‘no’. He wanted competition. I cannot find that in any speech around that date. Do you know when that could’ve taken place or where I’d find something like that? We have a large movement where leaders expect obedience & members expect leadership; no individuality. It’s quite frustrating.

All of them are edited.

First, since all are in English, the translator has edited them.

Second, headquarters has always edited Father’s words that encourages members not to follow the church hierarchy.

Third, since the persecution of our church in the 1970s church lawyers review all speeches for things that might be racist or illegal.

Fourth, local leaders often edit Father’s words because of the situation in their nation. (Japanese and English translations of the Holy Books vary widely in translation. Things that might be offensive to Westerners are reworded or removed in the English versions.) Americans do not receive memos from Korean HQ because our leadership thinks that they will upset us.)

The situation is the same as the Bible. I find that the English versions of the Old Testament leave out a lot of things that the Hebrew Bible says. I don’t read Greek, but I understand that it is also true of the New Testament. The solution of Unificationists is to learn Korean.

Father had often repeated that members should listen to him and not listen to our leaders. The future of our movement is not in the hands of any leadership after True Mother’s Seonghwa; it is up to us. If Satan attacks through regionalism and levels of protectionism, there’s only us, the membership to blame. The future of Cheon Il Guk is in our hands, not in those of leadership.

Unless a person has known that something had been said by True Parents, they would not know to look for it; possibly they would not even know that certain words had been spoken. Learn Korean to find these words in the original volumes.

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Angel ➞Satan + personification, anthropomorphism of our minds.

Between the Fall and prehumans? What is the evidence brightness left man? What did brightness consist of? Could it be measured?