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| Lecture 16 : [Resurrection 2] How does God carry out his Providence of Resurrection? | |
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| Date created : 2014-12-18/ Views : 1017 | |
Resurrection 2
Chapter 16 How does God carry out his Providence of Resurrection?
Welcome back to our series on the Unification Principle. I’m your host, Dr. Tyler Hendricks.
In our last session, we discussed how believers thought that resurrection means the saints who were dead would come back to physical life. But we saw that the Bible actually teaches that physical death is natural, and that resurrection means to separate from Satan’s realm, be reborn as God’s child and develop your spirit through good spiritual practices. Thus, resurrection is a process.
But what about those who departed to spirit world already? Is there a process of rebirth and resurrection for them? And what does that have to do with life on earth for us? This session unpacks these important questions.
According to the principle of creation, the growth of the spirit is only possible through living a good life on earth, physically. The growth of spirit requires the give and receive action of life elements from God and vitality elements from the physical body.
The spirit, like everything, goes through 3 stages of growth—formation, growth and perfection, to reach full maturity. In any era, human beings can revive and resurrect themselves to some spiritual level according to the level of God’s words and their own practice. Whatever spiritual form a person reaches on this earth is where they will go and live as a spirit person in the spirit world after they shed their physical body.God has been carrying out the process of resurrection through the history of the Bible. Let’s take a look.
For generations after the Fall, there was no spiritual growth, no resurrection, no word of God, no life elements. We call this the era to lay the foundation for resurrection.
From the time of Abraham, God began the providence of resurrection, based on making offerings and, after Moses, following the Law. This is the era of foundation stage resurrection, and people were justified to stand before God based on their works. They became “form spirits” and created the form-spirit stage of the spirit world after they died.
During the New Testament humans can raise themselves to be righteous by having faith in the Gospel and fulfilling their portion of responsibility. Therefore this era is also called the age of attendance by faith. (please move position)
This the new testament age. Thus in this era, humans need to have faith in new words of the new testament age and accept Jesus and fulfill their portion of responsibility to attain righteousness through faith in Jesus, and achieve growth stage resurrection.
Human beings will attain spiritual salvation and this will enable the spiritual body to become a life spirit. According to the principle of creation, the place where humans who have attained the life spirit level live in paradise, as Jesus told the thief who accepted him on the cross—this day, you will be with me in paradise.
When Jesus returns as the Lord of the Second Advent, he will bring salvation that is both spiritual AND physical. Those who attend him will gain admission to the kingdom of heaven which is at hand, so this is the age of justification by attendance, of living one’s life completely in God’s hands, and God will be able through the Lord and his Bride to free us from the original sin and make us into divine spirits. We become divine spirits. Of course, this requires our great effort and love, which is our responsibility. We gain the guidance to do so through attending the Lord and His Bride. (please move position)
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Now, what about those spirits who went to the spirit world without having reached the divine spirit level? Those who passed away without attaining completion are required to descend to the earth and receive help from people on earth to fulfill their portion of responsibility and attain resurrection in concert with that person’s physical body. This resurrection is like the second coming of every spirit person who ever lived.
Form-stage spirits of the Old Testament age, who lived a life of faith and accepted and worshipped God, returned to the earth after the coming of Jesus in order to attain their goal with the help of the believers living on earth. Thereby, they were able to resurrect into a life spirit.
The returning spirits and the believers on earth who cooperate with them in the “returning resurrection” process benefit equally. Therefore Matt 18:18 says, whatever you bind here on earth shall bind you in heaven and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.
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The spirits in paradise who believed in Jesus in the new testament era will return to the believers at the second coming of the messiah. The spirits will assist them to attain divine spirit love, and become divine spirits themselves. When these believers shed their bodies and enter the kingdom of heaven, the spirits that assisted them to attain restoration will join them. In this manner, the providence of resurrection will take place and spirits on different levels will grow to maturity in God’s love.
This tells us that someday, Christianity will become one family under God, and end its internal divisions. At the second advent, the spirits in paradise will gather around Jesus and return to Christian believers on earth and cooperate with them.
Depending on each individual’s faith, personality and the good deeds of their ancestors, Christian followers living on the earth will harmonize with the spirits in paradise, who will inspire them to break down barriers on earth, after which they will be broken down in spirit world as well, and this will be a virtuous cycle. Christianity will ultimately unite as one. (please move position)
The phenomena where the faithful receive revelation through voices, or see visions, or heal people, is made possible by spirits who return and cooperate. This is explained in Epistle of Jude 1:14-16, which states that in the last days the lord comes with holy myriads.
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The spirits of those who did not believe in Christianity and passed away and thus did not grow to the level of life spirit will also return for resurrection.
Those who believed in other religions and passed away will require different time period depending on their spiritual growth level to return for resurrection.
These people will return among those people who believe their religion.
They will cooperate with people of faith and contribute to further God’s providence of restoration and finally attain similar benefits.
The savior who will arrive on the foundation of Christianity is the Maitreya that the Buddhists long for, the True man the Confucianists wait for, and Mahdi awaited by Shi-ite Muslims. The central figure whose reappearance many religious groups are expecting to witness is actually the same person.
Since all denominations of Christianity and all other religions will ultimately cooperate to attain God’s providence of restoration centering on the savior, not just Christians but all other religions will ultimately come together to move forward towards harmony and unity.
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How will non-believers, the people who did not live a life of faith while on earth, attain resurrection?
The spirits of conscientious people will reincarnate to people of good conscience on earth and cooperate in fulfilling God’s providence of restoration with their help and reap mutual benefits.
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But what about outright evil people? God designed what we call indemnity conditions to rid human beings of our sin. We can attain the benefit of resurrection when we cleanse our sin by fulfilling what we call conditions, or actions, of indemnity—which means basically reversing or correcting a sin or selfish action. (please move position)
According to Unification Principle, a sin is any action or thought that reciprocates with Satan, with selfishness. People who go to spirit world with a lot of that accumulated feel terrible and tormented with regret, fear, anger and resentment, and we all have some of that. How can anyone resurrect through that? Again, nothing happens without finding a partner on earth.
So let’s talk about evil spirits. Evil people in spirit world are object partners to Satan, and their object partners are the spirits of evil people on earth. We on earth help them carry out their evil activities through our physical bodies, whether it be selfish living, exploitation of others or outright criminality.
So the work of satan can be traced to evil spirits that manifest through physical activities of people living on earth.
These evil spirits will attain complete resurrection when their counterparts on earth accept the result of their activity as indemnity to cleanse their sin and are grateful for the opportunity. We resist the impulse to do evil. We go through the same temptations, victimization, or troubles that caused the spirit’s evil action, and turn it around by overcoming the temptation or enduring the troubles. The evil spirit gives a lot of problems to the person on earth, but if we follow the principle, live for others and have unchanging faith with a grateful heart, eventually the evil spirit will change. This takes tremendous personal strength, so we need to support each other, through family ties and friendships, prayer and spiritual practices to get through times of personal temptations and troubles.
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Eventually, all spirits will resurrect through their own conscience given by God, and find their way to God’s love, because God is our Parents, who searches to find every lost sheep and them to the green pastures and still waters, and restores our souls.
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Now, you might ask, to what extent is this all guaranteed by God’s predestination? Does God plan everything? Or is everything up to me… which means, it might not work out, and nothing is guaranteed? This is the topic of predestination, and we’ll talk about it in the next session.
Thank you so much for listening.
