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Beliefs

Reverend Moon's teaching is called the Divine Principle. According to the Church, "The Principle is the result of divine inspiration, prayer, and the study of religious scriptures and of life itself. Many tears and much intense suffering were part of the price of gaining this profound understanding."
(Sounds like Gnosticism in a sense)

The Divine Principle is based on observations of the creation in order to understand the Creator. Moon observes that everything in nature comes in pairs: male and female, positive and negative charges, arteries and veins, and so on.

This duality of Sung Sang (causal and masculine) and Hyung Sang (resultant and feminine) must come from God because God is the creator of all. God's nature is thus characterized by equal masculine and feminine aspects joined together in perfect harmony. In addition, because humans value love and harmony we can conclude that "Heart" is the essence of God's being.

Heart is the impulse to love and seek an object to love. God feels joy when He can give and receive love with His beloved. God loves each one of us individually, and rejoices when we return His love and multiply it by loving others.

In addition to this inner nature of duality and love, God has an outer nature that Moon calls the Universal Prime Energy. This is what creates, develops and sustains the cosmos.

The purpose of creation and the purpose of life is to experience the joy of love. "In His original ideal, God wanted everyone to be perfected in love, able to give true and unconditional love to every human being and to the creation." This was to happen by Adam and Eve's free will in a three-step process called the "Three Blessings":

Becoming perfect, which means to have God's character and be in a "Four Position Foundation" consisting of God, the perfected individual, and the individual's mind and body.
Have an ideal marriage, in which a Four Position Foundation is formed among God, the man, the woman, and their children. This marriage produces perfect and sinless children.
Have dominion over all of creation, creating a Four Position Foundation among God, man, things, and a dominion of love.
After the third blessing, the Kingdom of Heaven would be established on earth. But Adam and Eve fell short and failed to realize God's purpose. Specifically, while still working towards the first blessing, Eve was sexually seduced by Lucifer. This caused the spiritual fall. Then, feeling ashamed, Adam and Eve consummated their marriage. This was the physical fall because it was not supposed to happen until they had perfected themselves.

Ever since, selfish love has dominated human existence.

Instead of multiplying goodness and love through their descendants, they multiplied selfishness and corruption. As a result, we have never seen "true parents" who could raise sinless children and create a sinless lineage. Every person has been deprived of true parents, parents who perfectly embody God's love.
This state of affairs causes suffering in God, as parents do when they see their children suffer. God has continually sought to restore his original plan for mankind, which must be done by fulfilling the three blessings. In other words, someone must attain perfection, marry, raise a sinless family, and propagate this perfection throughout the earth until the Kingdom of Heaven is established on Earth.

However, before the blessings can be fulfilled, there must be a restoration of the Foundation of Faith and the Foundation of Substance, which were destroyed by the fall. (These are referred to as indemnity conditions and together form the Foundation for the Messiah.) The Foundation of Faith was broken by Adam and Eve's lack of complete faith in God, and must be restored by someone having perfect faith. The Foundation of Substance was destroyed when the role of man and angel was reversed in Satan's triumph. It can be restored when someone in the position of the archangel Lucifer humbles himself before someone in the position of Adam.

God has frequently offered his assistance in accomplishing this and will eventually succeed in his purposes, but has been continually thwarted. God's first attempt was to separate Adam's good and evil natures into his two sons, Cain and Abel. If Cain had submitted to Abel, this would have restored the Foundation of Substtance. But Cain killed Abel. Failed attempts were also made with Noah, Abraham, and Moses, who restored the Foundation of Faith but not the Foundation of Substance.

It was John the Baptist who finally succeeded in preparing the Foundation for the Messiah. He restored the Foundation of Faith through his asceticism. This put him in the position of Abel and the Jews in the position of Cain. When they venerated John the Baptist, the Foundation of Substance was restored and the Messiah (who was Jesus) could be sent.

But then, the Foundation for the Messiah disintegrated when John denied that he was Elijah and even questioned whether Jesus was the Messiah. Therefore Jesus first had to restore the Foundation for the Messiah before he could do his work as Messiah. He restored the Foundation of Faith through his 40-fast, but the people rejected him and therefore he did not restore the Foundation of Substance.

But then Jesus allowed Satan to invade his spirit, was killed on the cross, and then his spirit self (not his physical self) was raised three days later in victory over Satan. When his disciples believed and followed him, this restored the Spiritual Foundation of Substance. Thus Jesus became the Spiritual Messiah and provided a spiritual salvation to believers. But since he did not marry, he did not restore the three blessings and complete God's plan. He failed to bring physical salvation along with the spiritual.

This is where Reverend Moon comes in. God prepared the way for his coming in the last 400 years, with events like the Protestant Reformation and the Great Awakening. Various calculations of parallels with biblical figures have led to the conclusion that the second messiah (or Second Coming) must be born between 1918 and 1930 and in Korea.

Reverend Moon says that at the age of 16, he was called by Jesus in a vision to be the second Messiah who will complete Jesus' works. According to Unification Church teachings, Rev. and Mrs. Moon were the first couple to conceive children without original sin. Moon and his wife are regarded as God's first ideal family and they are addressed as Father and Mother by disciples.

Moon calls on members of the church to follow his example of marriage and thereby participate in God's plan for restoration. In accepting the Moons' blessing of their own marriage, followers believe that they have children without original sin and help establish God's kingdom on Earth.

From true parents, a true family, society, nation and world can be generated, with children experiencing the love of God as an everyday reality. It is in the true family that God's love can blossom on all levels: between parents and children (parental love), between husband and wife (conjugal love), from the children towards their parents (filial love), and among the children (brotherly and sisterly love). If the members of a God-centered family practice these forms of love within their own home, then their family will become a model for their neighbors, their community, their country and for the family of humankind. This true family would lead to nothing other than the kingdom of God on earth.

In addition to the creation and propogation of the ideal family, the indemnity conditions for the Three Blessings must be fulfilled. According to Unification teaching, World War I satisfied the indemnity condition for the Restoration for the first Blessing and World War II satisfied the indemnity condition for the Restoration for the Second Blessing. Finally, World War III, which Unification Church members say is yet to come, will satisfy the indemnity condition for the Third Blessing.

After this, the Kingdom of God on earth can be established, in which all peoples, cultures, races, and religions will be united together and united with God in a Four Position Foundation. The world will finally enjoy eternal peace, love and joy. This is the ultimate hope of the Unification Church and its followers. (We know what will happen when the world is united, and who the world will be united under)

Teachings

Moon claims to be the messiah of the Second Coming and his wife is the Holy Spirit. He and his wife, called The True Parents where he is the True Father and his wife the True Mother, are the first couple to be able to bring forth children with no original sin. "The cross is the symbol of the defeat of Christianity." The Bible is considered scripture along with Moon’s work "Divine Principles." Sin is genetically based. It is not a moral issue. The thieves on the cross represent political movements. The thief on the right side of Jesus represents democracy. The thief on the left of Jesus is communism. Adam and Eve fell because of sexual sin. Eve had sexual relations with Satan. Jesus is a ‘true person’ though not God in flesh. The Holy Spirit is ‘the True Mother,’ or ‘the Second Eve." The church denies the doctrine of the Trinity.