Long Island Family Federation - About FFWPU Long Island




	A Brief Introduction We are entering a new age and living in a time of rapid transition. Yet for all the changes that are taking place, many of us worry about the direction that these changes are taking and feel that there is still some fundamental insight and effort needed to realize positive, lasting change. The Family Federation for World Peace and Unification (FFWPU) was established to help address these concerns. The Long Island FFWPU is presenting through a series of lectures a unique, logical and deeply spiritual analysis of God and life's true meaning. It is a non-denominational, non-sectarian, inter-religious and inter-national effort. The Divine Principles series, which is outlined in the accompanying lectures, is a vision and a guide that offers hope to those who want to find the essence of life and live righteously. All of us have at some time asked fundamental questions about God, ourselves and the world. We have also often wondered what our futures would be. Such questions are common to everyone. However the answers that have been given often have been inadequate. In answering these questions, we need to think of them from a new perspective that will give us answers we can all be satisfied with. The Divine Principles lectures series is directed toward this purpose. The Divine Principles is based on the teaching revealed by God to the Reverend Sun Myung Moon. Reverend Moon's revelation unfolds in stages, and a proper response by the reader or viewer is essential for that unfolding to proceed. We need to invest time and effort to understand God's communication and in doing so fulfill a portion of our own responsibility to seek out the truth. Sun Myung Moon was first called by God when he was sixteen years old. He then struggled through the invisible (spirit) world, which is the world of cause, seeking to solve the fundamental questions about life and the universe. He had to overcome tremendous obstacles spiritually. In search of the truth, he walked a path of suffering and fought a bloody battle against the forces of evil and Satan. Only God really knows the difficult path he traveled. In his spiritual communication with God, Sun Myung Moon validated deep insights he discovered into God's plan and purpose for life, and he discloses revelation in the lectures concerning the fundamental aspects of God's will for humanity. A Sermon by Dr. Hak Ja Han Moon Translated into English, Manhattan Center, NYC, Nov. 4, 2012. Click here! In order to systematize and teach this knowledge, he spent countless hours in prayer and in study of the Bible. In 1950 he began to teach formally the most important parts of The Principle to his disciples. However, much of The Principle received by Reverend Moon is still unpublished. More of The Principle revelation is being released according to the progress of the dispensation and the development of the foundation on earth. However, even a brief investigation of his teachings will bring noticeable spiritual benefit because of the new knowledge that is revealed. With this new knowledge, a deeper relationship with God is made possible. We can know God's true parental heart of unrequited love and his deep longing for us. God's Ideal of Love According to The Divine Principles lectures, God is the origin of love and heart. God's motive in creating is to realize his ideal of love -- to realize his ideal of love is the Purpose of Creation. In the world where God's ideal is realized, man and all things live in happiness and harmony with God's love as True Parent as the source of life and happiness. The world where the sphere of God's ideal love is complete is the Kingdom of Heaven. God created man on earth, not in heaven. God's ideal when realized on earth is thus called the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth. Man is to live in God's kingdom on earth, and then his spirit self at death is to enter God's kingdom in the spirit world, where he will live for eternity (the relationship between these two worlds is similar to that between the mind and the body in human beings, where the mind is subject and the body object). The Kingdom of Heaven is the place where an individual who has completely experienced God's love lives happily for eternity in an ideal relationship of love with God and other people. The purpose of the returning Christ is to establish and exemplify that complete relationship with God. In God's ideal world of love, there cannot be selfishness, sin, unrighteousness or injustice. However, as explained in the lectures, the first man and woman did not fulfill their responsibility to fully mature themselves first in God's love and, as a result, they left the realm of God's direct dominion. This was the Fall, and its result was that sin and evil (separation from God) entered the world, and Hell, which is the realm outside of God's love, came to exist. Could God abandon his children and this world, full of sin, unrighteousness and suffering? No, he could never abandon his children. As He said in Isaiah 46:11, "'I have spoken, and I will bring it to pass; I have purposed and I will do it.'" God will restore men and women to be as He originally intended and promised in the three great blessings that He gave after creation (Gen 1:28). So God's dispensation for salvation is the Dispensation for Restoration of the Original Ideal, in which He will establish the ideal kingdom of love together with man, which was His original purpose of creation. God is a living and active God. Both throughout history and in the minds of people, God's active providence has left its mark. Then, what of man, the object of the living God's dispensation? What has man been like throughout history? At each stage in history, God has had to deal with humanity according to our spiritual state and intellectual level. Has man always remained the same internally or has he been progressing and constantly improving? If man had not fallen, he would have reflected God's character fully (Jn 14:20) and perfection (Mt 5:48), and thus God would have been able to relate to us in a direct dominion of love. However, Adam and Eve fell, separating themselves from God, and became embodiments of sin and evil, instead of becoming the persons that God had originally envisioned. If we were to speak of how man's spirituality and intellect were affected by this state of separation and fall, we could say that they were reduced to a very base state. Through God's Dispensation for Restoration providence, the spirituality and intellect of fallen people have gradually developed. As man's spiritual and intellectual levels have developed in each age, God has been able to revise accordingly the means of educating people and relating to them. For example, in Abraham's time, when man's spirituality and intellect were extremely low, God had to have people come closer to him through the offering of sacrifices. The people of that time were too immature to respond to laws and commandments. Several hundred years later, at the time of Moses, God carried out the dispensation through the Law. At Jesus' time, instead of repeating the same dispensation through laws or commandments, God worked in a new way to bring the people closer to him, by giving the Gospel, on a level appropriate for the spirituality of the people of that age. Why Was the Messiah Hard to Recognize? The fact that the Jewish people, who so devoutly believed in God, did not recognize his son, Jesus, as the savior is a crucial point in the Dispensation for Restoration. Why were they unable to recognize his son, Jesus? In that age, the people of Israel followed God through obedience to laws, but then God began to approach the people through Jesus himself by means of the new dispensation of the Gospel. In light of these historical facts, we can see that as man's spirituality and intellect develop, God has always adopted a correspondingly developed method to reach man. The objects of the living God and his dispensation are not like fossils, but rather are persons who are very much alive and active. Then, what is the present focus of God's dispensation? It is not the people of Jesus' time, nor the people of Moses' age, nor primitive man still further back. It is contemporary man, living here and now. Yet we cannot deny that today most young people are not interested in the churches. The rational and scientific emphasis today demands a clearer and deeper understanding of truth and an explanation of the seeming contradictions in religious teachings and practices before people today will take up a religious way of life. As we can see in God's historical process of restoration (in the lectures), God is alive and working, so we can know that He will surely give humanity a new expression of truth, one that can lead people of this age and spiritual level to greater maturity. Today, many difficult questions arise during an examination of the Bible. For example, what is the proper relationship of God, Jesus and man? What is the correct understanding of Resurrection and the Last Days? Why must Jesus return? When and how will Jesus return? Answers to all of these are given in the Bible in parables and symbols but they had yet to be clearly explained until the Divine Principle appeared. We read in John 16:25 that Jesus said, "'I have said this to you in figures; the hour is coming when I shall no longer speak to you in figures but tell you plainly of the Father.'" In John 16:12,13 we read that he also said, "'I have yet many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth; for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come.'" And in Revelation 10:11 we read, "'You must again prophesy about many peoples and nations and tongues and kings.'" Each of these passages indicates that in the Last Days a new expression of the truth will be given. However, since it will be a new revelation, there will be some aspects which may not be understood in light of conventional doctrine or tradition. For example, even though Jesus' teachings were based on the Old Testament, the people of his time were bound to such a literal interpretation of the Old Testament that they could not understand Jesus. It was for this reason that Jesus said, "' ... new wine must be put into fresh wineskins'" (Lk 5:38); he was teaching them that they had to make themselves new if they were to receive the new words. We know that God worked through Noah and Abraham and we know that God spoke through Moses and Jesus. Is the same God, who is alive today, unable to give a new revelation? What matters is why God created and that we fulfill his Will by living the truth. There is another reason that mankind needs a new, deeper expression of truth. We can clearly see the continuing decline of modern civilization and of order in society with no satisfactory replacement in sight. A feeling of emptiness, loneliness and discontent has led to despair, confusion, self-indulgence, immorality, and alcohol and drug abuse. Confusion throughout society about standards of value and conduct has caused a strong trend toward egoism and, accompanying it, the breakdown of the family, the rapid increases in crime, juvenile delinquency, and all kinds of immorality, which are unsettling the foundations of society and causing a loss of hope in the future. Violence and war, which are prevalent, and racism, the suffering poor, the impotence of the world religions in leading the modern age, and the expansion of atheism and even Marxism, all reinforce the doubts about the prospects for modern civilization. None of these crises can be completely or even partially solved in an instant, but a fundamental and lasting solution is possible. Since God is alive, He will definitely save mankind from these crises through a new and revolutionary approach. The key to truly solving or eliminating any of these problems is knowing and understanding their causes. It is because the causes have never been fully understood that these problems have never been eliminated. The Principle explains these causes and presents clear and practical solutions that through education make it possible for the individual and the family, the core of human society, to freely and happily alter their lifestyles in concert with truth. Ignorance and misunderstanding of God cause men to despair. The Principle shows not only that God exists, but also explains the original heart of God and details his dispensation in history. Moreover, applying The Principle fosters a change of character for those who sincerely want to find God through a spiritual experience with the Holy Spirit. The more we experience the true love of God through The Principle, the more we experience our own re-creation. Furthermore, we are able to develop genuine and sincere human relationships with others when we understand each other's true value. True Family Values Through developments in the means of communication and travel and through trade and cultural exchanges, the world has been drawn externally so close together that now each nation directly or indirectly influences all others. Despite this fact, the basic content of human relationships is still distrust and hate based on self-centeredness and mutual lack of concern. In other words, despite the external trend toward a one-world community, unity and harmony in the truest sense under one God and clear understanding of purpose are not present. Experience of God's love alone can make this a reality. The Principle teaches that the family is the basic unit needed for the realization of God's love. The Principle also affirms that only through establishing order in the home can love be nourished in the dry heart of modern man, and only then can a true relationship be established between husband and wife, between parents and children, among brothers and sisters, and among neighbors in society. The love between an ideal husband and ideal wife is the fundamental condition for the happiness of human beings. Only when there is such love between parents will children be able to understand and experience ideal love from their parents. God's original ideal is for human beings to love God as their parent and live in brotherhood as one extended family. The Principle is a guide to the awakening of man's original love and to the restoring of the original human relationships that will create a one-family world society. The Principle also leads to unification of the internal truths, which religion has sought, and the external truths, which science has sought. The reason that The Principle is able to achieve this unification is that man's effort to find truth in God's Creation is related to God, whatever the discipline or approach. According to The Principle, all religions throughout history that sought and urged a conscientious way of life directly or indirectly came to exist by virtue of God's Will. It is true that today Christianity plays a central role in fulfilling the overall purpose of God's dispensation. However, God has led people of other nations by establishing religions suited to their particular time and environment in order to prepare them to receive the Messiah in the future. As John 3:16 says, "'For God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life'". God sends the Messiah not only for Christians, but for all mankind. The revelation that God gave to Sun Myung Moon was given quietly in the East, but it has given men and women throughout the world, especially young people, new happiness and new hope, and it has given them life in the depth of their hearts. Young people from virtually every nation, have taken up this new life and have found new meaning and follow God's Will with a new passion. In the accompanying lectures we introduce an outline of The Principle, which has the vitality to deeply move the human mind and spirit and to transform a searching individual into a person of new character centered on God. We encourage you to discover more heavenly truth by investing a few moments of your time to read the Divine Principles lectures on our website and/or to watch the videos. The conclusions follow logically from the first lectures, and readers who jump ahead to the middle or end will only confuse themselves without understanding the foundations for this thought that is established in the preceding presentations. We hope you enjoy the content and we pray you gain from it as much as we have. Please pray about it. God Bless you and thank you for your interest.

Introduction to the Divine Principle
Everyone is struggling to attain happiness and avoid misfortune. From the commonplace affairs of individuals to the great events that shape the course of history, each is at root an expression of the human aspiration for ever greater happiness. How, then, does happiness arise?

Click to play the audio of the Introduction (MP3)

The Principle of Creation
How can we know the nature of God, who is invisible? We can know it through observing the Creation. Just as the work of an artist is a visible manifestation of its maker's invisible nature, every being in the Creation is a substantial manifestation of the invisible nature of God, its Creator.

Click to download the audio of Part-1 of this lecture (MP3)

Click to download the audio of Part-2 of this lecture (MP3)

The Fall of Man
Every person has an original mind whose nature is to pursue goodness and repel evil. But fallen people are unconsciously driven by an evil force to commit evil acts, contrary to the desires of their original mind. In Christianity, the one who controls this evil force is known as Satan. This chapter, "The Fall," makes clear the identity of Satan and the origin of evil.

Click to download the audio of the Fall of Man lecture (MP3)

Mission of the Messiah
What is salvation? Salvation is restoration: to save a drowning person is to rescue him and restore him to the state he was in before he began to drown. God's salvation of man means God's restoration of fallen and sinful man to his original state of goodness -- to the position where he can fulfill the Purpose of the Creation.

Click to download the audio of the Mission of the Messiah lecture (MP3)

Resurrection
As people of faith we must accept the Prophesies of God. On the other hand, given the modern state of our knowledge, they do not make rational sense. This brings great confusion to the Christian faith. Therefore, it is important that we elucidate the true meaning of the Resurrection.

Click to play the audio of the Resurrection lecture (MP3)

The Second Advent
Jesus clearly foretold of his return. Yet it has been commonly thought unwise to speculate about the date, place and manner of the Second Advent. In Amos 3:7, however, we read, "Surely the Lord God does nothing, without revealing his secret to his servants the prophets." On that day, God, who knows the day and hour, will surely reveal all secrets about the Second Coming to His prophets before He carries out His work.

Click to play the audio of the Second Advent lecture (MP3)

Essentials of God's Providential History
The words recorded in this volume speak about the destiny of humankind and contain prophecy. They highlight the original principles of life, with concrete practical directions for the realization of a world of peace, and reveal recent providential history among nations.

Click to download the text of this book.