I wrote this 7 years ago, and recently, as you will see, have revealed the details and events that led to writing it. I hope that reading it again or for the first time can be a stimulating experience, and an introduction to Biblical Analysis based on Divine Principle of Rev. Sun Myung Moon, whom I am proud to call my teacher.

The phrase "a man after his own heart" is found in the Old Testament book of I Samuel chapter 13. It is part of the message spoken by Samuel, the last judge of Israel, to King Saul only 7 days after Samuel had anointed him as the first king of Israel. The message informed Saul that God desired obedience and that since Saul had not been obedient to God, that God would seek another man to become king, " a man after his own heart".

From time immemorial this phrase was always thought to be a reference to David who was the second king of Israel. However, in light of Divine Principle analysis of the events following Saul's failure on Mt. Gilgal, it can be unequivocally stated that the first choice for a man after God's own heart was Saul's son Jonathan and not David, and that only after the further failures of Saul and Jonathan was this destiny shifted to David.

Further analysis tells us that Saul represented Adam, Jonathan represented Jesus, and David represented the Lord of the Second Advent. If we then inquire as to God's deeper purpose behind the lengthy period of time in which David, Jonathan, and Saul coexisted, then we reach the conclusion that God desired to reverse Moses' sin of breaking the first set of tablets of the Ten Commandments and more importantly Moses' sin of striking the rock twice, since both were distant conditions increasing the possibility that Jesus would later be killed without completing his mission, since both the tablets and the rock represented Christ. Moses committed both of these sins in fits of anger which came upon him due to his own inadequate faith. A condition to indemnify these sins could be made if Saul and Jonathan, with the assistance of Samuel, could unite with David.

But let's slow down a minute and point out that Saul who was in Abraham's position, but on the national rather than the family level, also represented God's third attempt to form the nation of God's elect(Adam and Noah were the first two attempts). Consequently if Saul failed in his first offering as did Abraham, then he would be given a second chance to make an offering centering on his son Jonathan, just as Abraham was given a second chance to make an offering centering on his son Isaac.

This took place in the following manner as is recorded in I Samuel 14,15. The Bible states that the Israelites were under the thumb of the Philistines to such an extent that the Philistines prevented them from having blacksmiths and thus from making weapons or sharpening farm tools. In fact there were only two spears in all of Israel. Saul had one and Jonathan had the other.

Immediately after Saul's first failure, Jonathan with his armor carrier declared, "God judges by many or by few." and proceeded to wipe out twenty Philistines with his spear. An earthquake shook the ground, the Philistines became confused and started fighting each other, and Israel won a great victory that day, but..... But it so happened that Jonathan tasted some honey with his staff and was immediately informed by a fellow soldier that his father, Saul, had declared a fast that day. At the end of the day Saul prayed and God did not answer his prayer. Saul knew by this that someone had broken the fast. By drawing lots Jonathan was revealed as the fast breaker. Saul questioned Jonathan who then frankly admitted, "I tasted some honey with my staff. I'm ready to die.", to which Saul replied, "Okay, I'm going to kill you right now." This is the cooperation between father and son which parallels the cooperation of Abraham and his son, which was absolutely necessary for the offering to be acceptable to God, and for the mission to be passed on from father to son through three generations.

Saul's army then informed him that they were not going to allow Saul to kill Jonathan since the victory of the day before had been initiated by Jonathan's heroic action, which was very similar in spirit and result to David's later heroic action of killing Goliath. In this respect Jonathan was certainly a man after God's own heart, as was also David. Here then the army played the role of the angel who held back the hand of Abraham when it became evident that he intended to kill his son.

The ram caught in the thicket which became Isaac's symbolic offering is paralleled in Saul's time by God's direction given through Samuel for Saul to go and kill the wicked Amalekites and all of their cattle. However, again Saul failed to obey. This was also Jonathan's failure since all the soldiers knew that they were to kill everyone of the Amalekites and all of their livestock. Jonathan also must have known. Jonathan was in a position to speak strongly to his father and warn him to obey the command of God spoken through Samuel, especially since this represented Jonathan's symbolic offering. So the failure of Saul to obey can equally be considered Jonathan's failure.

After Saul's failure to kill the Amalekites and all of their cattle, Samuel informed him that he had failed again, at which Saul became angry and tore Samuel's robe. Only then did Samuel say, "Today God has torn the Kingdom away from you and given it to your neighbor who is better than you!" . Samuel then went and anointed David who became the second king of Israel. But until that point it is clear from the Biblical events that God was working with Saul and Jonathan in a similar manner as when He worked after Abraham's failure in the first offering to pass the mission to his son Isaac through Abraham's second offering.

But why in Saul's time was so much war involved in the national level symbolic offering? As explained in Divine Principle, the first 21 days of Saul's kingship were an attempt to indemnify the first nationwide course of restoration into Canaan in the time of Moses which failed without ever having begun, simply because the Israelites feared war. It is fortunate that neither Saul, Jonathan nor David feared war. That course was also to have been only 21 days. Therefore as stated in Divine Principle, 210 years of Babylonian Captivity and Return specifically resulted from Saul's first failure, which came only 7 days after he was anointed the first king of Israel, not to mention that all of the further prolongation until the coming of Jesus(1130 years) was precipitated by this first failure of Saul. This leads us to wonder when might the Messiah have been sent had Saul not failed.

In Christian history the Pope and Charlemagne parallel Samuel and Saul. However, the mission is passed on to Charlemagne's lineal descendants, perhaps because Charlemagne succeeded in his second offering as did Abraham. But the Pope-Charlemagne failure remains as the greatest failure in Christian history after the death of Jesus and prior to present times, and also prolonged God's providence to send the Messiah again until the present.

In conclusion, shouldn't we all become men and women after God's own heart who can initiate Godly action as did Jonathan, before being asked to do so. And unlike Jonathan, we must not be afraid to strongly remind our leaders, political, religious or economic, of the words of God, when they are in danger of failing their public responsibility ... to uphold and create what is normal in a Godly culture; the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth. 11/2/94 Peter Nordquist

This is the story behind the Unification News Article of a few years ago entitled, "A Man After His Own Heart", by Peter Nordquist. It's intended purpose is to show that we must aggressively seek to make conditional offerings in order to return ourselves and the world to an orderly state under the dominion of the love of God. As Rev. Sun Myung Moon, whom I am proud to call my teacher, has often said, "Restoration doesn't just happen! We have to make it happen, by paying indemnity!"

It can also serve as an introduction to concepts of indemnity, restoration, parallels of history and God's providence of salvation/restoration as He conducts it through the moral courage of countless people throughout the world today from diverse cultures, whose people sometimes clash, but all struggling for understanding, resolution of conflict and of course, happiness.

Note: "Father" in these stories, is an honorific title for Rev. Sun Myung Moon.

Best Regards, Peter Nordquist

A week before the 21st anniversary of the beginning of the fish providence, Father spoke on Sunday. He explained, amongst other things, that the American Indians had the right idea about torturing the body to free the mind, even putting hooks in their bodies and swinging on ropes attached to the hooks. The mind should be the torture master of the body - not kill it, but torture it, and that although many people do this to some extent, hardly anybody does it enough.

I thought that certainly this was an invitation to do a seven day fast for a providential purpose. Sizing up my situation I figured that I would do a seven day fast and prayer condition devoted to the purpose of paying indemnity for all symbolic offering failures in history.

Noon of the following Sunday, the finish of my fast, I was at the Fish Expo at Belvedere with Rev. Chang who was now the regular church director of Queens. It was quite hot and I was looking for a glass of water. Rev. Chang was in line ahead of me and got the last cup of water in the bucket. He was hot himself, but saw my condition and gave the cup to me. "Good offering," he said. Father spoke at this event as well.

A week or two later, during the week on two consecutive mornings, a stream of thought about the symbolic offering failures in history ran through my mind, from Abraham to Saul, Jesus, Charlemagne and in modern day America. God could not claim ownership of our environment, of our possessions, of our physical bodies. Possibly a week passed and our mission CF was soon about to visit. I felt a tremor in the force and began praying two days ahead that Jesus and Heung Jin Nim could guide the situation.

When he came, our mission members gathered for morning service and sat in a circle formation in the prayer room with the CF. When it was finished he began speaking to members. He spoke to Jin Hyung Pak and began strongly chastising in Korean for about 15 minutes. Then he began speaking to me. I listened for about 15 minutes as well. Then I interrupted him and said, "Okay I listened to you! Now you listen to me! Exactly this kind of behavior of yours is why Father came here and told us to follow Father and not you. Everything you've said is completely untrue and unprincipled. Don't you remember that you invited my wife and I to your house, because your wife was going to divorce you, but that after I talked to both of you privately that she changed her mind.......etc. ". For about 10 minutes I shouted such things at him.

Then he said, "So what should I do? Apologize?" I said that it would be nice and he apologized. Later in the lab, he came up to me with his fist ready to punch me in the face and asked, "Was that inspired?" I said, "Yes" and he walked away. Edmund Bolton quit that day in protest for the CF's treatment of Jin Hyung and myself. At lunch the next day, Jin Hyung was visibly shaking and said to me, "Wow Peter, you've got guts to speak to him that way." A year later Jin told me that had he reported the garbage the CF had said to him in Korean, that he could have gotten him removed, but wasn't going to bother.

That week I dreamed about Father and had a tremendously good feeling the whole week, as though I had done something extraordinarily good that I didn't as yet understand. That week Rev. Chang asked me to give the Sunday sermon.

On Sunday morning as I was studying the Bible in the morning in preparation, I noticed something odd. There were two versions of the first seven days of the reign of King Saul. One of them said he succeeded in magnificent fashion and that there was unity between Samuel and Saul, and the other one said the opposite of this.

I read between the lines and speculated that actually Saul had failed his first offering as had Abraham. But what's this? God then immediately worked through Saul's son, Jonathan, and what's this? Saul was about to kill Jonathan, but was stopped, and then was asked to fulfill a second condition - a second offering, killing the Amalekites and their cattle. And what's this, the second offering failed too, and then God switched lineages to that of David? Holy cow! Here's a missing page of Divine Principle - a major parallel of history topic staring us right in the face!

How come nobody saw this before? Or did they? How come it's not in Divine Principle. The old version of Divine Principle actually was incorrect on this point in respect to saying that the prolongations at that time were caused by the failure of what is actually Saul's second offering - failure to kill the Amalekites and their cattle. (The prolongations, to be in line with the principle of God's being able to extend a number three failure, must have been caused by the failure of the Saul's first offering - when he didn't wait for Samuel, but made the offering by himself.) I brought this to Dr. Andrew Wilson's attention and the new version of Divine Principle now states correctly, and only as a footnote, that the failure to kill the Amalekites and their cattle can be taken as evidence that King Saul had lost faith.

The Sunday sermon went well. A Japanese brother came up to me afterwards and commented that he now understood for the first time what studying that Old Testament stuff in Divine Principle has to do with the modern day - because I had traced the effects of the failures up into modern day America, as per my streams of thought on the subject that came to me after my seven day fast.

Afterwards I was sitting with Rev. Chang explaining in more detail about what I had realized about the two offerings of Saul paralleling those of Abraham. He said to me, "You have just answered the question that I have been wondering about for seven years. I thought Jonathan in the Bible was such a good guy, and I wondered why he had to die in the manner that he did. When I first came to America seven years ago, I took the English name of Jonathan because of Jonathan in the Bible." So we discussed it in depth and together worked out some of the details. Later I showed him the Interpreter's Bible references for the Book of Samuel. He began to realize for the first time, he said, that the Old Testament had actual history behind it and wasn't just a book of fictional stories.

I checked this point about the two offerings first with Lady Dr. Kim, then with Dr. Sonnenborn. "Good work," he said. Then with Dr. Kaufmann, Dr. Hendricks, Dr. Wilson and I told Dr. Shimyo who said, "Thank you for this information." Dr. Wilson at first said, "What two offerings?" Dr. Hendricks said, "Write it up for Unification News. If it's good enough, we'll put it in." Later I did and it was and they did. At East Garden in the lunch line, Rev. Kung asked Dr. Hendricks in a somewhat bewildered manner, "What's this stuff that Peter wrote in Unification News?" Dr. Hendricks replied, "The problem is that Divine Principle doesn't say anything about Jonathan and we didn't have a position on Jonathan. So I thought that I would let Peter write it."

I later realized that by shouting at my CF, who is also my spiritual father, that I was reminding him of the words of God, spoken through the prophet (in this case Father), concerning obedience and making a good offering. This is what Jonathan should've done to his father, King Saul, regarding the Amalekites and their cattle. Sometimes people need to be reminded of there responsibility. In doing so I had liberated the spirit of the Biblical Jonathan and answered Rev. "Jonathan" Chang's seven year old question. Together we discovered an aspect of Divine Principle, fulfilling the prophecy I had made to him four years earlier, when I had picked up the costume jewelry pearl from the crack of the pavement of the sidewalk in Flushing, Queens, because it reminded me of Lady Dr. Kim's (my spiritual grandmother) analogy that Divine Principle is like a pearl. It is always moving and rocking and stimulating our minds, and we cannot forget it.

Rev. Chang later attended Unification Theological Seminary at True Mother's request before returning to Taiwan, where I heard that he was asked by Father to be in charge of a Buddhist group that had recognized Father as the Matreiya Buddha.

Peter Nordquist 8/22/01 (7 years later)

 Download entire page and pages related to it in ZIP format
Table of Contents
Copyright Information
Tparents Home