Faith & Life by Rev. Yo Han Lee
Applied Foundations

2. Who Washed Your Fallen Nature?

The life of faith exists in order to remove your fallen nature. It is not God or Jesus but the person of more sinfulness than you who removes your fallen nature. Existing churches believe that Jesus saves them. That is not true. Only the person who has more fallen nature than you can wash your fallen nature. Then in this life, the person whom you hate most and dislike most takes care of your fallen nature. The way to remove it is to connect yourself with God’s position and be persecuted yourself by those people. Unless you have God, you cannot bear it.

Generally, people can’t be joyful and glad when they have trouble with others. But the man of faith can be joyful and kind to them and grateful in such situations because he can see God’s position by connecting with Him. A man of faith is joyful even when he suffers damages from the horizontal or worldly viewpoint. It is because he can see that it is more valuable to gain the eternal future than to lose in the present time. The Bible says that you should be glad to carry the cross. If you feel unhappy and bad when you got persecuted, it means you have the same fallen nature inside of yourself as the persecutor.

Otherwise you can’t take pity on the persecutors. When you are not completely within the Principle, Satan invades you. On the contrary, even Satan praises you if you are totally principled. Therefore, when you encounter something unhappy, don’t forget that it is happening because it is necessary for you. I want to emphasize that a man of faith has no enemies. Whenever you confront any hindrances and troubles, you can be glad considering that they are happening because you need them. Through that you can liquidate something important. You can never redeem anything if you leave God’s position.

• From Faith & Life by Rev. Yo Han Lee (1977)

III. ADAM’S Family

45. Introduction

Until now we have studied the providence of restoration from the historical standpoint, or from the viewpoint of the Principle, but we still do not know just what it is we must indemnify, just what position we are in… or how to develop concretely our external position or our internal position of heart. In view of this, I’d like to talk about how to apply the Principle in our lives, from a different viewpoint than that which has been discussed before.

Of course we must grasp the Principle as it is, as it is written in the book, but we must clarify the principles of life and learn how to apply them in our own situation.

46. The Meaning of Indemnity

In the Introduction to the Principle of Restoration, we came across the words “Providence of Restoration through Indemnity,” but to advance the providence of restoration through indemnity we must know that indemnity means, in fact, to fight. I am a self that has two masters. Man should only be dominated by the absolute God Himself. We have declared war when we learn that we are bound to evil, and decide to separate from the unprincipled, anti-master... tear away from him completely, to return, to be re-connected to our original Creator. With this purpose we have started our life of faith. We have declared a war. The battles that follow that declaration are indemnity. Once we have changed the direction of our life with the purpose of returning to and recovering our original self, then everything exists in the course of indemnity, within the period of indemnity. This is our position.

Make no mistake about it. We are now in the midst of a period when we must completely solve the problem of our relationship with the unprincipled master, and that we are in a course where a give-and-take relationship with the Absolute Being must be re-established as in the original course of the principle.

47. The Meaning of a Condition

Then, what is the ‘condition’ in the period of indemnity, the indemnity condition? This can be said to be the accomplishment which has been built up internally by following your own direction. For example, let’s say for a period of three days your motivation to start the spiritual life for those three days, and your accomplishment in the end, is connected, then it can be said that the indemnity condition has been established.

The best example of this is when Abraham went to offer Isaac. His action was connected, it did not contradict itself, from the moment he started to go for this sacrificial offering to the moment when he held the dagger high and was about to kill his son for God. He did not have second thoughts about it from his own standpoint. He did not doubt. Because he was thorough, straight toward the purpose without looking back, his motivation and his accomplishment were one. That is how he gained victory. The 120 years it took Noah to make the ark, and many other offerings were all done in this way. There is a certain time period connected with it. From the moment of determination until the moment of fulfillment, let’s say for a period of three days, the accumulated accomplishments in this time period become the condition for one to receive the blessing from God.

The life of indemnity throughout the providence of restoration can be seen in this way. You must set an indemnity condition of equal amount if you have failed to fulfill your responsibility, especially when you knew what that responsibility was and when you were in a position to fulfill it. If you are indemnifying the failure of your ancestors, the position of the ancestor that you have inherited, you can do this with a smaller amount of indemnity. The reason for this is that because there has been a history of paying indemnity throughout your family line, the indemnity is lessened by the sufferings of that time period. It means that because of accomplishments of sincere effort by one’s ancestors during this time, you, the descendants, can be accepted to stand in the position before the fall with an indemnity condition of lesser amount. This has such a historical nature.

Next: in the time of Abraham, the reason why Abraham’s failure not to cut open the dove at the time of offering became extended into a long period of 400 years is because he was in a position where, if he was sincere, he could have easily fulfilled his responsibility. This happens when one is in a position representing history, but one is not aware of his own significance. When one is in the position when freedom can be gained through himself, when he must be responsible for even the smallest condition, and fails, then this demands a condition of greater indemnity.

Especially in the times of historical transformation, when that moment has been awaited for 6,000 years. If one gives sincere effort at the right historical moment, one can inherit the foundation of faith of the providence of restoration of 6,000 years. If you see yourself with such historical significance, you can inherit history.

So it is very dangerous to come to the blessing after you have worked so hard in pioneer work, or witnessing. You come to the blessing and you come to Rev. Moon. If you fail at that moment, you will be in the position in which all your foundation of faith until now will be dug up, and it will crumble. Although at that moment, you are in the position when all of the purposes of faith until now have to bear fruit, it will become a big problem if you think of it only superficially, forgetting what you, who have been leading a life of faith until that moment, have been really doing, what was your center, what was your purpose.

All of our life, our determination, our purpose, is for that moment when we have to connect with Rev. Moon, when he is giving us all of history, when he is giving us his own life. In the same way, Abraham’s offering of the dove had the most important significance.

If we look at it this way, we see that life led up to the present moment, if not in order, causes the present moment to go wrong. If we come across an incident, we tend to think of it only in terms of that time, or we tend to blame others for it. Instead, we should see that this happens because we have been living this way until now. In this way, there are different kinds of indemnity.