Blessed are those who do His commandments, that they may have the right to the tree of life, and may enter through the gates into the city. (Rev. 22:14)

We know that men created by God succumbed to an angel's temptation to fall and were driven out from the Garden of Eden. We also know that men could not become the true dominator of the whole creation and made a world where the creation is anxious to see the revealing of the men of the original nature of creation.

Since God could not leave fallen men as they are, He has sent prophets to save them from the sinful state.

When anything has lost its original position or status, certain condition must be established in reverse course in order for the original position or status to be restored. Unification Church refers to the setting up of such condition "indemnity." In like manner, fallen man must set up certain necessary condition in order to restore himself. This act of restoring the original position or status endowed at the creation is called "restoration through indemnity." Further, God's providence of restoring fallen men to their original position by setting up the "condition of indemnity" is called the "providence of restoration through indemnity."

Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. (John 3:3)

God created men, and Satan fell them. Since fallen men were placed in the middle position between God and Satan where they could deal with both, they have to go through a process of separating themselves from Satan in order to be restored to the original state endowed at the creation. In odrer that fallen may be separated from Satan and restored to his origianl state before the fall, he must remove the original sin. But, man cannot remove the original sin unless he is born anew through the Messiah as his True Parent. Therefore fallen man, having been separated from Satan, must first restore himself to the perfection level of the growth stage; that is, to the standard to which Adam and Eve had grown. On that foundation, he may receive the messiah and, through rebirth, be restored to the position before the fall of Adam and Eve. Then finally he will come to fulfill the purpose of creation.

Since Adam and Eve annulled God's Word through disbelief, ther should be "conditional objects" for a certain period in order to restore the foundation of faith. We call doing this "to lay the foundation of faith." Next, fallen men have to lay the "foundation of faith," to remove the fallen nature. In this way, fallen man must lay the foundation of substance (incarnation) on the foundation of faith before laying the foundation to receive the Messiah.

Now, let us see how central figures of the Bible had set up these foundations.

And He said, "What have you done? The voice of your brother's blood cries out to Me from the ground." (Gen. 4:10)

Since men were placed in the midway position where they could deal with either God or Satan because of the fall of Adam and Eve, God had to divide their children, Cain and Abel, into Satan's side and God's side in order to save them.

Since Satan took away the birthright of the first son that Adam had, God had to work to take back the lost birthright. God had to establish the birthright by dividing Cain and Abel into Satan's side and God's side, and, by having Cain obey nd surrender to Abel, set up the condition that Satan obeyed and surrendered to God.

Cain brought an offering of the fruit of the ground to the Lord, and Abel brought of the firstlings of his flock and of their fat. However, God, who can take good things only, could not accept the offering of Cain who was in Satan's side.

And Cain was very angry, and his countenance fell. So God told Cain, "If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do no well, sin lies at the door. And its desire is for you, but you should rule over it." (Gen. 4:7)

And Cain said to the Lord, "My punishment is greater than I can bear! Surely You have driven me out this day from the face of the ground; I shall be hidden from Your face." (Gen. 4:13-14)

After that happened, Cain began to be jealous of his brother, and eventually rose against Abel his brother and killed him. Accordingly, the fall was made through two generations.

Had Abel taken care of Cain's heart, and had Cain offered his offering through Abel as the mediator, there would not have been the accident of killing. Then a condition by which man could be saved might have been set up at that time.

Since God's plan toward the salvation of man is unchangeable, He worked the providence of restoration by calling Noah, a descendant of Seth, after ten generations, or 1,600 years after Adam.

I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth, both man and beast, creeping things and birds of the air, for I am sorry that I have made them. (Gen. 6:7)

Noah was a just man and walked with God (Gen.6:9). God conveyed Noah His plan to destroy the corrupted world with the waters of the flood and told him to make an ark.

For 120 years when he was working on the ark, Noah received all the derisions and scoffing of the people. In spite of that, he obeyed God absolutely and finished the work. The ark had in it Noah, his family, and animals that represent all things.

After the completion of the ark, it rained for forty days. After the 40-day flood judgment, God blessed Noah and his family to be fruitful and multiply, bring forth abundantly in the earth and multiply in it (Gen. 9:7)

God exercised the providence of the flood judgment of the fallen world in order to separate the men subject to Satan into the representation of good an evil, and to set up the object through whom He could exercise His providence.

Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants he shall be to his brethren. (Gen. 9:25)

After the flood judgment, Noah began to be a farmer, and he planted a vineyard. Then he drank of the wine and was drunk, and became uncovered in his tent. And Ham, Noah's second son, saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brothers, Shem and Japheth. They were ashamed of their father lying naked. They took a garment, went backward and covered the nakedness of their father. Their faces were turned away. So Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his younger son had done to him. Then he said: ". . .a servant of servants he shall be to his brethren" (Gen. 9:25)

Then why did Noah curse Ham's act that much? Since men fell by their use of the lower parts, the fact that men conceal their lower parts out of shame means that they still have fallen nature. What Noah did was not a simple act of a drunken man, but it was aimed to set up a condition of indemnity of the lower parts by reverse direction. However, Ham did not know Noah's intention and concealed Noah's lower part, approving that he is Satan's side. This allowed Satan to invade man again. Accordingly, God's providence of salvation centering on Noah's family ended in failure. The providence was handed down to Abraham after the lapse of a 400-year period of indemnity through ten generations after Noah.

. . . the Lord had said to Abram; "Get out of your country, from your kindred and from your father's house, to a land that I will show you." (Gen. 12:1)

God chose Abraham, the first son of Terah, who was an idol-maker, as the central personage to succeed and fulfill God's will. This was based on the providence of restoration through indemnity, by which God takes from Satan first sons whom were lost by Satan. According to the Biblical verses (Gen. 12:10), Abraham once went down to Egypt because of a famine. When the Pharaoh of Egypt wanted to take his wife Sarah, Abraham, as planned beforehand, told the Pharaoh that she was his sister, lest the king should kill him if he found out that they were husband and wife. In this way, Sarah was taken by the Pharaoh from th position of Abraham's sister, and after God's chastisement of the Pharaoh, Abraham took back his wife, and also his nephew Lot, as well as abundant wealth.

Shall we think over what this means? Abraham, though unconsciously, was setting up the symbolic condition to restore through indemnity the position of Adam's family.

I will make you a great nation; I will bless you and make your name great; and you shall be a blessing. (Gen. 12:2)
Take now your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you. (Gen. 22:2)

Next, Abraham had to offer a conditional object as a symbol enabling him to restore through indemnity all the things which were supposed to be restored in Adam's family, centering on the offerings of Cain and Abel. Abraham offered dove, ram and heifer as symbolic sacrifice. God told Abraham to cut the sacrifice in two as a condition of separating good and evil. We read (Gen.15:10-13) that Abraham cut the offerings in two and laid each half over against the other, but he did not cut the doves in two. Birds of prey came down upon the carcasses and Abraham drove them away. Hereby, God reproached him for the failure in the symbolic offering and said to him, "Know certainly that your descendants will be strangers in a land that is not theirs, and will serve them, and they will afflict them four hundred years" (Gen. 15:13).

God did not accept the offering that Satan invaded and ordered Abraham to offer his only son Isaac as a burnt offering (Gen.22:2). When, in obedience to God's command with an absolute faith, Abraham was about to sacrifice his only son Isaac, whom he had received as a blessing, as a burnt offering, God commanded him not to lay his hand on the lad and said, " . . . now I know that you fear God. . ." (Gen. 22:12).

In this manner, God's providence of restoration centering on Abraham's family was to be fulfilled through Isaac by Abraham's success in the offering of Isaac.

The Lord God of heaven, who took me from my father's house and from the land of my kindred, and who spoke to me and swore to me, saying, "To your descendants I give this land." He will send His angel before you, and you shall take a wife for my son from there. (Gen. 24:7)

Isaac married Rebekah, the daughter of Bethuel. Rebekah conceived twins, Esau and Jacob. They fought even in their mother's womb (Gen. 25:22-23). God said to Rebekah, ". . . Two nations are in your womb, two peoples shall be separated from your body; one people shall be stronger than the other, and the older shall serve the younger" (Gen. 25:23) This can be interpreted as the fighting between Esau and Jacob in the position of Cain and Abel centered on the birthright of he elder son even before their birth.

Esau grew to become a skillful hunter, and Jacob was a mild man and used to stay at home. One day, Esau came in from the field and he was hungry. Esau thought little of the birthright that he sold it to Jacob for a pottage of lentils (Gen. 25:34)

Isaac said to Esau that he would bless him and asked him to go out to the field, hunt for him, make savory food for him (Gen. 27:3-5).

And he came near and kissed him; and he smelled the smell of his clothing, and blessed him and said: "Surely, the smell of my son is like the smell of a field which the Lord has blessed." (Gen. 27:27)

Rebekah was listening when Isaac spoke to Esau. She, then, made savory food and the bread, having Jacob, instead of Esau, be blessed from his father. This became the first mother-son cooperation by which the elder's birthright was restored. Since the fall began from Eve, mother had to help her second son restore the birthright in order to cleanse the original sin.

Later when she found that Esau was intending to kill Jacob, Rebekah had him flee to her brother Laban in Haran. Jacob worked hard in Haran for twenty one years, during which he married two daughters of Laban. He, then, went to his hometown with lots of wealth. Jacob ran to Esau and offered his wealth to his brother, conveying him how much he was longing to see his brother for the last twenty one years. Esau forgave his brother for what Jacob had done and the two brothers who were enemies made a dramatic reconciliation.

. . . inasmuch as I have seen your face as though I have seen the face of God, and you were pleased with me. (Gen. 33:10)

Esau, who was on God's side, could unite with Jacob, who was on Satan's side, and completely restore the birthright by having Esau surrender to him. Hence, the foundation to receive the Messiah on the family level was laid due to the foundation of faith and the foundation of substance centering on Abraham's family.

On that foundation, Jacob's family had to bear Abraham's sin and go on the road of 400-year course of indemnity.

Joseph, son of Rachel (Jacob's wife on God's side), was very bright and Jacob loved him more than all his brothers. Now Joseph's half-brothers hated him and were trying to kill him.

And God sent me before you to preserve a posterity for you in the earth, and to save your lives by a great deliverance. (Gen. 45:7)

One day when Joseph's brothers were conspiring to kill him who came to the field on their father's errand, Judah said to his brothers, ". . . Come and let us sell him to the Ishmaelites. . . " (Gen. 37:26-27). His brothers consented to this proposal. Therefore, Joseph was sold by his brothers and brought into Egypt.

Joseph became the prime minister of Egypt at the age of 30 and realized what he had been taught from heaven in his dream as a child (Gen. 37:5-11). He forgave with God's love his brothers when he met his half-brothers on the Satanic side in Egypt. Thus they followed the course of first entering Egypt on the part of the children and later, his parents were led through the same course.

Jacob blessed Joseph, instead of his brothers, with the birthright which God gave to him. God had Jacob be sent to Egypt by his brothers and suffer a lot in order to give him the blessing of birthright through the course of indemnity.

So Judah acknowledged them and said, "She has been more righteous than I, because I did not give her to Shelah my son." And he never knew her again. (Gen. 38:26)

Judah, who saved Joseph from death, had three sons. Since the first son did many wicked things, God killed him. Then Judah had his second son marry Tamar, his brother's wife. However, he went against his father and did evil things, too. Hereby, God killed him also. Judah told Tamar to wait until his third son is grown. Since he did not call her even after the son has grown, Tamar covered herself with a veil and wrapped herself. When Judah saw her, he thought that she was a harlot. Tamar tempted him and conceived by him (Gen. 38:6-18).

When Tamar was giving birth, the midwife took a scarlet thread and bound it on the hand of the baby who put out his hand. Then he drew back his hand and his brother came out first instead. His name was called Perez. And his brother who had scarlet thread on his hand was called Zerah.

The incest between a man and his daughter-in-law, as was illustrated above, is something that we cannot accept in ethical terms, and the birth of Zerah and Perez is also very strange.

Actually, Esau and Jacob were fighting each other in their mother's womb for the right of elder son. In the process of the birth of Zerah and Perez, too, the position of Zerah, the first son, and Perez, the younger one, was changed and Perez could take the right of the first son. Hence, God could restore the birthright in the Canaan tribe. Form that time on, the blood lineage of Judah who restored the birthright multiplied his descendants and was spread to tribe, and national level. Jesus, the Messiah of the mankind, could come in this blood lineage.

And he who overcomes, and keeps My works until the end, to him I will give power over the nations. (Rev. 2:26)

When we think about the history in the Bible, we can understand that God's plan to save mankind can be realized not just by God or man's effort alone, but only by the cooperation between God and man.

Cain had to go in front of God through Abel on heavenly side. Abel should do good things that deserve Cain's respect and love. And Cain should also believe in, obey, and follow Abel.

The road of establishing the foundation of faith and the foundation of substance requires patience. We have to know what God wants from us.

A religious life is that in which one places himself in the position of a sacrifice and offers himself as an acceptable sacrifice to God by dividing himself in two, representing the separation of good and evil. Therefore, unless we thus separate good from evil in ourselves centered on God's will, a condition for Satan to invade is created.