About Lineage

Tossa Cromwell
October 24, 2009

First, lineage is the central thing that God has been trying to restore throughout human history. The essential question that lineage looks at is simply, "Who is your parent?" with two possible answers, "God," and "Satan." Most people in the world would probably say that God is their parent and that Satan is certainly not. In other words, no one wants Satan to be their parent and God to not be. However, we "choose" who our parent is through our lifestyle, with the most important element of our lifestyle being our sexual lifestyle. Adam and Eve did not choose to have a sexual relationship according to God's true love lifestyle. Instead, they had a sexual relationship based on Satan's false love lifestyle, which constituted the original sin. Adam and Eve probably did not realize the magnitude of their sin before they committed it. They were likely being "driven by hormones" as our contemporaries might say. But through the act of the Fall, they essentially denied that God was their father and chose a new parent, Satan, because they chose to build a "love" relationship centering on Satan, Satan's values (self-centered values,) Satan's love (self-centered love,) and Satan's lifestyle (fallen nature.) As we learn in the Divine Principle, the Fall was also where fallen nature was passed on to human beings from Lucifer the archangel. Ever since then, human beings have lived according to fallen nature.

Lineage is a scary thing because it constantly influences our lives. There is a saying "like father like son." Because we are children of our father the devil, we live lives like him. That is what lineage is talking about. BCs do not have perfect lineages, but they do have the original sin cleansed from their lineage. BCs still have fallen nature, hereditary sin, collective sin and their own personal sin influencing them through their lineage.

Second, lineage is something that we alter through our life and love. The kind of life that we live and the kind of love that we practice in our lives changes our lineage, for the better or worse. I don't think any first generation member or BC has fully cleansed their lineage in his or her life. Therefore, in order to continue the heavenly lineage, we receive the Blessing as 2nd generation, which allows us to engage in sexual relationships without committing a sin akin to the original sin.

Third, think again about Father being the third Adam. God sent the first and second Adams on the earth and their common trait was a lineage devoid of original sin. The first Adam was the one who made the original sin, the second Adam tragically died before he could multiply his good lineage, and the third Adam has multiplied his good lineage to an incredible extent. Father has even declared the age of a fourth Adam and we have taken new versions of the Holy Wine in order to receive more and more grace and blessings from Heaven. It is a sad fact that for fallen people like us we do not always feel the grace and blessings we receive or we manage to forget about them or stop feeling them. We have to constantly invest in our relationship with God, our relationship with True Parents and our relationships in our family in order to keep and remember the incredible grace and blessing we have received.

Throughout human history, God has chosen people as central figures based on the lives their ancestors lived, in other words based on their lineage. After Cain killed Abel, God worked through Seth's lineage and chose Noah based on the lineage Noah represented. Through the flood, God tried to cleanse the world of evil lineage and keep the best of lineages alive through Noah's family. When Ham was claimed by Satan, that foundation was lost and another 400-year indemnity period had to pass. Then God claimed one of Satan's favorite, Abraham, and chose him to be the new father of faith, the ancestor of God's people. Through indemnity conditions and ultimately the Foundation for the Messiah made by Abraham's family, God could claim one family, and from there expand to a clan, tribe and eventually the nation of Israel. God tried to establish a kingdom through Saul, David and Solomon, but these central figures failed to establish a foundation for the Messiah again, which caused the Israelites to have to go through division, exile and occupation. Through this long course, God could finally claim one person from the lineage of David to be free of original sin, through the long history which was a cleansing of lineage. That person was Jesus. Through Jesus, God wanted to engraft the Jewish nation and later the whole world to the heavenly lineage, in order to restore the entire world.

Because of Jesus' death on the cross, God's Will to establish his lineage on the earth could not be established, but through the work of Jesus and the Holy Spirit, a spiritual lineage of Christians could be established on the earth, a lineage of people who had experienced rebirth through Jesus and the Holy Spirit. Centering on this lineage of Christians, God wanted to receive the Second Coming of Jesus on the earth and then connect Christianity to a physical and spiritual lineage of God, thereby completing the providence of restoration. However, the Second Coming was not received by the people of Jesus and the Holy Spirit's spiritual lineage, and the Second Coming had to create a new foundation on his own, which manifested itself through the Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity (the title is very meaningful and significant,) and later the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification, which signified the beginning of a new age itself.

As you can see, being of the chosen lineage does not make someone perfect. Neither does it make someone incapable of wrong choices. Adam was of the chosen lineage, but he fell. Ham was Noah's son, but he failed to unite in heart with his father and continue the chosen lineage. Abraham, Isaac and Jacob's lineage, raised and chosen by God, eventually put the Messiah on the cross. The spiritual children of the Messiah did not receive the Second Coming of the Messiah. At the same time, God's providence has progressed and human beings have been able to attain higher levels spiritually thanks to the merit of the age, which also has everything to do with lineage.

As second generation of the heavenly lineage, we have a great responsibility to live and love centering on God, in order to cleanse our fallen nature, hereditary, collective and personal sins, and to unite in heart with our True Parents in Heaven and on Earth. We should not for one moment think that our lineage makes us better than others or less fallible or responsible for our actions. On the contrary, evil spirits target 2nd generation more than anyone else, because of their inherent fallen nature, which makes them

1) feel jealous and envious of good people,
2) want to dominate good people and
3) influence good people to become evil people.

Our good lineage draws evil spirits, who want to dominate and control us out of their jealousy, hatred, arrogance and resentment. It's really scary, which is why we have to strive to unite with God and True Parents, attend Chung Pyung 40-day workshops, and really live good lives and practice true love in our lives. And it is essential that we continue the tradition of the Blessing by keeping our purity before and after the Blessing, staying away from alcohol, tobacco, drugs and free sex. We should strive to create ideal families in which God and True Parents' love can flow. Remember, our lifestyle determines who our parent is. Do we choose God and True Parents to be our parent or do we choose Satan to be our parent?

Is is only through the Blessing that we can completely remove ourselves from Satan's lineage. People who have not received the Blessing still receive the merit of the age and can get close to God based on the merit. Because God is the parent of all of us, he will go to any of his children who sincerely yearn to be with him.

One last thing: as second generation we many times have to go through trials and tribulations, indemnity conditions for providential reasons and we may have to carry more than our own load. Through going through suffering, we might set a condition for the salvation of our extended family, our clan, tribe, nation or even the world. Therefore, accept all difficulties with gratitude and joy, humility and repentance. It is through our heart that we can become true sons and daughters of God.

Recently, Rev. Yohan Lee explained in a speech that lineage is Shim Jung (heart). It struck as truth to me even though I did not know why.

Tonight I realized that the emotions we live with (in our heart) either resemble Satan's or God's emotions. And I realized that lineage is talking about that: what kind of emotions we have with us in our heart.

Anyone can control their emotions, but the question is what emotions are God-like and worthy to preserve and which are satanic. The only way I have found to distinguish between the two is constant prayer and interaction with God: asking him what he would think, how he would react, sanctifying my thoughts and feelings in his name.

I suppose that the lineage we receive at birth is the responsibility we are naturally born with. In other words, we are born responsible to cleanse whatever sins our ancestors committed. Then, based on what kind of lives we live and how much/well we love others, our lineage can be cleansed. Receiving the Blessing from True Parents is probably the best possible way of cleansing lineage.

Then, when we have children, they would receive their lineage based on what we have done in our lives. But even after their birth, their lineage might be influenced by our life and love.

Father was born with a special lineage, prepared by God for a long time, and with his special lineage came special responsibility. I believe that he has fulfilled his responsibility already.

What I wonder about is, "What is my responsibility?" I could come up with some answers right away, such as establish an ideal family, restore my tribe, fulfill the three blessings, but it's not always obvious what that means practically. Humanity as a whole is responsible to attend the True Family. Of that, I am sure.