By the Light of a Masterly Moon

A look at Unification doctrine—complex, coherent, and heretical

What has 1975 brought? Among other things, “a new international level in the work of the Unification Church”:

Reverend Moon assigned three missionaries each to ninety-five new countries, to begin their assignments by the end of April.… The coming three years are crucial years for expanding the work in America and building an international foundation [The Way of the World, January, 1975, p. 2].

The Unification Church has for its more formal name The Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity. “Reverend Moon” is Sun Myung Moon, who organized the movement in Korea in 1959. Formerly a Presbyterian minister, he kept the title “Reverend” when he was ousted by the Korean Presbyterian Church.

From twenty thousand in 1960 the church has increased to hundreds of thousands of adherents, and it is growing faster each year. The expansion plans announced in The Way of the World call for sending crusade teams on three-month tours of four countries. Mass rallies are planned for New York’s Yankee Stadium in April, 1976, and for Washington, D.C., the following April. A university and theological seminary are being established at Sun Moon’s extensive estate in Barrytown, New York.

The doctrine of the Unification Church clanks harshly in an evangelical ear. But to dismiss it because it is heretical is to be guilty of tactical error.

The doctrine, so dynamic in being ever open to further revelation through the founder, is a carefully systemized discipline of detailed biblical interpretation; it is hyper-dispensational, with a striking blend of Oriental and Occidental attitudes and philosophies. Let’s look at the main aspects of this complex, coherent heresy and try to locate its appeal.

Revelation Based

Nearly all the “revealed truths” of the Unification heresy are interpretative of the Bible. The doctrine is a rejection not of the Bible but of all previous theological systems. These revelations to the Reverend Mr. Moon have purportedly come directly from God at a divinely fitting moment in time:

Since God has started His new dispensation and the era of the Christian Church is over, He is removing his direct guidance from existing churches. This is why today we see churches the world over undergoing great spiritual decline [Divine Principle and Its Application, by Young Oon Kim, 1969, page x].

Such a concept capitalizes on the disenchantment that many people, especially younger ones, have experienced with Christianity. They feel that in the two thousand years of its existence it has failed to transform society and has settled for mere institutional self-service. Followers of Moon are given to understand that they are involved in an irresistable new universalist movement that will in the very near future establish “the peace of mankind, the brotherhood of all peoples, and the unification of all religions.” This is the cause to which they give themselves unstintingly, for it has given meaning to their lives and an acceptance within the fellowship of a counter-establishment force that thrives on a bad press and claims the future. In Moon they have a palpable, present Messiah, not an invisible Christ, though that Christ yet has value to them:

Jesus was chosen [by God] to be the Lord of lords, but because he could not complete his work he was unable to attain that position. Through the accomplishment of his ministry, however, the Lord of the Second Advent [Moon] will eventually be recognized by the people of the world.… The Lord of the Second Advent is to restore the sovereignty of the cosmos to God by prosecuting Satan before Him.… It is he who, through his prosecution and subjugation of Satan, established the crossing point between good and evil in 1960 [Divine Principle.… p. 196].

The 1960 “crossing point” was Moon’s marriage to his second wife (the first was divorced on the grounds of her alleged adultery). This marriage is said to fulfill the prophesied marriage of the Lamb in Revelation 19. Moon, the Lord of the Second Advent, and his wife, the incarnate Holy Spirit, became “the true Parents of mankind.” Like Jacob of the Old Testament times, Moon is in a twenty-one-year testing; this makes 1981 the year of destiny.

These are the last times, according to Moon, and perhaps the most significant of all the signs of these times is the identity given to the antichrist:

The “Son of Perdition” that Paul predicted, who opposes God and claims to be God, is clearly the atheistic Communist system. “He” is especially personified in Joseph Stalin, the Red master whose purges cost the lives of 30 million Russians, most of them Christian.… We are in the “great tribulation” now! [The Way of the World, Sept./Oct., 1974, p. 45].

Divine Principle Of Creation

The creation of man in the image of God, requiring both male and female, indicates polarity in God. “That is, He must possess within Himself the dual characteristics of masculinity and femininity, which are perfectly harmonized in His nature.” (This and all further direct quotations are from the official book, Divine Principle and Its Application, by Young Oon Kim.)

The basic premise about God’s nature leads to a statement of human function and the primacy of the family:

A man and woman who are the separate images of God’s polarity, have the capacity to form a perfect reciprocal relationship and to have give and take of love between them. The purpose of marriage is to unite man and woman that they may fully reflect God as a unit and remain forever in a complete relation of give and take with Him. In this relationship they form a trinity with God.… It is God’s desire to see the entire earth covered with such God-centered families. [Divine Principle …, p. 6].

God, however, cannot manifest himself freely since he is limited to man’s response, and man has failed—until now, until the rising of Sun-Moon.

The Fall Of Man

The original sin was totally sexual in nature. From the use of fig leaves by Adam and Eve to cover their sexual organs, the Abrahamic rite of circumcision so that “his descendants might make symbolic restitution for the original sin,” and the biblical expression “to know” as indicating sexual experience, Unification teaching concludes that eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil meant having sexual relations.

God intended such relations for Adam and Eve, but they experienced sex prematurely, before they had fully moved through the threefold process of formation, growth, and perfection. Furthermore, Lucifer not only was jealous of this new creature of God but fell in love with Eve because of her beauty and seduced her. Both he and Eve fell spiritually in the same act of fornication. When Eve tempted Adam to share her sexual liberation, he did, and man established a fatal trinity with Satan rather than God.

The Meaning Of History

From the birth of Cain and Abel, history to the year 1960 was a record of thwarted opportunities for men to fulfill the Divine Principle by uniting with God. This failure extends to Jesus Christ himself, for he came “to bring a physical kingdom into the world, and not merely a spiritual kingdom in the hearts of men” (p. 56).

Christ did not come to die on the Cross. Prophecies of that death (e.g., Isaiah 53) were only expressions of what God saw as the rejection possibility as over against the acceptance possibility. “If the people of Israel had fully accepted Jesus, he could have revealed to them the full significance of his mission for the establishment of his kingdom” (p. 67). They could have welcomed Jesus and provided him with a wife by whom he could have had children; then he and she could have established that perfect Trinity with God.

Because of his rejection by Israel, Jesus could only partially succeed. By joining fully with the Holy Spirit, he completed Trinity at the spiritual level, and he provided in his death the condition of restitution of those who believe in him. He accomplished salvation spiritually only:

Since Jesus achieved only spiritual salvation, the physical restoration of the world, the kingdom of heaven is yet to come. To complete Jesus’ unfinished mission, the Second Advent of Christ must come to pass [p. 70].

The Christ of the Second Advent is not this same Jesus, however:

It has been implied throughout this book that the New Age has now dawned and that the Second Advent is being fulfilled by a man other than Jesus of Nazareth. Then from what part of the world and from what nation does the Lord of the Second Advent come? [p. 191].

The answer:

To be chosen as the universal altar, this nation must itself be divided into two sections symbolizing Cain and Abel.… Korea has providential significance.… The establishment of the kingdom of heaven and the destruction of Satanic rule will be effected in this country first. From there it will spread universally [pp. 194, 195].

Jesus bears relationship to the new Messiah in the same way Elijah did to John the Baptist: John was the promised Elijah; Moon is the promised Messiah.

Principle Of Indemnity

Finally, the Unification heresy corrupts the grace of God, which provides the believer full salvation through faith in the complete and finished work of Christ. It demands a humanly achieved righteousness instead of the imputed righteousness of Christ.

God does not and cannot forgive men unconditionally.… If we pay only five per cent of our actual indebtedness to God, He will wipe out the rest—the ninety-five per cent [p. 48].

This indemnity principle, which Unification teaching admits is simple bankruptcy, has a most practical effect in promoting dedicated effort by adherents.

First, “payment [of the five per cent] requires utmost devotion and commitment … and when man fulfills this condition, his whole debt is discharged and he is acknowledged by God as though he had not sinned at all” (p. 48). This is simple justification by works. Works are required dues, in addition to faith, for one seeking divine approval.

Second, payment of indemnity is much easier at the physical level, by such means as fasting, whereas if any “arrive in the spirit world with unpaid debts, they will have to work to assist perhaps the very ones they hurt in order to pay what they owe” (p. 50). Buddhists and Hindus will recognize the Law of Karma, and Catholic converts will be comfortable with penance and the propsect of purgatory.

Third, the indemnity principle, or the law of restitution as it is also called, when understood by Unification followers provides both understanding of and protection against defection at any point. “Satan works particularly hard on those who hear the Principle, for they are most likely to leave his realm immediately” (p. 49). Inducements to defect come from Satan in the form of family, friends, jobs, wealth, and comfort! With each further step into the teaching, Satan attacks with “headaches, colds, indigestion, doubts, fears, trivial accidents and inconveniences, et cetera” (p. 49). The pattern of resistance ingrained into members is to “accuse Satan before God, pray for God’s assistance, and pay indemnity at your convenience” (p. 50).

The indemnity principle results in financial benefit to the movement. All members must at least balance care and expenses provided them with income they produce for the church. Special assignments in solicitation and sales or other work are assigned whenever a particular member’s costs outstrip his productivity. It is passing strange, also, and worthy of IRS investigation, that members can qualify for leading credit cards on declared income of, say, $2,000 a month, and yet declare no income for tax purposes!

A Final Warning

Training of new converts is intensive under the ubiquitous ever-smiling photographs of Moon, but it is hardly “criminal brainwashing” of unwilling victims, according to a recent court decision in a suit brought by distraught parents. The successful graduate has not only an extensive knowledge of the Bible set within a fully charted and diagrammed scheme of interpretation but also an equally extensive scheme of history, a psychologically sound method of approach to the unconverted, and a sense of destiny for this present hour. The dark future is transformed into a very close-at-hand moment of triumphant glory in which adherents are the very special heralds of their visible founder, who leads the way in making trinities with God and establishing God’s Kingdom on earth.

Unification teaching eradicates Hell, promising that even Lucifer will one day be reclaimed. It welcomes all people. It sees common roots in all faiths of the world. It sees one world, promoting this in political—economic messages in its newspaper The Rising Tide (which identifies itself as “America’s fastest growing freedom newspaper”).

They label themselves the servants of mankind and come on with a soft-sell love approach. For each convert, the new faith is self-chosen, not a parent-influenced or inherited belief. It is not a call to bear arms, though God help us if the movement continues to grow and requires fulfillment of the Book of Revelation’s symbolism of flaming swords, conquering armies, and the Man on the white horse!

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