Sanctuary Church Open Report from Hong Kong 2022-09-07
Alan Kwan 

The Substantial Reason why the Spirit World Initially Rejected the Divine Principle
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Many members have heard the story that, when True Father initially formulated the Divine Principle and tried to present it to God and the spirit world, initially God and the spirit world rejected it twice, until the third iteration when God and the spirit world finally accepted the Divine Principle.  Many members would understand it as a "beautiful test of faith", without giving it much thought beyond that.  This article attempts to give a more substantial explanation as to why that process was needed.  In short, the test was given not simply for some abstract notion of "testing" True Father's faith and confidence, but because it was needed as practical training to prepare True Father for his mission of preaching and spreading the truth.

The Divine Principle challenged many entrenched beliefs, in particular mainstream Christian doctrines.  So it should be expected that, when True Father attempted to preach the truth, he would be met with opposition, especially from the mainstream Christian position.  The Divine Principle is true and logically sound; hence it cannot be rebuked by true and logical arguments.  Instead, those attempting to dispute it would invariably have to resort to fallacious, illogical arguments, such as (the logic textbook types of) ad hominem, circular reasoning, appeal to authority, etc.  Examples of these are as follows:

ad hominem:
"Rev. Moon has not received formal theological training, hence he cannot be speaking God's truth."
"Who is this young man from Korea to preach to the Christian world about God and Jesus?"

circular reasoning:
"Mainstream Christian doctrines are true, hence the Divine Principle, which disputes and contradicts them, must be wrong."

appeal to (false) authority:
"Mainstream Christian doctrines must be correct because they are widely recognized and accepted." (In other words, because they are mainstream.)


Perhaps few have really given a good thought about this story, but the hidden fact was that, it was precisely these kinds of logical fallacies that were thrown at True Father when the spirit world was rejecting the Divine Principle.  In particular, when God, Jesus, and the saints were rejecting the Divine Principle, they were tossed as authoritative statements from these "authorities", without solid, logical arguments to back up those claims, and without convincing, logical refutations to specific contents of the Divine Principle (of course, because these were impossible).  Against these illogical claims, True Father had to stand firm and retain faith in the truthful conclusions he had reached (and the underlying assumptions of faith from which those conclusions were drawn, such as the benevolence of God and the divine will to establish God's Kingdom of Heaven on earth), and discern the fact that those rejections were logical fallacies of the appeal to authority type, and hence invalid and untrue.  In other words, True Father had to learn to value "truth" over "authority" - even authority which claims to be "Godly".

This was absolutely needed not only because True Father would have to stand firm and overcome opposition of that type, but also because, when eventually True Father would gain wider acceptance as the Lord of the Second Advent, he himself would stand in the position of authority.  This training was to ingrain in True Father the wisdom that he has to always value "truth" above "authority" - even when that authority is himself.  Only with the correct mindset could True Father stand always on the side of truth, and remain always truthful and incorruptible.  In other words, this training was a crucial step along his growth towards perfection.  For this important and substantial reason, namely to train True Father to value truth over "authority", the spirit world had to twice reject the Divine Principle from an "authoritative", yet illogical and untrue, position.

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(This and other reports archived at
http://www.zj-mahjong.info/San_arch_mirror/
under "Reports from Hong Kong church".)