Sun Myung Moon
Circa 1968
Excerpt
Living Faith in the Era after the Coming of Heaven
From "Selected Speeches of Reverend Sun Myung Moon"
(Unofficial Translation)
Photo date and location unknown
How did Adam fall at the beginning? He fell because of his unfaithfulness. Unfaithfulness is the first cause of the fall. Secondly, he insisted on his own interests. He acted selfishly, thus he fell. Thirdly, Adam demanded his own realm of love centered on him. These three are the three major reasons why he fell. Unfaithfulness, insisting on his own self-interest -- self-centeredness, and dreaming of a selfish realm of love are foot holds of Satan. The fallen angels became like that.
Then, how can we restore man to the original position? What should be done? Man has to go the reverse direction of the fall. Absolute faith! This is reason why we talk about absolute faith. The human ancestor fell from God because of his unfaithfulness. We must overcome in order to return. We must climb up higher than the line where our ancestor fell.
What is absolute faith? This means you must go forward until you die or even if you die. This means you must determine to go the path at the risk of your life. If you die while going on the path, you would die moving forward to stay the path not having fallen down off the path.
Absolute faith is able to cultivate absolute love. When you get married, wouldn't you know this? Don't you ask your spouse, "How must do you trust me? Do you believe me absolutely?" So, absolute love follows absolute faith. Therefore, absolute faith is needed to restore love.
What is absolute faith? For instance, if you have faith in a religious founder, even though he and you are separated by several thousand years in terms of historical time, in terms of your heart that believes in him, you enter and stand in the horizontally equal time period as he is. Because of this, you are taught to believe absolutely. When you have absolute faith, you would realize that you exist in the same place with the religious leader. Moreover, you would realize that you are living together with him. You should understand that faith lets you realize this and gives you such spiritual stimulations.