A Foundation of Faith big enough to receive the Messiah
Underlying topic(s):
- By John Eagles, April 10, 2001.
This page is part of an ERW course, Divine Principle.
It is the most important thing in life that we build a foundation of faith. It is the essence of religious life that we build a foundation of faith.
A foundation of faith is something internal. Nobody could see if you have strong faith. Only by judging the actions of someone looking at it from the historical perspective, it is possible to find out if someone had faith.
We conclude that Noah was a man of faith because he built the ark that saved his family. But the people around Noah thought he was rather crazy. Only because we now know that there really took place a flood, therefore we judge that Noah’s actions were right and that he had strong faith in God.
When we want to build a foundation of faith, nothing external in life does help us. My faith is really a matter between myself and God. A church can teach about how to make a foundation of faith, but if the church puts itself in the place of God, then such an organization hinders the individual to develop real faith.
In fact, when you want to gather real faith, it usually means that you have to take a position challenging the established order of an entire church or religion. The religions as they are now existing in the world are often more a hindrance to someone who wants to develop real faith than that you are being helped.
Foundation of Faith to overcome the fall of man
Because it is so extremely important to build up faith in our life, we must get the deepest understanding and look at faith from several points of view.
To build a foundation of faith is really nothing else than to restore the fall of man. The fall of man can be understood as a tragedy on four levels:
- On the level of heart, Adam and Eve gave their love to an evil archangel. Adam stopped to love God because he disobeyed God’s Commandment.
- On the level of mind, Adam and Eve got influenced by the sins they had committed. Each sin causes fallen nature to develop. This is a direct result from the evil love that you allowed yourself to be engaged in, but it also is a result of making give and take with evil nature in someone else. The fall means also fall of your original nature.
- On the level of body, the fall meant that wrong actions were taken. Once someone commits the sexual fall, those sexual deeds are false actions. But sinners do also do all kind of other evil actions. Fall is also fall of the body, which becomes dirty and is tending to be very self-centered.
- Finally, the fall of any person means that harm is done to the good world of God. Each person under God has a unique responsibility. If you fall, then you also fail to do your tasks in God’s world. Furthermore, your fall influences others to also do wrong things.
To build a foundation of faith means that you must reverse those four aspects of the fall. You have to do good actions that must be connected to God’s world. You also must overcome the fallen natures of your evil mind, and most important of all, you must totally obey God’s Commandment otherwise all what you offered has no meaning.
Many people try to build a foundation of faith by being obedient to a leader of a religious organization. Those people bring offerings to a church and think that in that way faith is built up. But unless you also really overcome your fallen natures, and still more importantly, unless you do really build a good and direct love relation to God, your offerings will be of no use for your restoration.
It is not so that you first restore creation, then later your body, and then your mind and finally your heart. Your heart, mind and body are levels on which you exist. They are inseparable. You cannot change your body unless you also change your mind and heart. So, if you bring offerings to a religious organization, but you do not have a good relation to God, then you do change your body, but also your mind and heart in a wrong way. You are actually building up faith in the religious organization, but not in God. Such faith is false faith. You just replace one kind of false faith, the faith in the words of one fallen angel, for another kind of false faith, the faith in a religious organization. It does not make very much difference whether this religious organization really was started by God or not. As long as your faith is not faith in the living God, and as long as you haven’t overcome your feelings of distrust toward God, your faith is not original faith.
Your Foundation of Faith depends on four factors
Adam and Eve originally had a direct relation to God. Adam and Eve lost their faith first of all because they disobeyed The Commandment. Always the purpose of building a foundation of faith has to be that we restore this original relation to God. I am Adam, you are Adam or Eve, and nothing less than restoring the direct relation of trust with God should be our goal for building a foundation of faith.
What is the meaning of building a foundation of faith, which is extending the foundation needed for our personal lives? If you are alone with yourself, and you would be living in a cave where no other person or spirit has access to, then it is much easier to restore your faith in God than when you live in the middle of society, surrounded by all kind of evil temptations and threats. The foundation of faith is connected to a number of things.
First of all, it is connected to your age. When you are a young child, it is easier to have good faith in God than when you are older. For example, when you are older, there comes the element of sexuality into your life. It is more difficult to keep faith when you are susceptible to sexual temptations than when you are still too young to have awareness of sexuality.
Second, it is connected to your surroundings. When you are a child, or a disciple of God-loving people, you only need to build a foundation of faith in unity with the foundation of faith of your parents or restoration-parents. When you would be a child of evil parents who carry much evil faith, your position of child is a big disadvantage. Before you could build a foundation of faith, you need to separate yourself from the false-love relationship existing between yourself and your parents. Also if you would be married in a relation in which God has no place, you cannot easily find faith in God. That does not always mean that a divorce is needed. What is necessary is that in love for your spouse you will stop living for a goal that is not centered on God.
Third, it is connected to your responsibility. The heavier your task is, the greater your mission, the more that you must carry. If you are responsible for yourself only, it is easier to act right than when you are responsible for a nation or even for the whole world. For example, when you must take responsibility for a nation, you first have to build a foundation of faith on the individual level. For this you must go through all kind of situations in which you must maintain good faith in God. After that you must make foundations of faith on the family level and tribal level, until you finally can be allowed to make the foundation of faith on the national level.
Fourth, it is connected to the history of failures or accomplishments by yourself and others who stood in the same position as you do. For example, Abel had to restore the faith lost by his father. Abraham, also being in Adam’s position, could inherit faith from those before him in the same position, but he had also to restore all the mistakes that these people had made.
The four points mentioned are interlinked. If you have more responsibility, you also must restore more historical failures.
The four main points that determine if it is easier or more difficult to make a foundation of faith are: your age, your surroundings, your mission, and the history of failures and accomplishments.
Substantiating the Foundation of Faith
The foundation of your personal faith needs to be substantiatzed. What does this mean? We do also speak of a foundation of substance and a foundation to receive the Messiah. A foundation of faith will only have effect and stay as foundation if this foundation of faith is also substantiated and is connected with God’s central work in God's Providence. We could say that the terms foundation of faith and foundation to receive the Messiah are not really necessary to be used, because a victorious foundation of faith is always substantiated and is always offered to God through the Messiah.
Yet, we do also speak about foundation of substance and of foundation to receive the Messiah. What do these concepts mean in relation to foundation of faith?
When you make a foundation of faith, then this faith is invisible and internal. But God’s world is built from real results, so if you have built up good faith, you also must express this faith until you can show real results. This is mainly done by offering your results to others. When the central figure for the foundation of faith in a nation built his foundation of faith, then he must, of course, offer this to God, but he must also offer his faith to all people of the nation. When i am building up faith and i successfully went through difficult situations, then God is able to give God's Word to me. The Word of God, in the form of revelations given to me, can be given only after i made a foundation of faith that i offered to God. I offer to God my foundation of faith, and God, after having waited very long for this, can finally give to me the Word. It is my responsibility to offer God’s Word to all those who are connected to me.
If any of you built a foundation of faith, then you also will receive God’s Word in some way or another. You bring good offerings to God, and if God accepted your offerings, then you receive God’s Word. You can receive God’s Word through Books of God’s Word, but you also receive God’s Word in your prayers and by getting insights while studying Books of God’s Word. It is your substantial foundation, you are making the foundation of substance, if you offer God’s Word to your restoration parents. Not always, such results will be published, but sometimes God wants your findings to become known to others.
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