The internal fall and faith
Underlying topic(s):
- By John Eagles, April 6, 2001.
This page is part of an ERW course, Divine Principle.
From God’s love came God’s desire to make good creations. God’s love was the motivation for creating the whole universe. If God’s love had not been there, then nothing would have come into existence.
All creations, everything that is made, begin somewhere in the heart of someone. Good creations have their origin in a loving heart, and bad creations have their source in a hateful heart.
A person like Hitler could get power over millions, he could make his followers to become killing beasts only because at some point earlier in his life Hitler determined that he wanted to be the boss over all.
When Lucifer determined that he would reject God’s newest creation of man and that he would stand up against God, there began the history of all misery for God and man and good angels. A determination deep inside the heart of an angel made happen all evil since then.
All external creations have their origin in the internal, in the invisible heart of desire. It is your desire that counts. When you have good desire, there will come about good actions from your life. When you have evil desire, there will come about harmful results.
Another word for this deepest desire is: FAITH. When you have good faith, then you will make good deeds. When you have no faith, you will not be able to accomplish anything. When your faith is evil but strong, then you will have much result, but those results will be bad.
Everything begins with faith.
What is faith?
Faith is a complicated phenomenon. Your faith comes from the deepest part of your heart. Original faith of man means that man has trust in God. God’s original faith is that God's creations are good. Satan’s original faith was that he would be able to turn upside down the good order of creation. It has always been Satan’s faith that he could topple God, that he could take over God’s position.
Because Satan had such kind of strong faith, therefore he made such big impact in human history.
False faith
The purpose of our religious life is first of all that we develop our good faith. Now we have found out about the essence of the fall, about the original sin of the angels, or about the internal fall, it is necessary to look again at this demand for faith in religious life.
Why did Adam lose faith? Adam, after his fall, had lost faith, and therefore, in restoration, each Adam- or Eve-type person must regain faith. We must find back faith in the goodness of God. Apparently, the good faith of Adam was destroyed by Lucifer.
How could Lucifer destroy Adam’s good faith?
The good faith of Adam was destroyed mainly by Lucifer’s work in the internal fall. Lucifer actively promoted false faith. That is another way of describing the internal fall. The essence of the fall was that Lucifer brought false faith to Adam and Eve.
What is false faith? False faith is faith in a reality that is not really the original reality. God created the world and God is good and God created a good world. Faith in the order as God made it or wanted it, this is good faith. Lucifer did not accept the order that God wished, and so he brought false faith into the world.
The essence of the internal fall is that Lucifer gave to Adam and Eve a false idea about who God is, which position God takes, and therefore also which position Adam and Eve are taking. Satan did especially work to destroy the good faith of Adam and Eve. Good faith, this means to believe that God is your good Father and Mother, that God only wants the best for you. This is what Adam and Eve could not believe anymore, after they had been poisoned by the false faith of Lucifer.
Faith is to restore trust in God
To restore the Foundation of Faith is the first demand of religious life. We know that we can make a Foundation of Faith by bringing good offerings to God. God is asking you to do something, and then you do this, in love for God, and you offer the accomplishments of your work to God. When you have done this over a certain prescribed time period, you have made a Foundation of Faith.
What is so difficult about this? The difficulty is that it seems rather crazy to offer to an invisible God. That it is rather strange to do something for a God of whom many think that to be bad or non-existent. To work for some time and to accomplish something, to get a certain amount of money, such things are not so difficult. But to offer this to God and not to offer this in a false way, for example to get a higher position in a church or organization, this is the real difficult part.
Satan, through the internal fall, has destroyed Adam’s good belief that he is the son of God and that God is a loving and good parent to him.
When you are asked to make a Foundation of Faith, you are asked to restore the original trust that man should have in God. The essence of the fall of man was that he came under the influence of Satan who destroyed the original faith of man in himself being the good child of a loving Eternal Parent, God. The essence of your restoration should be that you restore this good faith in God.
You can only restore your good faith in God if you restore your trust in God. And to restore your trust in God you must restore the trust in yourself as being God’s child. And to gain back the trust that you are God’s good child, you must judge what is the most evil in Satan. The most evil in Satan was that he took away the original faith of Adam and Eve and replaced that with a crooked and distorted faith.
All people in the world have lost their original love for God. They all have become victims, in some way or another, of the evil intentions in Lucifer’s heart when he committed the internal fall.
Good desire is what really counts in religious life
In religious life we have to come to the understanding that nothing external can really restore ourselves. The problem of fallen man lies in the heart, and it is the heart that has to be restored. Of course, once your heart is restored, there also have to be done many more external things. It is not enough to only restore your heart. But you cannot restore your mind and body if you did not first restore your good faith in God.
Good desire, that is what really counts in religious life. With good desire you can bring good offerings.
If you have false desire, then you are not at all living a religious life. If you have false desire, regardless what kind of so-called good things you do, then you nevertheless did become a result of the evil desire of Satan.
