What are the essential beliefs all Christians should hold?

Essential Christian beliefs include understanding God as the Heavenly Parent, embodying original essential masculine and feminine dual characteristics, and the source of all purpose and design in creation. Salvation involves restoring humanity's corrupted lineage to God's original ideal, a mission initiated by Jesus as the Second Adam, to be completed at the Second Advent in the East. Believers are called to embody God's true love and fulfill their responsibility to establish God's Kingdom on Earth.

Understanding the essential beliefs all Christians should hold is paramount for personal spiritual growth and comprehending God's ultimate plan for humanity. This clarity guides us toward a life aligned with divine purpose, leading to true salvation and the establishment of God's ideal on Earth.

The Nature of God and Creation

Central to Christian belief is understanding God's nature. God is the Original Being, the first cause of all existence, possessing original essential character and original essential form, along with original essential masculinity and original essential femininity (Dual Characteristics). This means God is not only Heavenly Father but also Heavenly Mother, our Heavenly Parent. This comprehensive understanding of God as Parent lays the foundation for authentic gender equality, as the value of both men and women is actualized in God's love. God is an entity with intellect, emotion, and will, displaying personality and feeling joy, sorrow, longing, and sometimes anger; yet, beneath all, God is love.

We can understand God by observing creation, just as one knows an artist through their art (Romans 1:20). The Bible states that all things were created through the Word (John 1:3) and in God's image (Genesis 1:26-27). This implies that creation reflects God's attributes, exhibiting law, order, and Principle. All entities possess both an internal character and an external form and, in turn, are composed of dual characteristics like masculinity and femininity, positive and negative. For humans, this is mind and body; for creation, it's phenomena like stamen and pistil, protons and electrons. This reciprocal relationship enables life's multiplication and reveals God as the original internal character and essential external form, the source of purpose and design for all things.

God's Purpose and the Lineage of Faith

God's ultimate purpose was to establish the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth through the Four Position Foundation, where God, a perfected Adam, a perfected Eve, and their perfected children would embody true love. However, humanity's premature and illicit act—the Fall—corrupted the original blood lineage from God, establishing a lineage of sin. The Messiah (Jesus) came as the Second Adam, with the mission to become the True Parent of humanity, marry a perfected Eve, and establish the True Family as the foundation of God's Kingdom on Earth. His mission was to restore the lost lineage and bring both spiritual and physical salvation. However, due to humanity's failure to fully receive him, culminating in his crucifixion, Jesus achieved spiritual salvation, opening the way for spiritual rebirth (Romans 10:9; Acts 4:12), but the physical, perfected family and Kingdom on Earth remained unfulfilled.

The Trinity, therefore, represents God's ideal for a perfected family, which was to have been fulfilled by God, a perfected Adam (Jesus), and a perfected Eve (his intended bride) who would become the True Parents. Following the crucifixion, the Holy Spirit works in the position of the spiritual True Mother, working with Jesus as the spiritual True Father to bring about the spiritual rebirth of humanity. Salvation is thus the process of restoring human nature and lineage to their original, sinless state, achieved by accepting Christ and fulfilling one's portion of responsibility in cooperation with God.

The concept of the "chosen people" is also clarified. While Israel was initially chosen, their failure to accept Jesus led to the mission being transferred. As Jesus taught in the parable of the vineyard (Matthew 21:33-46), God takes away the mission from those who reject His son and gives it to another people who will produce its fruits. Thus, Christians who inherit the faith of Abraham became the new Israel, no longer defined by lineal descent but by faith. The Bible reveals that Christ at the Second Advent will return from a nation in the East, symbolized by an angel ascending from the rising sun (Revelation 7:2-4), to complete the mission Jesus began.

Living the Principle

Living according to these beliefs means actively engaging in the process of restoration, starting with ourselves and our families, embodying God's true love, and fulfilling our portion of responsibility.

1. Embrace God as Heavenly Parent: Understand and relate to God as both Father and Mother, internalizing the comprehensive nature of divine love and striving for gender equality in all aspects of life. 2. Cultivate True Love and Lineage: Strive to make your family a reflection of God's ideal, practicing selfless love, forgiveness, and upholding God's ideal for marriage and sexual purity. 3. Actively Engage in God's Providence: Participate in sharing the understanding of God's true nature and purpose, promoting peace, and supporting initiatives for a better world, recognizing the ongoing restoration of lineage and the establishment of God's Kingdom on Earth. 4. Practice Continuous Self-Perfection: Engage in daily prayer, study, service, and self-reflection to deepen your relationship with God and embody the internal character and external form that reflect His attributes.

These answers explain the Bible in the light of the Divine Principle, the teachings of Reverend Sun Myung Moon. .

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