What is the foundation for the messiah?

In this teaching, the foundation for the Messiah combines restored faith in God’s Word with substantial reconciliation in human relationships. Sibling unity prepares humanity to receive True Parents. Abraham’s failed offering required 400 years of indemnity, while the family foundation had to expand nationally to withstand the surrounding fallen world.

The foundation for the Messiah is the preparation through which fallen humanity becomes able to receive the Messiah and cooperate with his work of restoration. It consists of two inseparable conditions: the foundation of faith, which restores humanity’s trust in God’s Word, and the foundation of substance, which restores relationships of love by overcoming fallen nature. Together, these prepare a family, a people, and ultimately the world to welcome the Messiah as a True Parent. God initiates this providence, but human beings must respond: faith must become embodied in love, reconciliation, and a community capable of supporting the Messiah’s mission.

The Biblical Foundation

The biblical expectation of the Messiah, the Anointed One, concerns salvation and the establishment of God’s reign. The promise following the Fall is an early anticipation of this victory: “And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel” (Genesis 3:15).

This expectation develops through promises concerning Israel and the blessing of all nations. Isaiah declares, “For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder,” and names him “Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace” (Isaiah 9:6). Isaiah also describes a suffering servant: “But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities” (Isaiah 53:5). These passages speak directly of Jesus.

Jesus declares, “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me” (John 14:6). The New Testament also proclaims the saving significance of his death: “But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8).

Yet these promises raise questions about preparation and response. Why was a long history necessary before the Messiah’s coming? Why did his appearance not immediately produce a peaceful world? Why does the Gospel say, “He came unto his own, and his own received him not” (John 1:11)? Some passages describe sovereignty among the nations, as in Psalm 2:6–8 and Zechariah 9:9–10. Jesus also says, “My kingdom is not of this world” (John 18:36). The Unification teaching connects them through the distinction between God’s unchanging purpose and humanity’s responsibility to prepare for, recognize, and cooperate with the Messiah, thereby resolving the apparent contradictions.

Why Faith and Substance Must Both Be Restored

To understand the foundation for the Messiah, one must first understand what was lost through the Fall. Adam and Eve were meant to grow into mature children of God, unite in marriage, and establish a family expressing God’s love. Their development required both God’s sustaining care and their own free response to his commandment.

The commandment made that responsibility explicit: “But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it” (Genesis 2:17). God could give the commandment, but Adam and Eve had to decide whether to keep it. Love and maturity could not be achieved through divine power alone while excluding their participation.

Their failure involved two connected losses.

First, they lost faith in God’s Word. Instead of trusting God’s guidance, they accepted a contrary direction. This was the inward, spiritual, or insubstantial dimension of the Fall: the breaking of trust that should have governed their growth. Restoration therefore requires a foundation of faith, through which human beings again place God’s Word above temptation and self-centered desire.

Second, they lost the original love of God as the governing center of embodied life. Their relationship as man and woman was intended to become a substantial expression of divine love, including the union through which children would be born. “Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh” (Genesis 2:24). The Fall corrupted that intended order of love and the lineage that would proceed from it.

Calling this loss physical or substantial does not mean that love is merely bodily. It means that love was meant to take visible form in marriage, parenthood, children, and relationships throughout society. Consequently, restoration cannot stop at inward belief. It must also restore the way people love and relate to one another.

The two foundations thus answer two dimensions of the same rupture: faith restores the relationship to God’s Word, while substance restores love in actual human relationships. A confession of faith without transformed relationships leaves the preparation incomplete.

The Foundation of Faith

The foundation of faith is established when a central person responds faithfully to God and fulfills a required condition over an appointed period. In the early restoration narratives, this involves a central figure, an offering or other object representing the condition, and a numerical period through which faith is demonstrated.

An offering is not a payment that purchases God’s favor. Its significance lies in whether the person faithfully follows God’s direction. It represents the surrender of self-centered control and the restoration of the trust that Adam and Eve lost.

The histories of Abel, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Moses are successive efforts to recover this relationship. Their circumstances differ, but the central question remains: will the person entrusted with responsibility remain faithful to God?

Providential history reveals a specific chronology: ten generations and 1,600 years from Adam to Noah, followed by ten generations and 400 years from Noah to Abraham. These numerical periods are part of God's timetable for restoration. Numerical periods signify conditions of restoration; they do not replace the central requirement of faithful action.

Human growth is likewise understood as passing through formation, growth, and completion. During growth, people remain responsible for responding to God’s guidance. The goal is not simply to complete a number of years, but to become mature enough to live in direct unity of heart with God.

The Foundation of Substance

The foundation of substance requires the removal of fallen nature through restored relationships. Faith must become substantial in the way people overcome jealousy, resentment, domination, and hostility.

The underlying pattern begins with the archangel’s relationship to Adam and Eve. The archangel was created to serve God’s children. His fall arose from resentment over their position and from an attempt to obtain love and authority contrary to God’s order. Rather than accepting and supporting God’s purpose for others, he placed his own grievance at the center.

This conflict reappears in the relationship between Cain and Abel. Abel occupies the position through which God’s blessing is to be received, while Cain must overcome resentment and unite with him. Abel’s responsibility is not to become proud or exploit Cain, but to act in a way that helps restore their brotherhood. Cain’s responsibility is to reject violence and receive goodness without being ruled by jealousy.

The desired outcome is therefore not the permanent superiority of one brother over another. It is reconciliation centered on God. Cain’s murder of Abel destroyed that possibility in their family and prolonged the course of restoration.

The pattern is reversed when people learn to see others from God’s perspective, accept their own responsibilities, refrain from seizing another’s place through selfish ambition, and cooperate in spreading goodness. These are relational changes, not merely ritual acts.

This explains the connection between sibling unity and the coming of True Parents: when brothers and sisters unite, the parents can come home. A household torn apart by hatred is not ready to receive and sustain its parents’ purpose. A reconciled household provides a place where parental love can become the organizing center of family life.

Applied providentially, humanity must overcome the archangelic and Cain–Abel patterns of rivalry so that the Messiah can be received as a True Parent. Sibling reconciliation does not itself remove original sin or make the Messiah unnecessary. It establishes the conditions in which humanity can welcome him and participate in the restoration he brings.

From Adam’s Family to Abraham’s Family

The earliest efforts to establish this foundation took place within families. In Adam’s family, Abel’s acceptable offering represented a foundation of faith, but Cain’s violence prevented the foundation of substance from being established.

The providence then proceeded through Noah. Noah’s faithful response to God provided the basis for a renewed beginning after the flood. Yet, Ham’s response to Noah exposed a failure to unite with the person at the center of that foundation. The family did not complete the conditions required for restoration. God’s purpose remained unchanged, but another course became necessary.

Abraham was subsequently called to establish a new beginning. His symbolic offering involved a heifer, a she-goat, a ram, a turtledove, and a young pigeon. The account states that he divided the animals but not the birds: “but the birds divided he not” (Genesis 15:10).

The failure to divide the birds was not an incidental detail. The offering was meant to establish a condition separating good from evil and placing what was offered on God’s side. Leaving part of it undivided meant that the symbolic condition was incomplete. The descending birds of prey signified an opening for satanic claim.

The consequence was a prolonged course of indemnity. God told Abraham that his descendants would live as strangers and experience oppression: “they shall afflict them four hundred years” (Genesis 15:13). Abraham’s mistake in the symbolic offering necessitated the 400-year course associated with Egypt. This period restored the failed condition and prepared the way for the providence to advance beyond the family level.

Here, indemnity means a condition through which a lost position or relationship is restored. It should not be understood as a claim that every person’s suffering is deserved or that oppressed people are personally guilty of an ancestor’s act.

Restoration in Abraham’s family continued through Isaac and Jacob. Abraham’s willingness to offer Isaac, together with Isaac’s cooperation, provided a renewed basis of obedience. The course then moved toward the substantial reconciliation of Jacob and Esau.

Jacob returned after years of hardship, approaching his brother with humility and gifts rather than force. Esau, instead of carrying out his earlier hostility, embraced him: “And Esau ran to meet him, and embraced him, and fell on his neck, and kissed him: and they wept” (Genesis 33:4).

Their reconciliation is a successful reversal of the Cain–Abel conflict. On the faith established through Abraham and Isaac, Jacob and Esau’s unity completed a family-level foundation for the Messiah.

Why a Family Foundation Was Not Enough

If Abraham’s family established such a foundation, why did the Messiah not come immediately?

The answer concerns the scope of the world surrounding that family. By this stage, peoples and nations had developed outside the restored family. Those larger structures remained under fallen or satanic dominion. A single faithful family was too small and vulnerable to protect the Messiah’s mission from being overwhelmed.

A foundation must therefore be more than an inward achievement among a few people. It must have sufficient social scope to receive, support, and preserve the work entrusted to it. The Messiah could not establish a lasting restored world if the community prepared for him could simply be overpowered by its surroundings.

The family foundation consequently had to expand into a national foundation. Jacob’s descendants went to Egypt, where a family grew into a people. The course associated with 400 years in Egypt served both as indemnity for Abraham’s failed offering and as the historical setting for this expansion.

Through Moses, the Exodus, the covenant, and the formation of Israel, the providence moved toward a people capable of receiving the Messiah. Deliverance alone was insufficient: the people also had to maintain faith and establish unity. Repeated failures of trust and cooperation prolonged the process.

Thus, the history from Adam through Noah, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob concerns the recovery of a family foundation; the subsequent course through Egypt, Moses, and Israel concerns its expansion toward the national foundation on which Jesus could come. The stages are connected, not isolated attempts with unrelated purposes.

Receiving Jesus and the Responsibility of John the Baptist

Jesus’ coming fulfilled the long preparation for the Messiah, but his mission still required a human response. Prophecy could announce him; it could not compel people to recognize and follow him.

John the Baptist had a particularly important preparatory role. His call to repentance and his testimony were meant to turn the people toward Jesus. John stood in an Abel-type position toward those who trusted his religious leadership. Their unity with him, followed by his wholehearted unity with Jesus, would have helped transfer that prepared foundation to the Messiah.

John’s later question—“Art thou he that should come, or do we look for another?” (Matthew 11:3)—reveals his uncertainty and an incomplete fulfillment of that responsibility. The failure of this prepared leadership to unite fully with Jesus frustrated the first worldwide course of restoration symbolized by Canaan. Jesus then undertook further efforts to gather a responsive community and establish the foundation needed for his mission.

This explanation should not be turned into collective blame against Jewish people. Jesus, his disciples, and many of his earliest followers were themselves Jewish. The theological issue is the responsibility of particular figures and communities within the narrative, not the supposed guilt of an entire people across generations.

The Messiah’s Mission and the Second Coming

The Messiah comes not only to teach moral truth but to restore humanity’s relationship and lineage with God. His role as True Parent addresses what fallen humanity cannot accomplish through its own efforts alone: liberation from original sin and entry into a restored family relationship with God.

The foundation of faith and foundation of substance prepare people to receive that grace. They do not mean that humanity saves itself before the Savior arrives. Rather, they express the necessary cooperation between divine initiative and human freedom.

Jesus originally came to establish God’s kingdom in both spiritual and earthly life. Because the required response was not fully realized, that comprehensive fulfillment did not occur during his earthly ministry. His crucifixion and resurrection nevertheless opened the way of spiritual salvation.

The resurrection and the disciples’ renewed faith established the basis for a spiritual community centered on Jesus. Christianity’s subsequent history is 2,000 years of preparation for the Second Coming, extending the providence toward a worldwide foundation.

The Second Coming completes what remains: not merely inward salvation, but the restoration of embodied human life, families, relationships, and society. The goal is the fulfillment of the original ideal of creation rather than abandonment of the earth.

Accordingly, the Last Days are understood as a transition from fallen sovereignty to a God-centered order. The hope is expressed in the prayer Jesus taught: “Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10). Heaven on earth requires people who embody that will, not only people who await it.

The Completed Understanding

The foundation for the Messiah can therefore be stated simply, while retaining its full significance: the foundation of faith plus the foundation of substance prepares humanity to receive the Messiah.

Faith reverses Adam and Eve’s loss of trust in God’s Word. Substance reverses the corruption of love by overcoming fallen nature and restoring relationships. The reconciliation of brothers and sisters creates the household in which True Parents can be welcomed. Historical expansion from family to nation and world provides an environment capable of sustaining their mission.

These elements explain both the long preparation and its repeated extensions. Abel’s offering required Cain’s reconciliation. Noah’s faith required his family’s unity. Abraham’s offering required complete obedience; its failure brought a 400-year course of indemnity. The reconciliation achieved through Jacob and Esau established a family foundation, but that family still needed to become a people strong enough to receive the Messiah within a hostile world.

God’s purpose remains constant throughout this process. What varies is the human response and, consequently, the course through which the purpose is realized. God provides guidance, grace, and the Messiah; human beings must respond through faith, love, and responsible action. The ultimate goal is mature life in direct unity of heart with God, expressed through loving families and a peaceful human community.

Living the Principle

1. Establish a personal foundation of faith through prayer, reflection on God’s Word, and faithful action. Trust is restored not only by professing belief but by choosing goodness when obedience is difficult.

2. Make faith substantial in your relationships. Identify jealousy, resentment, pride, and the desire to dominate, and replace them with honesty, humility, service, and reconciliation. Jesus joins love of God with the command, “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself” (Matthew 22:39).

3. Help brothers and sisters become united. Seek healing within families, congregations, and communities, recognizing that a reconciled household is better prepared to receive parental love and guidance. Reconciliation must respect dignity and must not become an excuse for coercion or abuse.

4. Honor embodied love through fidelity, responsible parenthood, and care for children. Restoration concerns not only inward spirituality but the actual quality of family and social life.

5. Support peace beyond your own circle. The movement from family to nation and world calls for cooperation across religious, cultural, and national boundaries, rather than concern only for one’s own group.

6. Combine personal responsibility with reliance on grace. Neither passive waiting nor self-reliant striving alone expresses the full foundation. Prepare through faith and love while recognizing that the Messiah’s saving work is a gift humanity must freely receive.

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

Last reviewed: September 29, 2026

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