New Truth In The Last Days - True Parents Organization

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NEW TRUTH IN THE LAST DAYS
judgment upon fallen evil people, but the planet earth was not literally
destroyed. God would never destroy the very earth that He created to fulfill
His ideal. Ecclesiastes 1:4 states, “A generation goes, and a generation comes,
but the earth remains forever,” and Psalms 78:69 reads, “He [God] built his
sanctuary like the high heavens, like the earth, which he has founded forever.”
The second Last Days occurred at the time of the Advent of Jesus. There
were numerous prophecies for the “great and terrible day” of the coming of the
Lord. (Joel 2:31, Malachi 4:1) One doomsday prophecy in the Old Testament
says, “Behold, the day comes, burning like an oven, when all the arrogant and
all evildoers will be stubble; the day that comes shall burn them up…” (Malachi
4:1) Jesus said, “I came to cast fire upon the earth and would that it were
already kindled!” (Luke 12:49) Yet we know that there is no record of Jesus
starting literal fires or flames, as Nero did. The “burning” of evil people is
merely part of the prophetic and symbolic language of the Bible.
In the New Testament James says, “The tongue is a fire” (James 3:6),
meaning that judgment by fire is really judgment by the spoken word, the
word of God! What is the “fire” that Jesus brought? It is the Gospel, the new
truth: his words, the Sermon on the Mount, and his parables. Jesus said, “He
who rejects me and does not receive my sayings has a judge; the word that I
have spoken will be his judge on the last day.” (John 12:48, italics added)
Other “Last Days” prophecies are hidden in symbolic language. Rev. Moon
has warned Christians hanging on to the prophecy about the Rapture that
nothing so spectacular will happen literally. The New Testament reads as follows:
For the Lord [Jesus] himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command,
with the archangel’s [Gabriel’s] call, and with the sound of the
trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first; then we who are
alive, who are left, shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to
meet the Lord in the air; and so we shall always be with the Lord. (1 Thessalonians
4:16–17)
Many Christians believe that at the time of this rapture, they will literally
be taken up into the atmosphere, into the physical clouds above us. But we
need to examine closely the mystical, prophetic language in the above passage.
The word “up” does not necessarily imply a rising up in body, but it can mean
a spiritual maturing, like going “up” in school from one grade to another. Also