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JAIN JOURNAL: Vol-XXXI, No. 3 January 1997 between God and man remained unrestored, that is, man had to suffer in the hellish realm of non-principle below the level of all things.
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At Noah's time, God saw the earth filled with violence, and regretted that He had created man. He performed the flood judgement, and destroyed all human beings other than Noah's family. Noath stood very loyal to God, but his second son, Ham in Abel's position, failed in fulfilling his responsibility. God again was interrupted here in carrying out his dispensation. From the viewpoint of the relationship between God and man, man could stand here in the position of servant of servants,' it is said, thanks to Noah's loyalty to God. Thus, here man was able to ascend to the level of all things.
It was, then, around 2000 B.C. when God blessed Abraham, father of the Israelites. To make a long story short, three generations of Abraham's family, i.e. Abraham, his son Isaac and grandson Jacob, successfully built up, for the first time, the family level foundations for receiving the Messiah. The Messiah was, then, to come. However, the Satanic world had already multiplied to form a large domain on the national level, against which Abraham's family level domain was too small to contend with. God, therefore, had to wait another 2000 years to send His son Jesus to the Israelites. From the viewpoint of God's relation to man, man ascended to the position of God's servant2 in this age of the Old Testament.
Jesus came as the son of God, free from original sin. Nevertheless, he was crucified, and could not perform his duty of freeing people on earth. It was after his resurrection that he came to stand as the spiritual Messiah and freed his followers in spirit. Christians could, therefore, ascend to the position of God's adopted son. Their original sin inherited through the flesh is, however, not yet liquidated. The Lord of the Second Advent must, therefore, come to restore the whole of mankind (i.e. on earth and in the spirit world), as God's true children in his own lineage.
To sum up, man at the beginning fell below the level of all things, that is the level of the hellish realm of non-principle. Then, he had to ascend therefrom, step by step, restoring first the position of servant of servants on the level of all things, next restoring the position of God's servant in the age of Old Testament (i.e. the elder son's position in the history of religion), then restoring the position of God's adopted son in the age of New Testament (i.e. the second son's position in the history of religion), and finally restoring the position of God's true son in the age of the Lord of the Second Advent (i.e. the third son's position Genesis 9:25
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2. Leviticus 25:55
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