The Supreme God has summoned to His full power the hidden reserve of good to vanquish the dominant force of evil forever, He has come to cleanse our civilization and to create an entirely new world. This is what we mean by divine providence. How did evil subjugate man in the first place? Let us look at the Genesis story of the forbidden fruit when Adam and Eve opened themselves to evil power by eating from the tree in the garden of Eden. There are profound implications in this allegory for the concept of original sin, but we can also draw an interesting parallel by substituting “medicine for ‘fruit.” The “fruit,” which opened the door to evil to the Biblical first man, can be taken as symbolic of medicine the substance that generates clouds in both spiritual and physical bodies and thereby makes man vulnerable to disease and exposes him to penetration by evil.

We have seen that the human entity embraces both spirit and body. The spiritual aspect, called the “spiritual body,” pervades the entire physical body and. takes the same form, We have also talked. about the fundamental law that subordinates the physical to the spiritual. Evil is the result of evil spirits that dwell in the spiritual body, whose center is the soul. As the clouds on the soul become more dense, the secondary spirit within and possessing animal spirits become more active arid their presence in the clouds is manifested in strange, animalistic behavior. Thus, in order to exterminate evil, it is necessary to dispel the clouds completely. But clouds are reflections of impure blood, and since drugs cause impure blood, man must first cease using medicine of any kind to prevent evil from coming into the world. When all medicines and medicinal toxins are eliminated, one principal source of clouds in the spiritual body will be removed. Clearly medicine is the root cause of evil, but it is unimaginably difficult to drive this seemingly simple truth home to people.

There is another important role that medicine has played in man’s history: medicine has functioned to weaken human health. As we shall understand later, clouds generated from within the spiritual body accumulate to increase impurities in the blood, which undermines man’s health, and ultimately, his mission. Natural purification occurs to purge the blood of impurities and dissipate the clouds. Purification is an uncomfortable and often painful process that is misunderstood as a negative condition. Unaware of the necessity for purification, people began using medicine in an attempt to relieve their suffering. The most effective way to guarantee that purification will not occur is to lower the vitality of the body, and medicine is the most effective way to do that. As the body weakens the purifying activity becomes milder and pains become less severe. People have misconstrued their relief from pain as an indication of recovery, when in reality it means the condition is growing worse. Medicine merely mitigates physical pain by its poison. Not only, it is completely powerless to cure, but it actually produces more disease.

Our blindness about disease is the fundamental cause of the distress and agony that fills the world, but it is also a part of God’s providence. So that civilization might develop, He created evil, setting it in never-ending conflict with good. At the same time He ordained that civilization should progress through the deterioration of human health. In more primitive times man lived a free and natural life. His food and shelter were for the most part the same as those of wild animals, and his health and physical strength were equal to theirs. In those days he went through life roaming the mountains and fields in the struggle to survive against fierce beasts, venomous serpents and other hostile animals. As time went on, his savage way of life changed. He no longer had to constantly battle wild animals, but conflict between man and man then grew more intense. It was through a long period of sustained conflict that human intellect advanced and created civilization after many generations. If the course of human development had been peaceful and quiet, people might have remained in the primitive state, perhaps advancing, but only slightly. The human intellect would have remained untapped. as they lived on, content with a relatively uncivilized environment.

When man took the first medicine, his act marked the “fall,” the beginning of our long history of disease and evil. One of the cardinal human errors has been the undaunted, persistent belief in the curative powers of medicine. Earliest man was robust and strong, but his God — given health gradually declined through the use of medicine. He was further weakened as he conquered wild beasts to make his surroundings less dangerous. Knowledge advanced through battle against wild animals and conflict between men. Combined with loss of physical strength, greater knowledge led man to construct roads and travel in conveyances drawn by animals, instead of traveling on foot as he had done in the past. Civilization moved forward. The steam engine, progressively better means of transport and communication were invented. People made themselves more comfortable and increased their efficiency with machines and electric appliances. They worked hard to reduce unhappiness through social organization, public administration, economy, education and scholarship, the fine arts and other areas of culture. They developed sophisticated moral and legal systems and devised elaborate institutions These finally reached the level of contemporary times.

Such a long history, however, has been nothing more than preparation. It was the necessary prelude to the coming of the New Age. In the cosmic plan the historical function of medical science is to make man vulnerable to evil and to lower his vitality. That function has been carried out. If evil had been allowed to dominate unrestrained and human health had deteriorated too far, humanity itself would be in danger of complete destruction. To save us, God could not allow medical science to advance further. He revealed the truth to me in order to restrain evil and transform civilization. Now is the time when God will check the power of evil and establish the true civilization, the time for good to predominate over evil.