In early July, while I was walking along Kosmonavtov Street near VDNKh, a young man about my age approached me. He first asked what I thought about family values, morality, and spiritual purity. I replied that I did not often think about such things. He then began sharing his own thoughts on those subjects. There was something in his words that affected me more deeply than I had expected, and the sincerity with which he spoke made me reflect. He then invited me to attend some lectures. I regarded the invitation with suspicion, but we exchanged phone numbers, and I decided to think it over.
This encounter took place about ten days after the dream that had left a deep impression on me. In the dream, the angels had said that they would “train me for a year and two hundred hours.” When I met Andrey E., it seemed to me that this was more than a mere coincidence. I felt as though those two hundred hours had somehow begun to take shape in reality.
After considering Andrey E.’s invitation, I decided to attend the lectures. The course lasted three days and was held in a building not far from where we had met and from the training center where I taught programming. It was a difficult period in my life. Rational thought was gradually giving way to intuition and emotion, while my subjective perception of the world was becoming increasingly important to me. I was looking for something to hold on to and hoped to find it in those lectures.
I found the content of the three-day course unusual. I no longer remember the exact order of the lectures, but their main ideas have remained in my memory. We were first told about God’s purpose in creating the world. According to this teaching, human beings were meant to attain inner maturity, create ideal families, and learn to care lovingly for the world around them. The fulfillment of these three blessings was presented as the original purpose of creation.
The lectures then turned to the Fall. It was explained not as the literal eating of forbidden fruit, but as a premature and forbidden union between Eve and the archangel Lucifer, followed by a union between Eve and Adam. According to the lecturers, humanity consequently lost its connection with God and came under the dominion of Satan’s bloodline. Spiritual salvation alone was therefore not enough: the individual, the family, and the entire world all had to be restored.
A significant portion of the lectures was devoted to the history of restoration. It was presented as a series of recurring cycles: whenever a person failed to fulfill their responsibility, God’s plan did not end, but its realization was delayed, passed to others, and unfolded again on a larger scale. Through the examples of Cain and Abel, Noah, Abraham, Moses, and Jesus, the lecturers showed how the mistakes of one generation had to be corrected by those that followed.
One of the lecture topics was the story of Abraham. According to this teaching, God instructed him to make a symbolic offering and divide the animals, thereby separating good from evil. Abraham, however, failed to divide the birds and thus disobeyed God’s instruction. Because of this mistake, the lost foundation had to be restored through the next generations, Isaac and Jacob. Jacob completed this stage on the family level, and the foundation he established eventually expanded into the nation of Israel, which was expected to prepare for the coming of the Messiah.
The next stage in the history of restoration was associated with Jesus. His mission was no longer limited to a single family or nation but extended to all humanity. According to the lecturers, however, the people did not accept him, and he was crucified before he could create an “ideal family” and achieve humanity’s complete spiritual and physical restoration. Spiritual salvation was achieved, but the completion of the mission was deferred until the Second Coming.
In the final part of the course, biblical history was connected to the modern era. We were shown parallels between different historical periods and told that the Lord of the Second Coming was to be born in the twentieth century, in the East, in a country divided between the communist and democratic worlds. Korea was presented as fitting this description, and Sun Myung Moon was identified with the role of the new Messiah. His mission, it was said, was to complete the work of Jesus, establish with his wife the model of the True Parents, and lay the foundation for ideal families.
Another important aspect of the teaching was the order in which a person should build their life. First, one had to establish a relationship with God. Only after gaining a firm spiritual foundation could a person build a relationship with a spouse, create a family, engage with others, and contribute to society. This progression—from the spiritual to the personal and then to the social—was presented as the basis for harmony and the fulfillment of one’s responsibility.
This was how I learned that the lectures were based on the Divine Principle and that Andrey E. was a member of the Unification Church, founded by Sun Myung Moon in South Korea in 1954. I also learned that Sun Myung Moon himself had died less than a year earlier, on September 3, 2012. The organization, known for its mass wedding ceremonies, sought to create “ideal families” and offered its own interpretation of Christianity. Although the Unification Church was often criticized over the controversies surrounding it, it seemed to me that Andrey E. saw the movement as a path toward spiritual growth and the unity of humanity.
I cannot say that I embraced the teaching’s entire doctrine, but some of the ideas I heard did resonate with me. Above all, I was inspired by the idea of God’s care for humanity. The thought that God does not abandon us and continues to guide us despite our mistakes brought me a gentle sense of joy and inner warmth. It was as though a feeling of God’s love entered me and brought me a measure of peace. I saw a parallel with my own life: trusting God and seeking a connection with Him might help me find inner harmony and stop fearing the outside world.
I began to view my failure with Nadya as an unfulfilled responsibility, similar to those that, according to the lecturers’ teaching, Abraham and Jesus had failed to fulfill. Influenced by what I had heard, I decided that correcting the consequences of past mistakes and restoring the balance that had been disturbed would require increasing effort on my part. With each new attempt to put things right, the price seemed to rise, just as the path from Abraham to Jesus had grown more difficult. The lectures encouraged me to focus on what depended on me personally: my own decisions and actions, and my ability to change the course of my life. I felt that I had the strength to correct what could still be corrected and move forward.
The lectures gave me a powerful emotional lift and the impetus I had been missing. They helped me believe once more that my life was not permanently predetermined and could still be changed through my own efforts. My failures no longer seemed like the end of the road; I began to see them as opportunities for growth and further movement. In this experience, I saw more than religious preaching. I saw a challenge to myself, and I accepted it.
After the lectures, I shared my impressions with Nikolai P. He warned me that the organization might be a cult. The client relations manager at the training center expressed similar doubts. Their words increased my wariness, and I hesitated to place my full trust in the organization or in Andrey E. Looking back today, I think I was wrong not to continue engaging with them right away. Perhaps my life could have changed much sooner. I lacked companionship and a way to take my mind off my troubles, while a long period of doubt and inner searching still lay ahead of me.
Because of this, my contact with Andrey E. developed slowly after the lectures, as though we inhabited different worlds that only occasionally intersected. He invited me to various events connected with the organization, but I attended almost none of them. Once, or perhaps twice, I went to a film club held at their headquarters on Kubanskaya Street, near Volzhskaya metro station. They did more than watch films there: they also discussed what they had seen and talked with people who shared similar interests.
It was at this film club that I met Ainur K. from the city of Yelabuga. For him, this was also one of the first encounters with the Unification Church. Only much later did he tell me that he had been stopped on the street and invited to the film club. At the time, he did not expect that this acquaintance would lead anywhere. Later, Ainur K. became an active member of the organization. We quickly found common ground, but at that time our relationship, just like my involvement with the organization, did not develop quickly beyond that point.
Nevertheless, my life remained filled with anxiety and tension. At the few job interviews I managed to attend, I was not hired. The lack of a steady income, my bank debts, and memories of Nadya left me feeling hopeless.
