Tokyo Church, Japan.
Matthew 26:36–46
We must acknowledge God, who exists as the absolute Being in this Cosmos.
If God exists, He cannot but hold some purpose.
If there is a purpose, He cannot but hold a hope. For us to go on inheriting that hope up to the level of the purpose, it is only natural to say that the greater the purpose, the harder it is unless one feels the heart (심정) of love in daily life.
The Fall of Adam and Eve and God’s Sorrow
God created all things with a purpose of love. On the sixth day, we know well, He set up our ancestors Adam and Eve as the center of this Cosmos, as the central figures who would complete the purpose, as the substance of hope, as the pioneers of a life who would make their daily living befit God’s Will, as the ones responsible who must take hold of the standard of that heart.
From the time God created our ancestors, He could not but think, through the realm of daily living, “When is the day of hope, which is My purpose?” Adam and Eve, standing before such a God, bore the mission of having to complete God’s purpose.
And so, when He beheld Adam, God’s position was to say, “I want to believe in Adam. I want to hold infinite hope in Adam. I want to pour out infinite affection.”
As young Adam grew, the standard and hope and affection that God could believe in were to grow together with him, and this Cosmos was to be accomplished, centered solely on God’s love, fulfilling the supreme purpose God desired.
God sought to realize a unified world that would become a Cosmos of glory, where all things could feel as God thought and as God felt—a world that could not be divided even if one tried to divide it.
But, greeting a day not even thought of, Adam and Eve fell. For God, who greeted the day of the Fall, the foundation that could be believed was lost, the standard of hope was lost, and the substance that could be loved was lost. As a result, God’s purpose of creation was left incomplete.
As a result of the Fall, their descendants—humankind, from our ancestors down to now—went on, as the days passed, growing distant from God and proceeding in the opposite direction to the purpose God hoped for.
The result was a rebellion against God’s hope, a rebellion against the foundation God could believe in, a fleeing from the position in which God could love. So it must not be left as it is.
The motive that brought this about lies, of course, with the human being, but the greatest motive lies with Satan, who tempted the human being. This is why God must here drive off the enemy, Satan, and restore the original purpose.
In this process of restoration, the more the human being grew distant from God, the more God had to undergo toil proportionate to that to fill that gap. He had to pay the price of sacrifice. It was because the human being himself did not stand in the position of doing that toil. It was because Satan did not stand in the position of helping it. The only one who stood in the position of saying He would do it was God alone.
Originally, Adam and Eve were to become the subjects who, communing with God’s heart and pulsing with God’s hope, would, within their daily living, be embraced in the bosom of the God of joy, be satisfied, and be thankful for all things.
Yet our ancestors did not know that the pain of God’s inner heart, beholding that they could not walk such a path, was greater than their own inner wretchedness.
But God, who could not abandon the conception of purpose centered on His fundamental principle, must, whatever may happen, realize it. That is, He must restore it.
We must not forget that here arose, for God, a path of the mission of the great cause (大義), not even thought of, a path of salvation.
So God, through the course of history, age by age, moment by moment, never for a single day failed to think of the sons and daughters He could believe in, whom He had yearned for in His heart, the sons and daughters who had been His hope at the time of the creation of all things, every one of whom, until then, He had given affection, filled with hope. But our ancestors could not feel this.
Of the countless people who, from Adam and Eve until now, passed through the earth and went to the spiritual world, those people too could not realize the heart of God in its inner depths.
For this reason, through sixteen hundred years of history, God did not have even a single person among humankind, in the world, who could become His own, who could be believed.
The Providence of Restoration Centered on Noah
There, God, in the sorrowful position of having to seek one person who would drive off Satan and run straight as an arrow to God’s side, saying, “I will contribute to God alone,” sought to set up that standard through Noah.
Unless God finds the agreement of the standard whereby a person believes in God just as God believes, God cannot subdue Satan and set out upon the providence. Because there was such anguish, God could not but command, through Noah, the path of toil of raising things to the standard of believing in God over 120 years.
We must know that it was God’s providence that Noah had to make the day of the flood judgment 120 years later a single hope, together with God’s command, and make the time until then a single period of the foundation of faith, binding his hope and the foundation of faith within the realm of God’s affection and faith. Not for one year, not for ten years, but over the long period of 120 years, the old man Noah repeated the same work every day.
It is a great mistake to think his family welcomed it. It was not a matter of twelve days later, nor of twelve years. It was 120 years.
The members of his family did not even know whether they themselves would die or not. Meanwhile, they all rose and began to complain against Noah. To him, thus rejected by his environment, what did God desire? It was, “Believe in Me alone.” Amid all the swirling affairs around him, there was not a single one who was wholly faithful to God.
Yet even though all rose in rebellion, he had to tread them down and rise, or drive them off, and set up a standard of faith that became one with himself. And so, together with that faith and hope, he had to fully accomplish God’s purpose of judgment. And so, in that standard of touching God together with thanksgiving in that continuous daily living, the connection of affection begins. For such a purpose, He set up Noah and had him build the ark.
So when God beheld Noah, He naturally worried whether he, like Adam and Eve, would again stand in a position of rebelling against the standard God could believe in, the standard of hope, and the standard of purpose.
God knew well that if Noah again stood in such a position, it would become a difficult problem. God, beholding the life of Noah building the ark day after day, knew well how much His own indemnity would multiply if Noah were to withdraw there. Noah himself did not know God’s heart, beholding Noah with such a worried mind and passing each day.
Because the purpose of restoration centered on Adam’s family had become incomplete, to restore it, Noah’s eight family members were needed. Unless this one fact was made thorough, He could not set out upon the second work. But because Ham did not know and broke the absolute standard whereby the three sons, centered on the parent, had to become one, God’s providence was prolonged by four hundred years.
And so God had to set up Abraham anew as the center of faith. He had to set him up as the standard of hope. He had to set him up as the one responsible who could fully carry out the mission of completing the purpose. It was God’s position that He had to bear affection and grope along the back path behind him.
The Mistakes the Ancestors of Faith Committed
Yet Abraham too did not know God’s inner heart. Abraham did not know that, even if God should cast away the Cosmos, He believed in him with hope, and that he himself was carrying out the mission of achieving God’s purpose; that God had entrusted everything to him; and that it was his position to set up the principle of judgment in his every move, in every aspect, and to set up the law of judgment by which even the enemy could be judged.
And Abraham himself did not feel that this was a standard to be carried out throughout his life. Therefore, he did not even imagine that, when he offered the three great offerings to God, the condition of not dividing the doves became a wretched condition of indemnity that had to be paid through history. He did not know that that was the final point at which the condition of the heavenly principle could be set up on the heavenly course of restoration.
Because of this, the substantial offering of Isaac had to be offered, and as a result, the Israelite people had to walk the wanderer’s path of four hundred years of drudgery in Egypt. And so we know well that the failure to complete the purpose that ought to have been fulfilled in the standard of restoration became the source of the Israelite people’s sorrow.
That God, who had sent our ancestors—Moses and the many prophets—and had yearned for Israel, had to set up from an individual one trustworthy clan and organize a people. And so, centered on the people, He had to make the world God’s world.
Although such things were the responsibility our ancestors had to fulfil in God’s stead, our ancestors neither carried it out nor even knew that God had been fulfilling it.
If we think from such a position, does God’s historical position have no relation to us in the present age and pose no problem at all?
It is not so. The present is even more so than the past. Why? Because now is a worldwide time, and the wider the scope, the more there must be the individual and the family God desires, and there must be a worldwide movement that restores through indemnity, as God’s substitute, before the world. Of course, God cannot but yearn for that.
Then is there, in this universe, in this world, a true child whom God can truly believe in? Is there a man?
In the lineage realm of fallen people, such a person cannot be sought. From the moment of birth, one inherits more than eighty percent of Satan’s feelings.
So the one son sent as a mediator who, within the long history, pioneered a realm of indemnity of heart and drew near to God—that One was Jesus.
History moves. The age calls. The future holds a desire for us. All of it must begin with God. The day God sent the Messiah to this earth as the center who fulfills the overall mission and as the central figure of the future who would liberate history and the age is the supreme day of joy in human history. Everyone must yearn for that day of joy. One must pass through that standard.
We, who are in such a destiny, can, because there is that day, set up a standard of faith by God. Because there is that day, we can be in accord with God’s hope.
Because there is that day, we can obtain a realm of living in which we can receive God’s love. The modern world is occupied by evil. The position and environment occupied by evil are packed full on Satan’s side.
The one son whom God sought to set up—by clearing that and pushing aside that environment, as the result of God’s toil over four thousand years, as a hope, as something He could boast of before Satan—was the Messiah as our Savior.
Jesus came holding such responsibility. He came to this earth as the central one who fulfills the purpose, in the very midst of heaven and earth and all existence.
He was more than the King of kings. He was more than the good substance.
Through Him, God beholds and thinks all things; through Him, He makes known all action, and through Him, He sets out upon a life of love. This was God’s inner demand and heart in sending Jesus to the earth. In sending such a precious son, He had to make an environment for him. There had to be an individual who accorded with God’s desire. There had to be a family. There had to be a people who could become the chosen people.
If there is the thought of the chosen people, descendants of the chosen people come to be born.
Though there are countless clans and peoples, to set up just one realm of clan and people who could say they cannot live without God, God toiled for four thousand years, embracing and raising the Israelite people. And so, making a weak people without faith into a people with faith and a people without hope into a people with hope, He led on through a long period of history, giving, through the prophets, the thought of the Messiah so that they might form a relationship with one single substance. We know this well.
Jesus, Who Was the Purpose and the Hope of All Things
That Messiah came. The Messiah came within that realm of the people, standing upon the foundation on which the Israelite people sought to achieve victory. God, to complete the purpose He had hoped for, sent Jesus as the subject of all the people. The purpose of everything was Him. The hope of everything was He.
The center who came holding faith toward God was He. And the historical good norm by which the parents had led their children up to that time was as well for the sake of forming a relationship with Him.
But whether there was a person who, with such an inner and outer heart, stood on Jesus’ side upon the earth—there was none. Jesus, standing in the very midst of it, responding to the call of history and the demand of the age, standing in an environment in which he himself had to decide the new destiny of the future, thinking that he himself held a grave mission passing through past, present, and future, could not live a life centered on himself as an individual. He had to live a public life.
Looking back, it was a thing he could see—that the hope of the countless ancestors in the spiritual world hung upon him. He knew that he had a mission to make the utterly desolate state of the Israelite people of that age the last of it and lead them into a new world.
If by any chance this stage were not passed, the descendants would arrive at a wretched stage. And he knew that, in the satanic world, through Satan’s accusation, he would have to become an offering of history.
What must have been the heart of Jesus, who stood within such a cosmic mission? How serious was the inner preparatory period until he set out upon his public life holding such a heart?
This is not recorded in the Bible. Of course, as for the crowd who came to Jesus at that time to depend on him for their daily food, there was nothing he could do about them. But he had to resurrect history.
One cannot build a living history by inheriting a dead history. Without an environment, one cannot rightly set up the standard of existence. Only when there is an environment does the standard for deciding existence arise. This is the circumstance of the earth.
Therefore, Jesus had to set up a standard of good hope upon this earth and form a relationship with the good environment of the people that God had made until then. That is not the relationship of one individual but a historical relationship. It is a worldwide relationship. It is a future relationship.
What was Jesus’ inner resolve when he set out on the three-year course to form it?
Even the disciples who yearned for Jesus did not know it. The only one who knew was God.
Even the method by which the people who claimed to stand in the supreme position God hoped for should go was unknown.
If the method and the standard of the purpose do not accord, the completion of the purpose is impossible. And so the Israelite people, though they were a people who had to go toward God’s side, went in the opposite direction.
It is a fact that when God sent Jesus, of whom there is only one in history, He desired that he stand in the supreme position of glory and be revered by countless people.
Since he came originally as the Savior, to say that he came bearing a destiny in which he could not but be hung upon the cross to forgive our sins is a thing that cannot be. There is no such God.
To think, “As the omniscient and omnipotent God, there would have been no path of salvation except by such a method, such a means,” is an insult to God. To say that he was hung upon the cross by heavenly fortune is nonsense. Not only that.
For God, He hoped to make an environment in which a life could be lived that accorded with the historical standard of faith, the standard of hope, and the standard of heart, and so He sent John the Baptist.
To inherit history, one had to offer a historical offering and decide on victory. Otherwise, he could not give the realm of history (歷史圈). Why? Because, owing to the repeated failures until then, the insult suffered by being caught in every kind of condition was something God alone could not remove.
If that were possible, then restoration, which is God’s purpose of having carried out the providence for six thousand years, would be no problem.
Salvation would be no problem. But what has gone wrong must be set right according to the principle. To mend it, one must leave a good part greater than the opposite. Otherwise, even if it is set right, there is no way to use it.
The Relationship Between John the Baptist and Jesus
So Jesus had a mission: to take charge of all the conditions the ancestors had done wrong over the past four thousand years, set up a standard of value greater than that, and make a standard from which he could set out toward God’s side.
Without doing so, one could not set out from the satanic realm of the world toward the world-realm of God of new hope. Jesus was in such a position. And, beholding God from such a position, he had to console God.
Such a Jesus had no face to show before God, who until then had groped through four thousand years of history, making him, one person, His hope.
So he had to command and lead the Israelite people and rebuild them as a new people. When he thought that the people raised as God’s people, or as His children, were rebelling against God, he had no face to show before God.
So Jesus, together with the anguish of his heart, walked alone beneath the Mount of Olives and prayed. That he had many such times is shown even in the Bible. And we must know that Jesus went to John the Baptist at the Jordan River to resolve his inner struggle.
Jesus was the only-begotten Son of God, who had to set out from God’s love and God’s hope and God’s absolute faith, together with God’s absolute protection, upon a life of victory and glory.
Then who was John the Baptist?
He was the representative of the Israelite people—that is, the messenger sent from God representing the Israelite people and the central figure, or central offering, who could draw the historical Israelite people into God’s realm of foundation as a living offering before Jesus. The figure sent from God bearing such a mission was John the Baptist.
So it was Jesus’ mission to set up John the Baptist with a hundred percent foundation of faith, a hundred percent standard of hope, a hundred percent standard of love, and to offer him to God at a standard united with himself.
By doing so, he could at last restore the historical failure through indemnity and, by offering John the Baptist as a single offering—as the substance of the foundation of heart and the foundation of hope and the foundation of love—remove the resentment and anguish and pain that until then had been caught in God’s inner heart (內心). And to make, from that, a foundation to greet Jesus was God’s providence and the purpose for which Jesus went to John the Baptist.
Concerning this, John the Baptist had a mission: as the substance of the representative of faith, the substance of the representative of hope, or the substance of the representative of love, he had to seek and receive the standard of hope, or heart, or faith from Jesus.
Otherwise, this would not spread out into branches. There, John the Baptist’s becoming Jesus’ first disciple was the position seen from the standpoint of God’s providence.
Unless he became the first disciple, he would become an existence that rebels.
Yet in actuality, John the Baptist became a center that repeatedly destroyed history, and because of this, the ladder connecting the Israelite people until then with Jesus collapsed.
From then on, Jesus’ lifetime became not a lifetime of advancing and developing but a life of being driven and retreating. It became a lifetime not of being welcomed by the other party but of being driven.
From the day John the Baptist failed to fulfill his mission, contrary to Jesus’ desire toward the Israelite people, the whole people took a position of opposing and rebelling. And so, the whole of Judaism failed to set up the central standard that it must be Jesus, and its view of history until then remained at a standard centered on Moses—which was not a standard that acknowledged God.
Therefore, they, in every corner of the world, in every place they went, have left behind a wretched history as a driven people—this we know well. The Christians of the present do not know this. “If by chance this is not acknowledged, then pray. God is alive.” This is the claim of the Unification Church.
Jesus’ Spiritual Salvation and the Second Advent
To set out toward the future, taking history as the base and treading the present, was God’s supreme purpose for Jesus. But the problem is where that purpose is now.
Until now, that purpose could not appear again. Centered on Jesus and centered on John the Baptist, it was to help the path of outer restoration by offering an offering of dead livestock (死畜), not to walk the path of salvation that opens through by offering an offering of living livestock (生畜).
The mission of salvation by the cross—there has been no more wretched path than this in history.
Where did Adam and Eve, who were born as God’s first children, go?
They became captives on Satan’s side. Where, then, is Jesus, who was sent to shatter this and again make a foundation to save them to God’s side?
Hung upon the cross, he made a realm (圈) in which Satan could not but be permitted to violate Jesus’ flesh.
Under such circumstances, the one that opened and went the path of spiritual salvation is Christianity, as the Second Israel. When the First Israel rebelled against God, He set up the Second Israel and desired that it become the original Israel that does not rebel; and, connecting the Second Israel, He leaves a new hope and leads it to a standard in which the Savior must be sought again.
We are learning that that very standard is what Christianity until now has called the time of Jesus’ Second Advent.
The First Israel, as the descendants of the first Adam and Eve, again walked the path of fallen Adam.
So, because Jesus, who had come to fulfill the mission as the center of the Second Israel, as the second Adam, was hung upon the cross, Christianity until now must learn and walk the way of the cross.
That the condition by which our ancestors, because of Satan, did not follow the completion of the purpose in the providence has been caught in history and has flowed down until now—this neither the historian nor the religionist knows.
There, the second providence after Jesus’ cross was to make a future realm of Israel centered on a second world stage. And so the worldwide realm (世界圈) of the Second Israel was made. But this is spiritual.
The human being is not originally formed only spiritually. He was formed with spirit and body together. Therefore, the setting up of the Israelite people also did not have only a spiritual heaven as its purpose.
The purpose was to subdue Rome, traverse (踏破) the world, and realize the Kingdom of Heaven on earth that completes God’s providence. Had Adam and Eve not fallen, they would have fully realized in that age the Kingdom of Heaven on earth that completes God’s purpose of creation.
What is the Kingdom of Heaven on earth?
It is a world in which God’s standard of faith appears a hundred percent within that realm of living. It is a world that moves, centered on the central figure who is hope itself. It is a world in which God’s heart can appear to anyone. Such a place is the Kingdom of Heaven on earth.
So Jesus, who had to fulfill such a mission, knew, looking back at the past, that if he did not forgive the Israelite people’s wrong, God could not carry out the providence of re-prolongation. That is because there would be no foundation. Jesus knew this well.
Therefore, Jesus’ heart upon the cross was the grave mind, you must know, that prayed:
“O God, strike Thou me and leave a bond by which I can set out toward a new history. If the chosen Israel of the present age perishes, does not all humankind perish at the same time? By all means leave Thou the realm of the Second Israel, and leave the foundation Thou hast toiled to build until now. Without me, the new sovereignty of the future will sink ever into darkness, and all humankind will come to be unable to know God or anything at all. They will be dragged to such a stage, will they not? Therefore leave Thou a hope that will remain as the lamp Thou desirest for the world of the future.”
When, having lived a life of thirty-three years, he came before God, it was Jesus’ own time of repentance for not having fully carried out his mission in the past.
Jesus, who said, “Forgive Thou the wrong of the ancestors of history”—their “wrong; unless Jesus forgives it, God cannot forgive.
Unless God forgives, the name of the Israelite people cannot be left.
So Jesus had to leave their sin of that day as it was and prolong it, and, desiring an environment and foundation (基臺) in which a third hope could be held, he had to choose the way of the cross.
That, by reason of the second defeat, it became a preparatory period for the third battle is the history of the Second Israelite people that has developed in the world until now—that is, the history of Christianity.
Then what is left behind?
We must clearly know that the path of the Second Advent that is to come is this: to take charge of the value of the third Adam and complete the original purpose of the creation of heaven and earth and, setting up again at the final tip of history the standard of faith, the standard of absolute hope, and the standard of absolute heart of God at the time of creation, to fully carry out the third responsibility, and thereby make the re-setting-out that God originally hoped for.
The Meaning of the Prayer Jesus Offered upon the Cross
What, in that case, is the condition?
A third Israelite nation must be organized. Until now, all has been sacrificed. It is because Jesus sacrificed his body and was hung upon the cross. The path the one who leads goes is the path the ones who are led must go.
Therefore, the people who yearn for Jesus, who went the way of the cross, must go the way of the cross. Because Jesus went yearning for a spiritual heaven, the Christians on earth have until now yearned for a spiritual heaven.
Then is it completed by that?
Of course, it is not completed. God made the person who would complete the purpose on earth. He made the person with water and earth and air. It is not the heaven you think of. It is the Kingdom of Heaven on earth. Such a world is what Jesus desired.
Hung upon the cross, when he beheld the blood dripping from his hands, Jesus sought the condition that the ancestors of the past had tried to set up. That was Jesus’ heart.
Shedding blood from both hands, both feet, the head, and the side, he prayed to God:
“Forgive Thou the sin of the ancestors of history. I offer it in place of our ancestors, who could not yearn for God and could not offer an offering to God; receive Thou it. Though I die at the young age of thirty-three, set up the condition that I died for God’s sake.”
If his desire were not all fulfilled and his prayer not answered, God’s four thousand years of toil until then would come to nothing.
So he said,
“Set up through me a standard of heart for the toil of God until now as a parent.”
When he faced God from the standard of the heart of all the ancestors and of God, and of his own future heart, he had no face to show. Looking at history, too, he had no face to show.
Looking at the present and the future too, he had no face to show. He knew well that, even in such a position, God could not but hold a pitiful heart.
And he prayed,
“O God, forgive Thou their sin. I must leave the history Thou hast toiled over until now.”
That was a grave prayer that, from that standard, he must shatter the condition of Satan’s accusation and make at least the foundation of spiritual victory in the new, second providence.
Rather than saving the people of the future, it was first a matter of connecting and leaving the historical bond of the past. History had to be saved.
So, for three days after his death, he went to hell and preached the Word to all the spirit-persons (靈人) who, by not obeying in Noah’s time, were in hell (1 Peter 3:18–20).
That Jesus had a grave mission of having to newly set up, in his own way, a historical tradition—this the people until now did not know. By making a foundation of victory in history, Satan can withdraw.
However much victory one obtains in the present, without being equipped with a foundation of historical victory, one cannot rule history, inherit God’s standard of providence, and connect with God’s heart.
Jesus came representing four thousand years of human history, but through the short life of some thirty years on earth, he took charge of that long history and agonized. There has been no such person after Jesus.
So the spiritual world could form a bond with him. Because he brought history to life, he could also resurrect the age.
You will know well the matter of Cain and Abel in Adam’s family. Had Cain completed the providence, Abel could have set out afterward.
So if we look at Jesus’ lifetime in terms of the character of the ages, we can see that the former age was the age of Cain and the latter age was the age of Abel.
Jesus was the second worldwide Abel-type owner and the first one responsible for building the world of Abel. The world until then had been the world of Cain. It was a world centered on the self. So one must gather and subdue that world, and for the first time, the brothers must greet the True Parents and stand in the position of children. This is the principle. Both the future and the past must be subjected to Abel’s standard. As its representative, John the Baptist had to fully carry out the mission of binding the past and the future.
The First Article of Faith
The setting out into the new world that Jesus took charge of had to begin from a place where it could stand upon a standard that Israel had fully accomplished both inwardly and outwardly. But owing to John the Baptist’s evasion of his mission, Jesus had to inherit even that outer standard and stand in Abel’s position.
That process of battle is Jesus’ three-year course. It was a wretched thing. You will know well Matthew chapter 11. Jesus showed that he had the authority to judge John the Baptist. We must not fear that.
Together with the hand of God’s providence behind all peoples and nations and the world, the world is developing. In name and in fact, Christianity is making a worldwide religious realm—that is, the free camp.
Here, the problem is that the present age is becoming one that returns to a position like that of old Israel. At present, America corresponds to old Rome. Yet the nation to which the Lord at the Second Advent comes is not an advanced nation. The Lord at the Second Advent comes with the mission of Joseph.
Just as Joseph, sold into Egypt, became prime minister and again saved Jacob and his brothers and family, He comes by such a course (行程). He absolutely does not come to an advanced nation like America. He comes to a wretched people who, driven and driven, yet seek God, and sets out from the start, making the authority of victory by God. The providence is arranged so.
So the historians of the present age say, “History turns.” History returns in a spiral. Why does it return?
If it exactly fits, it does not return. Because it does not fit, the providence returns.
If it sets out from the family, next it must connect to a form centered on the people. God connects the years He has carried out the providence on the people level—that is, the numerical reckoning—to the national standard.
Why? Because the individual is included in the family. If the family wins, the individual obtains the realm of victory.
So, to make up for the failure of individual salvation, one aims at the accomplishment of family salvation. The family is included in the clan realm. Therefore, if the family fails, God connects it to the realm of victory of the clan.
So if the clan wins, the victory of the family and the individual is acknowledged. If that fails, it is connected to the realm of victory of the people.
If the people win, the clan and the family all enter there. And thereby the national standard is made.
If the nation wins, the realm of the people enters there. And thereby the realm of victory of the world is made, and if the world wins, even the national realm is included there.
Repeating and turning such work deeply, making a connected standard of decision, prolonging it, and forming a spiral, the history of the present age has developed toward a great environmental realm.
Then what is goodness? What is the supreme goodness?
To acknowledge the centrality of the supreme standard and fully carry out that responsibility is the supreme goodness. Who is the supreme one of the universe? It is God. So do everything for the sake of God. This is the first article of faith. God’s victory includes the whole universe.
So, everyone, for the sake of God, even blindly is fine, so toil with all your strength. When a certain time comes, all is resolved. In that period, you must sacrifice yourselves. This is God’s providence.
The human being does not know whether God exists or not. What clarifies this is the Principle of Restoration. In the present age, we must cry out. We must seek.
We must beseech. We must receive again from Heaven the foundation of the heart that Jesus was equipped with. I must form a relationship with his hope.
Unless I place his heart at the standard of a covenant with me, God cannot work upon me as God’s hope, as God’s foundation of heart.
Unless that standard from which one can set out appears again upon the earth, one cannot gather this earth as the center of God’s providence.
You do not know that this is the problem of history and the global problem of the present, and it is becoming a global problem that we ourselves must resolve hereafter.
Jesus, two thousand years ago, held in his heart such countless hopes, teachings, and conceptions of purpose. The realm of victory of living, the realm of victory of the people, the national realm of victory, and the worldwide realm of victory hung upon that heart.
The Unification Church Is a Training Ground of Re-creation
But in the satanic world, even if one once expressed in words the hope or purpose one wished to bring to fruition, unless the value-substance, the substantial existence, of that word stands, that word becomes Satan’s.
We must know the aching heart of Jesus, who, wishing to speak yet unable to, had to embrace that ideal again and return.
The Jews, not knowing such things, insulted Jesus. They were blind and knew nothing. So we must cry out and call and beseech. The supreme standard God seeks lies, undoubtedly, in the realm of victory.
Our people, who have seen countless ancestors fail and countless people sink to the bottom of anguish, must think about how they can accomplish that standard and, shedding tears before God, earnestly appeal. We need protagonists of such prayer.
Prayer alone will not do either. Unless one is a person who takes responsibility, it will not do. Before the Lord at the Second Advent comes, a foundation that fully accomplishes Jesus’ heart and hope and purpose must be prepared. Again, the existence of John the Baptist becomes the problem.
The Lord at the Second Advent comes. Undoubtedly, He comes. But even though He comes, in the case where no foundation can await Him, toil follows there.
History sets out, forming a circle, centered on a first, second, and third standard. What passes through two points is a single line. It can be a line, but no more than that.
As the standard of departure for the creation of heaven and earth, God decided on three points, and that became the foundation equipped with the exquisite art of the creation of the universe and all things.
So the number three is the problem. The realm of the ideal cannot but accompany the number three.
The first Adam and the second Adam failed, but what does the third Adam inherit and come? He must inherit the content of the heart rather than the substance.
It is not that he inherits the flesh. The third Adam appears to have inherited the purpose of the first and second Adams, with a heart by God, a heart corresponding to God’s purpose. He is the Messiah.
If he were to come in such a form as coming on the clouds with the sound of the angel’s trumpet, God’s providence would take not six thousand years but not even six days. God is a God of principle. God, who created all things centered on the Principle and principles, cannot do the thing of Himself rebelling against the Principle and principles. There is no such righteousness (正), no such goodness. Therefore, that principle is absolute, and even God must accord with the pace of that principle.
We must, from now on, make a principled environment and seek the principle itself again. Jesus himself is the very figure of the principle, the substance of the principle. Therefore, a heavenly standard of principle, by which one cannot but obey him, must stand upon the earth.
Therefore, for us who stand in such a position, there remains the heart of Jesus, who stood at the center of the Cosmos, and God’s historical hope and our mission.
Toward this, what resolve do you hold? We must enter the realm of a heart like the heart of Jesus when he prayed in the garden of Gethsemane.
We must pass through the realm of the heart of Jesus, who, with a final prayer to God upon the cross, sought forgiveness for the sin of all people. To do this is our Unification Church.
A church—I do not consider it to be a church. It is a training ground (道場). It is a workplace of re-creation. It is a workplace. Therefore, what does not work, one cuts off.
One must cut off everything centered on oneself and make the kind of thing that fits the requirement of obeying God and not rebelling against Him.
There, if the leg is long, one must cut it. Even if there are two eyes, if necessary, one must pluck out one. For the human being, there remains what is called the condition of indemnity. Seen spiritually, it all remains. This is why God’s providence took six thousand years.
When one asks, “Oh, young people, what is your hope?” one may say, “Having heard the Teacher’s words, I will stand in that position and fully carry out Jesus’ great mission. I am glad. Yes, I will do it.”
The Deciding Authority of Victory or Defeat
Words are a simple thing. But will you really slit your belly?
Jesus became that standard. But even holding such a standard of heart, one must not lose; one must stand in the realm of victory.
So we must clearly know that our life of faith is not a path of dying and being judged, but a path of going while being judged alive. It is in the Bible too: If the hand commits sin, cut off the hand.
If the eye sins, pluck out the eye. It is rather better to enter the Kingdom of Heaven even as a cripple.
When the disciples saw Jesus work, would they have said, “Our teacher is a worldwide teacher”? Undoubtedly, they would have said, “He is the Lord sent from Heaven.” But it says, “Wait!” Who? It is Satan who says it. “Can you become one with Jesus? Jesus went thus. Will you too go so?” it says. Then if one says, “No,” it says, “Then go down below.”
This is the deciding authority of victory or defeat. The faith we must hold is not conceptual. It is a faith that needs a God who is in the realm of living (生活圈) and centers on living.
We need not a God who includes the realm of living, but a God who has come within the realm of living. One moves centered on such a realm of living. That itself is the problem. If it becomes so, one cannot but become a person who can even give God rest. The conclusion is such a thing.
If it becomes so, can God fully accomplish all the purposes of salvation He could not accomplish over six thousand years?
God cannot but do so. The Teacher’s battle until now has been for that. At a certain time, I prayed such a prayer: “O God! On the six-thousand-year course of God’s providence, our ancestors committed every sin and rebelled against Thee.
Certainly, make the six thousand years into six days so that it can be indemnified, and give me all the burden of that sin.” And I prayed, “In place of the 3.2 billion of humankind and all the ancestors who have until now gone to the spiritual world, let all the Satans fire their machine guns at me—only leave my life.
Thereafter, I do not care if I become a cripple. I do not mind what happens. Whatever happens is fine, so shoot me!” Apart from setting up the condition in that way, there was no other path. It is so even now.
The 3.2 billion of all humankind say, “Ah! That teacher has come. That is a great worldwide wave (大波). Everyone, come quickly. And clash and swallow it up. Finish it off!”
If they cannot finish it off and cannot swallow it up, let them themselves become so.
If one cannot swallow it up, one will, conversely (逆), be swallowed up. This is the Teacher’s way of thinking. So when one holds a great goal, before setting out, one must first set up plans for everything.
If one acts hoping for the success of one year, one becomes no more than the owner of one year.
If one acts hoping for the success of a thousand years, one becomes the owner of a thousand years; and if one desires the success of hundreds of millions of years and toils to the measure of hundreds of millions of years, one can become the victor of hundreds of millions of years. To work only one day and then, pleased about it, with eyes wide, be satisfied and say, “Ah, I feel good,” the Teacher very much dislikes. One must always hold something.
Even while dancing and rejoicing, one must always bear some burden. One must bear the cross of one’s lifetime more than anyone. The cross of the people remains.
The cross of the world remains. Immerse yourself in it. Enter the realm of the cross (十字架圈) and occupy it. Occupy it quickly. And if one becomes the owner, it becomes a single-handed match with the one making that realm of the cross.
If he is God’s supreme enemy, one must meet him and bring about the final settlement. This is fascinating. When you have already somewhat trained and forged (鍊成) your character and become Heaven’s elite troops and come to move Japan, I will set such of you at the head and begin a worldwide spiritual war. It is not fighting with guns or cannons. You hold the secret of fighting. Fire the shell of the heart. Fire the shell of hope. Fire the shell of faith. Jesus certainly did such work.
The Three Certificates the Person on Earth Must Possess
When you think, in the present age, of Jesus, the center of the universe, what would it be good for you to do?
Everyone commonly says, “When I think that he bore the cross and died for atonement, I cannot bear it for the injustice of it.” What is unjust?
Show that certificate. From where will you first bring a certificate? A certificate by which you can say, “I became thus. I did such work. This is the certificate of victory.” Such a certificate, you yourself cannot write. Then who writes it? At first, Satan writes it. God cannot write it.
You must know that you must have that certificate of victory written by Satan. Jesus knew this well. So at the start of the three-year public-life course, he called out Satan for forty days and fought the battle of having the certificate written. Those were the three great temptations.
Satan said, “You are victorious on the people level. So I cannot help but write the certificate. Otherwise I would have to offer up all my stages of activity to Heaven’s side at once.”
Therefore, you must first have the certificate written by Satan and then receive Jesus’ certificate. Thereafter, you must receive God’s certificate. You must know that these three certificates are needed. “Believing in Jesus, going to church on Sunday, singing hymns and praying, and then receiving an express ticket to heaven—so I am at ease,” they say, dozing during worship. It is the mood of a passenger bound for heaven. We must not make that a thing to celebrate.
This worship time is a time of fighting. It is a time of single combat. And yet, are you sleeping? If there is such a one, shake him awake. Just as Jesus said to Peter, “Satan, get away,” give him one in the side. That is love.
The Teacher does not let it pass if there is one sleeping during worship. Past, present, and future call me. Do you think so? Past, present, and future need me. You must think that Japan needs me.
Why is my face like this?
It is a little crooked to the side. I would appreciate it if it were egg-shaped. Why is it so round? Do not worry about such things.
Even if one is outwardly bad, there is a conscientious world that can be equipped, inwardly, with a hundred percent well-rounded standard. It is the world of the mind.
We must not forget that there is a world of feeling. Looking at one’s own hand, one may say, “That person’s hand is so beautiful, but why is my hand like a calf’s forefoot?” — yet if one holds the mind, “This hand is ugly to look at, but if with this hand I can make God weep, pioneer God’s path, and console God…,” that is full marks.
A Worldwide Gethsemane
Everyone, have you ever felt such a thing?
When one thinks straight through the work of the Heavenly Father, suddenly tears flow and flow, and weeping begins. However, one tries, one cannot endure it. When one touches it in the heart, tears come. Entering Adam’s family—especially in the case of a woman—one must say, “I am the very Eve who sinned. I am the pitiful Eve who must kneel before Thee. If there is even one path of salvation anywhere, I will go that path, so forgive Thou the sin I have committed.” And the man must repent that he is a descendant of the sinner Adam, who could not fully carry out his authority of dominion and overturned the standard of the principle of the creation of heaven and earth. And one must console God, set up the deciding authority of victory, and seek God’s command.
We cannot but go the path Noah and Abraham and Moses went, the path of Jesus’ Gethsemane and Golgotha, and the path the twelve disciples walked. The One who went to the cross comes through the cross.
The toil that follows the path of going forth, saying, “If I do not go this path, the path by which He comes will surely be far. To go even one step farther and let Him rest, I go ahead,” is only natural.
Seen centered on the 100 million people of Japan, one way or another, one must cross this path of indemnity. My beloved friend! One must go this path. Because it is a path with many obstacles, one must overcome them quickly. There, sacrifice is needed.
Had Jesus not gone with a true heart of sacrifice—that heart of sacrifice and hope passing through past, present, and future—history would not go in accord with that direction.
If it does not accord, such a worldwide realm cannot be made. What one does not think of cannot form a relationship with oneself. Without holding responsibility, one cannot make it one’s own.
Unless one holds responsibility, fights, and brings about the settlement, it cannot become one’s own. Jesus held responsibility. And whatever God required, he did. His body was whipped, and his forehead was torn.
Even in the midst of such, Jesus said to God, “O God, grieve Thou not at the sight of me.” This was Jesus’ heart. If it were you, you would have said, “Oh, O God, I am wronged. Judge Thou at once the one who wrongs me thus, ”would you not?
Jesus was not so. Because he went with such a heart, we, standing as his younger brothers, must now pass through this age of the bride. Unless one becomes Jesus’ brother, one has no qualification to be called a brother.
On Gethsemane and the height of Golgotha, there remains a worldwide han (한). You, too, must pass through that heart in which Jesus prayed, “If it be not God’s will, let this path, this cup, pass by. Yet do Thou not as I will, but as the Father wills.”
Have you ever held such responsibility for Japan and prayed?
The angelic world must cooperate with Adam and Eve.
So, just as Adam and Eve had to mobilize the Archangel and form that realm of the people in God’s realm of living centered on Adam, we must mobilize the spiritual world and command the angelic world to cooperate and must become ones who say, “In God’s joyful realm of living, I go,” or “I live”; otherwise we cannot make the foundation of the completion of restoration in this environment. This is the Principle.
Jesus sought that position. But he could not save his family, his clan. Originally, it had to be centered on John the Baptist, but that did not happen.
What I want to say further is that such things are not in the Bible.
If you want to know, I will teach you. If what I have taught does not please you, kneel and pray. If you pray, it can be resolved. You must know such relationships, go to Jesus, and become his younger brother and his elder brother.
If necessary, you must become even like his bride. To become so, one must ride over and cross a course of toil where one cannot rest even if one tries.
Just as Jesus passed through a thirty-year preparatory age and a three-year public-life age, the Teacher too is now passing through such a realm (圈). From such a year is the preparatory age, from such a year the age of practice, and from such a year to such a year the age of accomplishment, and so on.
So what the Teacher has said all comes true. When the Teacher moves ever so slightly like this, the whole world moves.
Why does it become so?
It cannot but become so. The merit (功) the Teacher has accomplished until now is all historical and of the age and of the future. What was it centered on? It was centered on God.
The Right Truth of Christianity Is the Truth of Resurrection
It is not that I long for love. It is not that I long for you. What I long for is not your faces but the path you go. It is the path you go that I long for. What God longed for was not Jesus himself but the path Jesus went.
If Jesus had gone the path the individual goes, the path the family goes, the path the clan goes, the path the people go, and the path the world goes—what would have happened?
What would it have been if Jesus had become a worldwide victor at the family standard?
What would it have been if Jesus had perhaps married?
Would that son have been acknowledged as God’s descendant, or not? He would have been acknowledged. Had it become so, even though Jesus died, there would undoubtedly have been a second Jesus. Had his descendants become a people and centered on them the whole of humankind come to live centered on God, what would it have been? Had Cain and Abel set up the condition of indemnity, the world would have become the Kingdom of Heaven.
If, by chance, there had been a young girl who, knowing such an ideal and understanding Jesus’ heart and intention, had gone before Jesus and said, “God desires it, so must you not do thus?” — What would it have been? The Teacher thinks of such things.
What would it have been?
Had the Israelite people sought to make a worldwide realm centered on Jesus, it would have been made. Because the standard of Adam and Eve is the standard of the original creation, had they absolutely accorded and become a trinity with God, it would have become so.
If one goes to a Christian church and teaches such things, they will open their eyes wide and drive one out. But we must think to that depth in earnest. We must think.
Where one does not think, one cannot realize. Where one goes without realizing, the hand of God’s grace does not reach. Jesus, holding such responsibility, with a spirit that went the way of the cross too boldly, overcame Satan and became the owner of the gospel that resets the world.
The reason I say such words to you is that you must set up and inherit such a purpose again and first spread it to your family, to your clan, to your people, and to your nation.
That God needs you is for the sake of the world and for the sake of Japan. God needs the chosen people. That is from the clan to the people, to the nation.
So one must restore the realm of the chosen people of the Second Israel. In restoring, one must restore centered on Jesus’ original hope. Why? Because Jesus came and could not fully accomplish that mission. The path to set up the three great offerings centered on Jesus as a historical indemnity was blocked.
Among the three, Peter, John, and James, Peter is the representative of faith, James the representative of hope, and John the representative of love and heart. There, if John had died, the history of Christianity would have been cut off.
Because he lived and it was carried on, the historical standard of the heart of the Jewish people and the standard for which Jesus prayed could be left upon the earth. That work, not all know. Peter is the representative of faith, James the representative of hope, and John the representative of love.
Jesus desired that these three disciples, in Gethsemane, pray together with the same hope as Jesus, the same faith as Jesus, and the same heart as Jesus when Jesus prayed. But even when Jesus was hung on the cross, robbers were hung on the crosses to the left and right. That was the most wretched scene in human history. The first person to go to Paradise with Jesus was the robber on the right. It is a sorrowful tale.
Peter had to fulfill the mission of Jesus’ first disciple, but he did not keep his position. The three disciples, who, as representatives of humankind of that age, had to stand before God as the three great offerings, went off as they pleased.
So Jesus died and again led them, and through the forty-day resurrection period made a realm of victory (勝利圈). Christianity is not through the cross but through the resurrection. The cross is a condition of sorrow. Had there been no resurrection, there could have been no beginning of Christianity.
When the Teacher traveled around the world, beholding many crosses, he reconfirmed that his mission is to do away with all those crosses. Even through my children, I will do away with them. Christianity is not the truth of the cross but the truth of the resurrection. In that sense, Jesus, without offering an offering, crossed over Gethsemane and crossed over Calvary as a condition of future hope.
To Build the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth
Then who must set up the future offering?
The Third Israel of the time of the Second Advent must set it up. One must set right the wrong of the first Adam and also take responsibility for it.
Unless the Third Israel is completed, in the present age centered on myself, the failed standard of the first and second Israel and the condition that ought to have been completed in Jesus’ day, and decides the three great offerings, and confronts Satan and makes a foundation of victory, one cannot stand in the position of a good parent. This is the Principle the Unification Church teaches.
Jesus had to die because he lost the three disciples. On the other hand, had the three disciples died together with Jesus, God, when He resurrected Jesus, would have resurrected the three disciples too. Had He done so, Christianity would not have had to go the path of suffering.
Looking back on such a historical past, now you must, in the present age, inherit the circumstances of the Third Israel and stand at the head and achieve a great victory.
If you console God’s mind, which agonizes over the world, and put in order your surroundings and your nation, and set up in the present a standard by which you can command in God’s stead, you can make the Kingdom of Heaven on earth in the environment in which you stand. That is Jesus’ desire, and God’s desire, and the Teacher’s desire.
The Teacher fights through a whole lifetime from that standard. If one rests in that battle, one cannot endure. Day by day, the battle becomes fierce and violent. With worldwide development, the atomic bomb has come into being. One must unfold a battle in which firing a single shot brings the end.
We must, centered on a spiritual battle, make one standard within the realm of thought (思想圈) and cry out to the world. I earnestly hope that you, as a Japanese person centered on Japan, can fully carry out the victorious mission of moving the world.
O Father, we are, sorrowfully, learning the principle of indemnity. There are times when, in our distress, we shed tears; yet because we know that unless we cross a certain standard of indemnity we cannot set up a standard with which the Father can be satisfied, nor subdue Satan and decide the limit of victory, we think with no face to show concerning the sin our ancestors committed.
Countless ancestors groped along this path, yet we think that, not knowing the Father’s desire and the Father’s purpose, they became Satan’s offering. We earnestly pray that, in the present age, Thou wilt set us in a position that does not tread the same rut as the ancestors.
O Father, look with pity upon the brothers in Japan. This is a people that, until now, in the East, once moved with the aim of a purpose centered on this nation—the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere (大東亞共榮圈).
We know that that was not by the Father but by Satan and that it leaves a single blot upon history. We know that all the brothers—having received a grateful path, granted by Thee the heavenly fortune by which they can now open a new path for Japan and contribute to the world in the future—are giving thanks.
Certainly, from the depths of our hearts, we earnestly desire that Thou wilt set them in a position where their minds grow day by day and move their environment, and where their substance, deciding a standard of existence by the Father, becomes the motive that can move all things.
When we think that the mission of the cosmic Jesus, of whom the Word has now been preached, passes through this historical process and, in the present age, is laid upon us, with the Second and Third Israelite peoples at the fore, because we are weak ones, our fingertips tremble, and our whole bodies tremble.
When we look back on our sin-filled past, we can by no means stand before the Father; yet when we think that Thou art the Father who must embrace to Thy bosom us who are defiled in the present age and again give us a grave mission, we come to think how heavy is the path we go and how we cannot but hasten.
We know that the aged must treasure their daily living and, desiring to draw near to the Father, strive. The young must fight earnestly to save the world. And we earnestly pray that Thou wilt keep them—not forgetting that they hold a great mission, depending on the Father for all things, desiring the Father’s purpose, taking courage, entering the Father’s realm of purpose (目的圈), and becoming victors who can attend the Father; and that, as princes and princesses of Heaven, received in Heaven and received on earth, or as the center, they may stand—and that Thou wilt ever widen the manifestation of victory.
We earnestly desire that Thou wilt grant grace so that, inheriting Jesus’ mission, in a life of thanksgiving to the Father, attending the Father, and setting up the value of that life as a standard of infinite value, we may become ones who can give thanks.
We thank the Father for having guided all the things of today, and all these things we pray in the name of the Lord. Amen.Jesus, Who Stood in the Cosmos
We earnestly desire that Thou wilt grant grace so that, inheriting Jesus’ mission, in a life of thanksgiving to the Father, attending the Father, and setting up the value of that life as a standard of infinite value, we may become ones who can give thanks.
We thank the Father for having guided all the things of today, and all these things we pray in the name of the Lord. Amen.