Let Us Stand on Heaven’s Side

Former Headquarters Church

Matthew 27:27-31

We know well that this world in which we live today is not on Heaven’s side. It is so with the world, but for us as individuals, too, there are many times when we cannot find anything on Heaven’s side.

Fallen Human Beings Who Must Return to Heaven’s Side

We have experienced much in the living environment through which we pass in the course of our lives, and the fact that the fight between conscience and body is repeated endlessly.

Yet, however difficult, miserable, and confused an environment we are in, we cannot but go seeking Heaven’s side. This is a natural logic. We cannot but make this our purpose and achieve it at all costs.

From the place where we now are, however much we think, we cannot conceive of Heaven’s side. This is because everything visible to us is nothing but phenomena opposed to Heaven’s side, and the environment in which we live is entangled with content unrelated to Heaven’s side. When we consider this, we come to know that to go seeking Heaven’s side and to stand on Heaven’s side is exceedingly difficult.

We must recover ourselves, who stand at the crossroads of Heaven and earth, God and Satan, good and evil, and go forward centered on goodness, centered on God, and return to God’s side. We know well that it is the figure of fallen human life to stand in such a destiny. That is why, until now, to grope for such a road, how greatly have countless human beings sought and craved God, putting forward the name of religion? We know this fact well.

Over the long course of history, countless people repeated such a thing. We must know that it is the life of us, fallen descendants, to be placed in a destiny where we can neither cast away this work that we grope for, writhing within our daily life, nor repeat it once again.

We must know that we human beings are thus placed in an exceedingly pitiful and miserable position, in a position where we cannot assert ourselves standing before anyone at all.

We know well the fact that, however much some hero or man of resolve upon this earth may have made every effort to achieve what he resolved in his inner mind and completed that purpose, there has not been one person who offered it to God as something of Heaven’s side and departed.

We also know well the historic fact that, though countless human beings came forth repeatedly holding ambitions, in the end they vanished together with lamentation. Yet we, in such an environment, cannot but writhe once again and, without fail, break through it. This is our mission and our responsibility.

Then what is it that becomes the issue here?

It is that, to stand on Heaven’s side, one cannot stand on the human side. That is, with human circumstances, one cannot come into contact with God’s circumstances; with the human bond, one cannot connect to God’s bond; and with a human purpose, one cannot form a relationship with God’s purpose.

Therefore, for us to stand on Heaven’s side, we cannot but first think of God’s purpose, live centered on God’s purpose, and take a stand of fighting to achieve God’s purpose. Because God is one who is connected through a public course, God cannot be present in a place centered on the private.

God can be present when, through a public standard, one comes to stand in an even greater public position. And only by becoming such a person can one draw near before God. That is why, from of old, countless saints and sages emphasized and taught goodness centered on the public position.

The Place Where God Can Be Present

Seen in this light, what kind of place is the public place where God can be present? Viewed centered on our human body and mind, that which is in a more public position than the body is the mind. And once both body and mind have become myself in a public position, I must again stand in an even greater public position, and what is that? It is the family. But if the family stands in a position opposed to my mind, establishing a public position is an exceedingly difficult thing.

Yet if there is a family that has established a public foundation, that family must stand upon a public foundation centered on the people.

If there is a people that stands upon a public foundation centered on the people, that people must stand upon a public foundation that is worldwide, beyond the nation.

We know that it is the life of fallen human beings to be placed in a destiny in which they cannot but establish such an ever-greater foundation.

Therefore, the road we must go does not end with living centered on my one self according to my conscience. Of course we must govern the body centered on the conscience and live, but also we must live to build a good family; and even having built a good family, we must lead that family and form a good tribe; and we must lead that good tribe and form a good people; and, further, there is connected before the road we go content by which we cannot but draw forth even a good nation, a good world, and a good Cosmos. Human beings today do not know that the road a human being must go is such a difficult road. There are many who, thinking that the purpose of life is just to live centered on oneself, getting by somehow, finish their lives.

In such an environment, we, unlike others, have been fighting to establish a foothold of goodness within daily life, aiming at a public standard for going to seek the sphere of God. That course, viewed from a human standpoint, cannot but be an infinitely miserable road. That standard is not a standard on which the whole can compromise; it is an absolute standard on which one cannot but deny the whole and tread over the whole and rise.

We must know the fact that, since it is an absolute standard, misery accompanies it.

Although such a public course is connected to human beings, God does not demand that human beings pioneer this course alone. Of course, it is a fact that He entrusts this lonely and miserable place to human beings to pioneer, but He does not lay the whole responsibility upon human beings alone.

God goes ahead on this road and, to fulfill His own responsibility, has been making much labor behind the scenes. Many people living upon this earth today do not know this fact.

When there is some true person, people may be able to appraise him as a true person by looking at his outer conduct, but they will not know well the fact that, until he came to a place where he heard the words that he was true, there was a process of countless struggles, and there were ridges where, though he ran up against countless adverse places, he did not bow to them but made resolves and vows. Yet you must know this fact well.

If it is so even for one person, it is all the more so for God, who sought to establish Heaven’s side through a public course of history. We have lived until now not knowing the fact that God, who desires that we go a public course—the greater that desire, the more, in proportion, God has behind the scenes made much labor that human beings do not know.

Human beings, in the process of pursuing goodness, are apt, the moment they stand in a place even a little discouraged or uneasy, to clutch themselves and easily fall into despair. But if one knew clearly the fact that God, in such a place, makes such labor for my sake and must labor in an even more miserable place to pioneer the road I am to go, then, however lonely and difficult a place, however fearful a place where one cannot but lament over oneself, one could not be so.

When we compare such a God with myself, we can know that God stands in a universal position and I stand in an individual position. And if one knows that God’s labor is so great as to be beyond comparison with mine, one can resolve to kick aside all the difficulties that come and follow God. This can be known even through the common practice of the human world.

Human beings today do not know whether God exists or not.

If one knew that God exists, one must not forget the fact that God, even now, undergoes much hardship to pioneer their road ahead and, amid much trial, walks the public course braving loneliness.

This is so not only for those who do not believe, but likewise for those who today call God Father and stand on the road of faith, pursuing their way toward the homeland of Heaven.

Forgetting the fact that God has come bearing such an enormous public course of history, how often have they, holding only content over which they themselves lament, seized upon God, cursed God, and betrayed God? We Unification Church members know how many such historic facts there have been.

Then what is it that Unification believers must know?

It is that they must, before anyone else, know the Heaven’s side that has borne responsibility on the public course.

God was harder pressed than my circumstances, harder pressed than our nation’s circumstances, harder pressed than the circumstances of today’s confused world—a God who bears responsibility in such an environment.

If there is a child of God who truly loves such a God, God will certainly go to seek that person before anyone else.

We Must Know God’s Misery

If there is a band that knows God, God will wish to relieve, through that band, the sorrow of history, will wish to charge them with the mission of the age, and will wish to entrust to them the responsibility of the future.

Today the Unification Church family members must, before anyone else, stand at the vanguard and know that God is a God in such sorrow, a God in such difficulty, a God in such an aggrieved and indignant position.

At what time do the indignant, aggrieved, and grievous facts arise for us human beings today?

It is when a thing that I trusted and hoped for is shattered, or when the blood relationship formed between me and another is denied. We know the fact that that time is more miserable and grievous than any other.

When a parent trusts a beloved child so, and yet that child betrays, the shock, the anguish, and the misery the parent suffers, proportionally to that trust, are beyond words.

Likewise, when a person one has loved at the risk of one’s life betrays, rejects, and disbelieves, it is beyond words miserable. The agony of writhing in such a place is not known to one who has not had such an experience. It cannot be known by words alone. This can be known by inference from the affairs of the world.

Then how did God come to be miserable?

We must consider this once again. God is not a vague God but a concrete God. He is also a God who has the highest relationship with us human beings.

If there is something in which God can rejoice, it is His beholding a point of departure that could set out with joy together with human beings and go on continuously toward an endless eternity. Yet that point of departure was lost because of human beings.

The place where God and human beings can rejoice in each other and sing of happiness is a place of attending God, where God is not lost. In such a place the human being was to be bonded, centered on God, in the position of a child; yet, despite this, through the Fall all such bonds came to be severed. Seen in this light, the human being is the very one who drove God today into a miserable place. Human beings until now did not know this.

We have thought that God grieves, but grieves in a place unrelated to me; that He labors, but labors from the position of a third party. We did not clearly know the fact that the labor, the agony, and all the sorrow were because of human beings and because of me, who represents those human beings. That is, we did not know the fact that it was because of me that God came to stand in such a position.

If there is a person who knows how miserable God was in the past and how miserable He is today, and who, knowing clearly the fact that He ran up against such despair for my sake, worries about such a God, that person cannot but return to Heaven’s side, try as he might not to. Therefore the problem is: where is the “I” who knows such a God, the “I” who has clearly realized that such a bond exists—where is such an “I”?

God created all things and made the human ancestors in the Garden of Eden as the central figures of all things. When He created the human being, He did not create him as some plaything of God’s. He did not create him as a pastime.

We must know the fact that God’s labor and devotion, until He created the human being and set him up as the center representing all things, were beyond words.

As to What Kind of Being Was the Human Being Created

When God created the human being, He created him pouring in every devotion, pouring in the very core of His heart and His life, and pouring in the whole of His love and affection. He created him within a bond that could not be severed by any force, that could not be divided, try as one might. Because the human being was thus created, God, beholding that human being, could at last have peace dwell within Him, and all affection and happiness could dwell only through that human being.

God is the Father of human beings, and human beings are God’s sons and daughters. Because the human being is one made by pouring in the whole of the bone of God’s bone, the flesh of His flesh, the marrow of His marrow, when such a human being pulls at God, He cannot but be pulled; and when God pulls the human being, he cannot but be pulled along.

God created the human being, within such a bond, as one whose content and purpose could agree.

If there were some word or poem by which God could praise the person He thus made, it would be the highest work, one that no poet or writer of the world could express. Its object is neither God nor all things, but the human being alone, who represents all things.

Upon a person who is, in outward appearance, however ugly and homely, God’s love can overflow, God’s Word of life can sprout, and God’s song of love can be sung. It is a human being possessing a lofty and noble value, centered on God, of a height that a fallen human being cannot imagine even in a dream.

We must know that fact. Though such a figure is the figure of one individual, God could not but see him as a figure representing the universe. Why? Because He created him, concentrating all His nerves and pouring in every devotion. Such was the figure of the human ancestors.

All things created around him were, for the human being, a stimulating symbolic body. The birdsong that came to his ears was a motive that could ring and vibrate Adam’s heart. The butterfly, the bee, and all other things were made as a symbolic, stimulating body such that Adam and Eve could not but love them. The blowing wind, the flowing water, and even a single blade of grass in the field were all made as the representational body of the substance that loves Adam and Eve.

He created them, setting the human being as the center of all things. How blessed a place is such a place of the human being! It was a human being lovely in God’s sight, the human ancestors whom, once embraced in God’s bosom, He wished to hold forever and ever and never let go.

He was a Father who, taking hold of Adam’s hand and saying, “Ah! Adam, you and I are a pair with a bond that no one can ever sever,” longed for an hour in which He could make a new plan and a new promise.

The human being, created within an eternal and unchanging bond of love, is a being that can become the center and core of peace. Holding the confidence that he can be so, he must embrace and love all the phenomena of Heaven and earth.

How greatly did God long for an hour in which the Father and the sons and daughters joined hand in hand and their hearts pierced deep, at “Adam!” “Yes, Father!” He could bestow, and they could inherit all the estate of Heaven and earth? God desired to have such a place.

Yet, without realizing this one day of desire, this one day of desire that God longed for, the human being fell. That is, Adam and Eve, who yearned for such a bosom of love, fell and died. Those very Adam and Eve, who were God’s love and the whole of His joy, fell through the Fall into the world of death. They died, I say.

God, who had to turn to cursing upon beholding His beloved children dead; God, who lost His beloved children and stood in such a miserable position, in which the human beings He made as a bond of children appeared all at once as a condition of curse; God, who could not call a son a son, could not call a daughter a daughter, and had to behold the figure of the human being whom, within a bond of love, He could have embraced entirely with His own hands, but could now never embrace, try as He might—we must know that it was the fall of the human ancestors that dropped God into such a miserable state.

The Heart of a Parent

The lofty love and the authority of lofty value that no man of letters today could express even if he tried have thus been degraded through the Fall. And the one who witnessed the fall of the human being is none other than God, who is in the position of Father.

Parents who have borne and raised children will know. They will wish to receive blessings and feel happiness through the sons and daughters they cherished so dearly. And if there is a standard by which they can rejoice and receive blessings, they will wish to leave it to their sons and daughters forever.

Even fallen human beings, holding such a hopeful mind, wish to become such sons and daughters. It is a parent’s heart to be anxious night and day with an aching heart, lest their sons and daughters, whom they hope will grow up well and be exalted by all nations and praised for all ages, should be wounded, and to protect them. Even a fallen parent’s heart is so.

It is a parent’s heart, the earnest mind of a mother who nurses and raises a child in her bosom, that even though the child soils itself and there is a stench, she can, through love, forget that circumstance.

If even a fallen parent’s mind toward a child is so, how much more earnest must have been the mind of God, the subject of love, who wished to love Adam and Eve through His original heart? Consider it once, all of you.

When you embrace and raise a baby, the mind by which you sing to it even in bed, talk to it in soliloquy, and wish it well is a mind that any parent would have.

However homely and lacking a child it may be, if that child has a defect, the parent’s heart undergoes the highest agony, soaking their whole breast; and when this is resolved, joy accompanies it proportionally to that agony. If even a fallen parent’s mind is so, what must God’s mind be?

As you know through the Principle, God, in loving the human being, thought of a love before which all Heaven and earth could submit, an authority given such that the whole could follow him, an authority before which the whole could completely bow its head—such a highest love and highest authority—and gave the human being responsibility.

Then why did God set up a portion of responsibility within human life? Because He is omniscient and omnipotent, He could not but give even that omniscient and omnipotent creativity; and because He is the eternal, unchanging subject of love, He could not but give a portion of responsibility to set the human being in a place that could stand in for that subject of love. Because this becomes a condition of blessing and is like a single key that can take possession of the whole, He could not but give it. And we must know that it was this portion of responsibility that became the issue and led to the Fall.

God, the Portion of Responsibility, and I

Do not stand in the position of a third party, I say. You are in this relationship—God, the portion of responsibility, and I. In the process of climbing to fulfill the portion of responsibility, when one sought to violate that portion of responsibility, what must God’s heart have been?

You have probably played much soccer. When your side’s ball crosses the center line, you shout “Yeah!” for joy, but when the ball crosses the center line and comes toward your side, how anxious your mind is! It is the same for the spectators. The bigger the match—like the Olympics—the greater the bond behind it and the wider its content, the greater, in proportion, the anxiety.

When nations compete against each other, that moment is very grave. That is why the players who take part, when they kick the ball, must kick it with all devotion. One wrong kick affects the whole.

Have you had such an experience?

A goal can go in instantly. Therefore, at the instant when the opposing side kicks the ball and it is about to go in, the goalkeeper must move toward the ball with all his devotion. But if he is blankly looking elsewhere, how appalling that would be! Yet in soccer, even if you concede one goal, you can win again next time.

But the portion of responsibility placed before Adam and Eve was such that, once done wrong, it becomes a dreadful pit that can be a cancer to human beings for hundreds of millions of ages. Because Adam and Eve were in a position of having to bear such responsibility, God, foreseeing that there would be Satan’s assault, warned them not to eat.

Despite this, they ate of the fruit of good and evil; so what must God’s mind have been, beholding that?

Did He cheer them on, saying, “Well, they were born that way, so it can’t be helped. Well done, well done”? Even at the instant when they were tumbling in such a position, God must have wished to trust that at least you would not do so.

At that time, how greatly must God’s anxious mind have tossed back and forth at the crossroads of two ways?

Right up to just before the Fall, how greatly must He have wished to assert the human being’s authority?

How earnest must He have been to set up that authority and bring Satan into submission? In such a heartbreaking place, the human being fell. This cannot be indemnified with a thousand years of han.

Since God knew that it would become a pit in which countless multitudes over hundreds of millions of ages would all be caught at the ridge of death, how indignant must He have been? It is the human being who inflicted such a miserable wound. When we consider such things, the human being is a being with nothing to say.

Even in the world, if one imagines the death of a seventh-generation only son, born to parents past their sixtieth year, that is, a child born very late, it would be despair among despairs.

If they were young, they could bear another, but if that seventh-generation only son, born so late, fails to grow up well and dies, how the hearts of the ancestors who sought to carry on the line of seven generations would burn!

Ancestors wish to receive, through their descendants, through their bloodline, the boundless blessing that is nowhere in the world. So if a child dies, the parents would wish to die following. Yet Adam was not a seventh-generation only son but an eternal only son.

God intended, centered on the one and only Adam, to form a family and establish the great work of Heaven and earth; so when that Adam died, what must God’s mind have been? When things went awry like this, what would it have been?

Could it be compared with the heartache of wishing to marry and being unable to?

If parents wish to live together for thousands and tens of thousands of years, but their seventh-generation only son is now caught by a terrible disease, and his life hangs by a thread, what would the parents’ hearts be?

Just imagine that your sons and daughters are now breathing their last.

Would the parents cry out, or not?

Those parents, if there were any method by which they could save their dying child, would cast away all face and dignity and use that method. Even if it meant becoming the eternal servant of some enemy, if it could save their sons and daughters, the parents would do so.

Do you understand that?

If there were some method to save that child, the parents would not think of dignity and face.

If a child could be saved by so doing, the parents would be glad to become servants. To seek the one substantial son who can set up the purpose of a certain day, they could become the offering that relieves the han of tens of millions of years.

If even a fallen parent is so, how much more God?

When such sons and daughters crossed the boundary and were parted forever, God’s misery was beyond expression in words.

Trying to Go to Heaven Without Even Knowing God’s Circumstances

As the established church says, it is easy to say, “Do not eat of the fruit of good and evil.” But if it were that simple, the providential history of Restoration would not have taken six thousand years.

How great a wound must God, beholding the child going in contact with an environment where such a miserable black cloud gathered, have suffered?

Though countless human beings have come and gone upon this earth, until now there has been no one who has suffered such a wound. Jesus crossed over the death-ridge of the cross, but he did not reach the place where that wound could be healed. We must once more clearly know that God is such a God.

People, when they go to church, just carry a Bible and say,

“If you only believe in Jesus, you go to heaven. Let us believe in Jesus and go to heaven,”

and it is appalling.

If one could go so simply, how good it would be! If one could go by so doing, why is the Christianity that has come forth believing thus gradually collapsing? It is not so simple, I say. To go to heaven, one must know what God was like.

Otherwise, if after going to heaven one learned the fact that God was miserable, do you think one could lift one’s face? Could people who went to heaven not even knowing God’s circumstances lift their faces, I say? Living without knowing this God who was so miserable, can one say, “Father, let me go to heaven. Give me blessing”?

When such enormous sorrow and piercing indignation are laid bare in broad daylight, could one behold such a God and, before Him, lift one’s face saying, “I am a son of God”?

If one could, that person is truly Satan. Satan came forth, betraying God, trampling upon such circumstances of God.

If, even after knowing God’s such circumstances, one could lift one’s face, that person is no different from a descendant of Satan.

That person must go to hell. God is thus a miserable and aggrieved God, yet in today’s established church they say, what is there for the omniscient, omnipotent God who created Heaven and earth to be sad about? But in fact, He is such a miserable God.

To go to the Kingdom of Heaven, one must know that account upon the earth, and if one’s own strength cannot reach to relieve it, one must at least become a person who sheds tears.

If one laments over oneself for being unable to relieve it, if one becomes the central figure of lamentation in an even more pitiful place, would God not know the circumstances of that lamentation?

If one thus laments, that becomes a condition, and a bond is formed with God. Being brazen, no bond is formed.

When Adam and Eve fell, what must Heaven and earth have become?

Would they have turned pitch-black or turned white? It is so even in the world, is it not?

When a young couple, living together, has one side split off or die, how they writhe! You are confident that you would not be so, but everyone here is a candidate to be so. However fine a person, even the greatest man of authority in the Republic of Korea, it is the same. At that ridge, there is no strongman.

Well, whoever thinks he could be a strongman there, raise your hand. There is none, is there? However fine, however stout, however skinny, and even a person at the very moment of dying—upon seeing that, one comes to shed tears, one’s breath is stopped, one’s breast bursts, and one is appalled.

Then what must God’s mind have been? “You there, give it up. I will create it again.” Was it so? If it had been so, how good it would be!

When your sons and daughters, once born, die, you will never forget them. When that child was alive and said it wanted to eat something, why could I not buy it?

When it said it wanted to wear something, why could I not buy it? Thus, every account of the food you could not buy and the clothing you could not put on catches and becomes han. Because God too has such a mind, He seeks to restore fallen human beings. Without such a mind, there would be no such thing as Restoration.

Do Not Boast of My Dignity and Authority

It is the han of God, who is Parent, that He could not do all that Adam and Eve wished and desired as they grew up. Because He has that mind, He carries out the history of Restoration.

Yet the human being, as a child, was to have set up the way of filial piety before God and established the law of the heavenly way and prepared a point of settlement, but failed to do so. Because today’s human being is one born in such a place, he cannot but groan amid lamentation, curse, and the wailing of discontent.

How, then, must we, who are in such a position, act to stand on Heaven’s side centered on God’s public foundation?

We must not boast of our present dignity and authority.

We must call up the original affection before the Fall, that is, the affection of original nature, that seeps out from between the bones and marrow. We must not stand before God in the position of the fallen ancestors. Therefore, fallen parents must weep and shed tears. We, born as their descendants, must, as a matter of course, suffer hardship.

We must become miserable. We must collapse and fall. We must be struck down. We must stand in an aggrieved place. That is a matter of course. Unless I become a self who, centered on the affection of original nature hidden deep in my bones and marrow, yearns for the Father who rejoiced before the Fall, embraces the wound that Adam and Eve dealt to God’s mind through the Fall, and can achieve it with a heart of original nature that has not fallen, I cannot form a bond with God.

That is why in today’s religions one is told to offer devotion until death. In the Bible too it says,

“Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength” (Mark 12:30).

Then what kind of place is that place?

It is a place of knowing the fact, not as the human being himself who fell into the fallen sphere and was born within God’s sphere of curse, but as one who has drawn forth the heart of original nature between the bones and marrow, of how miserable was the heart of that Father, who wished to love the human being; a place that can grasp through experience (체휼) such a heart—that is precisely the place of offering devotion.

Only when one writhes to feel is the bond between God and me formed. You must clearly know this. This is the motive by which one can enter the Kingdom of Heaven.

Told to give your whole heart, if you say, “Today I am busy; I have somewhere to go,” and then say, “I have given it my all,” is that giving your all? And if, when you were going to marry, you said, “I had better give it up,” and, when you were going to be wed and were told you must not, you said, “I had better give it up,” and turned away—is that giving your all? What does it mean to give your whole heart, your whole soul, and your whole mind? What is its limit? You must know this. Just getting by somehow is not giving your all.

You must clearly know that limit. It is to surpass the standard of the heart at the time when Adam and Eve fell. They failed to love God and failed to worry over God’s purpose. They also did not know what God’s inner heart was like. Therefore, you must not stand in an irresponsible place even after receiving a command.

Centered on God’s Word in the Bible, with a mind graver than Adam’s, you must, at the risk of your life, throw in your whole self. Your mind must be as earnest as a bomb hurtling to its target to explode.

God wishes not merely for the standard of offering devotion beyond the line of death, but for us to surpass the standard by which, within God’s ideal, all people of Heaven and earth sing of a love centered on God and can be embraced in God’s bosom.

God is an aggrieved and indignant one. Because of whom? Precisely because of me. You will think it is not so, will you not? You will say, “What relation do I have with an ancestor of a few thousand years ago?” but it is not so. You have probably seen a sprout come out of an old tree, all rotted, with only bare, ugly branches left, unpleasant to look at.

Whether it is a ginkgo tree or a zelkova, when you ask that sprout its age, will it do for it to say it is three months old because it came out this spring? Since my age began to take root from the time of the grandfather who planted it, what age must I say?

Who would be the person like the sprout of that old tree?

Precisely you. Then how old are you now? Do not think you are fifteen or twenty years old. To the age you think you are, you must add six thousand years. Because six thousand years is a nuisance, you just say fifteen or twenty.

Since the six thousand years are the same for all. In fact, if asked your age, you must say, “Six thousand and some years old.” You will say, Where is there such a person? —but the world of the heart is so.

For a Believer, Even an Extremely Miserable Place Is Needed

You have probably seen an old pine that, though alive, has only one root left, and, struck by a storm and pushed by a flood, hangs upside down, swaying precariously on a cliff or a bank. Whether pine, alder, or poplar…. And if the storm keeps raging, how appalling it must be for the tree! Would that tree wish for the rain to stop, or not? Think about it. Would it wish so, or not? Have you ever wished so earnestly for the sake of life?

Where is there anything more miserable than that? If at least the root were alive, there might be hope, but this is like a radish whose root has all rotted and gone soft…. Even if leaves are attached to the top of such a radish, it is bound to rot anyway. Even if the owner pulls it out, it all just goes into the cattle shed.

You are in such a case. It is the same for those who believe in Christianity today.

The root is stuck fast on a bank, and the body has fallen toward the seashore, and yet they say they will live here—is that pitiful or not? And do they dance for joy even so? However much such a tree may boast of its vitality, unless it thrusts up and drives its root even into the wall above, there is no road to live.

So one must go up to seek the root. One must cut off the whole tree and take a branch newly sprouting from the root. For a sprout to come out here, I, who have been until now, must be cut off. Only with such a mind can one leave behind at least a seed.

If one just says, “If I am cut off, it is a disaster; I must live,” one perishes entirely without a trace.

When you behold a great ship that has met a gale at sea, when the waves are so high that the mast is not visible, you think the ship has gone under the water, and when it becomes visible again, a sigh of relief comes out first, does it not?

How is it? Do you feel it vividly? Even if it is so, what of the people aboard?

Have you thought about what the chief engineer would feel? Would he say, “Well met, you”? When it went down, his heart sank, and he must have called upon God, “Oh God, I am dying.” Each time it went down beneath the waves, he must have cried, “God!” and each time it came up, he must have said, “Thank you.” Was it so, or not? Think about it.

A person needs such a history. One must have been in an extremely miserable place. Consider Jesus, who was mocked as he went toward Golgotha bearing the cross on his back. The Jews mocked Jesus, saying, “You brat, what a sight you are, you son of a carpenter!”

If you had been in that place at that time, what would you have said to Jesus?

You would have reviled him along with them. Now, if someone said, “You brat!” to Jesus, there would be an uproar, but from the standpoint of the people of that time, they could not but be so. Do you think it was because the Jews were all inferior to you that they nailed Jesus to the cross?

What was this fellow like, who claimed to have come as the Messiah whom they had awaited and awaited for thousands of years until their eyes fell out?

He gathered people and was driven and chased from this village to that village. The Jews did not see such a Jesus as the Messiah. But because Jesus was in the position of a son who was to carry on God’s piercing heart, he regarded being persecuted as a matter of course.

Beholding Jesus, who could swallow being driven, beaten, maltreated, and mocked, God could not but sympathize with Jesus.

Of course, in the Garden of Gethsemane he prayed that, if it were possible, this cup might pass from him, but that was a prayer for the sake of humankind.

Yet once the decision was made, he took it in entirely. A general equipped with the figure of a brave warrior, if he is going to die anyway, would wish to die struck by an atomic bomb rather than fall before a rifle.

Likewise, Jesus thought that the national curse and mockery were not the great thing. With the mind that “the road of the heavenly way I must go, you cannot confuse or block however hard you try,” Jesus fought on, feeling the Father’s heart.

The Teacher knows it to be so. I am not speaking from having heard it from someone. Upon looking into it, it was so.

We Must Clearly Know That God Is a Sorrowful God

Jesus, holding an inner heart that could surpass the standard of the sorrow of God, who grieved because the original Adam and Eve fell, valiantly trod over and crossed the place of death, where his honor and glory came to nothing instantly, embraced God, and resolved that whether he died he would attend God and whether he lived he would attend God. It was because of this resolve that God could, in turn, console Jesus.

By virtue of this, the foundation of the Kingdom of Heaven was made upon this earth. Without such a foundation on which God can be consoled, the unification of the Cosmos is not achieved.

When we consider this, you must know the fact that God is sorrowful.

Even when you go to the theater to watch a film, you must stand in a grave place and feel it as your affair, not as another’s.

If you go to the theater with the mind that, since some evil band is like an enemy that obstructs the road of faith, you will seize and clear away such a band when they appear, it is not a sin. If you go with such a mind, it is all right to go even to a place worse than a theater.

If you go into even a den where villains live, with the conviction that, taking on the appearance of a swindler if need be, you can draw them out, and with the resolve to strike down the enemy all at once with one sword, you are set up as a brave warrior of God. Such a person becomes the talk of wherever he goes in all the world. Would it be so, or not? “It would be so.”

Then to what degree would it be so? Consider it, all of you. You wish to cut them down, but can you? You think in your mind that you could, but that place is grave. The one speaking here too is grave. You may not know it, but he is throwing himself in, staking his life.

Without sowing life, one cannot reap the seed of life. It is said, as one sows, so one reaps. Because God came seeking humankind by the highest road with such a heart, people who held such a heart have, until now, been of help in developing history. Such people are on God’s side.

God is one who lost everything and grieves. Had the human being died of a naturally occurring disease, it would still have been all right, but though warned, “If you eat, you die,” he thoughtlessly ate. Beholding this, how odious it must have been! He told him he would die if he ate it. He said he would surely die. Though this word was blown into his ear, he ate of it because it seemed good. The human being has a tendency to do all the more what he is told not to do.

If told not to come to the Unification Church, one comes all the more.

If told, “Come, come,” one may not come, but if one is beaten with a club and told not to come, one will be sitting inside at the crack of dawn—wondering at what hour the Teacher, who comes out with a club, will come out. Because of this contrary, tree-frog-like temperament, things went awry.

So would God, beholding it, say, “Well done. Well, such things happen.” If He could, how good it would be. If one blankly goes off to a precipice, one cannot but die. One becomes a corpse.

If one believes in Jesus, what law can one set up?

One can set up the law of love. Suppose there is a bride and bridegroom who, though everyone in the whole village and their parents and brothers opposed them, drove off all opposition at the risk of their lives, made a lifelong pledge, and held a betrothal; if that bride said to the man who is her bridegroom, “I will go and be married to another man for just a little while and come back, so wait for me,” what would you do? Would that word be acceptable, or not? It would absolutely not be acceptable. God met with such a case.

If one did such a thing and then loved God, would God meet with them again? An enemy. A monstrous thing. Where in the world could there be a person worse than that? Search all the world over; there is no person worse.

Would God say to such a person, “Since you did so not knowing the law of love, will it not do if from now on you do not do so”?

Could that be acceptable? It could not be, I say. That is why the problem arises. Killing a single person, He would forgive hundreds and tens of thousands of times, I say.

Since the only reciprocal central being who could be set up before God’s love shattered the law of love, where is one to go to seek it?

It was to seek and set up this that Jesus came with a religion of love. That Christianity today cries out love is precisely for that reason.

Despite this, they say he died from eating the fruit of good and evil?

That is darker than a blind man walking in the dead of night.

If one could go by so believing, how easy it would be! If it were so, how comfortable Teacher Moon of the Unification Church would be!

To Set Up the Dignity of God, Who Had Adam and Eve Taken Away

Then how must one act to set up God’s dignity?

One must seek and set up sons and daughters who can be loved more than at the time of the Fall. To do so, one must in faith also hold a faith higher than that of Adam and Eve at that time. In heart and in character too, one must be beyond Adam and Eve.

When Satan tempts, saying, “Did God tell you to eat of the fruit of good and evil?” and enticing, “If you eat of it, your eyes will be opened,” one must not become a person who falls for it and is overcome. At this time too, one must be better than Adam and Eve and, in character, be a person who can say to Satan, “What are you, you rascal! You are a servant.” And in heart too, one must be a person who can say, “Who is the master of love?”

Then what is it that the Unification Church intends to do today?

It intends to make people go beyond that in faith. Is that good or bad? Is it good? How good is it?

If one could become such a person, however one gave thanks, it would not be enough, I say.

If that is a lie, one may be stoned to death, but if it is a fact, how greatly must one give thanks? One must give thanks until dying and being resurrected. If that were to happen, how greatly would God rejoice?

You must become people who are without shame in greeting the morning of resurrection in which Jesus rejoiced. Even Mary Magdalene, when she met the resurrected Jesus, could not come near, for he said,

“Touch me not before the time has come.”

Unless one is a person who can taste the morning of resurrection, one cannot go before the Father. To do so, you must know that you must feel the agony of death.

In believing in God, one must believe absolutely. Because we are humankind bearing the yoke of a history of failing to believe, whether it turns out to be gruel or rice, we must believe. Only by so believing does one go to heaven.

Is believing in Jesus just carrying a Bible and going to church?

Even while crossing over Golgotha bearing the cross on one’s back, one must believe, “I will be resurrected!” Believe more actively than anyone, I say.

Of old, Satan crossed straight over the boundary line and spoke to Adam and Eve. But today’s believer must become a person equipped with authority and character, before whom Satan is afraid to come. One must become such a person that the archangel is afraid to come before him.

Would a person who has prayed much be within Satan’s sphere?

One must become a person of such content of devotion that Satan cannot appear before him.

From where must the heart set out?

Among you here, there will be some unmarried young men and women. Who do you think is the central figure of the heart? You will think that once married, it is the husband, and for the husband it is the wife, but it is not so. The root of the heart, the central figure of the heart, is God.

That is why humankind must live a life in the womb. What performs the role of grafting one into that womb life is religion. That is why true religion teaches life in the womb. Will the Unification Church too live the life in the womb? Do you desire it, or do you not desire it?

Then how must one do it?

In character, one must become a person who can surpass the standard of Adam and Eve. In heart, it is the same. When one stands in a position of betraying God, being cast out, and bringing an unjust result upon God, how greatly must God grieve?

Even the sin of having inflicted a wound until now cannot be forgiven, so how could one go on repeating a course that inflicts misery again? You must have the heart that says, “Even if I die, I cannot go that road.” Only by holding such a standard of heart can one be united with God and stand on God’s side.

Then what kind of one is God?

Does He seem like a God seated on some throne receiving glory? It is not so, I say. What has God done until now, facing fallen humankind? He wails every day to save this humankind. It is God’s figure to lead humankind from such a position. God is such a miserable one. To save humankind fallen into misery, God awakens sleeping humankind, saying, “Come! Come!”

Yet it is not set up so that one can go merely by that. Here one must fulfill a portion of responsibility, and since He is in a position where He cannot do this in one’s stead, how hard it must have been to work!

God Has Carried Out the Providence Holding On to the World’s Castoffs

When we examine the people who knock at the door of religion today and set out pursuing the true road, there are many castoffs of the world.

Even the Unification believers, though they sit there so demurely, are all people bruised by the world. They are a band that has collapsed and been struck down in this age and this world.

At home nothing feels right, at school nothing feels right, watching the amusements they do not please the mind, and looking at society it is so, and looking at the world it is so; yet one cannot sweep it all away, and so one writhes. Rather than live seeing such things, one thinks it looks more fitting to depart cleanly in the days of one’s youth, saying, “I am off.”

Since one must even bow low before the most worthless fellow, is it not appalling? Especially simple young ladies are apt to do such things. That is called being clever. But that does not mean I am telling you to do so. If you do, you go to hell. The one standing here too has felt much of such things.

One must have gone through such cases too. But that is not the issue. Whether, after doing so, the road of life ahead runs onto a reef or a plain of peace unfolds—that is the issue.

When one looks into the minds of you who have come into the Unification Church, they are all bruised and pierced with holes, branded with the mark of a loser on the road of life. Not just one or two—messily riddled with gaping holes, I say. Beholding this, how miserable God is!

Whom did God center on until now when He carried out the Providence to save the human beings of this earth? He carried out the providence of salvation centered on rubbish-like human beings. How appalling it is! The fellows who claimed to be fine all fled, and only the utterly homely, the wound-covered, the maimed, the crooked-armed, the squint-eyed, and the harelipped—not beauties of all sides but cripples of all sides—remained, and He carried out the Providence centered on them. He gathered such human beings and carried out the Providence.

Not knowing even such a fact, you will come into the Unification Church and say, “Ah, I have been working for the sake of the purpose, so why does no one recognize me?” But look once into your history, whether you could say such a thing.

When you ought to have your heart pounding, worried lest something on your conscience get you thrown out, if instead there is someone who tries to throw others out, that is the problem.

A place that gathers rubbish and regenerates and repairs it is called a regeneration yard. Church means a regeneration yard that can repair human beings anew. Then what kind of church is the Unification Church? Since it is unification, it is a church that regenerates everything. It is a place that regenerates everything.

To restore, centered on what must one do?

Love alone will not do. Because it was because of love that the Fall occurred, to restore it must be greater than the love before the Fall. That is the love after Restoration.

Then can I cause that love to be born?

Can a human being cause it to be born of himself? He cannot. Then who does it? The Parent. God causes it to be born. For that, you must be grafted in here. Root and stalk, everything different, must be grafted onto the branch of God. God is doing such work. You must know how miserable a course God walked to make such a grafting possible.

When we consider such things, did God live laughing or live beating His breast and wailing? When you shed tears embracing your child who has died, you must give thanks, saying, “Father, when Thou didst meet with such a thing, how great was Thy agony? I thank Thee for letting me know that agony. I know that Thou didst let me meet with such a thing to save me.”

Considering that you are one who lost the Father, you must know how to feel that all the work the Father has done passing through the historic course is not another’s affair but my own. You must think of everything that happened over the six thousand years of history as your affair, not another’s.

Your being saved means that the whole six-thousand-year course of history is victorious. Your coming to be victorious means greeting an age in which all the historic things piled up over six thousand years can be resurrected. If that were to happen, how greatly would God rejoice?

The Meaning of God’s Telling Us to Deny Everything and Come to Him

Though God was a miserable God even when Adam and Eve fell, when He carried out the Providence to seek Adam and Eve again, He was a more miserable God.

God, expelled and betrayed by the child He went to seek; God, who came to be in the state of gazing over the wall at the figure of that child embracing the enemy, becoming one with the enemy, and living, clinging to it for dear life—what must the state of that God have been?

Then what would Satan have said, beholding this?

Mocking, “Why has God become like that?” and, “Your son has become like this.” He is here with me like this.” The very environment in which the human being lives is material by which Satan can mock God. Had he lived well and devotedly with God, a true inner affection would have dwelt there; but because he became one with Satan, he became material by which he could be treated like Satan before God. That is why God said one cannot come to Him without cutting off everything and settling accounts. One cannot return to Him without loving Him more than anyone.

Seen from this viewpoint, have we ever writhed with the resolve to fulfill the way of filial piety and loyalty before God today? Until now we have just lived habitually.

Our inner heart, steeped in the stage of daily life, has become material by which Satan can accuse us before God. Therefore, God came to seek the human being to greet him with joy, but coming to bear the cross once again, He came to embrace sorrow in His breast and shed tears.

When we consider that God, who was sorrowful because the human ancestors fell six thousand years ago, is, because of meeting me, shedding tears once again, we must know how miserable a God is. That is why God comes bearing the cross of heart—the cross of heart.

In Adam’s family, setting aside the fallen Adam and Eve, how greatly must God have striven to restore Adam’s family through Abel, centered on Cain and Abel?

How greatly must He have longed for these to hold a devoted heart and have a bond by which they could be loyal before God? Did He hope for it a day or two? He hoped for it for decades.

In such a process, how anxious must the Father’s mind have been, intending to restore by appointing a certain day?

Yet when this was shattered because of Cain, what must the Father’s mind have been? Sixteen hundred years thereafter, coming to the time of Noah, when He made Noah suffer for one hundred twenty years to gather it up again, how the Father’s mind must have ached! And how greatly must He have longed for the one hundred twenty years to pass!

Though the one hundred twenty years were tedious for Noah too, how tedious they must have been for God, who knew the time and waited! Noah could believe in God, and when he followed the command, there was God, one object who would console him. But God had no object who could console Him.

God beheld Noah, of whom He could not know at what moment he might forsake God and again leave many marks upon God’s breast. For Noah it was one hundred twenty years, but to God’s mind, beholding this, one day must have felt like a thousand years.

When, upon the foundation of labor thus achieved through a thousand hardships and myriad tribulations, that which sought to establish God’s purpose all collapsed because Ham made a mistake, Satan must have rejoiced, “Aha, good!” but God had to turn away, forgetting the whole environment, so how appalling His heart must have been!

Even letting that be, four hundred years later, to gather Ham’s mistake, when He assailed the family of Zerah, whom Satan loved most, to draw Abraham out from among the Gentiles, how greatly must God have labored! And if, when He drove him out, telling him to leave Ur of the Chaldees where he lived, Abraham had not complied, God would have had to leave even that place. You must clearly know that there was such an appalling account.

When God, who knew well that if Abraham did not move at His command all the labor of history would come to nothing, went to seek him, moving step by step, what must His mind have been then?

Recalling the han of history in which the successive forefathers from Adam’s time had until then betrayed Him, how greatly, in His mind, must God have longed for Abraham not to betray, as He went to seek a day on which He could tread over and rise above that resentment?

Here, if Abraham knew God’s mind and attended to Him, it was fortunate, but how anxious must He have been, with the mind of “what if he does not”?

Though He had promised, “Thy descendants shall multiply as the stars of heaven and as the sand upon the seashore,” when He sought to reach a verdict through an offering prepared by one approaching Him with great aspiration and hope, how anxious the Father’s mind must have been—consider it once, all of you.

Consider God’s Anxiety and Heartache on the Course of Restoration

Abraham was in a position where he had to make every devotion and think a thousand and ten thousand times.

Despite this, he split the cow and the sheep but did not split the dove, so Satan invaded here; and behold, all that He had desired for two thousand years, and instantly, how aggrieved the Father’s heart must have been!

And to seek and set up these things again, what must the Father’s heart have been, having no choice but to command that Isaac, Abraham’s late-born son, be offered as a sacrifice?

Even if Abraham had a mind to obey this command ten times over, what would have happened if Isaac had opposed his parent, saying, “What kind of instruction of God is this?

This old man has gone mad with age.” Knowing that it would not do for Abraham the parent to oppose, nor for Isaac the child to oppose, how anxious must God’s mind have been?

When God said to Abraham, “Offer Isaac as a sacrifice,” with how heartbreaking a mind must He have given that command! He must have thought it over a thousand and ten thousand times. God knew that if the command were not accepted, han would settle into the two-thousand-year history. That is why you must know the fact that in that voice calling, “Abraham!”

God’s deep account was contained. When Abraham went to offer the sacrifice, Satan stood at a crossroads—whether his descendants would be defeated on the thousand-year course of history or whether the history until then would be prolonged again—and so Satan made every effort to shatter it. You must know how heartrending God’s voice was as He set Abraham forth and charged him on such a battlefield of decisive combat.

Also at such a time, how sorrowful must God have been, beholding Abraham walk the three-day course toward Mount Moriah with his son! How appalling must the mind of God have been, who knew well that, depending on whether it was done well or ill in such an environment, the history of thousands and tens of thousands of years hung in the balance!

At this time, had the ignorant Isaac resisted his father, God could not have received it as an offering. If I were to offer you as a sacrifice, would you stay still?

Because Isaac, even in that place where his father was about to stab him with a knife, obeyed his father like a lamb, without any complaint, the road by which Satan could accuse was cut off.

Adam betrayed God’s Word for the sake of individual glory, individual happiness and pleasure, and individual desire, and fell into the road of death. But Satan cannot accuse the devotion of Isaac and Abraham, who offered the sacrifice without a single word of complaint or discontent even in the place where he had to give his life. Here at last the history of Abraham, the ancestor of faith, began. Until reaching such a decisive moment, how sorrowful God must have been!

A new morning of victory that could be boasted of before humankind for thousands and tens of thousands of ages came, and a departure of hope was shown, in which the mind of sorrow could pass and the mind of joy could sprout. In other words, because sorrow passed and a day of joy stronger than that sorrow was greeted, from this time the history of the founding of Israel began.

The world of darkness that began through Adam’s fall set out, through Abraham’s obedience to God’s command, as a world that could be greeted with joy. You must know the fact that only then could Abraham, with the name of ancestor of faith, make a new departure of history upon this earth.

Yet because there remained the trace of Satan’s accusation, a fight had to be waged once again centered on Jacob and Esau. When Jacob walked the twenty-one-year course in Laban’s family, what would have happened if he had seized Laban by the collar and fought? He must not have done so. Though he was reviled to the utmost, treated with contempt, despised, and had everything taken from him, he longed for the day when his father’s blessing would be realized, and because his hope for that blessing was greater than anything in the world, he could overcome all difficulties.

Jacob’s Tenacity

What did he feel deeply within, amid all this?

It was that there is no one in the world to trust. His uncle could not be trusted, his relatives could not be trusted, and no one at all could be trusted.

So, cutting off all bonds, the more he entered that environment of opposition, the more he thought he would embrace God entirely as his own.

The period in which he thus attended God as his possession, as the master of his heart, in place of the parents of his hometown, in place of the king of his homeland, upon the foundation of his heart, is the twenty-one-year period.

To Jacob, who deeply knew that inner circumstance, external wealth was not the issue. Because he knew that even if external wealth was shattered, God’s internal wealth would be piled up in him, he was driven and rejected for twenty-one years.

Yet his mind of loving his hometown and honoring the fact that he was of the blessed bloodline of Abraham did not change. Because even Satan, scattered on all sides, recognized that he loved more than anyone the value of himself as one who had inherited the blessed bloodline of Abraham, Satan could not but hand the flag of blessing over to Jacob, and no one could accuse Jacob. You must know this.

When such a Jacob was returning home, how appalling must God have been, who had to send an angel to Jacob to reach a final decision and drive Jacob into such a situation! This is because, since the human ancestors’ first fall broke out through the archangel Lucifer, that is, centered on the spiritual world, when resolving this too, one cannot win the substantial fight without first settling the spiritual side; so He sent the angel and had him fight with Jacob.

Here Jacob fought with all his might, even as his bones were being twisted. With the thought, “My twenty-one years of labor are decided by this fight! Whether I win or lose in this one night’s fight tonight decides the destiny of my life and decides the foundation of Israel’s blessing!” he wrestled at the risk of his life. Do you think the angel came and proposed to wrestle in jest?

When the angel came, Jacob knew he had come as God’s envoy. So when he asked whether he had come with the mission to ruin him or with the mission to give blessing, and the answer was that he had come to give blessing, Jacob said, “If you are to give blessing, then give it; why can you not?” —and the reply was that, because a portion of responsibility remained, it could not simply be given. That is, unless Jacob wrestled and won, blessing could not be given. In other words, unless he fought at the risk of his life, it could not be given.

When such a condition was set, Jacob resolved, “All right, good. Even if my fingers come off and my arm comes off, I will by no means lose,” and, with the mind that though struck by a sword he would not let go, though his neck were cut off he would not fall away, he wrestled. How long do you think he did it? He did it all night long. He did it with the mind that he would not let go until the other died.

There, God attended, and Satan too attended. And in that arena of reaching a final decision, how anxious Jacob must have been! Though the angel struck his hip socket and broke his leg, Jacob did not let go. It was that though you die and I die and both die, I cannot let go. How many hours do you think he did it?

Ten minutes? One hour? Two hours? He did it for more than seven hours. Even so, Jacob would absolutely not yield. Amid this, how appalling must God’s mind have been, beholding Jacob! God wished to tell him, “The angel is now fighting, representing Satan, so do not submit,” but He could not even do that, so consider with what an anxious mind He filled that time.

When time passed and it came to reaching the final decision, since Jacob would not let go, however the angel shook him off, there both God recognized it and Satan recognized it.

Only when Jacob stood in such a position did the angel recognize it, and only then did he come to have the name Israel.

When Jacob was victorious before the angel and came to receive the name Israel, what happened in the heavenly world?

They released their tense minds and shouted for joy. In the voice that, breathing out the deep sigh of sorrow piled up within, called “Father!” the account piled up over two thousand years was not the issue.

You must know that because the bond of heart by which Jacob, shedding tears for God for twenty years, could embrace God’s neck could surpass the bond at the time when Adam and Eve fell, he could receive the title of Israel.

How great must the hand-piercing God have been until then! We are human beings bearing a sin that, however repeatedly we shed tears, cannot console that mind. Because we bear such a historic debt, even if we offer ten million offerings, it cannot be repaid. Even in the present, how many are the moments in which we betray God?

If We Feel That the One Bearing the Burden of Sorrow Is My Father

When we behold such things, how great must be God’s burden, who must save all this reality and restore the world?

When we consider this, you, though the frail body of a woman, though a weak invalid, must writhe and step forth resolved to take responsibility for at least a part of that burden.

Unless a movement arises upon this earth by which, even if one is wounded, one drags that body and takes responsibility for that place from behind, you must clearly know the fact that a foundation of an earthly paradise on which we can console God, who comes bearing the han of history, cannot be prepared.

Who is the one who thus carries out the Providence bearing the burden of sorrow and bearing the cross of heart?

He is neither some grandfather of old nor a stepfather. He is the Father who, for hundreds of millions of ages, was to enjoy glory forever and ever, to be loved, and, in happiness, to share joys and sorrows with His children forever and ever. Unification believers intend to know that such a Father is in such a miserable place.

You must know that it is the band of unification that has gathered with the resolve to become figures who, bearing such a mission, step forth before God, who comes bearing the han of history, embrace that God, and writhe, saying, “Father, I now know; Father, I presently have come; Father, I presently will follow; Father, command me.”

For the two thousand years from the time when, passing through Abraham and Isaac, Jacob prepared the foundation of victory called Israel, until Jesus came, how greatly was the Israelite people humiliated?

How greatly were they driven and pursued?

God could not cast away such an Israelite people. Because God, viewed through the lens of the bond of history, could not forget the one time when they consoled Him even in a sorrowful process, He gathered them up again and again whenever the Israelite people did wrong and offered prayers of blessing dozens, hundreds, thousands of times. Yet because of the sin of killing Jesus, they became a people wandering as exiles for two thousand years.

Today, two thousand years later, God did not leave them as a lost people until the Israelite people could equip a new sphere of Israel. In God’s mind, beholding the Israelite people wandering as exiles for two thousand years, the han of a four-thousand-year history was entangled.

Yet, crying out and wandering as exiles, amid being maltreated and massacred, driven and trampled before countless peoples and humankind, they served God.

Because those people existed, the providence of Restoration could be pioneered; and because it was pitiful that they were still saying that God had not yet sent the Messiah He had promised to send, still believing and awaiting the old promise, God gathered that people up again and has protected them among their enemies, the Arab sphere. How great must God’s labor have been in doing so!

You must know the fact that He has been consumed with anxiety to protect a band like sheep among a pack of wolves.

That Israel fought the Arab sphere and won victory in six days was because of God’s power and God’s protection. Without God’s power and protection, it would have been absolutely impossible. Friend and foe alike acknowledge that this is a miracle of the twentieth century. Then how could this miracle have come about? It was because God worked behind the scenes. Because the mind of the Israelite people seeking God and God’s mind, which wished to form a relationship with such an Israel, formed a bond, a foundation of victory that could strike down the surrounding enemies, could be prepared. That is why Israel could raise the flag of liberation high before the world.

That the Israelite people, who inflicted sorrow before God two thousand years ago, again built a nation and came forth raising a new flag revering God, becomes good material by which one can bear witness to the fact that God protected them. It also becomes good material by which one can bear witness that God is a God who does not cast away a people and their later generations.

The Right Attitude Unification Believers Must Take

Today you have come into the Unification Church. Then what is the Unification Church? It did not come forth merely to console God, who came bearing sorrow for the two thousand years from Adam to Abraham.

Though a worldwide foundation was prepared by which, sending the Messiah before the Israelite people who wandered as exiles before various peoples for four thousand years, the resolution of han (해원성사) could be accomplished, the Israelite people lost this.

Therefore, it is the members of the Unification Church who were called and gathered in a position of being able to take responsibility for the whole of history, to gather this two-thousand-year history once again.

When we bow low and pray before the Father today, we must call the Father with a heart choked in the throat and stinging in the breast. The Father, whom we lost six thousand years ago; the Father, who has borne countless twists and turns and han because of me; the Father, who endured while being toyed with amid countless wounds, countless injustices, and countless enemies; when we consider that He is a Father entangled in countless han, countless wounds, and countless miserable accounts, we must be able to become a burning ball of fire, if need be, to melt the Father’s breast.

Yet, when we consider that we are children of lamentation and curse who cannot even do that, with what shall we console that Father?

We are ones whose sense of injustice should not be relieved even if we writhe and wail all night. Despite this, where have all such minds gone?

You must know that God, passing through the vast history, went through countless unjust processes to prepare an environment in which the flag of unification could be planted. You must know that there were innumerable days of which He could speak to no one.

If there is a person slighted at some gate, one must know that there is a God who met with circumstances dozens of times more wretched. When our people were placed in a wretched environment, we must know the fact that the Israelite people passed through an even more miserable national environment. And one must know that God, even from a place more heartbreaking and miserable than that, came to seek people holding a hopeful mind.

We must know the fact that such circumstances of God were, through the bloodline, inherited by us ourselves today.

Because we ourselves are inheriting such a foundation of historic han, we cannot but feel a sense of sin after eating and cannot but shed tears of repentance after sleeping. To do so is the philosophy of life and attitude of life of Unification believers.

We are in a situation where we cannot be joyful even eating food, cannot rejoice even seeing clothing, and cannot face the surrounding environment with a smile. We must know the fact that God was, to such a degree, miserably starved, trampled, ravaged, and toyed with.

We must welcome such a God. We must attend such a Father. We must pray to be made children who can offer full loyalty before God to relieve the Father’s breast, knotted with han for six thousand years. We must plead before God to be made ones who can inherit the Father’s true love, kept for six thousand years.

We failed to overcome the difficult environment. We failed to endure enough. We failed even to overcome the seven-year course. And even so, we are a band with cursed lips, busy prattling this and that about God.

We must become ones who can, even now, curse the fact that we became such selves who know no shame. Becoming such a band, writhing and wailing, we must devise a method by which we can remove such traces of God’s han.

You must know that it is the road Unification believers must go to writhe, saying that if there is such a method, we will do it though we die a thousand and ten thousand times. You must become one son, one daughter who can be so, and one family that can be so.

Who must become the one son who can be so, and who must become the one daughter who can be so?

Unless you become such a one, you cannot enter God’s Kingdom. Only when there is a family formed of such sons and daughters, a tribe formed of such families, a nation formed of such tribes, and a world formed of such nations can one go to God’s Kingdom.

Today you must bear in God’s stead the cross of heart that God must bear. Even if your body is torn and you become a beggar and food for eagles, you must walk that road. Yet God, though in a position where He could not even do so, forgetting His own dignity and bearing, has been writhing until now to save humankind.

True Filial Piety

You must become people who can, standing on Heaven’s side, call the Father; standing on Heaven’s side, speak for the Father’s position; and standing on Heaven’s side, in the Father’s stead, confront the enemy.

You must know how greatly the Father seeks such a person. He is a Father who, if there is such a son, wishes to embrace him until his bones are crushed, and, if there is such a daughter, wishes to stay up all night pouring out His account.

Who on earth must relieve the han knotted in the breast of such a Father?

Precisely you. Thereby you must enable God to proclaim to the whole world, “Because of your family I saw a day of happiness, because of your family I relieved my han, and because of you I greeted a day of desire.” Only when such a day is greeted, you must clearly know, does the Kingdom of Heaven open its gate upon this earth.

Then what is it that we must consider today? It is that we must not face God standing on our side. Today God seeks from us a person who says, “Even at the cost of sacrificing me, forgive the sin of the people.” He seeks a person who pleads, “Even at the cost of sacrificing me, forgive the sin of the world.”

If there is a person who, though sacrificing himself and feeling agony beyond that, pleads for the sin of the people and the sin of the world to be forgiven, that person becomes one who can inherit the whole world.

Until now, people have all worked centered on themselves. Me, me, me. How long will centering on me last? Because one is centered on me, the place where one could stand all crumbled away. There were all sorts of things.

The Teacher has many days of praying alone. You do not know the circumstances in which God notified me of God’s circumstances and, taking hold of the Teacher, pleaded. That is a circumstance only I can know.

God, who could not but plead so earnestly, so anxiously, so piercingly to the bone; how did the God who is the subject of power, who created this vast and boundless universe, come to be a God who comes to a slight single person and pleads His own wretchedness?

You must know that He is a God who, whatever becomes of His dignity, labors to make sons and daughters of God even by pleading until His hands become feet.

God longs for the appearance of a son centered on God, a son who can be trusted for thousands and tens of thousands of years, a son lacking nothing to be praised for hundreds of millions of years. He is a Father who, with an anxious heart, longs for Adam to come back to life.

Then why did He fail to become a Father who could, from a place of freedom, sing of happiness for thousands and tens of thousands of ages centered on beloved sons and daughters and praise a sovereignty centered on love forever and ever, and why did He become such a grieving Father?

A person who can attend such a Father must arise somewhere on the globe. If you cannot do so, you must at least pray for an environment to be made in which it can be so. You must do it even if you are reviled, driven, and put in chains.

Where is there a person who can protect God’s sons and daughters for God’s sake alone?

Where is there a person who can protect that family for God’s sake, and where is there a person who, standing on God’s side, can protect the tribe and the people?

Where are the sons and daughters who, in the Father’s stead, can run through the world holding the authority of a son? Until now there has not come forth even one person who could be so before the Father, longed for from hundreds of millions of ages ago.

Yet we must become such sons and daughters and, even if we become an offering a thousand and ten thousand times throughout our lives, become fertilizer and a foundation stone for that foundation, and make our every devotion. Yet, despite this, when God grieves because of it, and we are dawdling about elsewhere, it is a cursed thing.

Let Us Bear the Cross of Heart in God’s Stead

Today the Teacher wailed as he prayed before the Father. It is because, though I came to know that the Father is a Father who has borne a han-filled history amid the flowing years, I failed to console such a Father, failed to set up His authority before the nation, and failed to bring the nation and the world into submission and offer them before the Father, thus making a han-filled place. I wished to fulfill the Father’s purpose quickly and boast of you before all people as the Father’s beloved sons and daughters, but because it was delayed, countless people grew worn out and fell away.

When the Teacher tours the provinces, he thinks of the people he met and spoke with of old while witnessing at every alley or by the roadside. Yet, seeing that though that ground remains, the person has vanished and does not remain, I come to think of the account of the Father, who has walked the road of Restoration for thousands of years.

Will you become a person who, like one badgering the Father to repay a debt, demands wages and is a person who steals property behind the Father’s back?

You must know the shame of yourselves who failed to fulfill your responsibility until now and, making yourselves a wedge in the achieving of God’s ideal and purpose, must writhe for the sake of final victory.

You must pray, when you open your eyes, to be made people of Heaven’s side. You must writhe, standing on Heaven’s side and being reviled, standing on Heaven’s side and being driven, standing on Heaven’s side and suffering injustice, standing on Heaven’s side and resolving to leave behind a tribal bond.

Until now, the road the Unification Church has walked was miserable. It came forth with an account beyond words and an account it could not restrain.

Therefore, you will be able to know what Heaven’s side’s circumstances, Heaven’s side’s indignation, and Heaven’s side’s inner heart are like.

A person is not born upon this earth to live a hundred or a thousand years; since it is a life that must sparkle like the dew and then depart, one must not leave behind a tower of God’s curse.

When you die, you must leave behind comrades or sons and daughters who can come before that grave, embracing flowers, and writhe, saying, “Father! Your beloved son is departing.

Who will love this earth that your son loved? Who will save these people? Who will save this altar?” Otherwise, one cannot go before God. I ask that you not forget that we are humankind who, under whatever circumstances, must shed tears and console the Father.

If all become one, stand on Heaven’s side, resolve to die and live, and writhe with the resolve to attend upon this earth parents in whom God can rejoice and to prepare before the Father a foundation on which He can keep the Sabbath in rest for thousands and tens of thousands of years, and then die—would that become a han?

You must know the fact that Jesus, even before the road toward the cross, resolved to set up his fidelity.

Why the spear mark in the breast of such a Jesus, and why the crown of thorns on his head?

Yet because Jesus knew that the wound dealt to God’s mind was greater than the painful wound dealt to his body, he sought, by shedding blood, to console the Father’s inner heart and, with a wounded breast, to console the Father’s heart. You must know that it was because he had such a mind that he could be resurrected.

Therefore, we Unification Church members today must go bearing, in God’s stead, the cross of the heart. I hope that you may all become people who take responsibility for Heaven’s side, live on Heaven’s side, and can be resurrected on Heaven’s side, and I ask that you remember this hour.

Prayer

In the han-filled course of history, when was there ever the Father’s Day, when was there ever the day of the Parents, when was there ever the day of the children, when was there ever the day of all things?

When we consider that Thou hast decided these days through the pitifully driven and pursued band of unification, we truly give thanks before the Father, who has worked.

Father, now the First Seven-Year Course has ended, and the point of setting out toward the Second Seven-Year Course is drawing near before us. A confused world is at this very moment drawing near before us. We behold those who opposed us in the world all breaking away.

Father, we earnestly hope and desire that Thou wilt permit a day of liberation and a Kingdom of Heaven of freedom to be beheld soon and quickly by Thy sons and daughters who, casting away all their dignity and face, embrace Thy inner heart and writhe.

Father! Since Thy children here today know how pitiful the circumstances of Heaven’s side are, grant, we earnestly hope and desire, that they may become transforming sons and transforming daughters.

We give thanks that Thou hast been present with us at this hour today. Embrace in the Father’s bosom Thy children scattered throughout South Korea. We earnestly hope that the Father will look upon us with pity and not forsake us. Remember Thy children scattered throughout the world, and bless them so that wherever they go there may be only a day of victory.

Father, we know that this is a time when Thy children who remain too cannot but go forth. Grant that even amid a confused world they may become Thy children who can offer full loyalty for the Father’s sake and make every devotion for the Father’s sake.

Grant that, repenting of what was insufficient in the past, they may fulfill the way of loyalty and filial piety before the Father, and grant, beloved Father, we earnestly hope and desire, that by the devotion we offer, all people may receive blessing.

Believing that a day of victory will come to us, we have offered up all these words in the holy name of the True Parents. Amen.