Authors
1. We have to fix our gaze on heaven. Had human beings not fallen, had everything been right in the fundamentals, we could have lived with our gaze trained below ninety degrees.
Nonetheless, due to the Fall, we have to fix our eyes on heaven. It is not suitable for people of faith to look below ninety degrees; we need to gaze at heaven. Therefore, those who stare at the ground while walking are bound to decline.
Similarly, those who move with a self-centered mind will decline. We need to correct everything, beginning with our way of life, our body, our mind, and our heart. Then where should we set our heart? It is not to be set inside the course of history.
Instead, we should place it in the heart of Adam and Eve before the Fall. Through that heart and along with Heaven, we have to digest all the feelings we experience in our current life and in the trends of our time and resolve everything together with Heaven. Sons and daughters who can do this must emerge on this earth.
(10-209, 1960.10.02)
2. Love is essential for the unity of mind and body. When parents come to love their children, they willingly endure hunger, hard work, ragged garments, and going places they don't want to go.
While walking the path of such love, the mind and the body take the same unifying direction. It is the only way to unity, the only means to unity. If you take this as the standard for daily life and your entire life, you will not perish. This I guarantee. (48-191, 1971.09.12)
A life of witnessing
3. God trudged through the course of restoration and found the individual and the family, but this individual and family shunned Him. And yet, God continues to walk toward the salvation of the world. In the same way, each of us also has to advance.
We cannot avoid this path, even though it is perilous, filled with life-threatening dangers and wandering paths of sorrow. We must walk the same path as our Father, and seek to share in His adversity and sorrow. This is the concept of unity.
When we truly come to realize the Will of our Father, regardless of what hardships we face, we can overcome them. Furthermore, however challenging the circumstances may become, God is our Father and His difficulties are our difficulties. Therefore, we inherit God's tradition and engraft it into His heart and history by enduring pain when the Father is in pain. This is logical.
Unification Church members have to go this way without rest. Just as Jesus prayed and bore witness, even when facing death on Calvary, we Unification Church members have to bear witness in this world shrouded in the darkness of death. Even in hell, we have to witness the most miserable of people.
(015-340, 1965.12.07)
4. A life of faith is not a side job. It is a primary vocation. When you meet someone, who knows what will happen to this person afterward if you do not share the Word with him or her? Do not view this person as simply another person; view this person as your parent, your brother, or your sister.
If you are late, try to create a condition to meet again. Excuse yourself for having been late to a meeting and having been unable to share the Word, and set up another appointment. (269-072, 1995.04.07)
5. Witnessing is not easy because it is the activity that enables God to engraft a new life in a person. This is why you need to offer devotional conditions, even if it is for but one person.
For how many people have you risked your life and offered conditions?
Do not boast that there are many people offering conditions for you. Those who offer devotional conditions for others will be blessed, but the recipients of others' offerings will not be blessed.
Hence, we need to be the ones who offer conditions. If the other person does not listen to us despite the conditions we have offered, do not feel lonely or sad. Just accept that the heavenly principle works this way. If you have this disposition, you will never feel lonely or sad. (042-174, 1971.03.04)
6. Witnessing is like giving birth. Based on my experience, it takes three times more effort to raise someone into a person as trusting as a child than it does to give birth. We must take responsibility for those people even after witnessing them.
And for someone who has gone astray to return, they have to either feel astonishingly and profoundly tearful, vexed and depressed with themselves or an unprecedented explosion of the heart. (66-215, 1973.05.07)
7. For whom are we witnessing? Yes, we are witnessing for God and humanity, but we are witnessing for our children and ourselves. Indeed, we are witnessing for ourselves.
Therefore, we cannot hold grudges against others; rather, the target of our resentment should be ourselves. We need to witness ourselves instead of ordering other people to do so. Only then will there emerge that place in which we wish to live. (66-288, 1973.05.16)
8. We have to witness hungry people seeking food. Just as we recognize the value of food when we are hungry, witness with the same intensity to receive support from the spirit world.
This is how an object partner will emerge. Witnessing has to become our main job because the most important thing is to lead a life of faith. (142-292, 1986.03.13)
9. Adam was unable to reach perfection and marry. Therefore, True Parents must be realized in the fallen world. They have to form a family that will expand to the entire world, give birth to families, and form tribes on God's side that together will reclaim what was lost to Satan at the levels of the individual, family, tribe, people, nation, and world. Therein is the importance of witnessing.
What is witnessing?
Human beings are born of the fallen lineage of Satan's world. Witnessing is the process of engraving God's lineage onto every tree born of the false lineage, completely transforming the false olive trees. Witnessing constitutes this. Witnessing is also the fortune we take to heaven. (484-256, 2005.01.24)
10. Once we receive God's love, we have to share it. Therefore, it is impossible not to witness. We need people as our foundation, our platform on which to attend God above.
Hence, we witness. We require spiritual children who can take responsibility even for our sins. Accordingly, witnessing is not for the church, it is for one's self. If we share the Word with God's heart, we will succeed. (18-044, 1967.05.17)
11. If we travel around to witness, God will accompany us. What word do you get when you invert the Korean word for witnessing (전도)? You get the word challenge (도전).
If you have enemies, as long as you are with God, He will defeat them and everything will be fine. Witnessing is a challenge; those who refrain from the challenge of witnessing become lethargic.
Your father doesn't like that, your grandfather doesn't like that, your father and grandfather's descendants do not like that, and even your wife and children do not like that. Therefore, the father needs to challenge himself as a father, just as the mother needs to challenge herself as a mother. (555-073, 2007.02.08)
12. What happens when you sow the seed of love and this seed grows? When you ascend to the spirit world, all the people that you witnessed will not be someone else's descendants.
They will be akin to a new branch growing on your branch and all will be united. A tree that has grown new shoots for several thousand years will grow new shoots this year and new shoots next year.
Furthermore, you cannot be severed from this tree that is tens of thousands of years old or from its nutrients. Once you are connected to the tree, you will grow. (548-181, 2006.12.10)
13. If you feel restless with a yearning for God and go out into the street and meet someone, you will be able to establish a bond and naturally witness that person. When you are alone and have no one to whom to relate, God will come personally and dwell with you.
If you clasp your hands, the light will appear. You will feel it wrapping you in a protective embrace. When this happens, the question is whether you will profoundly experience this heart with a peaceful face, with your countenance manifesting peace, filled with happiness.
You should feel the exultation that transports your mind and body and fills your every cell. You should feel the complete embrace of Heaven's infinite love. Furthermore, when you dance and sing popular songs and feel the universe's attention, you need to feel your heart cry out to God, “Father!”
This is the sound and the realm of heart we need. Every person wants to experience this. If you have these experiences, your witnessing will be successful. (050-324, 1971.11.08)
14. When your heart moves you to witness and tells you, “Let's go witness,” there are those who are scared or afraid for their lives. How should it be for us? Should we witness because we welcome it because we go with the flow because we know we'll die if we evade it, or because we are afraid?
Which one is it? All of these motives fail the test. How then should we witness? The mind and body stand in the position of subject and object partners, and you start with joy when the environmental conditions conform to your partner's intent. Your mind was meant to begin with happiness, not sadness.
The experience of joy, rather than of sadness, was to come first. What was the Fall?
The elements of sadness took primacy before happiness could blossom. We are people searching for the path of destiny leading to redemption. Therefore, we need to begin with joy and internalize God's Will in a joyful process.
(127-209, 1983.05.08)
The daily life of a blessed family
15. As blessed families, we need to bring our hearts into oneness with God. We have to become one body with God, united with God's Will. Only when we accomplish this can we become a family that goes forward representing the ideal of creation.
No one can determine their value as an individual outside the context of their family. We are the embodiment of God's heart and hope. We are the substance of God's heart, in the position to represent His Will. (12-182, 1963.05.01)
16. Blessed families have to be role models for all humanity and the countless churches in the world. Our families have to complete and indemnify the responsibilities that Joseph's family was unable to fulfill.
Furthermore, we must, as a religious body, overcome and fulfill through indemnity the responsibilities Joseph's tribe, as well as Judaism, could not fulfill. Our responsibility is to resolve and overcome at once on the national level all the failures that transpired on the levels of family and tribe. (29-308, 1970.03.12)
17. What is the blessed family's duty? They must inherit the nation, the world, and eventually the love of God. Blessed families have the authority to inherit the nation and the love of God.
This special authority comes from the Blessing, which bestows on blessed families the power to inherit the coming kingdom of God and His love.
The Unification Church can speak about the world of heart, and the heart of history because it brings the love of God and allows us to connect with God and His kingdom. Thus, the family is the issue. (35-306, 1970.10.30)
18. Blessed families have to be patriotic, and invested in the establishment of the heavenly kingdom. Whether they are asleep or awake, their entire daily life has to move according to Heaven's command. From the viewpoint of the spirit world, blessed families on earth are similar to the heavenly kingdom's emissaries or intelligence agents.
Blessed families live in constricted environments, deprived of freedom while being persecuted by Satan's world. Therefore, to expose all the wrongs Satan's world perpetrates, blessed families have to risk everything, including their livelihood, get active, and expand their abilities. (210-052, 1990.12.01)
19. I place blessed families in the forefront. However, this is of no use if blessed families do not suffer hardships and shed tears for heaven and earth in their daily lives. One who never sheds tears is a false person.
In the Last Days, everything will be revealed. We have to shed tears, but not over what we can eat. We have to shed tears to fulfill our given responsibility. Furthermore, we are engaged in a battle against an enemy.
We are officers entrusted with an executive order to capture the enemy's base. It is ours to spend sleepless nights shedding tears due to this responsibility.
(13-271, 1964.04.12)
20. Receiving the Blessing resurrects you to the level at which Adam and Eve stood before the Fall. What then should you do? You still have to go through the completion stage, and for that, you need to fully understand God's heart.
To perceive His heart, you need to know the internal circumstances of God's tireless endeavors to redeem fallen human beings. Just as God offered His only Son and entrusted him with the responsibility to resurrect all humanity, blessed families are to go forward into Satan's world while offering their children.
Blessed families are to live carrying their children on their backs in the same manner that Mary and Joseph carried Jesus and escaped to Egypt. Furthermore, when they see their beloved children going hungry, the parents have to say, “We are living this way for the sake of the world; surely our loving Father will protect them.”
God will certainly raise their children to a position equivalent to that of the Lord who returns to this world in the flesh. So we remain standing until the end to accomplish our responsibilities. Those who demand, “Serve me, I am from a blessed family,” will be swept away. (14-125, 1964.07.17)
21. Have blessed families based their lives on God and His Will? They have not done so. They have led self-centered lives. We can create the garden of love only when our life's motive, objective,e and purpose are centered on God and His Will.
Then we initiate a give-and-receive relationship with God as our subject partner, attending to Him as our object partner. Within that relationship, God's love will pour down. (27-340, 1970.01.01)
22. What kind of people should you become? As families of Heaven, you have to abide by rules and principles. Blessed families lead hard lives for the sake of their tribe. You cannot sleep when others around you go to sleep.
You cannot eat when others are eating. Blessed families must raise the families within their tribe. You have to stand in the position of parents raising children. When the families you raise are in pain, you should feel even greater pain.
You have to be people who cannot bear the sight of someone in your neighborhood going hungry. You should bring something to that person with the heart, “II should go without food than let you starve. I cannot eat when someone has nothing to eat.” (29-106, 1970.02.25)
23. Blessed families know how to embrace and love their babies, but for what purpose were those babies born? They were born because of God and because of their relationship to God. You share secrets with your precious husband or your precious wife, but you did not design your relationship.
You met along a public path, following a heavenly principle. God intervened to create your meeting. Because He was involved, the more your children are in misery, the more God feels misery.
For this reason, the more that this is the case, the more you should offer conditions, firm up your outlook, and go forward with integrity, following your beliefs and principles, as one in whom God can place His trust.
If you do so, you certainly will overcome all obstacles. This undeniable truth is based on my experience fighting for God throughout my entire life.
(67-293, 1973.07.22)
24. Blessed families, reflect on the hardships I have had to overcome for your sake and raise descendants who can overcome hardships greater than those I have endured. This is the view of the Principle.
The Israelites who followed Moses out of Egypt had to go to a path of tribulation similar to the one Moses followed. Up to the moment Moses set out on his course, he was immersed in Egyptian customs.
Nonetheless, he had to preserve the realm of the chosen people, not surrendering the traditions that he had to uphold as an Israelite. In this way, the life Moses led until becoming their leader was one of affliction greater than that of any among the people of Israel.
Therefore, as they followed Moses, the Israelites should have recognized that Moses' hardships exceeded the difficulties they were facing. With this in mind, the Israelites should have crossed the wilderness and reached the Promised Land of Canaan within three weeks.
This was the problem. If you stand in the position of a child, you have to overcome difficulties greater than those of your parents. A patriot in a nation should endeavor to sacrifice more than does the king. This is the Principle.
(170-300, 1987.12.04)
25. Blessed families of the Unification Church must find their nation. You must recover a nation. Adam and Eve lost the nation.
Therefore, finding the nation became Adam and Eve's inescapable destiny. Since God and True Parents have intervened, finding the nation is inevitable and is our destiny.
We cannot realize it through money or other such means. We can do it only through our blood being shed. Furthermore, we have to stand before the altar of our blood. (459-235, 2004.07.13)
Sun Myung Moon