Our Boast

Former Headquarters Church

Romans 8:36-39

At this hour I will speak on the theme “Our Boast.” We know that upon this earth today there are countless peoples and countless nations.

Even when we look centered on any one person, it will be that person's demand to wish to boast of the people itself. And if there is a sovereign who rules some nation, it will be his desire to become a proud sovereign who can spread the majesty of that nation throughout all directions.

It is so with a nation, but on a large scale it is so even when we consider the world, and on a small scale each of you individuals is so too. With a mind that wishes to boast of oneself, one wishes to move one’s environment and form a bond with the nation and the world. That is human nature.

When we consider this, if we cannot deny that the original mind of the human being is such, that the environment of human life is such, and that the current of human history too flows in such a direction, then from where did the bond of such an account, the motive of such an account, set out?

If God exists and created all things of Heaven and earth, then, because God Himself is in such a position, all the beings bonded through God hold a mind that wishes to exalt themselves, a mind that wishes to display themselves. Therefore, we cannot but conclude that this is because the Creator is such.

The Purpose for Which All Things Were Created

God too wishes to boast of Himself. When we go far back to the age before history and recall that age when the Creator, who yearned over the world of creation, looked upon the created things He had made over six days and rejoiced, it is certain that God too created all things because He had a mind that wished to boast of Himself through all the created things. Whatever created being we consider, such an account is entangled within it.

In this created world that you look upon, or in this nature, created things of every kind and description exist. Through what process were the myriad phenomena that exist created?

They were made through the process of the Creator’s devoted heart. It is certain that however slight a being may be, it was created through God’s loving heart, from a place that held the boasting mind that God desired.

Seen in this light, you must know that all things that exist, from the most minute being on a small scale to the vast universe beyond our reckoning on a large scale, were made as beings of boast that God wished to boast of.

Until now you have lived centered on the created things left upon this earth. That is, whether you liked it or not, it is a fact that you have used and made use of all things. Then, if all the things you use in your daily life were made under the purpose of God’s loving and boasting, the question is whether you knew that and treated them according to their value. Ask your own original mind. How many people can truly say, “Yes, I did”? This is the problem.

When you awake from sleep in the morning and rise and look outside, the bright morning sunlight welcomes you.

Then, what does that sunlight signify?

That is, what is nature demanding of you? The question is whether you treated that light with a mind that praised it as God’s glory and God’s wondrous grace of creation.

If you did not live so, you must know that you become a shameful figure before all things, which were made with such content.

Human Beings Who Were to Become God’s Boast

It is certain that every object, from the small to the great, was made to reveal one aspect of God’s boast. Because God made all things holding such a mind, there had to be a reciprocal being who could so recognize and boast of the created things.

The cause of the creation of the angelic world lies here too, and the cause of the creation of Adam and Eve, the ancestors of humankind, that is, of the human being who is the master of all things, also lies here.

We must know the fact that, when God created Adam and Eve, He created them while envisioning a figure who could, in His stead, boast of and rejoice over all things, which He had made with a mind that wished to boast of them. And on the day when Adam and Eve, whom God intended to set up as the central beings, came to stand as central beings before the whole universe, how greatly would God wish to boast of these Adam and Eve?

To what extent does the boundary line of the object He wished to boast of extend?

Would He boast only through some part or portion of the created things? No. He looked toward a day when He wished to boast, mobilizing the whole of all created things.

The human being was made as such a precious being. God wished that the human being would stand in the place of praising God’s glory and that the human being would seek a day when God, rejoicing, could Himself proclaim before all things, “Praise the great work of creation”; yet despite this, the human being failed to stand in such a place. This was a han.

In the course of history, has there been any one time when this world, or a nation, has stood in such a place, or an individual stood in such a place? There has not.

If the human beings living upon this earth today stand in a place having no relationship whatsoever with the content that God wished to boast of, in a position where God grieves, then we cannot deny that they are in a position that runs counter to and stands opposed to the original standard of God’s creation.

Yet, in living until now, there may be people who think, “Ah, I possess such-and-such things, I hold such-and-such social standing, and before the nation too I am, this much, a patriot,” and consider themselves not lacking in anything to boast of. But centered on whom is that boast made?

First, one must boast centered on God.

Human Beings Who Became Unable to Boast

The human being is a being who was the first to become a boast centered on God.

Taking such a place where he could so boast, he was to step forth equipped with the bearing of a master, saying, “I have equipped myself with the qualification of master of the whole universe in God’s stead.”

That is the original purpose for which the human being was born. Despite this, God did not have a day when He could set the human being in such a place and boast.

In the social life you lead today, from where did that standard of boasting centered only on oneself begin?

This began neither from the nation nor from the world. It began precisely with oneself. Because in this way, one first came to be in a position of boasting centered on oneself, departing from the position of boasting centered on God, you must know that you are a self that cannot conform to the heavenly way.

Are we fallen descendants today in a place where God can boast?

We are not. Then, going back up through history, did Adam and Eve, the ancestors of humankind, stand in such a place?

They, too, did not. Had the ancestors of humankind been set up, according to the whole purpose for which God created, as the fruit-being in which the whole universe is joined, as substance embracing the whole universe in whom God could boast, humankind would not have woven such a miserable history.

Adam and Eve, the ancestors of humankind, through the Fall, appeared before God not in a figure of boast but rather in a figure of sorrow and came to be in a position not to lift their faces and boast but to bow their heads and feel shame. You must know the fact that from there, human history set out.

The ancestors of humankind did not set out from a place equipped with the qualification of the central being of the whole universe, possessing their authority together with God’s boast. That is, we know well that they stood in a place where they could not but bow their heads in shame before God and stood in a position where they could not but hesitate to reveal their figure before all existing things. This is the result of the fall of the ancestors of humankind.

Because the human being came forth with such an origin of history, when we consider the law of the heavenly way, that human being’s boasting absolutely cannot be forgiven.

From one to ten, a hundred, a thousand, ten thousand—none of it can be forgiven. That is why the person who walks the road of the Way (도) is told: do not boast, do not be arrogant, do not put yourself forward.

Let Us Become People in Whom God Can Take Pride

God did not permit fallen human beings to boast. This is because originally God made the human being as a being in whom God could take pride, and so the human being was to keep step with that and boast of his authority. Yet the human being betrayed such a heavenly way, drove God out to a place of sorrow, and sought to boast of his position; and this is the origin of the Fall.

Because such sown seeds of sin must not be reaped as they are, God strikes down the boasting human being. Therefore He says, do not boast. It was our forefathers, who have passed through history until now, and the humankind remaining in the present age, who have been in such a position.

What is it that humankind should hope for?

To put forward and boast of one’s own individual self is not the hope, and to put forward and boast of some house or tribe is not the hope. To set up and boast of some nation is not the hope of that nation’s people, and to boast of the world as a single peaceful kingdom is not the hope of humankind.

Even if we throw away and lose all things of this world, what is the first thing we must do?

It is to seek and restore to God the position of God, from which, in the place He originally desired, He can boast before the whole universe. You must know that this is the hope of hopes of humankind. We must know that attending such a God is the final purpose of fallen human beings.

Can an individual, from such a place, praise God’s glory, and can the family, tribe, people, nation, and world boast of God’s glory?

Unless we greet a day when, from a place where family, tribe, people, nation, and world are united, an individual can boast of God’s glory, and all three billion of humankind throughout the world can boast of that glory, it cannot be said that the original standard by which God made the human being, the standard by which He could boast, has been recovered. That is why God has, until now, been carrying out the providence of salvation for fallen human beings to seek such a day.

The Purpose That God Cannot Achieve Alone

The providence of salvation is the Providence of Restoration.

Then what is the Providence of Restoration?

It refers to recovering once again the standard that existed before that event occurred.

Then how is the Father’s position—in other words, the Creator’s position, in which, before the creation of the world, having made all things in the Garden of Eden, He could look upon them, rejoice, and boast—to be restored?

Based on what standard were all things originally made?

They were made with the human being as the standard. All things too were created to be brought to their conclusion in the human being. God hoped to set up the human being, thus created, as the first departure and, together, as the final boast.

Yet because the ancestors of humankind failed to stand in such a place, human history set out in sorrow, and in that process, shameful and sorrowful facts appeared before God.

You must know the fact that this became the tragedy of human history and the origin of lamentation.

Then how is such an origin of departure that the human being holds to be removed?

This cannot be done by God alone. Through whom did such a departure come about? Because it came about through the human being, to accomplish this work and escape this process, it is not God who must be the center but the human being who must be the center.

God’s purpose cannot be achieved by God alone. Before God created the human being, He had a sphere of hope in which He could create the human being and achieve the purpose centered on the human being, but after the creation, because the human being fell, He cannot but gather it up again through the human being. It cannot be done as God pleases.

Front and back are reversed, and all relationships of higher and lower are turned upside down; and to restore this, it cannot be done by God alone. Here a human being must without fail be interposed.

This enormous problem was brought about by the sin the human being committed. For you to restore this to its original state, you must break through this enormous state of sin. Unless you thereby prepare a foundation of liberation, the world of boast, the humankind of boast, and the created world of boast that God originally desired cannot be realized. We know that, viewed by the principle of creation, this is an inevitable fact.

That is why the problem for a human being who has fallen into such a fallen place is what he must do to go back once again to a place where he can boast centered on the original God.

For this, we must come to know the Father’s mind as He looked upon all things that He loved and wished to boast of and upon all things that He had made. If the Father’s mind as He looked upon those things was joyful, then we must seek that joyful mind.

Otherwise, we cannot restore this authority of boasting that we lost and the whole world of all things that must be built upon it.

Let Us Recover the Original Love and Heart

All things were made as beings of love, as beings of joy. Just as God, looking upon the things He had made, said that they were perfect, you too must awaken the mind that can feel that the created world is perfect when you look upon it. We must come to know the heart of God at the time He made all things.

Therefore, even when you look at a single blade of grass, a lowly thing, you must know that God’s devotion is imbued within it. That is, you must consider that, whether small or great, everything was made because God wished to boast of it, centered on universal value.

Therefore, while pursuing the original value of the human being, you must go seeking your way into the place that stands in God’s stead, that can appraise the value of all things God has made.

To go seeking our way into such a place, we cannot but explore the realm of the mystical. Because the human being has fallen, he does not know it; but if God, as the master, expresses joy to all things, are all things set not to know that joy? No. When God rejoices, all things too are set to be able to rejoice.

Because you are within the fallen sphere, you feel only the stimuli that can be perceived through the physical five senses. Yet God of original nature is the master who made all things, so if He expresses joy toward all things, which are in a reciprocal position, those things are set to know that joy. They are all set to feel and know. Therefore, we must seek such original love, such original heart.

Though the human being’s physical body has fallen, in the human being’s mind-nature there remains a standard related to God, a standard of departure; therefore, we must set up this standard of departure and become a resonating body of God.

Thereby, through a resonating heart, we must recover the standard by which God made all things and rejoiced. This is the problem.

Looking at Romans chapter 8, Paul said that all things groan. Paul did not say such a thing while holding some vague concept. When he explored his way into the ultimate place, the sound of all things groaning was heard louder than any sound in this world. There was such a thing.

The Ultimate Place Fallen Human Beings Must Seek

As a person of the fallen world, one feels nothing whatsoever; but if, through the original mind-nature one holds, one enters a place united with God and looks upon this world of all the phenomena of the universe, one can feel that not only the created things but the whole of this society today is groaning. Therefore, you must know that the ultimate place you must seek your way into is the place where, united with all things by the original standard in which God rejoiced, you recover the value of the human being.

That is why religious people, to seek their way into such a mystical realm, suppress all their bodily desires and abandon all practical conditions and practice austerities deep in the mountains to grope their way into the deep world of the mind.

You must know that all of this is nothing more than one means of seeking that purpose and standard.

Therefore, the more your mind approaches its way toward God, the more you can stand in a place closer to nature than anyone. That nature is not in a place unrelated to you.

You must feel keenly the fact that nature exists for the sake of the human being, that is, for your sake. Because God originally made all things for the perfection of the human being, the human being must awaken to that and appear as a human being who can boast before all things.

Otherwise, he cannot stand as one qualified to inherit that world of purpose in which he can boast before God. The ultimate purpose of the world of the Way lies precisely here.

When God created all things of Heaven and earth, He created them as beings of boast. Therefore, we must stand in a place accompanied by God’s heart, face this created world, and acquire through experience the joy with which God created.

And, setting all things before us, we must grasp through experience (체휼) a mind that can praise them as beings of boast made for my sake.

Otherwise, we cannot find the bond of the child that God wished to seek and boast of, which can be connected upon the foundation of the mind of original nature.

You must go seeking this standard. Until now, has there been a person upon this earth who could stand in such a place and boast? There has not. There has been no individual, and no family, tribe, people, nation, or world. There has not been one such person in all of human history.

As fallen human beings, as descendants who have collapsed without acquiring through experience the value by which God can boast in a seat of glory, can we go forth to such an ideal place? We cannot. We absolutely cannot. That is why there can appear no person who stands at the standard by which the value of all things can be praised through God’s boasting heart. That is all because the human being fell.

Israel, Which Failed to Become God’s Boast

God needed one person who could boast in place of all the phenomena of the whole universe. Therefore, one human being had to appear upon this earth in the true and ideal figure that agreed with God’s heart and could receive God’s right of inheritance over the whole created world.

Fallen human beings, because they are beings reaped as the fruit of sin sown by the forefathers who failed to acquire through experience the heart of boasting, cannot go forth to the true and ideal place.

If you plant beans, beans come up; if you plant red beans, red beans come up.

Because the ancestors of humankind sowed the seed of sin, only fallen beings are reaped, and such human lives can by no means go forth to the place of God’s boast.

Therefore, before such human beings, a figure must be sent to this earth as a matchmaker who can connect God’s heart-world to them. For this, God chose the Israelite people, centered on the thought of a chosen people.

Yet being chosen alone does not enable one to stand at the standard of boasting.

Those people had to fulfill their responsibility. But the Israelite people, by failing to fulfill their responsibility, failed to become a people that could boast for all ages of the value of having been chosen as a chosen people. In the course of history, they submitted again and again to the satanic world and betrayed God’s purpose.

The leaders who were to guide the people in accordance with God’s providence, too, passing through age after age, always stood in a place opposed to God’s purpose. And so the nation of Israel, passing through such an opposed history, lost the founding ideal of Israel.

Although the Jewish people were chosen as a chosen people through God’s preparation over four thousand years, that people failed to fulfill their responsibility to establish and boast of God’s nation. It was so with the individual, and so with the family, tribe, people, and nation.

God prepared for four thousand years for the providence of salvation, which was to set up the standard of the individual, family, tribe, and people and connect it to a national standard of boast. The one sent to this earth as master, to gather the sphere of Israel that could boast before all people at a national standard and to establish God’s purpose upon it, is the Messiah. A national Messiah! Precisely a national Messiah. Yet after Jesus, who was to appear as a national Messiah, died on the cross, what happened? Jesus fell to being an individual Messiah.

Had Jesus at that time not died, and had Jesus and the Israelite people become united centered on the founding ideal by which God could boast, from there the world could have been saved. But because Jesus, who was to hold the authority of a national savior, was driven and pursued out of the nation, he fell away to the position of a national-level Messiah of his people; and because he was driven out at the level of the people too, he fell away to the position of a tribal Messiah.

And because he was driven from the position of a tribal savior, he fell away to the position of a family-level Messiah; and because he was driven even from the position of a family-level Messiah, he was driven all the way down to his three disciples. So there was not a single foothold upon which he could stand as the Messiah upon this earth.

Accordingly, there was no foothold upon which God could boast centered on this earth either, and God’s desire to set up and boast of the Israelite people also could not be achieved. Thus Jesus could not but die, try as he might not to.

Miserably driven and pursued, Jesus could not but offer an anguished prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane to reach a final settlement. Yet this is the Jesus of whom they say he sought to save us with the holy blood of the cross? That is nonsense. You must consider that it was a miserable history.

The Messiah Who Was to Have a National Standard

Even if the road by which an individual can be saved was settled upon this earth through the Savior, can the family be saved by that? It cannot. Being saved as an individual alone will not do. The family must also be saved. When the salvation of the family is achieved, the tribe must be saved. That is, there must be a Messiah who will save the tribe, people, nation, and world.

Then what did Jesus accomplish up until he died on the cross?

He remained only in the position of an individual Messiah; he could not come forth to the place of a family-level Messiah. To become a family-level Messiah, Jesus had to become, as a family-level Messiah, the model for all people. But because Jesus failed to become so, he sought to settle the standard of a family-level savior, saying, “I am the bridegroom, and you are the bride.”

That was Jesus’ desire and wish, and what has come forth looking toward that is two thousand years of Christian history. Yet Christians are believing in something trivial.

Even the law of the heavenly way is not set up to send Jesus as a family-level Messiah. The standard of a national Messiah was that, from a position of exercising real authority to rule all people with the authority of a national Messiah centered on the nation of Israel, he was to set out equipped with a foundation from which he could found that nation upon the earth and command the whole universe. To have this standard was precisely God’s desire in sending the Messiah to this earth.

Despite this, the Israelite people did wrong and lost it all. That is why the Israelite people had no sovereignty for the two thousand years after Jesus. They had to suffer bitterly as wandering exiles.

God made much labor to send the Messiah to this earth. He set up Noah, Abraham, Moses, and John the Baptist, preparing a precious foundation over four thousand years.

Although the Israelite people were to prepare a national foundation centered on the national Messiah of the people and a worldwide foundation centered on the national Messiah, Jesus was driven and pursued and stood in a sorrowful position of not even having a foundation as an individual.

The Israelite people, who were the very ones who cast Jesus down to such a place of sorrow that he could not hold even the free authority of a savior on the foundation of an individual, suffered for thousands of years.

The World God Desires

Now what is it that you must seek?

Originally, Adam was to have appeared before God as the central figure of boast.

This is to hold the whole authority of the savior of all ages, and it is the desire of all people. The standard of a family-level savior is settled in the unfallen family of Adam. The word “savior” is used because of the Fall; had there been no Fall, the word “savior” would be unnecessary.

The original Adam was one privileged to hold God’s special authority, one who could form God’s family. Having been born in God’s family, he was to become God’s son and daughter and further was able to form a tribe as well—but all of this was lost.

Then who was the very one who caused such an individual to be lost? It was precisely Adam and Eve, the human ancestors.

It was Adam and Eve who shattered the authority and privilege of a family-level Messiah, Adam and Eve who shattered the eternal victorious authority of a tribal Messiah, and Adam and Eve who lost entirely the sovereignty to rule the world.

That is why God cannot but yearn for the world He desired centered on Adam. That is, God needs the individual, but that individual is needed to seek the family; the family is to seek the tribe, the tribe the people, and the people the nation and the world. And the reason such a world is needed is to seek the heavenly and earthly worlds centered on the love between God and human beings.

As Paul said,

“For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom. 8:38-39),

So humankind must, centered on God’s love, form a world that can be united with such a Jesus.

For God’s boast to be eternal for thousands and tens of thousands of ages, the heavenly world and the earthly world must be able to be bound together, centered on God’s love, into a standard of boast that cannot change, cannot go awry, and cannot be moved. Thereby it must become a Heaven and earth that go to the right together when God goes to the right, go to the left together when He goes to the left, rise together when He rises, and descend together when He descends.

Yet will it do for you to be believing in the salvation of the cross?

If that were so, there would be no need to enter the Unification Church. On a hot day like this, there is no need for such a game. Today’s believers say they believe in Jesus and go to heaven, but do you think that by so believing they will go to heaven? Not at all!

Even if the Kingdom of Heaven is realized, such people cannot go to the Kingdom of Heaven. Even when they go to the spiritual world, those who believe in Christianity become a people without a nation.

Because there is no nation upon this earth, when they drive you, you are driven; when they tear you, you are torn; when they stab you with a gun and a sword, you are stabbed; and when they cut you, you are cut.

Human Beings Who Were to Live in an Eternal Sphere of Boast

The sorrowful people, the sorrowful band who have lost their foundation upon the earth, are religious people. Therefore God, setting them up as a shield, gave the thought of a chosen people for the sake of a worldwide foundation of hope and sought, through divided Israel, to found a nation and world that could boast. For that, God, through a thousand hardships and myriad tribulations, pioneered the four-thousand-year retrograde road in agony and misery.

The Messiah, sent upon the foundation thus prepared, was nailed to the cross and killed by the Israelite people. Yet can one be saved by the holy blood of the cross? The cross must be smashed.

The cross is the instrument of torture upon which Jesus was hung and killed. But because Jesus, while dying, achieved the authority of resurrection, from that time humankind can obtain spiritual salvation by believing in Jesus and being resurrected.

Therefore, it is the truth of resurrection that one believes in; without knowing the truth of the cross, one is not truly believing. Yet those who believe in the truth of the cross—how are they orthodox?

We must boast. But we do not possess the requisites by which we can boast. That boast, which God wished to make by setting the human being before the whole cosmos, is the final boast. The human being was to have set out with such a boast, yet, despite this, because of the Fall, God could not see that boast. That boast is Alpha and Omega; the beginning and the end are the same.

Then where did the human being go, who was to live in an eternal, never-ceasing sphere of boast, continuing that boast forever and ever?

Through the recompense of the Fall, he was shattered into a thousand and ten thousand pieces. Can God found the Kingdom of Heaven or boast that He desires centered on such people as you? There is not the slightest hope. Since all have become tatters, they are things fit to be doused with gasoline and burned.

We must, without fail, go. Now, what fallen human beings should hope for is an individual with a national origin who can carry out the mission of an individual savior. That is why I must go and seek the place where, through the course of history, the forefathers stood in the position of an offering before God to set up the standard of a family-level Messiah.

Thereby, though Israel perished, we must seek the standard by which, until it perished, it lived, receiving blessing and inheriting that foundation as our own. And so the Unification Church too has come forth, centered on the foundation of Israelite history through the Old and New Testaments.

The Original Value We Must Boast Of

Although Noah was set up in the position of a human ancestor, he failed to fulfill his responsibility. When responsibility is thus not fulfilled, Satan accuses; therefore, you must hold the authority to fulfill your responsibility and correct the ancestors’ mistakes.

You must become sons and daughters who hold the authority to counsel Abraham for the mistake he made as the ancestor of faith, sons and daughters who can embrace and admonish for the historic facts of Moses’ mistake. Even centered on Jesus, you must become sons and daughters who can say, “Why did you die?” Here, believing in Jesus is not the issue.

Why did he die when he prayed three times so miserably in the Garden of Gethsemane?

Why was he made to die? Why was he made to pray,

“Abba, Father, all things are possible unto thee; take away this cup from me: nevertheless not what I will, but what thou wilt” (Mark 14:36)?

You must become sons and daughters who can say, “If you were going to be resurrected anyway, did you have to bear the cross and die?”

This, of course, is the responsibility of the Israelite people, who failed to fulfill their responsibility toward Jesus at that time and so made the motive for spreading Christianity within a two-thousand-year history of han; but Jesus too failed in his responsibility.

If the Teacher says such things, established believers will say,

“Jesus is God Himself, yet you invade His divinity! Ah, how frightful! That Teacher Moon of the Unification Church is the chief of heretics.”

But Unification believers are not a frivolous crowd. The Teacher too is not the kind of being that is blown away like a dry leaf in the wind. He is doing this work together with something that can push through even when a typhoon blows.

We intend, centered on the noun “unification,” bearing on our backs the signboard of world Christianity, to make a spiritual association. To do so, of course, we must have the active power to handle it. Jesus died trying to handle Judaism. He died trying to handle the chosen people of Israel, prepared over four thousand years.

What matches today’s worldwide Christianity is Judaism; what matches the Christians of the whole world is the Jews; what matches the Israelite people is the democratic world; and what matches Rome is the communist world. These must be handled. That is why the Unification Church has pioneered such a road.

You must become selves that can boast. You must be able to boast of the individual before all people. When God created Adam and Eve, He intended, through such a standard of original nature, to endow them with even the most subtle value and to boast.

Do you now have such value?

If you did, you too could hold all kinds of mystical conversations with all things. You could speak with a tree and with a stone. In olden times, Saint Francis preached even to birds and wolves. There are such fable-like stories, but originally the human being can do so.

A human being who holds the original value can move the lifeline of all existing things so that when all things are stimulated, he labors again before those beings, equips himself with the qualification, and can commune with them.

The Place Where One Can Boast

We have lost it. There is nothing at all that we can boast of, try as we might.

If among you there is anyone who complains, “When I first went to the Unification Church, it was really something; what sin have I committed that I should be treated more contemptibly than a condemned man standing in a courtroom?” — Then complain, I say. See whether the Teacher lied; try dying.

Where is there a place where you can boast?

If you can boast by citing your family, how is that family constituted? And if you can boast before all the phenomena of the world by citing your tribe, what kind of tribe is it? And where is such a people, nation, and world?

God desired this in His mind. Therefore, there must be one person who can come again upon this earth, communing with that mind of God and holding the authority to boast with the value of the whole—individual, family, tribe, people, and nation. That person is precisely the Messiah.

Because the Messiah does not come bringing along, just as it is, the way of life you have lived until now, he disregards entirely such ways as you consider good. The road of the Way must be walked in this manner. That is why that road is not a road walked in comfort, but a road that must be walked resolved to die.

Originally God made all things because He wished to boast centered on the human being. Therefore, unless the human being first stands in a place where he can love all things, he cannot go forth to the place where he can boast. The human being has not yet crossed the boundary line where he can boast. God wished to boast in His mind, but the human being failed to go forth to the substantial place where he could boast. And yet a fallen human being is called the lord of creation, holding the authority to govern all created things? Well, are you the lord of creation?

What lord of creation?

A corpse of creation, rather. Because the name “lord of creation” was attached, you know yourselves so and live deceived. That is why you must once again be thrown into the pit of death.

The Standard of Privilege by Which One Can Boast

Where would the standard of privilege by which an individual can boast be, and where would the standard of privilege that God wishes to boast of before the world of all existing beings, as a family, be?

Where would the standard of privilege of the tribe be?

And where would the standard of privilege of the people, and the standard of privilege of the nation and the world, be? And where would the standard of privilege that can join the whole universe be? Because the human being lost all of this, it must be sought again. Yet it will not do to seek an ideal world within fallen human society, seeking freedom and peace. It only grows more complicated; seek as you may, it is of no use.

That is why one person must come to this earth from a place unrelated to sin, holding a shield by which he can be victorious. That is, one person is needed who can perform the role of a bridge, the role of a matchmaker.

You are fallen descendants bound in the chains of sin. However strong you may be, you cannot snap those chains; therefore, a person who can snap them must come and liberate you from them.

Do you know how you were born? Do you know from where you came and where you are going? Even a person who has entered prison, when he comes out, comes out having decided where he will go. He longs for his own home.

Where is the place you are to go? Do you have a home?

You say you have a wife and sons and daughters, but do they really seem like your wife and sons and daughters?

Viewed in light of God’s standard of original nature, the value of an individual exists only when he is set up in a place where he can boast before all things. Sons and daughters too must be set up in such a place, and the family too must be set up in such a place, after which the family may love one another. But did you live in such a place? You married as you pleased and did all sorts of games. So they are counterfeit.

Therefore, such individuals, families, tribes, peoples, and nations must be bound together and put to a great judgment. The time to perish has come. When we see such things, it means God exists. Because none stood in a place where God could boast, He carries out the great judgment.

Then, will the great judgment be more fearful than the massacres of the communists, or not?

To greet the day of the great judgment, one must not fear the communists. Even if your forehead is split open, you must fight.

Do the Unification Church people here desire the great judgment, or not? Do you desire the day of the great judgment to come, or not? If you desire it, do you have any skill by which you can avoid that day or not?

If not, it is better to die in advance, centered on God’s purpose, before that day comes.

Therefore Jesus said,

“He who seeks to die shall live, and he who seeks to live shall die.”

That is why the Teacher is making such a fuss, saying die, to kill you in advance. Is this evil or good?

If it is good, then when I say I will kill you, you ought to say, “Good.”

Consider, all of you. You, too, will want to boast. Even young ladies, if they have something fine, wish to boast of it. But what use is boasting like that? Boasting centered on oneself, boasting centered on one’s family… boasting centered on the eyes of others is of no use.

God, Who Wishes to Boast

Viewed from the center of the watershed of the Taebaek mountain range, the water on one side flows to the East Sea, and the water on the other side flows to the West Sea. The water flowing to the clear East Sea wishes to go quickly, but the water flowing to the murky West Sea does not wish to go. Yet at the final watershed, all are divided. Even if one says, “Oh, you and I must not be parted; in death we die together, and in life we live together,” they are divided.

Now! You, all of you, do you wish to boast, or do you not wish to boast? I cannot say for certain, but you will have a mind that wishes to boast. Man or woman, old or young, everyone wishes to boast.

The Teacher has been to many places where beggars live. They go out by day to beg for food and bring it back, and there are all sorts of people among them. When they bring back the food they have each begged for and ask, “What did you get?” there is even one who dances, saying, “I got pork from a feast.” In such an environment, that too becomes a boast. Even though several dozen went out begging for food, if just one person’s level rises a little, they all make a fuss over it.

Do you wish to boast, or not?

If you do not wish to boast, then never mind. In that case, you cannot go to the Kingdom of Heaven. However homely one may be, one wishes to boast, I say.

When someone says, “Why is that person’s face like that? What a face! Oh dear, and there is a lump on it too!” — for a person to lump is a dreadful thing. Yet is this something to boast of? Is such a person set to boast? And yet that person says he has what others do not have. So he boasts.

You, too, wish to boast, do you not?

The Teacher too wishes to boast, but if he boasted, the world would be so astonished it would fall over backward; so he does not boast and just stays quiet.

However much they reviled the Unification Church with all sorts of abuse, he stayed quiet.

Have you ever heard of the Unification Church taking out a newspaper advertisement to defend itself?

Let them revile all they want, I say. When their throats hurt and their bellies get hungry, they will stop; so I think.

You wish to boast, and the Teacher wishes to boast. Then what about God? Would He wish to boast, or would He not? God too wishes to boast. But whom shall He bring out to boast of?

If He could bring out the Unification believers and boast of them, that would be perfect. Then God’s mind too would be joyful. God too thus wishes to boast, but for that there must be a person to receive the boast.

Would the person God wishes to boast of be a homely person, or fine?

That person is only in all the world, one who stands in a place where he can commune with God completely in heart and in circumstances.

Have you become such sons and daughters?

While the Unification believers are excited thinking that there is a God who has set up such a splendid standard of the son, the world is all asleep.

The Person God Wishes to Boast Of

God too wishes to boast. That is why God set up the historic saints, sages, and all the great figures, had them gather humankind, and then intended to boast. Yet, though He boasted through one age, one world, one course of history by the conditions those people set up, when those people failed to hold value by which they could boast having passed through Heaven and earth, they all collapsed in that place.

How wretched and desolate must Jesus have been, who prayed miserably in the Garden of Gethsemane of old and died on the hill of Golgotha?

Where had the twelve disciples gone, who had said they believed at the risk of their lives, and where had the three beloved disciples gone?

When Jesus saw that the disciples who had vowed to die before he died had all fled, and only women were bowed by the roadside weeping, do you think his mood was good?

It must have been bad. At that time Jesus must have thought in his heart, “You fellows, what use is it for you, who have lost the nation and lost the world, to weep now?

You should have made the effort before you lost it.” When a woman is divorced and cast out and then weeps as she packs her bundle, what use is it? She should have made the effort not to be so beforehand. That is why Jesus said to the women following him and weeping,

“Weep not for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children” (Luke 23:28).

It is truly an astonishing saying.

Then do the Unification Church people wish to boast, or not?

How greatly do you wish to boast?

You must boast to such a degree that all humankind of the world would come and go two, three, or four times to see it. Do you have the strength for that? It must pass through three generations. Unless it passes through three generations, it does not become God’s.

In the fallen world, it must pass through three generations. That is why it passed through three generations—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob—and Jacob too passed through three stages of seven years each. And it passes through the three stages of the age of Adam, the age of Jesus, and the age of the Lord at the Second Advent.

Then, when the Unification Church people were being persecuted, did you Unification believers boast?

In your minds, you may have boasted. But now the time to boast has come.

To boast, from what must one boast first?

If one’s father and mother did a boast-worthy thing, one must boast of that parent first. Then when the sons and daughters, and next the grandchildren, come and can boast, it is exciting. In this way, one must boast of passing through three generations. Otherwise, one cannot go to God.

You must go until, centered on the family, the tribe, and, centered on the tribe, the people join in, and it becomes a standard that can boast. There remains for you a road you must go, centered on the family.

You go that road, and only after passing through the people that God sets up do you become citizens of a nation. That is how it is set.

To Make Our Boast

The constituent element of society is the family. Do you think Jesus completed the role of savior upon this earth in name and in reality and then departed? During the four hundred years of Roman rule, the Israelite people were cruelly massacred; can it be said that Jesus fulfilled his mission as savior?

Not only Rome—there was no nation Christianity entered that did not have a history of being driven and shedding blood. And yet can it be said that Jesus fulfilled the mission of savior?

Jesus’ original purpose was not to save individuals. Jesus was to save the nation of Israel and, from that nation, build the Kingdom of Heaven. The Jews, the priests, the scribes, and even Paul I of Rome all had to submit to Jesus. All the rulers of Israel had to submit. It may be displeasing, but that is how it must be. Thereby, having gathered those who opposed, he was to set out toward the Kingdom of Heaven.

And yet you say the Son of God came to this earth to be nailed through both hands and both feet?

How could the Son of God do such a thing?

However lowly a person born into this sinful world may be, he does not play such a game.

For Jesus, glory turned into extreme punishment. This is because the Israelite people failed to fulfill their responsibility. That is why, for two thousand years after Jesus came and went, the Israelite people crossed over a ridge of han.

On May 15, 1948, Israel gained independence from the United Nations, and you must know that when Israel gained independence, the time for the Lord’s coming had drawn near.

They knew well how sorrowful it is to be a people who have lost their nation. So, having entered the Arab sphere, which is twenty times larger than Israel, they resolved in their minds, “Having entered the tiger’s den, we must keep our wits about us,” and in the Middle East war last May, they fought for six days and won. This was God’s help.

Two thousand years have passed since Jesus. You must know that you are the ones who must wind up this whole history and go forward. Then, to make “our boast,” must one pass through the barrier of boast, or not? Yet the person who cannot make their own boast should not even bring up our boast, I say.

Here, what is my boast?

It refers to becoming the central figure who, in place of the created world and the whole universe, and in place of God and all the things God created, can gather them up, govern them, and love them. Thereby, though the many prophets and martyrs of history came and went, they must all stand in a position where they cannot but take me as their model.

In the Unification Church, we do not pray in the name of Jesus. People who first enter the Unification Church will think, “Oh dear, what are True Parents?

What is this, praying in the name of the True Parents?”

Do you know what the True Parents mean?

True Parents refers to our ancestors who, without falling in the Garden of Eden, could boast for thousands and tens of thousands of ages within God’s glory.

Yet because the ancestors of humankind who were set up fell, there must be new ancestors; and because God too carries out the Providence centered on new ancestors, we pray in the name of the new ancestors. The reasoning fits exactly.

Because it does not go through Jesus alone, one must go through Jesus and the Holy Spirit. That is, Jesus is the Father-Spirit, and the Holy Spirit is the Mother-Spirit; so no fallen human being can go to the Kingdom of Heaven except through the bond of such parents.

Because Jesus is the Father-Spirit, without the Mother-Spirit he cannot become the complete Savior. Not knowing that this is so, will it do to pray and ask for blessing in the name of Jesus? They are all in ignorance.

You must re-educate the more than one billion Christians of the world who are thus deceived. Do you have the confidence, or not?

Why is the answer of those who say they have confidence so weak?

Then try liberating the Teacher once. Can you say you will liberate the nation when you cannot even liberate the Teacher? And yet, unable to repent, you sit there blinking your eyes. Words alone will not do. In these busy times, when is there time to lay out such words? You must show it immediately in action.

Nature Is the First Bible

There is a song that goes, “Our wish is unification; even in dreams, our wish is unification; to recover this nation, unification; O unification, come, come.” Well, what is our wish?

Do you know why the Unification Church is busy?

Because in death, unification; in life, unification; when we meet a person, unification; when we eat, unification—everything must be unified. Therefore, for you to bring about unification, you must become the world’s foremost person. If an awl, you must become the world’s foremost awl.

Become like a cutting machine that cuts a flint stone. When the Teacher sometimes goes to a factory and watches, a lathe turns, and when you set a boulder against it, “Whisssh!” — It is cut. Watching that, I thought how good it would be if the fingernails of the Unification Church members were this hard so that we could push Satan away alive. Is that evil or good? To strike another is a sin, but to strike Satan is good.

To make our boast, to communicate through the noun “we,” one must first pass through one’s own barrier. But have you become a person who can boast of himself?

What the Teacher is telling you is to inherit the authority to boast from a place more noble than anything in the whole universe.

Therefore, you must, through the road of the Way, cross over into God’s deep and profound heart-world, embrace all things, shed tears, and be able to pour out your account before the beings of the created world.

Facing them, you must become a person who can hold the attitude of mind to say, “Before my circumstances, there are your circumstances; yet you are in such a pitiful place because of me, so bear with me a little. Endure just ten years, just twenty years!” It is for holding this that there is the road of the Way.

Has Mr. Seok-on’s aged mother come?

The other day she came to the Teacher and said, “Ah, Teacher, it’s strange. Today, as I came down from the mountain after praying, the pine trees, the willows, everything, danced and swayed, and asked me to take good care of things—why is that?”

So I said, “This old lady has gone mad. Can such a thing happen? It was Satan who did that!” But that is a blessing, a blessing!

If such a good thing happened, then even if the Teacher opposes it, you should believe it to be true. Can you make it your own without treading over all of that and rising above it? If you cannot make it your own, Satan takes it away.

That is why the praying people of old said that nature is the first Bible. Not the second. When you look at the Bible woven through the history of Israel, its content cannot be clearly known.

Do you know how much the Teacher shook his head looking at that content?

It is like a fortune-teller’s divination—hang it on the nose and it is a nose ring; hang it on the ear and it is an earring. It is an expedient for escaping reality. Therefore, because it takes effort to judge the content of facts and to sift out the circumstances before and after, the natural world that God made is foremost, rather than the Bible.

Here, whoever is confident that he is a person through whom God can boast in place of the universe, raise your hand.

Since you raised your hand, the Teacher will ask you one thing. When you first saw your bride, was she lovely or not? “She was lovely.” Then did you think that your feeling her lovely and beautiful was because God had entered within you? “Yes.” Then did the woman who is your object partner praise you, saying, “I am glory among glories.

Did my husband come from the heavenly land or from the land of the stars?” “Yes.” Where does that “yes” come from—that word “yes”?

You know what stepping stones are, do you not?

They are stepping stones in a stream, but if you cross lightly, you can go without wetting your feet. This is, just as the noun says, a stepping stone. But the road of Restoration is not easy, like crossing stepping stones. It is very hard. Take even a single step, and you stick fast. It is just like floundering in a bog: the more you flounder, the deeper you sink.

The Unification Church Must Liberate God

When you walk a muddy road in spring, where the frozen ground has thawed, you will hope, having set out in clean shoes, to be clean when you return too. But shoes, socks, skirts, and everything else get caked with mud. It clings here and there and stands its ground without so much as a greeting. Even such a muddy road you find bothersome to walk; do you think the road of Restoration would be easy?

The road of Restoration must pass through them all—the restoration of the individual, of the family, of the tribe, of the people, of the nation, of the world, of the Cosmos, and the restoration of God. God must be restored, I say. Then you will say, “You say God must be restored, but how does one restore God?” It means that the sorrow submerged within God’s mind must be lifted away. God too cannot be God alone. There must be an object partner who can attend to Him as God.

For God to be happy, He must greet a filial child. Thereby, only when the whole world comes about through filial children is the Kingdom of Heaven realized in God’s mind. But now, when the children are all on the verge of death, could God be at ease? That is why the work of liberating God must be done.

This is the work the Unification Church intends to do.

If the world wishes to revile, let it revile all it wants, I say. The Teacher has done much prison time. In the living of life, and in the philosophy of life too, he has content that yields to no one.

Though the Teacher is delivering the Word here, even if he goes out to a labor site and labors, he yields to no one. Even in carrying salt sacks at a salt farm, he yields to no one. There is nothing the Teacher cannot do. He has the confidence that he can achieve the purpose even without your help.

Until now, the Unification Church’s Teacher Moon has been thought to be sitting in some lofty seat, stroking his beard, where at his “Hey there!” everyone would answer “Yes, sir!” —but you have it wrong. Indeed, because it is so, it even helps in strategy.

So we make a surprise attack, a surprise attack! The Teacher is doing this kind of work. The Teacher’s age is nearing fifty. But the road ahead is far. All of you—will you follow, or will you stop here? “We will follow.”

The Road of Restoration That Must Be Walked to the End

Until now the Unification Church has been reviled. They keep casting it over us, saying, “They say the Unification Church dances naked; it must be a licentious group.” How nice it would be to cover nothing and be cold. (In fact, it is nothing of the sort.)

In the old days, at the time of the March First Independence Movement, there was such a person in the Teacher’s village. This person shouted “Mansei,” whether dying or living. Then he was caught by the Japanese military police. In those days, to shout “Mansei,” one had to shout it resolved to die; yet this person shouted “Mansei” even as he was being dragged away.

However much the Japanese military policeman beside him thought about it, the man seemed to be a lunatic. Ordinary people, when caught, get wrinkled with worry, their eyes squint, their limbs all curl up, and they lose all strength and go to their death; but this person shouted “Mansei” even as he was being dragged along.

Since it differed from what they had seen until then, they said this person was not normal and was mad and let him go on his way. (Laughter) Such a thing can happen too. Will you, like the Japanese military police, stop here, or will you follow? “We will follow.”

The Teacher is now going to cross the Pacific; will you follow? Do you have the confidence to cross the Pacific? “Yes.” How will you cross it? You will have to ride a turtle or lay a bridge. But will you say, “If someone lays a bridge for me, I’ll cross; oh dear, if my legs get tired crossing, I’ll rest a bit, and if I’m still weary, I can just come back”? Words are easy. Still, will you follow, or will you stop? “We will follow.” Really? “Yes.”

The Teacher has truly been deceived much. When the Teacher peers into your minds, all he sees is a heap of trivial rubbish crammed in, so how can your words of resolve be believed? When I see this, it means God is pitiful.

Try laying out, from ten to a hundred, all the things your mind desires. See how many of them can be friendly with God. When you have something good, you say “mine,” do you not? At such times you tell even God to stand behind you. And yet the moment there is something a little bad, you say, “I don’t want it!”

In walking the course of Restoration, can you restore by taking only what you like?

What is good, even Satan tries not to let go of. That is why you cannot help but come to like the bad, whether you will or not. All of you, will you do so, or not? “We will.” Then must the Teacher stand at the head, or must you stand at the head? Who must stand at the head? You would like it if the Teacher stood at the head, would you not?

When the Teacher quietly thinks about it these days, it seems that in the end, even if I collapse from exhaustion gathering you up and cleaning up after you, I will get no sympathy. Yet I think, “It was originally the Teacher’s mission, after all…” Indeed, if there is such a mission, how holy it is.

Now, will you go, or will you not? “We will go.” Thereby, will you boast centered on yourselves and boast centered on us? But right now you do not have the qualification to make such a boast.

Even if an individual falls and fails to be saved—that is, even if he has lost the time when he could be saved—if the family fulfills the way by which it can be saved and comes to be saved before God, then a road opens by which the individual too can be saved secondarily.

Even if the family fails to be saved, if that family’s relatives are saved and are settled as a tribe that can be set up before God, then the individual too can be saved, and that family too can be saved.

When the Teacher this time gives the command that from July 20 you are all dispatched to the provinces and sets a fire to your tails, where will you go?

Will you flee home or rush out into the world?

If ten, all ten of you will try to flee home. Then you perish. Once the fire is set, you must all rush out into the world. Are you in such an attitude of mind, or not? Are you, or are you not?

The Original Standard That Must Be Restored

Now then, from now on, let us, all of us, try boasting once. Until now it was a time of being reviled. Have you ever, in following the road of the purpose until now, ever boasted?

When you entered a village, driven this way and that, did you not get your legs hurt, your head split open, or get driven back home by your husband?

When I see you like that, I even think, why is the Teacher’s lot so rough? Must I be persecuted like this by bands who have no relation to me whatsoever! It was not you who were reviled; it was the Teacher who was reviled. And this, done though told not to do it, brought reviling… It was you who caused the Teacher to be reviled.

You must know what it is the Teacher is trying to gain by doing this work. Because the human being lost the original standard by which he can boast before God, it is to restore that standard. This is what the Unification Church calls Restoration.

Because the original mind by which God wished to boast before the whole universe was all chopped into pieces and submerged in unspeakable sorrow, we must join it all together and seek and restore to Him the original mind. How, through me, is that standard to be set up?

How is a fallen human being to seek and restore to God that mind with which He rejoiced when He made Adam and Eve? You must know that this is the han of the six-thousand-year history, a grave problem that humankind must resolve.

For example, suppose there is a woman who, not knowing that she had an original husband, married another man. Then, after she had borne sons and daughters and lived on, she came to know that there was, separately, an original husband. So she takes the children she has since borne and goes seeking her way into the original husband. This is precisely the history of salvation.

Here, the children born through the other lineage are you. That is why you are adopted, children. And the woman who left her original husband, married, and then returned to that husband is the Holy Spirit.

Accordingly, the Holy Spirit does the work of taking the sons and daughters in the satanic world and returning them to God’s bosom.

Consider quietly, all of you. The original father should have been my father, yet I was born through another bloodline.

When that father looks upon this face of mine, would his mood be good or bad?

How bad it must be! Each time he looks upon that son, the history of bygone days comes to mind. “Because you did wrong, I have suffered like this until now,” he thinks. Here the account of the six-thousand-year history is included in what comes to his mind.

We Who Must Relieve God’s Han

Yet God grits His teeth, suppresses such han, grafts in such a human being, and says, “You are my son. My son. My son.” And He says, “Resemble me. Resemble me.” This is like the work of setting a counterfeit before oneself and, by saying, “It is genuine, it is genuine,” making it genuine. Although God is in such a position, how much has the human being rebutted and resented God?

Yet God, even while going forward, centered on human beings placed in such a position, gives love to a place where, upon this earth, there is an original family and a tribe centered on the true Messiah-thought.

Abel was set up to save Cain. The decisive verdict on whether Abel stands as Abel comes from cultivating the standard by which he brings Cain into submission and can return to God’s bosom. God has such an account, I say. Yet more than resenting and grieving over His own such position, He regards as more grievous the position in which His son cannot but be the one to gather such an account. Do you understand what this means, all of you?

You must know that God has endured until now because, more than the disappointed mind that arises from the fact that fallen human beings are in the position of stepchildren, He grieved more over the position of the son, who, even in an unjust place, cannot but do the work of making them into true children. You must know this.

That is why the Lord who comes upon this earth cannot come as a Lord of glory.

Only when he fills in and levels flat all the pits of han of countless human beings can the Kingdom of Heaven, the Garden of Eden that God originally envisioned, be realized. Thereby God must be enabled to make a free procession. At that time God makes His procession with the Son set before Him.

When God makes His procession, He does not stand at the front. Just as, when the president of a nation makes his procession, the guard corps stands at the front to escort him, so when a new Kingdom of Heaven is realized upon this earth, the Son must enter attending the Father.

Because God must carry out such a work, to seek upon this earth sons and daughters who can do so, He has carried out the Providence until now, passing from the position of the servant of servants to the position of a servant and from the position of an adopted child to the position of a son.

This is the six-thousand-year history that has been woven to drive the individual, drive the family, drive the nation, and drive the world, and thus make an environment of a free Kingdom of Heaven.

Here, who sacrificed?

The servants, adopted children, and son are close to God’s side. Among them, the one who sacrificed representatively is Jesus. Jesus, the only begotten Son of God, came to this earth as the guide to the Kingdom of Heaven and pioneered the road by which fallen human beings could turn from the road of death to the road of life.

Thereby he founded today’s democratic world, and upon the foundation of that two-thousand-year desire, it was possible to head toward a new age. The band that intends, from here, to gather history and the age and set out toward a new ideal Kingdom of Heaven is the band of the Unification Church. Do you understand?

Yet the band of unification is not extraordinary in outward frame; even looking at their faces, they are faces like anyone else, and their form is no different from the Baedal people of the Republic of Korea. Nor is it a band that eats and lives especially well. Nor is it that they possess some nation and have sovereign authority to boast of. By whatever measure, they do not qualify at all.

Yet it is centered on such a band that the historic resolution of han (해원성사) is accomplished. Such a solemn task is placed upon our two shoulders. All of you, is it a thankful thing or a sorrowful thing? “A thankful thing.” Truly a thankful thing? Truly thankful? “Yes.” Then you must repay that thankfulness.

The Attitude We Must Equip Ourselves With

Then, in coming forth to seek this purpose, what labor was made?

Until such a place was cultivated, what road of death was passed through? You must consider this.

When I, as one of the band of unification, stood before God, how deeply am I steeped in all the historic grievances heard around me?

How deeply am I steeped in the grievances of the age? You must consider this.

You must consider that when, centered on oneself, one fails to resolve the standard of the future completely, that han stretches out even into the future. Therefore, it is the band of the Unification Church who must feel the fact that they are so tense at the decisive line of past, present, and future that they cannot compose themselves.

Thus Heaven and earth hope that you will not derail and go astray from the course of Restoration. The prophets and martyrs of the past too are asking you to relieve and save the historic han that they could not resolve. It is the band of unification that has borne the mission to stand in such an enormous place and resolve it.

Though a frail band, you must stand upon a foundation equipped with such content so that when you ask for help to build the foundation on which you can accomplish the resolution of han for God, all will call you God’s sons and support you and be able to bear witness before Heaven and earth and will say they will become your fence. Yet no one can deny that we are selves who are not so.

When we see this, you must, of your accord, step forth onto a road of repentance today and repentance tomorrow, suffering today and suffering tomorrow, driven today and driven tomorrow.

You must grope your way into the deep valley of God’s heart and be able to gather the road that God has walked until now.

The age of historic han, the worldwide time, has drawn near before our eyes; and you, who must gather this time centered on God’s grief-stricken heart, must repent that you are in an insufficient position, unable to take responsibility for it.

That is why you stand in a position where you must await God’s merciful mind, compassionate mind, sympathetic mind, and hand of love. And yet you hold a mind that says it is no concern of yours. You must know that you are placed at such a grave point.

So when you come to know God’s purpose, rise and go forth, lifting your hands before God. Though a wretched figure, a slight being that looks like nothing, you must say, “My body has stood in for God’s han; therefore, though the waves of death become a flood and flow as a muddy torrent, there will be none who can break me, who am like a rock.” Thereby, you must become a plumb weight, a pillar, so that the drifting bands of death can take hold of you and live.

You must have the confidence that you can be so. Furthermore, because present society is a complex and confused environment, human beings groan everywhere and flounder, parched for love.

You must hold in your mind a kingdom of peace that can cross over this both inside and out and, centered on this world, settle the confused state of affairs.

The Attitude We Must Equip Ourselves With to Become God’s Boast

On the external side, you have nothing but an environment of discouragement, lamentation, and despair. But in your minds, are you equipping yourselves with an attitude that can boast of happiness before all Heaven and earth?

If you failed to do so in the past and fail to do so in the present, then, setting your sights on the future, make a hidden resolve so that from tomorrow you will set up a figure of yourself that can be so.

You must hold the resolve to go forth of your accord toward the enemy camp, cut off the enemy general’s head, strike down the enemy, and, having devised the strategy, without fail occupy the position. Thereby, you must make the new resolve that, although the past and present were so, on the road you must go in the future; such things must not be.

If you cannot do this, then pack your bundle and get out, I say.

On the road ahead of you, there remains a fierce fight in which you must reach a final settlement more miserable than at any time in the past. Therefore, you must temper body and mind, arm yourselves inside and out, and advance as invincible elite troops against whom no band of the satanic world can be a match.

You must not go on living bearing, just as it is, the mark of the rotten conduct of ten million years ago. It must all be wiped out in this place.

Thereby, when the reveille sounds on the new morning, you must equip yourselves with an attitude to march vigorously, brimming with hope, toward the enemy camp that was your target. It is the band of unification that must be in an attitude that can add stimulus to this and lay the whip to those footsteps.

So I cannot help but worry about your attitude. In this way, let us attend to a Teacher in whom God can boast and seek a family, tribe, people, nation, and world in which He can boast.

After humankind had passed over the ridge of han upon this earth for four thousand years, Jesus, who was awaited according to the content of the prayers pleaded by the many forefathers of the spiritual world, came. That one day that was desired had come.

The trumpet sounded upon this earth, and from that day a new Heaven and earth set out. Yet the Israelite people of that time did not know it, and the scribes and priests all did not know it. Like the dead of night, the people of the world were all asleep.

Amid this, Jesus, awake alone, yearning with all his mind for the Kingdom of Heaven of hope, felt the sense of mission that he must accomplish God’s purpose from within surge up all the more strongly the more complex the environment became.

But Jesus, who was in a position where nothing at all could be done, offered an earnest prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane to reach a final settlement with God.

You must know how grave that content was. His original mission was thus, so why did Jesus have to be caught at the barrier of the cross?

At that time Jesus must have thought, “It is all right for me alone to die, but what is to be done with the tears and blood God shed over the four-thousand-year course of history?”

Jesus was to connect that to an altar, purify that altar, plant a marker of victory before God, and from there cultivate the foundation of the Kingdom of Heaven.

Jesus, who bore such a mission, could not but go to the other world without fulfilling his responsibility in his generation.

The Central Figure in Whom God Can Take Pride

That is why, though the sufferings of the Christians who are pushed, driven, and treated with contempt as they are dragged along through the course of history may be a matter of course, when we consider the labor that God must make in order once again to carry out the mission of Restoration with a han-filled heart, you must know the circumstances of Jesus, who, because he bore the mission of the son, could not but offer such a prayer for a final settlement.

If, by Jesus’ death, the han of the heavenly way were relieved, then that road would indeed be the road the son ought to walk; but when we consider that, after Jesus died without fulfilling his responsibility, the conditions of han knotted in God’s heart remain knotted in history and in the world, it is an account that, from the position of the true son, one cannot bear to see and cannot leave behind.

Yet that was the content God decided, knowing well the environment whose time had already passed. You must know well how great was God’s inner anguish in having no choice but to hand Jesus over to the cross.

Thereby Jesus came to be nailed to the cross on the hill of Golgotha by such bands—the Israelite people and the Jews who swarmed in, clamoring and cursing, “Chief of the heretics, a good death to you. Are you the Messiah we desired for four thousand years?” — passing that curse from mouth to mouth.

Yet the Judaism that thus persecuted Jesus and nailed him to the cross and killed him remains upon this earth until now. They stand in the position of having slighted the master’s son and sent him back, and of slighting even the master, and yet they became a band that blows the trumpet and holds a feast, claiming to be on the master’s side. That band is the Israelite people, who for two thousand years were miserable wandering exiles.

That people became a people who could not be liberated unless there was set up the one condition that Jesus would come again upon this earth, as the desire of a two-thousand-year history, and forgive their sin.

Yet because the time has now come when they can be liberated and set out toward a new Heaven and earth, a new world, they were able to have a nation.

What is the desire of God, who came bearing such historic han?

It is to seek one person who can boast of that value to all the historic saints and sages and to the people living in this age. That is why He tells you to become the central figure who can boast through history, boast before the three billion of humankind in this age, and boast before the countless generations to come of a road walked for thousands and tens of thousands of years.

You must fulfill the mission of a son or daughter such that, from a place that gathers together past, present, and future, you can make God weep tears of gratitude, make Jesus weep tears of gratitude, and make the Holy Spirit weep tears of gratitude, becoming a person who can hear the words, “Had it not been for you, what would have become of things?”

Only then, you must know, do you hold the value to be able to stand as a being who can boast before God and as a being who can boast before the whole universe.

Then, standing in such a position, have you ever faced God and called Him Father? Have you called out, “Father!”? You did not even know whether the Father exists or not, whether He is a stepfather or a true father.

Now, from a place that knows such content, you must call the Father and go forth embracing the circumstances held within that Father’s breast. Thereby, to resolve the han of the place where exploded indignation crosses with the sense of han, you must hold the conviction that you will, of your accord, go even the road of death and walk the road by which you can go forth to a place beyond Jesus.

Rather than praying miserably as Jesus did, you must become a person who goes even the road of death, boldly volunteering for it.

The Blessed Family We Must Boast Of

The Teacher, to pioneer this road, has been resolved to die hundreds and tens of thousands of times. The Teacher is a person who has resolved in his mind to go this road even if bullets pass through his heart hundreds of times. The Teacher is doing this work, thus resolved to die.

And yet have you, who are following the Teacher, ever so much as thought of such a thing?

When the Teacher commands you to go into the valley of death, how many will there be who will go? That road is one where, if you go ten times, you can come back alive nine times; and yet were you not the ones who avoided even the one road you were to go out on?

What God awaits is to seek and set up one being through whom He can boast of humankind. Thereby He awaits the day when a Kingdom of Heaven of hope, in which, centered on that one, He can set up and boast of a family, set up and boast of a tribe, set up and boast of a people, and set up and boast of a nation and world, is realized upon this earth. Holding such an earnestly awaiting mind, God’s circumstance of intending to set you up, who are worthless as the workers of a hoped-for day, is astounding.

Even if it means dying ten million times, you must writhe with the resolve to settle, in your generation, the dignity and qualification of a son in whom God can boast, and then to die. To do so, even though that place is the valley of death, you must become a son who can take responsibility for God’s grievous circumstances, who can say to God, “Trust me and command me to go.” Though the Unification believers ought to be such, many are not.

You must boast of the qualification of a son. Therefore, you must boast of God’s blessed family. In the Unification Church, we hold Blessing ceremonies—the 36 Families, the 120 Families—that exist neither in the world nor in history.

That is, we know a thing that has never been in history and are doing a thing that has never been in history. To this, all humankind of the whole world must come flocking. Because it is all for the sake of humankind, the Unification Church holds the Blessing ceremonies even while being opposed.

Only recently have people begun to try to recognize it, but God endured for six thousand years with the hearts of those human beings not recognizing it.

Since one is trying to become a son of such a God, having it recognized is rather a shameful thing. When all people lift both hands and praise his holiness, that is rather a place where the son must feel shame before God.

Therefore, you must prepare God’s foundation of victory. Before you prepare it, you cannot but bow your head in shame and prostrate yourself and wail.

You must know that you are a descendant born inheriting the blood of sinful ancestors, one who cannot lift his face until God commands him to lift it.

By gathering such a self and establishing an individual foundation of victory, you must become the very thing that all things and all humankind yearn for; and by gathering and setting up the family and establishing a family-level foundation of victory, you must become a family that can boast before God.

Thereby, in this sinful world where we could not become a family that can boast, holding the authority of a family that God desires, you must stand in a place where you would rather regard it as shameful that our family was called.

Before God says, “It must be your family,” and wishes to set you up, it is the families of the Unification Church who must, from a place where God can call and set you up, call God, shed tears of repentance, and carry out the mission of entrusting that family into God’s bosom. Despite this, how many Blessed Families know such value?

It is also the families of unification who, within a bond of flesh and blood in which without me you cannot exist, and without you I cannot live, make one vertical foundation.

Therefore, it is the families going forward with the unification ideology who must, exerting all their strength for one another, boast of a foundation of life on which they vie with one another, saying, “Let us make and glorify God’s foundation of glory, and I will become the fertilizer and the foundation for it.” But how many families can be so?

The Standard of Character of Unification Believers

When you offer worship centered on the time prepared on the Sabbath day, you do not offer it within a limited sphere. Transcending the nation, countless people living upon the earth are offering devotion and praying with tears toward this place.

Even in a place where they are driven and pursued by the people of the world, they pray and offer devotion for the sake of Headquarters. It is the Headquarters members who have the responsibility to praise such prayers, saying, “So it is,” and, in place of their heart, to attend God.

Despite this, have you not, rather than being in such a place of offering devotion, become a band that treats their praying lightly and criticizes and sneers at it? If there is such a mind, it must be cut off. The heart-world is thus a fearful thing.

You must, three days before, prepare with a tightened mind for the Sunday worship service. Thereby, you must enter the church door writhing with the resolve to pray for the happiness of all people and to connect, through me, the authority of resurrection and the bond of life by which all people can be revived; and you must attend worship with a mind choked with emotion before God.

Even that would be insufficient, yet you are more brazen than a peddler. Would this have been the figure of the band that God sought over the course of six thousand years of history? It would not.

Our people and the humankind of the world are, to greet the one time they have awaited until now, coming in toward our gate from all directions, moment by moment. At such a time, though you have the responsibility to make your inner preparation and take in everything at a stroke and pass it on, if you stand in a position of being all pushed over and toppled before the tide of thought that surges in, would that person be a son or daughter of God?

You must, even while sleeping, even while eating, begrudge the time and handle this miserable state of affairs and pass it on. This is an age in which you must set up the position of a child who holds the authority to do so; and yet, when you forget this and become a band that cannot govern its own fallen body and fails in its responsibility, you ought to perish. But because you are a band that God has sought through a six-thousand-year course of labor, that cannot be, I say.

We must boast of the truth we hold to all the nations of the world. We must boast of this unification ideology for all ages.

If, holding this content, you fail to be victorious and cannot boast, then your descendants must fight Satan. Thereby, when they become victorious and can boast, a time will come when they dig up your graves and accuse you, saying that though you held the value of a glory that should have been possessed in your generation, you failed in your responsibility before Heaven and earth.

The glorious Word we hold is the one and only Word of truth, which no one else has possessed. Through this truth, we must set up one standard of character. It is not the han-filled standard of character of the prophets and martyrs who were invaded upon a foundation of an environment that Satan toyed with as he pleased, but a standard of character that can bring Satan into submission and accomplish the resolution of han for all the saints and sages of the spiritual world.

The Unification Church is a foundation of a free Kingdom of Heaven that can greet the sons and daughters who relieve God’s six-thousand-year-knotted mind of han and yearn for a day of liberation, that can open up that breast over which God fretted and greet the beloved sons and daughters He loves.

This place is a place from which one can go straight through to God’s heart, which no one in history upon this earth has ever possessed. When we consider such things, when we consider that these are figures called and set up in such an enormous and fearful place, you must without fail fulfill your responsibility.

God wishes to set us up and boast. That is, He wishes to set up the band of unification and boast. That is why it is the believers of the Unification Church who must cast away all the things called precious upon the earth, offer their whole lives for the sake of the purpose, and, resolving to make this value shine forever and ever for thousands and tens of thousands of ages, do this work.

Despite this, believers who are not so must repent.

The Teacher, with a Heart like Joseph’s

Teacher Moon of the Unification Church, pioneering this road for fifty years of his life, has been driven before the people and driven before the nation. In the time of Japanese rule, he was driven before the guns and swords of the Japanese; under communist rule, before the guns and swords of the communists; and in the democratic world, before a dictatorial regime. Even amid the persecution of these three ages, he has broken through at the risk of his life.

Not only that, even the three regimes of the Republic of Korea (the Liberal Party, the Democratic Party, and the Republican Party) have inflicted all sorts of persecution to drive out the Unification Church, and Christianity too, which ought to have been a comrade of Heaven and a brother of Heaven, opposed us.

Those who, having come forth first, ought to have become our elder brothers and family and our fence, how much have they opposed and persecuted us until now to drive us out?

When I consider the fact that the voices of the established denominations opposing the Unification Church still do not cease even now, I am indignant and heartbroken.

At such times the Teacher comes to think of Joseph. Joseph, having fallen into a pit where he could only have died at the hands of his brothers, was sold to foreigners and entered the land of Egypt. Thereby, while working in the house of Potiphar, the captain of the guard at that time, he was falsely accused and put into prison, but within God’s sphere of protection, he received grace and became the prime minister of Egypt.

At that time a famine struck the whole land, so Joseph’s brothers too came to Egypt to seek food. Joseph was in a position where he could have treated them with contempt and sent them back as his aggrieved and indignant mind pleased; but even so, considering that they were his father’s flesh and blood and his brothers, he bit his tongue and endured. (Gen. 39-42)

Because the Teacher knows the mind of Joseph, he prays, holding such a heart. The Unification Church will not perish.

However many arrows of blame and slander come flying, those arrows will be broken sooner than the Teacher will collapse. Therefore, the Unification Church will not perish.

Until now there has been no one upon the earth who could rise centered on God’s heart. There was the authority of Satan, who rose centered on the fallen nature, but there was no authority to rise centered on God’s heart. Because the Teacher knows this, even in a place where he lay like a corpse in the valley of death, he did not despair.

Even at a crossroads of life and death where gun and sword crossed, even in a place that decided one’s fate, the Teacher, standing here, did not behave like a petty man. He passed through such a lifetime in a manly way.

Yet where has the flock of sheep that was thus prepared and equipped until now all gone, and why is there a flock of goats?

This is because the people failed to fulfill their responsibility. It was the established church that ought to have repented of the people’s sin and built an altar for God.

Yet because even the established church failed in its responsibility, the people became driven and pursued. Therefore, only when one holds a mind that loves the flock of goats more than the flock of sheep that was lost can all the sheep be saved. You must know that the Teacher has held out until this day, holding such a mind.

Let Us Make a Full-Scale Advance

The Teacher is not doing such work without thought. The Teacher is a person more relentless than anyone, a person who cannot endure indignation more than anyone.

The Teacher knew God’s great purpose, knew how great God’s suffering was, and knew what that enemy was like; but because he could not go forward on the Teacher’s road, by which he could gather this up and cross over, until then he went silently. And what has appeared until now is the content of his having, meanwhile, made that a condition and striven to find out the inner things of Satan.

Now the final time has come before us. Because the time to reach a final settlement has come, we must mobilize as a whole. Therefore, you must know that the tears you shed today are not sorrowful tears shed in a place where enemies mock, as in the past, but tears shed from the position of a priest, in place of the sorrow of the people. That is, your being persecuted and driven is being undergone in place of the sorrowful destiny by which the people cannot but be persecuted and driven. So you must hold pride.

The reason the Teacher, even in a place where he was driven, pursued, and shed tears, embraced Heaven and earth, embraced a tree, and wailed and endured, was to block the miserable road that these people could not but go and to have one place where he could take hold of God and plead. It is to resurrect this people once more.

When Jesus died on the cross, through his death, he resurrected the souls of humankind. But you must have a day when, while alive, you resurrect this people. The Teacher too has walked until now, not refusing the road of death for the sake of that.

Now this nation and this people have become an environment that can greet us. From now on, even if there is persecution on the road the Unification Church goes, it is no problem. Even if the nation is mobilized to oppose it, the Unification Church will not disappear; and even if the whole of Heaven and earth is mobilized to eliminate it, the Unification Church will not disappear. Such a foundation has been cultivated.

Until such an environment of the age came about, God labored to pioneer the dark road of night. Thereby it has become like broad daylight, so that if only one can open one’s eyes and look around in all directions, there is a road to live anywhere.

If one fails in one’s responsibility at such a time, one cannot become a son or daughter of God.

You must know that you are the band of the Unification Church who must, before the countless peoples and nations of the world and before all created things, go forward vowing of your accord. That is, you are the band of the Unification Church who must set up your authority and the authority of the family and the authority of the tribe, and, centered on such a people of unification, go forward toward a welfare Kingdom of Heaven.

Now, to strike down the enemy, you must resolve that, whatever price of sacrifice it costs, I will stand at the vanguard and smash the enemy camp. You must know that, because such a time has come, this year the slogan “full-scale advance” was set up.

Our Attitude In the Last Days

How miserable have our people been until now?

Has there ever been once when it exalted the nation’s prestige and boasted before the many peoples? These people are truly pitiful.

This morning too I saw the young people of Japan returning, shedding tears for these people. Had Teacher Moon of the Unification Church not been present among these pitiful Korean people, what would have become of it?

The Teacher, reviled and resented by these people, opposed and driven and subjected to all sorts of humiliation, has held on to these people and not let go.

Now foreigners—that is, the seeds of Satan—have come to this land and been made to shed tears standing in this place where the Teacher was born and been made to yearn for this nation more than their homeland or hometown. When I consider this, I cannot help but praise the fact that the future of the Republic of Korea is dawning bright.

Then what is the attitude and authority you must hold? It is the attitude and authority of sons and daughters who can boast before all nations. To become such sons and daughters, one does not become a filial son or filial daughter in a seat of glory but must stand in a place where, in a place where all people reject and spit, one stands in for God and resolves, “I will take in God’s stead the arrows God is to receive.”

Even in a place of death, one must take God’s suffering in His stead, fulfill the responsibility of a son, and form a bond of filial piety. Thereby, one must gain God’s trust. You must know that this is the road the band of unification, persecuted and mocked, driven and pursued before these people, must go.

Upon the foundation thus made, we have planted the seed of life. Since a sprout has come up on it and a flower has bloomed and borne fruit, that fruit is the first fruit obtained, and by virtue of it, a national tradition and a worldwide tradition have become a foundation that can set out with a new heavenly bond. It goes without saying that upon such a foundation of victory, the Kingdom of Heaven sets out. You must know such facts well.

Besides the Korean people, many other peoples too can, from a general standpoint, become peoples that can boast. That is, viewed centered on the Unification Church, other peoples can keep the way of filial piety to God merely by praising the victory of Heaven’s side.

But you, being persecuted, driven, and pursued, grasping through experience (체휼) God’s sorrowful and aggrieved circumstances, and passing through the road of the cross of death that no one faces, must embrace God—only then do you set up a bond of filial piety.

We must, from such a place, become loyal subjects and filial children and go on fighting. Because this road is a road of holding a good foundation on which we can win a privilege that no people, no believer, no church, and no person at all can possess, we must, without fail, go it.

That is why, though outwardly we appear miserable, when we look at the inner account, it is content that can be cried out from a place so tense that the marrow of the bones melts and the beating of the heart stops.

If this becomes the motive and wellspring for resurrecting again the human beings of the world of death who had died, then the filial piety and loyalty in such a place are a good gift of one time that only we can hold and become a condition of boast that only we can possess.

Why, then, do you let such a condition of boast that you could possess be taken away by Satan and turned instead into a condition of curse by which Satan can accuse?

It is to hold it as a condition of boast, and it is for the sake of this that he has offered his life and fought, that the Teacher has walked the road until now. And yet you, though the time has come, lived as you pleased, eating and sleeping in comfort.

At such a time, you must feel shame that you failed in your responsibility, and, with the bright Kingdom of Heaven that all people yearn for set before you, writhe with the resolve to set up at least the fidelity of a filial child. You must know that the time when it must be so is the Second Seven-Year Course.

You do not now know how precious the fact is that you were able to take part in the Second Seven-Year Course. But wait and see, I say. Once a few years pass, the fact that you failed to go this road will be knotted as a thousand-year han. The Teacher’s words are not false.

Let Us Become Heaven’s Elite Troops and Charge the Enemy Camp

The many prophets and martyrs of the past are a band who received the priority to wail and appeal centered on their age. Shall we here reenact such a bond of history once more? I wish to ask you not to become a miserable band in a place where you lament, “Had I not known, I would have been happy….”

If, in the course of the struggle to found a new kingdom of peace that is the free Kingdom of Heaven, one has fought shedding blood more enormously than anyone, he will not perish. This is because the blood he shed is not the blood of death but the wellspring of life. The place thus founded is the foundation we must go to, must dwell in, and must leave behind. This is the bone-aching reality.

You must yearn for the day when, standing before Heaven and praying, “O Heaven! All that Thou didst wish to boast of, centered on the ideal of creation, has borne fruit in me. I have formed a oneness with Thy inner heart, which wished to set up the human being and boast forever to all the world,” God can answer, “Yes indeed!” —and, from such a place, march toward the Kingdom of Heaven of freedom and peace in which God rejoices.

And when the heavenly hosts and angels and all the beings of the whole universe praise, saying that at last the lord of creation has appeared, that a center has arisen, and so the resolution of han is accomplished, you must become sons and daughters who receive that praise and set up a foundation on which you can be embraced in God’s bosom of love.

Thereby you must hold as your own, forever and ever, the love of that God who is one and only, the Creator of all things, who can boast of His value for all ages, and who is the wellspring of life.

Centered on this, the world is within it, and even God is within it. Therefore, you must know that if you become one who loses this epochal point of the age, which can leave behind such absolute authority of love, you fail to set up the standard of boast that God intends to set up through the unification ideology.

For the sake of such a purpose, you must go this road today and tomorrow. Do you understand?

We who go this road within a worldwide environment are like lonely orphans, but we are by no means orphans. Behind us are God’s elite troops, who prepared this day through hundreds of millions of ages of history, and these are precisely the countless spirit individuals in the spiritual world. They have all prepared a place from which they can act centered on the earth.

Therefore, you must consider that reinforcements are scattered throughout the world and become Heaven’s elite troops who, as brave warriors, charge in full assault against the enemy camp.

You must not fall behind here and become a petty man. And I ask that, by passing through this barrier and thereby following God’s purpose, those who wish to boast become the ancestors of humankind who inherit God’s love from a seat of glory and march forever and ever. Do you understand well, all of you? “Yes.”