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1. We have to search for True Parents and then fulfill our filial duty to those parents. Adam and Eve did not fulfill their duty of filial piety to God. Originally, they were to have had children only after fulfilling that duty.
Then they should have taught their children to follow that way. As a result, a tribe was to appear with a God-centered tradition of heart. To establish that tribe, God has worked through six thousand years of history. (15-218, 1965.10.10)
Meeting True Parents
2. We may have thought that if we could only meet God, that would be enough. Yet human beings still feel distant from Him. Simply put because our ancestors could not become true ancestors, we were unable to have True Parents and could not become true children.
This means that, even if we were victorious over Satan, we could know God only from the perspective of an adopted child. To have a direct relationship with God, we have to attend the True Parents. (5-184, 1959.01.18)
3. What is our ultimate purpose? It is to return to God. It is to experience love directly with God. To do so, we have to meet the True Parent. If you were to meet the True Parent in his youth, that time should not be seen only as one person's youth, but as a time of historical destiny.
It is the time that traverses the age of the adopted child and that of the direct child. Although he is an individual like you and me, he has the unique value of being able to connect the individual to the whole; thus we can become counterparts of the Absolute Being.
Therefore, when we attend the True Parents, the value of an individual who began as a servant of servants, or as a servant, or as an adopted child, rises to that of a direct child. Only by attending True Parents can we connect to them and form an eternal bond with them. (36-229, 1970.12.06)
4. In what kind of place would you want to meet the Messiah? Where would you want to meet the bridegroom Jesus? How would you prepare, and how would you want to look when you went before him? These are serious questions.
Would Jesus want a bride who welcomed him with a radiant lamp of glory, saying, “You are my bridegroom.” Or would he want a miserable-looking bride weeping uncontrollably in a lonely place like Gethsemane, saying, “My ancestors could not fulfill their responsibility”? How would you answer?
Before meeting the bride of glory, the Lord seeks the bride of suffering. You attain the qualification to become the bride by going through the destined way of the bride of suffering. This is the course of restoration.
If a child seeks to resolve the sorrow of his or her father, the child must experience a deeper sorrow than that of the father. (14-223, 1964.12.27)
5. In the course of the providence of restoration the individual has hurdles to overcome. Until now, the six-thousand-year history has been to find the one lost Adam. It has taken six thousand years to find one perfect man. At a certain point in time, one individual overcomes all hurdles and attains perfection.
Only by overcoming these obstacles can a new eternal bond with God be formed. Today is that time, that age of hope, for which humankind has been longing.
Furthermore, the person who has come to the earth as one perfected man is the Savior for whom all people have been waiting. This is our understanding of the Savior, the Messiah. (31-009, 1970.04.08)
6. The True Parents come only once in all eternity. America needs them, Christians need them, Buddhists need them, each country needs them. They are the central figures who are needed by everyone, from the individual to the family, tribe, people, and nation.
Originally, True Parents should have taken care of all things, but because of the Fall, false parents appeared and all was lost. Therefore, True Parents will come to transform and resolve everything.
If you follow True Parents first as an individual, and then as a family, tribe, people, nation, world, and cosmos, you will go to heaven. Until now, you believed in the Unification Church and followed True Parents as an individual, and you wanted to go to heaven, but that's not enough.
If your family believes, you follow as a family; if all at once the nation believes, you will follow with the nation, and if suddenly the whole world believes, everyone will go to heaven. (259-317, 1994.04.24)
7. Because God has gone forward selflessly, I could not go forward-thinking of myself. God has been looking for a person such as me. Without finding such a person on earth, one who could pay indemnity, He was unable to resolve his sorrow.
God's six-thousand-year history of sorrow dwells in my family. Enemies within and without have persecuted and tried to stop me. God also walked this path. This came about because of our wrongdoing. No one has been able to understand God's deep heart.
In this environment, God struggled to find and raise the family of His ideal. Now that the True Parents have come forth, you too have to walk the same path. You cannot go this way without resolving the past, and you cannot go this way thinking of your family.
You need to know how great my internal suffering was. I should be able to forget my suffering by looking at your family. Blessed families should become a shield around the Parents' family, and should be able to demonstrate excellence. They should be families that represent a new world. Even now, there should be people who are striving to become those families. (20-045, 1968.04.13)
8. Until now, you have prayed to your Father as if you were in the kingdom of heaven. But if your Father is in a serious and pitiful situation, you should feel that you too are in such a situation. Even though we cannot express this, in our hearts we have to share our Father's pitiful situation.
We should say, “Father, no matter what sorrow I may have, no matter what difficulty I may face, don't worry.” We have to be able to fulfill our filial duty and comfort Him. Unless such a person appears on the earth, there is no way to solve the problems of history.
Even if we stand in an extremely difficult position, we should not desire God's sympathy. Rather, we should offer God our sympathy. Jesus appeared as the culmination of our eternal bond with God, which has endured throughout the ages of history. But because Jesus could not fulfill God's Will, the Lord who comes again has to do so.
This is the way of the Lord of the Second Advent. This is the path of the True Parents. True Parents are the result of the hope of history. The True Parents are the historical, conditional, substantial beings that God raised to represent the whole. (31-077, 1970.04.19)
The foundation of faith
9. Through belief in True Parents, the Unification Church has entered the age when we can educate our sons and daughters directly.
Therefore, if you follow the path of the True Parents, unite in heart, and offer devotion, you will naturally become one with them and your conscience will clearly distinguish what is good and bad. You gradually will become brighter.
God is not far away. You are object partners of God's love, sons, and daughters who receive God's love. We should always be aware that God dwells in our conscience. This means we are one body. We need to feel that God is our vertical Father.
We should keep this in mind as we lead our daily lives. If you do so, all of your ancestors in heaven will be with you and the realm of the angels will be with you.
Through this, representing Adam's family, you will realize a perfect family and go directly to the kingdom of heaven. (275-163, 1995.12.04)
10. Because the True Parents are the central figures who establish the standard of faith in the foundational period, you need to follow True Parents with absolute faith, absolute love, and absolute obedience.
The True Parents have explained everything up to the world level, from the ideal of creation through the Fall and restoration. These are not mere words. True Parents have gone this way and built bridges. This is why the completion of the Old Testament Age, the New Testament Age, and the Completed Testament Age depends on me.
Because the Fall destroyed the object partner that God created through His absolute faith, love, and obedience, and because God is looking for that object partner, we cannot help but invest everything with absolute faith and love.
(294-213, 1998.07.19)
11. Abraham built an altar where he prayed and earnestly pleaded for Sodom and Gomorrah; his devotion was like a hidden root. Your heart for the area where you are living and the people of that area should be on fire like Abraham's.
Never forget that you are to take over the foundation of faith that Abraham established through his course of hard work, which is like a hidden root. God promised Abraham's family, who are our spiritual ancestors, that they would be the source of blessings.
This expanded as it passed through Isaac and Jacob to Moses, forming a people. Through Jesus, it expanded to the world scale. Abraham's heart of deep faith and loyalty to Heaven created this connection to God. Do you know the hidden secret that allowed Abraham to become our spiritual ancestor?
He loved God and faced Heaven alone, and he lived for the earth. Therefore, he could establish the foundation for a deep and wide relationship with Heavenly Father. (1-140, 1956.07.01)
The foundation of substance
12. It is never easy to remove fallen nature. Even when trying to overcome long-term habits such as smoking or drinking, we go back and forth repeatedly. Then how can it be easy to remove our deeply rooted fallen nature, passed through our bloodline for many thousands of years? It is impossible by human effort alone.
Even if you make God the center of your life, attend Him with absolute faith, and struggle throughout your whole life, it is a difficult battle. There is no point in even attempting this unless you are ready to attend God as the True Parent, with absolute love greater than the love you have for your parents and children.
(442-272, 2004.03.12)
13. When God decides a course of action, He always establishes the positions of Cain and Abel. He teaches us through Cain. From this position, we have to pioneer the way of sorrow, pain, and death.
Since enduring and pioneering to the end is the way of restoration, even Jesus ended up being crucified on the cross. Through his resurrection, the foundation of victory was laid, and the Holy Spirit descended. This was the decisive beginning from which Christianity spread to the world. (14-254, 1965.01.01)
14. When Cain and Abel's spheres are united into one nation and sovereignty, God's eternal, ideal kingdom of heaven on earth is established for the first time.
The Unification Church has to go forward for that purpose, leading Cain and securing a foothold for the Parents. We need to do this constantly as they go forward. We need to make Cain and Abel families and Cain and Abel tribes.
When we have a base that allows us to go forward and unite Cain and Abel's nations, on that foundation our Parents can go forward to the world level.
(056-356, 1972.05.18)
15. Christianity is the elder brother who remains with us to the end. That being so, unless we become one with this elder brother, there is no way to avoid death. We are facing that fate.
What is God's hope?
It is that the Unification Church and Christianity will join hands. This is due to the Principle. The Parents can be recognized only when Cain and Abel become one. Through Cain and Abel, the Parents can be reclaimed.
Yet because of the separation and conflict between Cain and Abel, the Parents' way forward was blocked. Only when Cain and Abel unite and form a tribe on the world level will the Parents emerge. When that unity occurs in the democratic world, the groundwork will be laid for a world-level victory. (60-303, 1972.08.18)
16. Today, in the course of restoration, if you like to save Cain, you have to triple your effort. This will not work if you only give orders and do not know how to take orders. This is not the correct attitude. Abel shed his blood. It is a significant fact that he shed his blood to prepare the way for Cain to live.
That is the standard for victory, and it is the way a pastor must go. As a pastor, you need to ask yourself whether you have taken an Abel-like responsibility for the members. You have to ask yourself if you have sincerely tried to raise one person as if it were your life's purpose. (070-150, 1974.02.09)
17. Through the victorious foundation of Cain and Abel's unity, the Parents can appear on the earth. Once they are here, for the first time, we can receive blessings and heaven can start anew. We go to heaven not on our own, but by attending the Pour parents.
We can say that the Parents have already appeared in the Unification Church, but the world-level Cain-Abel indemnity conditions are incomplete, and the foundation of the blessed couples is not secure. As an Abel-side family representative, you have to be victorious and receive Heaven's blessing.
The neighbors should bow down in tears and say, “Even if the world is destroyed, your family should be blessed.” You can only stand in the eldest son's position if your community bows down to you and reveres your family. (100-315, 1978.10.22)
Sun Myung Moon