Former Headquarters Church.
John 1:1–13
Prayer
Father, today again we have prostrated ourselves here. Each time we stand in this place, we cannot help but ask ourselves: For whom am I standing here? Grant that we may become those who can stand for the Father, for humankind, for this people, and who can take responsibility for the many denominations and the many sons and daughters who are Yours. Let this not become a time when something apart from Heaven rules over us.
Father, we long for You. We long for the voice of the Father, who made promises to us in secret places, and we long for the words of counsel by which the Father, loving us, urged us to endure and press on.
Every person lives longing for a new stimulation, a stronger stimulation, and a new environment in which they can move. It is for this reason that human beings have created history, that they have widened the bonds of the individual to pioneer society, and have gone on to form peoples and to establish nations and the world.
When we consider that human beings came forth in this way to pursue ever higher ideals and to taste new joy; when we consider that the Father who created humankind is all the more so, we come to know that the Father who created humankind is all the more so.
We have come to know that when human beings grieved and shed tears, the Father too shed tears, and that when human beings sighed, the Father too sighed. We know well that for those who, caring nothing even for death, offer up their lives and run for the sake of true goodness, He has driven back the darkness and all the obstructions of the enemy and raised a new history of resurrection.
Father, these people were a starving people, a people with nowhere to lean, a people without hope, a people with nothing to boast of. Each time it leaned upon something, these people were held captive by it and were trampled by it. For this reason, we cannot deny that the Father's sorrow in facing these people was great.
When we examine the history of these people, we know that, through the invasions of other peoples, countless twists and tangles were woven together, and that each time the people were torn, trampled, driven, and cast into wretched circumstances.
Here we have gathered, we who have received the flesh and blood of this people.
The time has come for us to appeal to Heaven to resolve the han (한) of this people. In this situation, where these people, placed in wretched straits, waver back and forth at the crossroads of life and death, who shall be the one to become its center?
We do not wish to believe in anything of man. We do not wish to rely on anything whatsoever. The Father surely knows that, even while we were driven and pursued, we appealed for the day to come when that which wells up from the center of this heart and explodes with Heaven as its center would lead this people. On this day, too, we have stood here to forge such a bond.
What are these sons and daughters of Yours, gathered here, seeking with that heart? Do we have anything to boast of?
Have we acquired the knowledge of the world? Do we possess any worldly glory? Yet we have clearly come to know that everything acquired humanly will vanish together with the human being and cannot be bound to the Father.
We have come to know that the heart (심정) surging up toward Heaven and the earnest desire to give our utmost loyalty do not well up from the shock given by any philosophy, nor do they well up from the shock given by the history of humankind.
We know well that today's religion, with whatever it possesses, cannot praise the grace of resurrection, nor can it strike the heart of the believers of the early church of old, whose hearts soared to the heavens as they cried out toward Heaven.
We who, believing and hoping and pressing on, sometimes shed blood and sometimes fell into despair, have now cast off everything and come before the Father with naked bodies like little children. Much learning complicated our minds, and many ideologies (主義) likewise made our living environment wretched.
When we look closely, if it could be said that we had any teacher, it was only the conscience and a certain warning of the heavenly order (천륜) that strikes into that conscience.
We have come to know that the time has come when we can sing the song of liberation, and that the time has come when we must raise the beacon of a new heart and sound the trumpet of the march; therefore, Father, gather the young people of purpose. Gather your sons and daughters who shed tears of blood and cry out for the sake of this people.
We are not a throng that appeals by following some ideology. Rather, we await the day when we ourselves, by first dying, may become fertilizer and sprout as new buds upon this people. We pledge before You that we will become such people.
Therefore, Father, before we speak, let us first grasp through experience (체휼) Your heart; and may You alone, with an earnest heart, occupy our breasts and melt our hearts.
How greatly have You longed for us to re-examine ourselves with supernatural awareness, to fix the position of our existence, and to appear in the form of a new resurrection?
We know that the time of hope, which the Father has longed and longed for, is near. Now let these sons and daughters of Yours, gathered here, return to the heart of a little child. We have come to know that, however much a human being may know something, it cannot be compared with the things of Heaven.
We know that only when there is the satisfaction of that moment of being held in Your bosom can one transcend the concept of time and rejoice eternally, transcend the concept of time and be thankful eternally, and sing of happiness eternally. We also know that such a world—the world of the ideal of creation that the Father has desired—must be realized upon this earth.
Today, we are wounded by the twists and turns that arise in society, but we await the eternal world of freedom, happiness, and peace that can fill this in and transcend time; therefore, let us be bound to such a world. We know that You are the Father who leads us to such a world, and we know that we are the ones who must come forward, resolved to make every sacrifice to build such a world.
Therefore, let this be a step that comes forward for this. Guide us so that we lack nothing in being qualified to receive the Father's blessing, and grant that we may become those who lack nothing in establishing the standing of being the Father's children. Father, earnestly we beseech and desire it.
Father, look with compassion upon this capital city, look with compassion upon these people, look with compassion upon this humankind.
Now we need a lifeline by which we can break through this environment where the waves of death surge. Grant that we may ride that lifeline and sing of the grace of having been saved, and let the day come quickly when the triumphant song of victory can ring out through this heaven and earth.
What words shall we speak at this hour? Since we have come forward bearing the Will You have permitted, reveal Your desire and Your Will that You wish to convey. Let the heart of the one who conveys and the hearts of those who receive become one, and earnestly we ask that this may be an hour in which we can be bound to something new that we have never felt before, and return bearing something new—we have prayed in the name of the Lord. Amen.
The title of the message I intend to consider together with you today is “The Consciousness of Purpose in All Beings and the One World.” I will speak under this title: “The Consciousness of Purpose in All Beings and the One World.”
What Humanity in the Last Days Desires
Each one of us exists as one among many beings. Yet there is a certain motive behind our having come to exist in this way. We cannot deny that this motive, compared with myself, must in every respect be something absolute, greater than myself, and the very source of power.
Behind even a single blade of grass, there is a power greater than itself, and there is an absolute source that makes it exist as a living thing. Going further, even when we look at the human being — that is, at my single individual self — there are physiological phenomena and the workings of emotion and heart.
Seeing these things, we can infer that there must surely be, behind us, some motivating something that gives rise to the workings that bring such phenomena into being and that elicits the heart.
The human being, called the lord of creation, tries to value himself highly without even knowing his value of existence.
However much knowledge a person on this earth may possess, with external things, he cannot speak of a value higher than life. However supreme a being one may be — able to boast before all the world in politics, economics, culture, religion, or any other field — one cannot be said to possess anything beyond the value of the life one received at birth from one's mother. Such is the human being. Seen from this viewpoint, the question arises whether this world today is truly a world and an ideal world.
More than anything, the human being possesses precious life. Yet unless we live as the object partner to the power that moves this life and gives shock to this life, we cannot find rest in this world, which is the relational world of that power.
Therefore, the human being seeks to forge a bond with an absolute life-entity greater than their life. This is inevitable. And so we cannot but bestow upon the One who has set up this Will and has been carrying out the providence such names as the Absolute One or God.
You know that those who live in this present time, the historical end-time, suffer all the greater anguish the more knowledge they have. And everyone knows well that this anguish dominates one's own vital force and makes it impossible to pioneer the welfare in which life can find rest.
What is inevitably required at such a time is a resting place for life that comes through the Absolute One. Everyone, without exception, demands this, and we must realize that all people need it, beyond peoples and beyond the cultures of East and West.
From this viewpoint, we can recognize the fact that we long for something through which we can be bound to the Absolute One. The more a person is equipped with much knowledge and has cultivated his character, the more acute his faculty of cognition through consciousness; the better he knows that with the specialized field he knows alone, he cannot pioneer a resting place for life.
Therefore, we must realize that the human being has nothing whatsoever to boast of. Since the course of human life begins in anguish and ends in anguish, there is nothing to boast of. For this reason, if no one appears who can resolve such problems, this world will perish.
You must keenly feel the fact that, unless some ideology that can resolve this comes forth upon the earth, humankind will be placed in a state of despair, able neither to retreat nor to advance.
Human beings did not know this fact, but from of old until now there has been One who has labored, through human beings, to open a single gate of life throughout all heaven and earth; and that One is none other than the Absolute One, God. How thankful a thing this is! To recognize the actual existence of such a God — the protagonist who will build the welfare of life, the Absolute One — and to come forth seeking the method of its resolution: this is religion.
Yet religion, until now, has struggled while clinging to conceptual things.
Therefore, the problem becomes: how shall this conceptual form of religion be transformed into a life-giving form of religion?
Religious people must devote their greatest passion to this problem. This is a grave problem for which, if there is an Absolute One in the heavens, the answer must be obtained directly from that Absolute One.
All Beings Created According to the Consciousness of Purpose
If there is a Creator, and if a being is a creation made through Him, then that creation must surely have a consciousness of purpose (목적의식) or a purposiveness (목적성) by which it seeks to attain some purpose.
This is an undeniable fact. However clever a person may be, he cannot deny it. If even a single tiny thing has a protagonist who made it, then that tiny thing too surely has a consciousness of purpose or purposiveness bestowed by its protagonist.
The point is that the consciousness of purpose or purposiveness bestowed by the Absolute One who made it pre-exists (先在) the consciousness of purpose or purposiveness that the thing itself possesses.
Therefore, we cannot deny that all beings were made according to some consciousness of purpose of the Absolute One. And so, the more a person has learned and the broader his vision becomes, the stronger his consciousness of purpose grows.
Furthermore, the greater the authority one holds, the greater one's consciousness of purpose becomes. When there is a sovereign who has established some sovereignty, we see that the more greatly he feels the value of what he purposes with that sovereignty at the center, the more he desires to achieve something newer and of wider scope.
For this reason, all of us human beings — from the individual, beyond the family, to society, nation, and world — are in anguish because of this very problem.
Then will the world that human beings have hoped for, passing through the six-thousand-year course of history, end as this kind of world?
If so, it is too vain.
Anyone whose mind is somewhat awakened will think: Is there not, beyond this, a world utterly perfect and without flaw — a world transcending religion, transcending the difference between East and West, and further, a world in which the consciousness of purpose is realized, where heaven and earth can be grafted into a single life-entity and move as one? That time has come.
All the sensations we feel as we live are driving us to advance toward a world of some purpose. I cannot fully know that world of purpose, but I can know that the sensations felt through the five senses are driving me to advance toward a greater world of purpose.
Then, on what basis does God drive us?
Human beings live by establishing concepts recognized through ideology and consciousness. Here God drives us based on the sensation and life that come to be felt from the consciousness of purpose of the whole.
What is consciousness, dear friends?
Consciousness, simply put, is the totality of experiences or phenomena that we can actually experience. Psychologists say that consciousness contains experience, contains representation, and contains emotion. This refers to what is experienced through the five senses of the human being.
Through this consciousness, we pursue an absolute purpose. Yet with this absolute consciousness of purpose, life cannot be governed. Can philosophy or psychology solve this problem? It is impossible. Every discipline of learning has come up against this problem.
Though our human body is small, this mind extends beyond time and space into the infinite world. Yet this mind must, within daily life, be connected to some world-level consciousness of purpose; otherwise, it derails. It will be swept into the pit of evil and fall into a state of despair.
The human being has a conscience that can set the environment in order. And there are ethics and morality that set that conscience in order. Ethics and morality are connected to a higher ideology, and so the human being, based on that ideology, pursues something higher. Nevertheless, humankind today cannot lay a hand on the problem of life.
How shall this be solved?
Humanity Must Advance Again Toward the World of Purpose
If God exists, then that God must establish the purpose and value of all that exists.
To do so, the day must come when one being is set up to bring the standard of life to completion, and when all beings possessing a consciousness of purpose can form a relationship with the life of God and can sing the song of liberation. Unless that day comes, there can be no true liberation for humankind, and no life of true freedom.
For this reason, religion has been advocating for life.
If you analyze your consciousness of purpose, you will find that it has two directions. The first is the living direction, for the body to eat and survive; the second is the life direction that, going beyond this, moves based on conscience. No philosopher today has crossed the boundary line between these two.
Religious people, emphasizing the life direction, and worldly people, emphasizing the bodily direction, the external direction, come forth toward the consciousness of purpose. Coming forth, taking such different directions — this is the phenomenon up to now.
Then, at what time will these be united?
In what direction has God led those who walk the path of the Way, the loyal sons and daughters who, with souls thirsting, devote all their devotion and follow Heaven? He has not led them in the direction of eating well and living well.
Because God knows that from the very day of the fall the human being must advance again toward the world of purpose; because He is the God who knows that, to rebuild this world based on internal consciousness, infinite struggle and infinite hardship must be passed through; because He knows that in the end a world based on life must be established, and because He is the God who holds the heart of love for human beings — He cannot but make human beings deny this world and pioneer the path this world must take, and He cannot but lead them in that direction.
From this viewpoint, God establishes religion to set humankind in order. Therefore, those who follow religion have denied all external things. The footsteps of religion until now have counseled people to cast off all things tangled in external and environmental bonds and circumstances and, further, to go beyond even the problem of the heart and run, utterly alone, toward the destination of life.
Therefore, the consciousness of purpose of human beings seeks one world, one point of convergence, and God too is surely carrying out the providence in that way.
God desires to have human beings realize the value of the substantial entity they possess and to set them up as one being who can boast before all the world. This is precisely the path the human being must walk, and we must realize how thankful we should be for God, who tells us to walk this path.
This is not a vague consciousness of purpose. Even if it is vague, even though the suffering of the cross is added from the surrounding environment and there is some persecution, one must be able to press forward with the conscious concept felt in the heart at the center.
If a human being were equipped with all such life-content and the content of welfare, and possessed an ideology that gives shock to life, there would be nothing more to wish for. We must realize that the human being advances toward that purpose.
Then, where is the point of convergence at which all existing creations must arrive?
It must be a new world that can be freely felt beyond consciousness or concept. If there is an Absolute One, there must be the Absolute One's ideal of creation; and if there is an ideal of creation, there must be the world of purpose that the ideal pursues.
If He is the Creator, He must possess the value that can become the foundation of the world He purposes. He is surely the Heaven that comes forth seeking such value. Therefore, you too must eat for the sake of that purpose and live for the sake of that purpose.
In forging the valuable bond between that consciousness of purpose and the conceptions of daily life, and in fulfilling responsibility before Heaven, the conscience is giving us a shock.
You must clearly know that the human being stands in this position. The human being is placed in such a position. That consciousness of purpose moves humankind and moves the heavenly order, sets history in order, changes concepts, and, selecting an ideological lineage, advances toward that destination.
The Lost World of Purpose
Then let us examine in what position God stands. God sees, hears, speaks, and feels through the consciousness of purpose. And just as we have intellect, emotion, and will (知情意), God too has intellect, emotion, and will.
Then what consciousness of purpose does God, who is the original substance of intellect, emotion, and will, possess?
It is surely the case that He did not come to have a consciousness of purpose after creating, but that He had a consciousness of purpose before creation and then created.
If He were not such a One, He could not set history in order—because there is, behind history, a power that cannot be felt by human cognition.
If God had no such bond, He could not lead history and all humankind toward the purposed world. Therefore, God, even though human beings have fallen, feels to the marrow the world-level consciousness of purpose that ought to have been bestowed upon unfallen human beings.
The world realized that beyond the consciousness of purpose is the world of freedom, the world of infinite happiness, the world of peace. Not only that, but God is thinking even beyond the consciousness of purpose, to the world of the heart.
God set up the human being and blessed him to have dominion over all things. He created the human being to have dominion not only over all things but also over all beings in heaven and on earth. Yet this purpose of creation was not attained.
Do you know what doctrine God wished to teach Adam long ago?
He wished to teach the doctrine of the world of the ideal of creation, which could realize the purpose God intended. Yet He could not teach it. The point is that such a doctrine did not come forth.
God knows all things, but the earth does not know. And yet, until now, this earth has made a practice of betraying the God who knows. Therefore, this earth must receive judgment.
Even a person who knows the cultural history of the world somewhat, who sets up his own doctrinal concepts and boasts, thinking that this much should let him pass as a clever person in society—if you ask him, “What was it that God desired of Adam?” and again, “What value did God seek to establish through Adam?” — he will say, “I do not know.”
Humankind lost its primal purpose and its ideology. It lost the purpose of the ideal of creation, and the one world in which God and human beings were to live together.
Where has that world gone? Humankind must long for that world even in dreams and long for that world even when awake (生時). Yet though our life today, without rest, seeks to go toward that world, the power of this life is insufficient.
Therefore, all the seekers of the Way who came as representatives of humankind to manifest goodness, or the countless saints and sages, all died as they tried to drag this evil earth into that world. Because they grasped through experience and experienced God as the source of life and that very thing as the consciousness of purpose, they were able to pass even over the crisis of death. And in so doing, they laid a bridge before this humankind.
The Unity of Heaven, Earth, God, and Humanity Through the Heart
People often say that there is Heaven, there is Earth, and there are God and human beings. The world is composed of these — Heaven, Earth, God, and Humanity (天地神人) — yet each of these is separate.
Heaven and earth, God and human beings, are split apart from one another. Heaven and earth are split into Heaven and earth, and God and humanity into God and the human being. So what must be done? They must be set in order.
We cannot live apart from the earth. Going further, we cannot live apart from the conscience and the higher heavenly order. This is because the conscience stands in the place of Heaven (天) and the body stands in the place of earth (地).
If there is an Absolute One — a being possessing a single value that can harmonize heaven and earth—then it is the human being who has been set up as the representative being who can forge a heart-bond with that Absolute One.
Therefore, on the day when the body that stands in the place of earth, the mind that stands in the place of Heaven, and the heart that stands in the place of God are united, all problems will be solved.
I sometimes think this: that if the body and mind of the human being, and God and the human being, could be made one in heart, then not only world unification but also the unification of heaven and earth would be realized.
If a human being thinks like this, how much more would the thoughts of the One who established the ideal of creation and created this heaven and earth be so? It is surely so.
Then, for the sake of forging what kind of relationship with this heaven and earth and with the human being, did God create all the phenomena of heaven and earth (天地萬象)? The human being must conclude this.
If there is a victorious brave one who can conclude that “Heaven, Earth, God, and Humanity are one body and must be unified in heart,” then his body will be God's body and his mind will be God's mind. It is in this sense that Jesus said, “I am one with God.”
Because God created all beings based on the heart, there is not a single thing among all things that departs from God's heart. Therefore, Jesus, to find the point of heart-convergence with God and to prepare that place, came upon this earth and said, “I am the Son of God, the only begotten Son.” The Messiah!
Is one the Messiah unconditionally?
He is not the Messiah unconditionally. Many great figures, or prophets, came and went throughout history, but who among them spoke such words? Who among them called himself the bridegroom and called human beings the bride and the children? Herein lies the meaning.
Then, where is there a family that can commune with the heart of God, apart from a family based on the social system centered on some ideology or thought?
Where is there a person who can commune with the heart of God?
Where are there children who can commune with the heart of God? Where are there people and humankind who can commune with the heart of God? Where is there a person who, through the consciousness of purpose, can sing of eternal happiness and, staking his life, rejoice? There is none. Therefore, one must indeed be saved. We are such beings.
If God set up a purpose and gave the human being life, He surely does not intend to leave that life just as it is. When we dig more deeply into the content of life, the heart emerges. The heart is love. It is life, and it is love. Therefore, He advocates life and advocates love.
What God has desired until this day is, as the subject of life and the subject of love, to realize the ideal world of love together with human beings who have become true life-entities under His consciousness of purpose. Yet such a world has not yet been realized.
To Arrive at the World of Purpose
History until now has been for the sake of bringing all things to convergence before the absolute standard of life. Through the absolute purpose of creation and the absolute consciousness of purpose, we must become one with God. To become one, we must make contact ideologically, and further, we must make contact in terms of life. Only after making contact in terms of life are we connected to the love of God. This is why Jesus said, “I am life.”
Then what did Jesus leave behind when he departed?
He left behind love. The three — faith, hope, and love — will always remain, and of these the greatest, he said, is love. What does that mean? It means that, to arrive at the proposed world, the love of God is needed.
Dear friends, would a person who has received the love of God even once fall away from God? Would he oppose God?
It cannot be. If even human beings, having loved one another once, cannot forget each other even unto death, how much more would a person who has grasped through experience the love of God—which can carry one beyond the world of the consciousness of purpose—surrender to anything of this earth? Herein lies the reason Jesus was able to bless even his enemies.
Now then, let us open the door of our minds and look. Emotion and sensation are pursuing a purpose. All my movements are advancing toward that world of purpose.
So it is with my individual self, so with the family, so with society, so with the world. Even so, can this world simply pass over into that world of purpose just as it is? It cannot pass over just as it is. Therefore, there must be a transformation of heaven and earth (천지개벽). Look at the Bible.
Whatever religious scripture (經書) on the earth you look at, in the end, a transformation of heaven and earth appears as the conclusion. It is a transformation of heaven and earth.
Eternal Cognition and Grasp Through Experience
Dear friends, people love everything they see with their eyes. Whether an emperor seated upon a high throne or a beggar, every person loves life-giving things. Is it not so?
Only the degree of liking differs according to the high or low level of one's cognition; the liking itself is the same for everyone. Art and culture came forth to make even what is seen converge into one and what is heard converge into one.
When you look at the painting of a great painter, what must you be able to see through that painting?
You must be able to see the world. Only then can one become a world-class painter. It is the same with what is heard. Music that wearies you after hearing it once is not a masterpiece. Music that you can call good, whether you are angry or sad, whether suffering or merry — that is a masterpiece. That is to say, it must transcend time. It must transcend the age. No one can deny this.
All the feelings that come in through the five senses are the same for anyone who is a human being. Whether Eastern or Western, whether civilized or primitive, it is the same for everyone who is a human being. There is only a difference of degree. Analyzing the essence and determining the value are the same.
If God created the human being to sense all things through the five senses, then if the happiness a human being feels through the senses ends as something momentary, God would not be an ideal Creator. He would be a temporal Creator, a limited Creator.
Even if it is difficult in reality, when we think about it in abstract conception, if it is the things of heaven and earth created by God, then there must be a content that can be eternally grasped through experience whenever any person—whether primitive or civilized—looks upon them even once.
This is the same as what is heard and what is felt. Only then can He be called the ideal God and the Absolute One. Indeed, it is so.
Thought of from such a standpoint, the human being has something that comes in through the intuitive conscience, beyond the consciousness and cognition that come in through the five senses. Kant too clearly said so.
If a human being were to seize that world, open the door of that world, and there grasp through experience something intuitive, something inspirational, then what he saw once he would not forget even in dreams.
What is seen once lasts a thousand years, ten thousand years. This is why mystics today, not knowing whether they will live or die, devote their lives to asserting a single fragment of the spiritual world they have seen. That is how it is.
With music too, once heard, the emotion must be eternal. Once you are immersed in it, you must be intoxicated as though it were the last. The highest idealism is what intoxicates the human being in this way. It must transcend time, go beyond the living environment, and transcend even the world of world-level emotion. This is the course that idealists must pass through.
If the human being was created as a being that synthesizes Heaven, Earth, God, and Humanity, able to sense, grasp through experience, and discern all things, then God is a magnificent Creator. There, the word attainment of the Way (道通) becomes possible.
Where does God gather Heaven, the human being, and the earth into total convergence?
He gathers them into one world through the consciousness of purpose. With what? He does it with life-content that can govern our consciousness and concepts. Then the problem is how to bring this life-content into contact with the internal consciousness and concepts, and what is needed here is love.
Many people upon this earth have cried out for love and departed, but none has grasped through experience the love of God beyond the consciousness of purpose.
The one who, having grasped this through experience, sought to give shock to human beings from the closest distance so that they could become aware of that love, was Jesus, who came as the bridegroom.
Jesus, who represented Heaven, was a man who possessed God.
Since God, who governs heaven and earth, entered into Jesus, Jesus was a man who could govern the world, a real existence who could overturn the world.
The ideology of Jesus—this is at once the ideology of God and the ideology of the human being. The point is that this must converge in the one being that is myself.
Therefore, God, having set up the standard of life—that is, love—has been facing humankind until this day.
Humanity Who Must Find the Lost World
Then, in what position are we today, and what must we do?
We are going forward, gazing upon the world of purpose. This is because God drives us human beings into that world of purpose.
If sons and daughters of God appear who are equipped with the bond of life and love through the consciousness of purpose, the world of purpose will be realized.
We must realize the world.
Then what world will come after that?
A world in which heaven and earth, and God and humanity, are united will come. A world will come in which all things well up from the heart of God and, through the point of convergence of that heart, forge bonds and are set in order. A world of heart-bonds will come. A world will come in which the bond of father and child is forged—the Creator being the Father, and human beings the sons and daughters.
From the very day heaven and earth came into being, God hoped for such a world, but because of the fall of human beings, such a world was not realized.
God and Jesus were to forge the bond of love, and Jesus and the Holy Spirit were to forge the bond of love, to destroy the satanic world. Yet even today, such a victorious standard has not been established.
The work that Jesus and the Holy Spirit did was the work of giving you life. It is to resurrect life. This is because only by attaining the purpose of resurrection can the purpose of love be attained.
Seen in this way, how greatly must God, six thousand years ago, having created Adam and Eve, have longed and waited for the day to realize such a world?
Today, most people believe that when God created the human being, He made him as a fully grown person, grown enough to ride about on horseback. But it is not so. He created him according to the law of nature.
Cain and Abel, born of Adam and Eve, the human ancestors, were not sons born with the love of God at the center. Adam and Eve are our ancestors, driven out, chased by God's whip. Such are our ancestors.
Originally, Adam and Eve ought to have received from God the blessing: “Beloved Adam, beloved Eve, I have created you to build the world of the creation-purpose of the whole universe, the garden of love; therefore, you are the king of peace and the king of happiness.” No other being on this earth can become king. Only our ancestors were to become kings.
Adam was able to stand as the king of the earth and the king of heaven for all ages, eternally and without end. If we ask who it was that could first be given the name of king after heaven and earth came into being, after the bond of God and human beings came into being, it is precisely our ancestor Adam.
That king is at once eternal life and eternal love.
If Adam and Eve had become the ancestors of humankind based on eternal life and eternal love, what would they be but kings?
Had it been so, we would have been born as princes before all the world of existence. Yet what happened?
God bestowed upon Adam and Eve the authority to have dominion over all things.
What was the purpose of this?
It was to set up Adam as the crown prince who could accompany the heart of God and the life of God eternally. It was to enthrone Eve as the empress.
Therefore, we ought to resent our ancestors Adam and Eve.
If there is one who greatly feels, in his life today, the fact that our ancestors of the past betrayed the heavenly order and is enraged, saying, “God's wrath accumulated over six thousand years could not be resolved even by taking up a sword and striking off their necks” — Heaven will bless him.
Therefore, what was lost must be found again. Because, since the creation of human beings and of heaven and earth, the prince of Heaven has not come, the doctrine of the Second Advent is the attempt to enthrone that prince — the doctrine of the Second Advent. To say that one goes to paradise if one believes is a vague faith. The time of believing in such a rough-and-ready way has passed.
God has been setting the world in order through this consciousness of purpose, and has worked through history until now to drive human beings into that world of purpose. Why? Because the time to attain the purpose remains, He drives history on.
In this, there have been many victims, because He works history by striking human beings. He sets up some people and then strikes them. He must work history striking in this way.
The course that ought to be walked is a straight line, yet the road being walked is winding. It is going along in a winding way. Therefore, striking, He moves the individual, moves the family, moves society, moves the nation, and moves the world.
Jesus at the Second Advent, Who Must Achieve the Unification of the World and the Cosmos
Today, the currents of thought in the world are split into two. They are split into left and right (左右), idealism (唯心) and materialism (唯物), and these will one day collide with each other. Whether they collide in joy or collide in terror — this is the problem.
On the day they collide in terror, the whole world is death; on the day they collide in joy, the whole world is happiness.
If one seeks to make them one by threat and terror, there is an end to it; but if one seeks to make them one with the content of peace and joy, it can be eternal.
This is the reality, placed at such a crossroads. Moreover, the one placed in the position of the supreme sacrifice in this reality is the Korean peninsula. And among them, it is the Christians who believe in Jesus.
Therefore, the Christians are pitiful. And yet today's Korean Christianity has fallen away. Those are still more pitiful than you yourselves. The most pitiful people are precisely you yourselves.
You who are rejected even by the Christians who have fallen away. But let us not lose heart. Transcending time and transcending the character of the age in what we see and hear and feel, let us not despair. Herein lies the problem.
The satisfaction felt within the realm of the concept of time does not last long. It cannot be easily explained, but let us grasp through experience something transcendent.
One must become a heavenly person who, holding the standard that nothing of the world can remove one's conscious concepts, connects one's own value to the consciousness of the purpose of God based on Heaven. To achieve this, the problem is how to connect the heavenly heart to the individual, the family, society, the nation, or the world.
So God gives shocks of such content to human beings even while they sleep. He comes seeking human beings with the heart-content and life-content that must be resolved. Should it not be so? People of blind faith will be astonished. They will cry out in dismay.
I desire the world of the creation-purpose that lies beyond the world of consciousness. I desire that, even looking at a single blade of grass, I may feel from it an inexhaustible emotion of peace and be able to praise its value of existence.
So it is with seeing, and so with feeling; and the human being, though a small being, must go even to that place where he can receive the praise of all created things, which say, “Each time one individual moves, heaven and earth move, the heart of God moves, and eternal life moves — how wondrous!”
That is the place the human being must go. A world in which the value of the purpose of existence and its consciousness are united — since the sensations we feel are the same for everyone, the touch of eternal life that flows through our life, beyond the conscience, into the world of the heart, cannot be governed by anything human. This is because it is not swayed according to currents of thought or customs.
If this emotion is made to explode and brought into contact with all human beings, the world will be unified. The cosmos will be unified. It is not so merely in words; Jesus at the Second Advent actually comes bearing such content. Only then can he be received as the Lord.
If you are going to think, you must think this way. And indeed it is so. This person speaking here is not making abstract statements in vain.
This consciousness of purpose is pressing me. The world of the mind demands freedom and liberation, yet the environment is not so; and so it appeals, “What is the matter here?” Is it not so?
In the deep places of the conscience, one waits to be able to sing of freedom and liberation, unification and convergence, and infinite happiness; yet what of the living environment in which one dwells?
Terror and threat are binding me. Is it so, or is it not?
We must be thankful that, even while being bound in this way for thousands of years, we have come this far until today.
Now that the time of God is near, this binding must be loosed, and through one consciousness of purpose there must appear a life-entity that cannot be exchanged even for the whole universe — a being with whom God too cannot help but forge a heart-bond, and whom He would follow even into hell if he went to hell.
Unless one equipped with such a point of heart-convergence appears upon this earth, heaven and earth will perish. You must know this fact.
This person who cries out here has, until now, been opposed by these people, yet he has not fallen. It is unthinkable. Just wait and see — that is what I say. Gazing upon a single day, gritting my teeth, I press on. Though I have a mouth, I do not speak; though I have eyes, I do not see; though I have ears, I do not hear; I endure all things and press on.
Even when there are infuriating matters, I have not fought with the world but have held fast to God. If there is no response from there, then I will pack up my bundle and shoulder it. If there is a response, then even if it takes ten years or twenty years, I must go.
Beyond the Fallen World to the World of Eternal Life
Hereafter, the world will become a world of heartism (심정주의). The time when that world is realized is the time when the prince of Heaven appears upon this earth, holding the kingly authority of peace. This time is precisely the time of the Second Advent. You must clearly know this fact.
At that time, when the prince of life and heart whom God has established appears, you must attend and follow him, forge with him the bond of father and child, forge the bond of family, forge the bond of a people, and rebuild the world. This is the world of purpose, the ideology of the Kingdom of Heaven on earth.
It cannot be done blindly. Therefore, we must pray for this nation. Wherever we go, our consciousness of purpose must be strong. Facing God, we must receive the shock that lets us say, “You are the Father who transcends time and space.” Heaven demands this.
We need a power connected to the source of life, such that when we clench our fist, heaven and earth can move. We are going forth seeking the world of purpose. It is for the sake of the living and of the eternal life. Is it not so?
Dear friends, when all of one's purposes are fulfilled upon this earth, what becomes the problem?
It is the problem of life and death. Even if one held the authority to unify the world and to move the world freely at will, the problem of eternal life would arise there.
If God transcends history and transcends time and space, then we too must possess a transcendent life. Only when we establish upon the earth something bound to You does God become for us a God of love; otherwise, what kind of God of love is He?
This is why people long for infinite life. They try to live conscientiously. Yet they have not forged a bond with eternal life, have not achieved the revolution of conscience, and have not achieved the revolution of life.
No parent rejoices to see their child die. Therefore, if there is a parent who, though he himself, in this fallen world, has inherited the lineage of the fall, has the blood of the fall flowing in him, and is placed in the seat of death, yet desires that his children leap for joy and pass over that seat—he will surely go to the Kingdom of Heaven.
Jesus is such a one. Therefore, God cannot interfere. Jesus came for your sake. For your sake. The purpose for which Jesus came is also for the sake of “me,” and that God created all the things of heaven and earth is also for the sake of “me.”
If one becomes a human being who can set the whole environment in order, transcend temporality, and be happy, then one becomes, for the first time since heaven and earth came into being, a son or daughter whom God can acknowledge. Think about it.
What kind of son or daughter do you suppose God would choose?
What kind of person do you suppose He would love? If there were a son or daughter such as I have just described, He would surely choose him.
Therefore, all beings must surely pass beyond this fallen world. We must, by securing the foundation of the mind, set in order this world where terror sweeps in and the environment is in disarray, and open it up freely.
Within twenty years after 1945, the world will make a leap of development that human beings cannot imagine. That world cannot be governed by holding economic power. It cannot be governed by political power either. Established religion cannot govern it either. It has come to be such that present culture or history cannot govern it either.
This is because human beings keep trying to pass over into a new world. We have now entered such a time. The historical current of thought, which is flowing at high speed, must surely turn about at some time.
If it does not, but simply keeps flowing, it leads to hell. It must surely turn about.
On what axis must it turn?
It must turn on the axis of the heart and the life of God. Therefore, a person who can harmonize with the force of life is needed.
This is why Jesus said, “Love me more than anyone.” Those words do not mean to love Jesus himself; they mean to love God. Because Jesus came as the mediator who laid a bridge for human beings who would love God, he spoke such words.
Therefore, even if you have done something worth boasting of, on a world scale, in some specialized field, do not be boastful. That is how I see it.
The World of Love That Unfolds Through Give and Take
On the day we follow the Will of God, become victors at the last, and stand before Heaven, what kind of world will this world become? It will become a world of rest in which there is only the heart of love, together with eternal life.
The world to this day has struggled with the cognition and concepts of this world that harbor terror and are accompanied by terror. But on the day the world God sought to establish is realized, we will be able to sing of the bond of eternal life and eternal love. Therefore, we must contact those possessing eternal life.
In such a world, people and nations are not at issue. Brothers who are not brothers, parents who are not parents — that is, all peoples — are connected as one life-entity and can live together with the love of God.
Harmony is what unfolds in give and take. Is it not so?
The exquisite charm of harmony unfolds in a relationship of subject and object.
Therefore, the life of Heaven and the life of earth, the love of Heaven and the love of earth, must give and take with each other.
What unfolds there?
It is the history of the great opening that has not appeared in history until now, that comes to be for the first time since the creation of the world. The world of God's love is realized.
What kind of world is that?
It is a world that, seen once, is eternal, and that, heard once, is eternal. It is a world filled with such feelings that, once felt through the five senses, the whole becomes one. It is also an eternal and fundamental world in which the indwelling emotion automatically explodes and can move the body and even the sphere of living.
Therefore, we human beings must equip ourselves with the content that can realize such a world.
Only by creating such a world is God a splendid God. If the God you believe in is such a God, then He is worth believing in.
Because there had to be such a world, God created a world of two aspects. And so all things are relational. The eye, too, is made of plus (+) and minus (−).
Everything is so. The world must become one in which the mind becomes one with Heaven and the body becomes one with the earth, possessing the truth of God, resembling the personality of God, and further, communing with and grasping through experience the love of God. The world of hope we long for is such a world.
Once you go there, it is a place you never wish to leave for eternity. However wide you open the door, you do not wish to leave. You cannot leave. It is truly so.
Once you hear it, every cell moves. It is not a delusion. Once you feel it, that feeling remains for eternity. This is why Paul said, in Second Corinthians, that he did not know whether he was in the body or out of the body. Yet even that is but a fragment. It is no more than a part.
We human beings must set this world in order and realize that world of hope. Only when we feel the indwelling world of God's heart and the actual external world as one, and come to command all things, does God for the first time rejoice. We must become such people.
Because all things that have passed through the hand of God have not met such a master, Paul said in Romans that “all things groan.” It is, of course, a thing that ought to be groaned over.
Once one grasps through experience the content of the heavenly world and sets in order the circumstances and environment of the substantial world, and forges a bond with that indwelling, infinite world, no one can sever that bond.
If even the love of this world cannot be severed by anyone, the bond of that world is all the harder to sever. Living and dying are not the issue.
A people who can be in communication with such a world must come forth. Only when such a person comes forth and is acknowledged as a substantial entity that has transcended cosmic-historical value, transcended cosmic-historical position, and transcended cosmic-historical purposive concepts does one, for the first time, go to the Kingdom of Heaven.
What would it be like in the Kingdom of Heaven?
Would there be the concept, “You are an American, and I am a Korean”? When one says, with heart, “God! Father!” All are one.
The Problem We in the Last Days Must Solve
Therefore, all beings are passing through the process called re-creation, from a fallen position, centered on this concept of the consciousness of purpose. It is a recreation.
Since it has been broken, it must be made anew. However fine one may be, one is broken. The point is that fallen human beings are worse than a broken earthenware pot. That is how Heaven sees it. The point is that we are broken.
Since you are those who resemble exactly the form of the fallen Adam and Eve, what else can be done?
Since you are broken, you must be hammered and made anew. While being told to be gentle and humble, you cast everything off, are made to die, and are then molded and made anew. This is re-creation.
What is it made of?
It is made with heart. And thus a world of heart in which God can dwell eternally must be established, so that this universe sings of heart and can wholly incline before heart.
Considering such a history, if we are in a transitional position, advancing beyond this end-time world toward a new world, then we must not criticize others.
If we are to criticize, we must criticize based on truth and in terms of character. We must seek that which can move my mind and make my heart explode. I assure you that if young men and women appear in this ignorant Korea who can go before God and protest about this problem, the day is not far off when these people, centered on them, will govern the world. That heart is precious—no one can deny this.
A people must converge with one mind before the ruler of their nation. Not only the mind, but the heart, must converge—only then do filial children, virtuous women, and loyal subjects come to be. That is, only when the heart is united do the words “loyalty” and “filial piety” enter in. Is it so, or is it not?
Therefore, now a great transformation must unfold in heaven and on earth—one that can transcend each denomination, can go beyond each sect, can go beyond the concept of peoples, and can go beyond all the concepts of circumstance and human affection until now.
When such a world is established, centered on one protagonist, Heaven and earth, the human being and God, can sing the song of happiness together. God dances.
Only when it becomes such a world is the title of today's message, “The Consciousness of Purpose in All Beings and the One World,” realized. And so God, after setting in order this emotion of the consciousness of purpose, has been preparing one new current of thought through religious bonds.
Now He moves the static foundation, casts human beings into a crisis so that there is no longer any way to live, makes them cry out toward God, and then provides the point of resolution. I believe that such a time will surely come.
Therefore, the problem is how to connect the present, temporal emotion to heavenly emotion or consciousness. This is the important problem that we, placed in the Last Days, must solve.
This must be solved even at the cost of every effort and a thousand hardships. The believers must be mobilized worldwide and become a throng that transcends denomination, transcends peoples, and transcends nations to search for this.
Only when such a movement unfolds, only when such people come forth, can this world be set in order quickly.
Father, even though this path is rough, we have come to know that the world of purpose is the palace of the king of peace. We have come to know that, however rough this path and however great today's hardship and shock, they are not as great as the shock or blow that brings ruin upon the people and the world.
We have come to know the astonishing fact that, before we ourselves who sigh are liberated, the spiritual world (영계), Jesus, the Holy Spirit, and God must—beyond the people and beyond the world—be liberated; and we have come to know that the responsibility to liberate them rests upon us.
We have come to know the fact that the Father did not labor for His own sake, and that the Trinity (삼위신) did not labor for the Trinity's own sake, but that they labored to realize the world of God in which, passing through the consciousness of purpose established by the ideal of creation, one can sing of happiness, freedom, and peace centered on eternal life and eternal love.
We have also heard, at least in outline, the fact that, centering on the human being, He created the world of purpose to build the Kingdom of Heaven on earth and the Kingdom of Heaven in heaven and to live within it, singing and rejoicing.
Toward where is our consciousness of existence directed?
Toward where does our emotion of living move?
We have come to know the fact that the only thing that can set us in order is the heavenly order.
From such a viewpoint, we know that we must have a time in which we discuss our values, set the surrounding environment in order, and set the world in order. And let us feel that such a day is drawing near upon this earth where fallen human beings live.
Let us not become a throng that forgets that we are placed in an important era—historical and cosmic-historical—in which all these things must be resolved with ourselves at the center.
Because that time is coming, you told us that, when the Last Days come, we should give our whole mind and our whole will. You asked us to anoint our heads with oil and enter the inner room to pray. Indeed, it is right.
The present time is not a time to listen to anyone's words but a time to feel and experience with one's own mind, to forge a direct bond with the eternal God, and to connect with the value of Heaven; therefore, we earnestly ask that many upon this earth can move together with the ideology of the new world.
If these, having heard the message handed down today, have felt something and have newly resolved something, then we earnestly hope that the Father will be with them so that their life may stand before the Father for eternity. We have prayed in the name of the Lord. Amen.
The Consciousness of Purpose in All Beings and the One World
If these, having heard the message handed down today, have felt something and have newly resolved something, then we earnestly hope that the Father will be with them so that their life may stand before the Father for eternity. We have prayed in the name of the Lord. Amen.