Tokyo Church, Japan.
Matthew 27:45–56
We know the fact that Jesus is the Savior.
If Jesus is truly the Savior, then even though no one believes and no one acknowledges him, this Cosmos (天宙) cannot but accept Jesus and his ideal. And if God exists, then that God must, as is fitting, bring the ideal of the Savior to realization.
The Savior is indispensable to human beings and one indispensable to God as well. This is why it is a fact that the Savior is one indispensable to every being in the Cosmos, from the smallest to the greatest.
Because the Cosmos rests on such relationships and bonds, it is only natural that God Himself, and all humankind, and all things too must have their standard of life centered on Jesus.
The Mind of God, the Mind of a Parent
This is why Jesus’ desire is at once the desire of the earth, the desire of Heaven, the desire of humankind, and the desire of God. That desire is a desire that must be realized whenever, in whatever age, and an absolute desire that must be realized transcending history, age, and the past, present, and future.
Upon such a foundation of desire, Jesus was sent from Heaven into this world, but was his desire indeed realized on earth? And were Heaven and humankind realized within this universe according to God’s desire? It is plain that it was not so. Why?
The reason is that, before Jesus’ desire could appear, there had already appeared upon this earth a desire opposed to the original desire.
The desire that appeared upon this earth did not appear as the original desire humankind longs for; that desire became a desire opposed to God, or to Heaven.
Therefore, the true desire is in a position of having to collide with such a desire and reject it. To reject it and realize the original desire is none other than God’s desire.
So, to resolve this, God came to be in a position of having to send a Savior to the earth.
But were the desire, purpose, and ideal Jesus brought realized upon this earth through a pure path? They were not. The reason is that this earthly love, opposed to God, is a desire centered on Satan, and because it made a foundation with a purpose centered on Satan, the more it formed a large environment, the more its force could not but appear as an exceedingly negative—or contrary—force against Jesus’ desire and purpose and ideal.
There, God sought, before Jesus came to earth, to make a foundation of Jesus’ victory so that, even if this contrary desire and purpose collided with Jesus, his ideal could be realized worldwide.
In the original ideal world of creation, there is no need for a Savior, or religion, or prayer. That one has come to stand in a position of needing a Savior because one has fallen.
Had there been no fall, meeting God and expressing one’s heart (심정), and the very contacting of God within that life, would itself be a religion beyond religion and a prayer beyond prayer.
The very living of such a life would be the destroying of Satan’s desire upon the earth. It was Jesus’ life that had to fight for the sake of that.
But our forefathers did not become forefathers fit for God’s purpose of creation. In the ideal world of God’s creation by the Word, everything within the Cosmos belonging to the Son of God was to make worldwide, or to idealize, that view of life in which it is together with God’s heart.
That is, God sought to rejoice together with us, humankind, and, singing of happiness together with humankind, to stand of Himself in the position of the True Parent within our lives. This was the purpose of God, who created the human being as the supreme being. Such a fact is what we come to know through the Principle.
From the fallen Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel were born there, and Adam’s family began. Yet that family was not the family God desired. Inheriting that blood lineage, countless descendants arose, but those descendants came to feel a greater and greater sorrow.
We must realize the fact that the more the numbers grew, the more this increased the conditions of sorrow for God.
When we consider the fact that they formed one people, one nation, and one world of humankind, God Himself comes to be unable to bear simply leaving it be. Seen from the original heart standard of the True Parent, He could not abandon humankind—His beloved children, fallen though they were—having been robbed by Satan and watching them in a state at the very bottom of sorrow. Nor, from the heavenly standpoint, could He do so.
So it is God’s mind that, whatever path of suffering He must walk, He must save the whole of humankind. Therefore, the more the number of humankind increased, and the more it spread over the earth, the more God’s mind could not but feel an anguish all the more painful and wretched.
Concerning this, Satan accuses God thus: “Originally it was your ideal to embrace in your bosom the world and humankind centered on Adam and build an eternal world of love; but now a world such as this, centered on me, has been made.
Is there in this world a true child that you desire?
Is there a family? Or is there a people, a nation?” When Satan accuses God from such a position, God cannot but acknowledge such an accusation from Satan.
Because there is the heart standard that God and the human being are in the relation of father and child, He cannot but stand in such a position. To drive off this enemy here and restore this world to the ideal world of creation God desires is the history of the providence of restoration up to now.
Up to now, God has sought to send a Savior through the providential course. The hope of that Savior spans the whole world and the Cosmos. There, in the age when that desire would be realized—that is, when Jesus came—to make a foundation that could block Satan from confronting and opposing the Savior, God could not but seek one person who would contribute absolutely to God.
So, from Adam’s family, through Noah’s family, and reaching at last to Abraham, He found one person.
We know that it took two thousand years of history to seek and establish, robbing him from the satanic world, the one and only person who obeyed God.
There, by setting up a standard of believing God absolutely and not betraying God, whatever painful thing might come, God’s providence came, we know, to be in a position centered on one human being upon the earth.
God’s Hope
Abraham is the father of faith. God sought to teach even Abraham, the father of faith, the path He had originally hoped for before Adam fell and to lead him so that in his inner life and outer life alike he would not be reproached by the satanic world. He robbed away Abraham, who had been the son of an idol-seller called Zerah, and moved him from the environment in which he had lived to another place, and there had him undergo bitter hardship and set him on a path of cruel trial.
Yet we must realize the fact that, even amid such trial, God led Abraham, waiting for the one day when Abraham could go forward holding, as an absolute standard, only the single-minded devotion of his promise to God and his single-minded devotion of contributing to God.
God commanded Abraham to depart from his native land, called Ur of the Chaldeans. Abraham had, up to then, his historical environment, or his environment of heart, his environment of circumstances, and his environment of desire. There would have been an environment centered on his parents, brothers, and relatives. God called such a one. Abraham, though he had such a homeland, received God’s calling and departed from that place. From there, he set out.
The land Abraham aimed for and went seeking was not a place Abraham himself yearned for. It was a foreign land utterly unknown. That countless hardships awaited was a fact God too knew, and Abraham himself knew.
Yet, obeying God’s command, he courageously departed the land of Ur of the Chaldeans, his homeland.
Such a thing cannot but become a grave trial (lesson) for us who lead a life of faith.
Abraham lived the life of a wanderer, roaming here and there in a foreign land while believing God’s command; but had he not truly had a mind that loved God and believed God, there were times when he could well have betrayed God. Yet it was Abraham, who yearned for God consistently to the very last, who became a son God could trust—who, for the first time since humankind fell, was decisively established upon this earth as one person fitting for God’s Will.
And then there is the substantial offering (실체헌제) of Isaac. It was the heart of Abraham, who built an altar upon Mount Moriah and there sought to offer Isaac as the offering of the sacrifice—Abraham who believed that the God who had promised him would, whatever might happen, without fail bring it to pass—and because he had within him the power to overcome whatever trial or persecution of Satan there might be, he could finish the offering of Isaac without mishap. And so, by distinguishing Satan, he formed the foundation, we know, on which God could relate and go forward with the one and only person, Abraham.
God’s hope was centered on the one person Abraham was, rather than on that one person, a family that could believe God. When such a family arose, He desired, rather than that family, a clan; and when there was a people, He desired a nation. And when a nation was established, He desired, through that nation, to establish one world.
In this way, from the small to the great, from one person to the whole—to grow it and lift it even to the ideal world of creation God would realize—was the providence up to now.
There, God, directly leading the one person, Abraham, to a distinguished region, came, by the time of Jacob, to form a foundation of family-level victory. Jacob, too, departed his father’s homeland and went to Haran.
For this, Jacob forsook his attachment to his homeland—that is, his affection, or circumstances, his hopes for the future, and all his living environment—and went.
The heart within him, who headed for Haran with nothing but his body, taking nothing, was only a heart yearning for God.
If Jacob had a treasure, it was the conviction that God would bless him, the conviction that in whatever place he might be, God was with him—that was it. Jacob regarded that as the supreme glory and regarded it as the supreme authority.
The Course of Restoration of the Fallen Eve (Rachel)
So the path of suffering in the land of Haran, too, was not painful to him. The deeper he fell to the bottom of suffering, the more he could pour out to God the depths of his heart.
While driving the sheep, while listening to the sheep’s cries, he always prayed to God, “As I love this flock of sheep, do Thou love the blessed descendants of this Jacob.”
Even when he beheld all the myriad things, he prayed, “Just as I love every one of all things as an object symbolizing the Israelite people, O God! Pray love our many descendants.”
Jacob’s twenty-one years of life were a life of leaning upon God for everything, a life of entrusting everything to God. By living a life that sought to contact the depths of God’s heart, he expressed the will that the whole of his living must be together with God and must be for the sake of God’s glory.
Every place Jacob went was a path of opposition, and all of it was an incomplete environment that was not permitted; but the harsher that environment, the stronger Jacob’s mind grew toward God. This is why God’s heart too grew strong.
The more Jacob came to stand in a state of having to endure suffering or bitterness in his environment, the more God, in response, opened up Jacob’s path. This is a fact.
We must consider the fact that, by experiencing this, Jacob could pass without mishap through the twenty-one years of suffering.
But when the time was full and Jacob, knowing there was a heavenly command that he must now return to his homeland of Canaan, was returning home, there was the matter of his uncle Laban.
Laban was a person who, in the twenty-one years of Jacob’s life, deceived Jacob ten times and robbed him of the grace of the blessing he had received. To put it plainly, he was Jacob’s father-in-law, but seen providentially, he was in the position of Satan wearing substance.
In such an environment, if there were a person who truly loved Jacob, who was truly loyal to God, then however much that person was on Satan’s side, he could not be forgiven until Jacob’s period of indemnity ended; but once that period passed, or the conditions were all met, God could forgive the person on Satan’s side. The person who was in such a position was Rachel. She was Laban’s daughter and Jacob’s wife. Through long living together, she came to know the fact that her father Laban was doing to Jacob what ought not to be done.
Such a Rachel, if Jacob returned to Canaan, had to follow Jacob. Rachel, knowing that if there is a person who deceives and robs the property received by God’s blessing, the punishment of God before long descends upon that person, and knowing that when her husband Jacob returned home, her father Laban would not give the property he had promised Jacob, finally resolved to steal and take away something of value exceeding what her father Laban had promised Jacob. That Jacob had such a wife was an indispensable, absolute condition in his fulfilling the Heavenly Mandate (天命).
Jacob, who had a wife resolved to take with her, in full, the property that, as the result of twenty-one years of drudgery, he had been promised by Laban—resolved to draw out and take away property indispensable to Laban—stood, seen by God’s providence, that is, the providence of restoration, in a position where, unless such a condition were established, he could not set out on the family-level providence.
There, Jacob, becoming one with Rachel, had, over three days, to gather the property corresponding to all that he was entitled to receive, which he had until then been promised by Laban, and set out toward his homeland. This is not a matter that ends as a single fact that occurred in history.
That Jacob, who had received the blessing from Isaac, centered on one family, entered the satanic world as the representative of Abraham, and took out beloved Rachel and the property, means that human beings must wage a family-level fight, like distinguishing everything from the satanic world and handing it over to God’s side. This was an absolute condition in the providence.
But when Laban noticed that Jacob was taking his wife and property from Laban’s house and returning and pursued him. At that time, Rachel skillfully hid beneath the saddle of her horse the idol her father Laban cherished and sought, so that it was not discovered and she sent Laban back to his homeland.
That Rachel herself, who walked the course of restoration of the fallen Eve in the satanic world, sent Laban back from the position of substance, which means that she made a condition of having distinguished substantial Satan.
In this way, cutting off the conditions by which Satan pursues the earth, Jacob’s family headed for the land of Canaan.
The Earthly Victory, “Israel”
In this way, although Rachel made her own father turn back, there remained for Jacob a position in which, at the spiritual standard, he had to subdue Satan.
So Jacob, at the ford of the Jabbok with his homeland of Canaan before his eyes, while passing the night in prayer, had an angel appear and wrestle with him, staking life and death. To receive the blessing, Jacob, however much his opponent was an angel, could not help but fight and win.
With such resolve, fighting through the night, he won the wrestling match. And so the angel put the hollow of Jacob’s thigh out of joint, and Jacob received the blessing from him. He left behind a history of such content.
This history is not known to us. But its content stood amid God’s desired absolute condition and Satan’s keeping Jacob’s family from going to God’s side. Yet because Jacob’s family, at the same time as cutting off Satan’s side, stood upon a foundation of victory desired by God’s side, it came, centered on the family for the first time, to receive upon this earth victory—that is, the name “Israel.”
In the case of Abraham’s family, he became the father of faith; but in the case of Jacob, it became the gaining of victory. From him the Israelite people began.
Jacob, fearing to meet his brother Esau, set the sheep and the servants ahead of him; but when he visited his homeland, why did Esau not rise against Jacob?
That Jacob had robbed away his blessing was an unforgivable act. Within the heart of Esau, who was greatly enraged, there was surely the thought that, should Jacob come, he would kill him with a single stroke of the sword.
Then why did it come about that he could welcome Jacob?
The reason behind it was that the inner condition was established that Jacob, by every kind of venture, had repulsed Rachel’s father and subdued the angel—that is, had driven off Laban, the substance opposed to the spiritual angel.
If Esau opposed Jacob’s family, which follows God’s Word, God too could not forgive. God had to protect Jacob’s standard of victory. Esau did not know the content that whoever struck the condition Jacob held would himself be struck, but in his original mind, he knew that, though he did not wish to think so, he could not but comply.
We must realize that this came about by reason of Jacob’s victory and Rachel’s victory.
In this way, God set up a standard of family-level victory and, from that family, made the Israelite people centered on the twelve sons.
Though there was much toil in consecrating Jacob’s family, from God’s standpoint, He had to form, centered on this family, one clan and one people; and there could not be but one human being upon the earth who, setting up countless clans and peoples, could decide, centered on the condition of indemnity, whether one was on God’s side or Satan’s side.
This is because, in God’s providence up to then, unless a standard was set up — a standard of heart, or a standard of faith, centered on the human being as the center of individual and family and people and nation, or a standard of keeping God’s command; that is, unless those who took responsibility according to that long providence of God set up, always centered on faith, a standard of believing God, keeping God’s command and acting, and of having contacted God’s heart, thereby restoring the content that, when Adam fell, he did not pass through God’s heart, had no mind of believing God, and failed to keep God’s command — God’s providence could not develop, even though the age had passed.
There, to lead this family, which stood in Canaan with the foundation of victory centered on Jacob, even into Egypt, Joseph was sent ahead. God sent him out onto a path of suffering and placed him amid trial. But he had to believe God, love God, walk and act together with God, fall into no temptation whatever of the satanic world, and, holding a fixed heart and faith, act together with God.
Because Joseph, who was in the land of Egypt, lived in such a way, he came to be acknowledged by God as a victor. Because Joseph refused even the temptation of the wife of Potiphar, the captain of the guard of Egypt, and, even losing his position, stood on the side of justice and ran forward holding not only faith toward God and a mind that loved the Israelite people but also a mind that loved God, a standard of one person’s victory could be set up within the realm of Egypt and within the satanic world. Centered on that foundation, God gave the blessing.
And so Joseph became even the prime minister in that land and led his family into the land of Egypt. But God’s true desire was not that his becoming prime minister was the whole of it. God, in that period, carried on the providence so that Joseph would hold the sense of responsibility that he must make the people of Egypt into a people who would forever not oppose God’s providence; but Joseph did not realize it.
Joseph could relieve his family, who were starving from famine, but he did not think of the content, providentially, of resolving the spiritual famine in God Himself.
Moses’ Faith and His Qualification as a Leader
That Joseph led his family, but that people walked a path of drudgery through four hundred years of history, had its cause also in Joseph’s not fully carrying out his responsibility.
Had he made an environment of victory for his clan and, taking that as a foundation, made an environment in which the Israelite people could place the Egyptian people in Cain’s position and obey Jacob, who was in Abel’s position, then from there to make a standard of Israel’s national-level victory was God’s Will. But because Joseph did not know that content and failed to set up that standard, God, after four generations had passed, called Moses and had him once again bear the responsibility of answering God’s desire and sent him under King Pharaoh.
Just as God loved the Israelite people, Moses too loved the Israelite people. Moses, seeing his kinsmen, the Israelite people, suffering and enduring in the midst of pain, forsook the glory in Pharaoh’s court and set up a heart of affection toward the people, a standard by which God could love.
The truly blessed people ought not to have been left in such a wretched result.
So Moses, holding the conviction that “God will surely lead this people, as is fitting, into a new land of hope,” first contributed to God, and the conviction of the people who prayed to God began to pass through Moses’ heart.
The greater the outer persecution, the more the affection toward the land of Canaan, the homeland of the Israelite people, grew strong proportionally to the suffering that environmentally pressed upon them.
With such a mind, Moses set up a vow toward God, and, seeing the Egyptians whipping the people of Israel, feeling keenly that he must lead the Israelite people who had received God’s blessing, struck and killed an Egyptian with a stone.
Seen from an ordinary, flat standpoint, this is an unforgivable sin. But anyone in that position would, as a matter of course, have done such an act. Because Moses did such an act when God’s heart was standing in such a position, God acknowledged it as having struck in God’s stead.
The next day, seeing the people of Israel quarreling with one another, Moses tried to stop them. But because of the person in the wrong, word of what had happened the day before spread, and Moses, realizing that his position had become dangerous, fled to the wilderness of Midian.
The forty years of Moses’ life there tending sheep were wretched and full of hardship, but even within it, the mind that loved the Israelite people and God more than anyone and the mind that yearned for and loved the land of Canaan more than anyone were Moses’ excellence. It was a mind equipped with sufficient qualifications for Heaven to set him up as the leader of the Israelite people.
Because Moses’ mind, which loved the land of Canaan, was in a position that accorded with God’s hope to restore them to Canaan, God set Moses to oppose Pharaoh’s court.
At that time his wife Zipporah, because she held the resolve that, however difficult a land Moses went to, she would always become one body and become his hands and feet and comfort him, and, sharing Moses’ difficult position, bear God’s responsibility together with him—seen by God, she was an indispensable, absolute being in Moses’ yearning for and fulfilling the precious providence, and she also became a standard of indemnity.
Moses, taking his family, repeated fight upon fight in the place where Pharaoh was. But even through ten miracles, Pharaoh would not liberate the Israelite people. Had Moses lived only in Pharaoh’s court, it would have been impossible, when God gave such a command, to fight Pharaoh to the very last.
But Moses, through the experience of directly colliding with a difficult environment in the hardship of forty years of life in the wilderness of Midian, firmly held the conviction that “God is always on my side; if I stand in God’s position and hold a mind fitting for His mind, He is a God who will protect me.”
For this reason, Moses, even in a position where Pharaoh deceived him again and again and would not send the Israelite people back, never once lost heart but fought valiantly and won through. And so, seizing a margin of three days, he led the whole of the Israelite people out from the satanic world.
The Heart of a Leader
This is one part of the history of the life of faith of the children of Israel seen providentially; but seen from the standpoint of God, who led and commanded this life of faith, no one knew that there was a bitter inner circumstance—that, between God and Satan, God had to set His own beloved individual, His own family, His own people in such a painful position.
What we who live today must know is that we must not fail to know God’s inner heart—that is, His inner circumstance—God who moves history and, behind people, commands to have the purpose of the providence achieved, rather than the facts that appear in history.
The Israelite people, who did not know Moses’ heart, did not know the heart by which God and Moses, in accord, hoped for and yearned for Canaan, the mind of Moses and the heart of God that had to fight and win to the very last; they set out following Moses holding only the mind that they could return to their homeland. Because going to their homeland alone was their purpose, when there was suffering beyond that and bitterness beyond that, they stood in a position of rising against Moses and disbelieving God.
The inner worry of God and Moses, who led such a multitude of more than six hundred thousand, was beyond words. At that time, the Israelite people, who had to return to the land of Canaan, staking life and death, had to become high and low as one, or inner and outer as one, entrusting everything to God’s Will and becoming one with Moses and advancing. For example, even if about half of the Israelite people supported Satan’s side, God had to take even the remaining half of the people alone and enter the land of Canaan.
Even sacrificing a fifth or a tenth of the people, He had to make them one with Moses, have them hold a purpose fitting for God’s Will, and restore them to the land of Canaan. Only then could God’s providence centered on the people be fulfilled there.
But at that time, the Israelite people did not realize such a thing. The Israelite people, who thought only of their conditions of living, had no room to think of the people and no room to think of God. They ought, as was fitting, to have known what on earth was in the mind of their leader, but no one knew it.
When the Israelite people, who desired only to return to their homeland and the stability of their living, ran into a state worse than their living in Egypt, complaints began to arise. The problem began from there.
If the Israelite people forsook Canaan, the future homeland to which they were to return, and went back to Egypt, then however much they were the Israelite people under Moses’ guidance, they would come to be in a position with no relation whatever to Moses and a position with no relation whatever to God. Such a thing was a thing that must not be, for Moses and for God.
At that time, watching such a movement of the people, the bitterness of Moses as a leader, who heard from the people the complaints “There is nothing to eat, there is nothing to drink, there is nothing to wear, there is nowhere to live,” the suffering of Moses as a leader was the same as the suffering of God who commanded. And God, watching Moses so struggling in suffering and anguish, could not but feel a twofold suffering.
Toward the Israelite people, He could not but suffer over their betrayal; toward Moses, His heart suffered in pity and compassion. Among the Israelite people, who were in such a state of disbelief, was God not in a state of truly wishing to punish them, if someone said, “O God! punish these people”?
But Moses, each such time, comforted the painful mind of God, saying, “Are these not the chosen people of Israel whom Thou didst lead out of the land of Egypt through hardship and suffering (艱難辛苦)?
Is it not a good condition for Satan that countless peoples have cursed Abel?”
It was the heart of Moses that could, in later days, liberate the leaders of Israel, or the patriarchs, and countless people.
For Moses, watching the people betray God, it would have been easier for him to die. But Moses thought of the historical Israelite people whom God had blessed from the forefathers up to then. And when he considered God to be the historical God, the God of the age, the God of the future, who would be forever with his descendants and forever with his clan, Moses could not flee. And yet he could neither leave them as they were nor cast them off.
The suffering of Moses, who stood in such a position of leadership, was a thing no one could imagine.
So Moses went up Mount Sinai and prayed for forty days. It was because, unless he became one with the people, he could not enter the land of Canaan.
The land of Canaan, as the field of the altar God had designed, had to be distinguished from the fallen world and offered up as one offering. The land of Canaan had to be offered up to God as a people-level offering.
But the Israelite people all fell before God, before Moses. And in the end, even Moses, who held the mission of a leader, died in the wilderness without entering the land of Canaan.
The historical course that had set up Moses and led on so ended thus. Here we must know not only the history that appeared but also the wretched heart of God within it and the heart of the leader who bore responsibility centered on that heart of God.
The Israelite people, who, crossing the bounds of death together with Moses, underwent every kind of suffering under the enemy, were in a position of having to hold a mind of endless gratitude, thinking of Moses, who fought on their behalf as their representative, and of God, who encouraged Moses and commanded him.
Nevertheless, the people collided with one another and, facing Moses and God, made an idol and danced and rioted, saying, “We have no God,” “We have no leader.”
The history of toil over twenty-four hundred years came to such an end in that desolate wilderness; so where is there a wretchedness greater than this? Yet no one knew such a fact.
God’s Providence to Make Them One with the Messiah
Meanwhile, had the people who entered the land of Canaan centered on Joshua, bound together and become one with their leader, offered up an offering of victory, and become an undivided Israelite nation, that Israelite nation would have been a nation enduring forever, a nation God could not but protect. And the Israelite people would have stood in the position of a victorious people whom Satan could not invade. But even after entering the land of Canaan, they quarreled with one another and, toward the prophets, or leaders, sent from God, rose and did harm and slaughtered them. They did such acts continuously throughout history.
God, who watched such things, the more the fulfillment of the providence of restoration—that is, the realization of the ideal nation God desired—was prolonged, and the more history repeated, the more it flowed on, the stronger grew His mind yearning for that nation.
This is why the more sorrowful things there were in history, the more tears could not but gather in God’s eyes, and God’s mind could not but wander in a valley of suffering. That God carried on the providence of salvation, tracing such a wretched history, none of the believers up to now knew.
But God, who must by any means achieve His purpose, gazing toward the one time when that purpose would be achieved, sought to send one person who could become a leader representing the people and the world into one place and one environment, decide the final victory, and resolve the han (한) of history up to then.
Therefore, aiming at that, He taught through the countless prophets in Israel’s history that the Savior, the Messiah, would come. And He gathered the scattered people and made them one centered on one temple, and to those who opposed it, He applied punishment.
If they betrayed individually, He punished individually; if they betrayed at the family level, He punished at the family level; if they betrayed at the clan level, He punished at the clan level. If people were betrayed, He punished the people.
Through such painful experiences of history, He hoped for the day when they would become one; but until Jesus came, the Israelite people did not realize such a hope of God and did not repent. They received punishment and came to ruin. And whenever God blessed them, they fell; whenever He blessed them, they fell, repeating it over and over.
The human being whom God decided to send into one time and one environment must win a worldwide victory at the standard of serving the Will. Yet the people who were to be the foundation to offer that up, and their leader, and even the rites of the temple, all stood in a position not fitting for God’s Will.
The providence of restoration is the setting up of conditions of indemnity centered on time so that, as the four thousand years passed, all the conditions of indemnity had to be set up and a standard of people-level victory made.
Seen providentially, they had to set the people-level temple in order, become one with that people, and offer up all the peoples and nations of the earth, the sovereignty, and the temple and everything that came into contact with the Messiah.
Hoping for the day when that would be so, God led the Israelite people, but the Israelite people did not do so at all. It was in the manner of “The Son of God and the like—it doesn’t matter at all. The commands of leaders or prophets—whatever. The ideal of the temple—let it be however it may.”
The Israelite people, even after entering the land of Canaan, just as when they came out into the wilderness from the land of Egypt, made an issue only of their own individual hopes, in the manner of, “I’ll do fine living like this. The desire I want is not Canaan, the desire of the Israelite people. I don’t even need that. I just need my present-world desires fulfilled.”
It was the same attitude of life as when He led them out from the land of Egypt. But God desired the very opposite of what the people who entered the land of Canaan desired. And so, for two thousand and several hundred years, He loved the people and traced such a painful path.
Why was that? It was because that path was a course to subdue worldwide Satan for the sake of the nation of hope, the nation of purpose. He desired that the Israelite people in the land of Canaan do it, but that people did not.
In the midst of that, God sought one truly fitting for His desire, or one who, obeying His Word, bore responsibility and who, as God Himself loves the future world, worried over the destiny of the people in their wretched position and yearned for the Israel of the future, the Israel filled with future hope—He sought such a one. But there was none.
God’s Desire, Jesus’ Desire, History’s Desire
The Israelite people who appeared in history became vassals of countless nations and, in the end, became vassals of Rome and came to a state where nothing could be done.
Into such an age and environment, Jesus was sent. In the land of Israel, an environment of believing God had not been prepared, but because the time was full and the season of promise had come—that is, because on God’s side the time and the person were prepared—Jesus was sent at such a point. Before sending Jesus into such an environment, God could not help but send, through history, one who would prepare the environment so that it could yearn for Jesus. The one who came with such a mission was John the Baptist.
But seen from God’s Will, the very sending of John the Baptist was God’s sorrow. Had the people become one before John the Baptist was sent and prepared with a mind yearning for the Messiah, there would have been no need even to send John.
But because the people did not become one, God had to send John to gather again, centered on the land of Canaan, the Israelite people who had betrayed God before, and link them to Jesus.
Yet even that John, not knowing such content and the heart of God, was swept up in his environment and could not attend Jesus. As a result, John the Baptist was also betrayed.
And because the central figure collapsed, the Israelite people, who were to have been connected to him, could not but naturally incline toward Satan’s side.
The Israelite people had to become connected as one—that is, become inner and outer as one—with Judaism, the center of their inner thought, and the outer Israelite nation, and upon that, greet and attend the Messiah as the Lord of hope. But the Israelite people, who ought to have yearned for Jesus, sent from God as the Savior of Israel, did not know such a fact at all.
The time was full, and the person prepared by God was sent, but there was no environment to receive the time and the person. There was no foundation through which God’s ideal could be conveyed.
Jesus, who came with the supreme purpose into that unprepared environment, desired that the Israelite people would await the Messiah.
Such a Jesus and the Israelite people had to become one. Where the Messiah went, the people had to go. The Messiah’s desire had to become the people’s desire. The Messiah’s life had to become the people’s life. The Messiah’s action had to become the people’s action. They must not be split apart. The Messiah and the people, who in this way had to become one, in the end split apart.
By this, all the historical things that until then had flowed down centered on the people, and even the Messiah, sent as the center of the people, came to stand in a position of having no relation to the Israelite people historically or substantially, and Jesus had no choice but to go the path of the cross. Jesus, through the cross, went the final path.
Thereafter, the Holy Spirit descended, and through the path of resurrection, if up to now we have relied upon a spiritual Savior—then what was God’s desire toward the earth?
God’s desire was in the Israelite people. God’s desire centered on Israel as a nation through the people. The issue was to establish, through the blessed Israelite people, one blessed nation.
When Jesus came to this earth, he came to realize God’s desire for the earth.
Therefore, Jesus’ desire was the same as God’s desire, and that was to lead the people and move the nation. Rather than a people, it is a nation. It was a sovereign nation that Jesus and the Israelite people were to realize together.
But the nation Jesus desired was not a nation for that age alone. It was an eternal, historical nation. That is, it was a nation that would lead its people forever. Within that nation, there are the people, there is the clan, there is the family, and there is the individual.
God’s desire too, and the desire of Christ sent by God’s Will too, and even the historical desire of the Israelite people who yearned for God, were in the end not the people. Nor were they Jesus himself. They were the nation God desires—that is, the nation of God. Therefore, the hope and goal of Jesus, who came to this earth as the Messiah, was precisely the Israelite nation.
Jesus’ Heart and His Sorrow
In forming a nation, three elements are needed. First, there must be land. There must be people. And there must be sovereignty. Then, as for what people that nation’s people are, they are the Israelite people who had nurtured tradition through history, and the land is the blessed land of Canaan.
And the central figure who sets up the sovereignty had to stand as the national, total leader; the One sent for such a purpose was the Messiah.
The Messiah was not to become the spiritual Savior of all people by dying. He was sent as the almighty prince upon the earth, as the center of the Israelite nation, and as the center of Rome.
When Abraham was blessed, he was called from his homeland and sent unconditionally.
Jacob, having received the blessing, forsook his homeland and entered the land where the enemy was. Moses, too, was so. Having been promised the blessing, he was sent into the wilderness.
In like manner, centered on Jesus, an Israelite nation had to be built, an absolute land of Canaan decided, an absolute Israelite people decided, and an absolute Israelite sovereignty decided. And it was Jesus’ responsibility to set up that supreme person and surpass Rome, the worldwide center that was moving the whole earth of that age—that is, to set up a new thought, a new culture, a new national ideal centered on Jesus, and a national tradition.
But when did Jesus ever, in the nation of God, manifest the dignity of the Son of God? When did he ever command, saying, as the king of all people, “Hear my command”?
Toward the Messiah, who had been born as the only begotten Son of the heavenly Father, was there anyone on earth who attended him, saying, “Truly you are the prince of Heaven”? There was neither such an individual nor such a family. There was neither a clan nor a people.
Since there were no people, there was no reason for a nation to exist.
So Jesus, having come to this earth, could not convey even one complete teaching to a single individual. Jesus, who could not speak a complete teaching to an individual, how could he speak a teaching concerning the family?
Jesus, who could not speak concerning the family, how could he speak that teaching concerning the people, the nation, the world? Therefore, there was not a single person who knew the inner heart of Jesus.
In that time, there may have been some who followed Jesus, drawn by his many miracles, or to get bread. The myriad and myriad various people gathered to satisfy their desires, but no one knew Jesus’ true heart and, holding the resolve, “I will become a person indispensable to you,” yearned for Jesus.
Since there was no such person, there was no reason for such a family to exist. Since there was no such family, of course, there could be no people either. This is why we must realize that Jesus passed his life in a wretched, forlorn, unspeakably painful position.
Even looking at the prayer in Gethsemane, was it not so?
Though the three disciples had shared with Jesus the joys and sorrows of three years and had yearned for their teacher, who had vowed, “Wherever you go, I will follow you,” at each of the three prayers in Gethsemane, they fell asleep.
That was the final result of the disciples who had yearned for Jesus. Jesus, praying whether to decide upon death or to choose life, said, “If Thou art willing, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as Thou wilt.” He repeated such a prayer three times over.
Even in that grave hour of deciding whether to die on the cross, the disciples, who had not become one with Jesus, could not stand in a position of dying in Jesus’ stead. A person who, at the time of making a promise, cannot keep the promise cannot stand in the position of a leader who carries out the promise.
So when Jesus was seized, they all fled. This was the people’s recompense for God’s four thousand years of history.
One Must Cross Over the Path of the Indemnity of Death
God sent countless prophets and forefathers, and when those people betrayed Him, He punished them and corrected their wrong path and repeated promise upon promise. Two thousand years ago, He sent to the Israelite people Jesus, the hope of all people.
Yet the Israelite people betrayed the Messiah, who was to bear the responsibility of guiding that people’s destiny and of swaying the world’s destiny. Since history began, there has been nothing as wretched as this.
That the human ancestors fell was something that came about in a position with no toil of forefathers; but that the Israelite people, through these four thousand years of history, in a position of having to attend the Messiah, treated the Messiah so, is a total betrayal of the forefathers who toiled for thousands of years up to then, and a total betrayal of God’s thousands of years of toil. This brought about the result that, toward God’s ideal, the purpose of Jesus’ life, and the purpose of all humankind, there is no greater sin than this. For that reason, thereafter, the history of the Israelite people could not but become wretched.
If one reads the history of the Israelite people in the Scriptures, in every age, the people who persecuted and abused the Israelite people perished. In this way, the people who had been nurtured under God’s protection became, after Jesus died, a pitiable people who for two thousand years led the life of wanderers here and there, unable to assert a sense of peoplehood centered on any leader.
The four thousand years of history up to then were lost together with Jesus’ death.
From there, again, a new history began. Through a wretched history, what the Israelite people had built up upon the foundation of God’s four thousand years of toil, and their merit too, brought about destruction.
After Jesus’ resurrection, the Christian believers became the Second Israel centered on Jesus and came even to promise a worldwide start centered on a national-level standard.
The standard the Messiah had idealized advanced as a spiritual standard. This is the history of the development of Christianity up to now.
Christianity bears the responsibility of having to clear away that historical sinful act (罪行) the Israelite people committed and must cross over death.
For an individual to be saved, one must cross a pass of indemnity, such as the individual dying. For a family to be saved, one must cross a pass of indemnity, like families dying with one another.
For people to be saved, one must cross a pass of indemnity, like peoples dying with one another in that way.
On such a path of martyrdom, shedding blood, appealing to the earth one part of God’s lament, and toward God saying, “We beseech Thee, pray send the Lord at the Second Advent whom Thou hast promised. Toward the first-coming Messiah, the Israelite people disbelieved to the very last, but we have become a people called the Israel of faith, who yearn for and attend the Lord at the Second Advent, so pray send him to ”us”—crossing the path of the indemnity of death, crossing over the tombs of corpses, raising both hands toward God, and crying out in entreaty—such is the destiny in which the position of Christianity lies.
Now that two thousand years of history have passed, the ideal of Christianity, standing upon an altar of countless blood and countless sacrifices, has come to be able to move nearly half (殆半) of the world.
The democratic world of the present age has come within the realm centered on Christian culture. And God’s providence has been widening step by step—the age of individual-level providence, the age of family-level providence, the age of clan-level providence, the age of people-level providence, and the age of national-level providence.
God has, up to now, expanded the stage of providence to realize one world fitting for the ideal of creation. That ideal world of God is not two. It is absolutely only one.
Yet in the present age, the Christians who stand in the position of the Second Israel, scattered throughout the world, are struggling among denominations.
If they fail to send the Messiah they yearn for, or if they forget how greatly God toiled in history to leave them, or what their responsibility is, then the Christians too come to stand in the same position as the Israelite people of the past who opposed God.
Throughout the whole world, the fortune of the outer nations heads toward one. And the Christian world, as the center of the ideal of that whole outer world and the center of spiritual leadership, stands in the same position as that in which, so to speak, in Jesus’ time the believers were to bear, toward the Israelite nation, the national spirit, and held the privilege of being able to be made inner and outer as one at the time of the Messiah’s descent.
Now, upon the earth, the world has become one stage so that one can go anywhere freely. What corresponds to the Rome of old is America.
The democracy that follows them holds a historical tradition centered on Christianity.
God-ism, God-Thought
Then what kind of movement must Christianity carry out today?
Just as Jesus’ age was a difficult period in which the fighting among denominations, among sects, and among peoples did not cease, such a period will surely appear, in terms of the age, within this democracy.
Therefore, just as the world cannot be led with the present democracy, at that time the world could not be led with Rome’s ism either. The ideal the Messiah led was higher than the ideal Rome led.
In today’s democratic world, too, it cannot help but become such a situation. At that time, if Christianity, which must keep and firm up its inner position, splits into sects and fights, it brings about a wretched result in this closing age.
Therefore, the countless religious bodies must rise from within a worldwide movement of unity.
The state of Korea, where our Principle has appeared, stands in the same position as that of the Israelite people of the past. Economically, it is like a vassal of democracy, and in terms of faith, amid the confrontation and strife of churches and denominations, the zeal of faith is, indeed, cooling beyond words.
Within such a world, for our Unification Church, as its name says, to make a foundation holding the Principle, the ideal of unification, there is needed, indeed, a course of humiliation corresponding, historically, to the wretched time of Jesus.
So, receiving oppression from countless sovereignties and walking a path of countless persecutions, we have, in an environment where many things are not permitted, made what may be called a foundation of victory.
Just as Jesus’ ideal was to make Rome into one world, our ideal too is not the ideal of one nation alone.
First, we must break down and bind together the walls of the Christian denominations spread throughout the whole world.
Next is ideological unity in the present age. Now communism, opposing democracy, is appearing. It, holding a systematic view of the ideal that stands upon a foundation of empirical science in its theory, is confronting democracy.
A person who can overcome this is needed. Unless an ideal comes forth that is equipped with a systematic thought—that is, a thought system centered on an idealist worldview (唯心觀) and centered on God, indeed empirical and substantial, a thought system that can be experienced in the process of living, that can move the stage of life and make an ideal world, and thereby a thought system by which God’s existence can be acknowledged—this communism cannot be brought down.
But if this does not appear and Cain and Abel fight to the very last, they perish together, and if both perish, there is no salvation or anything. In Adam’s family, Cain fought Abel and killed Abel. Cain betrayed God.
So on God’s side, it is said, Seth was brought forth. In this way, in history up to now, it is always Cain, who has defied God, who strikes first. The losing side struck first.
The First World War was so, and the Second World War was so. But if the side that is struck comes to be in a position of not opposing God and not dying, history sets out from there. Yet if the one who was struck has no power to surpass the one who struck and set up sovereignty, He moves the mission to another person and seeks to set up the ideal of a new world.
So, looking at such a situation of the Last Days, there is bound to appear a God-ism centered on the content of these three isms—a world-ism equipped with a thought system, together with a thought-ism, a thought-ism, and a spirit-ism.
That ism surpasses all existing thought systems, accords with substantial and empirical living, and thereby is substituted (代替) for the center that hitherto held the value of the whole.
If that substituted ism is an ideal system, or thought system, or religious system, which acknowledges not God’s existence conceptually but God as the center of life, and can make such a foundation of faith, then the problem is solved from there.
Value That Fits God’s View of Purpose
The conceptual God we think of is far from us. The God we have known from before is far from us. The God we venerate through faith is far from us. We need a God of life.
The human being yearns for such a joy that can answer what circumstances and the heart desire. The problem lies there.
However much one has a worldwide position or honor, if it does not hold a value that answers the feeling of living, or his heart, or his circumstances, it has no meaning.
If that value is acknowledged to be such that there is nothing that can replace it for any person in the world, or compared even with all the people of the two great camps of the present, then that person can become a master who, transcending history, can move even God.
The human being has a heart. The human being must live. In living, one must cooperate. The purpose must pass through desire.
Further, in living, a view of value fitting for one’s own purpose, the view of value of the individual, the view of value of one’s own family, and the view of value held in common among one’s own families—this is the absolute value. That is, it is value-fitting for God’s view of purpose. It is not a problem of a distant world.
If one knows it directly as one’s own problem, as a value beyond the value of living, then for a human being there is no desire beyond that, and for us there is no success beyond that. God too wishes to be, within the heart of beloved children, or within the countless conditions of hopeful human life, a being yearned for and praised as a being of infinite value.
Therefore, what the people of the world first require is, rather than a mere ideal, rather than some ism, the circumstance of living. Because He is the God of circumstances, if a thought comes forth in which the value of the human being in the circumstance of living is acknowledged as a value beyond all things of the world, this thought will remain forever.
The heart that stands there is itself the heart of the Messiah, and that heart is needed because it is the heart that becomes the source by which any purpose whatever can be achieved.
That circumstance is one that can form a relationship at a stage of life. It is a circumstance that can make one, even though heaven and earth split apart, that can make one, even though people split apart.
That desire is a desire that anyone, whatever, can call a common purpose. Is it not something by which one can say even to the person beside one, “That desire is my desire,” and praise and give thanks for his success?
In this present-day world, it is not a feeling or desire by which individuals can envy (妬忌) one another’s success.
Behold the existence of God, penetrated (徹) by such a view of value; behold God’s heart. Behold God’s circumstances. Behold God’s desire. All of it, to fit God’s view of purpose, taking God as subject and ourselves standing in an object position, we must become one.
When it is so, when God rejoices, we too rejoice together. My joy becomes the joy of God Himself, and my sorrow becomes the sorrow of God Himself.
Only then, even in living, can one behold God’s reality and discover oneself as having become a foundation of a being of infinite value. That value is a value that cannot be exchanged for anything in the universe.
So Jesus said,
“What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world but loses his own life?” (Matthew 16:26).
That is the truth.
It is the life of the Messiah to live together with God on such a standard, feeling that one’s own value is beyond the value of the universe and that, within one’s living, there is no happiness beyond this.
If individual and individual, and family and family, and, through clan and people, the nation and world inherit that, that is the world Jesus desired. Should it become so, it becomes the Kingdom of Heaven that God Himself sought to set up as the ideal of creation. The living itself contained within it exists together with God’s value. God desired that.
If one considers such things, what must the individual gathered here desire?
The desire we have held up to now is not the desire the original I desired. The house we live in is not the house we originally desired.
Our society and nation and world, too, are not what we desired. Everything is a view of living centered on oneself, a view of family, a view of society, a view of the nation.
The time has not yet come, but when that time comes, all such views are views apt to betray God.
This is why Jesus said,
“Whoever comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, and even his own life, cannot be my disciple, and whoever does not bear his own cross and follow me cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:26–27).
The Supreme Judge
As we of the present age, placed in such a position, what must we do?
Before God Himself judges, we must judge ourselves. To become a person who, ahead of the world’s judgment, holds the authority of judgment and undertakes the judgment, one must be a being who has passed through a judgment beyond the people's level.
That is, one must hold the authority and qualification of judgment beyond the national standard. Therefore, we, who are learning from the Principle how the heart behind history has moved, must set up that position by passing through all the inner circumstances, through mind and body, through practice.
The world now is made of two great isms. That is, communism or democracy. But God is neither communism nor democracy. He is Unificationism. Therefore, this world is gradually shifting to a tide that cries out for a world government, and to set it up, an economic movement of integration will come forth.
If there is something that opposes it, there will also be a providence in which it cannot but be resolved by force. And so, later, a way will come forth that can guarantee one international world government uniting the nations. Needless to say, our Unification Church must set up something far ahead of those.
What is it that individuals who stand just before such things are realized can do? God says, before judging one’s own family, judge oneself. When one does so, God sympathizes.
Then what is judgment?
It is to subdue completely. The meaning is that it is well if, even though alive, one is made as if dead. The purpose lies there. That is, whatever happens, to believe in God and obey. Not dying means seeking to move God self-centeredly.
Such an ideal must appear upon the earth. For a human being to become one truly qualified to undertake holy judgment, one must, in fighting Satan, resist with real strength and, standing in a right position, win.
To set up one perfect person who carries out such judgment, one must cross the pass of the standard of becoming, from the standard of a somewhat imperfect one to a perfect one. To put it another way, his trial and the position of his value of existence are those of one corresponding to that content. Which is the real thing—toward that, one must, on the contrary, conversely collide and go forward.
What kind of judgment will Christianity, centered on God up to now, receive?
As for what the historical meaning of judgment is, it is to hold the power, not lose to the history of evil, to remain at the very last, and put it in order. The one who remains at the very last is the supreme judge.
There, if it be said that some worldwide movement fitting for God’s final ideal will come forth hereafter, because that movement must judge the individual and family and people and nation and world, a situation is foreseen of colliding amid a confusion of peoples, or a tide of worldwide confusion, such as never was before.
Unless it be one that does not collapse even amid trials with which even the leaders of the democratic or communist world can do nothing, it is not the real thing.
Even in making a famous Japanese sword (名刀), there is a way of striking. Concentrating one’s spirit on one place alone, injecting the spirit of the Cosmos and joining the power of heaven and earth, one strikes with a hammer.
If one joins one hammer to one’s own strength together with the power of the Cosmos and strikes, our arteries will throb and leap.
Since we know that we cannot but stand in the absolute heavenly station (天位) of judgment, we must think about how we can make the Unification Church a church that remains, and whether, though the age passes and the isms and thoughts of the world pass, the ideal of the Unification Church can remain. The problem lies here.
In this, is our resolve made?
The end of Jesus and our resolve—what did Jesus seek to say? He desired the final judgment. An imperfect being cannot be acknowledged. Therefore, Jesus’ teaching is not something that is cut off midway.
Coming to the present age, why has the Christian church lost its strength?
It is because they say, “Ah, this won’t do; that won’t do.” But it is not so. What won’t do simply won’t do, but not everything is so. It is not arranged according to a predetermined view of thought.
If someone, with the thought of this world, accomplishes the thing that, as is fitting, ought to be done, then follow accordingly. And it must not be a sense of faith in which one’s forward position seems to be taken away.
One must push it aside. Though it presses in a thousand times, ten thousand times, when one pushes it aside and comes to stand in a position that all who hold authority and power greater than oneself can acknowledge, God decides the final victory.
Judgment of Heart
In the history in which Christianity up to today has set up worldwide the conditions of death, or of indemnity, it may have set up some standard of victory. But God’s desire is not the world of indemnity alone.
It is the building of the ideal world. As one draws near to this ideal world, the final limit of the world of indemnity will appear. When one crosses that limit, the state of faith of the past will not do.
What is needed here is the final one world that humankind of the present age yearns for. That is, it is the ideal world of God’s original creation. A perfect desire that encompasses all and embraces all. To be perfect does not mean to set one thing aside and do another. History moves, aiming at that perfect thing.
That religion, which has been the source of history and culture, coming to the final stage, reconciles within itself—this proves that the final history is near.
We who stand at that dead-end road—what must we feel?
Up to now, God’s providence, to do away with sin and evil, has set up the conditions of indemnity from the individual to the world. That is, it was a history of sacrifice. But history does not begin with sacrifice and end with sacrifice.
One throws off the history that began with sacrifice, judges it away, and enters a new ideal world.
From such a position, God desires a perfect individual, a perfect family, and a perfect world that has reached the ideal stage through judgment. That perfect Jesus could not teach.
However much one reads the Bible, there is no such thing in it.
Religion up to now has been apart from society. A religion that has the power to enter the very midst of the satanic world and repel it in all directions must not depart from living. That, indeed, is centered on a thorough standard of living of the ideal and is together with God and on God’s side.
If God is the inside, the human being is on the outside, and they are one—a religion that has completed the purpose of religion, in which, when I rejoice, God too rejoices; when God grieves, I too grieve: knowing the meaning and value of such a religion, we must, with the view that the religious sense is the ideal that becomes the source of our living, fight through this closing time.
So what must our Unification Church do?
It must carry out judgment. Before God carries out the final judgment on the world, judge yourself. By what standard? By the standard of the center.
What is the center?
It is God. Centered on God—but one must not judge by God’s outer things. One must not judge holding things like the relation of command toward the earth.
Judge centered on God’s heart. The problem is not simple. Therefore, as for what the ideal that will move the future world is—it is the thing of the heart that connects with God. Where one centers on that heart, there cannot but be peace.
Then what is the heart?
It governs everything connected to the nerves. It holds the content and power that can govern everything, such as the view of living. Because what stands in the position of the source of life is the heart, even if one denies life, one cannot deny the heart. Even if one denies existence, one cannot deny the heart. The heart is the thing before existence. So the conclusion follows that God is love.
Then suppose the Unification Church lives centered on the heart. Then what is the heart? We have never seen a heart.
If one asks whether the heart is long, round, or high, one cannot answer. But when one is together with a loved person, it is nothing; yet when that person departs, yearning gathers and fills one up. It gathers and fills up to the highest sensitivity of the nerves. The more one loves, the more it fills up.
We do not need such a heart whose limit can be measured by the five senses. It cannot be explained, but it is certainly overflowing (充溢). When one touches it, a closed mouth opens. Eyes that had been weeping twinkle and laugh.
A person who had been wearing the color of death (死色) becomes peaceful. When it vanishes, it is wretched. When it comes, one says one needs no world.
Even the heart of a human being is like this, so how would it be with one who, having a relationship with God, the absolute subject of the heart, has touched that heart?
This does not appear on the surface, but it certainly exists. It is the warriors of unification who, centered on such a heart-ism, the ideal of heart, now seek to advance toward a new world.
Our Purpose and Responsibility
Then, from where does one carry out judgment?
Up to what limit must the judgment make contact?
What God makes the highest point of restoration is the nation. Earlier, I said Jesus’ desire is the nation. That nation is the ideal nation. It is not the present nation. It is one in which individuals who have crossed the limit of the judgment of the heart gather and form a family, a people, a nation.
Let us draw an X like this. When one draws an X, where does the adverse reaction arise?
It arises at the crossing point. Where the Unification Church, in some age in this world, raises one point and crosses, an adverse reaction arises. In the individual, an adverse reaction arises at the boundary of the physical mind and the conscience.
An adverse reaction arises from the individual to the family, from the family to the church, and if the Unification Church appears in Tokyo, an adverse reaction arises in all the churches of Tokyo.
If one acts in the name of religion, an adverse reaction arises. If this becomes a matter of a social movement, an adverse reaction arises. If this appears as the realization of the ideal world, a problem arises.
Then how can one do so that an adverse reaction does not arise?
To prevent this adverse reaction is judgment. To say, “Kill whoever opposes,” does not work. If one leaves that adverse reaction be, not one will remain. Not one is forgiven. This is why, so as not to kill the other, one must set up the other.
If I enter the position of dying, I can receive God’s sympathy. Because I am a being in a truly happy position, by the very act of entering a truly unfortunate position and living, the people of the two positions can come to live.
For that reason, because crossing causes an adverse reaction, one does not cross but attaches behind.
If one does so, keeping a parallel position together, even going together, there is no adverse reaction.
Even if an adverse reaction arises, of the two, the Unification Church family member can take that position, but the other cannot. Then what must one do with him? One sets him in front. If one sets up such a policy, it works. This is God’s love.
What is supremely perfect can occupy even when it goes to a supremely imperfect place. Therefore, we, entering the very bottom of Japan, collect scrap and go before a conglomerate that holds tens of millions, hundreds of millions, and say, “Please give me a single newspaper,” must ask with a dignified heart.
Then, as one year passes and two years pass, with the passing of time, an adverse reaction arises in the opposite direction. Work at the lowest level causes an adverse reaction at the highest level.
Then what will become of Japan? How must one restore Japan?
To restore Japan, one must restore the world. Until Japan is restored, the Unification Church of Japan is needed. When Japan is restored, the Unification Church of Japan is not needed.
Therefore, when the world is restored, the Unification Church is not needed. Because God needs the greater, He sets up the smaller. In setting it up, He sets up the perfect thing.
To fulfill the mission of this position, the path of suffering toward the perfect thing is needed. Therefore, it is not the imperfect thing that is needed. The perfect thing—that is what is needed.
Our thought is not Japan alone as its object. Look at the world. For the sake of world restoration, we collide in living. Holding the authority of judgment, strike yourself.
For example, if it is said, “Won’t you go over there?” one commands oneself in a word, “Go!” and kicks oneself.
In making a hero who can move the whole world to tears, the Teacher does it in an earnest way. This is why the Teacher, even going into prison, regards it as ordinary, and even taking the whip, regards it as ordinary. He says, “Strike! Let us see whether the hand that strikes hurts or my shin that takes the blow. Strike and see whether the skin tears.” In the past, too, it was so many times.
Where is there a doer of filial deeds beyond that position, a doer of filial deeds who can move the whole world to tears beyond that, a doer of filial deeds who can receive Heaven’s acknowledgment beyond that?
A doer of filial deeds who, doing and doing, gives thanks to Heaven, moves God to tears, and moves the world to tears. The one who moves the world to tears moves everything. The one who moves everything gains everything.
This is why the Unification Church has, up to now, built the foundation of the heart.
If an individual lives such a life, it completes the judgment of the individual. If a family lives such a life, the meaning is that the judgment of the family ends. If the Unification Church lives such a life in Japan, the Unification Church becomes the ancestor.
If one does what all of Japan cannot do, one can save Japan.
If the Japanese people take the lead and do what the whole of the world’s humankind cannot do, the Japanese people will become a people that leads the world. The person fitting for such a character, who has become such an ideal and such a foundation of completion, pierced through with God’s heart, is a person of the Kingdom of Heaven who can remain in the nation of God.
First, restore Japan. Love beyond the Teacher. Love the world beyond the Teacher loves it. Love God the Father beyond the Teacher loves Him. If the Teacher should fall before you, you must not cling to the Teacher’s corpse and weep.
Who does God, the Teacher, love? Who loves humankind, the Teacher loves?
Who loves the Cosmos, the Teacher loves?
Who bears the responsibility the Teacher bore? You must not lament to God from a position of not having loved so. This is the word the Teacher wishes to leave with you.
We must pioneer the path of judgment in this age and this environment. We who must save humankind to be judged—if you have realized that, unless we take something with us, there is no way to save them, then, pray, with tears and with blood and with sweat, strive until you save them and seize the final victory.
Then, even if one dies on earth without gaining anything, in Heaven one is the supreme victor. Within the circumstances and fortune of this difficult world, if the family members of unification make in each nation a foundation that no one can move, advance, or pray with the confidence that the world can be recreated and resurrected.
Prayer
O God the Father! Thus, we have come to know that we are truly Thy sons. O Father! We wish to know the color of Thy tears and their taste too. We need the suffering of the tears and sweat Thou hast shed. We need the heart of toil with which, wringing Thy heart, Thou hast moved history up to now.
We need the face of that ideal (理想) of Thy smile. We need that dignified spirit and body that, sitting upon the throne, holding the authority of victory, commands the Cosmos.
O Father! Now we have come to know that, for the sake of God, Thou art equipping the band of the Unification Church and needest a pitiable band who, for the sake of God, endure and go through the bounds of death.
We have come to know that, unless they go such a path, God cannot set them in the position in which the central figures of the past stood. Thou didst once send Jesus to this earth to realize the supreme desire, but because the Israelite people did not fully carry out that mission, Jesus died on the cross.
The history up to now has flowed as a history of sorrow amid sin and evil. Pray forgive the sins the forefathers of the past have committed.
If, by chance, Japan has committed in the past a sin that cannot be forgiven, then, seeing the toil of the tears and sweat and blood of these family members of the Japanese Unification Church, pray accept it. Thou didst promise Abraham that if there were ten righteous people, Thou wouldst forgive.
In like manner, we know that Thou art One who will promise to manifest a new direction for the future of this Japan if there are a hundred people within this nation who vow loyalty toward Heaven.
We have clenched both fists, firmed our minds, and risen toward Heaven. We have risen for the sake of the Father. We are now training here to achieve that purpose as warriors of Heaven who will shoulder this Japan and go anywhere in the world.
If Thou acknowledgest these and believest these trained ones, we desire that Thou wouldst set this people in front in any place whatever of the world.
O Father! Pray, love, especially all the people in the sphere of Eastern civilization, who up to now have traced a wretched path in history. Before the sphere of Western civilization, which is a material civilization and an external civilization, the sphere of Eastern civilization is losing everything. But by the principle that all external things must be governed by the one who stands in the inner position, we know that at last, the more Western civilization draws near to the civilization of the East, conversely (逆), the more it cannot but lose everything, and an age of destiny comes in which it cannot but kneel and bow its head before the inner spiritual civilization of the East.
In such a reality, we give thanks that Thou hast set up our Unification Church in this one corner of the East, to deal not with the East alone but with the whole universe, and to fulfill the responsibility of cosmic unification.
Pray grant that the humankind who now, within Satan’s bondage, suffer and endure and lament can be saved by our hands, through our blood and tears and sweat. Grant that we may put forth strength and give us resolve and courage. We pray in the name of the Lord. Amen.