Former Headquarters Church.
The title I wish to speak to you on today is “The Father and His Kingdom.” I shall speak for a while on this title.
The Purpose for Which God Created Heaven and Earth and All Things
Every object in this world that human beings have made has, without fail, an owner. And in that object, there is the purpose of the owner who made it, and there is also the purpose that the made object itself holds.
We also know that there is one who created heaven and earth. The Owner who created this heaven and earth is called God. Yet the things created by God cannot abide together with God, and the world made by God has become a fallen world.
From the very day of the Fall, heaven and earth and all things came to lose their owner. And so heaven and earth and all things came to stand in a position of having to seek their lost owner and bind a bond with Him once again.
We know that this path of going forth to seek the lost owner is the path of restoration.
Then what purpose did the Owner, who created this heaven and earth and all things, have?
That Owner created heaven and earth and all things to exist as the Father of humankind and to exist as the central being of hope who could be manifested through human beings. This heaven and earth and all things were to be such that the Owner could love them and they could receive the Owner’s love. They were to become things belonging to God, things belonging to God’s kingdom.
Yet this did not come about; instead, heaven went its own way, the earth went its own way, and human beings went their own way, and all became divided. We know well that this is the Fall.
This is why God came forth to gather this divided state. Gathering heaven and gathering the earth, He came forth gathering the whole, centered on human beings. This is the path of restoration God has walked.
Originally, God and we human beings were bound in a bond of parent and child that could never be forgotten, however much one tried to forget it, and could never be parted, however much one tried to part it.
Yet because human beings fell, God could not stand in the position of our Father, and we human beings could not stand in the position of God’s children.
If there is the most pitiful person in this world, what kind of person would that be? It is a person who, having a child, cannot call that child his child; a person who, attending his parents, is in a position where he cannot call them his parents. There is no one more pitiful than that.
Again, if a husband and wife, having sworn before all the world through a bond and a promise and bound the bond of husband and wife, are in a position where they cannot love one another, where is there a person more pitiful than they?
God and Human Beings, Who Must Restore the Relationship of Parent and Child
In what position do God and we human beings stand today?
God is the Father of us human beings, and we human beings are God’s children, yet we are placed in a position where this is not so. That the relationship between God and human beings is originally that of parent and child is the core thought of Christianity. Moreover, this is also the principled content of the creation of heaven and earth.
Therefore, human beings must seek a way to a position in which they can bind the parent-child relationship with God.
Where is there a thing more wretched and sorrowful than a world in which the relationship between God (the Father) and human beings (the sons and daughters) has been severed?
Therefore, that God grieves goes without saying, but we human beings, who have lost God, are also in a position where we must grieve. And we must realize that there is no sorrow greater than the sorrow of the earth, which has lost the heaven it should attend as its bridegroom.
Then, if there is something that must be sought by mobilizing all heaven and earth, what would it be?
It is to seek the lost Father, to seek the lost children, and to seek the lost bridegroom and bride. The path of coming forth to seek these is the path of restoration.
On this course of restoration, has God ever had a single day on which He could say, “I am God”? He has not. Though God created the world for the sake of His beloved sons and daughters, He could not call it “My kingdom.” And have the many people, or the many saints, who come forward believing in God ever been able to say that this whole world is theirs? They have not. In this way, this heaven and earth have become a heaven and earth that has lost its owner.
Then what has become the owner of this heaven and earth in God’s stead?
Satan, the enemy of God and our enemy, has become the owner. They have become all things that have lost the owner to whom they should belong and human beings who have lost their original parents.
When we think that they are the Cosmos and humankind who have thus lost their owner and lost their parents, what is it that we must do?
It is to seek our lost parents and to avenge the enemy of our parents, an enemy who can never be tolerated. We must bear in mind that this remains the duty of us human beings.
What is the path of restoration, a path for seeking?
It is a path for seeking the lost Father and for seeking the kingdom centered on that Father. To accomplish this, one must pass through the position of the servant of servants, then the servant, the adopted child, and the child, and, as victorious sons and daughters, receive God’s blessing. Thereby, becoming true parents centered on God, one must form a family, form a clan, form a people, and form a nation, and so realize a world. This is the purpose of restoration that God desires.
Was there ever a time when God set up a single individual and said, “I am surely your Father, and you are surely my son”?
Was there ever a son or daughter who received the words, “I am the Owner who created heaven and earth, so when I move, it is heaven and earth that can move with me; when I settle, it is heaven and earth that can settle with me. You are my son, so you too can do such work in my stead.” There was not.
God sent Jesus to this earth and said, This is my beloved Son. He called him the only begotten Son. Yet though He sent him to this earth as the beloved Son and the only begotten Son, God could not love him to the very end.
For the first time since the creation of the world, God could not love the Messiah, who bore the title of God’s beloved only begotten Son.
Where is there a thing more grievous than this?
It was so for God, but how must it have been for Jesus, who was sent?
He could not even say, “O Father, love me, I beseech Thee.” At the very most, he said, “O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me” (Matt 26:39).
Within these words, a great meaning is contained. Though he ought rightly to have received the Father’s love, there was a certain condition and a boundary line by which he could not receive love freely. It was a love that could only gaze from afar, a love that could only yearn, a love that could only wait. And so he could not say, “My Father!” or “My son!”
The many saints on this earth who believe in Jesus call themselves God’s sons and daughters. But are there sons and daughters with a heart of burning, passionate love that wells up truly from God’s heart (심정)?
Are there sons and daughters whom God can embrace, bearing His breast and saying, “Yes, you are my son”?
There are not. Heaven and earth remain as they are, and though many people have the form of human beings, no one can have dominion over heaven and earth. No one can take God’s love for his own alone.
God, Who Has Carried On the Providence Bearing the Responsibility for Restoration
Even Jesus, who has gone to the heavenly world, must pray. The Holy Spirit, too, must undergo the travail of childbirth. For what reason must this be so? It is because there remains a han (한), arising from the Fall, that must be indemnified.
It is because the han bound up—from the individual, through the family, the clan, the people, and the nation, to the world and heaven and earth, the spiritual world and the physical world—must be resolved.
Without resolving this han, heaven and earth cannot bind a bond. Heaven is the bridegroom, and the earth is the bride. God is the parent of humankind, and humankind are God’s children. This bond must be established.
Then what, after all, is this Satan, or this devil?
He is a thief who stole the love between heaven and earth, between God and human beings—a love that could never be divided, however much one tried to divide it. Until Satan’s surrender is received, the rupture of the family cannot be prevented.
Today, the fallen descendants, following what their original mind aims toward, are going toward Heaven without even knowing it. They go even while collapsing and falling. They have passed through a historical course of collapsing and tumbling over—individually, as a people, and as a nation. Yet amid all this, the thankful thing is that, although they lost God and passed through such a course of repeated tumbling, the name of God has remained within the human mind until now. That even the name of God remains is a happy thing. And that, though Jesus has gone, the name of Jesus remains a happiness. Yet though you pray in the name of Jesus, from long ago I have not prayed that way. I do not pray in the name of Jesus.
Though there were many twists and turns in walking the historical course, you must realize that, having reached today, such nouns and such teachings—by which, before the descendants of humankind, heaven can be called the bridegroom and the earth the bride, Jesus can be called the bridegroom and the believers the bride, God can be called the Father and human beings the children—have been spread amid this complex world and have come to possess a worldwide stage. You probably think that all of this came about because Christians did the work of witnessing up to now.
Of course, countless Christians indeed sacrificed themselves from the position of an offering, but more than that, it is because God, who stands behind them, came forth bearing the responsibility to leave behind at least His name and to leave behind before the human beings on this earth at least the standard He desires. God has unfolded the providence up to now, shedding tears to lay a bridge to human beings according to each age.
Today, Christianity boasts of its history of martyrdom. In whatever age and in whatever region, wherever Christianity entered, the blood of martyrdom was without fail shed.
We know that it pioneered the foundation of its mission by shedding blood in this way.
Yet we must not think only of how individuals, families, or groups were wretchedly sacrificed. We must realize that, more than their wretchedness, God, who guided them, walked a more wretched path.
Then what kind of person can praise the name of God?
What kind of person can possess the kingdom of God?
It can wrap up all the historical wretchedness of God in a bundle, go to the satanic world, and unpack it there; one who can go to the satanic world and pour out God’s indignation and all the indignation and bitterness of our humankind and so take revenge—such a person can praise the name of God and can possess the kingdom of God. The time of taking that revenge is precisely the day of the great judgment.
The Path God Must Walk and the Path the Called Human Being Must Walk
My friends, if you look at the words of the Bible (Matthew 25:35 and following), to the multitude on the right hand He says, When I was hungry, you gave me food; when I was thirsty, you gave me drink; when I was a stranger, you took me in; when I was naked, you clothed me; when I was sick, you looked after me; when I was in prison, you came to see me. And you can see that to the righteous on the right hand, He granted eternal life, while to the wicked on the left hand, who did not do so, He meted out punishment.
When you face such words, you must not think they are merely words spoken in parables and symbols.
Jesus came to this earth and said,
“The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of man has nowhere to lay his head” (Matt 8:20).
Who would have known that the Son of God would become like this?
Who would have known that the Messiah, whom God prepared and sent over four thousand years, would come to such a plight upon the earth? Why did the disciples of Jesus, who had received the Messiah, have to be hung upside down on crosses and massacred?
Did God prepare four thousand years of history to make it so?
The bands who say they will become loyal subjects, filial sons and daughters, and faithful wives for God’s sake must walk this path.
Why is that?
Because, though there is the name of the loyal subject, there remains a path the loyal subject must walk; though there is the name of the filial son and filial daughter, there remains a path the filial son and daughter must walk; and though there is the name of the faithful wife, there remains a path the faithful wife must walk—and so these names are given to send them on the path of death. Because this path is blocked, they are driven onto it.
Therefore, to become a loyal subject, a filial son, a filial daughter, or a faithful wife, one must be able to throw one’s own body into the place of death in the stead of one’s sovereign, one’s parents, and one’s bridegroom.
Though a human being has been called before God, the human being has a path to walk as a human being, and God has a path to walk as God. Just as there is a path of the cross on the path the human being walks, there is also a path of the cross on the path God walks.
The human being goes centered on individual circumstances, but for God it is not individual circumstances alone; the human being goes centered on family circumstances, but for God it is not family circumstances alone; the human being, if it is a people, goes giving priority to the people alone, but for God it is not the people alone.
For God there remains, beyond the individual, the family; beyond the family, the clan; beyond the clan, the people; beyond the people, the nation; beyond the nation, the world; and beyond the world, the Cosmos.
Therefore, to break through the path of the cross, the sacrifice of human beings alone will not do. One must join those who have won on the individual cross, form a family-level form, and indemnify the family-level cross that God must walk.
One must unite people with people and establish the national-level condition that God must walk. Therefore, to become a true filial son or daughter before God, and a true loyal subject or faithful wife, one must first walk all the way the path one must walk oneself, and then help God on the path God walks. Whether by carrying God on one’s back or by whatever means, one must help Him.
The path of restoration is not walked by human beings alone; God, too, is walking it. Human beings go by way of the earth, but God is walking the course of restoration not only on the earth but in the heavenly world as well. This is why those who go for God’s sake, once they are blessed, must be relentless.
History is like that. Even if my individual self, after untold hardships, was called by God and became an offering, it does not end there. On that foundation, one joins a greater cross and advances one step forward from one’s present position—this is the path of restoration.
God, who must establish a family-level standard rather than the individual, raised family-level sacrifices; and beyond the family, the people; beyond the people, the nation; beyond the nation, He raised sacrifices for the world. This is why, before God, who has gathered history up to today, countless sacrifices were needed.
In the same way, for Christianity today to lay a single foundation centered on the world, it must, at the same time as it completes its sacrificial mission as Christianity, indemnify in God’s stead the cross of God, who must lead Christianity.
This is why the term “the great tribulation of the end of the age” comes forth.
The Reason God Drives Us to the Position of an Offering
A person who is set up as an offering on such a course of tribulation does not become an offering because he himself has sinned.
Rather, God drives him to the position of an offering to pioneer a greater field than his present position. This is the principle of restoration through indemnity.
None of our ancestors up to now knew of coming forth in this way through restoration through indemnity.
If, having won on the course of the individual cross, one proclaims before Satan upon that foundation that one will go to the path of the national cross and sets out, one can walk the course of the national cross. But it will not do to go without knowing what the national cross is.
Without knowing this, one cannot take responsibility.
For Christianity today to develop into a worldwide Christianity, it must set up the condition that it will complete its responsibility before God, indemnify the cross it bears as Christianity, and even indemnify God’s cross. Yet despite this, Christianity today is breaking apart because it fails to fulfill that responsibility and mission.
At such a time, God has established a religious body that can carry out a worldwide mission.
When God establishes such a religious body, externally, He sets up national sovereignty and so gathers what has been knocked askew. But internally, there must be a band that, centered on the content for laying a worldwide stage or a heavenly foundation, comes forth indemnifying in God’s stead.
If there were no such band, the way to save the world would be blocked. This is why you must realize that God has prepared such a time and is coming forth, preparing such a band.
Have the human beings of today come forth, cooperating in the knowledge of this content?
There must be people who, having won on the individual cross, come forward saying they will take responsibility for the family-level cross. Because none appeal in this way, the path God must walk remains. Are there among our Unification Church members today people who are undergoing family-level persecution?
If there are such people, they must not regard it as wronging and infuriating. You must realize that, while you are undergoing family-level persecution, God is receiving clan-level and national-level persecution and is also laboring more than you to pioneer the path of the cross.
Why is God doing such labor?
It is because, even at the cost of being broken on the family-level course of the cross, He must lay a clan-level foundation. Only by doing so can He establish a foundation that can be gathered again even if it is broken. Because God thus prepares in advance a sphere of benefit for each age, the family-level age and the clan-level age can be brought to a swift conclusion.
God has carried out this role. God has struggled alone on a stage of the cross greater than the persecution and the sacrifice of the cross that human beings undergo on the historical course. You must realize that this path is the path God comes forth seeking and the path God walks.
To Be Qualified as Children and as the Bride before God
Today, for a leader who represents this age to come forth and guide his people, he must first win on the course of clan-level trial. Only then can he move the clan into the realm of a people.
For Moses to gather the Israelite people, he had, of course, to undergo the trial within the realm of the people, but he had to overcome the national trial and the state-level trial in the wilderness of Midian and lay a foundation of victory. Only by guiding the people upon such a foundation does one become a leader who is not accused.
God, who guides ignorant human beings, is undergoing trials and tribulations greater than the trials and tribulations human beings undergo so that we human beings may not perish.
We must realize that, during the very time we human beings endure trial within a family-level sphere of benefit or a national-level sphere of benefit, God is hard-pressed to establish a national-level and worldwide foothold.
Up to now, because the countless people who have come to face God did not know this content, they appealed only to their sorrow before God. Appealing to their difficulty, they would say, “O Father, be pleased to receive my tears.”
The bands who say they believe in God and will become God’s filial sons and daughters, loyal subjects, and faithful wives have done this up to now.
One must become a person who, holding the heart that the cross my individual self undergoes is not because I have done wrong but is a substitute, on a worldwide scale, for the family-level cross, repels Satan, and then can say, “O Father! I have laid a family-level foundation of victory, so grant me the national-level cross.”
Yet you try to make blessings your own and to leave all your difficulties entirely to the Father. This is the mindset of a thief. You must clearly understand this.
When the Teacher faces you, I have probably said occasionally that God goes one world ahead of human beings. Because it is the step of God, who goes one world ahead, we Unification Church members must not forget that, while we are walking to establish a family, God is preparing a national-level foundation; and while we are in the process of crossing over a national-level trial, God is walking a daunting path of the cross to broaden the national and worldwide foundation.
Today we are God’s sons and daughters, who ought to support God, and the bride, who ought to support the bridegroom; yet have we truly lived such a life? We must reflect once again.
The Father and His kingdom—the Father is our Father, and that kingdom is our kingdom; yet because of human beings, the Father has become this wretched, and the Father’s kingdom has gone this wrong.
That God should bear the cross that human beings alone ought to bear, and that God should walk the path of suffering that human beings ought to walk….
Until you grasp through experience (체휼) this infuriated heart, you cannot become sons and daughters whom God truly loves, and you cannot be qualified as the bride before the bridegroom.
When I go to the provinces and behold the ignorant heart of the Unification Church members, I come to think of what the heart of God must be as He beholds this Unification Church. Beholding the circumstances of the Unification Church and thinking of God, who goes ahead of us bearing the cross to pioneer the path we must walk, we must follow behind God, encouraging Him, “Let us go quickly,” and we must offer all our strength before God and fulfill the duty entrusted to us.
Today, we must become filial sons. We must become loyal subjects and faithful wives. Then, in what position can one receive the title of filial son, and the title of loyal subject, and the title of faithful wife?
It can be received only on the path of the cross. Even Jesus could receive that title only in the place of exchanging it for his life on the course of the cross. You must clearly understand this.
You say you are God’s sons and daughters without walking such a path? You say you will become Jesus’ bride? You have far too much greed.
When One Goes Forward on the Path of the Cross, All Is Accomplished
The names of “filial son,” “filial daughter,” “loyal subject,” and “faithful wife” are not something one can receive smoothly and easily. God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit are striving before us to pioneer the path of faith.
We are saints who must go forward bearing a bone-deep mission. Would the heart of this God be at ease—this God who must gaze with closed eyes upon the saints dying to fulfill this mission, this God who cannot tell the suffering Jesus to resist that suffering?
This is why we must realize that the more we collide today with trial, persecution, and tribulation, and the more we enter into the cracks of circumstance, the more, in proportion, God’s cross too is intensified. Therefore, to become sons and daughters of God the Father, we must go by the path of the cross.
God is walking the path of starvation.
When have you ever devoted a single act of sincerity to this God?
Whenever there was something good, you stole it all and filled only your belly. The path one walks for God’s sake is not a path one walks to eat. It is not a path one walks to play. It is absolutely not a path one walks to be comfortable. To become a true servant who can attend the true Owner (God), one must cast off this decaying body and receive the title of true servant.
If there is a parent, one must attend, one must receive from that parent, even in a hard place, the title of “you are my beloved son or daughter”; and if there is a sovereign, one must attend, one must receive from that sovereign, even in a hard place, the title of loyal subject.
Only then does one become a being that the enemy Satan cannot occupy. Once one becomes such a being, one no longer loses God.
If one betrays God, one would lose Him, but once one becomes such a being, one never loses Him again. One becomes a filial son, a loyal subject, and a faithful wife before God.
Then, in what place will God seek true sons and daughters?
That place is the course of the cross. In the end, He calls on the course of the cross.
To follow that Father, one must bind a bond on the course of the cross and receive the title of “my beloved son or daughter.” Then, can all things be made to flow by that? They cannot.
There is the individual cross, and at the same time, there is the family-level cross.
This is why Jacob, after smoothly crossing over the hill of the individual cross before Esau, set out to seek the path of the family-level cross. After winning on the path of the family-level cross, one must go to the path of the national cross. Thereafter, one must go to the path of the state-level cross.
This is why Moses went to the land of Canaan, toward the path of the cross, to seek the nation again—that is, the nation of Israel—in the land of Egypt. Yet because the Israelite people failed to take responsibility on this path of the cross, the condition was established by which Jesus, who was to come later, could die on the cross.
It was the mission of the Messiah who came to this earth to pioneer the path of the worldwide cross upon the foundation of victory on the path of the national and state-level cross.
Therefore, though the Jewish nation, the Israelite people, and the Jewish believers ought to have become one and believed in the Messiah who came, because they failed to fulfill their mission, Jesus came to lose his national and state-level foundation. And so Jesus fell from the position of the sovereign to a position lower than that of Moses and lower than that of Jacob.
Because the Israelite people, prepared and established amid four thousand years of suffering, betrayed him at the national-level standard, Jesus came to leave the family, leave the clan, leave the people, and go out into the wilderness.
Jesus, dragged out into the wilderness by Satan, fought against him and came forth seeking again, at the individual, family, clan, national, and state-level standards, the four thousand years of foundation that the Jewish people and God had laid. He came forth, establishing a foundation of victory through a spiritual showdown battle. The path of restoration is such a path.
In the course of restoration of this age, our Unification Church is now going forward, looking toward the four-year course. Rather than praying about how you will walk this four-year course, you should pray about how you will prepare for the course after the four-year course. A wise person is one who, taking it as certain that the four-year course will go well, seeks the path to walk after the four years.
The Purpose for Which We Live
Walking this path up to now, you have become a band that did not collapse in the course of evil persecution and remained. You did not die in the place of being driven. Why is that? Because you knew that God was guiding us.
Can the footsteps of the guiding God be halted?
If one tries to halt the footstep, it grows faster and faster. Is it not so? It grows faster and faster. If one collapses, exhausted, on the individual cross, one cannot cross over the standard of the family-level cross.
If one collapses on the path of the family-level cross, one cannot cross over the clan-level, national-level, and state-level standards.
Today, centered on the four-year course, we must draw a worldwide standard based on the standard of the people and the nation and move forward. The problem is how we will break through, upon this worldwide hill of Golgotha, to the position where we can become loyal subjects and faithful wives before God.
God goes one age ahead, beyond the limit of each age.
If we take responsibility for the national-level age, God prepares the state-level age; if we take responsibility for the state-level age, God prepares the worldwide age. So which is harder—the cross we bear or God’s cross? God’s is harder.
Now what must we do?
When God guides our path on the hill of the cross, we must go by that path, become victors, and become people whom God can save.
We must go until, after walking all the way, the individual crosses; we hear the voice saying that now nothing remains for you but victory. At what stage are you now lingering? You must think carefully.
When we think of such things, you are sitting in this place now, but God has no time to rest. Today, it is not the Unification Church that is the issue. It is not Korea that is the issue. Nor is it the Teacher who is the issue.
Now everything historical is entirely at stake.
At such a time, you must feel where you yourself stand. When I look these days quietly, it is the same now as it was in the past. Although there remains a path of the cross that must be walked, you are not walking it.
The Father and His kingdom: the purpose for which I have walked is to seek the Father, and the purpose for which I live is to restore the Father’s kingdom.
Because the Father is shedding tears, I cannot live in comfort; because the Father is worried, I cannot rest in comfort; because the Father is bearing the cross, I cannot be in a comfortable place.
We, Who Must Conquer the Cross
My friends, when we set this Will before us and think, the present situation in Korea is exceedingly time-sensitive. The more one gazes at the world situation, the more urgent it becomes.
The time has come when we cannot but consider what kind of band it will be that can take responsibility in God’s stead on the summit of the worldwide cross. Those who say they dislike this path, who refuse it and fall away, are those who follow behind the band that betrayed Jesus as he bore the cross.
Today, our Korean people must hold the conviction that we must save, with our hands, the countless peoples of the world. We must be filled with the conviction that this mission cannot be yielded to any other people.
Likewise, the believers of the Unification Church must hold the conviction that, for the saving of this nation and this people, it can be none but the Unification Church. We must say that we will be the first to bear the difficult cross.
Since God bears the cross in a place of starvation, we too must have the resolve and conviction to bear the cross and set out without eating. Only this is a filial son.
Even while bearing the cross in a place of starvation, one must have a heart that wishes to give and wishes to offer. One must say, “I know what I ought to offer, but I have nothing to offer but tears.” One must do this. This is what I must do.
If God is in a thirsty position, I too must bear the cross in the same place. I must know how to bear, in God’s stead, the path of the cross that God must walk in a place of thirst and to hand over what is comfortable to God.
Even if one has become a wayfarer who cannot halt his weary steps and rest on a lonely road, one must know how to say before God, “I am all right.” One must stand in a position not of adding one’s own plight to God but of relieving God’s plight through oneself.
From such a position, one must become a person who knows that the cross one bears is one’s own responsibility, who knows that God bears a greater cross than I, and who can offer, can serve, and can attend. Such a person is a true filial son and filial daughter.
Then for whom does God carry on the providence?
It is beyond the family, for the people. It is for something greater than that. God, who bears national-level responsibility from the position of the people, does not treat lightly even the most insignificant single person who can fulfill even one responsibility within the realm of those people.
You must become a person who, holding a compassionate heart like God’s, comes forth saying he will relieve the suffering of the cross that God undergoes. God will receive every action such a person does as done for God Himself.
Today, the Unification Church members must say they will bear the family-level cross and bear the national-level cross added on top. This is the attitude of a Unification Church member.
Even if one fails at the family-level altar, it is enough to leave behind the title of loyal subject at the national-level standard and to leave behind the title of filial son and filial daughter. When we think of this, we come to realize that our Unification Church has met the age in which it must carry out a national-level mission.
Now, in this arena where we are looking toward the four-year course, the path we must walk is worldwide, and the kingdom we must seek is heaven and earth; so we must consider that the path of the cross that remains, until we seek and offer this heaven and earth to God, is great. Therefore, the cross we undergo now is a matter of course.
If you halt your steps here, you become a person who merely paves the road and then simply passes on. In the Unification Church, we will link things together stage by stage in this way: the age of formation, the age of growth, and the age of completion. This is why what you must bear in mind once again is that, in this age, you must keep your wits sharp and run the remaining path of the cross.
On the course of the cross, each time you collide with a trial, you must pray, “Thank you.” When you go by the path of the cross, you must take hold not only of the national cross but of the worldwide cross. Thereby, you must conquer the cross. Before conquering the cross, one cannot cross over the hill of tribulation of the satanic world.
Jesus, too, after conquering the cross, was able to establish the new history of resurrection and set out on the history of the New Testament gospel.
In the same way, our Unification Church members today must also conquer the cross. We must conquer the cross of the present world. Thereby, we must become a band that does not perish even when it receives trial and persecution. This is the method by which God guides us. Because such a path of restoration remains, each time your plight seems lonely and forlorn, you must think of the position of God, who is walking together with me.
Though You Rest, God Labors
John the Baptist said of Jesus,
“Behold, the Lamb of God who bears the sin of the world” (John 1:29).
It is a true saying. The Lamb of God, who bears the cross of the world, must break through all the hills of the cross that pierce from the individual, through the family, the clan, the nation, and the world, to heaven and earth and the Cosmos.
He must break through the Golgotha of the spiritual world and break through the Golgotha of the earth. And so he must cross the hill of the individual cross, cross the hill of the family-level cross, and cross the national, state-level, and worldwide hills.
You must choose and do the most difficult task. When you meet the most difficult crisis, you must say, “Teacher, I will do it. I, too, will give it a try.” You must strive to bear even God’s cross added on.
On this course, where you must now go forward bearing a heavenly mission, what responsibility and mission are you bearing as you cross the toilsome hill?
You must do everything, giving priority to God. That you are now starving is not because you cannot eat rice. It is not that you are thirsty because you cannot drink water.
You say all sorts of things with words, but is that something that can be done with words?
Matters concerning life are not done with words. When something is said to you, it lasts only at that moment. Only at that moment do you pretend to do it.
We must go forward bearing a great cross. The individual trial and the family-level trial were a preparatory period for laying a clan-level foundation.
Now you must not think that, because there is no persecution and trial appearing before us, our path will be smooth. Now the scope has grown wider.
In the past, you bore the cross while seated, but now you must bear the cross and walk. In the past, you bore the cross and went forward gazing at one place only, but now you must not look at one place only. You must go forward, watching the four directions—east, west, south, and north.
In the past, it was enough to climb the hill of the cross from that spot, but now you must go forward, looking all around and watching every side. The scope has grown wider.
The Teacher must uphold the path God walks, and you must uphold the path the Teacher walks. We must stand in the same position. We must not be far removed from one another.
The Teacher of the Unification Church is walking a more intensified path than you. And God, who guides the Teacher, is walking a path one degree higher. Even while you are asleep, God has come forth to bind relationships through the three stages of formation, growth, and completion.
Just as one passes through the formation level and is judged at the growth level, the second son is the issue. The second is the issue. That there is above and below, front and back, left and right is also because there is the second.
Everything must be resolved in the second. This is why the responsibility to set right the above and below, and to set right the front and back and left and right, lies with the second.
When I hear news of the Japanese church these days, they say that the Japanese high school students all come to the church when they finish their studies at school. They leave their school bags at the church and do roadside witnessing—they say each one witnesses to one person and then goes home. They say they are carrying on such a movement.
What have the grown men and the young people here been doing up to now?
Even if you do not move, God does not rest. If you do not do it, I will.
From the position of having to wage a new decisive battle while looking toward the final decisive battle, only the person who takes responsibility can return alive.
Because it is a path one cannot finish walking even in a whole lifetime, you must be awake, asleep, or awake and even in your dreams. Have you become so? Are you not seeking only to be comfortable? That will not do.
When you take public responsibility, you must be dignified regardless of what hardship befalls you. Though you ought to become the shield of the Lord when he bears the cross, even while bearing the fence of the environment you yourselves must walk, you are instead foisting it onto the Lord.
The public mission and what one must do individually are different things.
Let Us Become Those Who Realize the Father’s Kingdom
The Teacher, even at the cost of collapsing in exhaustion from hunger, thought of how I might go ahead on that path over which God is anxious and of how, if there is a path of the cross that can be borne, I might walk that path. Yet you are not preparing to walk such a path. Today, even while knowing that one is saved through attendance, you look on brazenly. You must not stop at such a heart.
Asleep or awake, we must go forward for the Father and for the Father’s kingdom. Even at the cost of dying a thousand and ten thousand times, we must resolve that han. A person who has such courage must be able to bear his cross and to bear God’s cross in his stead.
This is why today we must work for the Father and His kingdom. We must become filial sons and daughters whom the Father can call his own. Men must become the Father’s filial sons, and women must become the Father’s filial daughters.
We must become loyal subjects and faithful wives before the Father. We must clearly realize that we are thus a people born for God’s sake and that we must become filial sons, filial daughters, loyal subjects, and faithful wives. This is the mission we must carry out.
The path our Unification Church walks is difficult. Even on the difficult course of the cross, one must say, “Abba, Father, let it not be according to my will, but according to the Father’s will.” Is it the Father’s will that one collapse, shedding blood? Is it the Father’s will to suffer? Because one must avenge the Father’s enemy, it cannot but be so. Without doing so, one cannot avenge the enemy.
Knowing such things, we must become sons and daughters who attend the coming Father and loyal subjects and faithful wives. We are going forward to meet on a day on which we can be so.
On this path, we must become a band of the Unification Church that resolves not to become losers but to become victors. Now, let us work to the point of being thoroughly sick of it.
To become filial sons and daughters before the Father and loyal subjects and faithful wives before His kingdom, one must be able to bear the cross of one’s parents and brethren in their stead and to bear the cross of the people in their stead.
One who bears the cross in the stead of his brethren and his parents is a filial son and daughter; one who bears the cross in the stead of the people of that kingdom is a loyal subject and faithful wife.
When one possesses the Father’s love, one is a filial son and daughter; when one takes the sovereign’s love for one’s own, one becomes a loyal subject and faithful wife.
Today, how far have you pioneered the path of the cross by which the environment of the age must be crossed over?
Are you not going only by the path of the individual cross?
Going that way, you cannot live for God. On this course of going forward from the individual, toward the family, the clan, the people, the nation, and the worldwide stage, you must not become a person who lays the cross upon God.
Standing bearing God’s cross in His stead, you must cry out before God to become filial sons and daughters, appeal to become loyal subjects and faithful wives, and proclaim that my blood and flesh are blood and flesh that cannot be joined with the blood and flesh of evil. Only then can that kingdom bind a relationship with you, and the Father bind a direct relationship with you.
Clearly knowing such things, you must, as the vanguard on the course of the cross, fulfill your responsibility and become a band that without fail remains. Now the Teacher intends to gather the blessed families and undertake a new adventure.
Going back this evening, consider at what stage you yourselves stand. My friends, you wish the Will to be fulfilled, do you not? Who will fulfill this Will? Who, who will fulfill it?
Can even God do it alone?
Human beings on the earth must keep step with Him.
My friends, since there is a path to walk, we must tighten our belts. We must not be careless. It is a hurried step. I ask that you not become dropouts on the path you must run, but become those who can attend the Father in that place of unification that was promised and live, having achieved victory in the Father’s kingdom. Do you understand? Raise your hands, those who say they will do so.