Former Headquarters Church.
Everyone has a hope. It is the original mind of the human being to wish, to accomplish that hope, to equip oneself in a place of devotion, and show oneself before the whole. This is not only of human beings but of God as well. That the human being has such a mind is because God, who made the human being, is so.
To become a person who can leave behind some historical fruit in the world, or gain in one’s age achievements unlike others and remain as a model for later generations, or remain as a matrix that descendants can emulate, one must without fail pass through a process of putting in devotion.
Whether small or great, behind a historical event there is a process filled with devotion that ordinary people cannot imagine, and we can know well through history that only the result that has passed through such a process contributes to the historical plane or the epochal plane.
So today I will speak on the topic “The Offering of Devotion.”
What True Devotion Is
We who live upon this earth today cannot but consider how many people toiled, upon a foundation of tear-filled devotion, to build a new world of culture. On the other hand, if there is a God who seeks to save the human world, that God, too, to build that world to embody God’s ideal, must prepare a foundation of even greater devotion. Unless He does so and then seeks, there is no way to save the world.
Those who walked this road in the past could not present before humanity a foundation of hope, a nest of salvation. Because God knew this fact, He carried on the providence to save humanity by preparing a foundation of devotion.
For devotion to be accomplished, the mind must be unified. That is, one must hold a single, undivided heart. There must not be two minds. From beginning to end, one must be devoted with a unified mind.
Devotion is not an object that one can lend to someone and then take back. Therefore, if the beginning, the process, or the end changes into various forms, it cannot become devotion.
One must go centered on a single, undivided heart, a unified mind. But if that mind becomes one centered on oneself, devotion is not accomplished. Devotion must be put in, not centered on oneself, but for the sake of the other—for the family if it be the family, for society if it be society, for the nation if it be the nation, for a greater other—only then does the noun “devotion” come into being.
Devotion put in for one’s own sake may remain within one’s own lifetime, but it flows away together with one’s own lifetime. Only a foundation of devotion for the sake of the other can remain.
According to the size of the other, the achievement of the devotion put in, or the size of the bond, is decided. We often experience this fact in daily life.
Therefore, you must bear in mind that the requirement of devotion and the noun “devotion” come into being not where one centers on oneself, but without fail where one is for the sake of the other. Thus, when a child puts in devotion for the parent, a wife for the husband, and a subject for his sovereign, there the nouns “filial piety,” “fidelity,” and “loyalty” remain. Because this, transcending its age, becomes bound together with history, it is an inevitable fact that anyone whatsoever comes to respect such a standard and revere such a bond.
Not centering on oneself, one must hold a single mind for the sake of the other, and next one cannot but hold the heart of God. That is, only when, upon the foundation of a heart of love, one is for the sake of the other with a single, undivided, unchanging heart, does the noun “devotion” come into being.
For the noun “devotion” to come into being, one must, with a heart of love, strive unceasingly with an undivided heart.
And it must not end merely with having put in devotion, having been loyal. One must strive unceasingly. Yet effort alone will not do. Why? Because, in being for the sake of the other’s world, unforeseen misfortunes or reactions can arise, and it does not always turn out as I wish.
Therefore, along with effort, patience is needed. And patience alone will not do either. When something that cannot be accommodated appears inside and out, on all sides, the courage to cut it off is also needed.
For that, a fight is needed, and one must, without fail, pass through a process of struggle.
The History of Salvation and the Standard of Devotion
Observed objectively today, the history of humanity may be called a history of struggle. But it is not a blind history of struggle; it is a history of struggle with a consistent purposefulness. That is why behind that history of struggle there are people who put in devotion. That devotion is centered on some thought of theirs. It is a historical fact that when one has invested all one’s devotion and mind and love into the other’s world, it appears as the achievement of that effort, patience, and struggle.
Inferring from this, if the present realistic environment or all the social institutions exist because we need them, we come to know that behind them, such a bond is lodged.
First, I must put in devotion, and I must become one who possesses devotion. For that, one must hold a single, undivided heart—that is, a unified mind—and hold a heart that loves the other utterly.
When that heart of love and that undivided heart are present, that person can set up devotion and accomplish what he purposes. Thus, to attain the purpose, effort, patience, and struggle are needed.
Without passing through this process, one cannot stand upon the standard of a devotion-filled heart and cannot rightly possess the value of devotion as one’s own. This can be known not only from the history of humanity but also from the central figures God set up.
Then how did God carry on the providence to save fallen humanity, which had fallen into the world of death?
If He had carried on the providence in a rough-and-ready manner according to circumstances, in an “if it works, fine; if not, never mind” fashion, the only conclusion would be that He carried on the providence while receiving the bias of the social environment and the influence of social institutions. There was no such work of God.
This society, too, was formed through a bond of devotion in the background. That is why, to save this world, even Jesus could not but stand in a position not swayed by the social environment and center himself on a background foundation of devotion.
Then, centered on what the history of salvation is, decided?
It is decided based on the standard of devotion. When Heaven’s devotion becomes higher, the society in the world of death too can be absorbed before Heaven’s devotion. That is, greater devotion can absorb lesser devotion.
The original mind of the human being demands greater devotion. And this is the standard of our conscience. Therefore, it is a natural principle that the human being longs for greater devotion and seeks to move from the sphere of lesser devotion into the sphere of greater devotion.
Everyone has the mind to become a patriot, a loyal subject, a filial son, or a virtuous woman.
If there is a road on which one can be loyal to some society or people, one hopes to become such a person.
Who would not love his people, his nation?
Though there be differences, the loving heart is the same. But when some person who can represent a group, a clan, or a people puts in devotion, the great majority cannot take part in it. That is why the history of salvation can be realized by the method whereby those set up as representatives, representing the ideological standard of that group, clan, or nation, order the environment centered on it.
Then, if God seeks to save the world, how must that God do it?
He must put in devotion. He must put in devotion not with two minds but with one mind. With a single, undivided heart so full that it fills every corner of the mind, that no one can invade. You must acknowledge that there is a God who carries on the providence of salvation like this.
Because the human being fell, this world became a satanic world, and Satan trampled the human being to a degree where he could not even stand in the position of a servant. Thus, though Satan made us human beings fall to the position of the servant of a servant, God has worked to save the human being.
The fallen descendants, born receiving the enemy’s blood by which they cannot return to God, have in terms of bloodline the bond of children, but in fact fell to a position where they were set up neither as children nor even as servants.
God’s Devotion to Save Human Beings and the Condition Human Beings Must Set Up
How does God save such human beings?
It cannot be done in a rough-and-ready way. He must set up a standard higher than that of a sovereign of a nation who loves his people. And in some groups, for God to be able to pull out the central figure of that group as the one in charge of the providence of salvation, the liberator of the human being, that person must hold a heart more devotion-filled than anyone who is loyal to that group.
To save, as a servant of a servant on Heaven’s side, a human being who fell and became the servant of a servant of Satan, if God’s own devotion falls short of that of any sovereign or people who put in devotion within Satan and the satanic nation, He cannot save even one person. Why? Because Satan accuses.
He will accuse, saying, “God, who created Heaven and earth, You must stand as the highest standard before this humanity and take a position of devotion higher than mine. Yet if You saved some person from a position lower than mine, it cannot be called a complete salvation.”
One cannot set up the human beings of the satanic world, just as they are, as servants of God, who created all things of Heaven and earth. That is why, if God is to save the human beings on this earth, He must put in devotion greater than the devotion Satan puts in. And if there are people who render full loyalty to the sovereign nation of the satanic world, unless He stands in a position above the degree of loyalty that person renders, He cannot save the human beings in the satanic world. Thus God, through history, cannot but restore human beings from the servant of a servant to servant, to adopted child, and, passing through the position of son, to the position of bridegroom and bride, of parents.
Salvation is the regaining of what was lost. Therefore, the words “recovery” or “restoration” come from here. It is for this that there has been until now the history of God’s providence of salvation, such as the history of Christianity. And you must acknowledge the fact that behind God’s providence of salvation are woven a devotion-filled history of struggle, a bloody history of patience and effort, and a tear-filled history of an undivided heart. God, with a single, undivided devotion, with infinite effort, has come seeking the human being with an earnest heart.
Then how much devotion must the human being, who is to receive the benefit of the providence of salvation, put in for God’s sake?
The human being, too, each time he seeks to face God, because Satan accuses him at his side, cannot stand unless he sets up some condition to become a servant who can stand before God.
It is even seen in providential history. How great must have been the resolve of Noah, who laid down his whole life to God’s command for 120 years and set out on that road! Had there been two minds in it, it would not have lasted even ten years.
But because there was a single, undivided heart that could bore through his whole life and not change even if his whole life were tumbled left and right, and a heart of compliance, a heart of love that did not treat God’s command lightly, and a heart that endured and struggled, he could endure and cross the long, long reverse road (逆路) of 120 years. Thereby, a relative condition was set up that could be repaid before God’s devotion, and so history could make a new departure from there.
Without such a condition being set up, the history of the providence of salvation cannot be established, and without establishing the history of the providence of salvation, one cannot make a new departure in history and cannot develop the providence.
You must know that this is God’s circumstance seen from the standpoint of the providential view.
Only after passing through such a long, long history has this theory of the providence of salvation come to remain upon this earth. The human being passed through the Age Before the Old Testament, which is the age of the servant of a servant; through the Old Testament Age, which is the age of the servant; and through the New Testament Age, which is the age of the adopted child. Then, being grafted onto the one who comes as the direct son, one must set up the condition of having gone to the position of true son or daughter and received the love of parents.
Thereafter, one must go to the position of the original creation, in which Adam and Eve were born in Eden, receiving God’s bloodline, before one can attend God.
Attending God, too, must be done not individually, but with all the family members of the family united. This was the ideal of God, who made the human being.
Unless that ideal of Eden is completed, God cannot directly take part in the sphere of human living and feel a sense of oneness. That is why Jesus, coming to this earth, said, “I am the bridegroom, and you are the bride.”
Then what do “bridegroom” and “bride” mean?
To recover the standard of Adam and Eve before the Fall—that is, to set up the condition on which one can be blessed and to be blessed—is the Marriage Supper of the Lamb. Therefore, those who attend the Marriage Supper of the Lamb must set up the bond of restored children of the bloodline, form a family that can be set up within the sphere of the original ideal, and set out to seek God’s true love. You must realize that it is the mission of the coming Lord to make such a first departure.
The Stages of the Providence of Salvation and the Degree (度數) of Devotion
Then, what we must know in the coming course of history is that, to save the people bound to the satanic world from six thousand years ago, one can accomplish the providence of salvation only by surpassing the degree of devotion put in by the countless humanity of the satanic world.
If one does so, Satan too cannot accuse. That is why Jesus, too, said,
“He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.” (Matt. 10:37)
Not worthy means being on Satan’s side. Therefore, unless we love God more than we love the satanic world, God does not intervene for us.
To go to the Kingdom of Heaven, whom must one love more?
One must love God more than one’s own parents and love God more than one’s own wife and children. This is the formula for going to the Kingdom of Heaven. All the ancestors of the past—that is, Noah and Abraham and all the other ancestors—passed through this process.
Even in Abraham’s being determined as the father of faith, had he held more attachment to his son than to loving God, he could not have been determined as the father of faith.
If even to become a loyal subject of a nation one must pass through a difficult process, how much more, to become a loyal subject of Heaven, a filial son, a virtuous woman, must one pass through a process greater than that? That is why, unless one loves God more than one’s own child, one cannot go to the Kingdom of Heaven.
Because we stand in a bloodline relation with Satan, if we wish to be restored, God demands that we pray. There remains for us the wish to seek the hoped-for individual, the hoped-for family, the hoped-for clan, people, nation, and world.
This wish is not only my wish but God’s wish as well. Had Adam not fallen, he would have completed the individual, family, clan, people, and nation of the original creation, but because he fell, restoration comes forth in reverse.
So the people of Israel were formed, and the people of Israel had to attend Jesus as the true son of God, be grafted onto him, and set up the condition of having restored, in the form of a people, centered on Jesus, the standard of the Adam family that Cain and Abel had lost. Thus, Jesus came to set up the bond of the True Parent—that is, the standard that Adam should have fulfilled without falling—and introduce a new ideal of the Kingdom of Heaven before the people of Israel. But because the people of Israel, who stood in the Cain position before the Abel-type Jesus, acted like Cain, who killed Abel in the Adam family, Israel perished.
What was reformed as the Second Israel, centered on Jesus, who died, is Christianity. Thus, though God leads the history of salvation, when it comes to being in a position that cannot develop, it perishes. That is why the providence of salvation in Noah’s time was to form the foundation of the servant from the position of the servant of a servant.
In Moses’ time, the law was set up to pave a road on which one could advance from the position of the servant to the position of the adopted child. And so upon this foundation the promise was set up that the Messiah—that is, the Savior—would be sent.
In developing the providence of salvation step by step, it is not accomplished merely by the passing of time. Just as God put in devotion, one must build an altar of devotion.
Only when a standard of devotion is set up that can carry on a worldwide providence beyond Israel can God send the Messiah to this earth.
God, who sets the time when the epochal mission can be done and carries on the providence, sent Jesus to the people of Israel; but though the people of Israel had to create a national foundation of devotion that could settle the foundation of the adopted child before Jesus and equip the environment, the teachers of the law and the priests opposed, and so it was not accomplished. That is why Jesus was hung on the cross and died, and history was reformed, centered on Christianity.
The Responsibility of the Second Israel
Then what responsibility must the Second Israel, centered on Christianity, fulfill?
It must equip a worldwide Israel-type form, in a position as if, though Jesus came and went, he had not been here. That is why Jesus must come again. Many people hold the preposterous belief that when Jesus comes again, he will come riding a cloud.
One who does not understand the principle of heavenly law and, with a standard set up for his satisfaction, presumes to have stood in place of heavenly law when he comes to be judged at the court on the day of judgment has nowhere to go but hell.
Jesus did not come to die. Because Jesus died, the First Israel perished. So, connecting to the Second Israel, a democratic world centered on Christianity came to be built.
Then what must the Second Israel, which built the democratic world, do?
It must attend to a new worldwide Abel and restore Cain, who had killed Abel.
The coming Lord comes as the true son, equipped with the form of Abel-type worldwide victorious sovereignty. Here, because the democratic world, in the Cain position, must set up the standard of indemnifying and restoring the fact that the people of Israel killed Jesus and that Cain killed Abel in the Adam family, the Christians of the whole world must attend the coming Lord by every means.
One must not consider the coming Messiah to be a Messiah who can conform to the standard of today’s democratic-world social institutions or their forms.
Because God has carried on the providence, passing over from the age of the servant of a servant, the age of the servant, the age of the adopted child, the age of the children, to the age of the parents, the epochal boundary line and the boundary line of the providence of salvation are different.
Therefore, the Messiah does not come again to teach what is in the Old and New Testaments.
If he came for that, such a Lord would not be needed. Jesus does not come following the tail of such conceptions of faith and institutions.
Everything, from one to ten, must not be a uniform repetition. Because that is no more than the middle, it must be different. The content of prayer too must be different; the purpose too must be different; the whole of one’s thinking must be different.
The providential age passes from the age of the servant of a servant, through the age of the servant, the age of the adopted child, the age of the direct children, to the age of the bridegroom and bride—that is, the age of the parents.
For the Christians today to come to the Marriage Supper of the Lamb and take part in the first resurrection, they must prepare a wedding garment. To prepare a wedding garment, devotion and patience are needed. One must give all the devotion one has.
The gaze one looks with must be a devotion-filled gaze; smelling with the nose too must be devotion-filled; hearing too must be devotion-filled; all the senses one feels with the body must be felt devotion-filled. It is the principle of heavenly law that, unless one passes through the gate of devotion and becomes one whose mind can give thanks before the devotion-filled body, one cannot attend God.
A Place Where God Can Come Seeking
Among the crowd today who claim to cooperate with God’s providence of salvation, there are many of the sort (類) who instead disgrace, ruin, and sell off Christianity.
Men with young hearts whose blood boils at seeing such things ought, with an indignation and hostility they cannot endure, to expel injustice from the earth. In this sense, the Unification Church is needed.
We must, with a heart of love that gives all devotion, dedicate our devotion to the work of expelling injustice. Night or day, wherever we go, unbound by human feelings, even if some difficult environments and the guns and swords of enemies gather around us, we must endure and go on. But one must not endure as a boneless man.
One must go forward with the heart, “Just wait. On the day I appear with the form I have equipped, whatever there is will vanish like the morning dew.” Then the environment of the trial will, in the end, come to an end.
In the process from the individual, through the family, clan, people, and nation, until one crosses over the world, there are, together with the fight, countless sufferings.
One must resolve that, until world restoration is accomplished, such things will invade before me. For the sake of righteousness, one must go out and fight, staking one’s life.
So one must face the Father upon a victorious foundation; if one holds the form of a loser, the Father dislikes it. That God has walked a sorrowful road until now is because countless ancestors made mistakes. When they, having made mistakes, in a place of despair, call upon God, God is all the more sorrowful.
Therefore, you must be able to keep the historical han of the indignant God and, with a heart of endurance, fight and win. And then, God wishes that you would pray, “Father! This victory is prepared for tomorrow’s battle, so receive it.”
One who does not pass through the course of struggle in the life of faith comes to walk a course of lamenting, clutching his breast. That is heavenly law. To become a person of hope whom God is calling toward the earth, there must be traces of devotion-filled tears.
Unless a foundation appears upon this earth like the one on which God came forth, from the age of Cain and Abel in the Adam family, through the times He carried on the providence centered on the Noah family and the Abraham family—that is, from the age before history through the process of the historical age—with a single, undivided, unchanging, devotion-filled mind, God cannot carry on a decisive, victorious providence toward the earth. That is why you must consider whether the place where I now stand is such a place that, equipping a devotion-filled offering so that God can come seeking, I can take part together with the fortune of the world.
Then what sort of place is that place?
It is a place where Noah, Abraham, and Moses can praise the Cosmos, a place where the countless ancestors of history until now put in devotion even while drinking the sorrowful cup of the loser. It is a place where one must settle the history of lamentation and han and, raising both hands in joy and giving thanks, offer worship to God. But this is by no means an easy thing.
One must appear with a devotion-filled achievement that has crossed over the conditions on which Satan can accuse on all sides, in every direction. At such a time, one can present here a new historical step of victory.
Though One Cannot Fully Render Loyalty and Filial Devotion, One Must at Least Be a Participant
You must know that God is calling you. God, to offer the offering of devotion, has not been careless even in saving a single individual until now. Even in facing one of you today, He did not come in a careless way.
Yet how did you come?
Many came carelessly. How much have you taken part in the providence of God, who endured and fought through harsh adversity with devotion-filled achievement and upheld Him so that God could receive the offering of devotion?
Even if you could not become one who is loyal and renders full filial devotion before God, did you become at least a participant?
When you think of such things, you are zero points—zero points! When you come to feel such a heart, can you enter, spreading your limbs, to offer worship before God? Rather, one who sinned in ignorance, knowing nothing, has a lighter sin.
Seeking to come again before God with a form of an unfaithful past and an unfaithful present—how anxious one must be!
Have you even roused such a heart?
Because that could not be done, God, in the course of the providential history of restoration, sent a single representative to this earth in the “age of the servant of a servant,” but he did not attain complete victory.
In the “age of the servant” too, there was no one who fulfilled the responsibility and stepped forth with the value of victory. It was the same in the history of Israel, which is the “age of the adopted child,” and it was likewise in the history after Jesus came and went.
Do you think that Jesus, who prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane,
“O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt” (Matt. 26:39),
fulfilled his responsibility?
And did Jesus give all his devotion? Jesus came all alone and shed his blood on the cross amid the mockery of the multitude. What must God’s heart have been, seeing Jesus returning in such a wretched form? Upon a foundation on which countless prophets shed blood for four thousand years, He sent the Messiah, but they did not know Jesus.
How many Christian believers even today forget the course of the historical providence and misunderstand the historical offering of loyalty!
Did Jesus come to this earth to die?
If Jesus came merely to die on the cross, the Teacher would not believe in such a Jesus. Such a Jesus may save the dead, but he cannot save this world.
Though the direct son came to the world from the position of the servant of a servant, passing through the bond of the servant, the bond of the adopted child, and the bond of the younger son, upon the earth there was no storehouse in which one could deposit the offering of devotion for such a Jesus.
This storehouse should have existed and become Christianity and become God’s altar, but far from becoming so, it became the den of enemies.
Where has that foundation, which God built with tears and devotion, gone?
When you come to stand before God with both hands raised, can you become a true child who can struggle, saying, “Father, this is a bond made by the devotion of Your blood. Yet You lost the place of fruitful individual perfection where You could gather it in.
Let your undivided heart be connected to my undivided heart! With a love greater than Your love, enduring and fighting more than You endured and fought, I will set up a single day of victory upon the earth and loosen Your han”?
God dislikes the crowd who say they will receive grace and be saved, or the person who says he will go to the Kingdom of Heaven by leaning on God’s power. What is needed is a person who will build the Kingdom of Heaven. You must know this.
Today we cannot but cry out, “God! Where do the historical offerings of devotion and merit remain? Because this age is an age of total indemnity, we must indemnify the vertical history horizontally.”
Our ancestors through the ages wove a history of much blood, and the altar filled with God’s true devotion was, through a bond of blood, handed down to Christianity and prepared a worldwide foundation.
Yet, because it equipped the outward form but did not equip the inner form that could remain in loyalty and righteousness, what came forth to settle this bond of injustice is the Unification Church.
Many in the world seek to come in, but there is no true child who seeks to advance toward the Kingdom of Heaven. That is why God, knowing that it is difficult to seek a true child among fallen humanity and mend the fallen history, promised that He would again send the son He had prepared.
We must all unite and become the legitimate son (嫡子) who receives the right of inheritance before that one. Through that legitimate son, the son of the concubine (庶子) also comes to receive the benefit. It is so arranged. You are Unification Church members who must become warriors of unification.
The Chosen People (選民) and the Heavenly People (天民)
Then how must one receive the offering of devotion?
When this gathering today is the offering that gathers God’s supreme, devotion-filled history, given to the Korean people in place of the whole world, laying down the meaning of God’s six-thousand-year providence—how will one receive this offering?
To receive it carelessly, without putting in devotion, is a disgrace. One must at all times, with confidence, equip one’s own wedding garment and make devotion-filled preparation. That is why one must not say one will seek the coming Lord but must prepare to be able to greet that Lord.
If one prepares a foundation of devotion greater than the Lord and becomes a person who can shed tears for the sake of the world, the Lord, though told not to come, will come before him. If, when one’s own history is dug up, one is a chief of Satan, does one, without even putting in devotion, expect the Lord to come for one’s sake?
Unification believers must equip a devotion-filled offering. You may, until now, have regarded, as your achievement, all the conditions presented before these people on the course of restoration, but you must gather and bind all those achievements and prepare a devotion-filled foundation before Heaven. Thus, you must, as a Unification Church that can be more loyal than anyone in the Republic of Korea, form a foundation that can surpass the Republic of Korea.
You must know that this is the primary reason that you have, until now, been made to run up against difficult conditions and hardship.
Then, from where does devotion show its effect fastest?
If one puts in devotion while playing the flute and dancing and singing in a comfortable, easeful place, it has no effect. A single day of devotion put in amid adversity, where tears well up, where the reek of blood is in the air, where skin cleaves to bone, indemnifies ten years, a hundred years of comfortable times. Because we knew this fact, we ourselves cast off the comfortable place and struggled to walk the contrary road. Why? It was to show our utmost devotion before Heaven’s devotion-filled tears.
Even if one has no achievement of one’s own, a devotion-filled heart toward God and an earnest heart of loyalty are needed. If you could not become such sons and daughters, become at least an errand-runner who seeks such sons and daughters among this people and guides them before the Father, and then, of yourself, once call “Father.”
Jesus, even amid countless sufferings, gave full devotion to Heaven. Though on the cross he said the words, “Father, why hast Thou forsaken me?” because until the very moment of his death he faced the Father’s heart with a single, undivided heart—“Though the Father has forsaken me, I cannot forsake the Father”—the power of resurrection came to him.
We are coming forth having set up a seven-year course in Korea. During this seven-year course period, our Unification Church family members must indemnify all the sins of humanity throughout history, which trampled and shattered all the gifts of the han-filled God, who has carried on the providence to save the satanic world for six thousand years.
So, struggling to indemnify this, we have witnessed with blood and sweat and tears to indemnify the vertical history horizontally and to widen the foundation on which God can be attended.
On the road of death, holding fast to Heaven; on the road of tears, holding the bond of Heaven’s devotion; in a lonely place, holding Heaven’s power; hearing the counsel of the heart that Heaven brings to mind, one must rise again and be able to step forth before tomorrow’s hope.
Even though we are doing this work to introduce such a standard to you, the heart of gratitude toward it is growing ever smaller.
Who pours in devotion?
The owner has not been decided. If there is one who puts in more devotion, Heaven chooses him. Heaven has not yet made the decision, “I am the Father, and you are the Son.” Do you understand?
When God has not yet decided, “This people is My people, this clan is My clan, a clan connected with My flesh and blood,” one is always drawn to the high place where devotion is poured in. Before the decision, one is the chosen people (選民), not the heavenly people (天民).
Had Israel been decided as the heavenly people, it would not have perished. Because it could not become the heavenly people from the chosen people, Israel perished.
Therefore, what the Unification Church asserts today is not the thought of the chosen people, but the thought of the heavenly people. Do you understand?
If One Treats Carelessly, What Devotion Was Put Into
No one can invade, even for a single second, the goal the Teacher has set until now, laying down God’s Will. Here, there is absolutely no forgiveness.
One cannot treat carelessly a person who puts in devotion before Heaven. Even if some family member from the provinces brought a single apple to the Teacher, the Teacher does not lay a careless hand on it.
If one wrongly touches what devotion was put into, one is not forgiven. Therefore, if one disregards God’s single, undivided heart and God’s supreme effort, one becomes a sinner who cannot be accommodated before heavenly law.
One must not treat carelessly an object to which another has put devotion.
If it is an object into which a hundred’s worth of devotion was put, only one who puts in a hundred-and-ten’s worth of devotion has the qualification to handle it.
Otherwise, for example, if the responsible one of some group receives what devotion was put into and cannot connect it before Heaven, the more people who put in devotion, the faster it perishes. That is why spiritual groups, though they may be glorious in their generation, often overstep the heavenly way and soon perish.
You must know that such a law of heavenly relationships applies as a formula in your living. Then you will be able to know that the course of life you now walk and the living environment in which you live are likewise unavoidable.
With what can we face Heaven?
If we cannot shed the sweat that Noah of old shed while building the ark, history accuses. Furthermore, you must be able to feel the devotion-filled heart of Abraham as he set out on a wandering, gypsy-like road toward the land of blessing, God’s hope—that is, the plight of the wanderer in which Abraham was placed.
Just as Moses, not looking back on the glory of Pharaoh’s palace and all the conditions of happiness, went in place of the people of Israel, seeking a place of misery, sorrow, and solitude, so you must, with such a foundation, love the people and love Heaven.
If you cannot do so, the historical ancestors, taking as a condition the testament they left behind, will accuse from a third-party position.
Seeing such things, one can know how important a role the hand, the eye, and further the body and mind must play. Jesus prepared for such work over the thirty-odd years of his life.
In putting in devotion, there is a degree of devotion that Jesus, as the Savior, had to put in. It is not that, because he was born wearing the official hat of the Son of God, he could just go. To stand as the central being who can be set up before all the human beings upon this earth, one must cross over the pass of the inner conditions and advance toward the people and the world. A great trial follows there. That is why Satan, representing the world, dragged Jesus, the Son of God, about—to the mountain, to the field, to the pinnacle of the temple—and tested him as he pleased. When we think of such things, we can know that, to indemnify such a work, you yourselves must carry it out.
The Purpose and Value of Devotion
If you possess the offering of devotion that Heaven has sent down, you must be able to think about how much devotion God put in until Jesus came upon this earth. And you must think that He wove a history of shedding blood until a foundation was laid upon this earth.
Not only that—consider the historical process in which our ancestors crossed the tear-filled crises of being driven and pursued and, bearing tomorrow’s hope, struggled with a single, undivided heart to become sons and daughters who would remain to the last and fought in place of this people. It was not by chance. It was not a scattered, sporadic affair. Because in the course of history there is living content that can urge on the facts, we, upon a stage where we could embrace and cross the age, appealed for righteousness as Heaven demanded and carried on this fight.
The time has come when we must cross the last crisis of the fight; and what use is it, however well you ran on flat ground before, or however well you crossed steep peaks and ridges?
One must cross the one crisis of the final watershed. Even if one should die there, you must go. Otherwise—that is, if, although the time is already autumn, when the fruit must ripen, one remains green, thinking it is summer—one becomes no more than kindling that goes into the furnace fire, like leaves falling in the autumn wind. That must not be. Therefore, you must receive the offering of devotion with devotion and know the fact that God is calling and urging, counseling.
When the Teacher went to the Taereung holy ground this morning, tears came. Who guards this holy ground, and how much? At the holy grounds established at 120 places in 40 countries of the world, the fire must not go out. This must go round and round through one whole season. And Korea must become one broadcasting station and send radio waves to the world.
When Korea sends the waves, the holy grounds of the world can receive those waves and offer thanks and praise before Heaven. The holy ground is such an earthly outpost of God, yet there is no one who guards that outpost.
The prophets and family members of the Unification Church must not become a sorrowful throng before Heaven. God’s heart toward the holy grounds is exceedingly deep, yet since the children do not appear, how sorrowful God’s heart must be! God’s sorrowful heart over the holy grounds you can atone for, but when God comes to feel sorrow because, having promised to set up the way of loyalty and filial devotion before God, one fails to carry out that promise, it becomes irreversible.
If it comes to this, one can never again become a loyal subject or a virtuous woman.
What is most fearful is whether one has not trampled the devotion put in from above and below, before and behind, left and right.
Do you keep the offering of devotion well, receiving that devotion and distributing it to all sides, making flowers bloom so that many descendants can raise both hands and greatly uphold it? If this is lacking, Heaven’s wrath will appear like a typhoon.
On the day the vengeance of Heaven’s army shakes the earth, you will have nowhere to go. That is, one is driven into a dead-end alley. And one is set up not on the mountain peak but in the valley.
However little one has been equipped, however little achievement one has, this alone one must accomplish.
One must not do such work for one’s own sake alone. One must shed tears for the sake of the nation rather than oneself, for the sake of the world rather than the nation.
Even if these people called the Republic of Korea, the Han people, the Baedal people, should vanish, the world must remain. It must remain as a world humanity that pursues peace and hopes for peace.
Even if one cannot put in devotion for the nation, one must put in devotion for the world; even if one cannot put in devotion for the world, one must put in devotion for God.
God, to give us the most precious gift, told us to love God from the highest standard. He said,
“Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength.” (Matt. 12:30)
You must know that the devotion our ancestors have put in until now is a devotion of hope. It was a devotion struggled in the process of seeking a single day of hope; it was not a devotion put in to possess the hope and attend Heaven.
Do you understand? From a position far removed from God, it may have become a tumbling devotion on the course of indemnity, but it could not become a devotion that accomplishes the will of hope and comforts God.
No one in the human world possessed such devotion as to praise the glory of Heaven. That is why, through the coming Lord, one must subjugate all the enemies and render every devotion of loyalty and filial piety to the Father, who has been freed from the han of the indemnity world.
All the devotion in the two-thousand-year providential history of Christianity through Abraham, Moses, and Jesus until now became a sorrowful devotion that left only nail marks in God’s heart.
What Devotion We Must Offer
What devotion must true sons and daughters offer hereafter?
Not a devotion on the stage of realistic living, but a devotion of hope, a devotion of glory, a devotion of loyalty, a devotion of attendance.
Only by leaving behind and departing with such devotion can the Kingdom of Heaven become my Kingdom of Heaven and that Father become my Father.
The devotion until now was a devotion on the path of indemnity, but the devotion hereafter must be a devotion for attending Heaven, a devotion for taking part in the position of attendance. We who take part in this are those who take part in the first resurrection.
To take part in the position of attendance, one must equip oneself with content by which one can comfort God, who has been sorrowful until now, and take part in the story of His sorrowful devotion. What came forth to introduce this and to set up before God the indemnity conditions that go with it is the Principle of Restoration.
Through the Principle of Restoration, what shall we do?
To conclude the sorrowful historical process, we must put in devotion and set up indemnity conditions. Thus we must take part in the sorrow of God, who lost Adam in the Adam family; and we must make Him forget the grief in which Cain, who should have borne the final fruit, instead killed Abel and drove a nail into the Father; and make Him forget the grief in which Noah, having endured, toiled, and been loyal for 120 years, was destroyed instantly. And we must know the heartfelt content of the toil that spanned the three generations of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And we must be able to take part in the sorrow of God that continued down through the two thousand years from Moses to Jesus. It is to do so, to plant God’s heart in you, that the Principle of Restoration exists.
Therefore, you must find the Father who was lost in the Adam family and fulfill in his stead the grief of Noah, who could not stand before the Will in the Noah family. And you must stand in place of the heart of Abraham, who struggled when, through his mistake with the offering, his descendants came to be cursed for four hundred years; and you must stand in place of the sorrowful heart of Moses, who, in a burning love for the people, struck dead the Egyptian who was the enemy for the sake of God’s Will when the people of Israel were placed in a wretched position. And you must know the heart of God, who faced that.
You must be able to take part in the sorrow of God, who gazed upon the people of Israel as they suffered a history of persecution, driven and pursued for the restoration of Canaan, and at the price of much blood through which Christianity has passed until now.
If you feel that God toiled thus to seek me out, you must become one who can say, “God! Through me, forget the historical han.” And you must know that only when you become the master of a devotion who, holding the decisive authority of victory by which Satan can be subjugated, equips the form of a victor before God and can render attendance (侍奉), glory, and praise, can you become God’s adopted child.
Therefore, one must cast off the words, “In the past I did such-and-such for Jesus.” One must also cast off the thought, “Look how much I worked after entering the Unification Church. When I become the master, I will do such-and-such.”
You must know the fact that one who, though his road remains, looks back and laments is one who has already lost everything and is hoping for some irrelevant condition. There are many such people.
If you wish such a mind to vanish from you this very day, you must destroy the enemy’s camp that blocks the way and equip the glory of a victor.
To equip the glory of a victor with a heart of public indignation centered on God’s historical han, one must crush the enemy and indemnify and restore this. Standing at the head, let us make the final decision by a charge.
Settling the decision of victory or defeat, one must set up a victorious people before God and offer national devotion before God so that God can greet a single day of glory. How God must long for such a day!
Do you, too, hold such a longing heart?
The Main Stream Enters the Great Sea First
Some family member holds the convenient thought, “Whether what is being done now is God’s Will or whatever, if I just stay still, swept along in the flowing current, that is enough; why bustle about and make a fuss?”
There are many people who think there is no need to make a fuss, since the Teacher will drag them along even if they stay still.
One might think that, since the water on the mountaintop flows all the way to the Pacific, even if it stays still, whether it flows in the main channel or swirls at the side, there is only a slight difference in distance, so it is all the same. But even in flowing water, there is a main stream and a tributary.
The mainstream, which collides head-on with the whole of the inner twists, enters the great sea (大海) first.
In the Unification Church, too, there are a mainstream and a tributary. The Teacher poured all his devotion into leading the direction of the mainstream. He led it as a single leaf-boat on a great sea where a typhoon blows in.
One must make the blowing wind become a stronger force that brings one to the destination and makes it bear fruit. As long as history is not shattered, as long as strength does not fail, the raging waves of this great sea can be an aid of tempering and trial in going toward the destination, but they cannot be a hindrance to attaining the purpose.
Among the Unification Church young people today, there are many whom the Teacher would like to give a drubbing and send flying off to the four directions.
You must feel like an artificial satellite flying off from this perverse world full of prisoners.
A person of shallow conviction cannot set up a subjective standard in pioneering the way ahead. To believe in God is to put conviction to the fore and go without resting. Therefore, one must run so hard that, on returning home, one cannot even remember the rice bowl (bapbari: a North Korean word meaning a bowl for holding rice).
Now that we are surrounded by the enemy army, how can we think of the rice bowl?
In our Unification Church, there are many who sit down and set up their spot, holding a rice bowl, like a taffy seller on the street. There is no time for that. One must run.
One must, busily, like an artificial satellite faster than a jet plane, greet the offering of devotion and hand it over gently before the countless humanity. When one hands over that offering, ten million people will shed tears of thanks to us.
Even if I cannot now have a single day of joy, unless one strives to leave behind a foundation of devotion that later generations can treat as an offering of devotion, one cannot become a warrior of unification and cannot enter the great sea.
When the Teacher went to Taereung today, a woman said that the Unification Church is a range upon range of mountains. Even mountain upon mountain, once crossed, is flat ground.
Every one of the Unification Church members is like a person hanging by a rope, trying to climb to the top of that high cliff. The pass each of you must climb is rugged, yet how splendid it is!
There is a person who, climbing a high pass, without looking up, says, “Having come this far, this is enough,” and gazes only at the flat ground, satisfied with that.
If a flood comes while one has not even climbed the pass, what will happen? That moment may be comfortable, but one is a condemned prisoner under a sentence of death. And there is a person who, having climbed a certain distance, says, “Ouch! My leg is broken.
Since my right leg is broken, I must mend it before going. While mending it, I may as well rest a while before going.” Then a companion appears, and, saying to each other, “It’s hard, isn’t it?” they try to gaze only at the flat ground.
And there are people who, while others climb step by step, say they will jump all at once. Such people, when they first enter the church, are exceedingly busy. They come to experience, even while sleeping at night, their legs moving and their eyes exercising.
Once you get onto the normal track, you will all come to know. The teacher, too, had such a time in the past. When the cells of my limbs went into action first and wished to go, I could not but be dragged along by them. You too, when you first entered the Unification Church, wanted to run at once, did you not?
One Must Not Relax Until Reaching the Goal
The Teacher is grateful to God. Had God made the Teacher’s character such that he only wanted to run at once, some accident, whether death or whatever, would have occurred. But God, when we climb to a certain pass, blocks the way and makes us prepare. Because there are many stages to pass through.
Because the Teacher knows this, even if he cannot easily cross that pass, he absolutely does not despair. The living evidence of one’s own past days becomes, without fail, historical material. When one climbs all the way up and unties the belt one had tightened, much persecution and trial come.
Because it is the formula that, falling once, one rises once; after passing through much persecution and trial, one reaches the destination. That is why believers must not have days of laughing for more than a week.
If there is a good day, one must pray, “God, how many days will You let this last?” and, receiving a promise from God, then laugh. One must know how to offer even such a prayer.
Unification believers who have wind in their lungs are pronouncing a death sentence on countless people. Encountering words they have never heard, they are shattered as if struck by a cannon. That is why the Teacher of the Unification Church is cursed until now.
Even when the Teacher says, “When you witness, wherever you go, do it meticulously and well; do not say this thing, say only that thing,” they first blast out, bang bang, the words that were good to them when they received grace. To the hearer, they are words that would make one faint, but the speaker just says them, pleased with himself.
If one shoots a gun well, one should hold a gun according to one’s own experience—whether a carbine, an M1 rifle, or a shotgun air rifle—yet would it do to say one will shoot a shotgun air rifle in place of an M1 rifle?
God uses a person equipped with a background that can be applied in the right place, a position that can adapt to the environment, and one’s own central standard.
Most of you are old acquaintances of the Teacher, and when I quietly look at your faces, they are different from before. If compared to a season, they are just like autumn. The eyes do not shine, and the hands have no strength. Seeing this, I would rather not leave it alone.
However, once one has entered, one must equip oneself well with the posture for the moment of death. What I have worried about in guiding the Unification Church until now is the day of death draws near, and what shall I do for that day?
The Teacher carries his will about with him. It is to pray about what requirement I can ask before the Father and to stand upon the standard of having made the greatest effort I can while I am alive on the earth.
The Cord of Devotion
Because the Teacher struggled while putting up a fence around the complicated spiritual world, Heaven never once departed.
You stand upon such a foundation, but you must be careful when countless spirit communicators and countless spiritual individuals come and go. In this field, one’s own experience will not do.
Since original natures differ from one another, it must be something new. When facing a new person, unless one faces him from a relative position with a mind that can respond to a new standard and a value corresponding to it, one is caught in a condition.
That is why the Teacher fears most a person who puts in devotion. A person who throws his weight around and gives orders to all under Heaven is nothing. He is the same as a tiger’s fart. The Teacher fears most the person who puts in devotion, such that when he commands, Heaven and earth obey, saying, “Yes.”
If one binds God tight with the cord of devotion, even God is completely bound. There is no heavenly law that can cut the cord of devotion. That is why the very body and essence of God is connected with our Unification Church by the cord of devotion.
The throng of devotion gets beaten and takes it away. This is the road of restoration. Accordingly, you who stand in such a process must put in devotion. However well you make your start, you must, at the very first, put in devotion and make your start.
Suppose God announced that there would be a tree-climbing contest. Then the greedy Unification believers, fighting to climb the biggest tree, would, in the end, have the contest end with no achievement, the fight unfinished. This means great greed and no achievement.
A clever person will first find a tree suited to himself and climb it. But a greedy person, trying to climb the highest tree beyond his measure, ends up falling.
First, one must climb little by little and, setting up one standard at a time, complete it. Do not start too big from the beginning.
If you steadily set up achievement and, pouring in devotion to the measure of the loyalty corresponding to your essence, stand in a place that can remain for a thousand ages, holding the standard of the offering of devotion that Heaven has accumulated, then, even if the hoped-for will is not accomplished in your generation, it will without fail be accomplished in your later generations. If one goes forth holding such a foundation of devotion that can remain toward the world, the fame of oneself and one’s descendants will spread out into the world.
When devotion is moved to another place, how is it moved?
Little pieces of iron are clinging to a small magnet; if a large magnet once sweeps in and out, what happens to these pieces of iron? They all come to cling to the large magnet.
Likewise, when this large magnet is the heavenly fortune, when the foundation of devotion of the heavenly fortune comes and goes before you, it takes away entirely the foundation of devotion handed down from all the ancestors of the ages until now.
In the Last Days, it takes all this away. At such a time—that is, when one is robbed—one gets robbed while sitting still, mouth open, laughing. Why? Because there is a way to steal back what was stolen.
You must do such stealing as takes away from the whole globe tens of thousands of times a day. In pioneering this world of ignorance until now, the Teacher has always used such a strategy.
One goes down first and gets beaten.
If one is beaten, all matters go smoothly, and one receives sympathy. And when a higher one is beaten before a lower one, an inverse-proportion effect appears. That is why one is told to be gentle and humble. When, having done so, one rises, one takes it all away. In this way, the Teacher has taken away many bundles of grace from people who had received grace.
Is this a sin or good? (Good.)
Because God desires unification, when one takes away the bundles of grace loosed worldwide, gathers them in one place, and distributes them again, the world comes to be unified. But those who received grace in the past and had it taken away, because they know the taste of that grace, will be in agony, pining for it.
This grace, taken away and stored up, is then given out little by little to all, from father to child. Because the Teacher can govern grace, even if thirty million people say, “He is the chief of heresy. May he perish.” He does not perish.
If one was beaten without cause, one must receive compensation for the loss. Even when the Teacher went into Seodaemun Prison, he stretched out his legs, snored, and only slept.
When you cannot swallow me, that is my advantage. To do this work, at times one had to be shabby, and at times one had to be pointed at. In pioneering this road, I suffered all sorts of hardships. Each time, I thought, “God has come through hardships far greater than this; how should I not go through this much hardship?”
The more such stories one suffers in a public place, the more one can fill the storehouse with treasures others do not possess.
When you come to know that such is grace, can you grow weary going out to witness?
That you grow weary and develop neuralgia when you go out to witness is your fault, not God’s. You may resent it, saying, “Oh, my neuralgia came from the Will, yet the Teacher does not even understand that!” But the Teacher has never once been able to resent God, saying He does not understand me.
Only after making a promise to God that cannot be exchanged even for several worlds and putting in devotion can one face God.
Prepare the Offering of Devotion to Render Before the World
On today’s course of walking the seven-year course, what offering has been left to you?
Hereafter, the people of the world will try to take many of the Unification Church’s officers. When someone is at headquarters, they take an interest and, without fail, ask about that person’s career.
Then I explain what career he has. At such a time, you must go with the boldness to wash the grease clean off your hands and speak up boldly; would you go and speak with that same musty old way of thinking of the past?
If a person has received the offering of devotion, he must also know how to render the offering of devotion. With that devotion, which burned up one’s youth—that is, with tears and blood and sweat—one must be able to offer the offering of devotion for the sake of the people and the world.
We must offer, before all the world and before Heaven, our offering of devotion, which has added a hundred’s worth of devotion to a ten’s worth of Heaven’s grace.
Thus, we must leave behind a condition of restoration through indemnity by which even our descendants can live in peace.
Only one who can struggle to add, with his hand, to Heaven’s requirement can, as one of the heavenly people, offer the offering of a people if it be a people, the offering of a clan if it be a clan, or the offering of a family member if it be a family member. One who does not come in through the gate of devotion is a thief.
The road on which devotion goes, the road of unification, the road that introduces the offering of devotion, has already been pioneered.
Following that road, passing through the original traditional bond, you must, without resting, dedicate your life and advance toward your destination. Thereby, though the form of it is outwardly forlorn, on the later day when it becomes a world of joy and glory, the Father, filled with joy, will greet you.
For that day, you must resolve even upon death, and, even if you die, you must struggle to introduce that day before these people and die. I ask that, even if such a day of death comes, you will all the more resolve and strive to become a person who, in the midst of death, can possess that world of hope.
The road on which devotion goes, the road of unification, the road that introduces the offering of devotion, has already been pioneered.
Following that road, passing through the original traditional bond, you must, without resting, dedicate your life and advance toward your destination.
Thereby, though the form of it is outwardly forlorn, on the later day when it becomes a world of joy and glory, the Father, filled with joy, will greet you. For that day, you must resolve even upon death, and, even if you die, you must struggle to introduce that day before these people and die.
I ask that, even if such a day of death comes, you will all the more resolve and strive to become a person who, in the midst of death, can possess that world of hope.