The human beings living upon this earth today cannot escape temporality. Any event whatsoever comes to pass without fail within time.
Every event without fail has a before and an after. There is the past leading up to that event, and there is the present in which that event occurred. Again, if it is an event, there is the place in which the event occurred and the place that follows it. It is the same when we consider human history.
The individual, the family, the tribe, the people, the nation, and the world are all moving forward within such a sphere of time.
The Conditions Required for Accomplishing a Purpose
In living, a person without fail has a purpose that must be attained. Centering upon that purpose, he must go for ten years, twenty years, thirty years, seventy years, for a lifetime. The greater the purpose, the more strongly he must resolve inwardly. Without doing so, he cannot reach that purpose. What this means is that unless one continues, through the process called “time,” an inner resolve capable of surpassing that purpose, one cannot attain that purpose.
Even in the process by which a single individual attains a purpose, bonds of a thousand shapes and ten thousand forms come colliding against him. In pressing the work forward for the accomplishment of a purpose, there may be an environment that welcomes the road one walks, but far more often the environment is one in which the conditions that oppose and obstruct that purpose appear several times over and several dozen times over. This is a fact we come to feel in our daily lives. And so, when one cannot overcome the environment that assails him and, unable to endure, collapses, there comes about the sorrowful result called failure, together with frustration.
We come to see much of this fact in our daily lives, in this society, and in this world. Thus, in our daily lives, we come to experience that the conditions opposing the road we walk are proportionally more numerous than the conditions welcoming it.
If there is a great man and he seeks to run toward some great purpose, then the greater and the more magnificent that purpose is, the more there will lie hidden within it events that encompass the nation and encompass the world. Those events appear upon the road of that great figure not as conditions of welcome but as conditions of collision and opposition. The greater the factor of opposition that appears, the more it can become a factor of despair and a factor of failure.
Therefore, when such events arise, the person who takes charge of the event must appear as a nucleus of power in which a resolve greater than the event and a mighty content have been joined. And without colliding with the difficult environment, he cannot resolve the event. Hence, the position of the person who must resolve while placed in such an environment cannot but be exceedingly serious. Thus, to overcome such a problem, one must hold a stronger conviction toward the purpose.
How one is to bring forth an inner impulse capable of surpassing the conditions of trial that press in from without cannot but be the crucial key that resolves that problem.
Whenever human beings collided with such problems upon the course of life, they sought to overcome them, but every time they ended in failure. This has been the ordinary rule of our human life. Then what does God, who knows this, require of us? He desires that we go on making resolve and determination once again.
Since a crisis of trial will surely draw near to us as well, we must resolve once again to prepare for that crisis of trial. To collide with the external environment and be victorious and attain one great purpose, we must bring in a strength and a stimulus greater than the trial that approaches. This is the most important problem of all. This is not a problem over which God alone is concerned; it is an important problem that we ourselves must also resolve.
When people come to collide with such a position, they need a stronger power. Because a stronger stimulating factor is needed, they come to require a third power. The greater a figure is, the better he knows that he cannot reinforce the strength to overcome a crisis of trial from among people who live ordinary lives within an ordinary social environment. Therefore, for great individuals, needing a third power is unavoidable.
Yet because this cannot come forth through human beings, they seek a power stronger than themselves and a stimulus beyond what they presently feel, and each time they come to seek God. We come to see much of this fact through the biographies of great men.
If You Would Overcome Trial
You must offer devotion in preparation for such an environment, such a life, such a moment. What this means is that, knowing that the conditions of trial that approach are great, you must offer every sincerity. When you do not know what the content of the trial to come will be and do not know when such a trial will come, you must always live a careful life and offer devotion in a place where you can become one with God. Continuing such a life, you must reinforce the strength by which you can cross the crisis of trial that approaches.
Seen from this point, since the purpose of a person living a life of faith lies not so much in the individual’s victory as in the world, the course of the man of faith, who must go to the very limit point of that world upon the road on which he beholds that great purpose, cannot but be a weary road of suffering. Therefore, the road that each of you must walk hereafter is not a level road.
This is a road that must be walked desperately; the more one feels that there lies across it an environment in which the resolve of countless human beings can fail. This road cannot but be a course of difficult trial, a wretched course.
Then what is the only secret by which that trial can be overcome?
It is enough that one’s own capacity for inner resolve be greater than the trial that approaches. That is, one must stand in a subject position from which one can create the strength to cope with the crisis of external trial.
However, if one walks the road of faith from a position in which such strength cannot be reinforced, then one must always take an attitude of unity with God.
This course of trial that I walk is not a course for me alone to walk; it is a course that God too must without fail walk. Yet because God cannot go without passing through a human being, He must raise the person called “I” and go; and if not through me, He must go through some other person. Therefore, only when I stand in that place where, representing countless people, I offer devotion and, saying that God’s Will is my will, appeal with all the devotion I possess, can I form a bond with God; and thereby I can be reinforced with a new power that until now did not exist within my environment. This is the life of a man of faith.
The greater a person is who takes responsibility for history and bears a world-historical mission, the more he needs not so much an inner resolve to overcome the trials and afflictions of his age as a resolve capable of crossing a trial beyond what he aims at, and if that is worldwide, a trial upon the worldwide dimension. For such resolve to continue, he must form an inner relationship with God, unknown to anyone. This is a fact.
Therefore, when a difficult problem arises, one should wish to consult God rather than consult through a human being. And one should feel that pouring out and consulting over those circumstances together with God is more valuable than anything else, rather than laying open one’s circumstances and consulting some individual. We can know, in the light of history, the fact that without such an experience one cannot bear a difficult mission.
In this respect, before each of you who stand today upon the road of the Will in our Unification Church, there remains an individual course of indemnity (탕감) upon the road you must walk individually. Only when the individual course of indemnity comes to its end at some point is a foundation prepared upon which one can at last form a relationship with God. Then, centering upon that foundation, one can step forward bearing public responsibility. In other words, without passing through a process by which one can indemnify oneself, one cannot take responsibility for a public course of indemnity. It means that to take responsibility for a public course of indemnity, one must pass through one’s own course of indemnity.
If we analyze our course of indemnity, all of it carries a historical character, and this is something hereditary, inherited from the forebears of the past. Here, if one’s countless forebears were good ancestors, it is one matter, but the less good the ancestors were, the proportionally greater are the conditions of indemnity imposed upon oneself.
If You Would Settle the Conditions of Indemnity
When we come to know such a fact, the problem becomes how, before setting out upon the public course of indemnity, I am to cross the limit line of my indemnity.
Then, when we consider the individual course of indemnity, how great will be the amount of indemnity that one’s own self must cross over? For some it may be ten, for some a hundred, for some a thousand, for some ten thousand.
When we look at the thousand shapes and ten thousand forms of humanity today, we may say that the shapes of indemnity laid upon each one behind them are likewise of a thousand shapes and ten thousand forms. Here, the person who takes someone as his standard and says, “He is a happy man,” is a foolish person. The happiness of which we speak when we say that he is happy is not something connected to the individual. It is historical. That is, it appeared through the good merit of his forebears.
His good forebears did not live happy lives while living lives of good public merit. Among his ancestors there are many who did not pass through a happy life course centering upon their own individual selves in the course of a lifetime but who stood in a public position and walked an unhappy life course. What they left behind while walking such an unhappy road is public merit. There remains for them a foundation of merit upon which they expended their own present reality and expended their lives for the sake of the hope of the future.
Those who are raised upon such a foundation of their forebears’ merit, in other words, the descendants born upon a foundation on which their forebears have already paid the price of future sacrifice, come to live more happily than anyone in any society until the period of indemnity comes, which occurs only after they go to some limit point in the future. In other words, they come to live within a sphere of life in which they can receive blessings.
The more a person is born in a position in which his forebears have indemnified his factors of indemnity, the more he cannot but be a happy person at the present point.
However, though the countless people who still have contents of indemnity remaining look upon such a person and wish, “How good it would be if I too could live happily like him,” they cannot live in that way.
However much they may wish it, it cannot be. The more they wish for it, the more aggravated trials and aggravated contents of indemnity will come before that hope.
We must know the fact that the more one wishes for such happiness to be realized within a short period, the more the aggravated factors of indemnity come colliding before oneself proportionally to it.
Therefore, before we go out to a public position, we must know how much indemnity we ourselves must settle. If there is a person who surmises how much such indemnity remains, then when it comes to whether he will indemnify it in a year or indemnify it in a month, there is probably no one who would seek to indemnify it over the course of a year. Anyone would wish in his heart to indemnify it all within a month. Yet if one seeks to indemnify it within a month, since a trial aggravated tenfold will come crashing down, the problem becomes whether one’s own self is prepared to bear that trial.
To settle such conditions of indemnity within a month, one cannot remain in one’s position just as it is. Here one must without fail make a vow, and in making a vow there is without fail a condition. Even worldly and profane people, when they make a vow, do so by planting a knife or by staking some other thing.
In the same way, to shorten the period of indemnity that lies before the road one must walk, one must without fail make a corresponding inner vow and resolve; and there one must stake a condition capable of matching the condition of indemnity.
An offering is something set forth as one condition in making a new promise between God and me. Therefore, when such an offering is made, for what is it made? Here the view of purpose must be clear. Just as there is no vow without a purpose, so there is no offering without a purpose.
To pass through the road of indemnity, time must without fail be expended.
Moreover, not only is time expended, but an expending of one’s own self must take place. Therefore, what is presented as a conditional object to prevent the expending of one’s own self is the offering. You must know this.
The Private Course of Indemnity and the Public Course of Indemnity
There remains for each of you your responsibility to pioneer such a road of faith.
Then how much time have you expended here, and how much have you expended yourself? This determines whether the factors of indemnity are removed.
When we consider such things, what kind of road is the road of faith today?
As you yourselves know, it is probably the road of sacrifice. Then what sort of sacrifice is this sacrifice? It is the sacrifice of one’s own life course. In other words, it is the road of investing every factor by which one could be happy. Not only that, but one’s own physical body must also be drawn into this.
In other words, it means that one must pay the price of the sacrifice centered upon the whole and the sacrifice centered upon one’s own self. That the longer that time is and the greater the amount of one’s own sacrifice, the more proportionally one can settle the amount of indemnity for one’s own generation is proper reasoning.
If you say that you are living a life of faith to indemnify, you must clearly distinguish whether that indemnity is private or public. Before the members of our Unification Church today, such a course of indemnity plainly remains. Ordinary human beings do not know their road of indemnity. They do not know the course of indemnity they must pay. Yet God is in a position where He cannot but guide even such human beings, however vaguely, onto a road by which they can be indemnified.
Therefore, when God commands us, He does not say, “Sacrifice for your own individual self.” He says, “Sacrifice for others, or for your family.” What does it mean to say, “Sacrifice for your family”? It is not to settle one’s own individual conditions of indemnity but to settle conditions of indemnity from a position one stage higher. That is, He exhorts us not to indemnify upon the road we walk for the sake of today’s road, but to indemnify for the sake of the future that is to come.
The person who has paid indemnity for the age that is to come can advance. The person who indemnifies for the sake of today cannot remain in tomorrow, but the person who indemnifies for the sake of the future can remain in today. What this means is that the person who takes responsibility for the position of indemnifying for the future can cross beyond even today’s course of indemnity.
Therefore, when we come to consider the flow of history, what is its mainstream thought? It is sacrifice. Human ethics and morality today emphasize sacrifice.
Sacrificial service centered upon the family and sacrificial service toward the country are the universal courses walked by any individual or people. Thus, in the family, one is told to walk the road of filial piety toward one’s parents and of loyalty toward one’s country. That is to extend the content of indemnity that I bear even into the future and there to settle it.
To be loyal for the sake of the future is to be loyal for the sake of a countless multitude. The devotion that I offer is not for the sake of myself. Though it is one person who offers the devotion, the influence of that devotion reaches even to that entire nation. Therefore, if the citizens of that nation are ten thousand, all ten thousand must repay me.
Among those ten thousand there will be many who are greater than I. It is a place of natural environment in which those great individuals, standing in an objective position, offer prayers of blessing (축수, 祝手) for me, look up to me, and exhort me to receive blessings, a place where the condition of Cain and Abel can be connected to a great stage.
Therefore, my individual devotion does not end within myself alone; it reaches even to the people living within the environment connected with me. Among that multitude there will also be descendants of good forebears who passed through a course of indemnity beyond the one I now walk. When I stand in a place where such people look upon me and bow their heads in praise, God cannot but remember me.
Thus, the person who possesses ten people, a hundred people, a thousand people who remember him in this way, God cannot but remember. If I pray for blessings upon them and labor to indemnify them, and they in turn pray for blessings upon me, then my individual conditions of indemnity are automatically settled by their prayers and by their living for my sake.
The Foundation of Devotion Upon Which God Can Descend
That God, taking such an environment as His standard in the course of history, has led countless human beings was not to bring calamity upon human beings; it was a strategy of love to hand over to each one the authority to receive blessings more than anyone within the sphere of that age. We must know that such a strategy is precisely to have them sacrifice from a public position.
Therefore, the more people there are who pray for a person and who offer devotion for him, the more that person cannot but be a blessed person. To have many people who offer devotion for me, I must first hand over all the blessings I possess before many people. You must know the fact that before that, many people will not offer prayers so that I receive blessings.
If ten people offer devotion for one person, God cannot but remember that one person. Gathering an environment in which such devotion is offered and saying, “Let us widen the ground of an environment in which we can stimulate one another to a new stage,” a single body was formed, and that is the church.
Therefore, the person responsible for a church must not offer devotion for himself. He must offer devotion for a countless multitude.
The place to which that countless multitude must go is not only their families but also that nation and even the world. Therefore, the minister’s gaze must not remain only upon his family and the members of his church. He must have a mind that can turn, through those members, toward the nation and the world and must say to God, “Combine the devotion I have offered and the devotion the members have offered, and pave for us a road by which we can go out to the world.” When the minister and the members become one and give and receive in this way, God without fail descends there.
The time when they become one and God descends, is the time when they become one, not for the revival of their church but for the revival of the nation. Then that church will not perish until the nation becomes one. Furthermore, if there is a church that offers devotion in order that the world may become one, that church will not perish until the world becomes one.
What was it that enabled Christianity today to pioneer world history?
Jesus Christ, even upon that destined road of dying upon the cross, said, “Abba, Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me. Nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou wilt.” Here is the Father’s Will, and where is the limit line of that Father’s Will? It is the world. Therefore, he crossed the line of death for the sake of the world and crossed every road of suffering in which blood was shed.
The believers who follow such a central Christ must take Christ’s mind as their model and resolve and go forward, saying, “I too will go for the sake of the purpose of the Christ who died for the world. Even though I should die as Christ walked the road of death, I will go having fulfilled the way of loyalty and filial piety before God.” The more worldwide the company that resolves in this way to shed in their stead the blood and sweat of loyal subjects and to shed in their stead the blood and sweat of filial sons, the more the world will be renewed, and there will come to be one developing history. For that, an infinite price of sacrifice must be paid.
Yet in every place where that blood of sacrifice was shed, where is the limit point of that sacrifice?
If one has appealed for the development of one’s own church, that church will come to its limit point; that is, it will end when it reaches the age of the end of the century. But a church that has become a historic altar of martyrdom for humanity and the world will rule history and will not perish even after settling the Last Days (끝날).
From such a viewpoint, when we look at the devotion that Christianity has offered today, there may be many among them who pray, professing a day upon which the worldwide Christian sphere can be victorious, but how many Christian believers are there who have offered devotion and walked the road of death to save even the enemies who will be judged in the Last Days? Their number is not great. We can know this by looking at the terminal phenomena of Christianity today.
The Unification Church, Which Advocates Cosmos-ism
Then what must our Unification Church be like today?
Unification Church members who exist for the sake of the Unification Church are unnecessary. Only when our Unification Church stands in a position of living for the sake of the nation will it remain until the nation develops; and when it offers devotion for the sake of the world, it will remain as long as the world remains. If it offers devotion toward a place beyond the world, it will digest the world and remain in a place beyond it.
From such a viewpoint, the Unification Church advocates not worldism but Cosmos-ism (천주주의). This is not a vague matter. It means that such content is weighed today within our daily lives in close relation to the life of indemnity.
Then how many people are there who feel such a fact?
The more vividly one comes to feel this, the greater a figure that person will be.
Why is he a great figure?
Because he has stood in the position of one who has vowed that he will collide and struggle with the trials that will come before the world and before the Cosmos (천주). Though the time he hopes for may be a thousand or two thousand years hence, and though he may become a martyr today and become a sacrificial offering, even so he goes, having paved a starting point of victory in the historical age before God, who transcends temporality and rules the world. From such a viewpoint, our Unification Church members today must think.
Then what kind of person is a wise person?
The person who walks the road of suffering only for the sake of individual indemnity is a foolish person. In any case, the individual course of indemnity must be walked. It must be settled. Yet among individuals there will also be those whose amount of indemnity is so great, owing to the sin descending from their forebears, that it cannot be settled within one generation.
If such people offer devotion for their own individual selves, that devotion has no influence whatever upon the future.
But if one goes beyond one’s own individual self and, resolving upon sacrifice, steps forward saying, “I am an offering. My very life course is an offering. My very life course is a condition of a vow that stands in place of history,” then although one’s own self is insufficient, through that he can cross beyond the limit of history and set up a condition of a vow with God centering upon the world of the future.
In the place where one steps forward resolved upon death, there is nothing that one cannot vow. We must become people who step forward staking our lives. When one thus steps forward staking one’s life and makes an appeal of blood centering upon the world, that becomes an appeal directed toward the world.
Therefore, we must become people who stake our lives and vow before God, “I offer up my life course as an offering for humanity, for the world, for the universe.”
The person who thus appears as an offering while vowing that he will invest his life wholly for the sake of the purpose, however wretched and evil the ancestors he may have had, not only settles those factors of indemnity within one generation but also automatically settles and crosses beyond even the factors of indemnity of the whole clan, including his forebears.
Thus, history has been cleansed by the price of their blood and by their martyrdom and has been carried down to the sphere of the present age. When we consider such a fact, there cannot but be a road of indemnity before the road that our Unification Church members walk today. There is the individual course of indemnity. Only after passing through that individual course of indemnity can one walk the public course of indemnity. Is this not the proper view when seen centering upon that holy place called Heaven?
We human beings, being descendants of the Fall who cannot stand before the holy God, find it exceedingly difficult to stand in a holy place. Therefore, that God, who advances the Will of Providence, drives His beloved sons and daughters onto the road of death is not cruelty. Because that is one secret method by which He can give them blessings, He cannot but drive them onto such a road. We must know these circumstances of God's.
There will be times when trial comes colliding against us even though we go without having thought anything at all. At such times, let us not go avoiding that trial. Even if one has not vowed oneself, when the person responsible for the body to which one belongs has vowed, there are times when one is caught up in the conditions of trial that the responsible person presented and is drawn into indemnity. What does that mean? It means that if the head of that body comes to perish, one collides with a fate in which one too may perish.
Then, since the one who set up the condition of indemnity is the responsible person, why do I, who never thought of it, receive the influence of the indemnity? It is the same as when the sovereign of a nation sets up a condition of indemnity upon the destiny of that nation and indemnifies it and goes: the citizens of that nation too must walk, together with the sovereign, the road of hardship corresponding to that indemnity.
Today Korea is upon the road of development centering upon the Five-Year Economic Development Plan, and the citizens participate in it and follow along according to what the government has planned.
If the government meets with difficulty, the citizens too must without fail meet with difficulty. In attaining that purpose, they are not separate from one another. The citizens receive the government’s influence within their sphere of life. Our law of indemnity is the same.
From such a viewpoint, when we come to look upon Asia and to look upon the world, if God should cross over into an age of indemnity centering upon Asia, then all the people living in Asia come to receive the influence of the age of indemnity of the Asian sphere. Still more, the sovereigns of those nations receive a direct influence.
Again, if the world should enter into an age of indemnity, all humanity comes to receive the influence of the sphere of the world’s age of indemnity. You must know that indemnity is crossed over in this manner.
What Kind of Person Is a Wise Person
Then what kind of person is a wise person?
He is a person who inherits the victorious bond of the historical age. In other words, he is a person who inherits something of greater value. To inherit something of greater value, one cannot but pass through a greater process of indemnity within one’s daily life.
Therefore, you must know that the road of indemnity is a road of destiny that we cannot but walk.
All the members living today centering upon the Unification Church must pass through a process of the age in which they can resolve matters centering upon the conditions of indemnity that the Teacher presents. If you do not go in the direction God has indicated from an external position, then you must receive indemnity at least internally.
When you keep step toward the place at which the Will aims, a war of attrition without fail unfolds internally as well. What this means is that at the same time as a war of attrition unfolds externally, a war of attrition unfolds internally too. You must know that the victory of the being called “I” is decided only when inside and outside become one. When one has expended the internal, one must join to it an external expending and thereby establish one bond. Without doing so, one cannot cross beyond the course of indemnity. Therefore, the person who acts for the sake of that is wise.
Therefore, the Unification Church today cannot but compel action before you. To compel is a wretched thing. But if it does not end as something wretched and one rather comes to overcome it, then one does not merely walk today’s course of indemnity for one’s own self; it becomes a condition that one has walked the course of the offering vowed before tomorrow’s public course of indemnity. When such a period comes to pass beyond three years, one can remain there.
When one comes to pass beyond three years, this enters within the sphere of the number four. When one crosses beyond the sphere of the number three, one enters within the sphere of the square. Therefore, one must cross beyond the number three. The number three is a number that lies in the process of seeking the number four. Thus, from there, the boundary line opens.
It is from the number four without fail that the work of God’s intervention takes place. If you draw a circle, in this circle there is, without fail, one place, and this place is God’s place. What is spread out from this to the maximum is Adam and Eve, and what is determined as the center upon the earth is the children.
Therefore, the parents’ hope lies in the children, and God’s hope too lies in the children. This is the problem. More than Adam’s fall, the fall of his son and daughter determined history. Therefore, only when one crosses beyond this sphere of three can one form a relationship with God. Hence, the fact that one must cross beyond the number three has become an absolute factor in indemnity. This we come to know from the Principle.
In setting forth this number three, centering upon myself, it becomes three days. If one fails in those three days, it becomes three years, and if one fails in three years, it becomes thirty years. It goes on in this way. Therefore, in the Unification Church today we are told to walk a three-year course. This three-year course is not a course for each of you individually; it is a three-year course bearing a historical Will.
In crossing the place of cosmic-historical decision centering upon the bond of indemnity formed in the historical age, the period of indemnity that can be presented cannot but be exceedingly important. Therefore, the wise man cannot but pour out his whole heart and blood during this period and walk that course as one offering that can be bound with the world.
You must know that the fact that our Unification Church today possesses such content becomes a great point by which it can rule history.
The Place of Eternal Goodness, Eternal Prosperity, and Eternal Blessing
Though the public course of indemnity must continue for a thousand years and ten thousand years toward that purpose, you must know that if there is a person who indemnifies it within his own private sphere of life and enables the world of the public purpose to be met within his generation, that person becomes a historic great man. The one who appears with the qualifications and authority of such a historic great man is the Messiah.
Moreover, the company that can accompany that Messiah and can stand in his place is the flower of world-historical hope before humanity.
Therefore, the period of indemnity that the Unification Church presents today, the conditions of indemnity that must be presented within that period of indemnity, and the “I” that becomes one with those conditions of indemnity—that “I” among them is an exceedingly great being. You must know that. Yet you are forgetting such a thing.
Now is the time that remains at the limit point of the course of indemnity. Then how must devotion be offered in this time that remains? That devotion must not become devotion offered for one’s own single person. It must be devotion that can reach world history. There, trials beyond speaking will come. The world that you now behold will draw near and collide before your eyes.
You must seize that moment and, riding the great wave that surges in, be able to push everything back in the opposite direction. This is a chance appearing for the first time in six thousand years of history. That God has brought such a chance into relief and bestowed it upon us stems from His great love. Therefore, the one who loses this period in which he can receive this love is an exceedingly foolish person.
Centering upon such content, Jesus too walked for a period of three years. Since the Will could not be accomplished within this three-year period, he had to establish at least a three-day period, and so, staking his life, he offered three days of decisive prayer. You must know that this is the road that Jesus Christ walked.
Because Jesus Christ lost the world-historical period, the public three-year course of indemnity, he struggled with all his might over the problem of how to connect the private three-day period to a worldwide bond, and so he prayed that not his will but the Father’s will be done, and he prayed that his enemies be forgiven, and then he said that it was finished. What does that mean? It means that his wish was fulfilled, not only the indemnity of Jesus’ own generation but also the connecting of that to the historical bond of indemnity.
Now then, will you invest your whole lifetime for the sake of private indemnity?
Or will you invest your whole lifetime for the sake of public indemnity? Either way, you invest your lifetime, so which will it be? The person who steps forward, staking his life, saying that he will invest his whole lifetime in a public environment for the sake of public indemnity, cannot but be a great figure. Through such a company, a new history will be founded.
Then how shall we, who stand before such a moment, fill up the time that remains? This is the course of trial that you must walk from now on. And so, in carrying on one’s own life, the problem becomes whether one lives an individual life or a public life. Within one’s own life, for whom is everything that I eat and wear and buy and sell? Is it for my own sake, or is it for God’s sake? And again, the problem is whether it is a public life or a private life. And whether your emotions are private emotions or public emotions also becomes a problem.
Must we not go seeking a place where we can vow to walk the public road?
Anyone who bears the mission of indemnifying history must advance to the place he wishes for. Therefore, you must know that the problem of how, within one’s daily life, one transcends private emotion and acquires public emotion is a problem that the man of faith must regard as important.
What is sin? Sin arises in a private place. Perishing, too, comes about upon a private standard. Evil is the same. When the pride exceeds its measure, it appears as evil. There is a limit to the private, and when one crosses that limit, one becomes evil, one perishes, and one commits sin.
Then where is the place where one can be eternally good, where one can eternally prosper, where one can eternally receive blessings? Where is the place where one can avoid perishing, the place where one can avoid becoming sinful, the place where one can avoid becoming evil? It is precisely the public place. Even when eating a meal, one must eat it in a public place. Even in working, one must do it as public work; even in speaking, as public speech. Thus, one must live relating all things to the public. Such a person could not go to hell even if he tried.
The Secret of Going to the Kingdom of Heaven
Then how public are you?
Who is the close associate who can build a bridge so that you may stand upon the public stage? It is your brother. Because the road of the Providence of Restoration (복귀섭리) is a road of pioneering the public road, the road that sons and daughters standing in a public position must walk is none other than the road of gathering the brethren. To walk the public road, there is no way but for brothers to live for one another.
Therefore, the person standing in the Abel-type position must become a model in living for the brethren. Thus, he must cause the person standing in the Cain-type position to follow him and must become one with him. Then, because the brothers all stand in a public position, they become good, and they prosper. All things whatever are arranged in this way.
The more public being is Abel. Among Unification Church members, there are those who think that because they entered first, they are Abel; but even though one entered first, if one does not stand in a public position, one is Cain. Cain too was born first, but because his position was less public than Abel’s, he had to follow Abel. Among Unification Church members too, there may be those who sit planted firmly and say, “I entered first, so I am Abel.” But if one does not stand in a more public place than the person who entered later, what is he? (“He is Cain.”) He is Cain. The person who says he is Abel is a thief. An Abel-type being is a person who stands in a more public position.
Then to walk the public road, what sort of relationship must one have?
One must have the relationship of brothers. In seeking cooperation to walk the public road, saying, “Father, let us do this,” will not do. But saying, “Elder brother, let us do this; younger brother, let us do this,” will do. What this means is that in walking the public road, the horizontal relationship is important. Even in going to the Kingdom of Heaven, becoming one with God is not the problem. The secret of going to the Kingdom of Heaven is to walk the public road.
In walking this public road, brothers are needed. Because one cannot widen a more public environment without going hand in hand with one’s brothers, even though an elder brother or a younger brother be a sinner, one cannot but forgive him. Because this public road must absolutely be walked, even though there be none before one but sinners and none but enemies, one cannot but forgive them and love them. Without doing so, one cannot walk the public road. What is inevitably required in walking the public road is love.
You must know such a principle and live according to the principle. If you know the Principle as the Principle and live your life as your life, you will perish. Then, although the Principle remains, you yourselves cannot remain. You must live a Principled life with the mindset that you too must remain together with the Principle. Heart (심정) and body must become one and move in accordance with the Principle. And what has thus moved must remain before humanity as something public and must remain in the historical age.
Do you wish to become so? Then stand in a public position. If you wish to prosper from a private position, you will perish. If you work centering upon your desire within your village, you will be struck down within that village. Is it so, or is it not? Even though you tell people not to hate, they will hate. They come to say, “When will that old man drop dead? When will that old woman collapse? If all the villagers say so, that person receives punishment.
The road of sacrificing for the sake of others is the road by which I receive blessings. Religion until now has taught that, and human ethics and morality have taught that as well. When we look at such things, we must know the fact that God is not a God who executes judgment to destroy history and to destroy human beings, but a God who comes seeking to give blessings to human beings.
Would God, who knows that the road of the Principle is a road that cannot be walked without loving one’s enemies, destroy the world’s humanity through judgment in the Last Days? No. God is in the position of a parent toward human beings. What Christianity today calls the judgment by fire is not a judgment by fire in the literal sense of the word.
Love Even Your Children from a Public Position
Today the world must go forward hand in hand with many nations. It must go hand in hand with Asian nations as well, with the Republic of Korea, with Japan, and so forth. Know that when the time comes to emphasize this to the utmost, the world-historical public age has come before our eyes.
Centering upon such a principle, we can know that when the day comes on which the affair of one nation does not end as that nation’s trial but becomes a worldwide trial and swirls about, a public nation of peace will come. At that time the problem is whether the world’s humanity becomes one or does not become one, and if the citizens of every nation live not for the sake of their nations but hold the resolve to live for the sake of the world and live only for one another, the world will prosper.
When water swirls round and round in a whirlpool, one guide is needed.
Therefore, when the world swirls round and round, you must find one road. In the midst of such turmoil, you must present one road to be walked. That is why we say, "Be united, become one.” That is why we advocate Cosmos-ism. It means that we should obey the public law of the Cosmos. You must clearly know that this is the assertion of the Unification Church. You may seem now to be going along without any thought at all, but in reality you are walking the road of indemnity. Therefore, though you who have come to know the Will may think that you will be at ease if you do nothing, it is not so.
When you look at the Teacher, you feel sorry, do you not?
In the old days you lived as you pleased, and there was nothing in the world you envied, but having come to know the Will, it is not so. Therefore, when the Teacher hands down some instruction, you must think of it with gratitude. Then the mind is indemnified. From of old, when Koreans went before their elders, they always composed their two hands neatly. That was the custom. When one follows the Principle and its principles, one is at ease. Do you understand what I mean?
Do you wish to receive a blessing? Do you wish for eternal life?
Then you must become a public person. In educating your children, do not love them only as my son and my daughter. You must become parents who love them as sons and daughters who are offerings for the people of the world. And when you hold your child in your arms and nurse him, you must nurse him with the mind that, standing in the position of a mother representing the humanity of this globe, you are giving milk to a child who represents humanity. And rather than giving milk only to your child because he is dear to you, become a mother who treats another’s child with the heart (심정) that he too is like my child. The babies who grow up nursing at the breast of such a mother will without fail become great people.
Even if it does not come about at once, in the course of passing through the first and second generations, a figure who can rule the world will without fail be born among those descendants. This is a formula. It comes about in that way.
You say you will receive a blessing?
Will blessings come inside my skirt and play about there, and will God on that account come inside my skirt? Can such a thing be? We must be embraced within God’s bosom; will God be embraced within our bosom?
Those who are confident that they can go around the road of indemnity, raise your hands. There is not one person. There is not one head of them. Since there is none, it is all right even to count by the head. Everyone must walk the road of indemnity.
Then, since one must walk the road of indemnity in any case, how must one walk it? The person who says he will walk the individual road of indemnity is an exceedingly foolish person, but the person who says he will walk the public road of indemnity is an exceedingly wise person. That is because if one walks the public road, one can receive the world as an inheritance.
Feel such things clearly within the course of your daily life. The relief one feels after indemnifying and offering devotion with a public mind cannot be bought even for ten million in gold. It is not to be compared with drinking liquor and dancing. Do you understand? That taste, the stimulus that one comes to feel there, is something that cannot be felt by anything else whatever. That state is a state in which one can breathe together with the universe. There, in the steps of one who offers devotion before God and steps forth vowing before God for the sake of tomorrow, a strong stimulus of power is always restored. Therefore, the trial that comes upon such a person can become a discipline and can become an asset. This is the course that great men walk.
How Shall We Overcome the Time That Remains and Make It Shine
Seen from such a viewpoint, we may say that the “time” that remains is not much. It is but a moment. It means that the period remaining is not long. When we look at the present world situation centering upon the Unification Church, a whirlwind is now blowing upon the world. Then in such a field, what must we do and how? We must take hold of the world’s humanity and indemnify. We must take hold not only of Asia but also of the world and indemnify.
Therefore, the Unification Church today must set fire to a few Unification Church members and, crossing national borders and passing through Asia, must stand at the forefront and, beholding the flow of history and the world of the future, must bear from that intermediate position the burden of indemnity for the sake of the world.
You must know that doing so is the only road by which one can become a son or daughter who can be remembered before God and a loyal subject before God. What the Teacher thinks is such a thing, and the road the Teacher walks is such a road as well. This is the position of the Teacher who is guiding you.
Then what must be done to overcome this time that remains? How is this time that remains to be overcome and made to shine? The point of resolution for this problem does not lie in some vague place. It lies precisely at this present point at which you stand today. At this present point today, in walking the destined road of indemnity, you must stand in a more public position.
Here, the more public one is, trials and sufferings proportional to that without fail draw near. But you must know that if one holds the mind, “If I stand in a more public position and undergo trial, God will without fail meet me with a power proportional to that trial,” then one can overcome the conditions of misfortune, the conditions of ruin, the conditions of wretchedness that come tomorrow. When one comes to stand in a public position and in a position of grasping the whole of life through experience (체휼) publicly, God without fail gives a power proportional to that. Would it not be so? God too must prepare in advance. God foresees what is to come and prepares through such people.
Therefore, those who offer special prayers know. When God tells one to pray for something, that is God’s strategy for crossing a more public moment. At such times, one must always offer every devotion. That devotion is not offered for the sake of one’s own child. It means that one’s own family is not the issue. Therefore, when one offers devotion, one must avoid one’s husband and avoid one’s children as well. Do you understand? It means to avoid things that are unruly and that can incur defilement. In a clean place, eating clean food, wearing clean clothes, and with a clean attitude of mind, one must offer devotion. Yet are you living such a life?
You Must Become Families That Walk the Public Course
To draw a conclusion: to attain a great purpose, a power proportional to it must always be reinforced, and that power absolutely cannot be reinforced in a private place. God absolutely does not form a relationship in a private place. Then how is the power to break through the crisis of trial that will come to be reinforced? It is to offer devotion before God from a public position, surpassing the trial that approaches. The problem lies there.
In going toward a purpose of a million, or of ten million, or of the whole world, a trial proportional to it without fail draws near. What this means is that if ten months of indemnity were required and one says that he will indemnify it in one month, a trial more than tenfold draws near. To indemnify it at one stroke, one must possess a worldwide, public attitude of mind. On the day one is equipped with this alone, however great a crisis of trial may draw near to the world, God cannot but use me as His line of defense. There a great power comes forth.
When a crisis of death lies before you, you must not become weaklings who seek to flee from that place. If one duels with historical death and, crossing beyond the death of a single life, resolves that he will bring historical death to life, then even though he dies, he can revive again at the time of historical resurrection.
Therefore, the person who charges forward, staking his life even when a crisis of death lies before him, is wise. What I mean is that the person who lays his neck on the line and charges forward is a wise person. Do you understand?
If one lays his own individual neck on the line and walks the road of indemnity and lays the family’s neck on the line and walks the road of indemnity, then that family will be able to occupy the royal palace of the world. Do you understand what I mean?
Until now we have passed through an age of individual offerings. Therefore, if there is a husband and wife who stand upon that road permitted for the sake of the Will and walk hand in hand, keeping step, saying, “If we quietly scatter and quietly offer up our blood and flesh before God, what would there be to become han (한)?” then that husband and wife are a couple possessing cosmic value. It is to carry out this undertaking that the Unification Church has fought until now.
If one offers a family devotion that can surpass individual devotion, one can cross at one stroke the periods of indemnity that have been repeated until now within individual history. What this means is that this becomes possible when a husband and wife step forward, staking their lives and saying that they will become offerings. When we consider such content, we must know how tremendous, how great, and how valuable we, who stand at the present point where such a foundation can be prepared, truly are.
Therefore, in thinking of one’s wife, in thinking of one’s husband, in thinking of one’s children, one must think from such a position. Moreover, in wearing clothes and eating and sleeping, one must wear and eat and sleep from such a position.
What I mean is that even in loving, one should love from such a position. If there were such a family, how pleasing would it be in God’s sight? Until now there has been no such family in the world. If such a family were to appear, would God’s blessing enter that family, or would it not? Even though one told God not to come, even though one did not say, “O God, help me and come to me,” God would seek that family. Such a problem must be brought to completion and crossed over.
Therefore, for you to uphold the Way of Heaven and to liberate God, you must, beginning from the family, prepare such a bond of husband and wife and walk the road of passing through such a moment of indemnity. Only then can what Adam and Eve did in binding God be liberated worldwide by one husband and wife, according to the principle of restoration through indemnity. Theoretically as well, it is so.
When we consider such a problem, if there comes to be a family centered upon one husband and wife who can identify with this and cross beyond it, a tribe centered upon the family, a people centered upon the tribe, and a nation centered upon the people, then the world will be unified into one through that nation. That comes about automatically.
Therefore, the Teacher will hereafter as well drive you of the Unification family toward these people and toward this world. This is a wretched thing. It is a work that bruises the heart more than suffering alone does. In the old days, when I suffered alone, horizontal bruises were formed, but now I am in a position where I must feel vertical pain. When parents who ought to love their children must be in a place where they cannot love their children, what must that heart be like? I, too, must go feeling pain and shedding tears.
Thus, we must establish today a family centered upon God such as no one in the historical ages ever conceived of.
Private families perish, but public families prosper. This has been thoroughly made into a formula. However harsh a road of hardship may lie upon the road that such a family walks, because God is together with that family with a countervailing power by which it can cross beyond it, only victory remains upon the road that family walks. You must clearly know that this is the road God walks upon, the course of indemnity.
Let Us Become Those Who Inherit the Historical Destiny
In this time that remains, not only the Teacher’s family but your families too must be restored. Thus, after restoring the nation and the world, we must found the Kingdom of Heaven.
For that, the three-year period from 1970 to 1972 is significant. On the day we fulfill our responsibility during this period, the world will turn. Do you understand what I mean? (“Yes.”)
Husband and wife and children, hand in hand, must accomplish through the family this task received as such a holy mandate of Heaven. For that, what we eat and what we wear, our coming and our going, must be public. Whether one runs a business or does anything else, if even a single penny comes in, it must be spent in a more public place.
You must not become the sort of husband and wife you were in the old days when you did not know the Will. Upon a road where one can receive grace and can receive an inheritance from God, one must think that even though all my property be consumed, there is a value greater than that; therefore, one must go, and so one must go forward.
If you hide your property away on one side, you will be punished at once. That is the same as stealing the offering. Do you understand? The thief who steals the offering is punished. This is the most fearful thing of all. It means that it is a crime.
Today our Unification Church members must think, when they possess something, how to leave it as something more public. However difficult life may be, they must think of how they must leave something more public. The world looks at our Unification Church and says that it has much money, but in fact it is not so. It is a Unification Church that has gone into debt, lacking money.
Today is not the issue; the issue is to seek a road by which tomorrow’s suffering can be prevented. It is to seek such a road where money and people are invested. This is a war of attrition, but because it is a public work, it cannot but be done.
Knowing such things, I hope that you will govern well the time that remains and, within this reality, become those who inherit the historical destiny.
