We know, and also directly experience, that the people living upon this earth cannot live a life of happiness alone. Just as it is so with the individual, so it is with the family as well, and so with the people and the nation, and we know the fact that it is likewise so when we look at the world today.
Therefore, all humankind today is living upon a stage of life on which they cannot but sort their way through the conditions of unhappiness. History too flowed in that way, and the present too is so, and we know that future history too will continue, connected to such an environment.
The “I” as the Central Matrix of Everything
Now, within such an environment, it is we individuals, each holding one life, who become the problem. Sorrow begins centering on the individual and at the same time ends centering on the individual. This is the destiny of us human beings living in the present age.
The sorrow of one nation cannot be resolved by that nation itself. To resolve such sorrow of a nation, every citizen of that nation must seek some motive and relationship by which the sorrow can be resolved within himself. Otherwise, there is no way for that whole nation to escape from unhappiness or from the conditions of evil.
Even though we pursue the happiness of the whole world, that happiness cannot come all at once, centering on the whole. Before the happiness of the world is achieved, the happiness of every individual scattered throughout the world must first sprout upon this earth. And thus, as long as the happiness of each individual does not bear fruit upon this earth, the happiness of the world can't be achieved.
When we look at such points, we come to know how important a position each of our individual selves is today. Each of our individual selves stands upon the boundary between two things: one can become the matrix of happiness, and one can also become the matrix of unhappiness. Such an individual, that is, each of our individual selves, is not one in whom only “I” exists. Centering on me, there are parents above and children below, and to the left and right there are brothers and sisters. And before and behind there are what we call the people and what we call humankind.
Then, when we consider why my one individual self becomes the matrix that forms the center of all this whole, however deep history may be and however great some relationship may be, when it is a history apart from me and a relationship apart from me, it has no relation whatever to me.
However happy the countless peoples or the countless human beings scattered throughout the world may live, or however happy the countless social phenomena appearing in the present world may appear to be, before that happiness forms a relationship with me, it has no meaning. Therefore, we must know that the being called “I” is not in some particular position distinguished from the whole but is in a position that stands in place of the whole.
Therefore, in creating history as well, a new history will be created only when this very “I” is established as a fresh figure. And in a life that pursues happiness historically as well, unless one finds a fresh figure of one’s own self, the happiness or the peace upon this earth has no relation to me. In this way we must know that everything is connected, centering on me, and that everything is determined through me.
The Importance of the Being Called “I”
Then why does the human being stand in such a position?
It is because the human being is in the nearest reciprocal position before the Absolute Being, God, who is the root of the life of all humankind and the center of the whole universe. That is, it is because the human being was established in the position of the only object before the only absolute subject. Therefore, the statement is established that today all the requisites of happiness and unhappiness cannot but be bound in my human individual self, that is, centering on the fallen individual.
Therefore, happiness can begin from one individual who is reciprocal before the absolute subject, and truth can be formed there, and freedom and hope and victory, or glory, can sprout from there. And it does not end with that. It can become the matrix of the happiness of the whole and can become the center of all the requisites of hope. That is why, centering on a person who can be so, we must form relationships of happiness and hope throughout the whole world.
Only through such relationships will a new happiness or a world of hope appear upon this earth. Therefore, unless one prepares a true figure of oneself that can become all the requisites of hope before the Absolute Being and appears upon this earth, no happiness has any relation to oneself, and no wish has any relation to oneself. It simply passes by.
The fresh happiness that can remain before the current of history, or before the lifetime of humankind, which forms relationships of life, can set out only through an “I” who appears without fail holding one point at which he can be in accord with the Absolute Being. Therefore, such an “I” is the problem. In the world, three billion of humankind are flowing along with history. Amid all that, we must become an “I” who can stand in the position of owner.
If God presents happiness before humankind, that presented happiness will begin through some center; we must become that center and make it so that happiness can begin through us. We must long for that “I” who can set happiness out from such a central position.
The one world, the ideal world, or what we call happiness or goodness, that the world pursues does not change with the times. If one becomes an “I” who has become a center that can govern history and who stands in a central position that can move the fortune of heaven and earth, from that time we can live eternally together with the eternal Absolute Being. It means that one can live together with the Absolute Being and die together with the Absolute Being. That is why all humankind cannot but hope to become an “I” who can stand in such a position.
The good person of today determines their own position by taking such a standard as one point. It means that, according to what the distance is between that central point and oneself, what the angle is, or what the direction is, it is determined whether one is a patriot before the people, or a great man before the world, or a sage and wise man before humankind.
An ideology that has worked in a direction different from that one center, taking that center as the standard, is not the object of the hope we desire. That is because there is a distance before the center we require. It means that we are thus in a position of holding a distance before the center and do not possess completeness.
Therefore, we are seeking the truth and the happiness in a position where, transcending distance, there is no distance from that center, in a position that can become the origin of the departure of everything we desire. Such a place must without fail exist.
That one position, which can become the center of the individual today, cannot but be, at the same time as the center of the individual, the center of the family. So the family bound to such an individual, the society centering on the family bound to such an individual, the nation centering on the society bound to such an individual, and the world centering on the nation bound to such an individual- that world is precisely the place of hope we must go to and the world of hope. Isn't such a world what is called utopia and the Kingdom of Heaven on earth?
When we reckon from the position in which our humankind pursues the perfected supreme realm of truth in the course of history, where is the place God would go to and the place He would dwell, centering on humankind? Isn't that place precisely the place where such a center is established?
The important means for finding such a place is religion. It means that religion is, in every respect, no more than a means for finding the road by which one can go toward such a place. So upon such a footing, one must properly seek the relationship between religion and myself.
Our Destination
When we go toward some destination, what we think and about that destination differs. It means that the destination we gaze upon differs in content from what we think as we go toward it. Therefore, if there is a person who says he will make the content of the time of going toward the destination into the content of the destination itself, he is a foolish person.
So in the process of passing through, one must appear as a new figure holding other new content of joy. Speaking in Christian terms, that is resurrection. Here will not a new life centering on the original posture of us human beings be resurrected and come forth? You must think centering on such a standard.
When we ask in whose mind among the thirty million people of the Republic of Korea today such a standard has begun to be established, according to the degree of that, such a form of movement will appear in the minds of the three billion of humankind of the world as well.
If there is no such movement at all, humankind is in despair. However much Heaven may exist, nothing can be done. Therefore, if God must willy-nilly dwell in a position apart from the center, that God is far too wretched a God.
If He is a God who ought to dwell within the minds of humankind, He must not dwell in such a wretched position apart from the center. Before that original center is established, He will not even appear among us.
That is why in the world of the Way one goes seeking the fresh source of the mind. That place is a place into which all humankind can seep, a place that can become the motive by which the whole world of existence forms relationships, and also a place that Heaven can make its ideal stage.
Humankind too is seeking that position, but God too will likewise be seeking that position. Just as humankind gropes in the dark toward that place without knowing, will God too grope in the dark without knowing? No. If God too gropes in the dark without knowing, we can't find that place.
If even God, the Absolute Being, were groping in the dark for that position, it would be impossible for weak and insufficient people like us to find that place. It means it would be absolutely impossible from the outset. God is certainly heading toward that place in knowledge.
Then must not the person who can become the center, and the family centering on such a person, and the nation centering on such a family, and the world centering on such a nation, be settled and fixed?
In other words, must it not be that God desires a true figure that can reveal holiness and glory in a free realm that can eternally never change, can eternally never be wounded, and is eternally without obstruction and opposition? But God cannot build such a figure alone. That is because, in building it, the human being is made to be the partner. So must not God be wretched?
To Wash Away the Wound of Humiliation
All of you, today’s title of the Message is “The Wound of Humiliation,” is it not? The word humiliation (수욕 受辱) has come out; what is disgrace? It is shame, shame.
What is this shame?
It is that, although one is true, if one receives the treatment of a position that is not true, shame arises from that, and also disgrace arises from that. And when that disgrace and shame are publicly acknowledged as really being so, that becomes humiliation. In other words, when the truth is completely denied its true position, there the word humiliation arises.
So when one comes to stand in a position from which one cannot escape, however one would escape, that is infinite suffering and infinite unhappiness.
To speak again by way of example, a filial son is a person who, as a peerless filial son before his parents, has devoted such filial piety that one could say, “This is precisely the duty of a filial son,” and through whom the parents are glad, and who through that is in a position where parents and child can become completely one.
But when, although he is a filial son at such a standard, he is attacked as though he were not a filial son and is placed in a position of having to give back the position of a true filial son, that becomes a disgrace more than anything.
If the value of a filial son who has become one with his parents holds a value of ten million, the wound of humiliation of the person placed in the position of disgrace is likewise that deep.
If one would wash that away, what must one do?
One must rise to a position above that. In rising to a position above that, what happens?
A pass arises in the mind of the child, and a pass arises in the mind of the parents. Two boundary lines of the pass arise. And the positions of the two boundary lines appear differently from each other. Then the positions of the two boundary lines grow ever more distant, and if left as they are, they come in the end to be eternally divided.
Then what must be done to make these boundary lines coincide?
Merely making them coincide will not do either. One must make the boundary lines coincide and seek a road by which one can cross over that pass. Otherwise, one cannot be restored to the original state. Is that not so?
If a filial son has grieved his parents’ minds, to make that grief disappear from the parents, the standard of the filial piety he practiced in the past will not do. What one has done until now will not do. One must discern with new eyes the things one has thought of as the standard of filial piety until now.
One must criticize once again the self one believed until now to be the standard of filial piety. A standard of filial piety from a position where requisites for criticizing and discerning remain will not do. One must raise the standard of filial piety above that. Only then can one wash away the wound of humiliation the parents received, can one not?
It is likewise the same in the relationship of sovereign and subject in a nation. When a subject was praised by his sovereign, saying, “This is precisely the duty of a loyal subject. You indeed are my loyal subject. You are our glory, and the relation between you and me is a relation and a bond that can remain eternally in history,” emerges as the figure of a turncoat of whom the sovereign can say, “I did not know you would be like this.”
How great is the wound that the sovereign receives?
To recover the position of the loyal subject of old, one would have to be several hundred times more loyal than before and establish the duty of faith several thousand times more.
Even so, it would be difficult to turn the sovereign’s mind. It means that even if one devotes a thousand times more loyalty than before, it is difficult to turn back the wounded mind of the sovereign. It means that nothing can be done about the wound that has arisen in the sovereign’s mind.
The sovereign cannot forget it even though a thousand years pass. To the extent that his faith in that subject was strong and what he hoped for was great, proportionally, he came to feel a pain several tens of millions of times greater. He keeps that pained mind always.
So unless one devotes several thousand and several ten-thousand times more loyalty than before and resolves that pained mind of the sovereign again, and washes away the wound of humiliation the sovereign received, there is no way to recover the position of the loyal subject of old.
The Motive of Humiliation and the Motive of Its Recovery
When we look at centering on our human affection and centering on the moral obligation that holds eternally in the human world, what would the relation between God and us human beings be?
Here, what God desires is a supreme center. To find that, God has until now established countless people and led them. At times He established a certain person and led, and at times He established another person and led.
God, who labors to obtain the true, did not treat them as mere puppets. Because He is in a position of seeking to set what is not true in a position above the true. In making the human being, who has left the position of the true and lost the value of the true, return to the position of the true, the human being cannot be that motive. Therefore, God must raise that motive, and how great must be the wounds and the humiliation God has undergone for that!
Yet if God, from the position of a parent who has been humiliated and a sovereign who has been shamed, were to say to the human being, “You wash away this disgrace,” it would be absolutely impossible for the human being to return to the position of the true. It means that fallen human beings cannot go seeking God. It means that a human being, however much he writhes, is in a position of being unable to go seeking the original standard of happiness.
If He were to hope that such a human being would recover the original standard by himself, God would fall into a position of being eternally unable to form a relationship with humankind.
Such a human being must be raised to the supreme central position; and for that, who must become the motive?
The motive of humiliation may have been the human being and not God, but the motive that can recover the wound of humiliation cannot be apart from God. This is what is wretched. That a parent who has been disgraced by a grossly unfilial son must set out again to seek that son; this is not something a parent can do. This is a business in which heaven-and-earth (天地) has become earth-and-heaven (地天), and up-and-down (上下) has become down-and-up (下上). It is an upside-down business. That God’s position could not but be so is far too wretched. You, too, may undergo such a thing in your living. Words like “shame” and “humiliation” are established in such a position.
Then what kind of road was the road on which God has faced our humankind until now?
It was not only a road of shame but a road of humiliation. You must know this. Although it was the human being who made a boundary line between God and the human being and made that distance far, it is God who must shorten that distance. Here God, from the position of the eternal Absolute Being, has appeared as one inner figure in place of the reciprocal human being and has stood in the position of a pioneer who opens that road. Satan mocks such a God. He mocks Him, saying, “Is that Thy work to do? Art Thou not in a position to gaze upon and rejoice in original human beings who are good and fulfill the duty of loyalty and filial piety? Yet Thou devotest sincerity for the sake of human beings who wounded Thee? Is that not apart from Thy original Will?”
A parent who goes seeking a fallen child undergoes humiliation greater than the disgrace the fallen child undergoes. He undergoes shame greater than the shame the child undergoes. That is why the children who gaze upon that parent can present no condition at all, even if they receive an evaluation lower than that of fallen human beings.
Even if they undergo something more wretched than that, there is no way to make excuses before the parent who went seeking such children. Though it is mortifying, one cannot refute it. The more one refutes, the more wretched it only becomes.
When we gaze upon such circumstances, God is coming to seek the sons and daughters He lost until now, the sons and daughters lost in the true sense; and He is likewise coming to seek the figure of sons and daughters who can be true people who can become the center of history among humankind, who can become the origin of the happiness of us all, and who can stand in a position that becomes the base of hope. He is coming to seek Thy lost world again. Satan has infinitely tormented and infinitely mocked such a God.
The Center of Life Humankind Must Go To
Even so, if God had sought to avoid such a position of shame, what would humankind have become today?
But God forgot and forgot such shamefulness, and each time He heard the clamor of the enemy refuting Him from around Him, He came seeking such sons and daughters bearing hope, saying, “The sons and daughters who will appear hereafter are different from the Adam and Eve of old. The sons and daughters I am setting out to seek are different from the sons and daughters who fell in the old days. They are different from those human beings who set out with sin. They are, without fail, different.”
Because He is such a God, He has been leading history and conducting the providence until now. He is a God who comes seeking a human being beyond one who prepared the motive and origin by which the enemy can mock and who hopes for and comes seeking a human being who holds something beyond the love or the truth or the goodness the enemy presented.
If God had not had such hope, He could not have carried out the great enterprise called the Providence of Restoration while passing through the course of history until now. God has always come forth holding such a mind. He has come until now making such a mind His central thought and gazing upon the historical age in which that hope would be realized.
Only then could He find sons and daughters greater than that, could He not? And without finding such sons and daughters, is there no way to fill in the wound of humiliation?
So what must the attitude of us today who call upon God, that is, of people of faith, be like?
One must stand in a position of resolving a thousand times and ten thousand times that one will go beyond the position of Adam and Eve, who left a wound of humiliation before God. One must stand in a position where there is more than enough to indemnify and restore all the mortifying circumstances in which God could not trust human beings until now.
Where might the limit be that God is seeking?
Where might be that limit at which He seeks the figure of sons and daughters of faith whom He eternally cannot but believe, holy sons and daughters whom the enemy cannot accuse however he would accuse? Will it be a position ten times better than Adam and Eve? A position a hundred times better? A position about a thousand times better? Whether a thousand times or ten thousand times or hundreds of millions of times, one must somehow cross over that standard and go all the way to a position where one can say that one has filled in God’s wound.
When we think of such things, how apologetic is our position before God today?
When we think of the past affairs of us human beings, and when we think of the many sins we have committed before Heaven in our living, we are in no position to complain that God does not recognize me now and does not comfort me.
Even looking at my own single generation, if God were to indemnify the han knotted in one generation, nothing at all would remain to me. Even if these people, or the world, were blown up all at once and destroyed, are we not in a position where we could not even think of refuting?
Yet God is seeking victorious sons and daughters within all this. So where are the sons and daughters who have trodden upon and crossed over that history of humiliation and are equipped with a figure of truth, a figure of filial piety, a figure of loyalty, against which all the beings of history can put forward no condition of accusation?
Such sons and daughters are sought not by Heaven alone; humankind too must seek them. The place where such sons and daughters are is the center of life that humankind must go to. Only by going seeking such a position will happiness come to us, and only by going seeking that position will a world of hope come to us.
Can You Become the Son or Daughter Who Is Hoped For?
All religions today are seeking such a position. The thought concerning this, spoken of in Christian terms, is the thought of the Second Advent. That is why we too lead a life of faith to go seeking such a position and become one there and to become selves who can harmonize there and become one body.
Then in what position are you? For what reason do we believe?
Some people say, Let us believe in Jesus and go to heaven; but can people who cannot even believe in themselves believe in Jesus? Then there would be nothing so contradictory as this. A person who can absolutely trust himself should say he will believe in Jesus; but can a person who cannot even believe in himself say, “I believe in Jesus”? That is the problem. Seen from such a position, God is pitiful. You must understand this. God is truly pitiful.
You who were born bearing the destiny of being a daughter, if a daughter, or a son, if a son, are made to be brought forth at some time before the age the age desires. It means you must appear before this hope of history that asks whether you can become such a daughter, whether you can become such a son.
Whatever one’s appearance may be, the question is whether one can become a loyal subject and can become a filial son. It is not that one becomes a loyal subject because one’s face is handsome, nor that one cannot become a loyal subject because one is ill-favored. Appearance is not the problem. It means the external figure is not the problem.
From the marrow, from the mind, one must be able to grasp God’s aching heart (심정) through experience and sob and weep aloud ten million times. God will long for the figure of a true filial son, the figure of a true loyal subject, who can hold such a mind and cry out before God and step forth, asking whether it should be so with Thee.
Here, holding the value of several hundred times and several tens of millions of times that of Adam and Eve, and holding the original and sincere mind of filial piety, can you fulfill the duty of a filial son who can become a flower and a fragrance before Father God and bow his head with a glorious figure?
Even if one is a filial son, is one not a figure with a blemish remaining, the figure of such sons and daughters as could not settle the history of the Fall and, being continuously connected, could leave a blemish in the future?
When God calls such as you son and daughter, how much insufficiency must He feel within, and with how great a pain and wound within must He face you? When we look at such points, we today must newly examine our attitude of faith.
How much did God like Adam before the Fall?
That is what becomes the problem. And how glad was Adam to see that God? The impression of that time remains in God’s breast and cannot be forgotten. And what was God’s figure like when He set out to seek Adam and Eve in Eden? How glad was that mind when He called His child, saying, “Adam”? When He gazed upon the figure of that child, how great was the stimulus felt in the mind of a father who gazed upon that face and every visible part? At that time God’s mind overflowed with hope, and happiness sprouted. All of God’s wishes began from there.
And thus, if they had stood as eternal objects who could fulfill God’s wish, how full must the Father’s mind have been as He gazed upon them? Yet all at once the binding cord was twisted, and there arose the painful event, which cannot be forgotten however one would forget it, of God’s sons and daughters being wrecked.
How great a wound must God have received in the mortification of having to step forth into such a position when He had already been in the midst of hope! That is what becomes the problem, and we must clear that up. It means one must enter that position again and resolve that problem. That is why we must go back up toward that pass.
The Quickest Road to Receiving God’s Sympathy
We must appear in a position above Adam and a position above Eve, as figures holding value greater than Adam and Eve. And thus we must go forward to a position where we can resolve that we will absolutely not be defiled by the evil world, a position where God cannot but love us and cannot but embrace us, and must be able ourselves to acknowledge our own lofty and great value.
But the positions in which we call out, “Father,” will be of ten thousand forms. Then when will God meet sons and daughters by whose single word calling upon the Father from a supreme position all of God’s problems can be resolved? God has not met such sons and daughters until now.
How much must God have writhed until now to meet such sons and daughters, sons and daughters who can appear not merely as one individual but as the center of the world, the substance God hoped for, sons and daughters who can step forth with dignity as sons and daughters of God equipped with the authority of victory? If you think of such things, you will feel how utterly blocked the way ahead is.
All of you, let us cross over such a position. Let us press through any wall and go. One must hold the conviction that one cannot be broken, however one collides with anything. That is, with a mind that says, though my body be broken, my mind cannot be broken, and though my body be wounded, I must be equipped with the posture and etiquette I must have.
In other words, it means one must go a road with which God, who has endured in such a position, can sympathize. Then what must one do? What is the road on which one can most receive sympathy? It is the road of undergoing humiliation, just as God underwent humiliation.
Even though one is a fallen child, an unfilial child, if one follows the teaching of the father and the teaching of the mother, one draws near to the father and mother. If one has received the admonition of parents that even if you die you must do this work and die, then, though one has fallen, one must kick one’s way out of the fallen environment and writhe to live so, saying, “I will live like this.”
When the environment runs contrary to oneself, one must also be able to say, “I cannot live influenced by that environment,” and boldly step forth opposing that environment. The more one is driven by those around one saying that you are not a fellow who will live like that, and the more one is driven into such an environment, the nearer one draws to the parents.
This is a strategy that indirectly draws forth God’s heart (심정). This strategy is the finest method by which one can receive God’s sympathy.
Is it not so even in the world?
When a child has done something wrong, the grandfathers or the elders of the village and the neighborhood come and step forth bearing evidence by which he may be forgiven, saying that they too were like that when they were young. Then the parents cannot but forgive. Though the child has fallen, he must repent of it in his mind and, in an environment harsher than the environment in which he fell, in a position in which he cannot but fall again any number of times, writhe saying that though thousands of fallen people try to drag him down to their position, I will keep the parents’ command. And thus, if one goes seeking that position of being struck, becoming covered with wounds while saying that even if one dies, one will die keeping that command, only then does God come to sympathize again as a parent. It means only by going to such a position can one receive God’s sympathy. Such a road is the quick road.
In other words, it means one must be able to be struck for Heaven, and to assert goodness as Heaven’s spokesman, and to confront Satan in Heaven’s stead, and to step forth before Satan saying, “Do as you please. However much you do so, I cannot be so.” Rather than boasting to God, “I am such and such a son of Thine,” one must be able to enter Satan’s den saying, “Satan, use all the power you have and do to me once again the deeds by which you caused God countless mortifying wounds of humiliation,” and tread upon and rise above that process which Satan governs as he pleases, and step forth with dignity.
Only by standing in such a position can one at last receive God’s love. On any other road, even standing on Heaven’s side, one cannot receive God’s love. However much one strives to center on Heaven, by oneself alone it will not do.
The Common Road Fallen Human Beings Must Go
Therefore, just because people who go the road of the Way have come to know such a relationship, it is not that a complete relationship is formed.
Then what must one do to form that relationship?
One must, without fail, enter the world of the enemy and pass through a process of undergoing humiliation. Otherwise, the relationship is not formed. That is the providential history of Restoration. The position where one is restored is a position of death.
That one set out seeking a life worth living, centering on my greed so that I might live well, is the starting point of the Fall. Therefore, from the point where one makes the resolve to go seeking a position of death for oneself, the road of revival opens up.
That is why true religion must cross over the pass of death. That death is not dying within God’s loving hand. Nor is it dying before parents and siblings, or before one’s neighbors or relatives or one’s people. It means dying before a band far removed from me, a band that opposes me and my people. When one thus enters an opposing world and comes to die in a position of being opposed, God, who was wounded before the world, sympathizes with him.
The road of true filial piety is not believing in and following Heaven while remaining only within the sphere of Heaven. You must know that one must enter the opposing world and there receive recognition as a filial son and return. The quickest road is none other than this road.
That is why Jesus too, when he prayed at the last in the Garden of Gethsemane, said, “Abba Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me. Nevertheless, not as I will, but as the Father wills.” Here my will is to live, and the Father’s will is to die.
If one were to make a filial son and a loyal son there, one ought to do as the son wills; then why did God set up the opposite will there and drive Jesus out? It is because, to enter the same position as the ancestors of humankind who betrayed God, God too must enter a position of turning His face away from him, and Satan too of betraying him. Because Satan betrayed and Heaven likewise betrayed together with him, if God were to sympathize, Satan too would have to sympathize. That is why God drove him out, and that too became the motive of a new history.
That is why, until just before Jesus expired, Satan’s force was in full sway, but after Jesus died, he had to bow his head. That is why God takes a position opposite to Satan and walks this road. And thus, because a history unfolded in which, going against the satanic world, the relationship of a new command and the motive of a new departure gushed forth, through that Christianity today came to form a worldwide cultural sphere.
To put it another way, the fallen sons and daughters who had made God sorrowful, that is, the sons and daughters whom Satan dragged along and delighted in, have died. It means that those sons and daughters who were used by Satan, those sons and daughters who gave despair to God, have died.
But now, at the same time as God’s wish has set out, the road Satan hoped for has turned to despair. That is why it was said that he who would die shall live and he who would live shall die. This is a saying that penetrates heavenly reason. Here the question emerges whether this road is not the common road that fallen human beings must go.
When can the wound of humiliation disappear?
When sons and daughters appear who can tread upon and cross over the history trampled by the enemy and mobilize the whole through the past, present, and future and raise the banner of revolt and attack, God will be liberated from the days of humiliation. Would it not be so?
How Shall We Erase God’s Wound of Humiliation?
Members of the Unification Church must go such a road all the more. Though the Unification Church has been reviled until now, my continuing to go this road is because I was pricked by conscience. Though it is a road one can hold up before Heaven, that road is also a road of humiliation. On going this road, the people will be mobilized and oppose, and the satanic world too will clamor for dear life and raise the banner of revolt and resist. It must be so. But one must not become a person who vanishes there.
When one is weighed at the crossroads of life and death, one must become a dignified figure who can tread upon and cross over even death. And thus one must be able to say that one died with both God and Satan acknowledging it. In dying, one must be able to say that one died fighting Satan for Heaven. Dying too, when seen in terms of purpose, divides into two. The world divides precisely here. The manner of dying is the same, but one must be able to say, “I died for Heaven. I died receiving Satan’s attack for Heaven.” When it becomes so, in the end one can subjugate the one who struck, and God, who was unjustly wounded, can hold new hope there.
So even if one dies, it must not end with death itself; after dying, one must appear with a figure of loyalty and filial piety beyond that of a loyal subject or filial son of the human world, for God. And thus, when one stands before God as a fresh figure of a son, God at last comes to receive that son with a new mind.
If we look at the letters of the Apostle Paul from such a viewpoint, we can see that their content and situation are all in accord with God. Centering on the death of Christ, who died representing our individual selves, he expounded from the viewpoint that his resurrection is the resurrection of all of us. Upon the foundation of such content, Christianity today has been able to leave behind an eternal ideology.
Today our Unification Church too must cast away blind faith within the Unification Church. The people of the Unification Church must not seek to be praised. In going the heavenly road, the person who blocks the clamoring enemies of the satanic world and fights and overcomes them with his life at stake is near to Heaven. This is the nearest road to becoming a filial son and a loyal subject before God. When one comes to resolve for oneself that one will become there a figure of victory who can exchange death for life, that is, who can cross the line of death, one can tread upon the wound of humiliation Heaven underwent and rise.
That is why Christianity underwent infinite slaughter for four hundred years under the Roman Empire. In whatever age and in whatever place, wherever Christianity went, blood was shed. Without blood being shed, the door did not open before Christianity.
Looking at Korea too, it was so in the time of the Daewongun, and looking at Japan too, it received much persecution, as in the Himahara Rebellion [히마하라 난] in the time of Tokugawa Ieyasu. It is for such a reason that there has been no history that began without leaving in Christianity the gravestones of loyal subjects and filial sons who shed blood and died.
If We Would Erase the Wound of Humiliation God Received
Then how shall we erase the wound of humiliation God received?
It is possible by establishing conditions of blood, by crying out loyalty and filial piety even while dying, and by keeping that fidelity. But in the satanic world, there is no such thing. It means the satanic world merely lives for itself, and there is no such thing there. It means there is neither a filial son who is filial before his parents nor a loyal subject who is loyal before his king. That the master as master, or the children as children, seek only to drag along even the sovereign and even the parents for their own sake is about the satanic world. So one must tread upon them and cross over.
Since what fell in Eden is in a position that coincides with the satanic world today, to restore them, one must go to a position of being opposed by them. We are placed in a destiny in which we cannot but go a road of receiving Satan’s counterattack, going back against the fallen position in which we were welcomed by Satan.
Without going this road, there is no way to fill in the wound of humiliation. This is the road of filial piety toward Heaven, the road of loyalty, the true road.
Centering on such content, true and filial sons and daughters of God who can go forth before this world with their lives at stake must come forth upon this earth. It means there must appear sons and daughters who can build a worldwide altar of life and offer up their whole single life in place of this universe and the whole Cosmos, and a figure who can remain to the end, crossing the pass of death as a positive substance in a negative social environment.
When such a figure appears, however evil the world may be, God’s humiliation is washed away there, a standard of victory is established there, and from there let us found a new history. Is it not the duty and obligation of people who fulfill the way of loyalty and filial piety before Heaven to go seeking such a road and inherit the traditional legacy?
Crossing over such a position, we must become sons and daughters whom God can call sons and daughters, not to be exchanged even for several tens of millions of times Adam and Eve, and sons and daughters of God of whom He can say that, having met such sons and daughters, it was rather good that Adam and Eve of the past fell. Though Adam and Eve, by falling, became the ground of bitter resentment and the ground of indignation and the ground of grievance and wretchedness for God, one must become a person who can be praised before God to such a degree that He can say, “Because they fell, I have found sons and daughters of such utter loyalty and filial piety, so their falling too was well done.”
If such a person comes forth and seeks forgiveness, will there not arise a way for even the Fall of Adam and Eve to be forgiven, and will there not open a road by which even hell can be forgiven and liberated?
History is turning over and flowing toward such a pass. Before such a current of history, one must step forth with a new current and must draw it swirling into this new current and make it so that it can flow leisurely into one place. That new current must be entirely different from the current of old.
What draws out a historic world of freedom and a world of happiness in which one can lead such a new life is religion today. So we too, who go seeking such a world, must be equipped with such a figure and such a posture. Only then can we at last fill in God’s wound of humiliation.
Only when there is achieved in this heaven and earth that day when, having filled in that wound of humiliation, we can attend Father God, who rejoices, and take hold of the hem of His garment and dance for joy; that day when in a free heaven and earth we can raise a shout of joy together with all beings; that day when we can say, since the one day for which both Father and son have waited has been welcomed, let us rejoice together with heaven and earth; only then does a new world set out.
Only there will Heaven’s wound of humiliation at last be erased, will it not?
For that day we must struggle. We cannot but go such a road. In other words, it means that merely believing is not the road of being for the Father, but that going while fighting the satanic world and, at times, being struck is the road of going for the Father.
In the old days Adam and Eve fell through their greed, but we go through God’s greed. So you must know that only by riding the road of death can one erase the wound of humiliation.
In the 1970s we must resolve once again to become new workers of unification who walk toward a new self and a new people, groping through such heart (심정). We must welcome the year 1970 as an age of liberation, whereas until now it was an age of indemnity, and as an age of resurrection and glory, whereas until now it was an age of death.
It means that, whereas until now it was an age of inflicting wounds upon God, hereafter we must welcome an age in which all God’s wounds of humiliation can be erased, and His han resolved for Him. We must prepare such a road so that our church can be one that can be so, and so that the Republic of Korea and the world can be so.
Knowing that we are now at a point on such a road at which we must adorn well the final five minutes toward the final summit, I hope that you will pray and prepare to wash away God’s wound of humiliation and cross over.