What Is Heaven?

1. Heaven is a vast place. It is a world bigger and wider than this universe. But even though it is a world whose vastness is beyond description, if the people you love are somewhere in that world, no matter where, they appear instantly when you say you want to see them.

And they know right away your frame of mind as you yearn for them. As soon as they arrive, they greet you, and knowing what is on your mind, they say, “Thank you for thinking like this about me.” That is why there is no need to explain in the world of mind.

Without having an explanation, you can feel it all. When you go there and meet someone, you know right away that he is going to say this or that. You listen to him, even though you know what he is going to say. So how wonderful this world is! True love passes through the shortest route, and true love is the quickest of all.

Even if a beloved child is somewhere abroad, as soon as the parents think of that child, they will already have left, seen that child, and returned. Love transcends distance.

Because true love travels the fastest, this whole vast universe can be the stage for your life's activities. Since it transcends time and space, there is no sense of distance. It is as if everything is right before your eyes. (210-092, 1990.12.01)

The kingdom of heaven is a world abundant with God's love

2. The kingdom of heaven is the world of God's love. It is a world where the air you breathe is love.

That world is filled with life. No place in it doesn't throb with life, and everyone is bound together through blood ties. Since its people are descendants of God's one lineage, if God feels sorrow over something, the entire spirit world feels that sorrow as if it were one body with God.

And when God feels joy, everyone feels that joy. In this way, God's love is moving the vast kingdom of heaven. In response to this love, the living realm of all created things is beautiful art based on the subject-object partner relationship. Just as we are connected by lineage, everything is woven together, so when God is happy, we are happy, and when God is sad, we are sad. (226-113, 1992.02.02)

3. Jesus said, “The kingdom of God is among you,” (Luke 17:21) and that the kingdom of heaven is centered on God's love. Because the love of God is the center, all relationships in the kingdom of heaven are based on God's love, and a universally well-ordered environment comes about.

Then, to reside in that realm, what kind of person do you need to be? Only those who harmonize with the essence of God's love can reside there. People who are not like that cannot experience it.

What, then, can harmonize with the essence of God's love? Self-centeredness is worthless. Only investment in others, in one's life, one's devotion, and everything one has, allows one to live continuously in the realm of God's love.
(46-036, 1971.07.18)

4. In heaven, we can take satisfaction in what we have prepared and in having led a life of attendance. Then what kind of people can go to heaven? Not those who believed in the Lord to receive blessings, that is, those whose main wish was to receive blessings.

Heaven is the destination for those who live preparing their hearts to attend God. It is a place where even those who die during their time of preparation can go with joy, for they leave behind a life of attendance. Resurrection takes place there. After preparing to attend, you need to lead a life of attendance.

Then how can you lead such a life? Try feeling that which is around you; observe your environment. The details of life do not appear easily. How to lead a life of attendance is a crucial question. We should think about this in our everyday life. (8-304, 1960.02.14)

5. Heaven is a place we cannot enter without establishing relationships of heart. It is the original nation, the nation of original nature that can govern everything. It cannot belong to you based on personal feelings.

Rather, it is based on deeply felt bonds of heart. Ultimately, it is where we are to communicate on the level of the heart, rather than on the level of personal sentiments.

The purpose of God's providence on earth is to lay the foundation upon which we can go beyond sharing ordinary sentiments, and sing out our honest and most poignant emotions from the depth of our hearts. (8-290, 1960.02.14)

6. Even though Jesus came to establish the original homeland, he was unable to do so before he left this earth. Though he said, “The kingdom of heaven is among you,” Jesus was unable to see the kingdom of heaven with his own eyes.

Likewise, our most respected forebears and the martyrs, sages, and wise people who have come and gone in history were unable to see that place or usher in that day. All those who inherited the lineage of evil from their fallen ancestors have yet to establish ties to their original homeland.

This is why everyone is searching for the ideal. In reality, people are pursuing their original homeland. What kind of world will that be? Not a world where people are enemies to each other, envious of others' success, or resentful when others rejoice.

In that world, one person doing well represents everyone's success; one person rejoicing represents everyone's joy. The original homeland is where, when one person rejoices, everyone rejoices; and when one person feels content, everyone feels content. (18-102, 1967.05.28)

7. Make your life a joyful one with God in the center. Make it the kingdom of heaven. In that kingdom, you practice a life of giving. God also has to give. Parents have to give to their children. Even after giving something good, a parent desires to give something even better.

As a parent, even if you have dressed your baby in the best clothes and given him or her nice things to eat, you are not satisfied. Instead, you say, “I wish I could give better things.” Desiring to give something better after you have already given is the heart of a parent and also the heart of God. (34-141, 1970.08.30)

8. Heaven is the place where husbands and wives go after raising the sons and daughters to whom they have given birth. It is the place they go while guiding their sons and daughters, their grandchildren,n and their clans.

Further, it is the destination of the entire nation. Heaven is realized in that way. No matter how much the religious believers of today wish to go to the kingdom of heaven, it is not a place that you can enter alone. You can never go there alone. (41-300, 1971.02.17)

9. The kingdom of heaven is what you experience after you have been born of the original parents of goodness, formed a husband and wife relationship, given birth to sons and daughters, loved them, and bequeathed everything to them in the harmonious universe where God can rejoice with all creation.

The kingdom of heaven is not somewhere the father can go without the mother. It is where everyone – father and mother, sons and daughters – is meant to go.
(41-231, 1971.02.16)

10. What is our greatest desire? It is to possess God's love. Even if we have possessed God, if we cannot possess the love within Him, which is even more precious, God cannot be ours. Thus, we need to possess God's love.

When His love first becomes mine and mine becomes His, the internal and the external become one. A nation based on such love becomes an ideal homeland without upper and lower classes.

When we lie down in such a place, we feel that there is nothing in the universe that does not appear good and that does not exist for our sake. Since God's love is like that, the heavenly world, that is, the kingdom of heaven, which is to be the destiny of people today, is filled with love. (39-211, 1971.01.10)

We are the mediators between the kingdom on earth and the kingdom in heaven

11. In the process of creation, God made all things and made humankind. Everything began with God at the center. God's Will was for oneness between Himself and all people, and equilibrium for all things in the creation.

We human beings stand in the middle, between God and the created world. Thus, we can function as the mediators between the spiritual and physical worlds.
(067-143, 1973.06.01)

12. There is no doubt that God's creation of heaven and earth was glorious. First He created the substantial spirit world. He then created the substantial physical world as a representation of the spirit world.

Finally, He created Adam and Eve as the central embodiment of the physical world and spirit world. Adam and Eve were destined to move together in rhythm with heaven and earth.

The necessary implication was that if Adam and Eve changed, heaven and earth also would change, and if Adam and Eve's center were broken up, the center of the entire universe would break up, and if the center of the entire universe were to break up, the center of the Creator also would break apart. (1-064, 1956.05.23)

13. There is a reason God created human beings as two separate entities, man, and woman. First, God exists as the subject partner with harmonized dual characteristics, but because He has no external form, He needed a form through which He could relate to the substantial world.

Since the creation includes a physical world, God required a body that would enable Him to communicate with and act freely in that world. It could not just be the body of the man or the body of the woman. It had to be the bodies of both Adam and Eve together reflecting the image of God.

Without form, God is limited in His ability to relate with the corporeal substantial world. Accordingly, if Adam and Eve had become one while attending God and if, after becoming perfect, they had married and given birth to children, they would have become the external, horizontal, substantial True Parents, while God would have become the internal, vertical, substantial True Parent.

If this had happened, Adam and Eve would have stood in God's position and resembled God one hundred percent, both internally and externally. And if Adam and Eve, resembling God completely, had become the True Parents of humanity, all humanity would have come to recognize them as God's substantial form.

Second, God created human beings as separate entities, man and woman, for the perfection of love. When Adam and Eve became the perfected substantial forms of love and achieved complete oneness, God intended to dwell within them and become the Parent of true love for all humankind.

Adam and Eve, who thus would have stood in the position of God's external form, then would have been able to reproduce children and form an ideal family and an ideal world. Once this happened, the spirit world and the earthly realm would have been connected through humankind. (516-066, 2006.02.03)

14. God has no external form; He is invisible. Even in the spirit world, God cannot be seen. Nonetheless, God needs a body. God created all things because He requires an object partner. Through it, He can assume a physical form. Perfected Adam and Eve were to have become God's body.

So originally, when they went to the spirit world, Adam and Eve were to have become the king and queen of the family, tribe, people, nation and world, and of the cosmos. Thus, in the spirit world they would have represented God.
(242-167, 1993.01.01)

15. God's vision of the ideal of creation included the kingdom of heaven in the spirit world, but He created all things because He wished for a concrete kingdom of heaven in the physical world where He could reside.

In other words, God created the world and everything in it to experience the glory of both the spiritual and the physical kingdom of heaven, with Himself and Adam and Eve as the center.

He did not intend to establish the kingdom of heaven in heaven and on earth just for Himself; He created them for humankind as well. God's purpose for creating heaven and earth was so that human beings could live in the kingdom of heaven on earth and afterward in the eternal world of the kingdom of heaven in heaven, centering on Adam and Eve. (1-282, 1956.12.16)

16. What kind of people can live in the kingdom of heaven on earth? What kind of spirits can live in the infinite spirit world, the kingdom of heaven in heaven?

People who have received the love of Jesus and the Holy Spirit on earth and, going beyond that, received the love of the Father directly, lived together with Hi, and become the victors of harmony based on the ideal of love – only they can live in that kingdom. (1-284, 1956.12.16)

The kingdom of heaven is to be established first on the earth

17. According to God's Principle of Creation, the kingdom of heaven must be perfected first in this earthly world. Originally, God created us such that, after living in the kingdom of heaven on earth while in the flesh, we naturally would discard our physical body, move to the kingdom of heaven in the spirit world, and live eternally.

Then what should the kingdom of heaven, which we need to construct on earth, look like? The original family and the kingdom of heaven have the same structure. Basically, in a family, there are the original parents, the original husband and wife, the original children, and the original brothers and sisters.

When this family becomes one centered on true love, harmony, and unity come about automatically. On that foundation, with true love, true life, and true lineage woven together, they can take on an even higher purpose. (474-175, 2004.10.30)

18. If human beings had not fallen, they would have become the perfected true children of God, with God as their Parent and His true love at the center of their lives. Perfected human beings were to form the bond of true husband and wife surrounded by God's love, give birth to, and raise true children.

Together, they were to establish the kingdom of heaven on earth and live there, and then with their entire family they would one day live in the kingdom of heaven in heaven. If your father went to hell and your mother went to heaven, how could she feel it was the kingdom of heaven?

If the parents went to hell and only the children entered heaven, how could anyone call that the kingdom of heaven? The kingdom of heaven is a place where the family enters together and lives in an eternal realm of peace.

Accordingly, God can settle His ideal of creation only where heaven has been made real in a family on earth. This is where God longs to dwell. (443-174, 2004.03.23)

19. You must realize that you need your grandfather and grandmother, father and mother, husband or wife, and children. Those four stages encompass all of humanity. Then you have to love your nation more than you love your family and love the world more than your nation.

To live in the spirit world, which brings together the past, present, and future, you need to practice such love. The kingdom of heaven on earth is established here on earth, and the kingdom of heaven on earth creates the kingdom of heaven in heaven automatically. It is the place where people who have practiced the four stages of love can go. (277-192, 1996.04.15)

20. If the first ancestors had not fallen or sinned, but instead had conformed to the Will of God, God could have rejoiced when they died. Would they have had any regrets?

If you have lived without bitter anguish, if you have been able to rejoice and offer praise before God, and if God Himself is happy with you, then upon your death you will be in the kingdom of heaven He created.

That is the kingdom of heaven of God's original intention. People with deep bitterness are not meant to go to that kingdom of heaven. You cannot enter the kingdom of heaven while in torment. (41-228, 1971.02.16)

21. The kingdom of heaven that God desires is not established only in the spirit world. The kingdom of heaven God desires is established first on earth, and then in the spirit world. The spirit world is populated by the spirits of people who have passed on.

That world and this earthly world cannot remain separated. To possess a victorious substantial self and to embody heaven's ideology, you need to uphold both heavenly ethics and human ethics.

You need to live the ideology of the kingdom of heaven in your daily life. Then you will be in accord with both heavenly and human ethics.

That should be the ideology of the kingdom of heaven for individuals and, at the same time, for the family, society, nation, world, and cosmos. Your very being should manifest the ideology of the kingdom of heaven. (2-226, 1957.06.02)

22. As the incorporeal subject partner, God longed for an object partner who could provide the universal stimulation of love in history, for which He had yearned since the beginning of time. How great that stimulation will be when He encounters men and women who have become perfect object partners, both corporeal and incorporeal!

God created Adam and Eve on earth because the kingdom of heaven is to be established first on earth. After they live an ideal life on earth, their spirits are to dwell in the eternal kingdom of heaven in heaven. (135-011, 1985.08.20)

23. At your home, please take care of nature to make a good environment. A person who has given his or her best for this will have a proportional right of ownership in the next world, the kingdom of heaven, which is hundreds of times bigger than this one.

You attain this stature on earth. Do you want to be well-off there? Or would you rather find yourself in a room in the spirit world just big enough for you to touch foreheads and look at each other's faces? You should live in such a way that you will be able to fly, dance, sing, and go wherever you please, seeking hundreds and thousands of places.

What is the most desolate place in the world? If you go to such a place and find that the soil is barren, you should want to make that place green by yourself, even if it means you have to invest precious resources from your country. You should at least set a model standard, as does Manmul Peak on Mount Geumgang. The time has now come to make many things.

Even after having done so, establishing a beautiful kingdom of heaven remains for us to fulfill in our fives. We need to become the owners, creating an environment where we can live in joy. (481-185, 2005.01.04)