This is an unofficial English translation prepared for tplegacy.net. It has not been reviewed or authorized by FFWPU or any official Unification Movement publishing body.
Former Headquarters Church.
Romans 8:12–21
Prayer
In this hour, please grant that we may harmonize with the Father's original heart, just as it is felt within our hearts.
Father, please let us know how to examine for ourselves what position we stand in. Please let us know what position this self of ours occupies — this self that has wished to boast, wished to be seen, and wished to be deemed precious. In this hour, let us trace and examine for ourselves what position we have taken and how we have become a self that wished to be seen, a self that wished to boast, a self that wished to assert its value — whether on the historical course passing from the past through the present toward the future, or within the realm of the laws of the fortunes of heaven and earth, or in the world of the heart.
The course of life we have walked has been a course on which we could find no place to stand — this we have felt to the very marrow of our bones. We cannot deny that even within the depths of this single hour, we are a self that wanders without knowing where to abide.
We have already felt that anyone who clings to such a self and dreams of a single day of rest cannot help but become a loser in the course of life. Let us realize that the “I” who grieves, grieves out of longing to live; the “I” who is heartsick is heartsick because he does not know which way to go; and the “I” who wanders, wanders to reach one purposed place.
Our hands have grasped nothing capable of striking down and overcoming the power of death, and our hearts have established no center that cannot be moved, even though heaven and earth should shatter.
It is the iron rule that nothing among the myriad creatures and forms of heaven and earth can exist apart from the law of heavenly principle. Yet, we are sorrowful figures who have not been included in the Heaven that so unmistakably exists. Looking upon such a self, please at least let us know how to lament.
Let us realize that the “I” that wishes to put itself forward and boast is a hollow being, and that the “I” that judges by comparing itself with this or that is a being already standing close to the seat of judgment when seen from the heavenly position. This we earnestly ask and beseech.
Father, since You bear the responsibility to release the grief of human lives that wander without finding their place, without knowing their value, without knowing the direction they are to go, this little child knows that even today You are toiling to find that place—the garden of rest where all peoples are to abide, the place of value to be boasted of before all heaven and earth, the place where all human beings can lift both hands in welcome and run forward, saying, “This is the place of purpose I have been seeking; this is the place of eternal life.”
Please let us know that for the accomplishment of this work, the Father has labored until now, that even in this present age the Father is laboring, and that even in the future the Father will be solicitous.
With what face shall we now behold the Father? With what shall we attend the Father? With what shall we long for the Father? With what shall we wish to hear the Father's words? We are those who do not know.
Because of the Fall, we have become baser than a clod of earth; therefore, please guide us, in this hour, to set aside any thought of our own existence and not to permit any of our possessed self-assertion or any consciousness of our own.
Let us transcend our own fixed notions and transcend our own consciousness, becoming as clay grasped in the palm of Your hand, so that we may be molded as You please and respond as Your will desires. We earnestly ask and beseech that You once again lay upon us the touch of re-creation, so that we may belong within the Father's realm of dominion and the pulse of life may again beat within us.
The Father is said to have created all things of heaven and earth by the Word; therefore, please permit that, in this hour, by the Father's word, our dead bodies be revived, and a heartistic liberation be realized in which, intoxicated with rapture, we may sing the value of all creation before heaven and earth. Thus, let the Father's joy and glory burst forth in the very depths of our hearts, so that in this hour, in body and mind, we may experience the figure of joy-filled freedom. We ask for nothing beyond this. Earnestly, we ask and beseech that this one will, this one circumstance, this one work alone may pierce our hearts.
Now, Father, having appeared to speak, what words shall we speak? In days past, too many words have been spoken. You know that there were many times when words had to be spoken even in environments where speech could not be uttered; please do not let this hour be such a time.
Let us yearn in heart and rejoice in heart; let Your heartache become our heartache, Your circumstance become our circumstance, and Your sorrow become our sorrow. With all our heart and all our devotion, please permit this hour to be one in which we can leap forward to the seat of the Father's glory. Earnestly, we ask.
Now, please take into Your charge and govern all that is to be conveyed. Let the heart of the giver and the heart of the receiver harmonize as one, transcending all consciousness of self and all temporal notions, so that this hour may be one in which we experience the very movement of the Father who moves directly. Let this single hour be one in which, without our even knowing, we may dwell within the deep shade of the Father's heart; please permit us such an experience. Earnestly, we entreat and beseech.
On this day, please bless the multitudes of humankind who long for the grace of blessing, and bless the many altars. Above all, please bless those hidden sons and daughters of Yours who, having dragged their bodies — wearied from fighting on lonely battlefields — into the Father's presence, kneel and pour out their hearts longing for the proper time and season.
Since You are the Father who would establish the same will of grace, we entreat and beseech that we may meet this grace of glory in the same victorious form in this hour. We have offered all these words in the name of the Lord. Amen.
The Self as the Base of Good and Evil
We know. Through the bond of the Fall, human beings stand under the shadow of death — this we know. Therefore, our hearts and our bodies stand in a position where we must pioneer this gloomy environment of death and advance toward that bright and good world.
When we examine it, we cannot escape the environment in which good and evil stand opposed, with myself as the stake, causing me to wander to the right or to the left. The fact that we can be good and that we can be evil cannot be denied — it is because there is some good thing drawing us toward the good place and some evil thing drawing us toward the evil place.
There is an invisible world that is unseen by our physical eyes, and we must come to know that in that world a good God and an evil spirit are fighting with the human being as the stake. And in this world in which we live, too, we cannot deny the fact that good and evil, without our knowing, are pulling at and being pulled by our single being. With this being called the human being set up, both in heaven and on earth, there is striving from the left and from the right. We must first recognize that we stand in such an environment.
In what kind of seat have we been born upon this earth? We have been born in a seat where above we may face Heaven and below we may face the world. Toward what place is this self of ours now running? This is the question. Though you may not know it clearly, you must have experienced in your daily lives that two arrows—those of good and evil—are piercing your heart.
Though my body is a small form, considering that within it, on the side of Heaven, there is the base of good and evil, and on the side of this earth, there is also the base of good and evil—you yourselves cannot but explain in what position you have been born, in what position you stand, and whose sons and daughters you are.
If the parents are good, the children also will be good. The fact that we ourselves are not good but live in an evil position is undeniably because our ancestors begot us in an evil position. Whether we like it or not, having been born in such a position, it is a grave matter that we explain ourselves; but a still graver matter, before that, is to explain whose sons and daughters we are.
The Three Great Parents and Fallen Humanity
From where, then, is our origin?
I did not begin from myself. Going beyond the self, I began with my parents. If we trace the source still further back through ancestor after ancestor, who at last comes forth? If the progenitor of humankind comes forth at this point, we must take hold of him and explain what relationship that progenitor has to ourselves.
Whose sons and daughters are we?
Human beings have three great parents. What rears our body is the earth. The earth, which provides the elements necessary for our body, is our parent. Yet there is no one who knows that this earth is the parent of humankind.
Next, there are the parents who gave birth to us. This cannot be denied. The parent of the body is the earth; the parents of the heart are the parents who gave birth to us.
But human beings have not only these two parents. Beyond these parents, there is one Parent, the figure of ideal value, absolute and eternally everlasting; if we cannot acknowledge or explain that Parent, the human being can do nothing but lament.
Therefore, I declare with conviction that mankind, on the historical course as it flows on, can never possess the garden of rest unless it has some single moment, some single time, some single period in which it explains such a Parent.
We have a Parent of the Heart, and that Parent is not a parent who perishes together with the earth but a Parent who can shake and govern the history of the earth and the history of humankind and still have power to spare. That Parent is precisely the Heavenly Parent — that is, the Parent who created us. We must know that human beings have these three great parents.
Today's human beings think only that the parents who gave birth to them are their parents, but it is not so. The source of your body is a clod of earth.
You were born as the sons and daughters of the parents who bore you, but you do not resemble only the parents who bore you. The human being seeks something newer and greater beyond those parents.
If it is the iron rule that without motive and bond there can be no heavenly result, the fact that we yearn for a figure of absolute value cannot be denied as being because such a Parent exists.
Then what kind of human being can be called a true human being? It must be a human being whose heart can be in communication with the earth. If the parent that bore us is the earth, mankind must be those who know how to live for that parent in the heart, together with it.
Going further, those who know Heaven, who are concerned for the will of the Heavenly Parent, who today and tomorrow fight on toward the destination of goodness desired by that will, and who strive to explain that absolute bond—these may be considered people walking the true course of life.
Looking from this standpoint, what kind of people will be the people who can remain into the future, the people who can rule the world? We can declare it. It is people who love the earth as a husband loves his wife. Such people never perish.
Such people, when their nation is invaded by an enemy, generate the strength to fight against the enemy. A people who, more than themselves, lay hold of the people, lay hold of mankind, and know how to love—such a people never perish.
The wars up to this day have been wars to seize land, and wars to set up some ideology and draw human beings under it. But there is one remaining sphere that those who walk the Way must address—what is it? It is to make a foundation with which Heaven can resonate.
If people who cannot live without loving Heaven, or such an ideology or thought, appear upon the earth, the fortunes of heaven and earth will move on their behalf.
What kind of human being is one who can live in the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth? It knows how to love Heaven as its parent, one who knows how to love mankind as his parent, and one who knows how to love the earth as its parent. It is one who sets this up as the ideology of his life and lives by it.
Without our even knowing it, our hearts go searching for places where the landscape is fair. Why? Because something we ourselves cannot know is bound deeply within us.
The fact that, the moment we face nature, we feel something, we recall ourselves, and we are immersed in a deep state of the heart is also because the original bond is being recognized anew. Had the human being not fallen, he could have shed tears even while holding a single blade of grass; he could have felt as toward a beloved or a dear friend; he could have experienced the very delight that the Creator felt when He fashioned that grass. Were he such a human being, he would not live a life that has fallen, despaired, and grieved.
Human Desire and the Fall
What has art, until now, been seeking to present by pioneering, again and again, the deep valleys of the heart of human life? It has sought to feel the beauty of the inner world correspondingly and to express its original value externally, one hundred percent. The purpose of art lies there.
Then, have you ever embraced visible nature and rejoiced?
Have you ever, intoxicated with the beauty of mountain and stream, said, “O human beings, behold this. O Heaven, the wonder of Your craft of creation is astonishing.” If you have not, then you stand within the realm of despair.
The Apostle Paul poured out his heart. Through the human being's Fall, lamentation arose; and that lamentation, he said, did not stop with the human being but extended over all the creation in heaven and on earth. These are the right words. Human beings have many cravings, but they are not cravings. They are the natural mind. They are not cravings, but the natural longing of nature. Yet because it has been confined within a limited region, the urge to break through it and go forward is a natural outpouring.
The desire of human life is not to conquer this world. It is not to possess the earthly realm. It is to harmonize with billions of human beings, to discuss the value of the whole, and—if there is a sovereign Creator—to sing of relative value together with that Creator and exchange hearts with Him.
Therefore, the human heart runs. Our heart and our mind are running toward some place. The desire stirring within me to embrace the whole cosmos is not a bad thing. It is only that, having departed from the original orbit, we cannot face it nor lay hold of it. Because there is a time when we may take hold according to a fundamental principle, our hearts are running.
When we once again reflect upon ourselves, what do you feel?
Within our hearts, a battle along two paths is unfolding. Even though I felt happiness today, I have no authority to make that happiness continue tomorrow, the day after, throughout my whole life.
Even though today I may take hold of someone I love and sing of happiness, I cannot sing of happiness eternally with that person at the center. As time passes, things change. You cannot deny the fact that no ideology or anything of value can be eternally boasted of before the world of being.
Think once again, in this hour, that you yourselves are such. Then where is this body trying to go? Where is this mind trying to go? Where is this heart trying to go? This is the question. We were born without having the place where we ought to be, from the very moment of our birth.
We were born without having an environment in which we could rest. We were born as beings who, without our knowing, fell into a battlefield environment. We were born into an environment where we do not know who entangled whom or who was confused.
Therefore, to resolve these problems one by one, things such as human ethics and morality, the way of the Way, came forth; and going beyond and beyond all this, in the end, mankind has come to forsake everything upon this earth and seek out Heaven. Because of this, we are stuck in an environment from which we cannot leave, even if we wish to. Our habits, the notions, and recognitions of life formed since birth, bind us. Going further, some unknown form of sin entangles us.
Considering this, whose sons and daughters are you? You have become the sons and daughters of the evil world. This cannot be denied. You are the sons and daughters of the evil world. Though you have a heart that yearns for goodness, you do not stand in a good position; you lament from an evil position; therefore, conclusively, you are the sons and daughters of the evil world.
Christianity sums this up by calling them fallen human beings — fallen human beings. A life ensnared by those two letters, “the Fall” — sinful human beings who cannot escape the lineage of the Fall.
The Life Course That True Sons and Daughters Must Walk
From here, we must depart. We must set the environment in which we stand to go forward. How? If the body opposes, we must strike the body and go on. If the mind opposes, we must strike the mind and go on.
If the heart bars that path, we must break even this heart and go on. The path that pioneers this way is the path of the Way. The path of the Way is a path of forsaking and going, of kicking aside and going, of forgetting everything and going.
Though for thousands of years it has been said that one must go in this seeking, there has been none who has gone, none who has been victorious — what shall we do? On the historical course up to now, countless people have rushed forward seeking to escape from the lineage of lamentation, to sever the name of sinful child and to bear the name of good child, but as yet no figure of victory has appeared who can be said to have completed the journey. The problem lies here.
If there is a Heaven and a hell, then Heaven and hell are within my own heart. We stand at the crossroads of grave death and rebirth, with us as the stake, and good and evil are fighting. You are now trembling at the worldwide terror that visits in this age of the Last Days, but anyone who longs for the true life and seeks the destination of the true homeland must know that the more dreadful thing is not the externally manifest terror but the battle of good and evil within his own heart.
If one becomes a loser here, he can never escape the flesh and blood of the evil parent and becomes a child of the world of death; if one becomes a victor and stands in the position of a child who has received the flesh and blood of the parent that Heaven can publicly recognize, he becomes a child who shall remain in the world of heavenly value, transcending the history of the earth.
Therefore, we must take hold of our hearts and fight. That fight is not something to be resolved by some relational being; it must be resolved from within one's own heart. That is why, when the disciples asked where the Kingdom of Heaven was, Jesus answered, “The Kingdom of Heaven is within your heart.”
However conscientious, however good a man may be, you must know that if his heart does not, throughout the whole of his life, continue a way of life in which he can sing of the Parent together with the whole universe, he shall be cut off and one who shall be barred.
We must go. Even if I do not wish to, history is going toward that place; even if I do not wish to go, this world is going toward that place.
If anyone betrays the fortune of the world, Heaven will drive that person out, even by striking them. If any individual blocks the direction of that fortune and refuses to go, Heaven will move toward the destination of the great cosmos, even by striking him. We must go toward that place.
We often speak in this way. When some person represents our country and goes out to an international competition, we call them a son or daughter of Korea.
Going further, one who represents some organization within the country, or some clan, is called a son or daughter of that organization or clan. And entering the family, he is called a son or daughter of his parents.
Thus, the noun “son or daughter” is used in a wide range. Then what kind of life course must true sons and daughters walk? We have not become sons and daughters that Heaven can publicly recognize. The standard for such sons and daughters has not appeared upon this earth. It has not appeared. This I can affirm.
The standard for sons and daughters of a nation that Heaven publicly recognizes has not appeared either. Is there such a standard? There is none. From the time heaven and earth came into being, there has been no commandment, nothing, by which any kindred, any clan, any people could be called sons and daughters of Heaven publicly recognized by Heaven.
Did the people of Israel become sons and daughters of Heaven?
They did not. That people, who readily betrayed Heaven, who in one age after another walked the course of traitors before Heaven, who seized and killed the Messiah whom God had sent — that people did not become sons and daughters of Heaven. They did not stand in a position where God could love them, saying, “Yes, you are My sons and daughters representing the world.” They did not stand in a position where He could establish a nation of the chosen people and call them sons and daughters of Heaven on behalf of that nation. There is nothing by which they could be called sons and daughters of Heaven on behalf of the clan.
Going still further, even centered upon a family, they did not stand in a circumstance where they could be called sons and daughters of Heaven. Let those who say they have so become raise their hands. This is the problem.
When we think in this way, Heaven is a pitiable Heaven. What was it that Heaven longed for in His heart? It must have been to set up the original human being — unfallen — our unfallen ancestors as world-level sons and daughters. He must surely have dreamed of setting them up as sons and daughters who could rule the world, who could represent the sovereignty of a nation; He must surely have dreamed of setting them up as sons and daughters of a clan, of some family.
Yet because every standard Heaven sought to set up was cut off, human life has come to flounder and to suffer. Therefore, we must kick away the iron bars of the iron-strong Devil, meet a day of liberation, and seek the Parent that Heaven can recognize and render filial piety to him.
When we consider this, if anything is dumbfounding, nothing is more dumbfounding than this. Heaven has labored for six thousand years until now and has woven together altars of indescribable sacrifice, yet does not stand in a position to possess such a standard—what does this mean? We must know that we are those who must lament.
God's Will Accomplished Through Those Who Are Driven
We have gathered. Heedless of the path of persecution, we have come pressing on. We have come seeking. Heedless of the valley of sorrow, we have come seeking.
For what reason? To escape from being sons and daughters of the evil world and to become true sons and daughters of goodness, we have come seeking.
The fact that our ancestors who came and went on the historical course set their environment in order and rose toward the destination was an action and a practice in accordance with God's word, “Go.”
Look. How was it with our forefather Noah? He was driven by his environment. Yet, for one hundred and twenty years, he poured all his ardor and all his property into building the ark. Working with sincerity and devotion, whenever he had the time, he cried out that after one hundred and twenty years, they would be judged by water. Though he cried out for one hundred and twenty years, Noah found not a single comrade. Vast crowds mocked him.
Looking up at the clear blue sky, they laughed; looking at Noah lamenting in the streets, they laughed. Such was Noah, mocked and driven. Severing every bond with all the affairs of the world, Noah was the one who wished to come forth as the family of the new nation that Heaven would permit, as the parent of the new nation, as the kinsfolk of the new nation.
This is the standard of fidelity that Heaven desires. Yet you say you will believe and merely go to Heaven? It cannot be so.
How was it with Abraham?
Before the voice of Heaven that bade him leave Ur of the Chaldees and go to the wasteland of the wilderness, without hesitation, he abandoned the beloved hometown where he had lived in happiness, abandoned all his household possessions, and set forth.
The one who walked such steps is Abraham, our father of faith. And look at Moses. He forsook everything and led six hundred thousand multitudes out into the wasteland. There, too, he was driven.
On the historical course up to now, the sages and worthies who advanced standing for goodness were once driven from the world. Only after being driven can the will be accomplished. Therefore, we must be driven and driven again. Thus, we must press on to the destination we are to seek, to the position of the parent centered on God.
Among the words read out today, we find the words “adopted children of God.”
Some crowds console and assure themselves that, having believed in Jesus, they will go to Heaven, and that since they go to church, they are sons and daughters of God; but the sons and daughters of God of whom I know are not such people.
The heart of God from before the creation to the end of the world must so melt into the very marrow of my bones that, if there is sorrow in God, I can feel that sorrow with my life, and if there is joy, I can feel that joy with my life—that is, only when I can pass through every emotion of God can I be determined to be a son or a daughter of God; before that, it cannot be.
Even in becoming an adopted child in the world, is it enough merely to call someone “Father”? It is not so.
For us to become sons and daughters of Heaven, we must receive the lineage of Heaven and enter a position where we can Heartistically call Him “Father.” Before that, you are no different from a servant. You have no relation whatsoever with the True Parents. Because the lineage is different, you are an adopted child.
The providence of salvation is to give you the awakening, “I thought this was our parent, but he is the enemy!” — and to make you sever the bond with this enemy of a different lineage and go forth.
History has been formed by people who were driven. We must know the fact that all those who, until now, have led the world and proclaimed ideologies and thoughts have been driven.
The historical course is the floundering of the individual, driven by the clan, feeling something new, and striving to follow the heart of the great Parent of heaven and earth.
If there is one who observes history — that is, a historian — he must observe history from such a viewpoint. Anyone who does not know that history flows on the foundation of the unseen heart of heavenly relations is not a world-class historian.
History is flowing forth beneath the unseen heartistic something — that is, the heartistic ideology that created the great cosmos. The fact that it is moving under a clear purpose cannot be denied.
From clan, through tribe, to people, to nation, and on through allied nations, it has been forming a federation of nations. Now the time draws near. The time when the gates of the world can be thrown open is approaching, step by step, before our very eyes.
Then what kind of standard must come forth in the future?
Since God, who created the cosmos, is our Father, one Crown Prince must take the stage, standing in the position of His son and daughter, who can confidently say, “This world is mine.” This is what heaven and earth are awaiting.
The Path of the Way
What did the human being lose along with the Fall?
He lost the earth. He became a human being who has lost the earth. This earth has become an earth without a master, trampled here and there, swept this way and that by the ideologies and currents of one people and another. Thus, the humanity of this world too has become a humanity without a master. At one time, this ideology sweeps it; at another, that current sweeps it — humanity has become a humanity without a master, and going further, even heaven and earth have become a heaven and earth without a master.
That is why we go in search of the master. We go searching for the parent. When we weep, crying, “O earth that for six thousand years has been stained with blood! O humanity that has been trampled! O Heaven that has been lamenting because of this earth and this humanity!” — A heartistic world must be realized in which Heaven can weep, humanity can weep, and the earth can weep.
If there is a Creator, it must surely be so. If it does not so come about, then there is no God. Since this is a journey set out longing for the Parent, we cannot stand still as long as we do not meet that Parent.
History passes on. Even after embracing some people for centuries, He releases them. Now, on a worldwide scale, the two great camps of democracy and communism are confronting each other. It may seem as though these will play the role of the final parent, but they will not. Those who are fighting cannot be the true parent. They are false. Centered on the heart, there cannot be two leading figures. In singing centered on the heart, there is only one.
Where on this earth is there a hero who can occupy the heart of the parent? No matter how great a king, no matter how great a demon-king who seized authority, none of them can intrude upon it.
A heartistic world in which God can say to you, “You are My sons and daughters,” and you can say to Him, “You are my Father,” must surely be realized in the Last Days. If there are people who, Heartistically and in their daily lives, live in contact with such a standard, they will be victorious. There is no one who can occupy them.
Therefore, today too, we must go forward. Is it not so, all of you? You are human beings who have a fallen parent but do not have an unfallen parent.
However much you may strut, however gifted, however this and that you may say you are, you are descendants of fallen ancestors. You are the clan of the Fall. The element of evil is rooted deeply, having flowed from your forefathers and seeped into your single body.
Do you suppose it is what Heaven desires that we obtain joy by doing whatever such a body wishes, whatever it deems good? It is not. We must deny. What we see with our eyes — denied; what we hear — denied; what we eat — denied; what we sleep — denied. Such is the path of the Way. It does not approve. It does not permit any notion of possession at all. Even the notion that I am the son or daughter of someone must be cut away.
Where is there such a law?
Even the parents who bore me, since they are not the true parents that Heaven can recognize, must be cut off. The same with wife and children.
That is why Jesus said, “He who does not love me more than anyone else cannot be My disciple.” The Way starts from here. The true Way denies even the heartistic notion of possession. A religion high in heart is a religion whose life is like that of a prison. It denies even the human being's heartistic right of possession. Therefore, anything else is not even a problem.
We must deny everything. A thousand times, ten thousand times, we must deny.
This eye, this ear, this stomach, this heart — every one of them must be denied. We must say, “O God, if You are alive, even by striking me, please make me deny myself completely.” This is the life of the man of the Way. The purpose of the judgment is to lift and set in their proper place those who, after being struck, have nothing left to be struck.
Then how shall we settle the heartistic bond woven by lineage?
This must be the greatest of all of Heaven's distresses. Circumstances can be solved easily, but the heart can be solved only by staking life and death upon it.
Circumstances can be settled by setting up conditions of relative value, but the question of the heart can be settled only by staking my absolute life upon it. Therefore, the path of the Way must be walked, staking death upon it.
The Parent We Must Seek
We are placed in a destiny in which we must set forth. Before the God who has labored for six thousand years, we must be able to say, “Father, who has come seeking mankind with a heart of grief, we are overcome with awe and gratitude.”
We must know that for the long six thousand years, God, as if for a single day, has been floundering and hurrying with quick steps to find His children. God, with a heart of grief, weeping aloud, has been following mankind. Only such a person can go to God's Kingdom.
Look. God has labored for six thousand years, and yet to this day there are no sons and daughters He can embrace in His bosom and love eternally—how can He not lament?
My friends, do you feel this in your hearts?
In your homes, has it been arranged so that God can come in and say, “Yes, treat me well. Yes, I will sleep at your house.” It has not been so arranged. God has not had a person in whom to dwell, nor has He had a house. Is it not so in 1 Corinthians 3:16? “Do you not know that you are God's temple?” The temple is the house. God seeks a house. The denomination exists to make the house.
What is the house for?
It is to seek the son. Because we must find the house to find the sons and daughters, we go in search of the house. In the end, the aim is to find the sons and daughters.
I once prayed in this way: “Father! If the fortune of the great cosmos is alive, since I now know something of the deep parental love of Yours, please make me a son or daughter of Your wishful longing — a son, a daughter, with whom You can rejoice within one family.” My friends, have you ever prayed such a prayer?
Have you ever attended a Father who, longing for sons and daughters for six thousand years, says, “Yes, My son! My daughter!” — and at that moment, forgetting His dignity, struggling, not knowing whether to weep or to rejoice, embraces you and rejoices. You have not, have you?
There remains a path we must walk. We have the mission to find the parent of the family, and at the same time, the mission to find the parent of the clan. At the same time, we have the mission to find the parents of the people. We have the mission to find the parent of the nation. Furthermore, we have the mission to find the parent of the world and the parent of heaven and earth.
A loyal patriot who has resolved to lay down his life for his people does not hesitate to deny his parents and to deny his wife and children. The present is passing through the age of nationalism.
Now we must go beyond the age of nationalism centered on a single people and attend to a new parent centered on the world. The present age is flowing into the age of globalism. The time is approaching when, beyond the parent of the people, we must attend to the parent of the world. We must become loyal patriots.
We must become filial sons and daughters. We must become virtuous women. In the end, what kind of parent must we be? Beyond the parent of the world, we must attend to the Creator who created heaven and earth as our Parent. We human beings must press on as far as the position where we can attend such a Parent.
That path is a course of bitter sorrow. We must know that it is a sorrowful path we must cross, floundering.
In carrying out the providence of salvation, God did not first send the parent of the world. He did not send the parent of a nation. He did not send the parents of the people. He did not send the parent of any one religion. He set out from the position of the parent of one individual. He set out with one home as the unit. With one home as the unit, God sought a nest of rest in which to abide.
The Lord Who Comes as the World-Level Parent
What he thus came forth seeking was the altar of Abel, the family of Noah; but because that was broken, the traces of one thousand six hundred years of toil vanished without a trace.
Then, after laboring for four hundred years, He sought to be centered again on the family of Abraham; yet Abraham erred in his offering, and once more it was broken. Therefore, only when, by way of Isaac, the third generation of Jacob was reached, was He able to set up the goal of the family and conduct the providence.
Look at the Bible carefully. God wished to bless the nation of Jacob for the sake of the people He had chosen upon this earth, but He could not, and instead He blessed the household of Jacob. He found only the one household of Jacob whom He could lead. It was a sorrowful history.
What is the father of faith?
He is the root of the new faith. Centered on the household of Jacob, He intended to multiply, to make a people, to establish a nation, but eventually, this was not accomplished.
What became of the descendants of Jacob who received the blessing of the family? They fell in the wilderness. When Moses was leading the multitudes who had been forced into hard labor in Egypt, who could have known that they would fall in the wilderness? Moses had been set up in the position of the parent of the people.
If the people of Israel had acted together with such a Moses with the heart, “Whether we die, we die together; whether we live, we live together. Where my father goes, why should I not go?” they would not have perished. Yet the foundation of Moses, who had been set up beyond the parent of the clan as the parent of the people, was broken without a trace.
So those who were set up as inheritors of the lineage of the parent of the clan were the many prophets. Upon such a foundation, a parent comes — what kind of parent? Beyond the parent of the nation, and the parent of the world, and going further, He comes as the Parent of heaven and earth. This is the thought of the Lord, the thought of the Messiah. You must clearly understand. Then what is the purpose of the Messiah's coming? It is to break down the evil nation and its sovereignty and to establish the sovereignty of goodness with which God can hold the world in His palm and govern it, and so to settle the position of the True Parent.
Jesus came and went before all mankind. With what? Setting up Jacob as the type of the parent of the family, setting up Moses as the type of the parent of the people, and upon that, sending Jesus as the type of the world-level parent before the people of Israel. To become a parent, one must enter the world of the enemy and fight and win.
Therefore, Jacob went into the household of Laban in Haran and fought. Moses, too, went into the palace of Pharaoh, the world of the enemy, and fought. Only by fighting and winning can one settle the position of the parent.
Jesus too came to this earth and was to fight in this world — like the land of Egypt in Moses' time — and find the standard of the world-level parent. Yet he died. He went on to fail. Because he had failed, he must come again. Because the effort to set up the world-level parent ended in failure, the family-level parent and the parent of the people were also all broken.
Because the standard of the parent that had come forth seeking through four thousand years of work and the law of heaven and earth was lost, that parent must be linked spiritually. Therefore, Jesus spoke of the bridegroom and the bride. Do you know what the Holy Spirit is? It is the Mother Spirit.
In Christianity today, people speak of the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit, without knowing what it is, but the Holy Spirit is the Mother Spirit. Jesus is the Son Spirit, and God is the Father Spirit. Before the Father, the sons and daughters could not become the True Parents and fell; therefore, Jesus came as the True Parent to give you rebirth.
What is rebirth?
It is to be born again. To be born again is to be born because one has died, is it not? It means we must be born again from the womb of the Mother, the Holy Spirit.
Attending to Jesus as Father and the Holy Spirit as Mother, the work in which, centered on the love of these Parents, we are conceived again in the Mother's womb and are born — that is the work of salvation.
Jesus was to bring this to completion on earth through both spirit and body, but he went without fulfilling that mission. That is why Jesus must return. My friends, this is not the word of the man who is speaking here. If it sounds like a lie, then pray about it.
Twenty-seven hundred million human beings of the world have come forth seeking. They have come seeking and seeking. They have struggled and struggled.
For what reason? To attend the lost world-level parent. This is the final gate that leads into the heartistic place of rest. Because Adam and Eve, who had been blessed to become the world-level parents, did not become the world-level parents and lost God, on the day that the true world-level parent comes into being, we shall be able to meet God face to face. At the time we meet God, both the gifted and the ungifted will be judged. We are going forward in this manner.
The Final Destination
Then what is the purpose for which Heaven sets us up and bids us come?
What is the conclusion that the Great Sovereign of heaven and earth desires? It is to set up the True Parents. Once we have made a bond of blood with that Parent, even were we to try, we cannot deny God.
We will not be able, even in dreams, to deny God's reality of existence. We enter the realm where the Father is within me and where the Father is in my daily life. We must know that Heaven bids us come to meet the Parent who transfers us into that heartistic world.
Whether one speaks of the Way or of God's providence, the final purpose is to attend the Parent.
If there is love, what greater love is there than this?
Hence, eventually, God becomes the Parent. Look at the Bible. It says human beings are those who have lost their Parent, that they are like orphans, like widows.
Therefore, we are going toward a world in which we can attend to God as our Parent. That place is the final destination of human life.
A 38th parallel that we must cross lies before us. Multitudes who can say, “If we stand in a position where we must cross, then let us cross! We must go. Let us go!” must come forth upon this earth.
Have you reached the standard of saying, “Let us cross! Since this is a step set out for the world's sake, let us cross even though the family opposes! Let us cross even though society and the nation oppose it! Let us cross even though the ideology of this world opposes!
If you have not, you become a defeated soldier.
In what kind of ideology have you been steeped?
Are you still saying, “My son, my daughter; my son, my daughter”? All such things will pass away. All mankind must pass beyond such a standard.
Now, throughout the world, parents are killing their children, children are killing their parents, and husbands are killing wives. Why?
Because all this must be cut away. The fortunes of heaven and earth come driving in. They drive humanity to a place where every human bond can no longer be trusted. Heaven drives them not to break, but because, unless they are broken, the situation cannot be set in order. History has come forth in this manner.
Democracy broke down imperialism. Look. If villains hold sovereignty, the whole world will become a world of villains; therefore, a revolution arose, broke them down, established democracy, set up sons and daughters whom God loves as presidents, and turned things upside down.
With this, what is to be accomplished?
My friends, what is it that must be sought in such a world? We must seek the existence of the parent, the existence of the loyal patriot, and the existence of the virtuous woman whom Heaven would seek and set up. If there are such people, those people will rule the world. They will rule. Is the principle not so?
We must unite. We must resolve. And so we must first stand before the world-level parent that Heaven sets up for us. The ideology that has come forth to realize this is the ideology of unification.
Let us unite not by circumstance but by heart; let us each, taking the Parent's heart as our model, become brothers and sisters and love one another.
Then what is the model character that can follow such a Parent? Upon what foundation shall we testify to the heart of that Parent?
Let us look here at Jesus. He stood in a position to possess and govern this earth, but he was betrayed. The people of Israel, set up as the chosen people, betrayed Jesus. The beloved twelve disciples — and finally even the three disciples — betrayed Jesus.
So all hopes upon the earth were cut off. The hopes he had wished to fulfill, having come to the earth, were all broken. Yet the one thing he held on to and went with was the heart of the Parent. He said, “Father, the heart of the world-level parent that You wish to seek and set up, that alone I shall hold on to and carry.
Even though my body should be pierced by spears, nailed with nails, and fall bleeding, the integrity of the Parent that You seek, that alone I shall carry with me.” Because Jesus had such a heart, he could not help but pray a blessing even for the people of Israel as they were being swept into the pit of death.
Thus, Jesus went on to set up the position of the spiritual Parent. Therefore, you are the spiritual children of Jesus. Jesus was beaten in the flesh and accomplished only in spirit.
Therefore, the Lord who is to come again must accomplish it even in the flesh. Now this body of ours must inherit the flesh and blood of the Parent that God can recognize. Until that bond is found, we are bound to lament along the sorrowful course.
Because we long for that Parent, the world is preparing for the day of that Parent's coming. That one leading figure, that one Parent, that one world is the fruit and the goal that God has been laboring for these six thousand years.
There must come forth a heartistic successor who can stand in the place of that Parent — a heartistic successor. Not a successor only in word, not a successor only in form, not a successor merely fond of him, but a successor who takes the Parent's sorrow and pain as his own, who suffers in the Father's stead, who grieves in the Father's stead, struggling Heartistically to set up the path of loyalty and filial piety before Heaven. Only such a multitude can stand before Heaven.
The One Path by Which We Can Live
It is no use to be ever so versed in the Bible. It is no use to have believed forever so many decades. What is needed is heart. Upon the foundation of an absolute heart that wishes to attend Him, we must love Him. That single heart — who can ever take it away? Children? Children are no problem. Wife and children?
Wife and children are no problem either. One's own brothers and parents are no problem. No glory or authority is a problem. With single-minded devotion, we must be able to say, “What I shall possess is You alone; the whole of my consciousness and notions is Your consciousness and notions.”
You must know that Heaven comes seeking such heartistic children. Now that you have heard this much, you must have an awakening: “Yes, the world is moving on to fulfill such a will.”
Now, returning, let us reflect upon ourselves. What kind of life are you living? If Heaven wishes to cut, but I take hold and weep, that is greed. If Heaven is driving us out, but I refuse to go, then I perish. I perish. Truly, I perish. Just wait and see whether you do not perish. There is no choice but to become an oppressed people.
Now, the only path of life for these people, our pitiable Korean nation, is to make a bond with the heartistic Master. We have all become naked. We have been stripped of all. We have lost parents, wives, and children. With the dividing of north and south, all that I had, all that we had, has been brought to ruin. All bonds and relations have been broken.
We have come to a state where we no longer know who is child, who is parent, who is brother, or who is relative. As it is, we have been born into such an environment. But if we know that there is a heavenly providence that liquidates history and hands it on to a new dimension, let us not lament that we have nothing to eat.
Let us not lament that our appearance is shabby. There is one and only one path of life: it is to become a multitude whose hearts blaze up and who go forth to seek the bond of the Parent that Heaven has set up. If we become such a multitude, this people will rule the world.
We must sing of the heartistic bond, comfort God, forget our own sorrowful position, and say, “O God, I give thanks even for being set up in such a place.” Heaven did not forget me, and the fact that He has set me, who was in a pitiable position, in such a place is—if we know it is because there is a will to bind us with the world He purposes—a thing for which we must simply give thanks.
Looking at it from the world, our people are pitiable. Squeezed between two currents, we have become a people driven, torn, and trampled. But we must know that this is not because Heaven heartlessly drove us into a pitiable place; rather, it is to draw us out of there and set us to weave a new history. No ideology has begun in a wretched environment.
Without escaping that miserable environment, no new history can be brought about. The new heartistic history of Jesus burst forth, using as its springboard the formalized denomination of Israel and Judaism—decadent, having lost the heavenly heart through custom, system, and authority.
Today, even though we are placed in such an environment, if we know that God moves for such a purpose, let us not lament that we have no parent; let us not lament that there is this or that lacking in our environment.
Instead, let us take the Parent of the new ideology as our parent, and take the heartistic ideology as our possession and as our ideology. If such Christians come forth, the world will be conquered through such a multitude.
Therefore, we must know whose sons and daughters we are. Now we must hold the conviction that we are sons and daughters of God. We must also model ourselves on the spirit of Jesus Christ.
We must not become people who lose heavenly dignity and heavenly honor. Heaven will desire that, trampling and striking down everything contrary to this, we walk the one path of advance.
How is it that the name of the Parent of unchanging love has vanished from before mankind on this earth? All the historical sorrows of pass after pass — bearing grudge upon grudge, being trampled — are wearisome beyond endurance.
You too, weeping at such passes, said, “Today I have crossed this pass. Tomorrow I must cross that pass. This year I must cross this pass; in years to come I must cross that pass.” You divided the whole course of your life and had a plan to cross the passes of times and seasons one by one, and human beings did not know it.
We have come to know that, in Jesus' thirty years of preparatory course, there was a time when he planed and chiseled as a carpenter in Joseph's family; a time when, with spirit soaring, he came forth as the Son of God; and a time when, against the people of Israel sleeping in the shadow of death, against the Jewish denomination, he poured out sharp words of cursing as upon hypocrites.
We have come to know that all these were not accidents but were carried out according to the inevitable rule of his life to escape the bond of the earth. We have also come to know the bitter sorrow with which he went, having come to earth without settling the position of the world-level parent and without setting up even one true child whom he could embrace.
When Jesus was about to die on the cross, true filial sons and daughters should have accompanied him; how is it that there was a robber on the right and a robber on the left? We know that the life of Jesus, who had no filial sons and daughters, was forlorn.
The God who sent Jesus to this earth wished to set up before him one son, one filial son; yet the human beings of this earth, who were to attend Jesus as Parent, did not become filial sons and daughters before Jesus, and we have come to know that this is a lamentation. We have learned today, too, that we have the responsibility to release the historical sorrow with such grudges woven into it.
Until now, we have lived as descendants of sin in the shadow of death. We have come to know that this is not the position where we are to abide; the position where we are to abide is the place where we were created by God's will, the place where, from the day His will appeared upon this earth, we were to live possessing the qualification of the original parent.
We have come to know that to seek out and reach the position of that Parent, we must pass through the family, pass through the people, pass through the nation, and pass through the world. And we know that, in the worldwide final age of the Last Days, there shall come a time when, as sons and daughters of God, attending to God as Father, making a bond with the one victorious Parent of heaven and earth, we must judge all the multitudes of the enemy by the heartistic standard of the Parent.
Earnestly we ask and beseech that, for that one day, we may reflect upon and set in order our hearts so that we may sound the trumpet of victory.
Before these sleeping people, before this sleeping mankind, before the multitude of Your lamenting sons and daughters, we have the responsibility to ring a new alarm bell and awaken them.
Furthermore, we know that this must become a heaven and earth in which, harmonized with the heart of the True Parent and with the affection of flesh and blood, we sing of the bond of brothers and sisters, sing of the bond of the family, sing of the bond of the people, and upon that foundation sing of the worldwide bond, sing of the heavenly bond, and at last be able to say that we have set up the bond of the Parent who can pass through into the heart of God.
Only thus shall all the work of providence concerning this earth be resolved—this we have learned and come to know.
Therefore, please guide us so that we may become those who fight today and fight tomorrow for that purpose, and grant that, from this hour, we may become sons and daughters who deny the past, deny the present, set up a new self, and step forth to make tomorrow's life worthwhile. Father, earnestly we ask and beseech.
Please do not let us become those who hear the words and stop there, who feel them and stop there. Knowing that these words, which have given us life, will become a condition of accusation on the day of judgment, please permit us to become Your sons and daughters who do not become ensnared by that condition. Earnestly, we ask and beseech.
Since we are those who prepare for the one hour of glory to be revealed, since we are bodies who have resolved, please bless us that we may, in heart, lift the Father, and harmonized in one center, become sons and daughters who can pioneer and shine in their daily lives without lacking. Grant that, in that one place, we may become sons and daughters who can act as the master before Satan. Earnestly, we ask and beseech.
And so, restoring the garden of the heart that You wish to seek, please grant that the worldwide humanity, becoming brothers and sisters in one great family, may attend the Father as Parent and live in a free heaven and earth in which Heaven rejoices, and all peoples rejoice. Earnestly, we ask.
To this end, we have come to know that we must press forward, beginning from myself, to the standards of the parent, the people, the world, and the cosmos. Earnestly entreating that, from now on, we may become those who can advance in total march with new resolve and determination, we have offered all in the name of the Lord. Amen.
Whose Sons and Daughters Are You?
To this end, we have come to know that we must press forward, beginning from myself, to the standards of the parent, the people, the world, and the cosmos.
Earnestly entreating that, from now on, we may become those who can advance in total march with new resolve and determination, we have offered all in the name of the Lord. Amen.