The Words of Sun Myung Moon from 1956
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The Words of Sun Myung Moon from 1956 |
1 "I am the true vine, and my
Father is the gardener. 2 He cuts off every branch in me that bears
no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that
it will be even more fruitful. 3 You are already clean because of the
word I have spoken to you. 4 Remain in me, as I also remain in you.
No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine.
Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. 5 "I am the
vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you
will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. 6 If you do
not remain in me, you are like a branch that is thrown away and
withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and
burned. 7 If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask
whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. 8 This is to my
Father's glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my
disciples. 9 "As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you.
Now remain in my love. 10 If you keep my commands, you will remain in
my love, just as I have kept my Father's commands and remain in his
love. 11 I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that
your joy may be complete. 12 My command is this: Love each other as I
have loved you. 13 Greater love has no one than this: to lay down
one's life for one's friends. 14 You are my friends if you do what I
command. 15 I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not
know his master's business. Instead, I have called you friends, for
everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. 16
You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you
might go and bear fruit -- fruit that will last -- and so that
whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you. 17 This is my
command: Love each other. 18 "If the world hates you, keep in
mind that it hated me first. 19 If you belonged to the world, it
would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world,
but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates
you. 20 Remember what I told you: 'A servant is not greater than his
master.' If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also. If they
obeyed my teaching, they will obey yours also. 21 They will treat you
this way because of my name, for they do not know the one who sent
me. 22 If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not be guilty
of sin; but now they have no excuse for their sin.
John 15:1-22
Now we have come to the last Sunday of this year. Father, were there times when we fathomed Your heart and were concerned for You? When did we fight for the Father's affairs? When have we genuinely loved the Father?
Father, please forgive us for not having fully coped with the commandments that You have given us with Your concerned heart in this one year and the responsibility that You have entrusted in us for the sake of the people. Throughout the year, there were many commands that the Father gave to us, Your unworthy representatives. Please forgive us for not having been able to complete that responsibility. Please allow us to accomplish the great will that the Father demands.
Forgive the fact that the people on earth who associate with the will have been unable to rise to the level of materializing the hope that Heaven desires. They have been unable to obey the commandments because they are ignorant of the time. Although we might have passed through the path of conflict, when we see that we could not bring victorious accomplishments before the Father, we must feel ashamed.
Please bestow again all the responsibilities that You once entrusted in the sons and daughters gathered here. Please allow them to dash forward for the sake of the Father's will. Allow us to distinguish our internal self and our external self and reflect in ourselves, "When will we be able to receive the love of the Father?"
Father, the mission that You have entrusted in us is not meant to be used just for our own selves, but to seek the people and the world. Furthermore, we are to remove the bitter grief of Heaven. Therefore, we who must take up that mission and follow the Father's orders feel completely awe-stricken before You.
Father, please raise us up again before You, we who are weak and inadequate. Allow Your compassionate and grace-filled hand to go beyond this place and overflow toward the satanic world. Father, we sincerely hope and desire this.
Father, please look upon these people with compassion. Please consider with sympathy the countless churches that have gathered on behalf of this people. Please allow them to be aware of the presence of the Father's great will and dispensation.
Based on this, please allow each church and nation to uphold the will of the Father. Please bring about the fulfillment of Your wishes by working through these people to induce the 2.4 billion people of humanity of this world to advocate the will of the Father. Please let the day come in the near future when the whole 2.4 billion people of humanity can sing that glory. Father, we pray this from the depth of our hearts.
On this day, these people have reported all their lacks. They desire once more the compassionate love of the Father and have come before Your holy presence. Please protect them with compassionate love, embrace them with Your glorious grace, and enhance them with new courage and new power. Father, we hope for this from the bottom of our hearts.
Now we beg that You will allow this hour to be a moment when, attending Father, heaven and earth can harmonize and the Father's love of goodness can dwell in this place. Let this time be a moment when we can offer the Father the glory that arises from our union with Him and receive love from the Father.
Spread widely across the countryside, there are lonesome sons and daughters who are kneeling down and are building altars before the Father. Since the whole mission of the last days has been entrusted to them, please allow them to center themselves on the will of the Father and manifest only the will of Father wherever they may be. We pray with the utmost sincerity.
Earnestly hoping that on this day You will let only the glory of joy descend upon the congregation, I prayed in the name of the loving Lord. Amen.
Father! We are grateful toward Your grace, which found and raised us up and allowed us to carry on the fight until this hour. Today we still have the mission to offer all of our minds and bodies to fight for the one glorious day of the Father. Please let us not become exhausted.
Father, we have often felt that You have personally walked side by side with us as we traveled the difficult path that we had to take to obey Your commands; that You personally stood at our side even on the path of death. We must offer gratitude before that love of Yours, which guided us inadequate ones and persevered through many things.
Father! Although a long time has passed since the day that You promised and permitted, we feel humiliated before the granted will. If Your sons and daughters who have gathered here today cannot return glory to the will, Father, please allow them to at least return tears.
Father! In these last days, we pray that You will allow the fulfillment of the wishes of the ancestors, who made appeals on behalf of the people according to Your commands to persevere. Please quickly manifest Your will before the humanity of the world and give Your commandments.
Father, among Your sons and daughters who have gathered here on behalf of the people, are there those who cannot realize this great will of Yours? Please let them feel and experience the heart of the Father, which reaches deep down into the flesh and bones.
We understand that the path we must walk is long and danger-ridden. No matter what kind of obstacle block our path in whatever time and place, please empower us to penetrate through them. Please lead us not to become ones who feel grief for ourselves. Father, we pray from the depth of our hearts.
Father! Let the sons and daughters who have gathered here today eradicate all the things they are attached to and extricate all that has become entangled for 6,000 years. While we root out our own inadequacies, at the same time, please allow us to eradicate in this one place all the inadequacies of these people. By doing so, please allow us to liquidate all the shameful things of the 6,000-year history of humanity. Father, we earnestly ask that on this foundation and in this hour You will let this be the year when we can set the condition of victory before Satan and step over it.
Father, please guide us to become like children who do not know anything. Please allow us to do nothing else but obey when we are led and do nothing but submit when we are guided. Please do not let any subjective opinions or concepts remain in any of us. Resembling the heart of the Father and taking after the pure heart of children, let us become people of goodness and keep to this path, regardless of whether we are dead or alive. Allow us to charge forward on the path even if flesh and blood are shed.
Lonely members spread across the countryside are clinging on to the way of the Father's will and are fighting to safeguard it at the cost of their lives. Please guide them not to become debilitated. Father, we beg that You will grant them courage and righteous impulses in this hour, so that they can greet the day of joy and glory with a new determination and readiness.
Please forgive our deficiencies in this hour. We possess nothing and we have nothing of which to be proud. All we have is our earnest desire to be embraced inside the Father's bosom of love like children. Father, we ask sincerely that You manifest Your holy presence and penetrate deeply into the depth of our hearts. Please personally bestow the blessing according to our given measure.
Please let there not be anyone among the sons and daughters gathered here who gets dragged away by Satan. We wish earnestly that this may be the moment when we can receive the seal of purification, hold the flag of joy and victory, and return the glory of Hosanna before the Father for eternity. We offer all these words in the name of the Lord. Amen.
Father! We have learned through the words of truth that heaven and earth are created as one body. When we consider that heaven is the subject and we are the isthmus, we cannot live even one day or one moment without receiving the sap of the Father's love and life. Please forgive us for not having been able to live so as to receive the sap of love that emanates from the eternal God when we should have lived as the branches and leaves of Heaven.
Father! In this time of the last days that forebodes the day of judgment, please allow us to be engrafted to the love of the Father centering on Jesus Christ, who is the perfect root. Although we know that God longs to reap from us the fruit of love that is born through the eternal love of Father and of Jesus and the Holy Spirit, we fear that we might become an obstruction to the Father's harvest because of our immaturity, imperfection, and frailty, which prevents us from bringing that to pass.
We entrust ourselves to You. Father! Please raise us and care for us. By guiding us through the hardships and turmoil, please allow us to mature as ripened fruits. Through the loving hands of the Father, please allow us to become the realization that can build the eternal Kingdom of Heaven, the harvester who can reap the harvest.
Father! We know that this moment today is not the first time You have predicted this event. You had already prophesied it long ago in the Old Testament era and at the time of Jesus 2,000 years ago. If we really understand this, then we must cultivate ourselves and become the harvest that can be reaped by Heaven and bring peace to Heaven. Yet when we evaluate ourselves, I am sure that there are those among us who do not feel that they have become mature yet. If this is the case, then Father, I ask earnestly and pray that You will allow them to repent before You on their own volition. Lamenting their own frailty, let them repent even for the grief of Jesus Christ.
Father, we have gathered here today. Please govern our minds totally, and be the center of operations to reign over us. In this way, please do not tolerate any evil concept or assertion that is unacceptable before the will of the Father.
Father, please let these who have gathered here become completely purified children by undergoing repeated processes of purification and bringing an end to the works of Satan. Please allow this to be a time when only You can operate and intervene.
Please allow us to understand that You are pressing us to fulfill the day of Christ, and that this is the time when You wish to manifest the love of Christ through us. Moreover, please lead us to understand that by raising us up, You long for us to take hold of the troubles of Christ and step forward in this twentieth century. Father, please lead us not to center our footsteps on ourselves as we dash forward toward the heavenly nature. Please lead us not to remain in the state of offering self-centered prayers.
Please allow us to chase out all the elements that invite the invasion of evil as we move forward. Father, we pray from the depth of our hearts that You will hold onto us, so that we can travel through any kind of danger-ridden road of conflict for the sake of realizing the will that You desire and that we can persevere even on a road of utter despair.
We know that we cannot receive the glory of earth because we are not men of the earth. Just as it was prophesied through Jesus Christ, we know that when there were citizens and sons of Heaven who possessed the true love and integrity of the Father, they were not welcome on earth in any era during the 2,000 years of history. Father! Please guide us to be able to cope with the persecution we may receive from this people when we try to fulfill the works of Jesus for him. Please empower us to overcome the contempt, the tribulations, and the sorrow that we might suffer at the hands of humanity on earth as we try to lead our lives for the sake of Heaven.
Jesus is longing for the day of harvest and is calling for us today, after the 6,000 years. Please withdraw the traces of historical grief and the blood and tears of the crucifixion through us. Guide us to serve as the shields of victory. Please allow us to understand that Jesus, the substantial manifestation of hope, is longing for us to become qualified to dominate Satan. By virtue of this, Father, we ask sincerely that You will allow us to become the sons and daughters who are determined to fight every day with the joyful will of the Father in our hearts and to subjugate the enemy Satan, even if we have to continue and complete it through our descendants because we could not accomplish this mission during our life-long dedication to the Father's works.
We who are facing the new year must make a renewed resolution deep in our hearts to walk this path of conflict that endangers our lives. No matter what kind of enemies oppose us, Father, please guide us never to submit to them, and safeguard our fidelity. On account of this, Father, we hope with the utmost earnestness that You will allow us to become Your sons and daughters who can reveal before all things that we are the sons and daughters who represent You.
Please let the words You grant us today become manifested and link our hearts. Requesting earnestly that You will move the spirits and mold us anew with Your hands of power in this hour, we offered all these words in the name of the Lord. Amen.
The title of the sermon that I want to reflect on with you is "The People Chosen for the Restoration of the Kingdom of Heaven." I will speak briefly upon this topic.
Ladies and gentlemen, today we greet the last Sunday of this year. You understand clearly through the principles of restoration that if we do not fulfill our responsibility today, then it must be done tomorrow.
Since the creation, history has traveled through the 6,000 years by passing through one day, one year, and then through a long period of time, while times and seasons were changing. Yet you also know very well that now the dispensation of restoration, through which the great judgment will take place on earth all over the world and God will become complete, has to be realized through the 2.4 billion people of humanity on the earth today.
We have now come face-to-face with the last days of the 6,000-year history of the dispensation. We have been participating in helping the history of the universal restoration and have stepped forward to achieve the will. The time has come when we must unequivocally understand our own situation.
Accordingly, you yourselves must now step over the 6,000-year history to reach the level of Adam and Eve, who were the ultimate ideals of the restoration and the center of creation. Going one step further, your family and society and the whole humanity of the world must reach the standard. Before that standard is met, the dispensation of God will not be consummated on earth.
We, the descendants of today, must take responsibility for the gigantic and fearful dispensation of restoration, which is full of ordeals, and for the failures committed by our ancestors as well as the things that they left behind unaccomplished. You must feel deeply in this moment that such a universal mission rests upon you.
Due to the fall of Adam and Eve, the ideals of the Kingdom of Heaven have been fundamentally destroyed and the ideals of the Kingdom of Heaven that should have been realized through humankind have fallen down from Heaven. What is more, until now the Kingdom of Heaven has not been realized; the citizens who can build the Kingdom of Heaven have not been found. The families that can cultivate the citizens are not established. The couples and brothers and sisters who can form such families are not found either.
Therefore, the restoration of the Kingdom of Heaven is the central purpose of what God demands. Moreover, the movement to restore the Kingdom of Heaven must be done in a process of reversal. Starting from citizens of Heaven, the children of Heaven, the brothers and sisters of Heaven, the couples of Heaven, and the families of Heaven must be restored to construct the Kingdom of Heaven. Such a mission rests on our shoulders.
The land that we are living in today, this world in which we live, is not the land of the Kingdom of Heaven and is not the world of the Kingdom of Heaven. It is not a world centered on God, but a world centered on Satan, a world that stands opposed to the Kingdom of Heaven. Nonetheless, in the concluding period of history, without fail there will emerge the watershed when the evil world is restored to the Kingdom of Heaven of goodness. The 2.4 billion people of humanity today have crossed the pass of the restoration of the individual, family, society, nation, and world in accordance with the dispensation of God.
The central purpose of Jesus Christ coming to this earth and disseminating the gospels was the restoration of the Kingdom of Heaven. This standard called the Kingdom of Heaven is supposed to not only restore you as an individual, but going beyond that, also restore the family, society, nation, and world. Therefore, from the day that you began to believe in Jesus, you have been traveling the road of conflict for the sake of restoration. The lives that people lead now in this world are not for the sake of the world. Although they claim that they live for the sake of the nation, they do not. Although they claim that they are living for the sake of the family, they are not living for the sake of the family. Moreover, although they say that they are living for the sake of themselves, they are not really living for themselves.
All human beings that live in this world of evil today should live for the sake of the world, but they have not been able to do so. People who should be living for the sake of their nation, their people, their tribe, family, and themselves have lost that fundamental position.
When people today live centering on themselves, they are not able to live centering on their minds. When we examine how low we have fallen, you will find that we have fallen so low that although we should live centering on our minds, we have not been able to do so. We have been living for the sake of our physical bodies. We have become people who live only for the sake of our self-centered desires.
Similarly, for the sake of restoring fallen men, God has been carrying on the work of rectifying the body to subjugate it before the mind, rectifying the individual to make him submit to the family, rectifying the family to subjugate it before the people, rectifying the people to make them submit before the nation, and rectifying the nation to make it yield to the world.
Therefore, in any society, individualistic people have been standing in the position opposing the revolutionary course of faith in Jesus. What is more, people who have centered upon themselves have also stood in the opposing position. Because God works in line with the progress of history, in other words, in the orderly progression through the individual era, the family era, the people era, and the national era, in that course of progress, there have been difficult moments of crisis when people could no longer follow.
In this era of the last days, when the 6,000 years are being consummated, the ideology of Jesus Christ has been established on earth as the ideology of the restoration of the whole world. In other words, today the ideology centered on Christianity is becoming manifested as the central ideology of the entire world. However, the ideology of the enemy has counter-attacked, and these two divisions are engaged in a fight.
Then what is the standard that we who stand in this kind of position must pursue? If we look at it through the hope of Jesus Christ, who established the ideology of the restoration of the Kingdom of Heaven, this world is not the only ideal garden that we must pursue. The ideal standard of restoration that God seeks is not only this earth. It is the garden of ideology that has become one based on the union of heaven and earth. Therefore, God has been carrying on the dispensation until now for the sake of finding the one glorious day when we can join in harmony and sing centering on Heaven.
What must we, who live in this era, understand? We ourselves must restore through indemnity everything in the history of sin.
When you believe in Jesus, there will unfold a fight on the individual level. The fight between the mind and body will unfold. Those who become stragglers in this fight cannot become the citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven. When evil acts centered on the body try to subjugate the mind, if you cannot overcome it and be victorious, then you cannot become the citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven. We today have the mission to restore from the world to the nation, from the nation to the people, from the people to the family, from the family to the couple, and from the couple to brothers and sisters. Because of such a fundamental standard for the ideology of the Kingdom of Heaven, we must first restore ourselves.
Since it is said, "the Kingdom of Heaven is in you," although the universal Kingdom of Heaven must also be built, the individual Kingdom of Heaven must first be completed. What this means is that you have to become someone who can stand before the universe after establishing the reciprocal base for mind and body.
Therefore, now you must become someone who can be assimilated into and be harmonized with any aspect of the entire ideal of Heaven. If Jesus is compared to a grape tree, you can maintain the shape of a branch of that grape tree, no matter which aspect we belong to. Your moving from the branch to and through the stem is what restoration is all about.
The first stage that you must find is the stage of becoming the citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven. Before you lies the fate to enter this stage of citizenship in the Kingdom of Heaven. You who are in this situation must have a new historical concept. You are not to live for your own sake; you must have the mentality to live for the sake of the citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven, the compatriots of the heavenly nation. You must not have a partial concept but a universal one. Moreover, if you belong to a society, then you have to have the mentality of that society. If you belong to a nation, then you must have the mentality of the nation. If you live in a nation, then you must learn how to love the citizens of that nation.
We today must be able to assert our will with our minds and bodies before God, who has been guiding history for the sake of the construction of the Kingdom of Heaven. We must be able to love the citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven. We must have the mind-set that we exist for the sake of building the Kingdom of Heaven, for the restoration of the world, which is the will of the Father. We, as the believers in Jesus, should not blindly support Jesus, but be able to believe in Jesus by becoming one with the fortune of heaven and earth internally and externally. God has been establishing the ideology of the restoration of the Kingdom of Heaven centering on the universal dispensation. We must become the sons and daughters and citizens who can stand there. Furthermore, we must learn to love the compatriots of the Kingdom of Heaven.
If there are those who have faith among the people around you or beside you, then you must be able to consider them as your brothers and sisters and your compatriots. Moreover, you must persuade everyone to do the same. When we look at these kinds of things, it is clear that your responsibility is unspeakably immense.
Then what is the demand that God is making of us in these last days today? It is none other than mobilizing the faithful believers and building the garden of the Kingdom of Heaven. Therefore, individuals must become united and peoples must become united to become compatriots of the Kingdom of Heaven. You must understand this.
When we look at the 6,000-year history vertically, in the Old Testament era, God gathered the citizens of Heaven. In the New Testament era, God gathered children of Heaven. Similarly, history flowed in a reverse manner.
In the world today, there are people who are trying to build the Kingdom of Heaven centering on the ideology of the compatriots of the Kingdom of Heaven. Moreover, there are also people who rely on the ideology of brothers, sisters, and couples of the Kingdom of Heaven to build the Kingdom of Heaven.
Now you must learn to obey the laws of the Kingdom of Heaven in your daily life. To establish the Kingdom of Heaven, you must learn to abide by the laws of the Kingdom of Heaven. Moreover, while you learn to obey the laws of Heaven, at the same time, you must learn to lead the life of the Kingdom of Heaven. Furthermore, while you learn to live the life of the Kingdom of Heaven, you must also become one through the love of the Kingdom of Heaven.
God has been working to restore the Kingdom of Heaven until now, so centering on what should we abide by the laws of the Kingdom of Heaven? We must obey the laws of the Kingdom of Heaven centering on the Biblical words that Jesus gave to us. Since words are the very laws of the Kingdom of Heaven, we should live centering on the words. This is where your path is. You are to live especially according to the laws of the Kingdom of Heaven centering on the Divine Principle words that testify to the internal truth of the Biblical words.
Then what kind of life should you live? You must live a life that represents the thirty-year life of Jesus. Your life in the last days today must be a life that testifies to Jesus Christ. Because of this, you should be able to divulge your life to all people. You must live the same type of life that Jesus demonstrated to us. You must follow the example of the life of Jesus, who abided by the laws centering on the words of God. By leading a harmonious life, you should live for the sake of Heaven.
Therefore, centering on the words, you must now lead a life that represents the life of Jesus, which is based on the laws of Heaven. Your hope and ideal must be the love of God. For this reason, you must set the condition of harmony for the sake of making a link with the love of God. This is what God demands of all the Christians of the world today.
The resin of one tree branch flows to other branches. It circulates through all the leaves and branches. Similarly, you must learn to create harmony between yourselves and give. Such people can possess the eternal love of God.
Accordingly, we Christians should abandon our self-centered mentality and develop a new mind-set that we represent the world and the universe. Therefore, when we look at our members, we should understand that they are not simply who they appear to be today. You must feel that they represent the 6,000-year history, the eternal dispensation, and horizontally, the 2.4 billion people of humanity. In each person, we can find the universal promised will of God's love. Consequently, you must become the co-operator of that person. Because such a mission rests on you, you must learn to view the dispensational will of God with a correct perspective and represent that will.
The same thing is true in your personal or family life. Your children, your parents, and your spouse do not exist for your sake. Your children are not for your sake and your brothers and sisters are not for your sake. The same thing is true for your parents. They exist for the sake of something greater than the nation and the world, for the sake of the universe.
We should be aware of this, and on that level, relate with our brothers and sister and with our parents. If you recognize this fact and feel this in your life, then you cannot judge anyone with words.
We must never forget that the universal will of God can be found in each of us. You must be aware of the fact that you do not exist for yourself but for the sake of the world, for the sake of heaven and earth. You represent the mission of restoration. You must become unified in your daily life.
You who have been traveling the path that others do not walk must abandon a self-centered life. You should cast away self-centered concepts. Even in our Unification Church, we must throw away a perspective toward life centered only on the Unification Church. The reason is that we are all cells and particles of the universe.
We who live in the last days must feel the historical workings, the providential workings of the heavenly principles, the workings of the comprehensive love of God. Moreover, only when you become the victor in the universal fight with Satan by conquering your bodies, can you become the people needed for the garden of the Kingdom of Heaven. In this kind of moment, you will develop a relationship with Heaven. You must understand that God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit have joined their hearts and are fighting with Satan in order to realize this hope.
When you try to fight with Satan today, you must distinguish whether or not the thoughts, concepts and ideology that you have are for your own sake. If all of your thoughts are for your own sake, then you will have no way to escape Satan's realm.
What is more, we Christians, who are moving forward toward the world, must step beyond the mentality of history constrained in this world. You must be able to transcend that to comprehend and judge the world with a universal perspective of history.
Then what would happen now to the world whose purpose is restoration? What would happen to the society, family and to us, whose purpose is restoration? What is the will of God, whose purpose is restoration? You must understand these and go beyond them. To do that, you must be able to live relying on the words, having the sacrificial heart of Jesus Christ, and able to live in harmony. Jesus said, "Blessed are the ones who bring peace and harmony. They will be called the sons of God." (Matthew 5:9)
Those who can bring harmony wherever they go can go close to God. You have the responsibility to bring harmony to all individuals, to all people, to the world, and to heaven and earth.
If you fail to feel this somewhat substantial responsibility in the living environment that you are in, you must at least feel it in your hearts. You must have the mind-set that you will become the sacrifice who can bring harmony to individuals, to families, to societies, to nations, and to the whole world. On that foundation, you must have the attitude to confront Satan and go before the Father.
If you build this kind of relationship and lead your life, then when you see someone who is doing good things, you will naturally have the desire to bow your head down and elevate that person. Moreover, if you see someone who is doing evil things, the thought will arise in you, "It is my task to guide that person. I will be responsible for that person." If there is someone who feels this to the bottom of his heart in his life, then he does not have to pray for his own sake. He does not have to pray for his own family. If each of you makes the determination and pledge that you will build the Kingdom of Heaven that God wishes on earth and if you live for that cause, then God will be with you.
Therefore, if there are people who can join hands and build the altar of harmony, then they can bring forth a new revolution that will stride forcefully toward the world. The same thing will be true for the churches. If there are people who are determined to die, with the mind-set that they will join hands and become the sacrifice of harmony following the example of Christ, then although the steps they take might seem unsatisfactory and fragile, it is not so. Their steps are robust steps directed toward the construction of the Kingdom of Heaven on earth.
Jesus Christ came to earth with the amazing mission of heaven and earth on his shoulders. In the 4,000- year course of history in which there was no loyal subject or filial son who lived for the sake of Heaven, it was Jesus Christ who came to fulfill the mission of the loyal subject and the filial son that Heaven sought.
The thirty-year life of Jesus was completely for the sake of Heaven. It was a world level and universal life. What is more, his life was a life of sacrifice for the sake of Heaven. You must follow the example of Jesus Christ who, unlike anyone in history, came as the filial son for the sake of Heaven.
Father's will is building the Kingdom of Heaven. The Kingdom of Heaven is the world in which the humanity of the whole world joins hands to be in harmony and in intimate friendship and to intermingle in love and raise their hands to return glory and gratitude to Heaven. When we think about that, then clearly the life of faith that we have led so far is very immature. We must get rid of this kind of immature life of faith.
The time of any kind of denominationalism has passed behind us. The time of any kind of ideology of people has passed behind us. Now the time has come when we must find the ideology of restoration and the concept of faith on the world level.
Koreans today are pitiful people. What these pitiful people must understand is that the history of God tears down the individual to build the family, tears down the family to build the society, tears down the society to build the nation, and tears down the nation to build the world. This is the judgment of Heaven.
Humanity has passed through judgment like this, but what is the problem remaining in the last moment? It is to destroy the course of Cain, which is one of the two courses of Cain and Abel that have been in confrontation and in conflict. Therefore, you must become a different person centering on the words of Jesus. You must establish the words of Jesus as the laws and become different people. You must become the loyal subjects and filial sons of Heaven who can represent the life of Jesus.
Having done that, you are to go before God, who is pursuing the ideal of unification, and be able to say, "God, please liberate through me the bitter grief of not having been able to unite the world and embrace it in love." Christians today do not understand that there remains before us such a great, historical, universal, and cosmic mission. Then to what extent have you been able to manifest the love of Jesus Christ? To what extent have you realized faith and life based on Jesus Christ? You must understand the line of that limitation.
The grace coming from Jesus is universal grace. Therefore, we today must live with the concept of the Kingdom of Heaven in us. Your every movement and all of your feelings must be centered on the mind- set, "I am the representative of the Kingdom of Heaven." You must live with this kind of mentality. When you are cursed before all people and feel a surge of anger within, you must suppress it based on the concern that your anger might bring curses upon the 2.4 billion people of humanity. This is the heart that Heaven has been feeling until now. If you, even after knowing this fact, become overwhelmed by fury and disobey the will of the Father, then how can this be tolerated? All of you are to join in alliance and help each other.
Which people are in difficulty? You must feel that person's difficulty as if it is a wound inflicted on you. You must then co-operate. This must not be done just by the Korean people. The whole of humanity must help.
You must walk the path of restoring the Kingdom of Heaven. You must become the sons and daughters who receive the love of the universe. Next, you must learn to attend God, who is the center of the universe. The God whom you cry out for and Jesus Christ whom you seek and believe in do not exist only for your own sake. The people who believe in Jesus today do not understand that. They think that Jesus and God are only for their own sake.
This is not God's wish. This is not the will of God. God's place is at the center of the whole of heaven and earth. You must learn to attend God like this today. However, this is only possible for those who live the life of the Kingdom of Heaven.
Then what is the reason that God has been working in history for 6,000 years? It was for the purpose of embracing the whole of history in His bosom. God has been wishing that not just earth but even the spirit world will become one with the whole through His love. He has been longing for that one day. If you want to receive grace from this God, then you must pray, "Father! Please call on me."
God's love must never end with you. What you must understand today is that the grace that God gives is not only for your own sake. At the same time it saves your life, it is also for the sake of saving the whole of humanity.
Nonetheless, because the people of today live centering on themselves, though many people want to find God, there is almost no one who receives this grace. You must free yourself from this. You must penetrate through it and dismantle it to serve God as the cosmic God. Before this universal God, you must feel the responsibility that penetrates deeply into your minds and bodies. The garden of hope that you believe in and desire is not just your garden of hope. The archangel fell because he tried to seek and believe in God centering on himself.
The God that the people of today believe in is both our God and the God of humanity. He is both our God and the God of the world. He is both the God of the world and the God of heaven and earth. At the same time, he is our universal parent.
However, if you examine the faith of the people who believe in Jesus today, they are saying, "Please be my God," and those who are a bit better than that do no more than say, "Please be my family's God." Rising a bit higher from this are those who say, "Please be the God of our denomination." We should never have these kinds of concepts.
There are many denominations in the world today that are crying out for God. However, we do not need the God who is sought within a denomination. Only when people gather who transcend the denominations and call out to Him as their father centering on the whole of heaven and earth, can humankind attend God on earth.
Therefore, we today must let the concepts we have be linked to the whole through our families. You who have embarked upon a new road must abandon your life up to now and make a new and historical departure toward the concepts of universal life.
At such times, the attitude that you should have is the heart that can attend the substantial presence of the universal God. By doing so, you can receive the love of God and build the relationship of giving and receiving with God. At such a moment, you can finally consummate the ideology of the universal bride.
After consummating the ideology of the universal bride, you can go seeking the restored world. But you can appear as the bride before the substantial manifestation of the universal God only after restoring the people and brothers and sisters, and the children and couples. Only when you reach that position can you stand before the substantial manifestation of the universal God centering on the love of God that springs out there and become one with that love. The couple who comes together in this way is the couple who can dominate this earth and live in the Kingdom of Heaven. Moreover, only after you have children as this kind of a couple can you build the family of the Kingdom of Heaven. When you form a people with these brothers and sisters and children, you can finally bring the dispensation of restoration to a conclusion and live the life of the Kingdom of Heaven on earth.
Likewise, the great movement of restoring the Kingdom of Heaven is exhibited through you of today. Therefore, you must increase your efforts toward the realization of that will and never become servile before Satan. Just as Jesus Christ did all that was possible as the loyal subject and filial son of God, we must also complete our duties as the loyal subjects and filial sons.
You must understand this: only after you cause the humanity of the world and all the spirits in the spirit world to fulfill all their obligations as loyal subjects and filial children, can you become the sons, children, brothers and sisters, family, or people who can return to the Father the victorious glory of having completed the restoration of the Kingdom of Heaven.
Beloved Father, today we must dash forward. Although our strength is not enough, we face an amazing historical conclusion in which we must jump over tens of stages at once. Although we are in the position to magnificently pass through the course of judgment, we are in a deep sleep today.
Father, we have become bewitched by the secular world. We are accompanying evil. Father, we desire from the depth of our hearts that You will lead us to eradicate all evil elements and raise us as victors who can return victorious glory to the Father, who is the center of the cosmos.
All the hidden stories of history have become entangled in us. Father, we pray that You will allow us to cut them all off and find the center of liberation so that we can stand in the position of a friend to Jesus Christ and make a full bow before the Father.
Please lead us, the ones chosen for the restoration of the Kingdom of Heaven, not to trample upon the ideology of the Kingdom of Heaven by centering on ourselves. Father, we hope with the utmost sincerity that, until we can be pulled by the ideology of the Kingdom of Heaven and can accomplish it, You will allow us to go forward, to sacrifice, and to fight on. Until we attend You as the universal Father, we pray that You will allow us to persevere and win the victory in the battle.
Father, please govern our minds forever. Now please allow us to become sons and daughters who can offer a full bow of gratitude before the Father, who is the center of the whole based on the new standard of universal life. We earnestly request that You will allow us to become sons and daughters who can be immersed in Your love. Father, we prayed all these words in the name of the Lord. Amen.