Cheon Seong Gyeong – Sun Myung Moon
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Cheon Seong Gyeong – Sun Myung Moon |
Beloved Heavenly Father, I thank You for Your grace, and for having shielded me in my struggles from my childhood until now; during those years I have been apprehensive of any humiliation or shame that Heaven might suffer. Among all the good things on this earth, there is nothing more precious than connecting to Your original heart. Knowing this, we must infinitely long for that relationship. We must keep in mind that those who experience Your love will have no regrets even if they forget about all the things of this world. Now we must seek the ideal world, the original homeland where we live by Your love. We must prepare today on earth for the day of our birth as liberated children endowed with the authority of freedom of our third life.
We must know that just as we needed to be healthy in the womb to be born to lead a healthy life on earth, we need a wholesome earthly life to have a wholesome life in heaven. As the world today is one of conflict under the dominion of evil, we must we must be resolved to fight to the death in order to be blessed with the cooperation of heaven and earth and to keep in step with the dynamic fortunes of the universe. We must resolve that our descendants will never be placed in the same position as we have been. (49.308, 1971.10.17)
Beloved Father, when we think of how You exist and have toiled unremittingly to usher in a new spring, we must become Your infinitely grateful and joyous sons and daughters who lament the fact that we have yet to offer our entire life and love to You. In our predestined relationship with You, our lives are meant to be harmonized, and completely absorbed in and by You so that we too, may greet the new spring.
We must realize that only when we greet spring for the first time will the flowers bloom. We must not become such pitiful souls who have never done so. Just as a flower goes through summer and autumn before blooming and bearing fruit, we too are to undergo a similar process to bear fruit.
We know that for a tree to bear fruit, it first absorbs life elements through its roots, trunk and branches in summer, concentrating a perfect life force to bring forth a second life. Similarly, we must become the sons and daughters who are introspectively determining whether we have a life force welling up in our hearts one that is capable of rebirth in a new world even if our bodies should die.
No matter how much time flies by no matter how fiercely the storms rage; our inner life force must withstand the intrusions of the environment and persevere persistently on the path of growth. Only in this way, can we welcome the new spring and become a seed, the original source of a second life, which can be planted again.
Likewise, no matter how pathetic we may look externally, if we maintain our value as the original essence that can enhance the spiritual life force and as a seed that can he planted in the infinite world, we are not miserable people even though we may think we are. Please allow us to realize that the more miserable we may appear externally, the more our internal value is complete and guaranteed. (32-36, 1970.6.14)
Father, we have realized that without the desire to serve and bow down humbly to You, we can have no relationship with You in the eternal world. Open the doors of our hearts to feel Your heart and hear Your voice welling up from the depths of our hearts, and guide us to regain our lost bodies today. Help us to appreciate Your historical course of toil and trouble to find each one of us, that we may humbly bow our heads before You. (?-280, 1958.9.14)
God does not have a body. Therefore, in order to manifest His body, God used Adam as His body, showing His face through him. That is the ideal of creation.
God is the original spiritual focal point and Adam is the original physical focal point. These two focal points generate a 90-degree angle. This is God's purpose of creation and the purpose that people desire. Had Adam and Eve not fallen, they would have occupied the positions of father and mother eternally in the spirit world; yet, due to the Fall, this was not possible. Had there been no Fall, everyone could have gone to Heaven simply by attending their parents as though they were attending God. (119-109, 1982.2.1)
This created world is round everywhere: the sun, the earth, and the stars; everything is created round. Even our mouth, if we analyze it, is round. No matter what, everything is created that way. Then, the universe makes relationships by going around and around, making circular, cyclical movements. Even if one individual thing has a round shape, it does not exist by itself individually but makes a relational connection with the whole.
Then, why are we born? We are born to beat in rhythm with this vast universe. Ocean waves lapping against the shore lap against our hearts as well. Gentle breezes sighing serenely lull our hearts into serenity. Flowers in bloom release rich fragrances and stir the fragrances in our hearts. (104-122, 1979.4.22)
If we are born, raised, live and die in love, then we can be grateful for our birth, life and death. You were all born by having participated in the place where your father and mother loved and treasured each other exceedingly. You are participants in this love. Since you were born through your parents' love, you consider yourselves born as the flags planted through your parents' love. These flags flutter to express love. We are all meant to live for the sake of love throughout our lives. So you should wave the flag of love for your mother, wave the flag of love when you see your father, and wave the flag of love for your siblings. (103-258, 1979.2.25)
Your living body cannot be perfected unless your entire existence becomes a foothold for absorbing nutrients. This phenomenon occurs in the natural world. The crossroads of life do not appear over a long period of time but in a single moment.
People who ignore a moment fail to obtain something precious. They cannot become great people, nor inherit God's throne and crown. Thus, for the sake of one bright shining moment, exercise care with each word you utter, each action you take, and even each thought you entertain. Deal with life and solve problems, believing that the contents of your daily life will all remain as phenomena in relationship to the world. That is the only way the realm of victory is determined.
In this way, the realm of victory is determined in one moment. It is the same with the historical realm of victory and the cosmic realm of victory. Those who know the infinite value of one bright shining moment and live accordingly can become great people, even saints or God's sons and daughters. In this way, the junction of life and death is crossed in a single moment. (31-217, 1970.5.31)
Today, our attitude is the problem. Of course, it is necessary to first desire the coming of the kingdom and wish for the Will to be done. Yet, what is more important is how we ourselves can personally become one with God's will.
If we take this one hour, we see that how we use it to become one with the Will is more important than to desire the Kingdom of God to come. Therefore, we must first create environments as individuals, families, tribes and peoples that will enable us to inherit God's will, whereupon we can then proceed to establish a relationship with God's Kingdom. Then, centered on God, how do we make a relationship with the Will in this one hour -- if you are given an hour -- within the sphere of your daily living? This is a very important issue.
Looking at the history of the providence of restoration, there were four thousand years from Adam's family through Noah's, Abraham's and Moses' families down to Jesus' family. Here, however, what led to their failures did not occur over the span of, say, a year. In Adam's family, the Fall of Adam and Eve was not something planned out and put into action over the span of a year or a decade or even several decades. Their mistake happened in a flash, and when we think about how that failure of one moment has been perpetuated over eons of time, we can understand the fearfulness and dreadfulness of that instant.
Due to the failure of that one moment, so many people who walked the path of righteousness in the course of history had to undergo untold suffering, and many races that could not follow the Will fell into the abyss of destruction. All these became the origin of a tremendous offering of indemnity. When we understand this, a single hour that we ordinarily live so casually in our daily life becomes fearful; but even more, we have to feel how fearful a moment is, even one second of one hour that goes by as the clock steadily ticks. Even the eternal Kingdom of Heaven does not exist without having an integral relationship with the single moment.
Eternity does not start when we die, but at the moment we come to know God's will. Here, if for even an instant there is a leap in the relationship of time or an abyss created, eternity will be interrupted. Therefore, while walking the path of faith in the course of your lives, do not procrastinate by deferring your providential responsibilities from this year to the next, and then to the year after that, or from your youth to your midlife and finally into your old age. We cannot live like that. People with such a lifestyle will die without having ever spent even one day of being one with the Will over the course of their lifetime. They cannot go to the Kingdom of Heaven.
However good your country of residence may he, you cannot go to the Kingdom of Heaven if you were unable to live even one day by a victorious standard; you cannot enter the eternal world if you failed to live even one year victoriously. Hence, while it is important for believers to go forth dreaming of eternity, what is even more important is how they actually eradicate evil and whether they become the standard-bearers of goodness. This is preeminently crucial.
From this perspective, Adam's momentary lapse led to eons of anguish. It was in Adam's family that Cain and Abel had to dissolve the anguish of their parents and demolish the wall that existed between the brothers and create the origin of one family. Yet the murder of Abel, who was set up as the representative of the providence of restoration, was also an instantaneous incident.
In the 120-year course during which Noah toiled to build the ark, in only a brief moment God issued the command, "The day to fulfill My wish has come: all aboard!" Those who followed this order were able to receive the blessings of the eternal God; those who did not were buried within the realm of eternal judgment.
It was the same with Abraham: God's promise that his descendants would be as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sands on the seashore" (Genesis 22:17) was bestowed in the twinkling of an eye. Abraham's sacrificial offering did not require decades but rather a mere day's work. The time it took him to cut the offering and place it on the altar was not more than an hour, yet that single hour historically bore the seeds of all life and death, curse and blessing.
Today, what believers should dread is not the visitation of judgment in the Last Days but the question of how they will harmonize their daily activities and face life's crossroads in alignment with God's will. (37-217, 1970.12.27)
How did God create Adam and Eve? If He used clay, what kind was it? Where did He begin? From which point did Adam and Eve's lives start? We cannot think that God created them as adults, but rattier as babies. Without the notion that God behaved as a pregnant mother who subsequently gave birth to, nourished and nurtured a baby, we cannot logically explain the formation of all existence through the three orderly stages of growth. Logically, Adam and Eve passed through infancy before entering the growth and completion stages. This is heavenly law.
What was Adam and Eve's infancy like? We must proceed from the concept that the invisible God nurtured a baby whose beginnings were in the world without form and who could pass through the course in the physical realm. (225-198, 1992.1.20)
Since the society, nation and world in which we live are far from ideal, all manner of suffering occurs, and good and evil are at cross-purposes.
If we took a random sample of a hundred men, it would reveal that one hundred percent of them jostle among themselves in "an every man for himself" struggle within their circumstances to cope with the demands of their mundane affairs.
Therefore, in our daily lives, we all acutely lack the confidence that we can complete the day's work that we planned in the morning. With a wider scope of activities we would need proportionately more drive and determination to bring a victorious result in our everyday life. Lacking these, that day cannot be victorious. Such days turn into months and months into years.
We also lack environments conducive for meeting our monthly goals. To end a month victoriously, we need the drive and determination necessary to achieve breakthroughs in tackling both the details and complexities of that month. Without them, we cannot conclude our monthly activities victoriously.
Getting through a year successfully requires us to be equipped with a fighting spirit or driving force that can thrust aside all the challenges of each and every one of its 365 days. We can then celebrate that year victoriously. If we live a year like that, and continue in this vein, it will eventually add up to ten, and then twenty, and then thirty years, and that eventually becomes our life path. (31-30, 1970.4.12)
People living on earth today cannot escape from the constraints of time. That has been true throughout history. Individuals, families, tribes, people, nations and the world all move within the realm of time.
Wherever people exist, there is always some goal to attain. We are to focus on such a goal for ten, twenty, thirty, seventy years and, indeed, our entire lives. The greater our goal, the stronger our internal commitment needs to be. Unless we maintain an internal determination that surpasses the goal through the process called time, the goal will be unattainable. (31-149, 1970.5.24)
You may not know of the reality of the spirit world, but I enjoy the special benefit from God of having a clear insight into that unknown world. Digging into the root of that world, I found its principles to be quite simple. In the spirit world only those who lived altruistically in line with God's universal principles can enter the higher realms. The world structured along those lines is the ideal heavenly kingdom. That place is the original homeland that humankind must seek. Today, although we are exiles from our original homeland and live a fallen life, we are destined to return there. God had to create a path for this in the course of history because we could not do so by our own efforts.
This is why God raised up many different religions. They are training grounds through which He has been directing all people along that path, whatever their race, cultural background, customs and traditions. Religions are the training grounds for training people to become eligible to return to the original homeland. Taking into account the diverse cultural backgrounds ranging across the four corners of the earth, God is leading humanity toward a unified world of religion that can progress upward onto higher ground.
What does religion which guides people to the original homeland, centrally teach? It is to live for the sake of others. As highly developed religions tend to emphasize this principle, they teach us to be gentle and meek, to stand in a position to elevate others and live for their sake, and to serve them sacrificially. All this serves to instill discipline in us to abide by the laws of the Kingdom of Heaven. (78-115, 1975.5.6)
What should be our life path? It is the path of possessing God's love. Possessing God's love is life's highest and final destination. Everyone, men and women alike, must go this way. Our life path must lead us to the infinite God of love. The greatest life path consists of finding God's love by crossing over the peaks of death tens and even hundreds of times, and continuing in that search even after death.
What is the endpoint of our desires? It is the possession of God's love. If, in that regard, we possess love more precious than our own, God cannot be ours. Thus, we need to possess God's love. If we possessed only God's love, then it would be all right even if He were not present. When His love becomes mine and mine becomes His, the internal and the external become one for the first time. A nation based on such love becomes an ideal homeland without upper and lower classes.
When we lie in that place of love, we feel that there is nothing under the sun that does not appear good and that does not exist for our sake. Since God's love is like that, the heavenly world, which is humankind's destination, namely the Kingdom of Heaven, is a place filled with love. (19-210, 1971.1.10)
People in today's world who flaunt their pedigrees and parade their degrees as marks of social distinction, are unaware that their births were spiritually sullied. They do not know that they were born with the love, life and lineage of Satan; God's enemy. This is a serious problem.
Due to the Fall, people have been born from Satan's love which was passed down to their parents. Satan's blood has made its way down through the lives of our mothers and fathers to us in the present day. The fruit of those three then, is you. As such, you all belong to the satanic lineage. In other words, Satan's blood is running through your veins. Therefore, he automatically bears his ideal fruit while God strives to redeem those very men and women and transform them into originally pure and perfect people. You all began from Satan's love and are born from his lineage.
Since your start was all wrong, you must return to the original point. As we originated from false parents, we need to return and start anew from true parents. How serious is this? It is imperative to inherit God's love, life and lineage afresh.
That is why, when you receive the Blessing, you undergo the ceremony for changing the lineage. You must believe in this more than your own life. Just because it is a Unification Church ceremony, you should not think of it as some ordinary ritual. It is like a wonder drug, an antidote, to restore the dead back to life.
Our ancestors committed an error so grave that countless people fell victim to its aftereffects throughout the course of human history. Knowing this, we cannot tread that same path again -- ever again! We paid a ghastly price throughout history for having perpetuated illicit love in the fallen spiritual and physical worlds, with far-reaching consequences for individuals, families, societies, nations and the world. (216-109, 1991.3.9)
When I say life here, I mean eternal life. I am not referring only to the spirit world, but to a life to live for eternity. Each individual was created to be an object of God's love. You are the object partner of the absolute God, and the partner in His love. God cherishes the notion of true love more than He values Himself. He is the absolute and eternal center of life. His ideal is even more eternal and the center of that ideal is true love. The partner of that love is you.
The attribute of love promotes unity between partners. Such love can unify a nation. Thus, one partner can accompany the other partner in any position and follow unconditionally. You can inherit God's entire fortune and even His entire heart. I went through a miserable course to discover this and now stand on that foundation. It is sublime and lofty and cannot be exchanged for anything: it is an amazing grace. For that reason, I stand in the same position with God. I share the eternal position of true love. The spirit world is in a different dimension from this limited earthly world. We cannot move freely within mundane confines, but as the spirit world is a higher-dimensional place, you can do anything there; you can leap across time. if you want something based on love, you can have it all anytime, anywhere.
We were originally created as eternal beings. If we become eternal beings of true love and go to the spirit world, we will be free. The first standard of life is the standard of good and evil, the second is the original starting point, and the third is eternal life. (216-107, 1991.3.9)