We have a special identity. We individually are the image of God and we are like True Father and True Mother. We have the potential to grow to the fullness of that identity. Such men and women can receive the blessing centering on God and true love. Then we follow the True Family tradition, living together. This is our identity.

This came as a gift from God and True Parents as our treasure as well as our identity. We must realize this potential as families, communities, and as the worldwide Unification Church. The kingdom of God has already begun if, individually, in your heart you have true love and life. If you own this, you have become the cornerstone of the kingdom of heaven on earth. Also, your family can become the cornerstone of the kingdom of heaven on earth. So the kingdom of God has already begun.

God's eternal gift and treasure through True Parents is undying eternal life. Our Unification Church is so rich, but our wealth is not external or physical. For example, this chapel was originally a horse stable. We are reminded of Jesus Christ 2,000 years ago being born in Bethlehem in a barn. But why are you happy here? Are you crazy? No, it is because we are not seeking external value, but internal value. We own God's special treasure and gift through True Parents. What is that gift? Undying eternal life.

What is the meaning of "undying eternal life?" Have you seen life? People do not know the meaning of life; it is not clear. From where does life come? It is not clear. The purpose of life is not clear. How to live a perfect life is not clear to this world. We are happy because we possess eternal life, so we must understand the meaning of eternal life.

Life is very mysterious. Even theologians and scientists cannot express clearly what life is. In John 3:16, Jesus said, "God so loved the world that He sent His only begotten son, Jesus Christ, that whosoever believes in him will have eternal life." Also, Jesus said that he is the way, the truth and the life. So the Messiah, Jesus Christ, brought life for us, as his gift. True Father, as the Lord of the Second Advent, also brings life.

Life in the fallen world is corrupted. Jesus said, "You have the name of being alive, but you are dead." So we have a "deathly life"; Jesus called us people of death. How can we find undying eternal life? This is very important.

We do not truly know the identity of life, or where it comes from, or its purpose and how to perfect it. This is really our struggle. Let me give an analogy of a lit candle. A lit candle has a flame, which is the burning energy of the candle. Life is like the flame, the burning energy. If you touch your chest, you feel your heart beating. Is your heart cold or warm? It is warm. Your body is warm; it is burning, like a continual flame. This is burning energy; this is life.

The flame of the candle comes from the candlestick. Inside the candlestick, the flame exists in potential. The flame is included, or possessed, in the wax of the candle. Life is energy. There are many kinds of energy. A car consumes mechanical energy; there is electrical energy. Also there is biological energy. There are so many kinds of energy in the cosmos; the cosmos is a huge organism of energy. The solar system, the planets, the galaxies and so forth are all a huge mass of energy. But this energy follows a natural principle according to a natural system, by which it turns and moves.

If life is energy, then what is the original root of life corresponding to the candlestick? Our lineage corresponds to the candlestick. Physical lineage is carried in the blood. Your heart is pumping every second your whole life, it is using so much energy. If this energy for the pumping stops, then physical life comes to an end. So life is energy, but where does it come from? It comes from the blood, which we inherit from our lineage. Like the flame from the candlestick, the blood circulation comes from the blood lineage, and from the circulation of blood comes life.

So the root of life is the blood lineage, centering on the blood circulation. Human life comes from this root, the lineage, but what kind of energy is it? It is divine energy: energy given by God for a special purpose. It is a noble purpose; in fact, God's highest dream and ideal is included in this energy. We make many different uses of this energy. Sometimes it is used to injure or steal. This is the evil use of energy. Human energy is divine only when it is used for good purpose, that is, to achieve the ideal of creation.

I grew up on my grandfather's farm, which did not have electricity. From elementary school through high school, I used a candle or lantern to study at night. If I bought a low quality of oil or candle, the flame produced a lot of bad smoke. So my study room was always dark, because of the dirty smoke. After a night of study I had ashes soiling my face and clothes. The quality of the flame depended upon the quality of oil. This enlightens us as to Jesus' meaning that we are dead even though we appear to be alive. Some of the ancestors in my lineage gave me deathly life.

The candle signifies lineage, and the candle creates a flame, which signifies life, but the purpose of the candle and the flame is to give light. The meaning of light, in our analogy, is love. The purpose of the candlestick, or oil, was to make a flame which would give light. The purpose of lineage and life, therefore, is to give love.

God's ideal is in fact the ideal of true love. We can conclude that the purpose of life is love. The perfection of life is achieved when life becomes love. This means that life matures and develops true love by evolving through levels. Life becomes spirit, and spirit becomes love. Love is the goal of life. So we can make the conclusion: life is divine energy for love.

If you go back to UTS today, and go to the library, or to the Library of Congress, please check anywhere for the meaning of life. You cannot find this dimension explained. Who gave this dimension? True Father. Father said that life is divine energy for love.

Jesus Christ said that we are alive but we are dead because the root of our lineage has something wrong with it. Our root is not good; it is a bad root, a satanic root. A bad root emits bad energy. Therefore he said we have deathly life. So, to own eternal life, we need a new lineage, which requires the experience of rebirth. Originally, God created our lineage and life and made the purpose of life, which is love. But these all have their origin in God, one point. That beginning point of the physical world is called the big bang, a big explosion which led eventually to love and life on earth. God is the invisible center, so to go back to God is to go back to a small point. This small point is invisible. But from the invisible God, love, life and lineage came out.

God created this entire cosmos, but the miracle of miracles was the creation of humankind. How beautiful! Especially in this room our sisters are so beautiful. Who created this beauty? Think about it. Children have such beautiful skin and hair. It was a miracle of miracles that God created humankind in the image of God.

New babies represent new life emerging after nine months in the womb. With all its education, laboratories and research, this super power country America, at the top of the world, can make robots. But can you compare robots with humankind? No. Even great robots cannot feel emotion. Can a robot produce a baby? It is impossible. Humankind is working so hard at it, but we cannot create humankind. Only God can do that; we are God's creation, God's masterpiece. It is a miracle.

But it all comes from the lineage. The candle possesses fire and light, just as lineage possesses life and love. You came from your lineage, the Smith family, Kim family, or Schwartz family, whatever. How did you receive your skin color? Did you or your ancestors determine what it would be? Did you have a conference with your mother while you were in her womb? Did you tell your mother, "Mother, I do not like white skin. Please give me black skin. I don't like black hair; please give me blonde hair?" Did you discuss this? Did you make your skin and hair color? No; it is predestination; already someone decided. You had no choice.

So, all of your potential, to become a good flame and light, or a smoky flame and poor light--all of this is predestined within the candlestick. Why do people want "Super Unleaded" gasoline? Because more power is coming, purer energy, with less exhaust and pollution. So, everything has an element of predestination. Therefore, the most important thing is not life, it is lineage--the candlestick.

What is the difference between today's Christian churches and the Unification Church? Christian churches' diagnosis is that if people live a life of faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Messiah they will be guaranteed eternal life. But no, this is not so. Even if they have faith their entire lives, they cannot find eternal life. Eternal life does not come from faith; it comes from a pure lineage, the divine lineage. Undying eternal life comes from divine lineage.

Last week we met Elder Lim, an 80 year-old Methodist leader. He believed in the Methodist Church for 70 years. Finally he found Divine Principle and True Parents, and he discovered hope. He was seeking eternal life through faith, but actually eternal life is in the lineage. Now he has made a new start.

Why is lineage so crucial? God used the spirit world and physical world, the entire cosmos, in creation. He invested all the elements to create life in Adam and Eve. So, Adam and Eve appeared as a small cosmos. Adam is the representative of the positive, masculine world, and Eve is the representative of the negative, feminine world. You will find elements from throughout the universe in each strand of your hair, elements from light years away. God used the entire cosmos to create Adam and Eve.

Then they fell. The fall of man came not in the realm of life, but in the realm of lineage, the realm of Adam and Eve's sexual give and take. Satan attacked the lineage. The trouble is with the lineage. Man and woman are a miracle, and you cannot see the man's sperm or woman's egg. But these two invisible elements are to produce new life, through the give and take of true love. This is the miracle of miracles. All of man's energy and elements, and all of woman's energy and elements, come together and meet. Sperm and egg meet and create new life, Cain and Abel. The fall of man came when this sexual relationship was self- centered. The trouble did not start with life itself, but with the sexual relationship, the lineage. The candlestick has a bad quality of light and oil. There is a bad quality of gasoline in our engine. This is the trouble.

Cain and Abel had to love each other after their birth, practicing love, which is the purpose of human life. But they killed each other. Cain's nature is to be jealous of Abel and kill Abel. Also, Abel is so arrogant and disharmonized with Cain. All this bad character is not from life, but from the lineage, rooted in Adam and Eve's fall. This is why God warned Cain that "evil is couching at your door". God knew that Cain inherited the capacity to commit murder. From the lineage, evil came. But most Christians today think that all you must do is repent in front of Jesus Christ and believe in God and you receive justification and spiritual rebirth and your eternal life is guaranteed. No! Spiritual rebirth is good, but we must do much more than that in order to go back to the point before physical life, to have rebirth on the physical level.

Lineage is the root. The difference between Christian churches and the Unification Church is that Christians believe that the problem is in the realm of life, but it is not true. Divine Principle's diagnosis is that the original root and source of the problem is not a matter of life; actually it is lineage. This is a big difference. As Jesus said in John 8:44, "You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father's desire. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies", proving that lineage, by which we inherit from Satan, is the source of evil.

If you go to a hospital needing treatment, you need to find a good doctor. If doctors diagnose people's ailments wrongly, and prescribe the wrong treatment, they make more problems. Today's Christian theory, which diagnoses that the source of the problem is in life, is wrong and causes more trouble. People may go to church all their lives, and be disappointed. I talked with Elder Lim. He said that for 70 years he went to church every Sunday, repenting with tears, and he could not find eternal life. So, we have to find godly, pure lineage, because the old lineage of humankind came from Satan. To cut out Satan, we need God's new lineage.

This is the destiny of religious life. So Jesus said you have to be born again. How can we be born again? Nicodemus asked, how can you go back to your mother's womb when you have a physical body? It is physically impossible. However, we can now experience a special ceremony in which we engraft into a new lineage. This new lineage is from the True Parents, and by engrafting and practicing a life of true love, we gain true sanctification, becoming the image of God and children of God. Christianity is vague about sanctification, but Unificationism is clear, as I will explain. The Blessing Is The Source Of Joy

Our True Parents brought for us true love, undying eternal life and pure lineage. God spent millions of years to prepare this gift through True Parents for us. This morning, it is very important that we realize this value. I met one blessed couple last week. The husband was complaining because he felt that his wife is not beautiful. I asked him, "Did you marry your wife's skin? Did you marry her physical size? Her family background? No; you married your wife's love, life and lineage." True love, undying eternal life, pure lineage--this is necessary for you, so you married her.

What is your motivation for marriage? Did you marry for external appearances and family background or education and position? Or for love, life and lineage? If you do not know the meaning of love, life and lineage, you don't know the value of your spouse. So we struggle, because we do not appreciate the Blessing. If you do not appreciate it, then it cannot become the source of your joy and happiness.

So we need to be born again. There are many blessed couples here with this experience of rebirth. The difference between Christians and us is that Christian ministers say the root of the trouble is life, and we say that trouble has a root deeper than life--it is lineage, connected to sexual problems. This is a very different understanding. We have new life. What do you use it for? Does the flame exist just for the sake of the flame itself, or for the purpose of giving light? "Let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven" Mat 5:16.

To give light means that we must practice love. Love brings sanctification. God is love, so through true love we can become the image of God, second God, sons and daughters of God. This is our goal. But we cannot fulfill our human responsibility without the investment of our complete effort. We need effort to achieve sanctification, in order to make this human life become love.

The purpose of life is not to steal from people, beat people and treat people badly. No; life energy is to be used for divine purpose. Divine purpose means that we become the image of God, children of God, even spouses of God, giving and taking love with God and becoming the sources of joy and honor to God. We should really support God and liberate God from His loneliness. This is our human responsibility and the purpose of human life.

Then, what is the purpose of love? Is the purpose of love just to be enthralled with your spouse, day and night just hugging and kissing? Will you only kiss eternally? Kissing is fine, but you have to make a new lineage. If the first generation only kisses each other, but does not produce the second generation, this world will become empty. If the second generation, by the same token, do not produce a third generation, this world will become empty. This would be a big problem for God, the world and the cosmos.

So the purpose of love is to produce a new generation. The purpose of lineage is to give new life. The purpose of life is practice love, and the purpose of love is to produce lineage. This is the eternal cycle. Human history is the eternal repetition of this cycle. The turning of this cycle must not stop, or the world will become empty. Perfection Of Three Blessings

This is our human destiny: the cycle of life, love and lineage. Whether you like it or not, everyone must fulfill this cycle. From this we can grasp the meaning of sanctification.

First, we need the perfection of life. Life begins with nine months in the mother's womb. Here we have a wonderful life. This stage relates to the third of the three great blessings, dominion, revealed in Genesis 1:28. In this stage we connect to nature, receiving the embryonic life.

After being born, we have 100 years of terrestrial life, and we need to breathe air. Through the water life, we prepared to breathe air. If the newborn baby cannot breathe, it means that in the womb, the lungs were not prepared well, and the baby must be put into the incubator. The eternal world is one of spiritual life, where we breathe love itself. The eternal world is God, and to have give and take with God we need the element of love. Through the 100 years of terrestrial life, we need preparation for the next stage, the life of breathing love in the eternal world. If we do not practice love in this physical life on earth, when we go to spiritual world we will have serious difficulties. We will not be able to breathe. We will go to the incubator--the kingdom of hell.

Our terrestrial life purpose is to become perfect in love, and to do so we need to pass through three stages. The first stage is that of the form spirit; the second is that of the life spirit, and the third is that of the divine spirit, which is the image of God. We become divine spirits by fulfilling the truth of the Old Testament, New Testament and Completed Testament. If we practice a life of righteousness, of principle, following our conscience, then our personality will mature and we will become divine spirits.

We have two personalities: the physical personality and the invisible, spiritual personality. The physical personality supports, as a nurturing soil, the growth of the internal, spiritual personality. Growth comes about through the physical body following the dictates of the conscience, which lead in a direction of righteousness. Thus, the spirit energy grows up through practicing true love, and becomes a divine spirit, with which God can have give and take action. Then we become children of God, which is the first of the three great blessings.

Next is the most important. As we grow, we first encounter the stage of brother and sister love, or fraternal love. Adam and Eve were growing up in a brother and sister relationship, and centering on God's love they were to have become husband and wife. This is the next stage, conjugal love. Then they become parents and give and take parental love, with the new lineage coming forth. This is the meaning and value of family life, and it is the achievement of the second great blessing.

The pattern of human life starts with the motivation of love. Love's ultimate expression is in the lineage, and lineage is the root of life, which in turn manifests the quality of love. Love then creates a second generation, moving again from love to lineage, lineage to life, and life to love. This is the human cycle. It will develop continually on earth. But through the fall of Adam and Eve, selfishly motivated love created a bad lineage, creating bad life--killing each other and hating each other, making war. This is to practice selfish love, satanic love, which between men and women creates more bad lineage.

A famous Catholic theologian, Teilhard de Chardin, in The Phenomenon of Man, said that humankind is going through spiritual evolution. The Pope heard this theology and was upset. So after a big controversy the Vatican rejected his theology. But Teilhard understood something true. His teaching of human evolution strikes true in relation to True Parents' work, the True Family's work and the blessed families' work, although he said evolution to perfection would take 50,000 years, and we can expect it much sooner.

It is because we have received God's pure lineage through True Parents, through which we have undying eternal life. We practice love, including family love, and invest energy in the next generation, which makes the second generation better than the first. They have a better quality of energy. The next generation in turn develops more. The third generation will be even greater people, with higher love and better lineage. This is human evolution.

So, if you attend pledge service at our church holy days and Sunday, with True Parents, Father said that the second generation should stand in front, and the first generation behind. It is because the second generation's life, love and lineage is more pure, so they are closer to God and True Parents.

Human evolution is available through the lineage. The Gospels of Matthew and Luke both begin with Jesus Christ's lineage. Matthew takes it back 42 generations. Jesus was great, because his lineage was special. Therefore, he could become a good person, King of Kings and Messiah. The lineage is very important. It was because behind him were these 42 generations, the ancestors of Jesus Christ.

Especially Rebekah, Tamar and Mother Mary--they had absolutely unmoveable, true faith. They cut off the satanic family tradition, with absolute investment, and offered everything to God, unafraid even to lose their lives. Tamar was in a very dangerous situation, as was Rebekah and Jesus' own physical mother, Mary. But they obeyed God with faith and loyalty. With this amazing practice of faith and love, God trusted them and could work through them to make a better lineage. From this, Jesus Christ came.

So, Father has this expectation in matching blessing candidates. Father's priority is for the sake of your lineage, the generations to come. Our change of lineage, the cutting of Satan's lineage, and engrafting into God's lineage, will expand to the society, nation, world and cosmos. This expansion is the purpose of love, life and lineage.

The new love, life and lineage is True Parents' most important gift, more valuable than any human possession. We are the richest people, because we have pure lineage, undying eternal life, and true love. Father has given us a small seed. If you just put this seed in your pocket, not nurturing it and making it work, it is not good. Study Divine Principle teach Divine Principle, and witness to people day and night--then your internal personality will grow up step by step, from form spirit to life spirit to divine spirit, and your eternal personality will be the fruit. In autumn, many people go to the orchard and pick apples. Do they like to pick the good fruit or the small, sickly fruit? What about God? Does He like to pick the small, sickly fruit or the huge, shiny fruit?

How do you obtain eternal life? There are four ways, which you can understand by knowing that you started from the small seed of lineage, grew up to become life and life grew up through the "ecosystem of the spirit" to become love, create a blessed family and bring forth the second generation. This is comparable to the salmon. The salmon comes from the egg, swims in the ocean its entire life, and finally returns to its original home, practices love, creates another generation, and dies.

That is the salmon's cycle, the same as humankind's--everything follows the same cycle. Even plants are the same; all living beings follow this cycle, even if though animals and plants are of a natural quality, and human beings have a divine quality. This turning of the eternal circle is the foundation to understand the four ways we achieve eternal life.

The first way is accomplished when we become divine spirits, in the image of God, and connect to God. This, to put it simply, is the first type of eternal life.

The second way deals with maintaining physical life on earth. How is this possible? Life is like fire. When the candle is consumed, the fire goes out. Our physical life, after 60, 75 or 100 years, ceases on earth. We cannot live eternally on earth; it is impossible. There are spiritual groups in Korea which promise that they can make you live physically eternally. If that were true, there would be big trouble: too many people. In your house there would be no room--this room is for your grandfather, this one for great grandfather, great-great grandfather, and the wife is cooking day and night. Eternal life on earth is not possible; we do not need it.

Then what do I mean by eternal life on earth? By fulfilling the purpose of lineage, life and love, you create a new generation. The new generation will have new sperm and eggs. Your DNA goes into your son's sperm. Then it goes into your daughter-in-law's egg, and has give and take, and creates the grandson's sperm, which goes into his wife's egg, and so forth, generation after generation. This is the way you can live physically on earth eternally.

In this sense, our lineage came all the way from Adam. Actually, Adam's lineage came to us as a bad lineage. So it ended; we cut it off and received True Parents' new lineage. The responsibility, then, of our blessed families is very important: to create the pure lineage going down generation after generation. Our purity is so important, because through pure lineage we can live eternally.

The purpose of lineage is for life and life's purpose if for love. So if you have life, please practice love: helping people, serving people, caring for people. The purpose of love is to create a better lineage. For this we need our spouse. Without your spouse, can you make a new lineage? No. Only half a couple does not work. We need two different parts combining together, making unity. This is our most important responsibility--to create this good lineage. This lineage is the second type of eternal life.

The third way to achieve eternal life is through becoming spiritual parents. Our spiritual children engraft to us, creating a spiritual lineage. Then they save other people, creating generations of spiritual children. In a sense, our spiritual seed is passed on through these generations. John's Revelation 22:2 refers to this, when it states "On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month." This is the third type of eternal life.

The fourth way to achieve eternal life is that which results from great contributions to human history through culture. These are made by the saints, great patriots, great artists and scientists. These people lived a beneficial life for all people, centering on true love and the will of God. Their light of love was a lightpost for the future generations: Moses, Buddha, Confucius and Jesus, and most of all our True Parents. This is the fourth type of eternal life.

So, whether your husband is smart or handsome does not matter. Your husband is such a treasure, so important for you. It does not matter if your wife is wise or beautiful. Your wife's race does not matter; you have to appreciate your wife. Without her, eternal life will not come. Please understand the meaning of eternal life.

People of all religions are seeking eternal life. But they do not know eternal life--where it comes from, or its purpose or how to perfect it. We know these things from True Father's teaching. Please meditate in the car, subway and at home, about the meaning of love, life and lineage. More and more realization will come to you. When you truly discover the value and meaning of love, life and lineage, you will appreciate True Parents and God forever.

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