Unification Sermons and Talks |
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by Reverend Joong Hyun Pak |
New Heaven, New Earth, New World
J. H. Pak
June, 1999
Two thousand years ago, John had a vision: Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, "Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God ..." (Revelation 21:1-3).
New Heaven and New Earth does not only mean blue skies and green mountains, but rather a new spiritual world, the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth and the Kingdom of Heaven in Heaven. All hell in the spiritual world and all hell on Earth will liberated. Satan's dominion and power will disappear and God's sovereignty will appear on the Earth. People who were once Satan's sons and daughters will be liberated to become God's sons and daughters. In this new relationship, they will become citizens of Heaven. This important, dramatic vision that John had is exactly what we have to fulfill on the Earth through the Messiah.
As tribal messiahs, our responsibility is to establish a new Heaven, a new Earth, and a new world. We are family messiahs, tribal messiahs, national messiahs. But we forget. Even this morning as we came from our home, we checked our wallet to make sure we had our money, our drivers license, and such. And we made sure we had the keys to our house. Then we were satisfied. We have a certain routine, certain preparation in our individual lives over which we have dominion.
Before Jesus Christ departed for the spiritual world he made a certain preparation. He left the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth with Peter. Peter himself had changed from living an individualistic, selfish life to living a universal, messianic life. Now he held the keys which would open the Kingdom. People throughout the Earth could become liberated from Satan and become citizens in the Kingdom of God. This is the messiah's responsibility.
Building the Universal Family
Family Pledge #4 reads: Our family pledges to build the universal family encompassing Heaven and Earth, which is God's ideal of creation, and perfect the world of freedom, peace, unity and happiness, by centering on true love. So, as messiahs, our goal is not only to establish our nuclear families but we have to build the universal family—the family on Earth and the family in Heaven. We forget our responsibility to the spiritual world. There is Paradise, the middle spiritual world, the Hell realms and we can say that our ancestors have been living somewhere in those places. They need to be liberated. They need the Blessing. This is building the universal family. This is the goal of the blessed families.
We have to establish the world of freedom, the world of peace and unity and the world of happiness. But logically, before we can build this kind of world, we need to liberate all the people in Heaven and on Earth from the dominion of Satan. So let's turn our thoughts now to Family Pledge #8: Our family pledges, as we enter the Completed Testament Age, to achieve the ideal oneness of God and humankind in love through absolute faith, absolute love and absolute obedience, thereby liberating the Kingdom of God on Earth and in Heaven, by centering on true love. This is the climax. We liberate the Kingdom of God on Earth and in Heaven.
Great Mother Dae Mo Nim came here to conduct the liberation ceremony. This is indeed something very important for our spiritual life. This is a special dispensation. We heard all the details connected to this prior to the ceremony. This is good news for us. It means we have almost arrived at the peak of the mountain! The last peak. It doesn't matter how hard the winds blow or how stormy it is, we have to reach the peak, because this is the Kingdom of Heaven we are reaching.
In liberation, we have three stages: (1) liberating our generation, our family; (2) liberating the future generations. For this we connect with Pure Love Alliance, and second and third generation education, bequeathing the heavenly tradition; and (3) liberating our past, our ancestors ["back to the future" as someone said!]. Without liberating our ancestors, more trouble will continue to come on the Earth and we will never have the Kingdom. This is our destiny, to liberate our ancestors. Divine Principle is the Principle of resurrection. Clearly our ancestors want to come down and be with us and help us so that together with us we can practice true love and life and resurrection. We hold the key to their resurrection. Tribal messiahs, national messiahs, world messiahs, True Parents, the cosmic messiahs, even God Himself—this is the destiny of us all—to liberate all humankind, PAST, PRESENT and FUTURE.
When Father gave us in this year's motto which included that we must "root out all of Satan's blood lineage" he meant in the spiritual world as well as on Earth. In both worlds we have Satan's blood lineage running through us so we must all be liberated. It is the most wonderful news of news that Dae Mo Nim came to liberate many ancestors for us. We kept the conditions and she conducted the ceremony. How wonderful! We must spread this good news to our families and our Christian friends and everyone on the Earth! This must not be kept a private matter. Billions of people are waiting to be liberated in both worlds.
Many of us have seen the movie What Dreams May Come. I urge those of you who have not seen this movie to quickly get the video. It gives a most realistic portrayal of life in the spiritual world and the situation of many of our people. You will see a love story but you will also receive an excellent education about the muddy, dirty, smelly, jail-like kingdom of Hell. Someone in the spiritual world must have produced that movie because you will see the Hell realms in a very realistic way. It makes us realize the urgency of the matter of cleaning up both worlds as quickly as possible. Through being liberated on through to the Blessing, our ancestors go from Satan's lineage to God's lineage—forever.
Our ancestors will become spiritual world tribal messiahs. They will protect us. They will pay us back. You will see. This is a good investment. We need the power of protection, for ourselves and for our descendants. When you send your children off to school each day you warn them, "Be careful on the way to school. Watch out for cars when you cross the streets; watch out for strangers that might do you harm; be careful of this, be careful of that." Isn't that so? So in this upside-down world, don't we need extra protection? It is coming.
In Korea, if someone does not respect his ancestry they call that person a barbarian.
The spiritual climate is changing now. In America people are beginning to think more and more of their roots and their ancestry. We see evidence of this in magazines, books, on television programs and on the computer. There are computer services now to help you trace your genealogy. Everyone is getting into it. They are excited about it. God prepared this atmosphere. Please believe.
In this age of technology, we have built things that are wider, go deeper and higher than at any time in history. And we also have the technology to make large entities into extremely small, minute sizes such as computer components. At its beginning, the computer was a huge, walk-in mechanism. There will come a time soon when some machine will produce the voices from the spiritual world. People are becoming more and more interested in the unseen. And daily, many are having spiritual experiences.
In May, as True Father was leaving for South America, he gave the title Cho Shil Yong Un Do, meaning something like "Interfaith, Holy Spirit Movement." Cho means Interfaith; Shil Yong means Holy Spirit. Un Do means movement. We are more developed so we can say Interfaith, Holy Spirit, Family and Bible. Our Family, our ancestors, together, forever.
What is the most famous symbol of America? The MacDonald hamburger sign? No. It is the Statue of Liberty! A woman, a liberator. This year 1999, the peak of the last year before the millennium, the last year of the twentieth century, who is liberating America? True Mother and Dae Mo Nim. They have brought the torch of eternal light, life and love, liberating us and our ancestors from the kingdom of Hell. The Statue of Liberty symbolizes a liberated America, the new world. This symbol is made of stone and metal, but the living Statue of Liberty is True Mother and Dae Mo Nim. True Mother takes care of the Earth and Dae Mo Nim takes care of the spiritual world. Same time together. Earth has the key which True Parents used to open the spiritual world, and now Dae Mo Nim follows with the liberation of the spiritual world.
Externally, two or three hundred years ago, the ancestors in the spiritual world knew that the time would come when America would be a liberator, opening the way to the world. It signals America leading the world to the New Heaven and New Earth.
The Babylonians kept the Israel people in captivity for 400 years and then liberated them to come back to Jerusalem. They became old messianic figures. They received the liberated life but that was not good enough. Because they received the liberated life they had freedom, so they now said "Oh, now we are free. Now we can enjoy our life." But God meant for them to have special missions; God's Spirit gave them special missions to now "go and liberate other people." This is what God was saying to them.
As we read in Isaiah 61:1-3, The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release for the prisoners, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn, and provide for those who grieve in Zion—to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair. They will be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the Lord for the display of his splendor.
So these people felt the splendor of God; they were so appreciative of the freedom that had been granted them. The Spirit of God encouraged them and told them to go and liberate other people in need. Jesus Christ said (as we read in Luke 4: 18-19), The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor. This is the tradition of the Messiah.
To his disciples and apostles Jesus said in Acts 1:8, ...you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. And in Acts 2:17, Jesus told them, In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams.
Peter received the Holy Spirit and what happened? When the people heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the other apostles, "Brothers, what shall we do?"
(Acts 2:37). There were 3,000 people gathered there. But many who heard the message believed, and the number of men grew to about five thousand (Acts 4:4). Five thousand people repented, and by Peter they were liberated from the satanic life to a godly life. This is the tradition of True Parents. They also followed Isaiah 61: 1-3.
All of God's people in the world have had to follow this tradition, including us, tribal messiahs. Dae Mo Nim actually gave this message when she visited us. If you want to be a true family, you have to liberate this bad family life. In her liberating message she said (1) go from a false family life to a true family life; (2) go from Satan's evil nature to God's divine nature; (3) do not drink, smoke, or take drugs, but live the heavenly lifestyle; (4) go from an immoral life to a pure life; (5) do not misuse public funds; in other words, be economically righteous. So we must all follow this tradition.
We can trust True Parents This is true liberation. We have to be completely liberated to God's heavenly way of life. Ancestors of several thousand members were liberated through Dae Mo Nim. Dae Mo Nim has great hope for America. We have received God's blessings in this nation. We recently had the privilege of welcoming 106 Saints to America to give us spiritual assistance. There is much to be done and we have so much reinforcement now to help us and more to come.
When you go out to teach, heavenly forces are there to help. When we open our mouths to speak, the Spirit of God will be there to speak through us, to use our tongue. God has always provided this for His people, no matter what Testament age we are living in. But God has to borrow our voice. He will provide the words. Two-thousand years ago, Jesus' movement was very small and not so powerful. But Pentecost came and empowered them. We are now being empowered. We can help revitalize Christianity. With True Life, Love and Lineage given us by our True Parents and the holy spirit power coming through Dae Mo Nim, we are having our own Pentecost empowerment.
Does being liberated, being Blessed mean we can settle back and take life easy and never open our mouth? No. There is a world in need out there. There are people in political captivity; there are miserable, hungry people; many hungry for God; there are prisoners behind bars; there are millions and millions of people everywhere with need. Shall we do nothing? Do we let the world perish?
We were all once captive slaves of Satan. Do we share what we have received or do we let others stay in slavery? We must work for the world of peace, freedom, happiness and unification.
We have truth to give. We have hope to give. We have freedom. Go, please, and convey this message to your departments, to your churches and to people everywhere: as liberated people, our mission is to become Liberators.
True Parents, Dae Mo Nim and are now expecting us to "learn and develop." We are entering this new stage now. In our movement we are always growing and advancing by stages and in that sense we are constant pioneers and must therefore always be developing techniques and practical ways to fulfill each stage.
We have advanced to the stage of give and take with the spiritual world. It is our responsibility to help the spiritual world. We have physical bodies through which they can pay the indemnity for their sins and through which they can receive the Blessing. Most of us attended the Ancestor Liberation ceremony for seven generations of our own family, centered on Great Mother Dae Mo Nim.
The expectations for the upcoming spiritual world Blessing in September are that each of us will bring three more people, preferably those closest to us—our relatives, our friends, neighbors, and so forth. Already many Christians have received the Blessing and they should be encouraged to come to the September event. This Blessing will be an observance time for them and also a time when they can liberate their 7 generations of ancestors as we did. At that time, as I understand it, we who had our seven generations blessed already now advance to liberating the 8th through the 14th generation of ancestors.
The remainder of this year we must concentrate on accomplishing the February 13 Blessing of 400 million couples. How? If we continuously bless couples between now and February 13, those couples we bless will likely have children of eligible age. We extend invitations for them to be a part of the 400 million. This is one possibility.
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