The Words of Joong Hyun Pak
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The Words of Joong Hyun Pak |
I am the way, and the truth, and the
life; no one ever comes to the Father, but by me."
(John
14:6)
This morning my topic is "Tribal Messiahs in True Parents' Age." Father and Mother declared the providence of tribal messiahship early this year. We must think about our position as tribal messiahs and our spiritual attitude for 1989. True Parents gave you and me the crown of tribal messiahship. It is a new challenge that we have to fulfill.
Father has spoken a bit about tribal messiahs in many of his sermons. I always try to catch Father's teaching about the meaning of tribal messiahship whether it is in public speeches or private moments. I take notes which I have organized to present in this morning's sermon. So please listen carefully, taking notes to share with your brothers and sisters in your community areas.
God created Adam and Eve to be the son and daughter of God. They were to multiply into a family, tribe, nation, world and cosmos. That was God's ideal for creation. At that time God would have become the Parent of Heaven and Earth from generation to generation. The people would have received God's guidance directly and absolutely followed God's way of eternal life. God would become the ruler of all, having dominion over the nation, world and cosmos. But Adam and Eve fell, leaving God. They belonged to Satan. Then the multiplication of the family, tribe, nation, world and cosmos became the satanic world, with Satan as the parent rather than God. We have listened our whole lives to Satan's unrighteous "truth" and followed his ideology. We also have Satan's blood lineage which is without life and love. Jesus said, "I know your works; you have the name of being alive, but you are dead." (Rev. 3:1)
In this sense, God's original ideal world has never existed in reality. The reality of this world is the satanic kingdom of hell on earth. This is human history. What is the destiny of our lives? We must return to God's original world and ideal. It's not easy, for we have to deny ourselves in order to belong to God. We must overcome the satanic family life and establish the heavenly family life; we must overcome the satanic tribal life and establish heavenly tribal life. We have to fulfill this ideal; that is the purpose of restoration and recreation.
We have True Parents and the True Family. We also have blessed families all over the world, so we have actually fulfilled the heavenly tribe on earth. Now we need to establish the heavenly nation, heavenly world and heavenly cosmos. Recently, Father talked about the unification of the cosmos as Father and Mother's challenge (see speech on page four). Our challenge is the challenge of building a tribe. Who will challenge the nation, world and cosmos? Our True Parents!
Restoration and re-creation are the process of returning to God's original ideal world. How can we return to the clear way of God? It's not easy. We need to find the way. In John 14:6, the Messiah's promise is to give us the path back to God. Of course, True Parents have given the way, then the truth and then true life.
Confucius said, "If I discovered the right direction for my life early in the morning and then died in the evening, I would be happy." So even Confucius struggled to discover the right direction. So for you and Ito find the right direction is really not easy. Many people use the words "the way". Jesus Christ said, "I am the way", meaning if you follow his direction, belief and actions then you'll go the right way. This was Jesus' promise and confidence.
He mentioned his truth; truth is the direction or guide to the promised gift of life. There are many "truths" existing today -- for example democracy and communism. Democracy isn't working and communism is already dying. For the past fifty years, the Soviet Union, China and the communist world strongly believed communism to be the ultimate ideology. But communism will never work for it is an untruth. This wrong "truth" misguided and made devastating trouble for human history. We need the truth.
The Bible alone promised the path to God: follow Jesus Christ's way and believe his truth and new life will come. The Bible has 66 books in the Old and New Testaments. The word "testament" means "promise".
The Promise is for new life. Where will this new life come from? In Exodus 24:1-8, "Moses took the blood and threw it on the people and said, 'Behold the blood of the covenant which the Lord has made with you in accordance with all these words.'" Jesus, before his crucifixion, gave the Last Supper to his disciples. At the time, he offered them wine telling them it symbolized the blood of the new covenant. In John 6: 53 he said, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you."
Our lives come from our parents' motivation of love. By receiving our father and mother's new life there had to be give and take of blood lineage. So, our old self has to die because our old blood lineage was from Satan's bad lineage. We need eternal life from the true heavenly blood lineage. Only from here can we receive new life. The goal of the Old Testament is to discover the true blood lineage. In the New Testament, Jesus Christ had given his disciples the chalice of his "blood". He gave his own life to establish this symbolic blood lineage. Even if he died, he wanted to win eternal life for man. Through taking part in this communion with Jesus, his followers and Christianity entered the spiritual family of God. In conclusion, the 66 books of the Bible were to guide man to discover the true, eternal blood lineage. If you have studied the Bible and never grasped this point, you really don't know the meaning of the Bible.
Last Sunday, True Father talked about the meaning of the new blood lineage. The key point of the Old Testament, the New Testament and the Completed Testament is rediscovering the blood lineage. Do you want the next generation to receive love, peace, true life, joy and happiness eternally? That's our goal. Through the Divine Principle's teaching we can discover God's new eternal blood lineage. With this blood lineage, new life will come.
After joining the Unification Church, we began the seven year formula course to completely lose our old lives and recreate ourselves. The purpose of the MFT course is to take all things back from Satan. God used basic elements to create the human body, so we need to restore all these elements. Fundraising brought new soil, new water and new air, or new basic elements. The witnessing course is required because the archangel destroyed God's sons and daughters. We are in the position of the archangel's sons and daughters. To overcome this situation, we must save people by guiding them to the heavenly way. We should witness to a minimum of 12 people.
After these seven years are finished, Father calls us to receive a new blood lineage by receiving the Holy Wine before the Blessing Ceremony. For seven years we sacrificed and paid indemnity in the formula course yet we received the Blessing Ceremony of eternal life in a few seconds.
We need to understand that the highest, most noble purpose is for us to express love, because God is a Being of absolute heart and love. If we connect to God and go to His eternal world, we will become beings of true love. But if we are not acting from love, we will never see love. If we never practice or act on love, then it can never exist. So our actions should never destroy anything or cause disorder to God and His truth. Our life's goal is to practice love and make True Parents happy and joyful by giving honor and gratitude to God. At that time, God comes to us and we live together with God eternally. God is our Parent and we are His true sons and daughters centered on love.
Now you can clearly understand why Jesus said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life." True Parents came and clearly taught us this way of Heaven. We are very fortunate. Individuals, as well as families, tribes, nations, world and the cosmos must pass this way of Heaven in order to arrive to God. That is our destiny if we attend the Blessing and receive new life from Father. Also, we need True Mother, because to be reborn we need a new mother's spiritual womb. From this perspective, let us think about the meaning of tribal messiahship.
Also, in order to understand tribal messiahship, we need to study the Christian theological concept of the Messiah. Some people emphasize that the Messiah is the King of Kings who controls the world from his throne. But the most important responsibility of the Messiah is to be the True Parent, bringing the new heavenly blood lineage that gives people rebirth. This is the most important, internal core of the Messiah's mission. So the Messiah means first to be the True Parents. Secondly, he is the central figure and ruler of all families, tribes, nations, world and cosmos, the King of Kings. Thirdly, the Messiah is the Savior.
From this perspective, what is a tribal messiah? We have to fulfill the position of parent, king and savior. In our messiah's course, we have to save our self first. That is the individual messiah's course. Then we are looking for our 12 Cain spiritual sons and daughters. Together we go to True Mother to be reborn and to True Father to meet God. That is the way of messiahship.
In light of this, the first key point is individual Adam's perfection. Who was our ancestor Adam? He was born as the son of God, but by going to Satan's side, he destroyed himself and denied his own value. Adam is the symbol of destroyed human personal life. If you are to become a tribal messiah, you must successfully fulfill Adam's ideal position -- individual perfection. That is the tribal messiah. To receive the tribal messiah's crown, you have to pass through the individual seven years' indemnity course of sacrifice and hard work. You can then receive the Blessing and enter into blessed family life. This is the individual messiah's course.
Secondly, tribal messiahship means family perfection. Jesus was a true man whose goal was to advance to the next stage of a substantial family life here on earth. But people rejected him and his ideal was sacrificed. His family life was only spiritually achieved. Jesus was only able to dream of the family perfection that we can now have. He did not receive the Blessing physically, but spiritually.
The third point is the most important. If we fulfill tribal perfection, then we reach True Parents' perfection. We can then receive the bonus of being a national level, world level and cosmic level messiah. Why? True Father is our root, True Children are the branches and we are the smaller branches. We have the same destiny, so we can freely inherit the victory of Father and Mother. That is Father's promise.
If we deny Satan's world and return to God by passing through the seven- year course, we will fulfill the individual messiahship level. On that level, we have not only ourselves as Abel, but we have witnessed to Cain. Then Abel and Cain together become a heavenly family and receive the family level messiahship. That is what our Blessing means -- family messiahship.
Before the Blessing, many brothers and sisters worked hard, obeying everything faithfully. After they receive the Blessing, however, they may forget Father and forget God. This is a very dangerous circumstance concerning our Unification families. Satan is trying to push us into this kind of thinking. But from family messiahs our duty is to go on to become tribal messiahs. Abel families have to discover and guide the Cain families to become tribal messiahs. An Abel blessed family needs to embrace a Cain family, witnessing to them to form a tribe. This is the tribal messiahship.
Then together we advance to the nation, world and cosmos. God is waiting there with true love. This tribal messiah's crown is a most important one. True Parents prepared this tribal messiah's course for us through the sacrifices of True Family.
Until last year, we were in the 43-year wilderness course where we were always attacked and despised. During their wandering in the wilderness the Israelites were attacked by barbarians, snakes and other wild animals. After they arrived in Canaan, and settled, no one could attack them. From this year on, we will settle in Canaan where no one can attack us. So please change your concept about witnessing and home church. Wherever you go, people will begin to agree with you and appreciate you. The spiritual atmosphere is changing because this is the year of entering Canaan. This is also the family level of witnessing. We have an Abel family, with God, husband, wife, and children. So now, people may say, "I don't really like you, but I like your wife." Or, "Your husband is such a heavenly person." Or even, "I don't like the couple, but their children are amazing." The beauty of the blessed children will testify to Father's matching ability.
The second generation is so important because the second generation holds the key to the success of the first generation's spiritual life. According to the Divine Principle, our way of heavenly tradition must be followed from generation to generation. So our second generation holds the key to the success of our spiritual life. Who will judge us? The second generation. If we are a success, the second generation will be very happy. If we are not a success, the second generation will be angry. This was recently shown in the workshop for the second generation of blessed children directed by Hyo Jin Nim. The horizontal and vertical positions were completely one -- being happy together, sad together, hopeful together. We, the first generation, followed our True Parents, but our attitude was not good enough much of the time. We didn't trust True Parents and we disappointed them. Father cannot be happy with us because we are not completely one with him. The way our second generation is now following Hyo Jin Nim is completely different!
From 1989 a new period has begun. The wilderness course is finished! The way of Canaan is beginning. All of spirit world is preparing to welcome the blossoming new life that is coming. Everyone is anticipating the advent of a new heavenly spring.
Originally in the Garden of Eden, Abel was the elder brother. But due to the Fall, Cain gained the elder brother's position. They separated, with Cain always against Abel. Abel always passed through a difficult life. There were no parents. So after passing through the 43- year's wilderness course, our True Parents restored Abel's position as the elder son with Cain as the younger son. As united heavenly four position foundations, we are now seeking the Cain families. United with them, we can fulfill tribal messiahship and go to God's eternal Kingdom. That is our goal.
This is the Age of True Parents. When all people are centered on True Parents, then unity among the children will come. Father and Mother have declared tribal messiahship and have prepared an eternal crown for each one of us. The meaning of "tribal messiah" is individual Adam's perfection, family perfection, Jesus' perfection, and tribal messiah's perfection connected to True Parents' cosmic perfection. Tribal messiahship is our eternal destiny. Your mission is to proudly declare worldwide, "I am True Parents' assigned historical tribal messiah!"