The Words of the Parker Family
|
|
The Words of the Parker Family |
Joan
of Arc
Recently Pepper Parker, under Heung Jin Nim's spiritual guidance, received several messages for our worldwide membership from Joan of Arc, the 15th- century French saint and national heroine.
Five hundred years have passed since I was on the earth. In that time I have seen how the world has changed. I have seen how man has advanced and how he has turned away from God. In my mind I have wondered when and how God might ever find a day to resurrect His children from their agony. For God Himself it has been worse still. If you have children of your own, in your hearts you may imagine what it is like to watch your children suffer continually and then just die, ignoring you. To solve this situation, and because of the immense longing of our own souls, many of us gave our lives. Today you call us saints, but we are merely those people who took up our own birthright and fought for what every man should have fought for.
Man was not created to live apart from God. Everything man does apart from God must end in failure. In your world, fallen men have built castles upon their fallen acts, but in this world, it is seen what becomes of their work. You yourselves have come down a long road, and at times the road has been washed in shame. It is because mankind was not prepared to receive the True Parents on the earth that you have stumbled so far, getting lost on the road behind them. People have not understood how God was working and have not been prepared to receive their own salvation. All of us are very fortunate that the True Parents and Heung Jin Nim and our elder brothers and sisters have gone on ahead of us, carrying upon themselves the work that we ourselves should have finished long ago. We are like a person who has been given life again and again and doesn't look to see who is saving him. Heung Jin Nim is among you now. For what he is giving you, history has paid an enormous price, True Parents have paid, and he has paid. It is true what he says that in the high realms we hear your prayers. We have always been with you, but we ourselves have not been free. Now, as you know, the tide has turned and the floodgates have been unlocked.
Because of Heung Jin Nim, a great movement of repentance and renewal has engulfed our members around the world. At last we see you trying to reach for the work that is rightfully yours. Behind you we are waiting like a great fire that will burst its walls. You must have confidence in us and go forward. Though you may not see us you must go forward. Though your way may lead to death you must go forward. It is your right and your destiny to do more than we have done. Do not even begin to speak of suffering until you have given your life. In God's world your suffering and your joy will be one; what you have laid down you will also take up. This is what you have not known.
Be glad that the time for sacrifice is not lost. What you build with your blood, sweat, and tears is eternal. Do not lose your chance. I am here with many others, and what we say to you is true. You have not known us, but we have always been with you. Do not be afraid of the world that God is opening to you now. Our task is to work with you to build a home for ourselves and for our children. Be confident that we cannot fail you. Be confident that you will not fail God.
Keep your heart and your hope fixed on what must be. Through you the final chapter must be written. God and True Parents are no longer your only resource. Your world is here. Everything you have longed for and tried to believe is starting to happen now. We are your assurance. You must thank Heung Jin Nim and believe him. You must search inside yourselves and find your home. Your eternal home is with us, and it should be natural to you for us to come and help you. God's work is all, and we are all one in it.
In the name of the True Parents I say this.
Joan
Heartfelt greetings to the children of the True Parents.
I have come to you today with very serious things in my thoughts and, in a sense, with the weight of history on my mind. You live in a small world, the world of your personal responsibility, and it distresses me to see that at times you attempt to make your world even smaller. Somehow your problem lies in the fact that you are not connected enough with Father's life.
Father himself began with nothing, and yet from the moment of his birth he was the center of the cosmos, and he was raised by the all-out effort of great multitudes of angels and saints and by Jesus' whole strength and God's whole strength. He was the one light in the universe that could not be permitted to fade or go out. From a crooked shack on a Korean hillside he himself has built up God's Kingdom to the enormous level you see today. He has laid the bricks and cemented them with his own tears and blood. He has gone through incomparable darkness and attack, while we in the spirit world waited, helpless and filled with anxiety, to see if he would survive. Now he is an old man. This has been the course of his life, that he has never turned from God's face, that he has never relaxed his grip on God's desire. And now, after one long and immensely painful life of agony, he finds that he is old, that his work on this earth is almost complete, and still with humility he comes to God and asks how to do more.
Why are your lives so small? It is because you do not feel the rushing force of history behind you. You dwell too much in the troubles of one day. Nevertheless, in Korea now they mark the places where Father has walked, living his course for God. The Holy Rock is enshrined, the mountains he climbed have become places of pilgrimage, and the hillside where once stood his cardboard shack has become a monument. Thousands of years from now, people will still be crowding these places to touch the land where Father walked, to sit in the place where Father wept for mankind.
Truly you who serve Father directly are almost without any sight or vision of who he is. We, the saints and martyrs who have lived our lives and died for God's cause already, would willingly live and die a thousand times more to be where you are now, to be in his earthly presence, to live in this blessed time period.
You work in the cities and towns of America, spread out like grains of sand scattered across a map. You walk down streets filled with ignorant and uncentered people. You pay bills. You eat and you sleep and you try to do your mission. This is your life on earth, and you bear it with a kind of resignation, dreading the future, dreading the next painful step of restoration. Someday -- I tell you now and you will see that what I say is true -- someday your descendants and the descendants of your spiritual children and of your tribes will come and walk the ground you walk now and think of you and try to imagine your faith and your circumstances and try to connect with you in their prayers.
They will pour their hearts out to you as their spiritual forefathers. They will want to pray where you prayed; they will want to walk in your steps; they will go on pilgrimages following your individual course through all your missions across America. They will have maps and guidebooks saying, "John Smith was here in such-and-such a year, and he did this, and he lived here, and his situation was like this, and he got this victory, based on this level of his heart, based on this determination that he made before Father. And then he went on to another place..." And they will follow your whole life course and pray prayers of gratitude to you, longing to connect with you and with your opportunity to serve Father directly. This day will come.
Do not take these words lightly. Therefore, wherever you go, whenever you walk down the street, you must feel that you are leaving your footprints behind you, where other generations will walk and pray and weep. Everything you have touched will be precious. Everything you have done will be recorded in the Acts of the Children of the True Parents. All the small things and the large things you have done will be clearly seen and venerated, just as each stone and pebble in the walls and floors of God's heavenly mansion will be seen and held as precious.
People will dedicate their lives to your memory and your service; they will want to be like you; they will call you the Holy Fathers and Holy Mothers, and you will be second only to the True Parents themselves...
Now what do you feel about your lives? If from the time you wake up tomorrow morning or from this very moment you continue to live with dread and resignation, then your lives are truly shrouded in ignorance and blindness.
You must believe me when I tell you these things. I was a very small person in the eyes of the world. My public course for God lasted a mere two years on this earth. Yet people have dedicated many pilgrimages and prayers, even their entire lives, to me. Of course I see these things and feel these things and I worry about you, about your attitude toward your earthly lives.
You must thank Heung Jin Nim for all these things that I am saying to you, for it is his heart that has liberated us and allowed us to share our wisdom and experience with you. He will create a great Pentecost on this earth; he will loose a whirlwind of fire on all the nations. Yet I feel that you, the torchbearers, the heavenly subjects, fear this fire, fear this day of resurrection. You must correct your vision of what Heung Jin Nim is doing. You must liberate yourselves from fears and misgivings. You are the new saints, more -- much, much more -- than us. Your minds are small and enchained. You do not try enough to expand and embrace Father's vision and desire.
What you leave behind you now is much, much more than the foundation left by Christianity's 400 years of martyrdom, or by the following years of God's historical providence. All throughout history up to now, God's vertical effort has been enormous, but His horizontal result has been small, tiny, almost microscopic. Not anymore. The horizontal matches the vertical now, if you will only let it. All of God's vertical effort, all the vertical effort of history, spreads wide upon the earth now. If you will open your minds, open your arms, and let yourselves become the images of the True Parents, the masters and true subjects of the earth and of future history, then we shall finish this providence quickly and for good.
All of the saints and martyrs of the past, directed by Heung Jin Nim's hand, will descend and fight the last "holy war"; all of the providential figures will descend and spread fire and blinding light into the darkest corners of the earth. This is Heung Jin Nim's pledge to God, and we unite with him in it. Do not cringe at the thought of battles and upheavals. This is God's moment of victory. We will destroy Satan's kingdom once and for all.
There is no reason to prolong this further. Through True Parents and Heung Jin Nim all things are being accomplished. Do not become small and try to hide. Take up your glorious and sacred destiny. Embrace Father's life course and his future vision. Embrace the new dispensation of Pentecost. This is a time of hope and joy. This is the golden hour of history.
In the name of the True Parents I say these things to you. Heed my words.
Joan
Greetings once more to the children of the True Parents.
This is my third opportunity to speak to you, and I hope that in this manner we may establish a new door of communication, and beyond this door a new world of one family. My heart has roamed the earth, and I am no longer just a patriot saint of France but a world citizen, and I am a member of the staff of the heavenly United Nations. All of the spirit world has been organized, and representatives have assembled here, and through us God's directives are passed to every nation of the world. Thus, no matter where you are, your prayers and your circumstances reach through the network to us, and we can at any moment mobilize to help you.
We are unlimited in energy and initiative and ideas. We will find a way to solve your troubling situations if you will give us the opportunity. Any time you call upon the name of God or True Parents or Heung Jin Nim, our forces are mobilized to help you, for that is our one desire, to serve and uplift.
I will speak to you in a very specific way today concerning what I believe to be the key you need to unlock the heavenly dominion, to connect with us and receive our help. This key, of course, has come to you through Father's words. On Children's Day of last year, November 21, 1987, Father gave a message entitled "Children's Day and the Unification of the Fatherland."
We know it takes the tremendous, painful, all-out effort of both God and man to change our lineage back to the original.... The one thing we can do is to deny our self-centered desires: deny all of our links to the satanic domain. Even unto death, we must deny them, preferring to go to the spirit world rather than be held by those physical ties that connect us to the false foundation. To deny the evil lineage, we have to belong somewhere else. Only when our love for God is stronger than our will to live can we begin to move our fallen lineage into the original one.
Centering on God, then, are we supposed to go around and kick down what Satan has built up and nurtured? No, violence is not our standard of denial. The true denial of Satan's bond is to have a stronger bond with God....
We know clearly that to be heavenly citizens we must not only love God the most strongly but also love other people, including our enemies. Before Lucifer became Satan, he was a being whom Adam and Eve were to love. This is Satan's claim before God: "Even though I fell into an unprincipled existence, You have the responsibility to love me. Unless You love me to the point where I say You have truly loved me, You cannot regain Your dominion over the world." This is a legitimate claim, according to the Principle. Hence, before we can go to heaven, we have to love not only God but also the unprincipled, fallen world, because originally it was in the position to be loved by God.
Thus, we have a most perplexing, complicated task. We must first love our enemy, including Satan, and yet we must also cut off our ties with our enemy at the same time! In order to satisfy these two conditions, we cannot help but go to the most difficult, painful places with our own two feet. In the most trying situations, we must love Satan as well as cut our ties with the false lineage. Satan is pushing us into the most agonizing circumstances, driving us even to the point of death. In order to charge our lineage, even when we are about to shed our blood and die, we must cling desperately to God, loving Him more than life.
In this brief message lies the key to God's history, to the history of the heavenly saints and central figures, and to the foundation of the new world. Father has lived his entire life based on the one principle contained in these words. You should memorize them and recite them in your mind several times a day. Through this principle of overcoming the satanic world and then sacrificing yourself for its sake, you can not only embody Father's own heart but you can mobilize vast reaches of an unconquerable spirit world, and you can fulfill your own purpose.
The future holds sacrifice for you, when it will be difficult to separate from your children, when it will be hard to continue in missions where the result is very slow and very small, when it will be strenuous to unite, or to overcome your personal handicaps. These truly are your blessings from God, disguised well so that you may earn them. Do not lose your opportunity to sacrifice and endure while you can. When you do at last come to the spirit world, you will want to have many experiences and difficulties in your grasp, so that your spirit body may have strong bones and muscles and stand upright before God and His heavenly council. You will have regret if you have backed away from suffering, or if you have held on to old resentments.
Let your life be based on the simple principle we point out to you here from Father's words. Heung Jin Nim himself has asked me to emphasize these words to you. If any one of you can unite totally with this principle, we will go with you wherever you go. You need have no fear or worry, for we will uplift you as our own heavenly king, and we will protect you and fight all your battles for you. By these words you will come to true sainthood, but I tell you, you will do much more than that. You will be God's first generation of true children, God's liberators.
You are going beyond the history of repeating cycles and indemnification now. You are entering a new history, one of glory and freedom and fulfillment.
Living in the old world, it may seem dim and far away to your eyes, but to our eyes it is real, and we follow you into it, supporting you and uplifting you. You must ask Heung Jin Nim if you cannot believe what I say. The new world is opened here, and its light shines into the lowest levels of the spirit world, where even the most pitiful and most disabled can see that God's victory is come.
In our hearts we feel we must thank you, but let us thank you by our work and our support. Let us help you come closer to the True Parents by giving you a glimpse of the historical meaning of your lives. Please pray about what I say to you, and let your minds turn to Heung Jin Nim with gratitude. As he walks the earth he may seem like a relentless warrior, but do not forget that he is one with the heart of infinite and unconditional love, the heart of his Parents.
Please embrace Father for us and unite with his words.
Joan
In the early 1400s France was a feudalistic, bankrupt, and demoralized country. Since 1338 France had been embroiled in the famous Hundred Years' War against England, who occupied much of its northern territory. In 1425 Joan of Arc, a 13-year-old peasant girl, was called by God to save France. For four years she was guided and instructed by the archangel Michael, St. Catherine, and St. Margaret, and at age 17 she donned a man's armor and began her mission.
By the force of her will and the light of her inspiration, the French troops rallied behind her to win battle after battle over the English. At the decisive battle of Orleans she succeeded in driving the English back to the sea. Thus she restored power to the French king, Charles VII, and brought a strong national spirit to France. However, because of the cowardice of her own king, she was betrayed by the Church, whose loyalties were with the English, and she was brought before the Court of the Inquisition. After a year of brutal imprisonment and interrogation, she was burned at the stake as a heretic on May 30, 1431, in Rouen. She was 19.
At the cost of her own life she succeeded in bringing France out of the feudal age and into the age of monarchy, which in turn would bring France to the outbreak of the French Revolution of 1789. From then on, God's providence to bring unity between the Cain-type democracy of France and the Abel-type democracy of America could begin, bringing history to the point of the coming of the Lord of the Second Advent.
Three years ago, Joan of Arc appeared to a French sister, to whom she explained that, although she knew that Charles VII was a coward, she fulfilled her mission given by God for the sake of unifying France. She explained how difficult it had been to use her heavy sword in battle but that today our weapons are not swords but our mouths and our pens, with which we must wield the truth in order to win the fight for the true liberation of God on the world level. At that time Dr. Young Oon Kim said that Joan of Arc was in a very high place in the spirit world.