Sermons of the Reverend Sun Myung Moon, Volume 4 |
Let Us Become Survivors
Former Headquarters Church
Seoul, Korea
June 29, 1958
As He is eternal, God created all things with an eternal ideology. Because individuals, races, all humankind and all things failed to become beings of eternity, God has been seeking them with grief until today. In other words, though God lost the ideal garden of creation because of the human fall, He did not abandon hope for the created world. He fought relentlessly with Satan throughout a long history to fulfill the vast ideology of creation. He has been persevering until today.
The Inheritor of the Surviving Hope and Ideology
God has this great hope. His agony lies in that He must start with the smallest thing. This great hope was to be fulfilled in the individual, but because the individual fell, hope for the whole was lost. Consequently, before the hope of all humankind and all things could be accomplished, God's hope had to be fulfilled in a single individual. This was God's situation. No one knew about this. To fulfill this hope centering on an individual, God set up Cain and Abel. When that providence failed and 1,600 years passed, He set up Noah's family. Yet Noah's family also failed through the mistake of Ham. Therefore, the providence was prolonged after Abraham and Moses until the time of Jesus.
Before Jesus came, the many prophets were to fulfill God's ideology within the individual. Yet they could not, and this hope was transferred to Jesus, the only begotten son. Jesus came as an individual, but he was not just a common individual. He was the fruit of God's 4,000 years of constant perseverance, His longed for ideology, and His shimjung. He came carrying with him all the hopes of the prophets who had died during the 4,000 years of human history. As the fruit of 4,000 years of goodness, Jesus came on a level surpassing the individual, racial, national and world levels. He came on the cosmic level. He came with an ideology that was to eradicate the resentment of Heaven.
Accordingly, the people of Jesus time were not supposed to allow Jesus, who came with God's awesome ideology, to have an ideology that remained only with himself. Instead, they were supposed to implant this ideology within the whole Israelite nation and from there reach each person of humanity. Yet because they did not know and accept the ideology, that great ideology of God stopped with Jesus. Moreover, because Jesus died, that vast ideology could not survive as an ideology of the physical world and remained only as the ideology of the spirit world. Consequently, the people of the physical world had to wait for the ideology that could survive eternally in the physical realm. Jesus was forced to come again to re-establish this ideology in the physical realm.
Where and when will the individual, the family and the people who possess this ideology, those people for whom the physical world has been longing and who will survive eternally, appear? We must know the place and time.
When Jesus passed away, he left behind his word and his hope, but he did not leave behind his ideology. Thus, this ideology has to appear.
In the last days, what kind of person can possess Jesus' ideology? That person should first acquire Jesus's hope and will. Beyond that, he should possess a mind that can retain that ideology and a grieving heart of knowing the course of human history. Accordingly, he should be able to experience God's ideology for the creation. When Jesus preached the gospels in the physical world, he sincerely challenged people with the directive to love him more than anyone else in the world. (Matthew 10:37)
Was there anyone who understood the profound meaning of Jesus' words and practiced them? No, there was no one. Even among the disciples who followed and lived with him, there were none who practiced Jesus' words completely. Jesus also told people to love their brothers. After his resurrection, he appeared to Peter and asked three times, "Do you love me more than these?" When Peter answered in the affirmative, Jesus said, "Feed my lambs," (John 21:15-17). Moreover, Jesus told his disciples that they must prepare and wait for him, for he would come again. If you select important words of Jesus from among the words he spoke, these can serve as a summary of them.
Jesus' Sincere Request
Who can fulfill this earnest request Jesus left behind? The person who fulfills this word can escape judgment in the last days and meet Jesus. Have you ever loved Jesus in your lifetime? Can you say that the intensity of that love was greater than your love for your parents, your spouse or someone else in the world? You must re-think this point. The sincere desire of Jesus in Heaven is that someone will appear who can love him more than they love anyone else. If there is such a person on this earth, that person probably knows and deeply cares for God's ideology of the creation, God's 6,000 years of labor, and Jesus' painful heart.
Jesus represented a value based upon God's Principle of Creation. He is within the lawful realm of Heaven's creation, without any contradiction or conflict. Because Jesus was in this position, his mind and body were one. Though he was separated from Adam by a distance of 4,000 years, he could exist, transcending time and space. This is why Jesus could perceive immediately that God's ideology of creation was embedded within Adam 4,000 years ago.
What kind of mission did Jesus have? Humankind, who was to connect with God's eternal love, did not connect with it. Jesus had the mission to connect humankind with God's love. He also had the mission to tie a knot of love between humans and all things. Because Jesus came to complete this kind of mission, he told his disciples to love him, the representative of Heaven, more than they loved anyone else in the world. At that time, however, there was no one who loved Jesus that way.
When we examine the course of human history from this viewpoint, we know that we are individuals who have inherited a lineage of sin. We do not possess the ideology of creation. We have not attended Jesus from the position of a bride. Because the people of Jesus' time entered a situation where they could have loved him but did not, in the last days people in the physical world have to love Jesus more than they love anyone else on a worldwide level. From the position of a loyal subject, were you ever intoxicated with a love that could surpass any in history toward Jesus, the king of kings and your bridegroom? If not, you cannot claim that you love God more than others.
God came to ignorant sinners by abandoning everything that belonged to the 6,000 years of history. If I do not receive this God with love, this ideology of God that comes to me will be suspended because of me.
Thus, when you pray for your family at this time, you should pray that they will be people who love God and Jesus more than any other. When you pray for your nation, you should pray that there will be people in your nation who love God and Jesus more than any nation. When you pray for humankind, you should pray that the Christians of this world love God and Jesus more than the followers of any other religions. If you yourselves cannot love God and Jesus more than all others, you should at least pray this much.
What does all creation desire from humanity today? They desire for someone to appear who can fulfill this earnest request of Jesus. His wish that someone would love him more than they love any other person. Though all things wish this, that kind of person has not appeared. That is why all things and Heaven are lamenting. You must know this clearly.
Love God and Jesus More than Any Other
What kind of grief is that lamentation? In the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve were supposed to connect with God's love and His ideology. Yet through the fall, they failed to make that proper relationship with Him. The lamentation of all things is the lamentation that longs for humans to recover this situation and connect with God's ideology and love. Consequently, a person who cannot liberate this lamentation of all things will be judged in the last days.
What kind of person will survive this judgment? The person has to know God's and Jesus' heart more than any other, and love them that much.
By knowing this heart of God, a person can connect with God's ideology through that shimjung and thus possess the power to drive the enemy out of this universe. The reason Jesus could bless his enemies, even when he was on the cross, is that God's heart constantly and powerfully boiled within him. This is how Jesus could stand firm even in the face of death.
Jesus referred to a bride and a bridegroom. What are the bride and bridegroom? In the 2,000 years from Jesus's death until today, there was no bride who loved God and Jesus more than they loved any other. Many people talked about Jesus and about history arising from Jesus, but there was no one who knew Jesus's grief at not being able to show God's ideology of creation to humankind. It is important to talk about Jesus and the history arising from him, but it is more important to deeply experience his heart. Accordingly, in order for us to be able to represent God's ideology and survive in the last days, we must unite our shimjung with Jesus'.
Jesus loved his disciples more than he loved himself. If there is a grief of Heaven, what could that be? To leave behind God's ideology of creation in the physical world, Jesus loved his disciples more than his own body. Yet the disciples ignored the heart and circumstances of Jesus who was loving them. They thought of other things when following Jesus. They failed to receive and cope with Jesus's love while he was alive. Thus, the fruit of his love was not produced. This is Heaven's grief. The disciples felt Jesus' love for the first time only after he passed away, only then did they understand the intent of Jesus' words.
What kind of people was Jesus hoping to find? He hoped to find people who despised and abandoned themselves. Jesus was looking for those people so he could love them more than any other. Therefore, the person who can meet Jesus in the last days is a person who gropes for Heaven with a heart of love, even at the cost of despising and abandoning himself more than anyone else. The people of the world long for Jesus to come back. Yet we must not just hope for Jesus to come back but must seek him. To do this, we ourselves have to go over the hill of sadness that God experienced within human history. We must go over the hill of hardships that Jesus went over, carrying the cross. In this way, we must shorten the period of providential history and transcend time and space to deeply experience the painful heart Jesus experienced 2,000 years ago.
Who went to Jesus' grave? It was Mary Magdalene, a person considered insignificant. It was Mary who loved Jesus most: Jesus, who was chased away from one town, cursed at in another, and ridiculed wherever he went. Jesus appeared in his resurrected body to Mary, who was so sincere. This is a symbol that shows the course that Christians of the world in the last days must follow.
What kind of life did Mary Magdalene lead? Because she loved Jesus, she forgot clothes and food, and lived only for Jesus. Her path of life transcended life and death and forgot any reputation. This is the course that the saints in the last days have to go. If there is a person on this earth today who has the same heart as Mary Magdalene, his eyes will be filled with tears, moved by the 6,000 years of God's dispensational history. He will realize that he is infinitely indebted to God.
Moreover, he will know he cannot pay back the love he has received, even if he commits his body to the flames. He will know he has to walk the road of death. Have you ever had this kind of heart at any moment? That kind of person will know the heart of God, who has sought us from the time of the creation, throughout the past, the present and the future, abandoning everything. That person will not be able to raise his head in front of God because he knows that he is infinitely indebted to Him. The kind of person who feels this shimjung and gives up everything he has to follow God can survive the last days.
Therefore, a person who wants to believe in Jesus but be comfortable at the same time can be a messenger for Jesus, but can never be his friend. Moreover, even if a person believes in Jesus, if he does not know his shimjung, he can be Jesus' friend but never his bride. Both God and Jesus want a bride, not a messenger or friend.
The Person Who Can Survive the Last Days
Jesus cried out to God after fulfilling the qualification to become the substantial being who has gone through the ideology of creation by loving God and humankind more than any other person in history. There was an instant when God forgot the dignity and position of being the Creator and clung to Jesus. No one knows this. Furthermore, God confronted Jesus with a shimjung of wanting to raise him to a position even higher than Himself, the Creator. Nobody knows this either.
Jesus was rejected and driven out by the chosen people, but because he knew the shimjung of God, who had persevered for 4,000 years, he had to endure. In addition, Jesus knew that God had sacrificed everything in the 4,000 years of history to find one son. Therefore, Jesus realized that to find a bride, he also had to endure his hardships, no matter what kind of sacrifice and rejection came upon him. Therefore, he did not curse the people who confronted him as if he were their enemy.
Mary Magdalene knew at least a little bit of Jesus' shimjung. However, when she tried to touch the resurrected Jesus, he told her not to. This meant that as long as the person who has the qualification of being a bride does not appear, attending Jesus on earth completely, the shimjungs of Jesus, the Holy Spirit and God's sorrow cannot be dissolved.
Therefore, in the last days you must find one being who appears in substance representing God. You must love him more than any other person, and you must be able to be his substitute. Furthermore, there must appear a church where those kinds of people are gathered and a nation. This church, this nation and humankind should be fulfilled centering on the heart of God. Yet as long as the people of today do not feel the heart of God, they will not survive the last days.
At this time you should realize that you are a historical sinner. You should know about and pray about yourself before slandering and criticizing others. You should think of and pray for the nation and humankind. Subsequently, when you confront humankind, which has to fulfill the world of God's ideology of creation, humankind will infinitely welcome you. When you confront all things, they will know that you have sacrificed and have been rejected and will comfort and welcome you. Moreover, when these people appear in front of God, He will wipe away their tears and comfort them. Only these people will survive the last days. God, Jesus and all things long for these people.
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