The Words of In Jin Moon from 2010
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The Words of In Jin Moon from 2010 |
On Nov. 28, 2010, Rev. In Jin Moon spoke to the Las Vegas congregation about music being a universal language that has the ability to unite all types of people, and to move people's hearts. Rev. Moon shares her personal experience with music, and how it has helped her feel alive during hardships she has undergone, including the passing of her elder brother. Following this reflection, Rev. Moon touched on the philosophy of living for the sake of others, and how it is really not a sentence implying for us to be miserable for the rest of our lives. "The whole point of restoration is to get to a place where we are restored, where we are celebrating life, and where we are living life, not dying for the sake of others."
Good morning, brothers and sisters. Happy Thanksgiving weekend, and happy Sunday morning. We of the Lovin' Life team are delighted to be with all of you here in this beautiful city of Las Vegas. It was truly such an honor for members of my family and me to accompany our True Parents when our True Father gave us such a wonderful speech at the World Assembly celebrating the era of universal peace, God's providence, and the Abel UN. Father is encouraging all the countries of the world to think of themselves as a family centering on God.
This is a very special time for all of us here. I know that our True Father and True Mother are fervently and furiously doing their best to spread the breaking news of why they are here, what they would like to do as the True Parents, and what we as the children of the world need to do to bring about the world of peace that we have all been waiting for.
Every Sunday morning I get up thinking, "How can I be the vessel or conduit through whom God, our Heavenly Parents, can share his and her message with our brothers and sisters? How can I be a good and pure conduit of our True Parents so our brothers and sisters can feel their love and urgency, and also their dedication to each one of us?' I find myself feeling somewhat unworthy at times.
Last night, when I saw all the families coming out onto the dance floor and celebrating their life with each other, I couldn't help but have tears in my eyes because we are a movement that has struggled, sacrificed, and suffered for many years. But in the spirit of Thanksgiving, this is an era when we live under the direct dominion of God, meaning that we stand in the position of original sons and daughters, just as Adam and Eve were meant to be before the fall.
When Heavenly Parents created their first son and daughter, just as I as a mother look upon my children and hope for them the greatest love, happiness, and prosperity, they wanted the same for Adam and Eve, and for all of us as well.
But we know that because of the process of indemnity that had to take place since Adam and Eve fell away from God many years ago, the children of the world have been suffering; they have been lost and wandering in the wilderness for many years. But with the advent of True Parents, a man and woman standing in the position of perfected Adam and Eve joined together in the Blessing of holy matrimony, and also standing as the True Parents of humankind -- something that Adam and Eve were supposed to accomplish many years ago -- we have the opportunity through them to inherit the true love of God, enjoying our participation in true love, true life, and true lineage.
Yesterday after a wonderful celebration, where I felt like I was watching a constellation of moon, stars, and the sun, I felt as if I were experiencing what the Good Book says in I Corinthians [15:41], "The sun has many splendors and so does the moon and so do the stars, and the stars differ from one another in splendor, but nevertheless they are all beautiful." When I look at our community, I see young and old, big and small, thin and wide, and a lot of young kids full of energy as well as an elderly group that is young at heart, with bodies slow to follow. Nevertheless, everybody is so beautiful, having such splendor and divinity.
It was like watching a marvelous show in a planetarium, where you lie back in your chair and look at the planets, the stars, the sun, and the moon from all different angles, and you realize how wondrous, beautiful, and awesome life is. I was not reclining in my chair last night, but that's what I felt like. The constellation of the heavens was there in the room, in our own community with all different races, backgrounds, religions, and economic classes represented and harmoniously enjoying the moment together.
I was not only delighted to see our brothers and sisters, the First and Second Generations, out there on the floor shaking their booty, but I was tickled pink because I saw our continental director, Dr. Yang, out there, too. He's a Korean leader who has such presence -- when he enters the room, you can see it. He was joining in the festivities, and he walked out there together with my personal assistant, Kevin Yoon. I've known Kevin for a long time but I've never seen him dance. And I've known Dr. Yang for a long time, but I haven't seen him boogie, either. But the two of them slowly made their way out there, jiggling to the rhythm of the band.
And, you know, Korean people are not the most flexible. They tend to be quite rigid approaching the dance floor. But the closer they got to the band, the more their limbs started to become fluid, and I saw our continental leader bopping along just like the group of teenagers standing next to him. I said, "Is this not the Kingdom of Heaven?"
I felt once again the profundity of the universal language that we call music. Music has the ability to unite all kinds of people. It doesn't matter where you come from, what you're like, or what character type you're like. We could take, for example, Dr. Yang as one extreme and my daughter, who's a fluid, gold-medal ballroom dance winner, as the other. They're very different people, but the music of the Lovin' Life band united them and all the people in between together in a common rhythm, and hopefully in a common form -- for those who have taken good lessons from my daughter. All were just enjoying the festivities and each other. We all were allowing the universal language of love and music to flow through our veins so we could experience the beauty of being alive, of being human, and of being a man or a woman at this amazing time. Seeing and feeling all that was profoundly inspiring to me.
Music has affected me significantly throughout my life. Being born into a public family, with heavy expectations put on us from a very young age -- and this goes for all my siblings in the True Family -- and always feeling like we're never good enough, or wondering how we could ever accomplish what people expect of us, has made a strong feeling of failure predominant in life for my siblings and myself for a long time. Sometimes the crushing weight of this burden can be so overwhelming that it's totally petrifying, so we don't know how to take the next step.
But for me -- and I know for my older brother [Hyo Jin Moon] in particular, who loved music and was a fantastic musician -- the universal language of music was lifesaving. In my own life of faith, music has been something like an old friend, a great, worn-out leather glove that you turn to winter after winter, regardless of whether you get new gloves or not. Music has been a constant friend, a constant supporter, and a constant comforter.
When I wrote the song "One by One" many years ago, I was trying to deal with the loss of my brother. When he passed away, the grief was so crushing, I could not even imagine living another day without him, going another day without him, or simply breathing another day without him. In a public family like the True Family, where we grew up so much on stage, so much in the public eye, always being scrutinized and judged, always receiving constructive criticism, while our parents many times were not there to be our security blanket or to tell us we were doing a good job, we tended to rely on each other for strength and comfort, like many brothers and sisters do.
But when I lost my brother and realized that I no longer had him to be with me on a daily basis, someone I could call up when I was confronted with an issue or particular problem, I found myself totally petrified. I could not move, I could not go on, I did not want to get out of bed. I have a piano in my Boston house called Chocolate Velvet. I call it Chocolate Velvet because it's a Steinway D, a huge, a nine-foot piano, with a glorious sound, so smooth and rich it's like chocolate. You're listening to these keys being played, but they feel like velvet on your ears.
I heard Chocolate Velvet call out to me in my moment of being petrified, and it begged me to play its black and white keys. I was so overcome with grief that I did not want to move, I did not want to get up, I did not want to do anything. It was the power of music, the power of Chocolate Velvet representing the invitation for creativity, that just seemed to attract me like nothing else.
I got to the piano and started to play, and I was so sad. People who know me tell me, "You're the minor sort" in that I tend to like sad songs; I don't really like happy songs. So I started playing around in A Minor, and then all these feelings started to happening, feelings I had kept repressed, that I could not express to anybody because I felt like nobody could understand me. When I started to play the piano, slowly this inhibition began to wear off: The music started to flow, and the words started to flow.
When it turned into a song, it turned into a great source of comfort for me. When I heard Chris Alan sing it today -- and he sings it beautifully, doesn't he? -- I am reminded of that time when I was so stricken with grief that I could not move. But I am also reminded of the beauty of the universal language that carried me through such an difficult time by allowing me to participate in my own divinity and create something beautiful out of something that seemed hopeless and made me feel like I did not want to live another day without my brother. Music made me feel alive.
I always bring the Lovin' Life band because music has the ability to move people's hearts. Regardless of what language we speak, we can all understand that this is a happy song, this is a sad song, or this is a thought-provoking song. But all in all, we realize that music is something beautiful, moving, and alive, something that was created out of nowhere through a person's creativity. We realize once again how beautiful our lives are.
Regardless of how miserable I find myself, I remind myself that we have within our hands the ability to create something beautiful out of nothing. And I also remind myself that, unlike our brother Jesus, who never had the opportunity to find his beautiful wife, build an ideal family, and celebrate life with his brothers and sisters in a community like ours, we are blessed to be able to live the life that even our brother Jesus Christ could not live.
Yesterday at the Thanksgiving dinner, Ambassador Zakhem was sitting with me at the head table. I found out that he used to be a ballroom dance instructor many years ago. He was delighted to have Ariana seated there, and he's the one who approached her and said, "How about the dance floor?" Out they went. It was my first time to meet him. He's a former ambassador who worked under President Reagan and George Bush, senior. He's an accomplished man with a political record that he can be proud of. But I was terribly moved by his introduction of True Father because he came out not as a politician and somebody who's seasoned at speaking in front of people, but as a sincere man who simply came out and said, "I want to speak from my heart." He did just that, and he touched every one of us.
I could tell that this man didn't just talk the talk but walked the walk. He understood how incredible it is to be in the presence of our True Parents. When True Parents were walking out, he came to greet them and bid them good-bye. Mother turned to him, and in her hand she held a corsage she had taken off my father's lapel a moment before. When Ambassador Zakhem said, "Thank you for the event; it was wonderful," my mother turned to him with a smile and handed him Father's corsage.
The look on this man's face! He turned into a beautiful little boy, and he accepted this gift so beautifully, realizing how precious it was for him to have Father's corsage. When I saw him at Thanksgiving dinner at the end of the day, he still had the corsage with him. By then he had it in a plastic container, and he showed it to me.
Do we need people like that to remind us how precious True Parents are? If former ambassadors are hanging for dear life onto Father's corsage in a plastic container, how much more so should we be knowing that we call them our parents, our father and mother? If Jesus had had the chance 2,000 years ago to find that beautiful wife and have that beautiful family, he would have started doing what my father is well known for. Jesus would have started blessing people, encouraging people from different races, backgrounds, and religions to look beyond their limitations and barriers and to understand that we belong to a common humanity and that our common parent is God, our Heavenly Parent. Yes, Jesus would have started blessing people 2,000 years ago.
What our True Parents are doing is the fulfillment of what Jesus would have done. Can you imagine: Here we are in Las Vegas, where everybody comes hoping to be a jackpot winner. Yesterday on the way to my hotel room, I veered away and went through the casino. One small woman playing a $25 jackpot slot machine looked terribly serious and terribly conservative. But just as I was passing, she hit a jackpot. The transformation from before and after was striking: from a conservative, dowdy, quiet, serious woman staring at the machine to an excited and happy woman who looked like a pep rally cheerleader at a major football game after hitting the jackpot. She was on fire! To everybody who walked by, she called, "I won! I won!" The machine was ringing off the hook, so we did know. She had so much power that she grabbed people walking past her. "I won! I won!" Somebody walked by and said, "You are really lucky." She turned around and said, "It's not luck. I was here at the right time. I made it happen." She was beaming.
When I saw her, I thought, "All of our brothers and sisters who attended the World Assembly are like jackpot winners. All of us have hit the spiritual wealth jackpot in our True Parents." I think it's interesting how Father keeps on holding these assemblies in Las Vegas. It's almost as if he wants to remind us that all of you are jackpot winners. Don't ever forget that.
When I saw the before-and-after transformation that took place in this woman, it was a reminder for me to understand how incredible it is to have our True Parents. We've been following them for as long as five decades, and the initial spark that made us open our eyes to realize who they are, what we need to do, and how we need to work together to build this world of peace was incredibly bright and powerful in the beginning. Over the years, though, we started having material and family concerns, maybe wondering why it's taking so long. Some of us may have forgotten how incredible it was, that first moment when we realized who our True Parents are, that first moment, just like hitting a jackpot that takes you from one type of person to another. Sometimes we forget.
But, as the Bible reminds us in Amos 9:13, the Lord warns us that the day is coming. The Bible is asking us to be prepared, to be ready, because the day is coming. And what does the Bible say? It says, "The day is coming, declares the Lord, when the reaper will be overtaken by the plowman."
What is a reaper? Somebody who reaps the harvest. In the autumn, when the crops have grown to their full height -- and I'm visualizing beautiful, majestic cornfields -- the reapers are those who harvest a plentiful crop. But the Bible says that the day is coming when the reaper will be overtaken by the plowman. A plowman is somebody who plows the fields, preparing them for planting. But the one who harvests, the reaper, will be overtaken by the plowman.
The text goes on further to say, "The day is coming when the reaper will be overtaken by the plowman, and the planter" -- the one who sows the seeds -- "will be overtaken by the one treading grapes." It goes on to say, "The new wine will drip from the mountains and from all the surrounding hills."
This verse reminds our community that we need to be prepared because what we think is the harvest that we are ready to reap might not be what God wants. We might think that the purpose of our life is to seek money, knowledge, and power. We might think that the purpose of our life is to seek material wealth, to amass material fortune, possessions, abundance, and so on. But the Bible says that it doesn't matter what you are ready to reap because you have to be ready to be overtaken by the plowman, somebody who will till the field and prepare it for the crop that God wants to share with all of us.
The Bible is saying to be prepared but also to be flexible because what we once thought might not be what God intends. We have to be totally united with our True Parents during this time because they are God's representatives -- our guides, our teachers, our father and mother -- who will help us stay the course, who will help us be prepared and ready, and who will help us be flexible as the ones who tread the grapes planted by the planter that God might bring from somewhere that we might not expect.
When our community was introduced to the concept of the Woman's Federation for World Peace, there was a great deal of shock, right? Our brothers wondered, "What about subject and object? Aren't men subject and women object?" But the Divine Principle teaches that we have God as our center, our head; a man and a woman on either side, truly honoring, respecting, and working with each other in the spirit of love, come together and create beautiful families. I know that a lot of brothers wondered what the Women's Federation was all about.
Then here comes what Father proclaims as the Pacific Rim Era. What are we going to do when Father starts putting women in positions of power? What is the community going to do? Maybe a lot of ministers in our faith thought that district leaders, ministers, and pastors should be brothers. But what about when Father asks sisters to be district leaders, pastors, or your senior pastor? I am sure it was terribly shocking for a lot of people.
But our Heavenly Parent, through the wisdom and guidance of our True Parents, was preparing and readying us, but also asking us to be flexible. Many wonderful things are going to be taking place, many wonderful surprises that have yet to be revealed. It's a call for us to be firmly committed and firmly united with our True Parents.
The Bible asks us not just to watch from the sidelines, not to just think about the new wine that will be dripping from the mountains. That new wine will be coming from the one who treads on the grapes. It might look like the person bringing the new message is someone who's trampling on the existing understanding of what we ought to be. Maybe it's challenging our concept of who we are. But in the process of trampling on the grapes, a process of destruction, there's a potential for construction. There's potential to make something new. And what God ultimately hopes for is to create this new wine that will drip from the mountains to flood and grace our world. This new wine will be like the spring of life.
Our True Parents are like the spring of life in this parched desert of Nevada. The whole of humankind has been thirsty for this water of life, this new message -- an understanding of love, of who we are as God's sons and daughters and what we need to do with our lives. We have been waiting to partake of the spring of life, this fountain of youth that people have so longed to possess throughout all time.
But if we think deeply about it, brothers and sisters, by our True Parents giving us the ability to experience true love, true life and true lineage, the right to inherit the true love of God, and the authority to build ideal beautiful families, we do live forever. When we partake of the spring of life that our True Parents are raising all of us with, we do live forever in the hearts and minds and beauty of our children, our grandchildren, and our great-grandchildren. The beauty of who we are gets carried forth one generation after another.
When Father is compelling all of us to dream and imagine -- and not only to dream and imagine but also to actually take an active role in building an ideal world -- he is challenging us to build the Generation of Peace. This "new wine" is a generation who understands that God is our common parent, that we are God's eternal sons and daughters, having divine value and personal destinies we need to fulfill, and that we need to live our lives for the sake of others, living -- not dying, not suffering for the sake of others but truly living, loving, and celebrating.
Had Jesus found a wife and had an opportunity to have children, the concept of Christian piety would have been vastly different. But because Jesus never had a chance to take a bride or have a family, our concept of being devout and holy means someone who gives up family life and love in order to seek a life of faith. But in our True Parents we realize that that's not what our Heavenly Parents wanted for their children. No parent in this world wishes for his or her child a life of suffering, misery, pain, and denial.
What we as parents want is for our children to be fulfilled, empowered, successful, and prosperous, even if we have to give our own life, even if we have to sacrifice ourselves. We want for our kids all of these things, and that's exactly what our Heavenly Parent wants for all of us. Our Heavenly Parent does not want us to be miserable, suffering, and living in pain. He wants us to accomplish, establish, and substantiate our own divinity, our own beautiful signature in this world by creating our own wonderful, ideal family. God wants us to be happy.
A couple of weeks ago I was talking about the significance of 10/10/10, and how truly profound it was that we have our True Parents, the Lord of the Second Advent, the Messiah of this world presiding over the October 10, 2010, blessing as the True Parents of humankind. This date will not happen again for another thousand years. Our True Parents were here to capture that date as the True Parents of humankind, to usher in a thousand years of peace.
We are living in the direct dominion of God. We have our True Parents with us. We have them proclaiming to the world that they are here to help us all inherit the true love of God by encouraging us to go through the Blessing of holy matrimony. Only by grafting onto this original olive branch of the original olive tree do we really have a chance at becoming one family, as a part of God's lineage. It's an incredible time.
It's so wonderful because this -- the 10/10/10 blessing -- is the first time in the history of our movement for Father to declare that under God's direct dominion our children should be encouraged to seek their own spouse. After talking about this, I received a long, elaborate e-mail from a Japanese brother, saying it was not his understanding that people should be happy in marriage. He said that in his marriage he has been suffering for 30 years, struggling and miserable, but he is living for the sake of others, sacrificing himself for the sake of others.
He was saying that he resented the fact that I was celebrating that we stand in the position of God's children, just as Adam and Eve would have done in the Garden of Eden, that now God has a chance to partake of our happiness and our children's happiness. For some reason it made this gentleman, who has suffered for such a long time, quite angry and furious. He was preaching to me, "We have to suffer."
I understand where he's coming from. I understand his sacrifice. I understand his willingness to suffer for the sake of others. But the philosophy of living for the sake of others is really not a sentence for all of us to be miserable for the rest of our lives. Yes, we have to go through a period of indemnity. Yes, we have to go through restoration. But the whole point of restoration is to get to a place where we are restored, where we are celebrating life, and where we are living life, not dying for the sake of others.
We should encourage our children to live life for the sake of others. But that also means taking care of themselves, being responsible for the choices that they make in life, and being excellent inside, in their life of faith, as well as being excellent outside, in the external manifestations of their faith, through their calling. They might be called to be great musicians, doctors, or professors, or the next president of the United States.
It's good if we as a community understand that, yes, we've suffered in the time of the wilderness. But this is the time of settlement. This is the time when we need to grow as a family and community. This is the time when we need to shine in our respective areas of expertise and our children should be called to dream, to be great -- not only like Mother Teresa, but as great as Albert Einstein, if our children are talented in mathematics or science. Maybe they're called to be great doctors who can find cures for cancer or AIDS.
Instead of just watching, instead of just listening, and instead of just sitting on the fence, this is a time when we need to be treading on the grapes. We need to do more than hear the train coming. Many men and women of history have heard the train coming. Many have not only heard the train coming, they have seen it approaching. Many brothers and sisters have not only seen or heard the train, they have also seen it pass by.
But are we going to let this train pass by, or are we going to get on the train? This is the time of the breaking news, the time when we should not be sitting on the fence. This is the time when we should be actively engaged in our life of faith. Don't just come to church for social camaraderie; be involved. Don't just come to see your friends, but come to touch somebody. Share the breaking news with your classmates, your colleagues, or different members of your families. Don't just enjoy the community for what it offers you; think about what you can offer your own community.
Every one of us is that agent of change. Don't just look to your senior pastor to do all the work that needs to be done in the church. I cannot do it without you. I need your support; I need your active involvement. So come and start treading the grapes with me, brothers and sisters, and get on the train.
Starting from this beautiful city of Las Vegas, let the spring of life flow. Let the waters of life -- the waters of true love, true life and true lineage -- flow into every American here in this great country. Let the waters flow through our community by helping our children to dream -- and not just to dream, but to make their dreams reality. I feel it is an incredible honor for me to be living at this time, when I can put in my two cents' worth, to raise up the beautiful treasures of our community, our Second and Third Generation.
Brothers and sisters, this is not a time to be sitting idle or listening to the train go by. It's time to get on board. It's time to understand how important it is to have our True Parents. It's time to realize that you have been winning the jackpot every day of your life. So one day at a time, realizing that each day is a day of huge jackpot winnings of spiritual wealth, how should we be as human beings? How should we be as children? We should be grateful and truly humble before God, who has given us so much.
So God bless all of you. Have a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend.
1: Now I would remind you, brethren, in what terms I preached to you the gospel, which you received, in which you stand,
2: by which you are saved, if you hold it fast -- unless you believed in vain.
3: For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures,
4: that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures,
5: and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve.
6: Then he appeared to more than five hundred brethren at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep.
7: Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles.
8: Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me.
9: For I am the least of the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.
10: But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God which is with me.
11: Whether then it was I or they, so we preach and so you believed.
12: Now if Christ is preached as raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?
13: But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised;
14: if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain.
15: We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified of God that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised.
16: For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised.
17: If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins.
18: Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished.
19: If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all men most to be pitied.
20: But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep.
21: For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead.
22: For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.
23: But each in his own order: Christ the first fruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ.
24: Then comes the end, when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power.
25: For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet.
26: The last enemy to be destroyed is death.
27: "For God has put all things in subjection under his feet." But when it says, "All things are put in subjection under him," it is plain that he is excepted who put all things under him.
28: When all things are subjected to him, then the Son himself will also be subjected to him who put all things under him, that God may be everything to every one.
29: Otherwise, what do people mean by being baptized on behalf of the dead? If the dead are not raised at all, why are people baptized on their behalf?
30: Why am I in peril every hour?
31: I protest, brethren, by my pride in you which I have in Christ Jesus our Lord, I die every day!
32: What do I gain if, humanly speaking, I fought with beasts at Ephesus? If the dead are not raised, "Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die."
33: Do not be deceived: "Bad company ruins good morals."
34: Come to your right mind, and sin no more. For some have no knowledge of God. I say this to your shame.
35: But some one will ask, "How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?"
36: You foolish man! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies.
37: And what you sow is not the body which is to be, but a bare kernel, perhaps of wheat or of some other grain.
38: But God gives it a body as he has chosen, and to each kind of seed its own body.
39: For not all flesh is alike, but there is one kind for men, another for animals, another for birds, and another for fish.
40: There are celestial bodies and there are terrestrial bodies; but the glory of the celestial is one, and the glory of the terrestrial is another.
41: There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; for star differs from star in glory.
42: So is it with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable, what is raised is imperishable.
43: It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power.
44: It is sown a physical body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a physical body, there is also a spiritual body.
45: Thus it is written, "The first man Adam became a living being"; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit.
46: But it is not the spiritual which is first but the physical, and then the spiritual.
47: The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven.
48: As was the man of dust, so are those who are of the dust; and as is the man of heaven, so are those who are of heaven.
49: Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven.
50: I tell you this, brethren: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable.
51: Lo! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed,
52: in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed.
53: For this perishable nature must put on the imperishable, and this mortal nature must put on immortality.
54: When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written: "Death is swallowed up in victory."
55: "O death, where is thy victory?
O death, where is thy
sting?"
56: The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.
57: But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
58: Therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.
1: I saw the LORD standing beside the altar, and he said: "Smite
the capitals until the thresholds shake,
and shatter them on the
heads of all the people;
and what are left of them I will slay
with the sword;
not one of them shall flee away,
not one of
them shall escape.
2: "Though they dig into Sheol,
from there shall my hand
take them;
though they climb up to heaven,
from there I will
bring them down.
3: Though they hide themselves on the top of Carmel,
from there
I will search out and take them;
and though they hide from my
sight at the bottom of the sea,
there I will command the serpent,
and it shall bite them.
4: And though they go into captivity before their enemies,
there
I will command the sword, and it shall slay them;
and I will set
my eyes upon them
for evil and not for good."
5: The Lord, GOD of hosts,
he who touches the earth and it
melts,
and all who dwell in it mourn,
and all of it rises like
the Nile,
and sinks again, like the Nile of Egypt;
6: who builds his upper chambers in the heavens,
and founds his
vault upon the earth;
who calls for the waters of the sea,
and
pours them out upon the surface of the earth --
the LORD is his
name.
7: "Are you not like the Ethiopians to me,
O people of
Israel?" says the LORD.
"Did I not bring up Israel from
the land of Egypt,
and the Philistines from Caphtor and the
Syrians from Kir?
8: Behold, the eyes of the Lord GOD are upon the sinful
kingdom,
and I will destroy it from the surface of the
ground;
except that I will not utterly destroy the house of
Jacob," says
the LORD.
9: "For lo, I will command,
and shake the house of Israel
among all the nations
as one shakes with a sieve,
but no pebble
shall fall upon the earth.
10: All the sinners of my people shall die by the sword,
who
say, `Evil shall not overtake or meet us.'
11: "In that day I will raise up
the booth of David that
is fallen
and repair its breaches,
and raise up its ruins,
and
rebuild it as in the days of old;
12: that they may possess the remnant of Edom
and all the
nations who are called by my name,"
says the LORD who does
this.
13: "Behold, the days are coming," says the
LORD,
"when the plowman shall overtake the reaper
and the
treader of grapes him who sows the seed;
the mountains shall drip
sweet wine,
and all the hills shall flow with it.
14: I will restore the fortunes of my people Israel,
and they
shall rebuild the ruined cities and inhabit them;
they shall plant
vineyards and drink their wine,
and they shall make gardens and
eat their fruit.
15: I will plant them upon their
land,
and they shall never again be plucked up
out of the land
which I have given them," says the LORD your God.