Book Four - True Family
Chapter Three - The Family Is the Model for the Kingdom of Heaven
Section 3. A Training Ground of Love for Entering the Kingdom of Love

God's will is to realize the kingdom of love. If God's will is to develop and globalize the ideal world of love, the family is the experimental ground where you earn credits, all the way from an elementary school certificate to a bachelor's degree and PhD. The family expands to the world. If you look at the world carefully, you will see that it is a world where grandfathers and grandmothers live, a world where adults like your uncles and aunts live, a world where people like your elder brothers and elder sisters live, a world where youths live, and a world where children live. So these places where old, middle-aged, young people and children live are larger expansions of the family. (147-281, 1986.10.1)

The family is the smallest unit within the training center and is also a textbook for entering the Kingdom of Heaven. It has all the levels: the grandfather's level, mother's level, couple's level and sibling's level. These levels expand into larger groups of grandmothers and grandfathers, mothers and fathers, your own peers, and your sons and daughters, and together they form humanity.

Only families that can love all human beings as their own spouses and as their own parents, and serve them as their own sons and daughters, can inherit the Kingdom of Heaven. This is amazing. The right to inherit all the power and authority of heaven and earth created by God lies here. (143-285, 1986.3.20)

The family is a textbook of love through which at the time of death you receive the right to be registered at the Palace of Peace and the Kingdom of Heaven. The family is a training ground of love. The extension of this family is the world. The world is made up of smaller worlds: there is a grandfathers' world, a grandmothers' world, a world of fathers and mothers, there are husbands' and wives' worlds and sons' and daughters' worlds. When these combine we have the whole world.

Thus if you love the people of the whole world as you love your family and as you love God through the family, this will make a straight road to the Kingdom of Heaven. Thus the first commandment is, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind." And the second commandment is, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." If you love God and love humanity, everything will be accomplished. If you cannot do it, your spiritual training will have been in vain. No matter how great a religion's spiritual discipline may be, if it does not know how to love God, humankind and the whole universe it will fail the test.

In the family you should deeply experience love by going through the official course of the training center which is an encapsulation of the whole universe and then expand this and love the world. You have inherited this from your family, your training ground, where you were raised with your mother and father. Therefore if you love your parents more than your wife, love your sons and daughters more than your wife, love humanity more than your wife, and love God more than your wife, everything will be accomplished. This doesn't mean that you should abandon your wife. If you love in this way, all the recipients of that love will come to love your wife as well. Is there a more glorious place than this? If you want to love your wife, follow this way. (143-285, 1986.3.20)