The Words of Sun Myung Moon from 1973 |
God's Grief
Reverend Sun Myung Moon
January 27, 1973
First International Training Session
Master Speaks
Translated by Mrs. Won Pok Choi
Sorry for being late. I have so many letters from Korea -- so informative, uplifting, and I had to instruct someone to reply; so I had to give the points -- how to answer the letters. He had to stay up until 2:00 a.m. to read all those letters, and still, this morning, he had to read more.
My subject this morning is God's sadness, God's grief. People in general don't know exactly what kind of being He is. They don't even dream of God having grief. If God be omnipotent and omniscient, how at all has God any grief? This is the general idea of the people about what God is. We have been taught by the Divine Principle that anything must have an object in order to perform give and take between subject and object. Unless they do that, they don't have any joy or happiness. Therefore, if God is the subject and He loses His object, He will be grieved. God is grieving over the fact that man, due to the Fall, went away from Him; and in the course of restoration of man, His grieving heart is more saddened when people are disobedient to Him, and more than that, the very being of Satan is saddening His heart. God is the subject to the whole Creation, while the Creation is, as a whole, in the objective position to Him. God is the subject of the human mind, and our mind is in the objective position to God as the subject.
When we are striving to come closer to God, we have to go through three points. We must have three points or three kinds of love, and that is: the love of parents, the love of husband and wife, and the love of children. Out of the three, what kind of love would come first? Love of parents would come before the other two. Then we can as well say that love begins from parental love. Then, what must be the source of parental love? We know that love was originated by God, in God. Then, we may say that love began in God as the Parent, and after His creation of man, male and female coming together in the position of parents to their children -- and there came about parental love, matrimonial love and children's love. Love begins from God, and then with man and woman put together, resembling God, they experience matrimonial love, and toward their children they feel parental love, while the children feel children's love toward their parents, and return their love to God and love revolves.
However, due to the human Fall, love started in Satan. Husband and wife were united in Satan, and they gave birth to Satanic children, and all the loves they enjoyed were Satanic ones. Therefore, without our denying the parental love under Satan, we cannot set up parental love under God. Without our denying matrimonial love in the Satanic world we cannot set up true love under God. Without our denying children's love in the Satanic world, we cannot set up children's love under God. Centered on true love, we may as well say that love on every level must have God as its ultimate subject. But, on the contrary, every type of love in the Satanic world is centered on Satan. That is not according to the Principle. Satan gets hold of parental love, matrimonial love and children's love. Those are dangling loose, but they still are in Satanic hands.
In order to restore those, we do it in the reverse order. You must grab away children's love first, next matrimonial love and then parental love. Not only take them away from Satan, but we must take those loves back into God's dominion. In doing that we must be able to separate those loves from Satanic dominion. By fostering that love under God, we must have wholesome children, fostered by God, marry each other, so that they can form matrimonial love. If they are united into one as husband and wife, and love God as the subject to them as the object put together, then, in doing that alone they will have cut off Satanic love entirely. Unless all those things are done, you cannot say that you have quite cut off Satanic love.
Due to the Fall of Adam and Eve, how many loves did we lose? Parental love, matrimonial love and children's love -- all those were lost. Then we have to restore all those loves back to the original position of higher dimension than the Satanic standard. In restoring man we have to set up the standard of children's love, matrimonial and parental love only by having won back all those loves that would suit the standard of God's love alone. We must find a standard in a man as the children of God in the perfect love of God, as the couple under God in the perfect love of God, and as parents in the perfect love of God. Out of the Satanic world, God has at least to find one such person as His child and raise him up and put him in a position to marry a spouse, and bring them to the position of parents. That person is the core of God's love and we can call him the Messiah. Then, you will see in him the true quality as the son of God, and after he has reached his maturity, you will see in him the true quality of a true husband with his spouse. Then you can see in him the true quality of a parent. Then you can recognize him as the Messiah, the son of God, the True Parent in God's sight, and then you can follow him, believe in him and minister to him. Through this man alone can you find God's love abiding and working there; and through him, after he is married, you will see a couple in God's love, with whom God will abide and love each other, and in them you will find parental love, in them God will be operating.
Why is it so? Why are all those loves revealed in that one person? It is because, due to the Fall of Adam, both God and man lost three kinds of love at once. So, God is to restore those three types of love in the man He has located as His son. By having this person restore all those three loves alone, he can commence the Providence of Restoration in other people. This man is in the place of Adam. Having been perfected, he is the only restored man in the whole world. God will raise him up wholesomely, with a girl in the position of Eve, somewhere -- just as, at the time of the Creation, He created Eve later. Those two, when they reach maturity, will be wed not of their own accord but by the will of God, in holy matrimony. When they come together, they will give birth to children and they stay in the position of True Parents.
Through so many thousands of years of human history, God has been locating that one person -- and having fostered him, He would marry that man to his bride, and then He would set up the parenthood under them. That's what it is. Even if Jesus had married a bride and set up a family, if he had not been able to have children, he could not have reached quite the standard as the True Parent, and in that case he could not stand in the perfect objective position to God. God, in a way, gave birth to Adam and Eve, and by having Adam and Eve give birth to their own children alone, the three levels of relationship of love will be perfect in its standard. In that case, God will be the internal True Parent to Adam and Eve, and Adam and Eve will be the external True Parents to their children. By internal, he means invisible, so when we go to the spirit world after our death, God will not be visible. There, too, God will abide in you. You have a mind for sure, but can you see your mind? Mind is your subject, but you can never see it. In the spirit world, too, God is something like your mind, and Adam and Eve in the spirit world will be in the position of body to God. By interpreting this way alone can our understanding be enlightened.
We have been talking about how to restore big things: our family, nation and world -- but the core of the whole thing is how to restore yourself. Establish and build the three levels of love in yourself by experiencing all those things. Then you may say what is the need of witnessing to the people? Why is it necessary? Unless you give birth to your own children, you don't realize the love of God in you. Anything in the whole world could be understood only by our experiencing it -- going through those things. By witnessing to as many people as possible and bringing those people into our movement we are broadening our base to work on, and by that experience we can find that love is being strengthened in us. By restoring yourselves, you can experience the true love of God in yourself, and then through matrimonial love your love is broadened or elevated to the next level or dimension. When you play the role of parents to your children, your love is still more elevated to the next dimension.
You must be very enthusiastic in finding those things and restoring them in yourselves. You must be able to really feel God as your loving Parent, abiding in you, illuminating you. In that case, your mind and your body must be united into harmonious oneness. Only then can you be loved by God. Have you ever experienced that kind of love? With your mind and body united into harmonious oneness, perfect oneness? If you are experiencing God's love on that level, you will be so grateful and intoxicated in God's love -- we can say that even Adam and Eve could not experience such love; you would be drunken in His love, grateful and happy. That's our desire on the first level. Would you want that? Has there ever been a man or woman who has experienced that kind of love on the individual level? The man would think, "I am the happiest man in the whole world. I am the only one who really resembles God and I am the only one who is loved by God in the truest sense." He would be the happiest man in the whole world. And if there be any such woman, she would be the happiest woman. When they reach maturity, God will be pleased with them and will be happy to bless them in holy matrimony, and there they can experience the love of God on a higher level. By their being put together they will feel the whole world is united into one around them. With the whole Creation around them, protecting them, they will feel vertical love, above them God loving them and below, their children loving them. Most of you here are in the prime of your lives, as I see you, and will expect to marry a girl or boy -- but have you restored yourself in the perfect love of God? Only after having done that will you be really happy.
You may say to yourself: "Well, he says we must marry a spouse only with God's consent; what if that spouse of mine is ugly, according to the worldly standard?" At the time of Adam and Eve, did they have a wide choice? You can imagine, perhaps, that God created Eve as a beautiful girl, but there was always the possibility of her falling down -- stumbling against something, getting scarred, with deformed eyes. What would Adam do? Even in the Garden of Eden, if she weren't careful, she might get hurt and become scarred! If that happened, do you think Adam would ask God to create another woman for him? No, that could never happen. Whether she had a scarred nose, a twisted mouth, crippled legs, or had no limbs at all, that could not be done! Adam could not kick her out. She was the only one there, the image of the female essence of God, and he had to know how to praise her, saying: "You are the beauty of all beauties and you are here for the sake of all mankind and you represent half of God's essence and I love you." How about you? Could you do that? Be honest and answer me.
In the Western world they marry each other without their parent's consent. That's not lawful in God's sight. If you marry like that there are possibilities of getting a divorce. More than anything else, you must think that your marriage is for your lineage, for your descendants. The most important thing is to leave a pure lineage. Just think back... you are born out of the lineage of your forefathers. You don't belong to yourself. It is not initiated by you. Love is the source of lineage. Love being more than your life, the lineage must be more than your life. Matrimony must be done to keep the pure lineage, and through your matrimony, you have to leave that as the tradition to your descendants. When you leave, your future descendants, your lineage, will be left, seen by the people, but your love cannot be seen. Love is invisible, only abiding and working in you. But when you obtain a pure spouse of yours and come together with him or her, you can leave children. Having a spouse means you can put two lineages together and leave your descendants to that new lineage.
In loving your spouse, you must transcend the lineage between the two of you; putting the two lineages together into one, through that union, you can give birth to your descendants, out of one lineage. If and when you love your spouse, bear in mind that that person is the fruit of the ancestry of past generations and the starting point or ancestor of future generations. You must put such vast value in your spouse. Love is something you inherit from your forefathers. In the Western world, do you really feel that you inherit love from your parents? When you marry, you are blessed by a minister, by a person you think is important or of high position. In that case, that person is in the position of the archangel. Originally, your parents must bless you in marriage. That's similar to God's blessing His children, Adam and Eve, when they reached maturity. In this case, your parents would bless you, saying, "You are my life, you are my love, you are my everything! I am so happy that you have reached maturity. I am now blessing you to be man and wife. I want you to love each other as we, your parents, have done -- and become one with each other, resembling us, give birth to wholesome children, multiplying your future generations." In that situation you must long to be like your father and long to be like your mother and long to have the love that they had. Such an event can only be imagined in a world without sin. In this movement, when you have been taught all of the Divine Principles, you will think that matrimony blessed in the outside world is nothing; you will scoff at those marriages.
Being in the position of children to your parents, would you like your parents to divorce each other? You would want harmony in the family. Would you like to fight against your parents? Not at all! Then, where does the harmonious tradition begin? From your parents, but your parents inherited that from God ultimately. The next level is from your grandparents, their parents, and their parents, etc. Children's love, matrimonial love and parents' love must be put together into one. You must have three levels of love, always. If you think of love centered around your grandparents: your grandparents, yourself and your spouse, and your children. Three, with God in the center and above, you can always form the foundation of four positions.
Of the three levels of love, which one is closest to God? Parental love. If you have your grandparents, you must really be able to love those aged people as you would God. Age-wise you must unite those three loves together: love for the old, love for the middle-aged, and love for the young. You must be able to experience those three types of love. If your grandparents are on their deathbeds, both your parents and yourselves must be in the same degree of grief and sadness. That's in accordance with the Principle. For instance, if your parents were to pass away first, both your grandparents and yourselves must be grieving over the death of your parents. Placing yourself in the center, the two other elements will always be in protection, in cooperation with you, as the central figure. In a situation where there is joy, too, if one out of the three has joy, the other two will be equally joyful. If the children are dead, both the grandparents and the parents will be equally sad over the death of the children.
Is it all right not to feel sad when your grandparents die, while your parents are so grieving? When you are old and ready to die, if your grandchildren are not sad over your death, would you be pleased? I want you girls to answer me. If you marry at all, would you like to marry a man whose parents are still alive and whose grandparents are living with him? If you like the contrary, your thinking is not wholesome. When you have your spouse you want to be all by yourselves. You don't like the idea of any other people, even your parents or grandparents, being around. Is that a wholesome idea? [NO!] Then, are you ready to marry a man who lives with his parents and grandparents? That is the most desirable ideal, isn't it? If you don't like that it means you don't like me -- because on the vertical level, God is above as grandparent, the True Parents as parent, and you as children. Would you hate to live with the True Parents and God? That is the tradition; you must live with people of three levels of love -- that's God's will. Therefore, I can safely say that those who hate to live with their parents and their grandparents cannot go to Heaven. They are not entitled to the Kingdom of Heaven. Do you understand me? One act, one scene, is over.
Our subject is "God's Grief." What must be God's grief? Where does God's grief begin? In the path of true sensation of love, in the path of heart, either happiness or grief comes about. Everything starts from love. When love is created, there is happiness. When the loving heart is lost or trodden upon, there is grief. The loss of love made God grieve; nothing else could have made Him sad. He did not want wealth, position, knowledge or any such things -- but He wanted love and He wanted to exercise love. I have said the conclusion. If God can find love in you, find in you the love of God, God will be happy over this. But if He cannot find the love of God in you, He will be saddened, grieving. If he cannot find the love of God in couples, He will be grieved. If He cannot find the love of God in parents, He will be grieved. Would you want to have God's love? How much do you want to have God's love? How much do you have God's love? You must be a dynamic object to God's love so that God's love may explode in you.
Have you ever experienced that love? Have you ever been so happy in the love of God that you had almost to weep from that love? That's not enough. You must be able to jump up and down the three levels of God's love. That love of God must connect man and the whole Creation and come back and forth between the three. When you weep, do you shed only tears? If you are really sad, three kinds of water will come out: tears, drool and sniffles. Those three will have elements in common. When you are hilarious in happiness and joy and merry-making, you shed tears with drool and sniffles flowing out. Have you ever been that happy? Have you ever missed someone enough to shed tears, with a running nose and drool flowing out? Have you ever longed for a person to that degree? If you've missed someone like that, was it for the sake of that person in the truest sense? If you reach that point, God will be right there for sure. That's the only place where you meet God -- when you are so sad, grieving, shedding tears, to have a running nose and drool flowing out -- there you can meet God.
If you cannot meet God at those two points, you can never say that there is a God at all. There is no other way for us to connect ourselves to God, except the way of the heart, and the way of love. It's very logical to say that we can meet God at those points. When you pray, you must feel that longing for God to such a degree that you shed tears, have a running nose and have drool flowing out. Only at that point will God have something to do with us.
Why is that so? When you shed tears, longing for God, you must go beyond the standard of love exercised in the Satanic world or else you will not meet God. Can you ever dream of God's loving you below the level of Satanic love? You must love each other as brothers and sisters more than they do in the Satanic world. You must love each other as husband and wife more than they do in the Satanic world, and you must love each other as parents to your children more than they do in the Satanic world. That's what Principle teaches us.
How can you do it? Should you just stay home with folded hands, weeping and sobbing, without going out to the frontlines to witness? If you are really ready to meet God, you'll do that not just by missing Him in your mind. I told you that when you miss God as the subject in relationship to you as the object, and think of Him with a longing heart, you can reach Him. That is most desirable, but things are not that way. Due to the Fall there is the Satanic force as subject to you. God cannot reach you directly because the whole Satanic world is above you like this (pointing to the blackboard), so He cannot reach you by going through the direct channel. Why is it so? In loving, you must love each other both on the spiritual and physical levels. That means your mind and body must become one with each other. The whole world of Creation is in the position of body to man as the subject or mind. So, He has to go through the Satanic world to reach you. If it weren't for the Fall, your mind could have become wholesome, so God's love could reach you immediately, but due to the Fall God has to go through the Satanic world... (pointing to the blackboard). This is myself; my truth element is here, mind, which is apt to belong to God. This part does belong to God, but we are more apt to belong to the Satanic world, since the minus elements, or our fleshly side, is stronger. Even though your mind is one with God, or tends to become one with God, your fleshly side is dragged back by the Satanic power, Satanic world. In comparison, the whole Satanic world is something like your body. Only if and when you restore your own flesh body will you meet God and be one with Him.
If you can restore your body on the family level, external level, you can meet God there. If you restore your body on the tribal, national or worldwide levels, you'll meet God there. The world of body is the world of Satan. Do you think Satan, who did not obey God, would obey you? Satan was able to hit even the body of Jesus; so, if you are not greater than Jesus, he is apt to invade you. How could you be greater than Jesus? You can, if you receive more love from God than he did. If we are supposed to receive God's love on a wider level, we must be able to restore our family in God's love and restore our clan and nation in God's love. You must make your mind a minus element or object to God as the subject, and you must be able to do this at least -- to become entirely one with God. In that case you, yourself, cannot play the role of plus to other elements, to minus elements. If you become one with God, there will be, let's say, 500 horsepower of love on your side. If you have 500 horsepower of love, but in the Satanic world they have 501, can your power defeat theirs? You must make this power stronger -- perhaps 600 or 1,000 horsepower. The stronger the power is on your side, the easier it will be for your power to conquor Satanic power. In this case, too, man's mind belongs to God and his minus elements are here on all levels -- but in order to save this man as a whole, God will come through the roundabout way to reach him or cover him, passing through the Satanic world. There is no other way for God to reach man.
In order to save one man as an individual, He has to go through the whole world, connecting everything to you. God is always ready to give you the whole world as your inheritance. By preparing the chosen nation of Israel and many things after that, He wanted you to inherit it. After inheriting everything and having your being connected with God in wholesome oneness, how much would you owe to God? God comes to save you as an individual -- going through all those stages, covering the whole nation and the whole world to reach you. You must be very grateful.
In order for God to reach an individual in Jesus' days, He had to prepare the chosen nation of the Israelites... leading that nation, which would inherit the next level of the family, governing all those things that God had in His possession. At the time of the Second Advent, God, or the Messiah, will do the same. Since you must inherit everything, He is prepared to reach you, but you must start your work and join Him, restoring everything while widening the level or scope. This mind and body together must join in perfect oneness with God... (pointing to blackboard). God must start from the top part to reach an individual, covering the whole world. I want you to know that very clearly. If you had a clear knowledge of this, you would not sit still waiting for Him to reach you, but would go out to the threshold to meet Him, out of your house, out of your station of life, returning hand-in-hand with other people to meet Him.
When the Messiah comes to you with 1,000 degrees of love, your heart of love must be the same as his. They will meet together and explode and make the whole world into one at an instant. The power of your love must be more dynamic, explosive and strong than any Satanic love, and then Satanic love will be defeated. When God's love and man's love are drawn together, like plus and minus in electricity, you can really defeat Satanic love and experience God's love covering the whole world. You will have created the climate of God's love, so that all surroundings will be in that atmosphere and know and experience God's love. All the people of the world will be swept into God's love.
God is grieving over the fact that man lost His love. Now, in order to reach you -- as He intends to -- He must go through those different stages. So, from your part, you must not stay still. You must work for the sake of God and the world, dashing out to meet Him from the other end. If the Satanic world did not exist, would God be grieve? So, the question is the existence of the Satanic world, the enemy of God's love. Unless we can liquidate every Satanic love, smashing it into naught, God's grief will remain forever. That's the way to eradicate God's grief, and that's our desire.
How can we smash the Satanic world? Because Satan knows too well that we, as children of God, are here to smash his world, he is preparing a fierce battle against us. You must know that. He won't bother with weak people, but will attack us. In order to avoid his power and win him over, we must go the reverse way. What is the reverse way like? Satan's characteristic is arrogance. In order for us to smash him, we must be humble. He would kill others in order to make himself survive, but we have to sacrifice our lives to save others. That's the reverse way we have to go. There is no other way.
We must repeat tens of thousands of times: "Those who want to lose their lives will gain their lives; and those who want to gain their lives will lose them." Satan will be afraid and will escape from us and we will survive. If you are not willing to die, Satan may be working within you and you are faced with death. If it is true that man fell in the beginning, don't you think that we have to go the reverse way in order to reach life? Our conclusion is only too natural. We must lead the kind of life, or place ourselves in the position, where Satan cannot attack us. Those who want to remove Satan from themselves, hold up your hands. When, where and how much later? Now? [NO!] In what way can you remove Satanic power from youselves? By sitting here? Then, where can you do that? Yes, in the front-line where Satan is swarming. They are waiting for us in the front-line, to fight us, and in that case are you ready to defeat them? What are our weapons to fight with and defeat them? The weapon of truth; namely, the Divine Principle. More than that, truth alone cannot do that, but love. Truth is the stick, the cane that will be helpful when we are in search of love. Then, what again is our weapon? Love? [LOVE!] God's love! Our weapon is love, higher than Satan's, stronger than Satan's, stronger than that of Adam and Eve before the Fall... Love in perfection.
If we are really one with God, in the love of God to the 100% level, there Satan can never invade, because in the territory of God's love, there is no place for Satan. With your mind 100% united into one with God, you must be ready to sacrifice your body, which still belongs to the Satanic world, and, by using your body to fight against the Satanic power, you can come back to God with mind and body united into wholesome oneness. With your mind put together with God, you want to go the reverse way. Only after you have won the people of the world, beginning with the individual, family and so on, can you really be qualified enough to return whatever you have won back to God; and only by doing that will you really have won God, on both the spiritual and physical level.
If you fight against Satan physically and defeat his power, you will be perfectly one with God, standing in the position where no Satanic power can invade you. There, you'll meet God, and will find that He was already there, waiting and searching for you. That perfect oneness with God, both on the physical and spiritual level, will place you in the position of Adam and Eve before the Fall... in perfection.
Where is the point where we will meet God? In your room or in the front-line? [ON THE FRONT-LINE!] Then would you like to stay in your room or go to the front-line? In doing that are you going to do it reluctantly, tearfully or willingly? Would you do that most unwillingly or full of enthusiasm and zeal? That is our desire. Our desire is the unity of our minds with God, our bodies with our minds, our whole being with other people. Only by doing that can we restore ourselves on the individual, family, national and worldwide levels. Let's come back to the position where we miss God very, very much. When we miss any other individual, any family, clan, tribe, nation or the whole world -- to that extent or to that degree, God will be there and waiting for us at the other end, and we will meet Him for sure to the full extent. Would you not go that way?
Therefore, why is God grieving? More than anything else, God has been sad because there has been no single person who knew God's heart -- who had this knowledge. There has been no single person like that, who could meet God in such a place; no one who was ready to fight and conquor Satan that way. Because there has never been anyone who could understand God's heart and would be ready to go through all those trials and difficulties -- however hard they might be -- to meet Him, save the whole world and return everything to Him. Now you have that kind of person with you, you have been taught this knowledge, and you know how to attack Satan and defeat him -- how to win the whole world and return it back to God's bosom; since you are ready to do that, you are most happy people. You must be most grateful to God, for this knowledge and for this readiness and zeal to fight. There are people of higher position, wealth, great knowledge in the world, but God has nothing to do with that world. Even though we may look miserable according to the worldly standard, we are the people whom God will think most highly of; we are ready to do what God would have us do.
So, God is now happy over the fact that we are here, ready to do His will; He is not grieving anymore. But in a way, He is still sad -- and He is so impatient to have you fight and conquor Satan. There are many, many elements and obstacles for you to have to go over and so, He is so impatient and so sad about that fact. We must tell Father in Heaven when we pray that we are here, saying: "We are all ready to go out and fight for Your sake and for the sake of the whole world. Don't worry about us. We will win at all costs and return the glory to You." Only in that way will we liberate Him from grief... so that He can realize His long-cherished hope of unity between God and man and unity between every true element. God sets hope in us and we have our own hopes, like a flickering fire burning in us, but we have to multiply that fire and multiply that love power and destroy the whole world of Satan to return it to God. We have now only a flickering candlelight, but we want to shed light into the whole world. The light will be multiplied and the whole world will be illuminated in the heat of God's love. So, we are the soldiers for that cause and we want to be ready to liberate God from grief.
The more difficult time we have to go through, the nearer we will be to God, so at the height of difficulties and trials you must be able to thank God for them. No longer be the person who would leave God grieving. Without Master, without you, God cannot win this world back to Himself. We are being used as His fighters, His warriors, to win against Satan. You must think about that. If you cannot realize this kind of world while our Master is on earth, you can never dream of realizing it after that.
We are placed in an awesome situation -- a dreadful situation in a way -- our every act, every thought will influence the whole world, and whether or not God will succeed depends on us. So, let us be ready with all our being to fight against Satanic power for the sake of God and the whole world. You must want to resemble God. If you should shed tears, sweat, blood for the sake of the whole world, you will find God shedding tears, sweat and blood for you. You will become the victor for sure. I want you to be courageous soldiers in the front-line in attacking and winning over Satan. If you are ready to do that, will you hold up both hands in pledge before God.
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