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REVEREND SUN MYUNG MOON SPEAKS ON
We the unworthy have come before the Father, who governs life and death. Father, please receive us. Please take us in accordance to Your Will.
Although we want to dwell inside the realm of life and offer praise to the Father, we are still bound by the sinful nature that dwells inside the realm of death. Father, You have been conducting the providence of restoration to guide us to the new realm. Please be present here in this hour and dismantle the realm of death. Grant the grace of life and resurrection.
Eternal Father, please allow this to be an hour when we can live our lives with the original value of creation. Allow us to become those who can sing praises to the supreme goodness of the Father.
Due to the fall of the first human ancestors, our connection of life to heaven and earth has been severed. The archangel, who should have offered praise on behalf of the angelic world, betrayed Heaven and failed to complete his responsibility.
Since You have called upon us today, please alleviate through us the bitterness You have felt because no one has recited poetry for You. Please consult with us about Your internal situation, which You have not been able to share with anyone. Raise us to become people who can connect with all people and with Heaven. Father, this is our sincere wish.
My Father, we sincerely wish that You guide us to remain loyal to You. You have longed to share Your joys of creation with us. Allow us to build a solid bond with You as embodiments of life.
Please reveal to us that You are looking for someone who can offer You sincere songs of praise, that You long for us to stand as objects who can cooperate with You. Please allow us to fathom the heart of the Father, who has established the ideals of creation and toiled until now to allow us to govern everything. Please allow us to offer infinite help, praise and inspiration to the Father.
We the unworthy have come in the presence of the Father. Please allow us to understand that we cannot achieve any condition the Father wishes us to fulfill, if we center our lives on ourselves. Please allow us to be able to fathom the Father's heart and situation. Father, this is our sincere wish.
Father, we know that during the last week we have committed many things which deviated from Your will; yet, even just for this hour, please allow us to build a genuine common base with You as You desire. Allow us to be embraced inside the Father's bosom of love as embodiments of goodness.
This is a glorious day. Please bless all people and bless this pitiful nation. Please embrace the lonely members inside the bosom of Your grace. We, the unworthy, bow before You. Please govern us. Let no other rule us.
Father of love, please do not let this be an hour when the forces of darkness invade. Let it be a time when we can harmoniously share our hearts with You in this sanctified place and bow before You. Hoping that You will personally govern us from the first of the hour to the last, we pray in the name of the Lord. Amen.
Please let this be an hour when we can commemorate the actual hyung sang of Christ, who originally came to rule heaven and earth. Let this be an hour when we can commemorate his heart as he was praying for his enemies, shedding blood on the hill of Golgotha. Please let us feel deeply, to the core of our flesh and bones, that this is the saddest thing that could have happened on the earth.
Father, we sincerely pray that You allow us to experience, within ourselves, the sorrowful heart of Jesus Christ and understand the bitter anguish of Heaven. We pray further that we can be concerned about Satan, who committed the historical sin, as well as about the direction our descendants will take in the future.
For 6,000 years, You have repeated Your labors and the providence of tears to find us. We are neither worthy nor dignified. You have been concerned for us every hour and every day, and You were never afraid of suffering wounds in Your heart. Please allow us to open the gate to our hearts wide and take after Yours. Please allow us to move our bodies and safeguard the footsteps of toils.
We who have passed through the course of sins and betrayed Heaven in sin have gathered in the presence of You, thoroughly exhausted, having attained nothing. Although we know we are unworthy to stand in Your holy presence, since it is our fate to find You, we bow down before You, cherishing Your heart. Therefore, Father of compassion, please forgive us. Father of love, please show us mercy.
Father, You have endured and continued to battle to find us. Please raise Your whip of advice. If some evil elements remain within us that keep us from You, please remove them. If we do not listen to Your advice, then please use Your whip to eliminate those evil elements from us, so that we may connect to the heart of Heaven and obey the commands of God. My Father, this is our sincere wish.
Father, please look down upon these thirty million people with compassion. Please be compassionate toward these people, who have crossed the valleys of sorrow in the course of their history. They have survived until this moment, even though they were lost and had to search for the way. Please allow Heaven's new message of righteousness to be conveyed to this people, who has been struggling without knowing their true destination. Please grant the day when we can build a new altar of resurrection. Please allow a time of new glory for these people.
We know that You have gathered us here and have ordered us to become sacrifices for the people. Please allow us not to continue to blame ourselves for not being able to cope with the responsibilities Heaven has bestowed upon us, but let us become the sacrifices who can offer all that we have for God's will and become the sons and daughters who can penetrate Satan's city with a bomb and blow it up.
These people are not the only ones who are wandering aimlessly, not knowing where they should go. Please ring the bells of new commandments upon the countless numbers of humanity who live on the earth, and manifest the light of life. Please let the hour come to us quickly when we can introduce the Father's one day of glory. Father, we pray for this from the depths of our hearts.
Father, You have called upon us and have revealed to us the entire will of the providence! Now we have come to understand Your will. Please perform Your works so that we can work to accomplish that will.
Please spur our steps when we falter and invigorate our bodies when we hesitate, so that we may go toward the blessed land which the Father desires with a new determination. Father, it is our sincere to become such sons and daughters.
Please take care of Your sons and daughters who have gathered here. They lie prostrate with desperate hearts. Therefore, please open Your hands of compassion. Please embrace them with the bosom of love, and grant them the glory of re-creation. We know that, at this moment, lonely members everywhere in the countryside are bowing before You. Please take notice of their sincere hearts and grant them the day when all their wishes are fulfilled. Personally manifest Your glory and delight in them.
We bow down before You now. Even though we have not brought any gift, please allow us to expose all our stained hearts and repent before You. Please allow us to expose all that evil has defiled and receive the grace of compassion through our repentance.
Please remove all our concepts. Allow us to revert to the heart of a child. Allow us to be held by Heaven's power and move in harmony with Heaven's motion. Allow us to attain life and sing of the Father's glory.
Although countless satans are eagerly watching us, please do not let any of us fall prey to their temptations. We hope that the Father will rule us. We pray all this in the name of the Lord.
Prayer
Father, we are like orphans who do not know where we should go or in what circumstances we live, but who blindly follow the flow of history without securing the center of life. We have been pushed back and have survived with a pitiful existence until today.
We did not know that the Father was there, holding us and weeping when we were sad. We did not know that our Master has worked day and night to find us, we who were shackled to the realm of death. Please let us understand that it is more precious to come to know and experience these truths than to win both heaven and earth.
Let us understand that we have a Father who has labored for us and has been deeply concerned about our lives. Let us then serve the Father with all our minds and bodies with a sense of great awe. Let us understand the heart of the Father who took wounding blows in our place, who held us and embraced us when we fell down due to exhaustion, and who comforted us and showed us our path. Please allow us to reflect deeply upon our hypocritical lives in which we have not lived up to our words. Please allow us to become one with the heart of the Father and to become the sons and daughters who can fathom the situation of the Father. Please allow us to become inseparably united with the Father and to mourn over Heaven's sorrow as our own and to rejoice in Heaven's joy as our own. Please allow us to consider Heaven's affairs our affairs and see Heaven's responsibilities as our responsibilities. Father, please allow us to concretely feel that we must shoulder the responsibility to fight the myriad satans with an unchanging heart and become a sacrifice to save humanity.
Heaven never dozes, even as we doze. Heaven never sleeps, even as we sleep. The Father has worked hard to awaken this people and guide them. We who have come before You are unworthy, so please forgive us. If there is someone who is dozing off, please chastise them. If there is someone who has been hurt, please pour oil on them and wrap the wound.
If someone is desperately trying to find Heaven, please embrace him and comfort him during this hour. We did not realize that the Father understands our situations and has forgiven our actions, even those which are difficult to forgive. Please allow this to be a time when we can bring out all our difficulties and sorrows from the depths of our hearts and replace them with what You give us. Father, this is our sincere desire.
Father, we pray from the depths of our hearts that You eliminate all wrong elements in our minds. Allow us to make a firm determination to become one with Your heart and sung sang.
Please let no one among us try to fathom Your nature with our concepts, but let us completely obey You and unite with Your will, to be molded as You desire. If we have some element within us which You cannot forgive, then please remove it from within us and personally command us.
Please grant them the words of truth You wish to give. More than any words, we need the new words that come from the heart of the Father. Please allow us to remove all distance in between and immediately feel Your heart, so that we can feel Your feelings and heart as our own. We sincerely pray that You allow us to experience the Father's grief and alleviate Your bitterness. Allow us to feel the impact of the new words of truth in our minds and bodies.
Please let the heart of the speaker and the hearts of the listeners be completely united, and multiply Your grace in this hour. Praying that You will extend Your hands of compassion to all the lonely members who are bowing to You all across the nation, we pray all this in the name of the Lord. Amen.
Human beings have walked the long course of history, not knowing their destination. With what ideology were they born? At what destination will they arrive with the aid of that ideology? Based on what value are they going to connect to what purpose? You know very well that people have been struggling because they have not found a complete solution to any of these issues.
When people of faith discuss their existence, they say that their existence began from Heaven and will end in Heaven and that they are pursuing the ultimate value before the will of God. Yet, I believe that there must come a time when even the average person thinks like that. Although all we think about is centered on ourselves, our human purpose is not to be found in ourselves. We sense deep within us that we seek to transcend ourselves and be connected to some world of ideology.
However, there is a gap of time and space between that world and where we are now. If something can bridge this gap, it is not an academic theory or some clever means. This gap can be bridged only when we enter the world of the heart.
"Heart" has been a controversial topic in the religious sphere and in the areas of culture and the arts. There is heart at the level of the individual, heart at the levels of the family, the society, the nation and the world. Furthermore, if a Creator exists, an actual Lord, it is undeniable that this Lord is moving in line with the heart.
People live and act based on their hearts. People act to solve problems based on their hearts, and they build relationships based on that too. This is how society, the world and Heaven's principles operate.
When we take the universe and the cosmos as a whole, the center of their activities is heart. In other words, there is no entity which does not abide by principles based on the heart. We have to understand this.
When we reflect on ourselves with respect to the heart, what kind of heart do we possess? What kind of heart do society and the people of the world possess? If there is a God who is trying to realize a unified cosmos, what kind of heart does He have? The important question is through what means and relationships the hearts are to be connected. If a great religion emerges which can help individuals transcend their hearts and even transcend their societies, nations and the natural world to connect to the heart of God, then all things of creation will naturally wish to belong within the realm of this religion.
What is the ultimate purpose of our pursuing greater goodness, higher beauty, and greater emotional love? It is to connect with the heavenly heart of the Creator. We must reflect upon this situation again.
When we examine the heart of God, the heart of the heavenly principles, and the heart of human principles, it is true that they are not moving toward one purpose as they should. Ethics in human society do not have the same orientation as the heavenly principles which follow the laws of the providence. If we were to use religious language, we can say that this is the result of the fall. Due to the fall, the heart of the Creator, the heart of the heavenly principles, and the heart of human principles are in conflict.
We must understand our situation and realize the state of our society and world. We must stop in our footsteps to behold the resurrected natural world again, to behold the heart of the Creator in a new light, and to look into the actual situations of society again. We must point out our minds and bodies again, otherwise, a new world of ideology and love cannot emerge in human history. We must look at the One who has stopped in His tracks to protect us.
We must stop and feel within ourselves an urgent necessity to reflect upon the One who has been working to build a relationship with us in our lives, even without our conscious knowledge. He is the One who has been taking care of our living environment and protecting us.
The topic of the sermon I want to give to you today is "Let Us Halt in Our Steps and Behold the One Who Is Protecting Us." I would like to speak on this topic.
We must learn to look at the whole picture. Furthermore, we must learn to lift our gaze and behold the world of minuscule organisms. We must lift our gaze and look at the actual situation of society, which is being destroyed by waves of death. We must lift our gaze and look at the world of emotions and ideologies, which longs to link the world of our hearts to the world of ideology.
We must think about connecting everything from the minuscule bacteria to the entire cosmos. We must think about the horizontal world and the three-dimensional world, which is the world of the mind.
The earth in which we live is constantly rotating around the sun, according to the principles of the universe. Not only the earth, but the sun itself is rotating. The sun, which is 1.3 million times more massive than the earth, is in constant motion. In the universe, there are vast galaxies that are many billion times more massive than the sun. We call these galaxies "miniature universes." In the universe, there are countless such galaxies. We call all of these together the "great universe." We must open our hearts wide and look at the huge universe. God, who created this enormous universe, has been acting according to the unchanging principles of the universe for many billions of years. God has been moving this entire universe with powers which are beyond our imagination and sensations.
The more we think about God, the Creator of this universe, the more we bow our heads before His magnitude. The Creator of this gigantic universe is the Father who cares for us, the God who protects us, our great Hero. We must comprehend this by opening our minds wide.
After creating this great universe, God looked upon all things of the universe with great delight. If God could talk, how much He would have said! If He could boast, how much He would have boasted!
Although the universe is so great it cannot be measured by numbers, God's purpose of creation cannot be found in the universe itself. God's purpose of creation can be found on the earth, which is only a small planet inside the solar system, and within human beings, who are even smaller than dust particles when compared to the great universe. When we think about this amazing fact, how delighted, grateful and glorious must we feel?
As we behold all things of the natural world, as we behold the beauty and harmony of how all things follow the seasonal changes in natural phenomena, we should not look at them without appreciation of their profundity. When we look at a flying bird, butterfly or bee, when we look at the flowing streams or the tall mountains, we should learn to feel that each of them is God's creation and the manifestation of God's internal heart.
Even though there are many artists and authors, each of them uses countless ways to describe the beauty of the natural world. This world is closely connected to the arts and literature. When we understand that without the world of creation, the natural world, we would be deprived of the object of our joy, we come to realize that we cannot live without it. We must behold nature through this connection of heart. Furthermore, from the infinitesimal germs, bacteria and cells that are in circular or square shapes, to the great and immutable heavenly bodies, all living and non-living things are acting and moving toward a certain purpose in an orderly manner.
Why did God create all this? With an open heart, you should reflect again upon the fact that He created the universe for the sake of human beings on the earth, so insignificant and small when compared to the gigantic heavenly bodies.
God should be delighted to watch over what He has created, yet He has never been happy. That is because when human beings are suffering in sorrow, there is nothing more sorrowful for God. Nevertheless, human beings do not even feel this sorrow. We have become so insensitive, we do not even feel it. However, throughout history, God the Creator has mourned before human beings did and worried before human beings did, and He has labored for the sake of human beings.
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