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REVEREND SUN MYUNG MOON SPEAKS ON
Father, You guided our ancestors without any hesitation, doing the most arduous work for six thousand years. Yet our ancestors often betrayed You. They failed to bring You joy, not standing on Your side in victory and glory. When we think about this, we cannot help but admit that we are shameful descendants of the Father.
Father! Please consider us with sympathy. Although we may be unworthy, You must hold us and restore us. Since You are well aware of this, when we think of how You have come in search of these unworthy ones, we are deeply ashamed before You. However, we have gathered with a heart of repentance before the Father who longs for us with a heart of love and is seeking us even today.
How many words of admonition do You want to give us? Yet You cannot speak as You want, and we have become incapable of communicating with You. Please guide us to understand that this is a source of infinite grief to Heaven. Let us mourn over our inadequacies.
The Last Days, when the power of death must be destroyed by the power of life, are nearing. Yet even as we thirst for life, we lack a heart of yearning for life. Please encourage and inspire us so that we can become sons and daughters who can step forward before our enemies bravely, with power and forceful heart, by depending upon the Father, the sovereign of life.
It is our wish that our hands be held by You and that we may take after You. Please, even for this hour, allow us to resemble the Father's internal sung-sang by removing all traces of defilement. Let us manifest the original beauty by resembling the external hyung-sang and glorify the Father. Father of love, we pray sincerely that in this hour You can rejoice with those of us who have cultivated the Father's original heart and have become the embodiments of the ideals of creation.
Please allow us to understand that the waves of death are hovering over us. Satan is trying his best to wipe away the power of life. Please let us first lay a solid foundation of the heart and rectify our bodies so that we can stand securely before the Father. Please guide us to feel that unless our minds and bodies are set on one goal and bow with a sincere heart, countless devils will trample us. Let us humbly and sincerely offer: "Please receive this, since this belongs to You."
Please eliminate all subjective concepts and thoughts of the past. Let us be filled with an ardent desire to call Heaven with a voice springing forth from the deepest part of our hearts. In this way, please let this be an hour when we can build a new relationship with Heaven. Give rise to a new heart, and bring about a new work of resurrection.
Now the wall of battle blocks our path. Please let us understand that we have arrived at the final stage of battle when we have to become the elite corps of Heaven and break through the wall. Please allow us to become brave soldiers of Heaven who can step forward and confront the power of death. Let us become sons and daughters of the Father who can march forward toward the enemy camp. Father, we pray that You will guide us to become the elite corps of Heaven who do not fear death and who can run silently toward victory.
Although those who are bowing their heads here may be different from one another, please let them have the same goal and the same heart. Even if our situations and states of heart may be different, let our heart toward God be the same. Please receive our sincere desire to do our very best for You.
Your sons and daughters who have gathered here have fought lonely battles. Struck by arrows shot by their families and society, they have been following the light of life and calling upon Heaven. Since You initiated everything, until the moment we can return victory and glory to the Father, please let there not be even one person who collapses out of fatigue. We have set out for the sake of the Father. Please allow us to bear the fruits of joy and broaden the foundation of the Father's glory.
This is a glorious day, so please bless all people. Bless the entire church, and bless the pitiful thirty million people of this nation.
We know that the light of life is in Heaven, and that the fate of walking the path of restoration depends upon Heaven. Father, You understand the situation of this people well. Father, You understand the state of the churches in Korea. We know that there must appear many living sons and daughters of the Father who can connect people's hearts and praise Heaven from the heart. If there are sons and daughters who are clinging to hidden altars and are desperately appealing to Heaven, please gather them together and fulfill Your words that You will use a small group of people to shame the larger multitudes.
Father! Just as the seven thousand people who did not submit to Baal were able to ward off the forces of evil, let there be a group of seven thousand people of goodness who can ward off Satan's malice. Please gather together into the Father's family all the hidden sons and daughters who can mourn with You, who can discuss and think with You. By connecting them together as members of Your family, please quickly restore the garden of glory and achieve liberation.
We entrust everything in this hour to You. Please preside over this hour from the beginning to the end. Please do not let our evil minds influence us. We pray that You will let the bows we offer You enable the whole of Heaven and earth to meet the standard of longing for the Father's glory and be in harmony. We prayed in the name of the Lord. Amen.
We sense that we have come into Your presence, and we lie prostrated after wandering in many places.
How can we ever pay back the grace You have given us by allowing us to call You "Our Father"? How can we ever pay back the grace of Your not hesitating to suffer any hardship to protect and purify us and for Your having guided us thus far? We do not have anything with which to pay it back. We cannot pay back the blessing even if we offer You our bodies; even if we offer all of our minds. We are still unworthy to even raise our heads before the Father's toils and accomplishments.
We know that the Father who guided us this far has the responsibility to save us, and that Father's strongest desire is to usher in the day of glory through us. When we reflect upon how the Father wants to be comforted by us, we are ashamed before the Father who put so much hope in us and who has persevered through the numerous difficulties of history.
If our flesh and blood can empathize with the Father's heart, and our bones have laid the framework of our character building, please let them become a basic unit which can testify to the Father's unchanging nature.
How much have You longed for the glorious and sacred incarnation whose every cell belongs to the Father and who returns glory to You? In history our ancestors could not honor You in this way. When they were following Heaven's way, they sometimes held grudges against You and abandoned You. We also know the historical fact that the chosen people had to give up their rights.
Father! Because we have inherited a sorrowful lineage, even if we may say we believe in Heaven today, we are so close to the evil world that we may betray You tomorrow. Please have compassion upon us. Please take hold of us. Please engraft our thirsty hearts onto the Father's heart of life, and give rise to the work of resurrection which can stir new life.
Many people have lived on the earth. Many people have been born and have died. Yet no one is concerned with the Father's situation and is mourning over the Father's sad heart. Please let us become those who can lament over the Father's situation and heart. Father, we sincerely wish that You will fill the earth with many sons and daughters who are burning with the desire to refute Heaven and earth, humanity, history and their fallen ancestors and to attend the Father.
For whose sake have we come here? It was not to see well-dressed or beautiful people. We who have ugly scars and wounds came to try to resemble the Father's holy sung-sang. Please do not reject us. Embrace us. You know that we are lonely because we do not have a place to rest our hearts and minds. Please comfort us during this hour.
Please appear before us with this heart and guide us as our subject partner of eternal life. Give us words of life which can penetrate our minds and bodies. Please let this be an hour when we can thank Your grace and bow to You.
We want to receive the words this hour. Father, please be with us. Please help us understand that if there is an internal gap between the speaker and the listeners, Satan will come in through that path. That is the realm Satan is seeking. Please let the heart of the speaker and the hearts of listeners be united so that we can be connected to the Father's heart and move in harmony with Him.
Your sons and daughters are on their knees and offering lonely and ardent prayers everywhere in South Korea. Please advise them, as they are suffering through all difficulties. You said that those who persevere till the end will receive salvation. Please guide us to glorify the Father by being patient and testify to the Father before the people as Your incarnations. Please bless the many churches and people who are gathering together. We prayed in the name of the Lord. Amen.
The title of the sermon I am about to give you now is "We Who Are Walking a Life Course." I will speak upon this subject.
It is commonly said that people are born and will pass away. From ancient times, even the greatest personalities have passed away. We have to think about how this pattern in history and Heaven relates to us. We will one day pass away. Although it is not clear what the relationship is, we know clearly that we came to the earth and will pass away from it after interacting in a complicated manner with many things and under the influence of some ideals.
For what purpose did we come and for what purpose are we going? Although many philosophers and religious people have tried to answer this question with all their hearts and souls, human history has progressed in sorrow. This continues to this day.
We are in an intense moment. We cannot deny that we are walking a life course that we cannot avoid. We were born through the lineage of our parents and found ourselves in a world that we never even thought about before. It is our fate that at some point in our life, we will grow old and die. No matter how great a person may be, he cannot stop the passing of his golden youth. We know the sad reality that there is no way to prevent one's aging, no matter how hard one may try.
Several times in the course of your life you probably felt deep remorse and regret during a moment of reflection, as well as a strong urge to stir things up around you. Why were we born, why should we live, and where should we go? You should not think that you were the cause of your birth. We do not know the origin and purpose of our birth. Although we were born, we were not born because that's what we wanted to do. Although we are living, it is not because we want to live that we are alive. When we die, it will not be because we want to die.
Then what do you have that is still worth being proud of? We are not born out of our own desire; we cannot live the way we want to; and we cannot avoid death. We should not be proud. If we are proud, we will only be miserable. Since we were born and are leading our life, we are to pass away after living such a life.
What is the purpose of this life? You should reflect on this question once more. Since you are not the cause, your purpose must not lie with you. Who does not want to be happy in his life? Who does not want to lead a rich and glorious life? Yet we cannot live as we want to. Still, we want to be proud of ourselves, live as we wish, and be remembered the way we want to be. In each of our hearts, we find this clash of contradictions.
Why do we, who did not cause our own birth, desire something great, wish to live well, and seek a more valuable and greater purpose? Is it because of ourselves, or is it due to some reciprocal purpose? We have to understand this clearly. There is probably no one who would raise his hand and claim that it is because of he himself. Were you born through your parents' lineage because that was what you wanted? Although your parents gave birth to you, they cannot determine the course of your life. They cannot set its outcome the way they want to. They can neither kill you nor save your life.
Who possesses this power? The day we can clarify the possessor of this power, we can rejoice centering on ourselves. People of the present era, however, are struggling and have failed to surpass this standard. We have to understand that we are these people.
For this reason, we are pursuing something greater in our hearts. Moreover, we want to push away the realm of death in our lives and become connected to a greater life and world. Moreover, since we have a heart of emotion and love, we want to transcend the world of human emotions and connect with the world of eternal and unchanging emotions. Although it is hard to explain or demonstrate, we are often pulled by these feelings. The purer your conscience is, the more you will feel that some force is prodding you to forsake this world full of contradictions.
For this reason no one alive on the earth can claim to be a good person. Upon our birth we find that we are not from a good lineage but an evil lineage. After our birth we find that we are not qualified to stand before the ideal of re-creation or to sing of our value. We cannot deny that we are unworthy, immature and imperfect. In Christianity such people are called fallen.
People's original minds were not born to live happily in a fallen world. Although human beings have been trying to turn away from the fallen path for six thousand years, they could not set the standard upon which they can claim they have avoided it completely.
Our flight from evil and our pursuit of goodness as we seek to reach a purpose is called the course of life. The path of destroying evil and adhering to goodness every day, even in the face of death, is the course of life.
For this reason your minds are shivering in fear. This is not true when you are heading towards the original homeland of the heart. When you are under the control of evil, you will feel fear that something has grabbed you. We have to remember clearly that this is because our original minds shun the sinful history, the powers of death, and the forces of darkness. We are in the course of fleeing. If there is a God, what will He do with all these refugees? How will God instruct the humanity of the world who must flee evil? If there is a Heaven, He will surely have to come up with a set of teachings.
What kind of course is the path of flight? There is no leader on earth. No one is in position to deal with other people's situations or to share his situation with other people. Although many people have lived, the fate of humanity has always been to flee. They are busy pursuing their own paths. This is the fate of a refugee. Ladies and gentlemen, when a criminal is escaping from the prison he was locked in, what will he see before him? He will surely see the path of survival, the free world, which is certainly a world he yearns for. The stronger his desire for the free world and the world of his ideal, the more he will struggle to escape from the situation he is in.
However, although humanity has to flee, they do not know the whereabouts of the garden they crave and hope for. Under these circumstances, human history continues to circle around. We have to understand clearly that people have not understood their purpose, direction and situation.
We know that human beings committed sin before Heaven when they fell. We are escaping from the unjust bondage of Satan, so we are deserters and refugees from the viewpoint of this world. Where is salvation? Where is the Kingdom of Heaven? This world is a city from which we must flee.
When we are running away, there is a way to flee successfully on the personal level. Since we cannot run away by ourselves, there are ways to flee with the family, as a people, and on the world and cosmic levels. If God does not instruct us in these ways, there is no way that we can refer to Him as the Creator, a being of love, or an absolute author of ideals.
Then where is the standard based upon which Heaven can teach us about the ways of running away? This is not some academic theory. These ways are not in Heaven. They are inside your minds. You have to understand this clearly: they are found in your minds.
The mind acts according to the principles of the universe. It wants to move without limits toward goodness. This is like a magnetic needle pointing to north and south. The principle of nature would never lose the direction and circumvent goodness. There is no such phenomenon. The human mind also seeks to move toward a certain purpose. We have to understand clearly that the mind which is orientated toward life moves through the heart, desires to distill out the truth, desires to unite with the whole, and desires to live in harmony with the doctrine of the whole. This mind is the foundation upon which Heaven can reveal the escape route.
We who are fleeing must fight if we are to maintain a heart which is orientated toward the heavenly nature. We have to fight. We have to understand clearly that depending on whether or not we reach the goals of escape, we may or may not attain salvation. This is the process we are walking through. How should we run?
Ladies and gentlemen, think about this carefully. When we are in a fight, we have to fight in a way that God desires, use the strategies that God desires, and reach the point which God desires. It is inevitable that we have to establish values which comply with the program of the sponsor.
Ladies and gentlemen, please reflect once more upon what state you are in. Since we cannot deny that we acting in a world of purpose and we are chained to that world, the crucial question we must address is what our situation is in the escape route of our life. There are those who are not awake, even when layers of the enemies' ranks are blocking the path before them. They are only dreaming about their situation, or they do not know that they are in a deep sleep. There are those who have fallen from fatigue in the middle of the path they should run on. There are all kinds of cases.
You should find yourself again. You who are participating here today should set the standard of heart, and, based upon that, discern your position and state of being and analyze yourself. Your mind yearns for something, yet without clearly understanding, you feel uneasy and fearful. For this reason, not only would you feel through natural phenomena that you should not be in the situation you are in; you will also sense it through all the things you see around you. Hence, even through these things you will have to understand the situation and state that you are in.
If you can become spiritually open, you will see that countless religious people of the distant past are crying out before the people. Many spirits are running by your side today. They are trying to awaken you by saying, "Let's go; enemies are coming." Yet your ears do not hear these voices; your eyes do not see; your bodies do not sense this. This is how tragic the situation is. There is nothing more mournful than this. This is not something that only you will lament over. This will become an unforgivable sin before Heaven, who is trying to connect the value of existence to the world of the ideals of the whole.
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