Cheon Seong Gyeong Ⅱ - 308. New life through repentance
28 Some people say they will begin their life of faith when they grow old, that they will go to heaven by having faith when they come close to death. They couldn’t be further from the truth. You cannot go to heaven that way. The time when you begin your life centered on God is important. If you begin your life of faith in your twilight years, it amounts to having spent a lifetime betraying God. In that case you have to repent proportionally to your betrayal. Those who persist in saying that when they are old they will somehow have faith and then go to heaven are foolish. (32-032, 1970.06.14) 29 Some members here have lived a life of faith knowing God’s Will for only one year, others for more than ten years or half a lifetime. The issue then is whether you have stood still, made progress or retreated. You need to clearly know where you stand and then you can go over the next hill. You may have made significant progress in the past, but if you are at a standstill today, God’s living vitality cannot be with you and you cannot maintain a loving relationship with God. You may have made tremendously positive strides in the past, moving forward with boundless value, boundless vitality and the boundless power of love, but if you are now at a standstill you are already separated from God. (32-019, 1970.06.14) 30 Repentance is absolutely necessary for fallen humanity to enter God’s realm of life and love. If one hundred points worth of sins have accumulated through our ancestors up to now, that much greater effort and repentance is needed. Hence when we speak of our life of faith, we cannot leave out repentance. We were born through countless generations of ancestors. If our ancestors were good, then as their descendants we will automatically be within reach of God’s realm of life. However, if we have evil ancestors, we will find ourselves far removed from God’s realm of life. For a person who is distant from God’s realm of life to draw near to it, a period of repentance that outweighs the evils committed by his or her ancestors is absolutely necessary. Unless this person completes this task, he or she will be unable to access a world of vitality greater than his or her own. Because of this, the path of faith requires heartfelt tears of repentance. (32-024, 1970.06.14) |