Pastor Hyung Jin Moon explains about the real story of Thanksgiving and about the blessing of freedom and responsibility: https://vimeo.com/193273182
Acts 23
30…Farewell
Eccliastes 3
20All go to the same place; all come from dust, and to dust all return.
Ecclesiastes 9
3This is the evil in everything that happens under the sun: The same destiny overtakes all. The hearts of people, moreover, are full of evil and there is madness in their hearts while they live, and afterward they join the dead.
Richard: Today’s readings seem to forbode the passing of a loved one.
LET US BE STRONG AND BOLD
AND RESTORE THE LOST LAND
REVEREND SUN MYUNG MOON
June 23, 1957
From the historical viewpoint, people who desired to attend God first had to fight an invisible Satan and next a visible Satan. Then they engaged in a battle with poverty due to a lack of material. Consequently, Jesus was given a temptation through bread on the personal level; next he was given a temptation through the temple on the environmental level; thirdly, he was given a symbolic temptation on the world level while standing on the top of the mountain. Such events took place based upon the principle of the struggles between good and evil.
Then what kind of heart did Moses keep in the attendance of God? He had the heart to attend God, to fight the enemy Amalek tribe in the wilderness, to fight starvation, and the courage to step forward fearlessly at the risk of his death. Moses fought Satan by himself and fought hunger for a total of eighty years, during the first forty years of his life in the palace of the Pharaoh, and during the second forty years in the Midian wilderness. When he won the fights, God called him.
Moses was not the only person who went such a path. Jesus did, too. Consequently, Jesus himself underwent the temptations from Satan that symbolize the confrontation with Satan. First, to overcome himself, there was a forty-day fasting period in which he fought against hunger, making himself an offering. Next, there was the temptation, “Make this rock into bread,” to pass through the temptation of material.
The reason Jesus had to go through this process was that of the fall, humans lost God, lost their position as a son and a daughter of God, and lost the creation. Thus, conditions were required to restore these.
Accordingly, also on a course that saints should walk, no matter the level, individual, a people, a nation, or the world, there are the temptations of Satan, who represents the world of evil. Also, instead of the glory as God’s son or daughter, there is a course of the cross to be followed. Next, it is required to overcome the suffering of hunger caused by the loss of the creation to Satan.
The Israelites in the palace of Pharaoh were united with Moses and won over the temptations from Satan, but when they were confronted with hunger while fighting Amalek in the wilderness, they came to resent Moses. Then where did this resentment against Moses derive from and why? If they had been born in the wilderness and had followed God’ will while living there, they would not have resented Moses. However, the habits developed during the life of four hundred years in Egypt and the living environment blocked their life in the wilderness. You must keep this in mind today.
In other words, the Israelites depart out of belief in Moses, but they could not forget the previous life environment and could not abandon their previous lifestyle. Thus, they came to perish. It interfered with the path of Moses and it separated them from Moses.
Consequently, the second chosen people who are to fulfill the ideology for the restoration of the land of Canaan on the worldwide level are Christians throughout the world. They can represent Israel on the worldwide level, and they should be proud of being God’s chosen people, even if they are faced with times of hardships like those of the first Israelites. At the same time, we should not follow the same footsteps as the Israelites, who perished due to their complaints and faithlessness when they were faced with starvation in the forty-year wilderness course and could not understand the viewpoint of the leader who came alone on behalf of the people.
Who destroyed the future of Jesus? They were the people who were chosen to fulfill the will of God on behalf of God, human history, and the whole. They should have led a life to fulfill God’s will and set the standard of their life of faith based upon it, but they failed to do so. That is, as the Israelites who should have upheld Moses’ will made him fall in the wilderness, the same people who should have upheld the will of Jesus made him die on the cross due to their faithlessness.
Consequently, Moses’ will was transferred to Joshua and Caleb, and they led the people into the land of Canaan. Similarly, the representatives of Joshua and Caleb in the second Israel had to inherit the will of Jesus and enter the land of Canaan on the worldwide level along with the disciples of the second Israel and build the Kingdom of Heaven on earth in that land. This is the hope of Jesus, and the ideal of the Second Coming.
Thus today we who are called for the fulfillment of the will of God should understand the historical background of the providence and should never commit the same sins on the level of the people. You should not become the ones who will again walk the same sinful path that the Israelites walked.