Deuteronomy 28

27The Lord will afflict you with the boils of Egypt and with tumors, festering sores and the itch, from which you cannot be cured. 28The Lord will afflict you with madness, blindness and confusion of mind. 29At midday you will grope about like a blind person in the dark. You will be unsuccessful in everything you do; day after day you will be oppressed and robbed, with no one to rescue you.

Richard:  This sounds very much like the symptoms of AIDS.  A lot of people seem to forget that AIDS spread like wildfire at the beginning of the epidemic through men at homosexual bath houses who had hundreds of sex partners.

Mark 6

8These were his instructions: “Take nothing for the journey except a staff—no bread, no bag, no money in your belts. 9Wear sandals but not an extra shirt. 10Whenever you enter a house, stay there until you leave that town. 11And if any place will not welcome you or listen to you, leave that place and shake the dust off your feet as a testimony against them.”

Richard:  These are Jesus’ instructions tot he disciples.  How would this look today; how would we carry out discipleship?  Leave your comments below (when logged in).

Let Us Celebrate Christmas on Behalf of Heaven

Sun Myung Moon
December 25, 1957
Chung Pa Dong Church
Seoul, Korea

Luke 2

1 In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world.

By virtue of Jesus’ birth, the providential will that God had been working to fulfill for the 4,000 years since Adam had come to pass. Moreover, we can also say that the wish of our ancestors in the history of the dispensation of restoration since the fall of Adam was also realized through Jesus’ birth. We must think again about the fact that Jesus’ birth was the moment when both the will of God and the will of humanity were accomplished.

Since the birth of Jesus, 2,000 long years of history have passed. Now we feel we are living in the same kind of historic, universal and intense period as the time when Jesus was born 2,000 years ago, when the will of God and the will of humanity were realized.

Although Jesus was born in the small, bloody body of a baby, he was the incarnation who could represent the Will of God. His crying voice and movements represented God’s grief of 4,000 years. They manifested the pattern of all the things that God tried to carry out on the earth. They expressed the sorrow suffered during the 4,000-year course of history when indemnity was being paid for the sins of humanity. Therefore, through his birth, we could usher in a scene of joy when a new history of goodness began.

When we think about how, due to one man, Jesus, the worries of God, the worries of humanity throughout the course of history and the worries of that time could all be gotten rid of, it is clear that Jesus was truly an immense personality. We stand in awe of him. However, in his time, there was no one who bowed before him with utmost sincerity on behalf of the heart of the Father, the hearts of all people and the countless prophets. You must feel indignant about this.

What kind of mind-set then is appropriate for those of us who have gathered to celebrate this birthday of Jesus? We must be able to represent the heart of the Father and the hearts of the countless prophets who came throughout the course of history. Moreover, we must feel the desire to offer a gift to baby Jesus on behalf of the hearts of the chosen people, who longed for the promised day at that time and yearned and prayed for the Messiah. You have to understand that only then can we comfort God’s heart and the hearts of the faithful believers of that time. Though history has passed by, you can attain the right to participate in the glory of the Father with the qualifications of the chosen people in place of the Israelites.

Furthermore, you must offer gratitude with the feeling that the birthday of Jesus is the day that all things in Heaven and earth can express joy. It was the day of God’s liberation from grief, as well as the day that the wish of all people was brought to fulfillment. While doing so, you must offer the gift you have prepared through your life of faith, with a nervous heart. With the heart that represents the heart of Father, the historical heart and the heart of the time, you must bow before Jesus and congratulate him.

Let us then examine who worked and how hard they worked for the birth of Jesus Christ. First, God worked for 4,000 years. Our ancestors, many prophets, wise men and heroes also worked hard. Moreover, the followers of Judaism, who represented the chosen people of the Israelites, also toiled and offered their lives. Similarly, until the birth of Jesus, you can find many hidden historical efforts that do not seem to have any direct relationship to it.

That is not all. Jesus lived his thirty years of life after coming to the earth. Since then, 2,000 dispensational years have passed for the sake of the will of the heavenly principles. Here we can find the historical grief of the past that existed before Jesus, as well as the 2,000-year history after Jesus that has been added to it.

The hope of Jesus, who was born for the sake of historical liberation, the liberation of the period, and the liberation of the future, has not reached fulfillment even now, 2,000 years later, because of the mistakes of the people during his time. Therefore, the sorrow of the 2,000 years after the death of Jesus has been piled on top of the sorrow of the 4,000-year history before his time.