More cedar in your palace
doesn’t make you a better king
    than your father Josiah.
He always did right—
he gave justice to the poor
    and was honest.
¹⁶ That’s what it means
    to truly know me.
So he lived a comfortable life
and always had enough
    to eat and drink.

¹⁷ But all you think about
    is how to cheat
or abuse or murder
    some innocent victim.

Richard:  Unrighteousness will be judged by God.

Who Will Become the Friend of Golgotha?

Sun Myung Moon
October 19, 1958

Luke 12: 26-43

The title of the speech I would like to reflect upon with you today is “Who Will Become the Friend of Golgotha?”

As you well know, Golgotha means the place of the skull and thus is the place of death. To become a friend of Golgotha means to become a friend of death. Christians believe in Jesus of Golgotha. Golgotha reminds us of the cross of Jesus, and the cross reminds us of his internal character. His internal character reminds us that God grieved over his death. With the dying Jesus, Heaven was stricken with sorrow and the earth took delight. Jesus came for the sake of the earth and Heaven; yet only Heaven understood him as he died for Heaven and earth. We should know that this is the sorrow of history.

If the chosen people had understood Jesus as God did, human history would not have become so deviant. Jesus came as the representative of truth, life, the ideal and love. Yet the truth, life, ideal and love he proclaimed were centered on Heaven and not on humanity. They were the truth a fallen person had to find to find hope, the life he had to possess, the ideal he had to find, and the love he had to possess eternally. Although Jesus came with truth, life, the ideal and love, when he died none of these, for which humankind searched, could be found. We should realize that for this reason humankind could not help roaming about.

So far there has been no one who possesses the word of truth which emanates deeply from the Shim Jung of Jesus. No one has the life which deeply grasps the bone and flesh of Jesus. There has been no one on earth who possesses the ideal to which Jesus aspired with his united mind and body and the love which enabled him to bring people together and run toward one purpose. Jesus, who came with the heavenly truth, life, the ideal and love sought to fulfill God’s ideal and will of love centering on earthly people and to fulfill the unifying purpose of the Creator God. Because of the lack of faith and the betrayal of our ancestors, however, in the course of history the truth, life, ideal and love God tried to find have vanished.

Thus, buried in fallen ties, humankind has had to wander around looking for the true word, life, ideal and love. Therefore, there should come a time when in the last days humanity can go through the woe-stricken process of battle in history and find one life. In other words, there should come a time when the common purpose is achieved, with a movement of one life directing the world and one ideal embracing all humankind. The sages who have come to serve God’s will have hoped that humankind would harmonize into inseparable oneness. In the last days, the unifying movement of love occurs which can melt anything. We are in a desperate time when humankind is living in the last period of history in distress, bitterness and fear. We must feel again how the sages have been struggling, disregarding death, to achieve such a day.

Though Jesus died on the cross, it does not mean complete ruin. Rather, his truth, life and love remain after his death. How then can humankind find this remaining word, life, ideal and love? You should know that this is the final question man should resolve.