Joshua 22
4-25 We built that altar because we were worried. Someday your descendants might tell our descendants, “The Lord made the Jordan River the boundary between us Israelites and you people of Reuben and Gad. The Lord is Israel’s God, but you’re not part of Israel, so you can’t take part in worshiping the Lord.”
Your descendants might say that and try to make our descendants stop worshiping and obeying the Lord. 26 That’s why we decided to build the altar. It isn’t for offering sacrifices, not even sacrifices to please the Lord.[g] 27-29 To build another altar for offering sacrifices would be the same as turning our backs on the Lord and rebelling against him. We could never do that! No, we built the altar to remind us and you and the generations to come that we will worship the Lord. And so we will keep bringing our sacrifices to the Lord’s altar, there in front of his sacred tent. Now your descendants will never be able to say to our descendants, “You can’t worship the Lord.”
But if they do say this, our descendants can answer back, “Look at this altar our ancestors built! It’s like the Lord’s altar, but it isn’t for offering sacrifices. It’s here to remind us and you that we belong to the Lord, just as much as you do.”
Jeremiah 36
36 During the fourth year that Jehoiakim[a] son of Josiah[b] was king of Judah, the Lord said to me, “Jeremiah, 2 since the time Josiah was king, I have been speaking to you about Israel, Judah, and the other nations. Now, get a scroll[c] and write down everything I have told you, 3 then read it to the people of Judah. Maybe they will stop sinning when they hear what terrible things I plan for them. And if they turn to me, I will forgive them.”
God and Humanity Should Live Together
Rev. Sun Myung Moon
January 11, 1959
Prayer
Father, please enable us to understand the grieving heart of Jesus, who had to speak to the beloved disciples about the imminent end of his own earthly life and his departure to the Father’s land. In a temporal sense, we are separated from Jesus by 2,000 years; yet time can be transcended in the world of Shim Jung. Hence, please arouse the fire of direct experience where we can envision Jesus with a disheartened countenance and saddened heart as he earnestly admonished his disciples. This is a scene for which we humans cannot help yearning.
Who on earth understood the heart of Jesus? Since there was no one who experienced heavenly sorrow in seeing his careworn figure, a sorrow which struck to the depth of the heart, we know that Heaven could not help lamenting over those people. Please enable us to sympathize in our hearts with the sorrow of Jesus. Without even one disciple who understood the heavenly Shim Jung and who called out “Lord!” He had to live under constant suspicion and thus ended his woe-filled life.
Although Jesus came to humankind with the heavenly Shim Jung and on heavenly business, people treated him according to their whims and persecuted him. They drove him into extreme loneliness. In spite of this woe and anguish, however, Jesus could not abandon the people. To pioneer the way to the garden of life, he was willing to go to Gethsemane and go the way of the cross at Golgotha. Please enable us to understand the sad truth that there was not even one trustworthy disciple who could truly merge with Jesus’ miserable heart.
We know that when Heaven comes looking for us in the last days, we should become the heavenly children who can carefully uphold the final Shim Jung of Heaven and who can connect our mind and body and experience the Shim Jung in heart and Word. We know that past sorrows are because our ancestors were at fault and did not understand the heavenly Shim Jung. Please enable us to treat Heaven with these thoughts in mind and plead, “Father,” with the orphan heart of Jesus. Please enable us to connect with the Shim Jung at that time. Make these people the disciples who can be trusted with an open heart, who can bear witness to Jesus. We sincerely desire this.
Thomas said, “Lord, we do not know where you are going” (John 14:5), and in John 14:8, Phillip said, “Lord, show us the Father.” Please let the people here feel how grave was Jesus’ sorrow when he heard his disciples demanding that he show them the Father.
Teach us to sympathize with the Shim Jung of Jesus, who had to conclude his life and leave behind disciples who did not know that Jesus lived with God. Teach us to sympathize with the heart of Jesus, who lived all his life for the sake of humankind, unable to see the fruits of his life, consoling God while his heart grieved.
Father, Your sons and daughters have prostrated themselves in Your presence here, so please bring their hearts together. Although they have nothing, please guide them to experience the Shim Jung You have given them, a desperate Shim Jung You tried to manifest through Jesus.
Make us the children who can represent the entire Shim Jung of Heaven, children who long for the heavenly Will and the world of heavenly Shim Jung. Allow us to appear before the creation without shame. We sincerely pray that You allow us to understand the heart of God and Jesus, who are waiting for the sons and daughters of whom they can be proud in front of the whole of creation.
Father! Please lead the thirty million people who are asleep under the deep wave of death. Guide the churches You have established to unify to fight against the powers of darkness with the authority of life. Although we are following the Will, we do not know what is the Will. Although we are trying to follow the heavenly path, we do not know what that path is like. Father! Please grant us the power to realize all this. Please bless us.
Father, please guide these sons and daughters of Yours to realize the desperate Shim Jung of Heaven on behalf of the nation. Allow them to stand closest to You. Father, we sincerely desire that You allow us to bow down before You with impassioned hearts that can listen to Your admonitions and cry out, “My Father, my Father,” embracing Your desperate situation.
Please help us understand that Satan is covering our eyes even now, by all cunning means, to abuse the world of Shim Jung. Please allow us to be offered to You as a living sacrifice by bringing our hearts together as one.
We must find Your path of life at this time. We must make a relationship of life with You and hear Your words of life. As I try to convey Your words with this understanding, please let the hearts of the speaker and those of the listeners become one, seized by a Shim Jung of earnest longing. Father, we sincerely pray You allow us to experience Your original ideal of creation with our Shim Jung, to receive Your Shim Jung as ours, and to be re-created through being moved by Your Word. We entrust You with everything. Please realize Your desires and embrace our lonely brothers and sisters. We pray in the name of the Lord. Amen.