Ephesians 6
5 Slaves, you must obey your earthly masters. Show them great respect and be as loyal to them as you are to Christ. 6 Try to please them at all times, and not just when you think they are watching. You are slaves of Christ, so with your whole heart you must do what God wants you to do. 7 Gladly serve your masters, as though they were the Lord himself, and not simply people. 8 You know that you will be rewarded for any good things you do, whether you are slaves or free.
Richard: I think that this speaks to our attitude as we do the duties that God gives us in life (through our conscience, mainly, but also to others such as our parents, or Christ). We should give obeisance to Christ and be glad to go the way of sacrifice, knowing that we will reach the goal of happiness after the course of hardship. The problem is, as Rev. Moon stated yesterday “We the followers of Jesus must go the way he went, whether we live or die. The problem is whether you really want to go this way.”
Isaiah 30
29 The Lord’s people will sing as they do when they celebrate a religious festival[e] at night. The Lord is Israel’s mighty rock,[f] and his people will be as happy as they are when they follow the sound of flutes to the mountain where he is worshiped.
The Ideal Kingdom of Heaven, Our Hope
Rev. Sun Myung Moon
February 22, 1959
We must go. We must go over the idea of faith that religious people hold. Furthermore, we must go over the cross of Jesus. Beyond the cross, we must go over Jesus’ heart of resurrection. We must even go over God’s heart and comfort Him. We must advance toward that kind of position.
How can we stop our footsteps from heading toward that longed-for place, the place where God resides, the place where Jesus dwells, the place of the true brotherhood of humankind? Before you lies the road of ideology that we must go, no matter what on earth holds us, stepping over every obstacle. We must even lead the people who have been those obstacles into following that road.
Have you ever thought about God’s hard work in finding us? From the day of the fall, God always sought Adam. God never failed to follow Adam’s descendants. He has been seeking you when you did not know He was doing so. Have you ever sought God? You must know that 6,000 years of sadness and millions of people’s deaths obstructed His path. When we know the hard work of God in seeking us, we should have the same kind of heart as we in turn seek God.
Jesus did not come to found an ideology for himself. Jesus came as the center of all people, to introduce all people to the garden of happiness and hope. Thus, he worked hard for all people, he suffered hardships for all people, he walked the road of sadness for all people. No one in heaven or earth was unrelated to Jesus’ sadness; yet he had no place to go. Nevertheless, Jesus did not lament and grieve over that situation; he left behind a new hope. Subsequently, he completed the standard of the Messiah and became the owner of pioneering a new garden of hope. We must understand this point.
We did not know about Jesus’ situation before now, but now we can see that Jesus passed away bearing sorrow and pain of heart. Since we now know this, we must go after Jesus, of whom human beings have let go. We must meet him. As you are filled with longing for Jesus, you should seek to meet him. Jesus fought to meet God, who had suffered for 4,000 years. Likewise, holding God’s hand, you must possess a mind filled with longing to meet the heavenly appearance that represents the 2,000 years after Jesus and the 6,000 years of history. You can meet God and Jesus, who were comforting you when you were sad, who were suffering with you when others wronged you and mistreated you. There is a hidden story behind meeting them.
When Jesus was passing away, he told many people many things. He said, “I will prepare a place for you in Heaven.” He promised to meet them again. We still have a way to go and a day when we can meet Jesus. Therefore, the conviction to go is not enough. We must meet that person.
The day we meet is the consummation of human history and the day of the second coming, in Christian terms. Therefore, you should possess a heart that longs to see the day of the second coming and a heart to march on to that day. You should go, overcoming hardships, persecution and wrongdoing and break down the gate of hell in the realm of death. The Kingdom of Heaven is a place where all conditions through which Satan can accuse us are vanquished, and everyone moves according to God’s ideal. Since the Kingdom of Heaven is a place free of all agony, if you leave behind any condition of suffering on earth, you will suffer in Heaven, to the degree of your lack of fulfillment on earth.
We human beings are in a situation to connect only after walking all the roads. We can connect only after walking all the historical roads that Jesus has already passed. Who are we to meet?
Richard: The day we meet the second advent of Christ is the day that we meet Jesus again.