Cheon Seong Gyeong 587
What are the laws of heaven? They
are to promote public righteousness.
Book 5 • Earthly Life and the Spirit World 588
Private matters belong to Satan, and
public matters belong to God. Go the
way of public righteousness. Even if
everyone opposes you on this course, if
you are not disturbed by the opposition
but go the way of hardship with vitality,
you will become a person of heaven who
will welcome spring. (47-270, 1971.8.29
Cheon Seong Gyeong 588
People today struggle internally and
externally at the crossroads between
good and evil, and public and private,
in their daily lives. In many cases, they
vacillate between the two and finally fall
into a self-centered, private lifestyle. Yet
those who do that will perish. Therefore,
they must repent for their past self-cen-
tered, private lives, grit their teeth, and
push themselves back into public life.
People tend to waver between these two
lifestyles. They are more inclined toward
living privately, and end up distancing
themselves from the public good. This
has been your life of faith until today.
Therefore, all those with a private life-
style must repent. (31-242, 1970.6.4)
The Religious Person’s Attitude
Sun Myung Moon
March 29, 1959
To gallantly travel the path of difficulty, the path of persecution and death while walking the path of faith, there is something you must feel first. You must feel that your birth and your being of a particular nation or group was not the result of your individual wish. You will not be able to deny that you were born on this earth by having been drawn into motion that even you yourselves cannot understand. When we think again about how the motive of my being originated and was given to me, how I was to go through this kind of course and am a resultant being, we must not boast of ourselves or our beings. We must boast about the being who has something to show off within the ideological realm of history, the whole, and the future.
Unless you have this kind of conviction and feeling now, a more complicated matter than you might think will occur in your path of faith. Sorrowful and difficult things will take place. You will face undeserved death. You will easily abandon your ties with the heavenly principles. You will stand in a position where it is easy for you to betray Heaven.
Therefore, we must have a heart that is deeply sensitive toward God’s ideology and reflect upon our lives in light of this ideology. We should live feeling that our individual selves are sacrificial offerings for the sake of glorifying cosmic relations, for the sake of forming a connection with the ideology of the infinite world of faith. As long as we lead a life of faith in which such an ideology does not disappear from our minds and in which such a feeling does not depart from our hearts, no one will dare intrude upon or subjugate us on this earth.
You must know that our ancestors felt a lot about such a connection. The people who began after Jacob received the blessing of being Israel had the ideology of being God’s chosen people. We know that this sense of being the chosen people established the history of the Jewish people. It was the base of hope in the course of building a new garden in the land of bliss. It was the heritage of the history of the restorational providence. This applied not only to the people, but also to the national leader who guided the people.
God sought out Noah and raised him to let humanity, which had abandoned Heaven for the 1600 years after Adam, form new ties of promise. Noah was not looked up to by the people of his time. He was of no importance in the eyes of those people. However, Noah understood the heart of Heaven, who wished to resolve the great regret through choosing a man like him. That is why Noah proceeded forward, surmounting all difficulties for 120 years, holding onto Heaven’s will and command.
Noah came to realize the preciousness of the relationship with which Heaven had raised him up, called him and commanded him. The deeper his understanding became, the greater his relationship with Heaven. As days went by, he felt deeply about the greatness of the will of the internal heart of God. For that reason, although no one gave him recognition and numerous people ridiculed and rejected him, Noah did not abandon the building of the ark for 120 years.