Deuteronomy 14
24 But suppose you can’t carry that ten percent of your harvest to the place where the Lord chooses to be worshiped. If you live too far away, or if the Lord gives you a big harvest, 25 then sell this part and take the money there instead. 26 When you and your family arrive, spend the money on food for a big celebration. Buy cattle, sheep, goats, wine, beer, and if there are any other kinds of food that you want, buy those too. 27 And since people of the Levi tribe won’t own any land for growing crops, remember to ask the Levites to celebrate with you.
Matthew 1
1 Jesus Christ came from the family of King David and also from the family of Abraham. And this is a list of his ancestors. 2-6a From Abraham to King David, his ancestors were:
Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Judah and his brothers (Judah’s sons were Perez and Zerah, and their mother was Tamar), Hezron;
Ram, Amminadab, Nahshon, Salmon, Boaz (his mother was Rahab), Obed (his mother was Ruth), Jesse, and King David.
6b-11 From David to the time of the exile in Babylonia, the ancestors of Jesus were:
David, Solomon (his mother had been Uriah’s wife), Rehoboam, Abijah, Asa, Jehoshaphat, Jehoram;
Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, Hezekiah, Manasseh, Amon, Josiah, and Jehoiachin and his brothers.
12-16 From the exile to the birth of Jesus, his ancestors were:
Jehoiachin, Shealtiel, Zerubbabel, Abiud, Eliakim, Azor, Zadok, Achim;
Eliud, Eleazar, Matthan, Jacob, and Joseph, the husband of Mary, the mother of Jesus, who is called the Messiah.
17 There were fourteen generations from Abraham to David. There were also fourteen from David to the exile in Babylonia and fourteen more to the birth of the Messiah.
My New Self and the Heaven Where My New Self Can Dwell
Sun Myung Moon
June 14, 1959
We were born on this earth. However, we did not contemplate whether being born on this earth into our life was a good or a bad thing. There are many people who do not even think about whether this reality is true or not. After being born and living our lives, we are bound to die, leaving our bodies behind. We know well that each of us must go over the valley of death.
The issue of whether we die a truth death is related to us and to our lives. We should not forget that as we began, so must we end.
There may be many who are proud of the fact that they were born on this earth of their parents’ lineage. However, a person with a true parental heart should grieve over the child she has borne. Even if a baby is lying in the cradle of happiness at birth, no one can be certain whether that child’s whole life will be happy. The parent herself should experience a heart of sadness before a heart of happiness.
If we acknowledge that the child is not born in the garden of happiness, then the life he will lead after birth will be the same; the valley of death he will cross after his life will be the same. We must not forget that we are living in this kind of realm. Let us ask ourselves, “Have I yearned for the true life? Have I lived a true life? Do I have the confidence to victoriously face death as I sing of the preciousness of true life?” Everyone would have to say, “No.”
For these reasons, we cannot deny that all people are within the fallen realm and all people have a deplorable destiny. We are not in the world of the normal mind; we are in an abnormal world and environment. Consequently, no one can assert the word “happiness” from the day he is born to the day he dies. We have to remember that such things as happiness, the ideal, and hope have no relationship to us. The reason my mind is not happy is that I have not become a person who can be joyful.
If I had a heart that substantiated hope, then I would rejoice in the midst of that fulfilled hope. However, I do not possess such a joyful heart. If I had substantiated the ideal, then I would be in the position to confidently command all things to follow me, but I do not stand in such a position.
Humankind should have possessed the true ideology, yet they did not. Humankind should have lived in a happy environment, yet they lost that environment. I should have become a person who sings the melody of liberty and peace and who returns the glory of all the happiness swelling in my heart to the Creator; yet I have not become such a person. We have to realize that there is nothing more miserable and sorrowful than this.
Jesus bore the whole burden of the four-thousand-year history. He bore total responsibility for the forefathers in history. He bore all the ideologies of happiness and the Kingdom of Heaven and the hopes of humankind throughout history. Therefore, Jesus is indeed the friend among friends, the center among centers, the center of our total life. He is the center of hope and ideology and even of life and death. Jesus left a word of hope on this earth.
Heavenly Father toiled over four thousand years of long history so humankind might gain new hope and recover happiness in the realm of the new heavenly ideology, coming out of the realm of lamentation and death.
Even though we stand upon the foundation of all Father’s great victories and accomplishments which culminated in Foundation Day, still, we are faced with the reality of subjugating this world with truth and love.
Even now, 60 years on from when Father spoke these words in the early days of his ministry, the world has actually got worse, and our own situation is equally as bad if we do not stand upon God’s Word – ‘The Eight Great Sacred Texts’ which Father sacrificed his life for. It didn’t just come down some ‘golden pipe’.
So added to that, is the tragic situation that those who followed him and believed in him, now like Adam and Eve have rejected his Word, happy to accept a counterfeit word, and follow and serve some leader as Father said not to do.
“We Are Not to Follow a Certain Leader or Serve a Certain Founder of a Religion”. The Person Who Will Serve the Grieving Father. Sun Myung Moon, May 24, 1959. (April 2, 2019. Daily Inspiration, VisionRoot)
They have replaced the Word for a person.
Humanity is still dealing with its fallen nature as we are, additionally now compromised and conflicted by our failure to keep God’s Word. If we don’t keep God’s Word, then what hope is there for humanity, but to go down the path of suffering and violence as followed the Fall of Man originally.
When the first children didn’t keep the Word, they and their descendants all suffered. If we do not keep Father’s Word, even in this exalted time as it was for Adam and Eve, our fate will be the same.
The ‘Rod of Iron’ is the Word of God, nothing else. If you promote the ‘Rod of Iron’ as a weapon instead of the truth, then you are directly responsible for the violence that will come.
Instead of sowing the truth, you will be sowing violence, and he who lives by the sword will die by the sword. The truth of the Last Days is to guide humanity back to God by stimulating our original mind, heart and conscience, so we naturally come into the orbit of God’s true love and truth.
Each person must become an individual truth body by keeping and embodying the Word. How else could we perfect ourselves. There is no such thing as miracle salvation, by just believing in someone we go to Heaven.
We have to work out our salvation as Paul told the Philippians. Phil 2:12-13 and as James also exhorted us. James 2.
Chapter 1 of Divine Principle also teaches this very point as do other chapters of Divine Principle.
To conclude, we must now take Father’s place and accomplish what Father said here, with the ‘I’ written in this text, referring to each one of us:
“We need to know that human liberation is God’s liberation. The liberation of your families, clans and nations consoles God who sorrowed over the loss of His family, clan and nation. In my life I’ll recover the lost Cosmos and dissolve God’s anguish. I have no wishes or thoughts for myself, except to practise absolute faith, love and obedience. If asked to die I’ll head straight for death. Even at the risk of death I’ll not turn back.”
“In this way, I must fulfil God’s desires and liberate Him forever from Satan. I must become the son who can liberate Him from His bondage, from the prison where He is entrapped. Only then can our piteous God, who suffers the bitter anguish of not having achieved liberation in the family, finally achieve liberation in the world and cosmos. Only then can He be restored to His position and establish His sovereignty based on the laws of the love of the family, tribe, people, nation and cosmos.” (300-72, 1999.2.21) OCSG, p2288, 1st para.
I agree. Emphasizing actual physical weapons as the core of God’s providence is wrong. And I also agree that when you sow a seed of (potential) violence, then you may also reap the fruits of that seed.