Register Now for the VisionRoot Spring Workshop: Peaceful Families; Peaceful World
March 18th to March 20th, 2022
Peace Kingdom Center, Harpers Ferry WV and Online
On March 19th we will study the textbook cited in the title above.
Cheon Seong Gyeong 2022
You can achieve what I have achieved through my life on the worldwide stage. You need your own offering or a foot- hold, which is a smaller model of the world stage. You should know that this is Home Church. It is Gajeong Gyohae. Do you understand? (109-184, 1980.11.1)
Richard: This is not only for Unification Church members. In the speech True Parents and the Completed Testament Age Rev. Moon says “the time has come for each family to take up the messianic mission of completing the work of salvation all over the world. After restoring your family, the next step is to restore your community, tribe, and nation. We call this process “tribal messiahship.””
Cheon Seong Gyeong 860
God is the Creator who made heaven and earth. He is the origin, the very parent of all beings in this world. He is the origin of the value of all existence. Because of Him, this phenomenal world of today came to exist. Such an absolute being does not change according to the changing of the ages. An absolute being does not change. He is not limited by time and space. He transcends all limitations and is the one who governs every limitation. Who is that being? We do not only call Him God. He is our “Father,” so we call Him “Heavenly Father.” What do you call God? He is your Father who gave birth to you. The word “rebirth” exists because of the Fall, but it was God, your Father, who originally gave birth to you. Your physical father forms a bridge between you and God. But after your physical father goes to the spirit world, you will call him your brother, not your father. In the same way, you will call your physical mother your sister. (21-249, 1968.11.24)
Scripture and Interpretation
4. Scriptures Teach Only a Finite Portion of Heaven’s Truth
And if all the trees in the earth were pens, and the sea, with seven more seas to help it [were ink], the words of God could not be spent. Lo! God is Mighty, Wise.
Qur’an 31.27
All the Scriptures mean as much—no more, no less—
to the discerning spiritual man
As a water tank
in a universal flood.
Bhagavad-Gita 2.45-46 (Hinduism)
The water from the ocean contained in a pot can neither be called an ocean nor non-ocean, but it can be called only part of the ocean. Similarly, a doctrine, though arising from the Absolute Truth, is neither the Truth nor not the Truth.
Vidyanandi, Tattvarthaslokavartika 116 (Jainism)
The Word is measured in four quarters.
The wise who possess insight know these four divisions.
Three quarters, concealed in secret, cause no movement.
The fourth is the quarter that is spoken by men.
Rig Veda 1.164.45 (Hinduism)
The Torah we have is the incomplete form of heavenly wisdom.
Genesis Rabbah 17.5 (Judaism)
I have yet many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth.
John 16.12-13
Every term has a Book. God blots out, and He establishes whatsoever He will; and with Him is the Essence of the Book.
Whether We show you a part of that We promise them, or We call you unto Us, it is you only to deliver the message, and Ours is the reckoning.
Qur’an 13.39-40
Now it happened to the venerable Malunkyaputta, being in seclusion and plunged in meditation, that a consideration presented itself to his mind: “These theories which the Blessed One has left unelucidated, has set aside and rejected—that the world is eternal, that the world is not eternal, that the world is finite, that the world is infinite, that the soul and the body are identical, that the soul is one thing and the body another, that the saint exists after death, that the saint does not exist after death… these the Blessed One does not elucidate to me. And the fact that the Blessed One does not elucidate them to me does not please me…”
[The Buddha]: “If, Malunkyaputta, a man had been wounded by an arrow thickly smeared with poison, and his friends and companions, relatives and kinsfolk, were to procure for him a physician or surgeon; and the sick man were to say, ‘I will not have this arrow taken out until I have learnt whether the man who wounded me belonged to the warrior caste, or the brahmin caste, or to the farmers’ caste, or to the menial caste.’
“Or again he were to say, ‘I will not have this arrow taken out until I have learnt the name of the man who wounded me, and to what clan he belongs.’
“Or again he were to say, ‘I will not have this arrow taken out until I have learnt whether the man who wounded me was tall, or short, or of middle height.’
“Or again he were to say, ‘I will not have this arrow taken out until I have learnt whether the man who wounded me was black, or dusky, or of a yellow skin.’
“Or again he were to say, ‘I will not have this arrow taken out until I have learnt whether the man who wounded me was from this or that village, town, or city.’… That man would die, Malunkyaputta, without ever having learnt this.
“In exactly the same way, Malunkyaputta, any one who should say, ‘I will not lead the
religious life under the Blessed One until the Blessed One shall elucidate to me either that the world is eternal or that the world is not eternal, etc.’—that person would die before the Tathagata had ever elucidated this to him.
“The religious life does not depend on the dogma that the world is eternal; nor does the religious life depend on the dogma that the world is not eternal. Whether the dogma obtain, that the world is eternal, or that the world is not eternal, there still remain birth, old age, death, sorrow, lamentation, misery, grief, despair, for the extinction of which in the present life I am prescribing… This profits not, nor has to do with the fundamentals of religion, nor tends to aversion, absence of passion, cessation, quiescence, the supernatural faculties, supreme wisdom, and Nirvana; therefore have I not elucidated it.”
Majjhima Nikaya 1.426-31 (Buddhism)
Teachings of Rev. Sun Myung Moon
Spirit and truth are unique, eternal and unchanging. However, the degree and scope of their teaching and the means of their expression will vary from one age to another as they restore humankind from a state of utter ignorance. For example, in the age prior to the Old Testament, when people were still unenlightened and could not directly receive the Word of truth, God commanded them to make sacrificial offerings as a substitute for the Word. In the course of time, the spirituality and intellect of human beings were elevated to the point when, in Moses’ day, God granted them the Law, and at the time of Jesus He gave the Gospel. Jesus made it clear that his words were not the truth itself; rather, he declared that he himself was “the way, the truth, and the life.” (John 14:6) Jesus was the incarnation of the truth. His words were just a means by which he expressed himself. Thus, the scope and depth of Jesus’ words and the method of his teaching varied according to whom he was speaking.
In this sense, we must understand that the verses in the Bible are only one means of expressing the truth and are not the truth itself. The New Testament is but an interim textbook given to enlighten the people of two thousand years ago, whose spiritual and intellectual levels were far lower than today. The modern, scientific-minded thirst for the truth cannot be satisfied by expressions of truth which are limited in scope and couched in symbols and parables aimed specifically at instructing the people of an earlier age. For modern, intellectual people to be enlightened in the truth, there must appear another textbook of higher and richer content, with a more scientific method of expression. (Exposition of the Divine Principle, Eschatology 5.1)