New Richard Urban Show:
#195-Supreme Court Passes on Defending First Amendment Rights
Cheon Seong Gyeong 733
You must be able to say, “Through the True Parents we have become ancestors who can bequeath a new lineage and become a blessed tribe that affects the realm of liberation! Our tribe will be of God’s eternal unchanging household and kinship!” When that happens, you will bid farewell to Satan completely. The Unification Church allows the honoring of ancestors. Did Christianity allow you to perform a memorial service for the repose of your ancestors?
The Unification Church should carry on and establish this tradition. This is not a secular tradition. This becomes the royal domain for eternally serving the traditional blood relatives in the realm of tribal messiahs who are succeeding in the genealogical generations by serving the heavenly Parent, the heavenly kingdom and the heavenly ancestors. It will be a nation where we can attend the king and sing praises for the eternal reign of peace. Do you understand? You, your mother, father, family and tribe can go directly to heaven only after having lived in such a nation. (220-221, 1991.10.19)
Cheon Seong Gyeong 1021
Offerings should be made with a serious mind and commitment. Can blessings be given to those who go to their grave after a life of comfort, abundant food, laughter, and dance? Only grass would grow on the graves of such people. But on the graves of those who died shedding blood for the nation, flowers will bloom as long as that nation remains. (46-347, 1971.8.17)
Cheon Seong Gyeong
Selections from the Speeches of Rev. Sun Myung Moon
Book 5
Earthly Life and the Spirit World
Chapter 6
Our Position in Relation to the Spirit World
Section 1. The Fruit of Life and the Divine Spirit
After birth, people must overcome their circumstances on their own. They must undergo a process through which they can inherit new life and bear fruit in the future. Finally, they must occupy a place where they can manifest the proper effects and results. For example, after grain is sown, it germinates, matures, bears fruit, and is then harvested and stored by the owner. We too must undergo a process whereby we can be harvested for a certain purpose.
You must understand that you are responsible to equip yourselves with the inner conditions which will permit you to inherit such hopes and to use those conditions to embrace the external environment. This must be accomplished not from a position of self-defense, but by taking the initiative.
Consider the persimmon tree that blooms in spring. Its flowers are not particularly colorful compared to other flowers. Their color is similar to that of the tree’s leaves. For this reason, with a casual glance you would not notice the flowers. Later, while the fruit is growing, because of the dense blanket of green foliage, you cannot easily tell whether there is fruit or not. The green leaves are so bright and fresh that it is hard to tell whether or not the tree has fruit. When summer turns to autumn, the persimmon’s color begins to change. As they ripen, both the inside and outside turn orange. Then you see them hanging radiantly on the tree even after all of the leaves have fallen.
It is similar with Unification Church members. Looking at the Unification Church, if the 1970s are said to be the fruiting season, then all the leaf-like elements should disappear. Just as the persimmon fruit exposed on a bare branch can possess the value of the entire tree, the question is whether we can become like that fruit.
Such fruit does not need any advertisement. By looking at the fruit itself, anyone could evaluate it one hundred percent inside and out. How much labor would the persimmon tree have to expend until it could perfect itself by bearing its fruit through this process? We must understand that until this fruit was perfected from among the numerous flowers that bloomed on the tree’s branches, it suffered and made more effort than any other type of fruit. We must understand that it overcame all kinds of environmental ordeals which could have caused it to fall: adverse circumstances like lack of nourishment that would prevent ripening and the ordeals of summer with its buffeting winds, rain, and storms.
If that tree could bear only one fruit, that lone fruit would contain the combined sap and external fight-to-live qualities of that entire tree. Only that kind of fruit could remain. If only one fruit remained on that tree, it would represent the value of the entire tree. In the case of a persimmon tree, that one persimmon would justify the value of that tree when autumn came, and save its dignity and authority.
If many flowers bloomed and much fruit ripened on a tree, but it all rotted and the tree could not bear fruit in the autumn, that tree, with its barren branches, would be so very miserable and sorrowful! If that tree could not bear much fruit, but bore just one that was beyond comparison with those of any other tree, it would stand proud of that one fruit before myriads of other trees.
There are numerous religions in our present society. Numerous denominations exist in Christianity alone. Amidst this reality, looking at the Unification Church in its fruiting season, God is asking for a certain fruit from it. As I have mentioned, even though a tree should bear much fruit, yet only bore one so perfect as to be unsurpassed by any other fruit from that tree, that tree can find its value, authority, and dignity through that one fruit.
Likewise, the Unification Church must bear fruit. Starting from its establishment until now, our church has undergone acute hardships and ordeals while advancing toward its fruition. The critical issue here is the quality of the fruit it will bear. From this perspective, you should be able to check whether you have indeed experienced a normal spring, normal summer, and normal autumn and whether you can bear a fully ripe fruit.
Looking at the fruit itself, we find within it the properties to produce branches, leaves, roots, and seeds. If we picked a fruit, it could be considered that we possessed that entire tree. Since that fruit has many seeds, with that fruit we stand in a position to possess tens or hundreds of trees. The fruit of a tree should inherit all the essential elements of life that the tree has to bequeath, be it ten or twenty years old. Only then is a perfect fruit harvested.
While the fruit is growing, its essential elements should never be severed. It should be left undisturbed to grow continuously. From the day its life began until the time it is harvested by the owner and kept in storage, the essential elements should never be disconnected, not even once. Whether it is windy – or worse still, stormy, they must not be disconnected no matter what hardships may come. These essential elements must be retained without interruption, from beginning to end.
From this perspective, after venturing on the path of faith, you must have all felt new life, new ecstasy, and new hope springing up within yourselves. From the day you resolve to become such trees, or people of such character, all the inner essential elements that are being prepared for the harvest season in autumn must be retained without interruption. Without a process to solidify and add something as the days go by, a fully ripened fruit cannot emerge. (36-10, 1970.11.8)
pgs. 704-705