Category: Cheon Seong Gyeong

God, the Parent of Humankind, Cannot Remain Aloof

No Income Tax Reform; Focus on Constitutional Rights Instead

West Virginia Legislative Session-2021 Priorities

I will be suspending (closing) my Facebook account after March 31st, due to the censorship imposed by Facebook, and my desire not to support the platform by my presence there. If you would like to stay in touch with me and Stacey on social media, I invite you to join the independent social media platform Friendica, which we run on our own server: https://friendica.visionroot.org/register. Here is one of our public pages, fyi: https://friendica.visionroot.org/profile/visionroot.

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Since human beings begin in love and mature through love, they cannot live separated from the standard of love. (Blessed Family -1062)

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The True Parent, as the perfected Adam, must restore the standard of the first parents, which Adam failed to meet. He must also perfect the standard of the parent that Jesus, who came as the second Adam, failed to achieve. The reason I have no choice but to establish a tradition of suffering in this era of the Second Advent is because Jesus established the spiritual foundation but failed to establish both spiritual and physical foundations on the world level. (55-173, 1972.5.7)

The Purpose of Religion

1. Religions Provide the Way of Salvation

Teachings of Rev. Sun Myung Moon

Why throughout history have people needed to improve themselves through morals, ethics, and religion? Why should we observe them? It is because we sense something is wrong with us, and we desire to return to our original standing before God. (205:8, July 15, 1990)

However hard the original mind may struggle to attain goodness, we can hardly find any examples of true goodness in this world under the sovereignty of evil. Human beings have thus been compelled to seek the source of goodness in the world transcendent of time and space. This necessity has given birth to religion. Through religion, fallen people mired in ignorance have sought to meet God by ceaselessly striving toward the good. Even though the individuals, peoples and nations that championed a certain religion may have perished, religion itself survives. (Exposition of the Divine Principle, Eschatology 2.3)

God, the Parent of humankind, cannot remain aloof when He sees His sons and daughters in their fallen state. They are like broken radios, so God created repair shops to fix them. These repair shops are religions. Seeing the many traces of these repair shops down through history, we cannot deny the existence of God. (54:102, March 20, 1972)

If God used His almighty power, He could easily save all humanity. Then He wouldn’t need religion. But why does God need religion? God wants the enemy to surrender willingly. When that happens, God can become the center and heal all beings. That is God’s strategy. (207:21, October 21, 1990)

Religion does not have humankind as its primary object. Rather, religious teachings establish God, the Parent, as foremost. A life of following God’s will is a course to establish and mature in a relationship with God. Therefore, holy men and women invariably support the will of Heaven and declare the heart of Heaven.
A true religion should teach people about God. A true religion should not have some vague ideas about God; a true religion should be able to give a clear picture of God so that people can understand Him. A religion that compromises with the world cannot be called a higher order religion. That kind of religion will ultimately decline.
A true religion should teach people the path to know God clearly, to become one with God, and finally, to reestablish the world that God originally intended at the creation. After all, the purpose of religion is to seek for the ideal world: a world without sin, a world where all people enjoy the original relationship with God. (February 6, 2003)

We know that the main problem here is not which denomination,
which religion or which group we belong to.
The viewpoint of truth—the entirety of truth—
is to have an inward heart that Thou canst recognize,
and to go forth with an earnest heart that can experience Thy heart.
O Father, grant us to know Thy heart! (4:236, May 18, 1958)

God’s Goal Is to Save Everyone

Urban Life Training Newsletter-March 18, 2021

I will be suspending (closing) my Facebook account after March 31st, due to the censorship imposed by Facebook, and my desire not to support the platform by my presence there. If you would like to stay in touch with me and Stacey on social media, I invite you to join the independent social media platform Friendica, which we run on our own server: https://friendica.visionroot.org/register. Here is one of our public pages, fyi: https://friendica.visionroot.org/profile/visionroot.

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In marriage relationships throughout the world, power comes when the husband earns and brings home money. The wife is naturally strengthened upon seeing the money he brings home, and the husband naturally gains strength seeing his wife so empowered. But if they are unable to earn money they become agitated, and their relationship may even break. A true husband and wife, how-ever, should create oneness in love with God at the center. (Blessed Family – 880)

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In the Bible it says, “What is bound on earth is bound in heaven. What is released on earth will be released in heaven.” This logic can be understood through understanding the unity of the dual structure. Human beings today should know how valuable their physical lifetime truly is. The conclusion is that the period of their life on earth is the only time when they can liberate God, revive this universe, and unite all heaven and earth. God and creation combined together could not equal the value of the physical world. Why is this so? God and this universe combined, without human beings in the flesh, cannot be perfected. Thus, they have to understand how important the human body is, while they are alive on earth. How great this is! (91-191, 1977.2.13)

Universal Salvation

Teachings of Rev. Sun Myung Moon

The sinful world brings humankind sorrow and causes God to grieve. (Gen. 6.6) Would God abandon this world in its present misery? God intended to create a world of goodness and experience from it the utmost joy; yet due to the Human Fall, the world came to be filled with sin and sorrow. If this sinful world were to continue forever in its present state, then God would be an impotent and ineffectual God who failed in His creation. Therefore, God will save this sinful world, by all means…
The Human Fall was undoubtedly the result of human mistakes. Nevertheless, God also assumes some responsibility for the outcome because it was He who created human beings. Therefore, God has felt compelled to conduct the providence to correct this tragic outcome and to restore human beings to their true, original state. Furthermore, God created us to live eternally. This is because God, the eternal subject partner, wanted to share eternal joy with human beings as His object partners. Having endowed human beings with an eternal nature, God could not, by the laws of the Principle, simply annihilate them just because they fell. If He were to do that, He would be violating His own Principle of Creation. The only choice left to God is to save fallen people and restore them to the original, pure state in which He initially created them. (Exposition of the Divine Principle, Eschatology 2.1)

The purpose of the providence of salvation, and of religion, is to save the entire world. Since God created humankind as His beloved children, He cannot just beat and kill them and leave them in hell. Therefore the goal of the providence of salvation is to save everyone, not leaving even a single person in the satanic world. God wants to take back every kind of human being. (80:283, November 2, 1975)

God is a God of love. When God looks down from His throne and sees spirits in hell crying out to Him in their misery, “Please, God, save me!” what would He say? Would He say, “You deserve a lot worse”? Or does He have mercy on them? Surely, God will do everything possible to liberate hell. (98:116, May 7, 1978)

Imagine you have a son who committed murder and was sentenced to death. As he is going to his execution, would you say, “You deserve to die. Good-bye. At last we are rid of you!” Would any parent think like that? On the contrary, you would rather want to die in his place.
Imagine now you have many children, and they are dying tragically one after another. Do you think any parent could just watch them die without doing everything possible to rescue them? Loving parents would be desperate to save their children. They would keep on trying, even though it may take an eternity.
This gives you some sense of God’s misery. As He watches His children entering hell and eternal death, God is infinitely sorrowful and anxiously tries to liberate them to eternal life. Only by so doing can He fulfill His responsibility as our Heavenly Father. Therefore, it is logical to conclude that in the end God will liberate every soul in hell. (62:51, September 10, 1972)

To believe, as some do, that all humanity will receive judgment and only 144,000 Christians will be saved at the Rapture is an unusually self-centered way of thinking. (245:97, February 28, 1993)

The Unification Church’s viewpoint of salvation is not for a husband to go to heaven while his wife goes to hell. Both have to go to the Kingdom of Heaven together. It is not for us to enjoy heaven while our father and mother languish in hell. We should dwell in the Kingdom of Heaven with our sons and daughters and parents together. (34:359, September 20, 1970)

God’s providence of salvation is to bring [evil] to voluntary surrender. If God could have used force as He pleased, why has the providence taken thousands of years? He could have finished everything in short time—a few weeks. However, since God does not use force, instead He endures a heart-breaking situation. (394:16, October 6, 2002)

Even fallen parents cannot feel joyful when one of their children is unhappy. How much more so for God, our Heavenly Parent? It is written, “The Lord… is forbearing toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.” (2 Pet. 3.9) Accordingly, hell cannot remain forever. No trace of hell will remain in the ideal world, which is the fulfillment of God’s deepest desire. In the Last Days, when the time is ripe, evil spirits will descend to evil people on earth of the same spiritual level and assist them to accomplish God’s Will. Indeed, even the demons testified that Jesus was the Son of God. (Matt. 8.29).(Exposition of the Divine Principle, Resurrection 3.3.3)

He Who Does Not Love Abides In Death


Urban Life Training Newsletter-March 18, 2021

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What should you do to reach this state? You need to cultivate your mind. Some religions have expanded in step with God’s providence and others in step with Satan. Since these religions are all mixed up, it is extremely difficult to differentiate the good and bad. The same is true within the realm of our mind. There are good minds and at the same time evil minds. Your mind may think, “Yes, I am good,” but that thought itself is not good. Our minds were formed as a result of the Fall. Consequently, there are some whose minds are influenced by evil and the evil realm of Satan, and others by goodness. There are all types of minds. Then what is of utmost importance? The way you set the gate to your mind is the most important matter in your life of faith. Therefore, in your life of faith, always be alert to those times when the gate of your mind opens and how to tune it to the gate of God’s mind. Always be prepared for this. You always need to have a mindset in your daily life of seeking and adjusting your mind to God at any given time.

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Within the elements of the mineral world may be found pairs of positive and negative ions. The 107 chemical elements identified in the Periodic Table will not react with just anything, however hard you may try to fuse them in the laboratory. Yet with the appropriate object, there is nothing you could do – not even God – to prevent them from fusing together. You already know about this, don’t you? Everything is incorporated within the pair system, whether mineral, plant or animal. All things exist in pairs, in accordance with the principle of positive and negative. (203-295, 1990.6.27)

Richard: There is no confusion in God’s creation about male and female. There are two genders, and that is what always has and always will ‘make the world go round’.

Eternal Life

2. Love: The Basis of Eternal Life

We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brethren. He who does not love abides in death. Any one who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him. By this we know love, that he [Jesus] laid down his life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.1 John 3.14-16

Teachings of Rev. Sun Myung Moon

Eternity does not exist apart from true love. (August 18, 1988)

When you are united with your beloved, you do not care if the world is perishing. Even if your parents demanded that you separate, threatening you with a knife, you would not be afraid of that knife. You would be determined to stay together, even if you died and went to the next world. You are not concerned about your earthly life, because you believe that you will be together in the spirit world. You actually prefer life in eternity to finite earthly life. (380:88, June 5, 2002)

May we discover by ourselves and prove by ourselves,
not only by faith or conviction but also from experience,
that Thou and I have a relationship extending front and back, right and left.
Thou and I were living, are living and shall ever live
in a relationship eternal and unchanging. (40:350, February 11, 1971)

Leave the Dead to Bury Their Own Dead

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If this is true with parents in the fallen world, how can we ever grow tired of giving and receiving God’s love in the essential world? When we establish the realm of God’s true objective partner in our own lives and understand the unchanging glory of true love for the first time, we will then be able to validate the logic of eternal life. In 1984, I was lying in bed alone unjustly incarcerated in prison in the United States, when God came and told me that I was the only person He could trust and that He wanted me to resolve the situation in Nicaragua. Am I really the only person God can come to with such a command? The United States is said to be a great country standing at the forefront of all developed countries. It has a population of 240 million and innumerable religious leaders. How wretched God must have been that He could not go to any of those people but had to come to me. Yet as God knows how to find people who have a great love for humanity, He came to me, who had been worrying about the world day and night. Had I not already established the Washington Times, and extended help at that time, South America would have fallen into ideological chaos

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As buds, you have not yet bloomed. Do not become wicked like those who write love letters and have illicit love relationships. You should blossom naturally. When God sees you, He should be able to exclaim, “Oh! You have blossomed purely and naturally. Since I can smell the fragrance, I can tell that you are a virgin.” In this case, God feels so much hope. Does God want something pure or something damaged? What about you, then? Do you want something pure or something damaged? Even fallen men want to have something pure. Would God not value that even more?

Eternal Life

For many the goal of religion is immortality or eternal life. People have always chafed under the limitations of mortality, and have found in religion the means to transcend the death which seems to proscribe the possibilities of human existence. As with resurrection, eternal life is not simply about the survival of the soul at death and its journey into the afterlife. Eternal life is not about eternal existence per se, but rather about the quality of that existence.
We find that the scriptures of many religions give two meanings to the terms “life” and “death.” there is physical life—existence on this earthly plane, and there is spiritual life—the state of blessedness which endures from life to life and transcends death. There is physical death—the dropping of the body which is an event in the voyage of every soul, and spiritual death—the condition of distance from God, ignorance, and a hellish existence in the hereafter.
“Eternal life” and “immortality” are thus ciphers to describe the condition of blessedness. this condition is present already in the physical life of the person who realizes truth or lives in God’s grace, and it will continue, unabated, in the hereafter. The person who gains eternal life has accomplished the goal of life, and hence death is not to be feared as a limitation, as it is for a worldly person who has tied all hopes to his possessions and pleasures in the world. We note, however, that Buddhist scriptures generally avoid speaking of this state of blessedness as eternal life, for Buddhism views the desire for life as a kind of grasping, and hence a fetter to liberation. instead, they speak of Nirvana.
Father Moon’s teaches that eternal life is rooted in our relationship with the eternal God, based upon God’s love for us and our love for God. “eternity does not exist apart from true love,” he states. Then he expands upon this concept to describe the relationship between human lovers as aspiring for the eternal. this is so because we human beings are designed for eternal life, eternal love with God, and eternal community with the ones we love under God.

1. Eternal Life in God

For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have everlasting life.
    John 3.16
 
He who believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and whoever lives and believes in me shall never die.
    John 11.25-26
 
Those who have faith and do righteous deeds, they are the best of creatures. Their reward is with God: Gardens of Eternity, beneath which rivers flow; they will dwell therein for ever; God well pleased with them, and they with Him; all this for such as fear their Lord and Cherisher.
    Qur’an 98.7-8
 
The Supreme Being does not die; I will there-fore not die.
    Akan Proverb (African Traditional Religions)
 
Being in accord with Tao, he is everlasting.
    Tao Te Ching 16 (Taoism)
 
Where one sees nothing but the One, hears nothing but the One, knows nothing but the One—there is the Infinite. Where one sees another, hears another, knows another—there is the finite. The Infinite is immortal; the finite is mortal.
 
It is written, He who has realized eternal Truth does not see death, nor illness, nor pain; he sees everything as the Self, and obtains all.
    Chandogya Upanishad 7.23, 27 (Hindusm)
 
Those who are free from desire are free because all their desires have found fulfillment in the Self. They do not die like the others; but realizing Brahman, they merge in Brahman. So it is said: When all the desires that surge in the heart
Are renounced, the mortal becomes immortal.
When all the knots that strangle the heart
Are loosened, the mortal becomes immortal,
Here in this very life.
    Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 4.4.6-7 (Hinduism)
 
For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
    Romans 6.23
 
From the unreal lead me to the Real!
From darkness lead me to light!
From death lead me to immortality!
Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 1.3.28 (Hinduism)
 
Higher than this is Brahman, the Supreme, the
Great.
Hidden in all things, body by body,
The One embracer of the universe—
By knowing Him as Lord men become
immortal.
I know this mighty Person
Of the color of the sun, beyond darkness.
Only by knowing Him does one pass over
death.
There is no other path for going there.
Than whom there is nothing else higher,
Than whom there is nothing smaller, nothing
greater,
The One stands like a tree established in
heaven.
By Him, the Person, this whole world is filled.
That which is beyond this world
Is without form and without ill.
They who know That, become immortal;
But others go only to sorrow.
    Svetasvatara Upanishad 3.7-10 (Hindusm)
 
The supreme stage of the Soul is free from birth, old age and death; he is supreme, pure, and devoid of eight karmas; he possesses infnite knowledge, intuition, bliss, and potency; he is indivisible, indestructible, and inexhaustible. Besides, he is supersensuous and unparalleled, is free from obstructions, merit, demerit, and rebirth, and is eternal, steady, and independent.
    Kundakunda, Niyamasara 176-77 (Jainism)
 
“For the living know that they shall die” (Ecc. 9.5): these are the righteous who in their death are called living… “but the dead know nothing”: these are the wicked who in their lifetime are called dead.
    Talmud, Berakot 18ab (Judaism)
 
Leave the dead to bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.
    Luke 9.60
 
 

Those Who Are Willing to Die Shall Live

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These eight months of January through August have all been part of a new era in 1989. It is now the end of August isn’t it? The course of global indemnity has been completed in these eight months. In connection with this we were able to hold many events last year, including the cross-cultural “exchange” Holy Blessing and the declaration of the Foundation Day for the Nation of the Unified World. Thus, all conditions of indemnity were fulfilled. In this way, everything was brought to completion in August. This includes the marine and water related activities. I have accomplished so much up to this point. (193-100, 1989.8.31)The Way in the Completed Testament Age

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The position of a married couple is truly a great one. There, the fulfillment of hope that humankind has yearned for throughout history blossoms in the form of children, siblings and spouses. In this way, just as God began His work of creation with love, the couple that represents Adam and Eve will begin to create on their own through the act of giving birth to their children. They take the position of substantial creators, and in the position of horizontal creators in relation to their children, they bear them. This is the making of the third creators, namely the children.

Resurrection

1. The Dead Return to Life

Teachings of Rev. Sun Myung Moon

Many have hitherto believed that the death caused by the Fall was physical death. Consequently, they have interpreted the biblical concept of resurrection as revival from physical death, and believed that resurrection of the dead involves the biological regeneration of their decomposed bodies. However, the Fall of the first human ancestors did not cause this kind of death. According to the Principle of Creation, the human body was created to return to dust after it grows old. A decomposed body cannot be restored to its original state. Furthermore, it is not necessary for a spirit to take on another physical body when he is meant to enjoy eternal life in the vast spirit world.
    Resurrection may be defined as the process of being restored from the death caused by the Fall to life, from the realm of Satan’s dominion to the realm of God’s direct dominion, through the providence of restoration. Accordingly, whenever we repent of our sins and rise to a higher state of goodness, we are resurrected to that degree.
    The Bible illustrates the process of resurrection: “He who hears my word and believes him who sent me, has eternal life; he does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life.” (John 5.24) Based on this verse, we can affirm that resurrection means to leave the bosom of Satan and return to the bosom of God. It is also written, “For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.” (1 Cor. 15.22) This verse means that because we inherited Satan’s lineage as a result of Adam’s fall, we are dead; when we return to the lineage of God through Christ, we shall be resurrected to life…
    The changes a person experiences when he is resurrected and enters the governance of God take place in his heart and spirit. These internal changes also purify his body, transforming it from a haunt of Satan into a temple of God. In this sense, we may say that our physical body is also resurrected. We may compare it to a building that was previously used for evil purposes and is now used as a place of worship. Although there may be no change in its outward appearance, it is now sanctified as a sacred building. (Exposition of the Divine Principle, Resurrection 1.3-4)
 
What happens to us after we die? Up to the moment we die, we belong to ourselves. But after we die, we belong to God. Because we were born of a fallen lineage, until death we cannot sever our ties with Satan. After death, however, we can establish ties with God. Therefore, unless we die we cannot be resurrected…
    Therefore, when the Bible teaches, “Those who are willing to die shall live, while those who want to live shall die,” it means by death not the end of our God-given eternal life, but rather the end of our fallen life into which we were born from a fallen lineage in a fallen world. (December 19, 1998)
 
The Bible teaches that those who are willing to die shall live, and those who want to live shall die. This means that in order to escape from the fallen realm we must be willing to give up our lives. There is no true life in the fallen realm. Hence, when we deny this fallen life, we can be resurrected. Jesus was resurrected because he denied his own life. Jesus could not resurrect himself; it was God who raised him. (307:167, November 8, 1998)