Category: Old Testament

Love Your Home Church more than Your Wife or Husband

Judges 5

The Lord’s angel said,
    “Put a curse on Meroz Town!
Its people refused
to help the Lord fight
    his powerful enemies.”

24 But honor Jael,
the wife of Heber
    from the Kenite clan.
Give more honor to her
than to any other woman
    who lives in tents.
Yes, give more honor to her
    than to any other woman.
25 Sisera asked for water,
but Jael gave him milk—
    cream in a fancy cup.
26 She reached for a tent-peg
and held a hammer
    in her right hand.
And with a blow to the head,
    she crushed his skull.
27 Sisera sank to his knees
    and fell dead at her feet.

Jeremiah 34

21-22 These enemies are King Nebuchadnezzar[e] of Babylonia and his army. They have stopped attacking Jerusalem, but they want to kill King Zedekiah and his high officials. So I will command them to return and attack again. This time they will conquer the city and burn it down, and they will capture Zedekiah and his officials. I will also let them destroy the towns of Judah, so that no one can live there any longer.

Richard: In the Old Testament, enemies attack God’s chosen people, the Isrealites, because they have discarded God and his commandments. As a whole, the United States has veered far away from God. We should heed God’s words and ways. This will help protect our nation and help each person and family to find true happiness. Read this speech to get a good overview of what God’s will is: http://visionroot.org/resources/rev-sun-myung-moon/peace-message-10/ .

Selected Passages from the Words of Rev. Sun Myung Moon about Home Church

Today’s Word magazine, September 1981 pp. 9 – 10

If your beloved parent or child were in jail, you
wouldn’t go to see him out of duty, but out of
love. The people in your home church area are like
prisoners in jail, and as God’s representative, you
should go there with a parental heart. You have to
penetrate people’s trust one level at a time,
gradually winning their hearts. It takes real
effort and love to do so. I want you to have
concern and pity for those who fiercely reject
you, because they are the ones whose hearts have
been hurt deeply and cannot trust. You must
understand that they need more love than anyone
else. ( 1/28/79)

Love God more than anything else. God is the
root, and home church is the fruit and harvest
of His love. When you come to the throne of God,
can you proudly say, God, I loved my tribe and the
world, representing You, and now I have come back
to You?
Home church is the battleground where you are
going to explode your love. You are going to home
church to wage the battle of love, aiming the gun
of love at each person. At the finish of that
battle, God will be triumphant, as well as 1tue
Parents and all your home church people. If you
win the battle of love in your home church, you
will be as God to your people. Because God is
invisible, He will manifest Himself to them
through you as His representative. I would like to
hear home church people say that when you enter
their home, God enters through you. ( 1/7/79)

Love will open their eyes. When you link that love
to one home church and it connects it to another
and so on, it will form an unbreakable chain of
love which no one, not even God, can cut. This link
will be directly sustained by the spirit world.
(5/1/79)

Set the condition that you love your home
church more than your wife or husband, your
children or parents. With all your heart, soul and
mind, love your home church. Jesus said that
whoever loved his husband or wife or family
more than he would not be worthy of the
kingdom of God. Likewise, if you love husband,
wife or family more than home church and God,
you are unworthy of the heavenly kingdom.
(1/1/79)

Are you going out with the messiah’s heart? Do
you look for someone to help you and give you
something, or do you feel that you are the
messiah who will bring whatever your 360 homes
need? ( 1/28/79)

The only way you can go out to home church is
with great expectation of finding a treasure of a
person, your lost relatives. The person who is
successful in home church is the one who
recovers the lost people, the lost country and the
lost spirit world. Everything that was lost will be
recovered by the successful home church workers.
(2/25/79)

In the small world of home church, you are
going to demonstrate that you love the people in
your area more than anyone else in history. You
must be superior in heart to everyone-past,
present and future-in loving that small world.
Then God will say, My son, you have fulfilled the
qualification. Come and receive my inheritance.
( 12/24/78)

Home Church Is a Microcosm of the World

Romans 6

15 What does all this mean? Does it mean we are free to sin, because we are ruled by God’s wonderful kindness and not by the Law? Certainly not! 16 Don’t you know that you are slaves of anyone you obey? You can be slaves of sin and die, or you can be obedient slaves of God and be acceptable to him. 17 You used to be slaves of sin. But I thank God that with all your heart you obeyed the teaching you received from me. 18 Now you are set free from sin and are slaves who please God.

19 I am using these everyday examples, because in some ways you are still weak. You used to let the different parts of your body be slaves of your evil thoughts. But now you must make every part of your body serve God, so that you will belong completely to him.

20 When you were slaves of sin, you didn’t have to please God. 21 But what good did you receive from the things you did? All you have to show for them is your shame, and they lead to death. 22 Now you have been set free from sin, and you are God’s slaves. This will make you holy and will lead you to eternal life. 23 Sin pays off with death. But God’s gift is eternal life given by Jesus Christ our Lord.

Isaiah 1

10 You are no better
    than the leaders and people
of Sodom and Gomorrah!
    So listen to the Lord God:
11 “Your sacrifices
    mean nothing to me.
I am sick of your offerings
    of rams and choice cattle;
I don’t like the blood
    of bulls or lambs or goats.

12 “Who asked you to bring all this
when you come to worship me?
    Stay out of my temple!
13 Your sacrifices are worthless,
    and incense is disgusting.
I can’t stand the evil you do
    on your New Moon Festivals
or on your Sabbaths
    and other times of worship.
14 I hate your New Moon Festivals
    and all others as well.
They are a heavy burden
    I am tired of carrying.

15 “No matter how much you pray,
I won’t listen.
    You are too violent.
16 Wash yourselves clean!
I am disgusted
    with your filthy deeds.
Stop doing wrong
17     and learn to live right.
See that justice is done.
Defend widows and orphans
    and help those in need.”

Richard: God is telling us to return to basics. Follow His word, do Home Church, know your neighbor, love you neighbor, help your neighbor.

Selected Passages from the Words of Rev. Sun Myung Moon about Home Church

Today’s Word magazine, September 1981 pp. 7 – 8

It’s your means of salvation
In order to find salvation, we must:
( 1) Pass through the judgment by words, judg-
ment of character and judgment of heart. All of
you understand that we cannot go to heaven
without passing through these three types of
judgment.
(2) Become a True Parent.
(3) Become a central figure in heaven and on
earth.
(4) Help others reach salvation. How many people
have you helped to attend the two-day workshop,
the 21-day workshop, and so on up to the 70-day
workshop? The number of people you have helped
to go through these courses is related to your
personal salvation.
(5) Gain 84 disciples. Everyone should begin his
course of witnessing, with the primary objective
of gaining 84 spiritual children. The number 84
represents the 12 disciples and 72 elders at Jesus’
time, which added together make 84. In addition,
those 12 disciples include the three disciples,
representing the three stages of growth. (2/3/79)

It brings you great benefit
Home church is the greatest gift God and True
Parents can give mankind. It has never existed
before and will never recur in the future. When
you make this gift your own by fulfilling it, you
will definitely become a son or daughter of God.
For the entire 60 years of my life, I have been
preparing this precious gift for you.and now I
freely give it to you; you can make it yours in six
months. This is an incredible opportunity. (4/15/79)

Home church is a very precious blessing for
you, because through it I am giving you a
condition to go beyond the fall of man. (5/27/79)

The extent to which you carry out the home
church providence determines your level of per-
sonal maturity. Perhaps two thirds of your
spiritual growth will take place through home
church and perhaps the other third will come
through other activities. When you follow Father’s
instructions here absolutely and become successful
in your home church, you will inherit four things:
material, man, spirit world and God. (3/29/79)

Home church is the place where you can receive
the worldwide inheritance; you will receive the
individual inheritance, family inheritance. clan
inheritance, tribal inheritance and national inherit-
ance. Through the home church providence you
will also receive liberation from satanic accusa-
tion. (2/25/80)

What you have in home church is a microcosm
of the world, and by practicing there what I have
accomplished on the worldwide scale, you are
entitled to receive what I have inherited from God.
(5/26/79)

When you become completely victorious, your
360 homes will become your home. All 360 people
will say, You have been hungry for so long-please
come to our house for supper: you have lost so
much sleep-please take this bed as your own and
rest. When they see how hard you have worked,
they will all say. Sit down and take life easy; let me
do your job for you. If people really see God in
you, they will surely say this to you. ( 117/79)

We talk about hope and faith. What higher hope
is there than to look forward to the day when the
people in your home church area welcome you?
When you go around knocking all the walls down,
you will eventually find the 12 gates open to you,
and you will finally arrive at the central point you
should occupy. Then you will become a successful
13. At that moment you will have finished the
historical indemnity centering on yourself. You
will have achieved something no one ever dreamed
of achieving, and you will occupy the central
position with God’s approval. ( 1/13/80)

360 Homes Represents the Entire World

1 Thessolonians 5

2 My friends, we ask you to be thoughtful of your leaders who work hard and tell you how to live for the Lord. 13 Show them great respect and love because of their work. Try to get along with each other. 14 My friends, we beg you to warn anyone who isn’t living right. Encourage anyone who feels left out, help all who are weak, and be patient with everyone. 15 Don’t be hateful to people, just because they are hateful to you. Rather, be good to each other and to everyone else.

16 Always be joyful 17 and never stop praying. 18 Whatever happens, keep thanking God because of Jesus Christ. This is what God wants you to do.

19 Don’t turn away God’s Spirit 20 or ignore prophecies. 21 Put everything to the test. Accept what is good 22 and don’t have anything to do with evil.

Job 14

Our time on earth is brief;
the number of our days
    is already decided by you.
6 Why don’t you leave us alone
and let us find some happiness
    while we toil and labor?

Richard: Here Job is praying to God. This could also apply to people; ignore naysayers and focus on doing the ministry that God has called you to.

Selected Passages from the Words of Rev. Sun Myung Moon about Home Church

Today’s Word magazine, September 1981 p. 5 to p 6

Worldwide level

Your home church is one small world repre-
senting all mankind and the entire earth; it is a
microcosm of the whole world, and it makes no
difference where you live or travel. No matter
where you go on earth, still you must do your home
church mission. Even if you went to spirit world
now, you would have to return to finish that
mission, because unless you go through that gate,
you can never enter the Kingdom of Heaven.
( 1/1/79)
Because the messiah has already made the
condition of sacrificing himself by giving his
life to restore the world, then his followers can
condense a lifetime into a mere seven years in
which they can follow the Principle and gain
success in their own home church area. That will
be considered the same as having fulfilled the
responsibility of restoring the whole world. The
whole world is represented in your home church
area. By restoring your home church area, God will
give you the same credit as if you had restored or
re-created the entire world. (3/29/79)

If you do well in home church, then during the
next seven years you can affect the events
throughout the entire world. Your area is your
world. If you win there, you can win the world.
(4/16/80)

The number 360 in your home church stands
for all of history; 360 represents time and space:
the lunar calendar has 360 days, a circle has 360
degrees. Furthermore, the number 360 is divisible
by all the significant providential numbers: 3, 4.
12. 72, 120, etc. Your 360 homes symbolize the
annual rings of history, your 360 closest ances-
tors. all the individuals scattered over all the globe,
and a living altar representing the entire world.
Ideally, you should find at least 12 different
nationalities living in your 360 homes; thus, your
home church becomes the cultural sphere which
can unite God’s providence, centering on
Christianity and synthesizing all races. Therefore,
home church is the final gathering place. (9/23/80)

The ideal world

When you accomplish home church, there will be
no more need for churches, for every home will
be a church. You won’t have to go to church or pray,
just live by the heavenly law, the law of the
heavenly country. When we finish home church,
God will have His own nation, and its citizens will
only have to observe its laws. When we love
everyone as an extension of our own family, that
in itself will be heaven. If this does not become
reality, then the Divine Principle is just another
ideology that does not work. (10/5/80)

Engraft to the True Olive Tree

Happy New Year!

Romans 4

13 God promised Abraham and his descendants that he would give them the world. This promise wasn’t made because Abraham had obeyed a law, but because his faith in God made him acceptable. 14 If Abraham and his descendants were given this promise because they had obeyed a law, then faith would mean nothing, and the promise would be worthless.

15 God becomes angry when his Law is broken. But where there isn’t a law, it cannot be broken. 16 Everything depends on having faith in God, so that God’s promise is assured by his great kindness. This promise isn’t only for Abraham’s descendants who have the Law. It is for all who are Abraham’s descendants because they have faith, just as he did. Abraham is the ancestor of us all. 17 The Scriptures say that Abraham would become the ancestor of many nations. This promise was made to Abraham because he had faith in God, who raises the dead to life and creates new things.

18 God promised Abraham a lot of descendants. And when it all seemed hopeless, Abraham still had faith in God and became the ancestor of many nations. 19 Abraham’s faith never became weak, not even when he was nearly a hundred years old. He knew that he was almost dead and that his wife Sarah could not have children. 20 But Abraham never doubted or questioned God’s promise. His faith made him strong, and he gave all the credit to God.

Jeremiah 50

Your rivers and canals
    will dry up.

All of this will happen,
because your land
    is full of idols,
and they have made fools
    of you.
39 Never again will people live
    in your land—
only desert animals, jackals,[g]
    and unclean birds.
40 I destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah
    and the nearby towns,
and I will destroy Babylon
    just as completely.
No one will live there again.

Cheong Seong Gyeong 1404

Beloved Heavenly Father, on this day,
February 7, 1999, the Blessing of 360
Million Couples ceremony that is being
closely watched by heaven and earth is
being held. All humanity on earth and
all Blessed Families in the spirit world
are represented here, for this is the new
day of the liberation of heaven and earth
when we go beyond the restoration of
the right of the first born, the right of
the parents, and right of kingship. This
is the moment when we have reached
a transition point in world history in
which we can fulfill Your will and Your
wishes to establish a united world of the
sovereignty of true love, the Parents of
Heaven and Earth and the God of the
original ideal of creation.
To restore the spiritual and physi-
cal worlds under Satan’s dominion and
inhabited by humankind which inher-
ited evil love, life, and lineage from
the evil ancestors in Eden, then You,
together in heart with humankind and
the spirit world, passed through the Old,
New, and Completed Testament Ages.
In the Old Testament Age, Adam’s
family failed to keep the covenant to
inherit the lineage giving rise to a par-
ent-child relationship with You, losing it
instead through the Fall.
They would have established that
relationship with You in the place where
they could inherit Your love, life, and
lineage; yet it was in that very place that
the sin of our first ancestors bound them
in blood ties with Satan as their false
parent, thereby giving rise to the sor-
rowful history that began with Adam’s
family inheriting satanic love, life, and
lineage from Satan as his children and
thus becoming his family. This, in turn,
created the environment of conflict
between mind and body, husband and
wife, parents and children, and between
siblings, resulting in Cain’s murder of
Abel in that first family. Consequently,
all of humanity is divided at the levels of
the family, tribe, race, and nation, and
even the world with the democratic and
communist worlds pitted against each
other. Amid the confusion of the Last
Days, it was Your will to establish the
Unification Church in order to usher in
the Completed Testament Age because it
had not been possible to completely ful-
fill Your will in the Old Testament Age or
establish Your ideal kingship in the New
Testament Age. Upon the foundations
laid in those two ages, the True Parents
were to come to earth and complete all
that was incomplete both on earth and in
the spirit world, and form relationships
based on their true love, life, and lineage
on earth in the name of the God of lib-
eration. It was Your will to completely
clear the field of wild olive trees that is
the fallen world and to engraft them to
the true olive tree, thereby forming a
connection as Your kinfolk, and, by so
doing, restore Your family. Upholding
Your will, the Unification Church has
continued its work in performing global
weddings in the name of the True Par-
ents in order to allow all people of the
world to indemnify the wrongful mar-
riages of history and become one great
family of brothers and sisters.

We Are Entering the Age When Parents Will Bless Their Children

2 Samueal 12

20 David got up off the floor; he took a bath, combed his hair, and dressed. He went into the Lord’s tent and worshiped, then he went back home. David asked for something to eat, and when his servants brought him some food, he ate it.

Richard: Here David picks himself up and continues life after his young son had died. Whatever difficulties arise, we should compose ourselves and continue with the core mission God has given us.

Ezekiel 16

33 Prostitutes accept money for having sex, but you bribe men from everywhere to have sex with you. 34 You’re not like other prostitutes. Men don’t ask you for sex—you offer to pay them!

The Lord said:

35 Jerusalem, you prostitute, listen to me. 36 You chased after lovers, then took off your clothes and had sex. You even worshiped disgusting idols and sacrificed your own children as offerings to them. 37 So I, the Lord God, will gather every one of your lovers, those you liked and those you hated. They will stand around you, and I will rip off your clothes and let all of those lovers stare at your nakedness. 38 I will find you guilty of being an unfaithful wife and a murderer, and in my fierce anger I will sentence you to death! 39 Then I will hand you over to your lovers, who will tear down the places where you had sex. They will take your clothes and jewelry, leaving you naked and empty-handed.

Richard: Jerusalem had fallen far from God’s standard. And although the language in this passage is symbolic, it is also literal. The moral standards of the Israelites had fallen to a very low level. And are we not int he same situation today. God does not accept homosexuality, extra marital sex and all kinds of sexual perversions that happen now. We have deviated far from God’s standard. Abstinence before marriage and absolute faithfulness in marriage is not just a nice idea; it is the standard that God has set up as His ideal of creation.

Cheong Seong Gyeong p. 1400

Rev. Sun Myung Moon

Section 12. The 360 Million Couples


Adam’s was the representative fam-
ily – formed by the union of God and
true parents – that would have embraced
the universe; had Adam not fallen, being
blessed by him would have been a uni-
versal blessing. Yet due to the Fall, they
were separated, and so families in the
world today cannot enter the realm of
grace of this great blessing. In order to
restore that which was lost in Adam’s
family through the Fall, I will bless 360
million couples standing in the equal-
ized position in the realm of families
worldwide. (287-142, 1997.9.14)
After the Blessing of 3.6 Million Cou-
ples, it will be a downhill ride – descent
is easy. That will be the 36 million Cou-
ples: the growth stage. What follows is
the Blessing of 360 Million Couples; by
then we would reach level terrain at the
bottom of the hill. Descending there, we
can return to the state of Adam’s fam-
ily before the Fall. By achieving this, we
are entering the age when parents will
bless their children. From this point on,
you can perform the preliminary Bless-
ing ceremonies yourselves. Recognized
as John the Baptist families, you will be
able to do that in the name of the True
Parents. (287-144, 1997.9.14)
Three hundred and sixty million
couples! To think that we will soon have
blessed 360 million couples! You cannot
deny that God is with us in this task. If
I were to explain this in detail, I would
have to go into the secrets of the New
and Old Testaments and all the histori-
cal theological systems. Once you heard
those things, your ears would be opened
and you would develop an insight into
the providential future. Then there would
be no one on earth who could stop you
from walking your providential path.
Do you want this insight or not? These
secrets are such that you would want to
see them with your own eyes even if you
had heard them, and once you had seen
them you would want to listen to the
words again and again, whether in per-
son or not. To gain this knowledge you
should not go a single day without hear-
ing my words. (287-201, 1997.10.30)
What would happen after the Bless-
ing of 36 Million Couples is accom-
plished and the next goal of 360 million
couples comes in sight? Since that is the
number of couples, that would mean
there would be 720 million individuals
involved in the Blessing. If each of them
brought four members from their fami-
ly, then four times seven is twenty-eight,
and the total number brought by them
would be 2.8 billion. Some would bring
even more than four people. Are there
only four family members per house-
hold in the East? There are some fam-
ilies with between five and ten mem-
bers in them. That would result in more
than three billion people coming over
to God’s side, which is more than half
the world population. The era has come
when, if you were to weigh the two sides
with a scale, our side would be the heavi-
er. (288-18, 1997.10.31)