Category: Old Testament

With Whom Will God Share His Heart?

Matthew 5

When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up on the side of a mountain and sat down.[a]

Blessings

Jesus’ disciples gathered around him, 2 and he taught them:

3 God blesses those people
    who depend only on him.
They belong to the kingdom
    of heaven!
4 God blesses those people
who grieve.
    They will find comfort!
5 God blesses those people
    who are humble.
The earth will belong
    to them!
6 God blesses those people
who want to obey him
    more than to eat or drink.
They will be given
    what they want!
7 God blesses those people
    who are merciful.
They will be treated
    with mercy!

Job 16

12 Everything was going well,
until God grabbed my neck
    and shook me to pieces.
God set me up as the target
13     for his arrows,
and without showing mercy,
he slashed my stomach open,
    spilling out my insides.
14 God never stops attacking,
15     and so, in my sorrow
I dress in sackcloth[a]
    and sit in the dust.
16 My face is red with tears,
and dark shadows
    circle my eyes,
17 though I am not violent,
    and my prayers are sincere.

Richard: No one has a “right” to complain about their situation. We can not definitively say whether a particular circumstance is good or bad, in the long run.

The Toil of God as He Tries to Raise up His Beloved Children

Rev. Sun Myung Moon
October 11, 1959

John 3: 11-21

1 Corinthians 7:28-29

God’s goal is to raise up individuals and people and to send one embodiment whom He can love and do His work of liberation through. God has been guiding history toward that purpose.

After the Fall, even though human beings betrayed Him so many thousands of times, because God considered them His children, He did not hesitate to do any difficult work or face the risk of death for the sake of achieving His goals. A parent cannot abandon a child just because he is committing sins. Original human beings are the direct children of God who are connected to God’s heart. Even if human beings were to abandon God, God cannot cut off this relationship and abandon people. This is what you have to understand.

When we think about this, we see that we are descendants who deserve to be mistreated by the universe and labeled as violators of filial piety. The same is true for every single person in history, including our good ancestors. From the standpoint of a nation, God is the king. We should serve God as the king and become loyal ministers. Because we are unable to do so, we cannot protest, even if people label us traitors and expose our sins to the world. This is what we are.

If such a relationship existed between two people, they would surely be the bitterest of enemies. How can God overlook these facts? It is because God has a never-ending desire to see people as sons and daughters who will live with Him eternally. Thus, even if God were ostracized today and tomorrow, turned away from this place and that, He could not turn away from His pursuit of the true child.

I have thought about it like this and have cried, “People on the earth! Before you long for your children and cry, long for God and cry. Before you become indignant about something, you should look toward Heaven and feel its indignation. If there is someone who is crazy about something on the earth, he should forget the earth and become crazy about God.”

God is an infinitely sad person. These are not abstract words. With whom will God share His heart? To whom will God reveal His pain and bitterness? There is no such person. For this reason God yearns for sons and daughters to appear on the earth, sons and daughters who can cling to God’s sorrow and pain and comfort Him. This is the highest standard we should aspire to.

What kind of person is God? He is not a ruler but a Father whose relationship with you is inseparable. That Father struggled in relation to the earth with a heart as desperate as if He were going crazy for six thousand years. Nevertheless, people repeatedly caused that Father pain and betrayed Him. If there is someone who recognizes this sin and becomes crazy about God even now, God will not abandon him.

God Created Human Beings to Give them His Love

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2 Samuel 23

8 These are the names of David’s warriors:

Ishbosheth[d] the son of Hachmon[e] was the leader of the Three Warriors.[f] In one battle, he killed eight hundred men with his spear.[g]

9 The next one of the Three Warriors was Eleazar the son of Dodo the Ahohite. One time when the Philistines were at war with Israel, he and David dared the Philistines to fight them. Every one of the Israelite soldiers turned and ran, 10 except Eleazar. He killed Philistines until his hand was cramped, and he couldn’t let go of his sword. When Eleazar finished, all the Israelite troops had to do was come back and take the enemies’ weapons and armor. The Lord gave Israel a great victory that day.

11 Next was Shammah the son of Agee the Hararite. One time the Philistines brought their army together to destroy a crop of peas growing in a field near Lehi. The rest of Israel’s soldiers ran away from the Philistines, 12 but Shammah stood in the middle of the field and killed the Philistines. The crops were saved, and the Lord gave Israel a great victory.

13 One year at harvest time, the Three Warriors[h] went to meet David at Adullam Cave.[i] The Philistine army had set up camp in Rephaim Valley 14 and had taken over Bethlehem. David was in his fortress, 15 and he was very thirsty. He said, “I wish I had a drink from the well by the gate at Bethlehem.”

16 The Three Warriors[j] sneaked into the Philistine camp and got some water from the well near Bethlehem’s gate. But after they brought the water back to David, he refused to drink it. Instead, he poured it out as a sacrifice 17 and said to the Lord, “I can’t drink this water! It’s like the blood of these men who risked their lives to get it for me.”

The Three Warriors did these brave deeds.

Hosea 8

8 Israel, you are ruined,
and now the nations
    consider you worthless.
9 You are like a wild donkey
    that goes its own way.
You’ve run off to Assyria
    and hired them as allies.
10 You can bargain with nations,
    but I’ll catch you anyway.
Soon you will suffer abuse
    by kings and rulers.

11 Israel, you have built
many altars
where you offer
    sacrifices for sin.
But these altars have become
    places for sin.
12 My instructions for sacrifices
were written in detail,
    but you ignored them.
13 You sacrifice your best animals
    and eat the sacrificial meals,[c]
but I, the Lord,
    refuse your offerings.
I will remember your sins
    and punish you.
Then you will return to Egypt.[d]

14 Israel, I created you,
    but you forgot me.
You and Judah built palaces
    and many strong cities.[e]
Now I will send fire to destroy
    your towns and fortresses.

The Toil of God as He Tries to Raise up His Beloved Children

Rev. Sun Myung Moon
October 11, 1959

John 3: 11-21

1 Corinthians 7:28-29

God created Adam and Eve as the heroes who could govern all things of Heaven and earth. God is the motive of love and the origin of love. He created Adam and Eve to invest all His love in them.

God did not create human beings to have them rule the entire universe. We have to understand that God created human beings to give them His love.

If God’s love is the power that motivates all things of the universe, why did God create and bless Adam and Eve? God created Adam and Eve as the people to whom He would give all the love which flows in Heaven and earth. You have to understand that God created our ancestors centering on that love.

God, who established the ideals and created the universe, must have rejoiced when He thought about how the creation of the universe would reach a finale with the creation of Adam and Eve. Moreover, God must have been indescribably happy as He watched Adam and Eve grow up. He looked at Adam and Eve with incredible joy and happiness. Don’t you think this is how it was? That was Adam and Eve.

God wanted to love Adam and Eve to the extent that He forgot about His dignity as the Creator, He forgot about all His powers and His omnipresent existence. You have to understand, then, how it must have been for God to look at Adam and Eve after the Fall.

Although you are children born of Satan’s lineage, you still love infinitely. You know how to love your beloved without limits. If human beings had not fallen, and good children rather than evil children had multiplied on the earth, then you could have looked at your children and felt the same intense feeling of love that God felt toward Adam and Eve after He created them.

People Who do Evil Things are Judged Guilty

Luke 6

22 God will bless you when others hate you and won’t have anything to do with you. God will bless you when people insult you and say cruel things about you, all because you are a follower of the Son of Man. 23 Long ago your own people did these same things to the prophets. So when this happens to you, be happy and jump for joy! You will have a great reward in heaven.

Ezekiel16

The Lord said:

44 People will use this saying about you, Jerusalem: “If the mother is bad, so is her daughter.” 45 You are just like your mother, who hated her husband and her own children. You are also like your sisters, who hated their husbands and children. Your father was an Amorite, and your mother was a Hittite. 46 Your older sister was Samaria, that city to your north with her nearby villages. Your younger sister was Sodom, that city to your south with her nearby villages. 47 You followed their way of life and their wicked customs, and soon you were more disgusting than they were.

48 As surely as I am the living Lord God, the people of Sodom and its nearby villages were never as sinful as you. 49 They were arrogant and spoiled; they had everything they needed and still refused to help the poor and needy. 50 They thought they were better than everyone else, and they did things I hate. And so I destroyed them.

51 You people of Jerusalem have sinned twice as much as the people of Samaria. In fact, your evil ways have made both Sodom and Samaria look innocent. 52 So their punishment will seem light compared to yours. You will be disgraced and put to shame because of your disgusting sins.

The Toil of God as He Tries to Raise up His Beloved Children

Rev. Sun Myung Moon
October 11, 1959

John 3: 11-21

11 I tell you for certain that we know what we are talking about because we have seen it ourselves. But none of you will accept what we say. 12 If you don’t believe when I talk to you about things on earth, how can you possibly believe if I talk to you about things in heaven?

13 No one has gone up to heaven except the Son of Man, who came down from there. 14 And the Son of Man must be lifted up, just as that metal snake was lifted up by Moses in the desert.[a] 15 Then everyone who has faith in the Son of Man will have eternal life.

16 God loved the people of this world so much that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who has faith in him will have eternal life and never really die. 17 God did not send his Son into the world to condemn its people. He sent him to save them! 18 No one who has faith in God’s Son will be condemned. But everyone who doesn’t have faith in him has already been condemned for not having faith in God’s only Son.

19 The light has come into the world, and people who do evil things are judged guilty because they love the dark more than the light. 20 People who do evil hate the light and won’t come to the light, because it clearly shows what they have done. 21 But everyone who lives by the truth will come to the light, because they want others to know that God is really the one doing what they do.

1 Corinthians 7:28-29

28 It isn’t wrong to marry, even if you have never been married before. But those who marry will have a lot of trouble, and I want to protect you from that.

29 My friends, what I mean is that the Lord will soon come,[a] and it won’t matter if you are married or not.

Prayer

Father, we know that we all have different situations and that the intensity of our faith is also very different. Father, even if our situations are different and the foundations of our minds differ, please let us understand that they are all centering on the world.

Please let us understand that God longs for us all to have the same situation and same foundation of mind during this hour. Please let us understand that God wants our situations to be based on Heaven, not on human beings. He wants the foundation of our minds to be connected not to human emotions but to the emotions of Heaven.

Each of us stands at the edge of two worlds. When we look to the left, we find that worldly relationships tie us down. When we look to the right, the infinite movement of goodness is pulling us. We know all too well that we are struggling between these two worlds.

Please help us understand deeply that God cannot raise people up in that situation and bless them. Nor can He call them or entrust them with a heavenly mission.

I pray that our situation and the foundation of our minds will tilt to one side so that they are not of the world but of eternal Heaven. Beloved Father, this is our sincere wish.

Now we lie prostrated before the Father. Please allow us to reveal the innermost parts of our hearts and to search for ourselves based on the Father’s teachings. With a new vision, please allow us to recognize our situation once more. Please allow us to realize our powers once more.

We sincerely wish that You will allow us to remember how we have been struggling, under what ideology we have been struggling, and for what value and standard we have been struggling. Then please allow this to be an hour when we can think again about how we were like this and that in the past, present and future. Beloved Father, this is our sincere wish.

Relationships and situations centering on people split into many relationships and conditions. Relationships and situations centering on Heaven have a more unified shape, and they form something new, unique and clear. We lie prostrated, longing to be unified in a unique way. Please extend the hands of love. Please sway us with Your powers. Please do not allow anything here that does not belong to Heaven, and move us with the original heart and mind so that we can become a group the Father can recognize as His own. Father, this is our sincere wish.

Father! Please build a bridge between minds and hearts now so that this may be an hour when we can connect to the Father’s situation and experience the Father’s heart. Father, this is what we sincerely wish.

Although many saints and sages have come and gone in history, they did not know the situation of Heaven and were ignorant of Heaven’s heart. As the Last Days grow closer, we should be discussing and solving the problems of the situation and heart of Heaven.

Please help us understand once more that to solve this problem we have to be happy even after sacrificing everything. We have to be determined to become sacrifices and bow before Heaven. Please let this be an hour when we desire the Father’s powers.

Please preside over everything in this hour. Please do not let us be entrenched in God’s grace. We know that there are many sons and daughters who have built secret altars and are shedding lonely tears out of concern for the will. Even if they may be in difficult situations, please bless them with the same grace. We have entrusted You with this hour. Please command this hour from the beginning to the end and let it be an hour You can recognize.

Even though God may have made all preparations, we know that we have to prepare the foundations of mind and body in response. Please do not let anything of the past remain in our minds. Allow us to return to the heart of a child and build a relationship with God again through the calm heart of the Father.

Please let this be an hour when we can be drenched in the grace of the Father’s commands and be united with the Father. Let this be an hour when the Father can personally talk things over with us and make a new promise to us.

I am about to speak the words. Therefore, Father, please be with us. I know that there is no need for a lot of words. I know that what we need more than words is to experience You through our hearts. Father, please open the gates to our minds and take care of our situations. We know that Jesus is the original heart who connected with You, and we have gathered our hearts to come together. Please let this be an hour when we can build a deep relationship with the Father’s original nature.

Please let this be an hour when we can make a new determination and pledge before the Father through new words of promise. Please let this be an hour when we repent for all our sins of the past and establish one purified standard before the Father.

Please do not let the heart of the speaker and the hearts of the listeners be divided. Let this be an hour when we can connect to the one heart and unite with the one grace. Otherwise, legions of demons will target this gap and drag us to the shadow of death. Please help us be aware of this and abandon all of our situations, concepts and thoughts. Let us return to the heart of a child to unveil our hearts and listen to the Father’s commanding words. Praying that You will bless us to build a relationship with the Father’s heart, we prayed in the name of the Lord. Amen.

Those Believers who Pose as Masters and Fight with each other over Power and Influence will be Damned

Deuteronomy 25

Moses said to Israel:

25 1-2 Suppose you and someone else each accuse the other of doing something wrong, and you go to court, where the judges decide you are guilty. If your punishment is to be beaten with a whip,[a] one of the judges will order you to lie down, and you will receive the number of lashes you deserve. 3 Forty lashes is the most that you can be given, because more than that might make other Israelites think you are worthless.

2 Chronicles 35

22 But Josiah ignored Neco’s warning, even though it came from God! Instead, he disguised himself and marched into battle against Neco in the valley near Megiddo.

23 During the battle an Egyptian soldier shot Josiah with an arrow. Josiah told his servants, “Get me out of here! I’ve been hit.” 24 They carried Josiah out of his chariot, then put him in the other chariot he had there and took him back to Jerusalem, where he soon died. He was buried beside his ancestors, and everyone in Judah and Jerusalem mourned his death.

Members Who Will Live In God’s Family

Rev. Sun Myung Moon
September 27, 1959

Matthew 12: 46-50

The God of history and of the present age is a sorrowful God. The God of the past and the present is a sad God. Those who do not recognize this will be judged. Those who truly love God will not be able to pray for the alleviation of their own suffering and agony. We should be grateful for the fact that God has been shouldering all the sorrows and pains of the past. Those who are ignorant of this and stress their own sorrow and pain will all be judged. If someone cries alone because he cannot pray about his own pain to God, knowing God’s sorrow of the past and the present, God will recognize him. You should pray, “How much greater is God’s suffering than my own pain? Even if I am to die, please let me shoulder it.” Those who pray for blessing today will become greater and greater sinners before God. The more you enter the realm of God’s grace and love, the more you know you are a sinner who cannot raise your head before God. You will find that to be true in the spirit world. Believe me if you will, or don’t believe me. I am not speaking foolish words. Those who want to think that, let them go ahead. That is not how the next world is. The spirit world is not like that. It is a world in which people will humbly decline the offer to be raised to a higher place several times. They will say, “I am not worthy.”

Those believers who pose as masters and fight with each other over power and influence will be damned, and such churches will perish. Now the time has come for us to turn around. We should try to run away when someone tries to elevate us and decline when someone wants to do things for us. That is how God will come to us.

Members of the Unification Church, although you are receiving persecution and mistreatment from the outside world, please do not be sad. This has been the path that the Lord and the Father have walked, so we unworthy sinners should walk it gladly. You should say, “If the agony of the people can be eliminated by my suffering, and the sorrows of the world and God can be alleviated through the sorrows this body experiences, I am grateful.” Those who do so will never be snatched away by Satan. God will never betray them. We have come together to become such people, to become God’s people and members of the heavenly family.

The world is fast asleep. God is longing for people who can forget about themselves while dreaming of the Kingdom of Heaven; in other words, the family of God who can cry for the heavenly parents and brothers and sisters. You have to understand that this is why you have gathered here.

If there are such people on the earth, then no matter how severe the persecution, no matter how miserable the events they encounter, they will remain till the end. For this reason we should hold onto Heaven and earth and appeal with our blood and tears. We should mourn over the sins of the past. We should mourn for the sake of the thirty million people of this nation. God longs for such young people, members of the heavenly family and kinsmen of Heaven. If such a movement does not emerge among the people, the Korean people will perish.

We Have to Live in a New World with New Hopes

Numbers 11

21 Moses replied, “At least six hundred thousand grown men are here with me. How can you say there will be enough meat to feed them and their families for a whole month? 22 Even if we butchered all of our sheep and cattle, or caught every fish in the sea, we wouldn’t have enough to feed them.”

23 The Lord answered, “I can do anything! Watch and you’ll see my words come true.”

Isaiah 16

13 The Lord has already said all of this about Moab. 14 Now he says, “The contract of a hired worker is good for three years, but Moab’s glory and greatness won’t last any longer than that. Only a few of its people will survive, and they will be left helpless.”

Members Who Will Live In God’s Family

Rev. Sun Myung Moon
September 27, 1959

Matthew 12: 46-50

With what will God judge on the judgment day? God judges with the conditions of restoration through indemnity based on the foundation of His heart of the past, present and future. When Mary Magdalene met the resurrected Jesus, she did not know that Jesus could not let her hold him. That is how it is. Do you think that one can go to Heaven just by believing? The thought may be good. But if you believe that, no matter how hard you try, you will never have anything to do with Jesus. It won’t do, even if you receive the words and put them into practice. No matter how faithfully you live by it, you will not be able to connect yourself to the embodiment. Why? It is because you are ignorant.

For this reason we should repent. We should repent and cleanse ourselves of all wrong elements. Why repent? For six thousand years, since the time of Adam’s family until today, our ancestors had to uphold the will of Heaven and fulfill God’s wishes. Yet they could not complete these responsibilities. We should shoulder the responsibility for this sin and repent. God is not just the God of the future. He is the God of the past. We have to understand God as the God who is working to cleanse all historical sins, and we should build a relationship with Him and purge our sins.

Moreover, since God is the God of the past, we have to purge the sins of this age. After having cleansed all the sins of the past and the future, we have to establish one new standard of the future and sing of the glory of the Father; that place is the Kingdom of Heaven, where we can live eternally.

Only after that can we form a heavenly family which does not even think about the sins of the past. This is the realization of God’s hope. Then we are to be recognized as sons and daughters of the heavenly family and live eternally. Such people do not need to believe in Jesus. They do not need Jesus. They do not need Christianity. They do not need faith. The place they go after they live a normal life on earth is the Kingdom of Heaven.

After the age of hope comes, God will not look back at the six-thousand-year history. There is no need to flip through the pages of sorrowful history. After the arrival of an age where we can say that this is certainly the standard based upon which solutions can be obtained through our minds, bodies and hearts, we do not need to flip back through the refuse of the past.

Ladies and gentlemen. People nowadays are interested in antiques. Do you know why that is? It is because we are searching for the original things which were lost. We have to find the antiques that Adam and Eve lost long ago, six thousand years ago, which could have connected us to God. After that we have to cut our relationship with the age of antiques and enter another era when we struggle to find new things. This world today is an accursed world which destroys and devours all new things that emerge. That is not true for the era of hope. The world that we hope for is a world where new things are valued. Since God’s nature values new things, we have to move toward that age.

For this reason people block the path we are walking. They tell us to turn around and go back to the past. They tell us to go deep into our minds. This is why Buddhism teaches us to enter a state of meditation. The reality of life on earth and its sorrow is that we have to seek our original selves and original minds. Yet after we go back to the past and resolve it all, we would never want to think about the past. God’s goal is to destroy it all and leave no part of it behind.

We have to live in a new world with new hopes. That is what the past of a people is like. Roman culture was revival of the Hellenistic culture. They studied the older culture and brought it out again and integrated it with the new reality. That is not what we should do in the future. Of course, it is good to study history. However, that is not the standard of our hope. Until now our fate has been to return to the past and return to Heaven. From now on it should be new.