Category: Old Testament

God has Sought to Transform the Individual, Family and Nation


1 Corinthians 1

1 From Paul, chosen by God to be an apostle of Christ Jesus, and from Sosthenes, who is also a follower.

2 To God’s church in Corinth. Christ Jesus chose you to be his very own people, and you worship in his name, as we and all others do who call him Lord.

3 My prayer is that God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ will be kind to you and will bless you with peace!

4 I never stop thanking my God for being kind enough to give you Christ Jesus, 5 who helps you speak and understand so well. 6 Now you are certain that everything we told you about our Lord Christ Jesus is true. 7 You are not missing out on any blessings, as you wait for him to return. 8 And until the day Christ does return, he will keep you completely innocent. 9 God can be trusted, and he chose you to be partners with his Son, our Lord Jesus Christ.

Psalm 145

4 Each generation will announce
to the next
    your wonderful
    and powerful deeds.
5 I will keep thinking about
your marvelous glory
    and your mighty miracles.[a]
6 Everyone will talk about
    your fearsome deeds,
    and I will tell all nations
    how great you are.
7 They will celebrate and sing
    about your matchless mercy
    and your power to save.

God’s Will Which We Must Untangle

Rev. Sun Myung Moon
June 14, 1959

Matthew 10

Matthew 18

God has been stubbornly pioneering one aspect of history in which the masses did not take interest: religion. Religion has not followed the trend of history and has maintained the singular path that went against the course of history. It has developed a conditional foundation which worked to foster the concept of holistic goodness in the background of history.

Had God not prepared that foundation of relationship and the conditional environment in the course of history as He developed the direct relationship with humankind, then He would not be able to have any relationship with us today. Had He not accomplished it, He would not have any relationship with our conscience today.

Religion has developed through the historical relationship and has prepared and advanced the foundation in the environment from the position that went against the contemporary society. I myself also advanced from a position that could not harmonize with reality and went against the trend of this age. However, if religion does not harmonize with society until the end, the garden of happiness, freedom and peace for which God, humanity and the whole cosmos long cannot be constructed in the dispensational last days; such an ideology cannot be established. If God is driven out, then the standard of absolute goodness in our conscience would also be driven out. Therefore, that absolute goodness also must pass through the process of historical relationship if it is to make a relationship with historical humankind. For that reason, God has worked the dispensation in this way.

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Please Make Us Feel That Our Minds Belong to You


Job 33

Job, listen to me!
    Pay close attention.
2 Everything I will say
3     is true and sincere,
4 just as surely as the Spirit
of God All-Powerful[a]
    gave me the breath of life.
5 Now line up your arguments
    and prepare to face me.
6 We each were made from clay,
    and God has no favorites,
7 so don’t be afraid of me
    or what I might do.

Romans 5

20 The Law came, so that the full power of sin could be seen. Yet where sin was powerful, God’s kindness was even more powerful. 21 Sin ruled by means of death. But God’s kindness now rules, and God has accepted us because of Jesus Christ our Lord. This means that we will have eternal life.

God’s Will Which We Must Untangle

Rev. Sun Myung Moon
June 14, 1959

Matthew 10

Matthew 18

Prayer

Father, my Father! Please make us feel that our mind belongs to You. Please make us feel during this hour that our body is flawless and untainted, just like the original Adam and Eve. As we realize our responsibility to become the glorious fruits that can be offered to You with our minds and bodies united into one, we ask You to please grant us the heavenly grace of calling You “our Father.”

We know well that the greatest sorrow of humanity is not being able to connect with Your love, losing the original conscience which can communicate with Your heart, and the disunity between our mind and body, which have the role of uniting that conscience and heart. Sensitivity toward Your heart was lost due to the fall. The mind that can love all things by experiencing Your heart disappeared from us. Father, please guide us to regain that heart. Please make our mind and body united and please make everything we have belong to You. Oh, Father! We earnestly hope that You will move us in this hour to possess a broad heart that can proudly spread the wings of love and embrace all things as we bring our all to You.

My Father! We desperately need Your word, which can connect us with that kind of heart. We know that we lost Your word; the next thing we lost was the substance, and the next was the heart. Father, please raise in us the lost original heart through Your word. We sincerely ask that You will grant in this hour the grace to be embraced in Your glorious bosom by our minds bowing to Your original words and our bodies listening diligently.

You were the one who initiated the task; You shall be the one to fulfill it. Everything was started from goodness; thus, the end shall also be goodness. Father, You said that You are the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. However, humankind lost the original heart at the beginning, and we cannot be connected to the heavenly heart even at the end. Now, in the last days, we should hold and connect with the original heart, yet we are still struggling in the grievous pits of the fall. Father, please forgive us.

Please make us understand in this hour that our mind is not ours but Yours; our body is not ours but Yours. Please, Father, make us experience substantially and actually the reality that all of our heart, sensitivity, and everything we have does not belong to us, but to You.

Father, I am about to convey Your words. Please do not allow any gap between the mind of the conveyer and the minds of the receiver. We know that it is easy to block heavenly grace if we assess things from our subjective viewpoint. Therefore, please make us reciprocate and harmonize for Your sake alone. We earnestly pray that we can return to a childlike heart, hear the words, and receive the feelings as they are. Please permit everything to start and end with Your presence.

Father! Please allow us to be connected to the heart and the situation of Jesus at the time of his ministry. Allow us to become the substantiation of his ideology and hope so that we can welcome Jesus, become harmonized with his situation and his heart, and establish the condition of joy by which to attend You. Father, please bless this hour which we received with Your permission to be filled with the grace of Your glory. I ask all this in the name of the Lord. Amen.



Lose Your Life to Gain Your Life

Matthew 12

9 Jesus left and went into one of the Jewish meeting places, 10 where there was a man whose hand was crippled. Some Pharisees wanted to accuse Jesus of doing something wrong, and they asked him, “Is it right to heal someone on the Sabbath?”

11 Jesus answered, “If you had a sheep that fell into a ditch on the Sabbath, wouldn’t you lift it out? 12 People are worth much more than sheep, and so it is right to do good on the Sabbath.” 13 Then Jesus told the man, “Hold out your hand.” The man did, and it became as healthy as the other one.

14 The Pharisees left and started making plans to kill Jesus.

Richard: The world will generally oppose you when you move aggressively to do what is right. Notice here that it is the very Jewish leaders that Jesus came to as their Savio whom they had been waiting for that are opposing Jesus.

Jonah 4

9 But the Lord asked, “Jonah, do you have the right to be angry about the vine?”

“Yes, I do,” he answered, “and I’m angry enough to die.”

10 But the Lord said:

You are concerned about a vine that you did not plant or take care of, a vine that grew up in one night and died the next. 11 In that city of Nineveh there are more than a hundred twenty thousand people who cannot tell right from wrong, and many cattle are also there. Don’t you think I should be concerned about that big city?

Richard: We should rejoice when our lost brothers and sisters return to God, not complain that their destruction did not come about.

God’s Will Which We Must Untangle

Rev. Sun Myung Moon
June 14, 1959

Matthew 10

34 Don’t think that I came to bring peace to the earth! I came to bring trouble, not peace. 35 I came to turn sons against their fathers, daughters against their mothers, and daughters-in-law against their mothers-in-law. 36 Your worst enemies will be in your own family.

37 If you love your father or mother or even your sons and daughters more than me, you are not fit to be my disciples. 38 And unless you are willing to take up your cross and come with me, you are not fit to be my disciples. 39 If you try to save your life, you will lose it. But if you give it up for me, you will surely find it.

Matthew 18

15 If one of my followers[a] sins against you, go and point out what was wrong. But do it in private, just between the two of you. If that person listens, you have won back a follower. 16 But if that one refuses to listen, take along one or two others. The Scriptures teach that every complaint must be proven true by two or more witnesses. 17 If the follower refuses to listen to them, report the matter to the church. Anyone who refuses to listen to the church must be treated like an unbeliever or a tax collector.

Prayer

Father, we know that Your ideal of creating the original garden and embracing the original true children with the original heart never appeared on this earth. Please forgive humanity. We have not sung to You with our original hearts from the time we were seized by death until today.

Please forgive us, the miserable ones who were unable to call You from the glorious original position. Father, please have compassion on us, for we did not attain the original heart and were unable to call You “My Father” with yearning.

Humanity lost the original garden, fell into the world of death and struggled against the darkness. We have been in the midst of lamentation and hopelessness, entrapped in the hands of the enemy. However, we long for the original homeland in our consciences, the remnant of the original mind. With Your touch, which we felt hour to hour, we have sought the stream of heavenly life. Father, even as You persevered through the historical battles, You helped us. We are so grateful.

Father, You know that being immature and unworthy, we are tired from this course. I ask You to spread Your hands of compassion over us. Please grant the power of re-creation and restore our original hearts. My Father, I sincerely ask that You hold us so that we may approach You with our original selves.

We must go toward the original world for which You long, even if we have to cut away everything of this world. Therefore, Father, please allow us to be totally immersed in desperate longing for the homeland. Please drive us so that we may run to the homeland, even if our bodies and legs become exhausted.

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We Should Make the Environment for God and Jesus to Rest

2 Samuel 2

12 One day, Abner and the soldiers of Ishbosheth[e] left Mahanaim and went to Gibeon. 13 Meanwhile, Joab the son of Zeruiah[f] was leading David’s soldiers, and the two groups met at the pool in Gibeon.[g] Abner and his men sat down on one side of the pool, while Joab and his men sat on the other side. 14 Abner yelled to Joab, “Let’s have some of our best soldiers get up and fight each other!”

Richard: We should focus on fulfilling our responsibility by following the teachings of the Eight Great Textbooks of Holy Scripture. We should not fight among ‘relatives’, such as the feuds between Sanctuary Church and Family Federation. Focusing on the Eight Great Textbooks will bring unity.

Isaiah 18

Downstream from Ethiopia[a]
lies the country of Egypt,
    swarming with insects.[b]
2 Egypt sends messengers
up the Nile River
    on ships made of reeds.[c]
Send them fast to Ethiopia,
whose people are tall
    and have smooth skin.
Their land is divided by rivers;
they are strong and brutal,
    feared all over the world.[d]

3 Everyone on this earth,
    listen with care!
A signal will be given
on the mountains,
    and you will hear a trumpet.
4 The Lord said to me,
“I will calmly look down
    from my home above—
as calmly as the sun at noon
or clouds in the heat
    of harvest season.”

5 Before the blossoms
    can turn into grapes,
God will cut off the sprouts
    and hack off the branches.
6 Ethiopians will be food
for mountain buzzards
    during the summer
and for wild animals
    during the winter.

7 Those Ethiopians are tall and their skin is smooth. They are feared all over the world, because they are strong and brutal. But at that time they will come from their land divided by rivers, and they will bring gifts to the Lord All-Powerful, who is worshiped on Mount Zion.

My New Self and the Heaven Where My New Self Can Dwell

Rev. Sun Myung Moon
June 14, 1959

What was it like for Jesus coming to this earth? He was born in a stable; he lived with the persecution and contempt of others; he died miserably, hung on a cross. Therefore, our task today is to feel the heart Jesus felt as he passed through the way of the cross.

If there is any glory, before I can sing of the glory, the Lord should sing to the Father, and the Father should sing to all people. Only after that can I sing of the glory. In order for the Father to sing of glory to all people, first there must be the Kingdom of Heaven on earth. Therefore, we should make the environment for God and Jesus to rest. We should re-establish the dignity of God as the Creator and the dignity of Jesus as the Savior. Heaven and earth, all things, the countless spirits in the spirit world and in hell, even Satan himself, should say, “You are indeed the son of God.”

You know that the sad historical course has not ended yet, and the time of the judgment has not yet arrived. Nevertheless, you felt the heavenly life, embrace the heavenly ideology, and received the shock of the heavenly heart. What is it all for? Of course, it is for God’s hope to be transferred to you. That is the purpose of God.

The people of this nation remain as God and Jesus’ concern. We should be willing to take the responsibility over all such concerns and liberate Jesus and God. Therefore, centering on such a determination, you should bring the victorious results from the war and attain the qualification of being a friend of Jesus. Only then can you substantially elevate to the level of resurrection. Because Jesus lived such a life and resurrected after his death, we also must go beyond the condition of being resurrected after living such a life. Therefore, we must follow the path of Jesus to discover our new selves.

Jesus Did Not Come to Die

Acts 13

13 Paul and the others left Paphos and sailed to Perga in Pamphylia. But John[d] left them and went back to Jerusalem. 14 The rest of them went on from Perga to Antioch in Pisidia. Then on the Sabbath they went to the Jewish meeting place and sat down.

2nd Chronicles 5

11-13 The priests of every group had gone through the ceremony to make themselves clean and acceptable to the Lord. The Levite musicians, including Asaph, Heman, Jeduthun, and their sons and relatives, were wearing robes of fine linen. They were standing on the east side of the altar, playing cymbals, small harps, and other stringed instruments. One hundred twenty priests were with these musicians, and they were blowing trumpets.

They were praising the Lord by playing music and singing:

“The Lord is good,
    and his love never ends.”

My New Self and the Heaven Where My New Self Can Dwell

Sun Myung Moon
June 14, 1959

Who are sons and daughters of filial piety? In daily life, if someone just feels happy when he sees his parents happy, that is not a filial son. The real filial son or daughter would not only feel the happiness; he or she would also feel the course of past hardships that went before the present happiness. If a son or daughter only rejoices without knowing everything of the process that led to the happiness, this is not a truly filial child. If that is the case in the human world, it would certainly be true in the case of the heavenly dispensation and of God’s will for the future.

Who was Jesus? He was the substantiation of new resurrection, culminating the four-thousand-year history. The people of that time did not know that he was unprecedented, representing Heaven and earth.

Had the high priests and Pharisees known that Jesus came for the followers of Judaism and the Israelites, they would not have opposed the people going to Jesus. However, they opposed and prevented this, and Jesus lived a heartbroken life on this earth and departed in misery. This is certainly the sin of humanity, not of God or Jesus.

How absurd is the fact that the birthplace of the Messiah, whom God promised for four thousand years through the prophets, was a stable. Think about it. In a stable? Many people today celebrate Christmas as a wonderful day but, actually, it is heartbreaking. Many do not know it is a sorrowful day for which no amount of tears would suffice.

Had there been people at that time who truly longed for and prepared for the Messiah such that their sincerity even touched the heart of Heaven, they would not have treated the Messiah in that way. There should have been people who prepared for Jesus, but there were none.

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