Category: Old Testament

Understand Your Identity

Judges 16

17 Finally, Samson told her the truth. “I have belonged to God[h] ever since I was born, so my hair has never been cut. If it were ever cut off, my strength would leave me, and I would be as weak as anyone else.”

Richard:  Understand your indentity.  Don’t let the devil steal your strength and identity.

Psalm 96

Sing a new song to the Lord!
Everyone on this earth,
    sing praises to the Lord,
2     sing and praise his name.

Day after day announce,
    “The Lord has saved us!”
3 Tell every nation on earth,
“The Lord is wonderful
    and does marvelous things!

Richard:  Yes, sing praises to our God every day!

When We Should Stay Awake with Heaven

Sun Myung Moon
April 19, 1959

Matthew 25:1-13

Prayer

Father, we miss the time when You used to teach us about all that was of You and the time when we beheld Your glory in ecstasy and did not want to remain on earth. We also miss the time when heaven and earth rejoiced as we were immersed in Your love and experienced Your Shim Jung.

You liked appearing in quietude, and did not mind coming in the middle of hardship. You have been working in history, fighting with us on the battlefield and in the place of despair. As we reflect that You have always stayed with us, fought with us, and always longed to live with us, please let us repent for our past course of faith in which we enjoyed rejecting and denying the earth, even though we lived there.

We have seen that although You are in glory when we joyfully serve You in the position of transcendence, You were pitiful, haggard and saddened when You appeared on the earth. We also have learned that You have been relating to us in this form throughout history.

We eagerly hope and desire that You will guide us so that we stand in the glorious position where we can rejoice with the Father who has been wounded on the earth and who has struggled to find a true son under hardship. We hope for this, rather than rejoicing with the Father who appears in glory. Continue reading “Understand Your Identity”

Please Instill in us Anger Over Human History

Mark 13

5 Jesus answered:

Watch out and don’t let anyone fool you! 6 Many will come and claim to be me. They will use my name and fool many people.

Psalm 19

9 Worshiping the Lord is sacred;
    he will always be worshiped.
All of his decisions
    are correct and fair.
10 They are worth more
    than the finest gold
    and are sweeter than honey
    from a honeycomb.

When We Should Stay Awake with Heaven

Sun Myung Moon
April 19, 1959

Matthew 25:1-13

A Story about Ten Girls

25 The kingdom of heaven is like what happened one night when ten girls took their oil lamps and went to a wedding to meet the groom.[a]2 Five of the girls were foolish and five were wise. 3 The foolish ones took their lamps, but no extra oil. 4 The ones who were wise took along extra oil for their lamps.

5 The groom was late arriving, and the girls became drowsy and fell asleep. 6 Then in the middle of the night someone shouted, “Here’s the groom! Come to meet him!”

7 When the girls got up and started getting their lamps ready, 8 the foolish ones said to the others, “Let us have some of your oil! Our lamps are going out.”

9 The girls who were wise answered, “There’s not enough oil for all of us! Go and buy some for yourselves.”

10 While the foolish girls were on their way to get some oil, the groom arrived. The girls who were ready went into the wedding, and the doors were closed. 11 Later the other girls returned and shouted, “Sir, sir! Open the door for us!”

12 But the groom replied, “I don’t even know you!”

13 So, my disciples, always be ready! You don’t know the day or the time when all this will happen.

Prayer

We know that history has been a sad course because of the fall of Adam and Eve, who were to serve You. Please instill in us anger over human history. The descendants of sinful Adam and Eve have continued until today with the inherited baggage of sin: driven, chased around, and suffering under hardships. Since You have responsibility as the Creator, and accordingly, can never forget them, You have been going through a historical course of toil to regain humankind, regardless of the age and time.

Please enable us to feel remorse over ourselves in such a position and to feel pain over Your having walked that path of infinite toil and suffering. Father, we eagerly hope and desire that You will give us the heart to feel shame together with You about who we are and anger over having inherited the sinful lineage of history.

We feel that the sinful character still remains in us. Our bodies are shackled in chains of sin. We are zealously waiting for You, merciful Father, to reveal Your power and ability. We are waiting to become true sons and daughters. We know that Your sorrow will deepen as You see sons and daughters fail, unable to cut off the barbed wire of sin, unable to sever the relationship with sin that invades them and fight.
Continue reading “Please Instill in us Anger Over Human History”

Have Hope that can Sever our Attachment to Sinful Reality

Romans 6

5 If we shared in Jesus’ death by being baptized, we will be raised to life with him. 6 We know that the persons we used to be were nailed to the cross with Jesus. This was done, so that our sinful bodies would no longer be the slaves of sin. 7 We know that sin doesn’t have power over dead people.

8 As surely as we died with Christ, we believe we will also live with him. 9 We know that death no longer has any power over Christ. He died and was raised to life, never again to die. 10 When Christ died, he died for sin once and for all. But now he is alive, and he lives only for God. 11 In the same way, you must think of yourselves as dead to the power of sin. But Christ Jesus has given life to you, and you live for God.

12 Don’t let sin rule your body. After all, your body is bound to die, so don’t obey its desires 13 or let any part of it become a slave of evil. Give yourselves to God, as people who have been raised from death to life. Make every part of your body a slave that pleases God. 14 Don’t let sin keep ruling your lives. You are ruled by God’s kindness and not by the Law.

Ezekiel 36

37 I will once again answer your prayers, and I will let your nation grow until you are like a large flock of sheep. 38 The towns that now lie in ruins will be filled with people, just as Jerusalem was once filled with sheep to be offered as sacrifices during a festival. Then you will know that I am the Lord.

 

The Path of Faith Which Should be Examined Carefully

Sun Myung Moon
April 12, 1959

Matthew 11: 1-30

Today and again tomorrow, we should have hope toward Heaven and receive a heartistic shock with which we can sever our attachment to sinful reality and the disorderly world and move forward. You should know that whether this shock continues for one day, one year, or for our whole lifetime determines whether you will arrive at the destination for which you long.

Without such a shock, you will be highly anxious. In this age, one can recognize how anxious and fearful one is without knowing quite why. If one has even a small conscience, he will feel driven into anxiety and insecurity. Although many young people feel this, if something that can remove it sprouts forth, the fear and anxiety that have been occupying a person’s ground of hope will retreat, and the world of things that square with conscience will appear. Thus, if the heart that carefully searches for this is quickening your walk and your body beyond anxiety and fear, it is not too late. The final point of unity is an earnest Shim Jung that explodes in my heart and is unaffected by materialistic or humanistic ideologies. It is the Shim Jung that makes me move to the one place of ideology that remains in the end. In other words, Shim Jung determines the final me. Continue reading “Have Hope that can Sever our Attachment to Sinful Reality”

Noah Appeared to be a Madman

Joshua 24

17 The Lord is our God. We were slaves in Egypt as our ancestors had been, but we saw the Lord work miracles to set our people free and to bring us out of Egypt. Even though other nations were all around us, the Lord protected us wherever we went. 18 And when we fought the Amorites and the other nations that lived in this land, the Lord made them run away. Yes, we will worship and obey the Lord, because the Lord is our God.

Ecclesiastes 11

9 Be cheerful and enjoy life while you are young! Do what you want and find pleasure in what you see. But don’t forget that God will judge you for everything you do.

10 Rid yourself of all worry and pain, because the wonderful moments of youth quickly disappear.

The Path of Faith Which Should be Examined Carefully

Sun Myung Moon
April 12, 1959

Matthew 11: 1-30

You should look and be careful in your speaking, hearing, seeing and feeling now. How hard have you tried to fulfill the historical responsibility? Have you ever surrendered everything and come forward, disregarding difficulties, anger, being chased away, hunger and death? How careful a heart have you had?

How often have you been overwhelmed by the Shim Jung that burns with a sense of responsibility, and desired to regain it? How often have you examined whether the heavenly hand was guiding you within your circumstances, reaching out to you, thereby coming to deny your previous position and embarking upon a new reflection? If you have not had such an experience, you should feel that you cannot show your faces.

In the Garden of Eden, the archangel was created first. The archangel had been ruling over the environment. When Adam and Eve appeared, he became an attacker. This was the beginning of history. Human beings, who insisted on habit and tradition in history, always opposed God’s way. They never cooperated. As the ancestors are, so are the descendants. Those who were being driven away have been leading history, fighting all the while.

It was thus with Noah as he served Heaven. To those who insisted on the social tradition, he appeared to be a madman. He looked demented, ridiculous and stupid. It was the same with Abraham. He tried to kill Isaac, whom God had blessed him with at the age of one hundred years. It was the same with Moses. Who instigated the people to accuse, betray and drive out the people of mission? They were the ones who clung to the historical traditions. If there is a Heaven, they should receive its judgment. The ideology of restoration is to sever attachment to the historical details, to take off the old clothes of the past, to meet the new morning in the new garden, and to appear in white clothes with new hope. Continue reading “Noah Appeared to be a Madman”

Avoid Changing Things, Proceeding Carefully

Watch the latest Richard Urban show:  The Returning Lord Should Not Judge Humankind With His Rod Of Iron

Mark 15

22 The soldiers took Jesus to Golgotha, which means “Place of a Skull.”[d]23 There they gave him some wine mixed with a drug to ease the pain, but he refused to drink it.

Psalm 45

1 My thoughts are filled
with beautiful words
    for the king,
and I will use my voice
    as a writer would use
    pen and ink.

The Path of Faith Which Should be Examined Carefully

Sun Myung Moon
April 12, 1959

Matthew 11: 1-30

This world must change. It should change on a great scale. Can you go without changing in such a world? You should become selves who do not change in a changing world. What, then, do you have to do? The solution to this must be provided by religion and truth.

History has been, is and will be progressing toward one purpose. The human mind, however, is changing. Your mind changes many times even in one day. The ideology you uphold also changes several times in your lifetime. We should feel in our daily lives that we are people of viciousness, descendants of the fall, the betrayal of Heaven.

The time has come to shout aloud, baring our chests and lamenting the sorrow of the cosmos, wondering whether there is a religion or leader who can stop it. History has been changing in every age and century. In God’s history of the providence of six thousand years, there was the age of sacrifice, the age of the law, and the age of faith. There has been the Old Testament and New Testament Ages, and the Completed Testament Age will come. Now the world of the new ideology should come. However, without changing the present world, this world of ideology will not come. Continue reading “Avoid Changing Things, Proceeding Carefully”