Tag: cross

There Was Nothing More Sorrowful than the Death of Jesus

1 Corinthians 16

13 Keep alert. Be firm in your faith. Stay brave and strong. 14 Show love in everything you do.

Isaiah 48

Your nation would be blessed
    with more people
than there are grains of sand
    along the seashore.
And I would never have let
    your country be destroyed.

20 Now leave Babylon!
    Celebrate as you go.
Be happy and shout
    for everyone to hear,
“The Lord has rescued
    his servant Israel!
21 He led us through the desert
and made water flow from a rock
    to satisfy our thirst.
22 But the Lord has promised
that none who are evil
    will live in peace.”

Members Who Will Live In God’s Family

Rev. Sun Myung Moon
September 27, 1959

Matthew 12: 46-50

Where and how does a meeting take place? It does not take place due to sweet words or good deeds alone. It comes about when there is an intense longing. How will the Lord look? What will his hands, eyes and nose be like? In the end what will determine whether or not you can meet him is the desire you have to touch and see him. This has nothing to do with the Jesus who spoke the words. It has nothing to do with God. When you meet, salvation is not attained by calling out the words of Jesus. You have to long for the substantial Jesus.

We cannot see Jesus no matter how intensely we desire to. Why doesn’t the Jesus who promised to come again come? Jesus told his disciples that he would come back soon. Why doesn’t he come? Why is this so? What is the reason that he cannot come when so many disciples and followers desperately want to see him and meet him? When there is someone who longs for him so badly that he is oblivious to the passage of time, he will certainly be able to meet him. There is a way this will happen.

We are orphans. God sees us as orphans. No matter how great the external family environment may be for someone on earth, in God’s eyes, he is still only an orphan. We have lost our true parents, our true brothers and sisters, our true spouses, and our true children. We are like orphans. Since this is how we are, how can we be at peace? Our hearts are pushing us. What are they pushing us to do? They are asking us to look for our original parents, brothers and sisters, brides and children. However, no matter how many times we circle around the earth in search of them we may not find them. Since we cannot find these even among the words of truth, where can we find them?

The beginning point of resolution is to put oil on our foreheads, enter the secret chamber and be overwhelmed with the desire to see the Father. If there is a way for the Father and the Lord to seek us, you should be ready to brave any path of death or any difficult mountain path, determined to move forward. Jesus went the path of Gethsemane and Golgotha while looking for such sons and daughters. Since he was not successful in his search, he went the path of death. We who long for the one day when we can meet our original parents, long for the day when we can cling to him and call him Father and Lord, how many hours have we shed tears?

Now the time has come when Christians all over the world must solve this problem. We have to yearn to see him more intensely than we yearn to see our own sons and daughters or anything else in the world. We must want to touch his clothes and hands, since he is our Father. We should be able to give all of our minds and bodies upon meeting him and share everything of our past upon entering his bosom, and receive consolation for all our difficulties and labors. We must understand that this is our highest hope.

We should long for the person more than we long for the words or his deeds. After we long for the person, we should long for his mind.

In the past some Jews were able to cling to Jesus. However, has there been even one person who related to him as if Jesus were his own parent whom he longed for, as if Jesus was the parent that he had lost and had been yearning to meet again? When God sent his only son to the earth as the Father of all people and the King of Kings, would He have sent him to be mistreated? God wanted people to honor him as the central person of history, the father of all people, someone everyone longed for and wanted to meet many times over. However, no one of his time treated him like that. This was the sorrow of Heaven and made Heaven most indignant. Although he came to give his blood and flesh for his children, his children pointed knives and weapons at him. How could it be a happy memory for Heaven? If Heaven ever had a cause for deep sorrow, there was nothing more sorrowful than the death of Jesus.

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.

Continue reading “Jesus Did Not Come to Die”

The Cross Was Absolutely Unnecessary


Acts 3

14 You rejected Jesus, who was holy and good. You asked for a murderer to be set free, 15 and you killed the one who leads people to life. But God raised him from death, and all of us can tell you what he has done. 16 You see this man, and you know him. He put his faith in the name of Jesus and was made strong. Faith in Jesus made this man completely well while everyone was watching.

Daniel 9

A foreign ruler and his army will sweep down like a mighty flood, leaving both the city and the temple in ruins, and war and destruction will continue until the end, just as God has decided. 27 For one week[n]this foreigner[o] will make a firm agreement with many people, and halfway through this week,[p] he will end all sacrifices and offerings. Then the “Horrible Thing” that causes destruction will be put there. And it will stay there until the time God has decided to destroy this one who destroys.

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

Sun Myung Moon
June 14, 1959

What should I, as an individual, do in these last days? To solve this problem, we have to hold onto the Messiah who came for all people. Humanity has progressed until today through numerous historical relationships. God’s dispensational history was brought about through the chosen people God so lovingly chose. This history was for the purpose of embracing His loving sons and daughters.

Therefore, we have to conform with the heavenly content that moved the six thousand years of history to possess the power of life that can push the whole of it away. Jesus drove away the four thousand years of history when he came two thousand years ago by being connected to the historical heart of God. After clarifying everything in the four-thousand-year history, Jesus wanted to build a new garden upon that foundation. Therefore, holding onto that heart of Jesus, we should clarify history and think of the future. We have to think of how much Jesus longed for the emergence of his new ideology at that time.

Jesus told Nicodemus that unless he was reborn, he could not enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Therefore, I must deny the life I have lived until today. No matter how much I think I have accomplished, I must deny my individual self. Because I am a fallen person, I cannot escape from that realm. My life and my lifestyle should be denied.

What we think of as normal is not indeed normal. We live an abnormal life; we have an abnormal lifestyle, and we die abnormally. The natural place for us to enter would be hell. What is heaven? It is the place where the person goes who lives a normal life, has abnormal lifestyle, and dies normally.

If Jesus came to distinguish between hell and heaven, to close the door to hell and open the door to heaven, to build heaven, then he certainly did not come with an ideology, a life, and a love that can be denied. You should understand this.

Who did Jesus come in search of when he came to this earth? Jesus came searching for the Israelites, whom God has established as the chosen people after indescribable hardships. Jesus was absolutely necessary for Judaism, the religion of the chosen. That absolutely necessary one was hung on the cross and departed. You should realize that Jesus was absolutely necessary for the Israelites and Judaism. The cross was absolutely unnecessary. It should not have been.

Do You Want to Go the Same Way as Jesus?

We the followers of Jesus must go the way he went, whether we live or die. The problem is whether you really want to go this way.

Cheon Seong Gyeong 194

What kind of person is a wise person?
He is the first to understand and recog-
nize the global era and the time of hope.
The wise person is the one who can bear
the responsibility of being the first to
recognize it, analyze it, criticize it, and
take action. In this way, he takes posses-
sion of it. Although he comes as an indi-
vidual, when the Messiah appears on
earth, he is not just an individual. He is
the fruit of faith, hope, and love that the
whole world desires. This is his value. All
the paths of history are connected to this
fruit. In other words; past, present and
future are all connected to it. Further-
more, all individuals, families, tribes,
peoples, nations and the world are con-
nected, and both heaven and earth are
connected to it. (13-142, 1964.01.01)

Cheon Seong Gyeong 1848

You could number the fish as you
like, for example you could name one
“fish number one.” Then those num-
bers could form a unified name system
worldwide. A fish could be numbered
as fish one hundred-and-something or
fifty-something. If there is a special fish
you like, you can call and order it by
number. You can tell them that you are
going to the fish farm at a certain time
and ask them to prepare fish number so-
and-so for you. All you would need then
is a sashimi knife. You can make sashi-
mi with that particular fish and have a
tasty meal. Such a time will come. (274-109,
1995.10.29)

The Ideal Kingdom of Heaven, Our Hope

Rev. Sun Myung Moon
February 22, 1959

Matthew 3: 1-17

Jesus carried with him the suffering of humankind. He started from the lowest point of humanity and ended at the top of Golgotha. There he sacrificed his whole self. Where was God’s son, the heir apparent, the Prince of Heaven? Where was the Messiah of humankind, the Savior? At that place, Jesus could not assert one iota’s worth of his value. It was a tragic and pitiable place. Yet Jesus was able to go over that hill of death, look to Heaven and advance toward Heaven’s ideal garden. His ideology was more powerful than death. His ideology was more powerful than any force in history. Thus, he was able to push aside the realm of death and resurrect. He brought the people who opposed him to repentance and, hence, Christianity today has a base of victory.

We the followers of Jesus must go the way he went, whether we live or die. The problem is whether you really want to go this way. Continue reading “Do You Want to Go the Same Way as Jesus?”

Jesus Did Not Come to Die

2 Timothy

4 When Christ Jesus comes as king, he will be the judge of everyone, whether they are living or dead. So with God and Christ as witnesses, I command you 2 to preach God’s message. Do it willingly, even if it isn’t the popular thing to do. You must correct people and point out their sins. But also cheer them up, and when you instruct them, always be patient. 3 The time is coming when people won’t listen to good teaching. Instead, they will look for teachers who will please them by telling them only what they are itching to hear. 4 They will turn from the truth and eagerly listen to senseless stories. 5 But you must stay calm and be willing to suffer. You must work hard to tell the good news and to do your job well.

Isaiah 11

Like a branch that sprouts
    from a stump,
someone from David’s family[a]
    will someday be king.
2 The Spirit of the Lord
    will be with him
to give him understanding,
    wisdom, and insight.
He will be powerful,
and he will know
    and honor the Lord.
3 His greatest joy will be
    to obey the Lord.

God and Humanity Should Live Together
Rev. Sun Myung Moon
January 11, 1959

John 14: 6-12

Peter, special among the twelve disciples, could freely listen to and believe the words of Jesus. Yet he failed to advance to the stage where he could receive Jesus into his heart without hesitation. Likewise, since the substance of the Word could not be embraced, when Mary Magdalene tried to hold the resurrected Jesus, she was prevented from doing so. Humanity has been unable to embrace the substantial being. This is the second tragedy of humankind.

The first tragedy was to have lost Adam in the Garden of Eden. The second was to have lost Jesus, who was the perfected substance of the Word. This is why he has to come again. This fact, when understood, is a matter for endless weeping. For people living on earth, there cannot be anything more sorrowful. Continue reading “Jesus Did Not Come to Die”