We Marry to Resemble God

Strengthening Families and Communities Forum:
#111-Jamal Johnson; Having Sex Outside of Marriage Is Bad for Society

Cheon Seong Gyeong 1187

The Ceremony of the Settlement of the Eight Stages signifies that the historical course of vertical indemnity and the course of horizontal indemnity that went through the stages of individual, family, people, nation, and the world. That is the vertical and horizontal courses consisting of eight stages are completed. Due to this, the right of eldest son has been restored, and the course of indemnity for all humanity is abolished. That is what I have done by holding this ceremony. The right of the eldest son is restored; the Parents are embracing all humankind. Thus, an end is brought to the history of war and struggle that was necessary in order for the right of the eldest son to be restored in the realm of parental love. The time has come when indemnity is not needed and we can reach harmony in love. In order to achieve this, I had to hold the Ceremony of the Settlement of the Eight Stages. By holding this ceremony, the Parents forgave both the elder and the younger son, so that next we can enter the age of the realm of forgiveness for the fallen parents. (193-173, 1989.10.3)

Cheon Seong Gyeong 2761

Where are we ultimately destined to go? We will go to the spirit world. What does that mean? Usually it is taken to mean the world after death, but this is not accurate. Why should it not be regarded as the world after death? It is because the spirit world is directly related with love. Since that world is related with love, it is not actually the world after death. The spirit world begins based on true love. Thus, when we stand within the realm of true love, that very place is the spirit world. The spiritual and physical worlds – these two worlds – become one in love. That’s why love is so magnificent. (144-199, 1986.4.24)

FAMILY

THE BASIC FORM OF LIFE

Conjugal Love

4. Marriage Is a Sacred Partnership, Aligning Two Human Beings with the Divine Image

Teachings of Rev. Sun Myung Moon

We can solve the fundamental problems of family life by strengthening marriage. Although some religious people regard marriage as sinful, we proclaim it the holiest of states.
    God instituted marriage as the only proper way for a man and a woman to love each other. Furthermore, when a man and a woman become one in marriage, whom do they come to resemble? They resemble God. Indeed, it is only when a man and woman unite in matrimony that they can fully resemble God, who created us in His image male and female. Only then can God dwell with us. (70:76, February 8, 1974)

If you only love as a single person, and do not embark on the path of loving as a husband and wife, your life will end in ruin. Love among single people inevitably breaks apart. It is a lifestyle that damages society and even the world. (111:257, February 22, 1981)

Commonly people think that love is what a man and a woman enjoy together. Yet that kind of love has no root in the past or outlook toward the future; it is merely a phenomenon with no direction. It is selfish love. Selfish love cannot be the source of peace, the basis of unity or the basis for freedom. How can there be peace, unity or freedom where people love each other one day and separate the next? There is no happiness there, only regret; no freedom there, only more obstacles; no unity there, only loneliness. That kind of love leads only to destruction.
    I want you to understand that Satan employs such love as a weapon to destroy the ideals of human life. Using this kind of love as a weapon, Satan is robbing us of true freedom, true peace and true unity. From this perspective, the satanic expression of love is truly God’s adversary. It is a most dreadful sin, a most hated enemy. (104:141, April 29, 1979)

Why do we marry? It is to resemble God. God is the harmonious being of dual characteristics. Man and woman are the divided manifestations of God’s dual characteristics. They have to unite as one body, becoming like a seed, in order to enter God’s original dwelling place.
    To yield good seed, you have to go the way of love. This means that you must be born in love, set love as your goal while growing, make love your aim in life, and walk the path of love. Then you will return to love. (138:99, January 19, 1986)

Why do you have to marry? It is because God exists with dual characteristics. A man and a woman each reflect one of these aspects of divinity. Therefore, they must come together and unite to manifest the fullness of God’s image. That is why marriage is the essential condition for your complete growth in the ideal of human love.

It Doesn’t Matter that Your Wife Looks Unattractive

Cheon Seong Gyeong 2065

Our tong ban breakthrough activities must be done centering on the family foundation. From there, centered on True Parents’ words, specifically those dealing with the declaration of True Parents, you should inspire the people to connect with our activities and move forward. This time I’ll send out all the members and have them make and show copies of the video tapes to the people. In between tapes we will have people record what they saw and thought. It will work once you try it. You must deliver deeply moving speeches to everyone, and then enroll these people in the future in the effort to unite North and South Korea. From a spiritual viewpoint, South Korea is in the position of the mind, while North Korea is like the body. The body opposes the mind. Since the body belongs to Satan’s realm, that’s why this is happening. (205-334, 1990.10.2)

Cheon Seong Gyeong 1916

Since Jesus lost his body, the foundation for the main stage disappeared, and he lost his foothold in Asia. Therefore, the material civilization went in the opposite direction. It was dragged the other way to Rome. It should have gone towards the West from Asia, but instead it came back the other way from the West. It conformed to the path of indemnity and had to go along that path while shedding blood and suffering sacrifices. In this way, Western Civilization went around in a circle, centering on Rome and passing through Britain and America, to return again to the Pacific civilization. It returns to the Pacific civilization, because it was in Asia that Jesus lost his body on the worldwide level. The spirit and the flesh were separated at this place. Therefore, Western Civilization, the material civilization, went the other way in a circle to return to Asia. (249-132, 1993.10.8)

Conjugal Love
  1. Love and Affection between Husband and Wife

Teachings of Rev. Sun Myung Moon

Do you wish to become a loving couple that shines like the moon and even like the sun? Try to dig out all the beautiful points in your spouse. It may take a lifetime of digging, and still you cannot fathom them all. Finally when you arrive in the spirit world, you can plumb love’s deepest core.
    Therefore, wives, study your husbands. You may think he is one way, but then you should discover another side of him. Study him from every possible angle, and you can see the whole universe in him. Then you can think he is more amazing than God! When you married him you saw him only through a small lens, from one direction, not from all directions. As long as you continue to regard him only from that narrow perspective, you cannot find ideal love. Over the years of living together you need to study him from every direction. Continue reading “It Doesn’t Matter that Your Wife Looks Unattractive”

We Marry for the Sake of Our Partner

Cheon Seong Gyeong 1721

What are the sexual organs for? They are for finding love. Through woman and man finding each other, love comes into being. Such is marriage. It cannot be exchanged for anything in the universe. Man is the way he is because he was created in correspondence to his genitals. The woman too was created the way she is in correspondence to her genitals. People have been living till now without knowing the fact that woman came to be woman and man came to be man on account of their sexual organs. (280-60, 1996.11.1)

Cheon Seong Gyeong 1242

If you have the opportunity to attend a Blessing Ceremony, you should not go thinking you are just a man or a woman and there is nothing else to it. When you attend the ceremony, you are there representing men and women who have come and gone in the world over the past six thousand years. You must understand that you have been invited as such. You should experience this reality deep in your heart. (30-169, 1970. 3.22)

THE BASIC FORM OF LIFE

Conjugal Love
  1. Love and Affection between Husband and Wife

Teachings of Rev. Sun Myung Moon

A man’s wife represents his mother; she contains elements of his mother as well. At the same time, she contains elements of his elder sisters, younger sisters, and indeed all the women in the world. When he loves his wife, who contains all these elements, he is loving his mother, his elder sisters and younger sisters, and indeed all the women in the world.
    Likewise, to woman, her husband represents and contains elements of her father, elder brothers, younger brothers and all the men in the world. In loving him, she loves her father, her brothers, and all the men in the world. This is the ideal of the family. (God’s Will and the World, September 21, 1978)

We marry for the sake of our partner. Therefore, the man should have the attitude that even if he finds some aspects of his wife unattractive, he will love her even more than if she were beautiful. This is the principled way of thinking. (97:321, April 1, 1978) Continue reading “We Marry for the Sake of Our Partner”

Let Us Rejoice, for the Marriage of the Lamb Has Come

Listen to Dr. Kelly Kohls, founder of the National School Boards Leadership Council, speaking at the Strengthening Families and Communities Forum:
#109-Dr. Kelly Kohls: How to Fix Boards of Education

Cheon Seong Gyeong 2345

On this day and in this place where the Cosmic Parent and the Parents of Heaven and Earth have attained oneness of mind and body, I declare and direct that everyone will strive to achieve the age of sovereignty of the one ideal, of the unified world of Cheon Il Guk based on the liberation of heaven. I pray that You will let us achieve everything in accordance with our desires. I report this in the name of the True Parents. Amen! Amen! Amen! (404-288, 2003.2.6)

Cheon Seong Gyeong 1270

The fruits that Christians have produced through their lives of faith are the fruits of the wild olive tree. In order to produce fruits of the true olive tree, they need to be cut off at the base and have the sprout of the true olive tree engrafted on to them. If the sprout cannot be engrafted, the tree should be pulled up completely and burned to ashes. If the wild olive tree is not uprooted completely, it will produce further fruits, which will then be strewn around the tree and will grow into more wild olive trees.

Special Reading: Cheong Seong Gyeong 1404-continued

We have walked the path of persecution in the process of our work until now, but through carrying out these things under Your guidance and protection, we have been able to overcome all the situations and people who have opposed us – from individuals to families, tribes, people, nations, the world, and cosmos, even up to the realm of Satan and hell. As we have inherited Your lineage through Your true love, You protected us just as parents protect their children so that the Unification Church was able to overcome during its difficult course all the hardships and persecution coming from the fallen world and was able to surmount individual, family tribal, racial, national, global, and cosmic peaks. Now we are able to hold, in the name of the True Parents, the Blessing Ceremony of 360 million Couples representing all humankind, and are graced to celebrate with heaven and earth the liberation that transcends religion, race, culture, and nationality. For this great occasion of the Blessing, we are truly, truly, truly grateful.

In the spirit world, there are Blessing groups of fifteen billion and fifty billion parents, brothers and sisters following on from a first group of twenty billion spirit people. Here on earth, the 360 million couples – in fact more than 400 million couples – who are being blessed in today’s ceremony number more than 800 million individuals. Based on an average of four family members per household, the total number of family members related to these newly Blessed Couples must be over three billion. All Blessed Couples in both the spiritual and physical worlds should strive to resolve the ongoing problems of juvenile promiscuity and family breakdown in order to save this chaotic world and straighten out the confused history of humanity.

Ascetism, Monasticism and Celibacy

4. The Problem with Asceticism—Lack of Love

If I give away all I have, and if I deliver my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.
    1 Corinthians 13.2-3 Continue reading “Let Us Rejoice, for the Marriage of the Lamb Has Come”

Lord, When Did We See You Hungry?

Stop the Vaccine Mandates. Stand for freedom and against government and medical industrial complex corruption and tyranny, this Sunday, January 23rd in Washington, DC.

Listen to the Richard Urban Show:

Cheon Seon Gyeong 323

A flowing love that embraces the spring and has still more to give in reserve, a love that melts the snow and thaws the ice in a cold winter – infinite love, immeasurable in height or width – should form a bond with us and never leave us. It should take its place in the core of our being. Without love, we cannot find anything of value in the world. But when we can vividly feel and sense such a love inside us, that love can more than compete with the universe. Someone with absolute love in the center of his heart, meaning love that is the same from the beginning to the end, can compete with the universe even though he is merely one individual. (33-75, 1970.8.9)

Cheon Seong Gyeon 1381

Now everyone has to know about the Unification Church. It has become such a matter of common knowledge that those who are ignorant of it would be considered as having no common sense. It is true. People who haven’t heard of the Unification Church would be considered to be good-for-nothings. You will expe-rience this all too well if you go abroad. If they ask you where you are from and you answer, “Korea!” they will automatically ask you, “What is this I hear about the 30,000-Couple wedding?” If you were not present at the ceremony, you should say at the very least, “I saw it on television.” If they ask you, “How was it?” you cannot just say, “It was magnificent!” and stop there. When they ask you, “So it was magnificent, but who was there?” you would have to describe to them every aspect of the ceremony, wouldn’t you? The same is true for me.

Charity

Charity to the poor and the needy is a traditional virtue encouraged by all religions. Our relationship to the highest Good creates a natural bond of family among all members of the community, rich and poor. We can experience God’s love and compassion for all his children, and especially for those who suffer from poverty, disease, war, famine and natural disasters. Giving alms and charity is a concrete expression of this spiritual bond of love. Texts such as the parable of the sheep and the Goats from the New Testament liken helping a poor man to giving offerings to God or the highest saints. Charity is not excused even for the poorest giver, according to several texts.
Some passages describe the attitude one should take in giving charity. The dignity of the transaction should be upheld by all means. “Do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing” describes the value of anonymity for both the donor and the recipient: for the donor to eliminate any occasion for boasting and for the recipient to preserve his dignity. An even higher form of charity, according to Maimonides, is to extend interest-free loans and other forms of aid to help the poor man get started in a business or trade and thus earn his own living. In a modern version of the adage, “Give a man a fish; you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish; and you have fed him for a lifetime,” Father Moon has been developing oceanic fishing enterprises with the intent to help the people of Africa become self-sufficient in food.

1. Charity in an Expression of God’s Love and Draws Us Near to God

Blessed is he who considers the poor;
The lord delivers him in the day of trouble.
    Psalm 41.1

They feed with food the needy wretch, the orphan, and the prisoner, for love of Him, saying, “We wish for no reward nor thanks from you.
    ”Qur’an 76.8-9

They sold their possessions and goods and distributed them to all, as any had need.
    Acts 2.45

Continue reading “Lord, When Did We See You Hungry?”