Sermons of Rev Moon - April 12, 1959 - The Path of Faith Which Should be Examined Carefully 1

[대태양/김현수]

REVEREND SUN MYUNG MOON SPEAKS ON

The Path of Faith Which Should be Examined Carefully
April 12, 1959,
Former Church Headquarters
Seoul, Korea

Prayer

Although we are unworthy, we have missed Your holy image and have come back to You and prostrated our minds and bodies. Please accept us with the grace of sympathy. You have loved hundreds of thousands of times and have endured endlessly. Father, You who have never abandoned us and never ceased to guide us with love! Although we are not satisfactory for the will and Your standard, please treat us with a sympathetic heart. Since we still have a fervent desire to turn away from the troublesome world and go to Your world of shimjung, we eagerly hope and desire that upon seeing such a heart in us, You will give us sympathetic love; You will bear with us and come to us.

The place where we receive Your love is the place for which all creation longs, the place for which innumerable people yearned in the past, and the place that the people of the present and future should desire. Please guide us to think about this. Please guide us to feel at this time that the more we try to be embraced in Your loving heart, the more attention we will receive from all things. Father, we ardently hope and desire this.

Give us now the heart to call You "our Father" and to see that You have toiled for us and are in sorrow because of us. Allow us to appear as zealous sons and daughters who can be moved by such a heart and embrace You, calling You "Father."

We know that the one who seeks You with an ardent heart and who worries about Your situation will not be forsaken by You. Please allow our hearts to run toward You and our bodies to rush into Your embrace. Father, we sincerely hope and desire that You fill our bodies and minds so that we can rise above the sinful history of anger, sorrow and lamentation. Spur us on in body and mind.

Since we are weak and cannot walk confidently to You, we would like You to stand as the master of our faith. The earth is turbulent, and the thorny road remains to be traveled. Although we are exhausted, we would like You to come to us in strength.

We did not realize how often You were frustrated by us; nor did we know that when we thwarted Your worries, hard work, and hopes, You were shocked again and had to turn back. Help us understand that Your hope is greater than ours. My Father, we truly hope and desire that we will not forget that You want us to be strong when we are weak and that You are looking for sturdy souls for Your providence.

Our minds long for Your character; our bodies desire to behold Your form. Our hands want to grasp Your hands and body. Since we know that it is Your main hope to meet true sons and daughters who can sing with Your love, guide this time so that at least our hearts can be seized by such a shimjung. Father, we eagerly hope and desire this.

We are stained by sin today, wallowing in the darkness. Thus far, our feelings and five senses have been busy crying out for our sadness, unable to feel Your sorrows and sighs. We have been ignorant of Your grieved heart. As we have nothing to show You, at least grant us the heart to feel remorse over this.

We know that only when grief explodes in our hearts to reprimand our misguided past selves and our deficient present selves will You hold us, see us, and embrace us. Father, allow us to possess such a heart. Father, we eagerly hope and desire that such a passion will appear in us that we can be consumed with shimjung; we can discern our lack of qualifications and dedicate ourselves wholly to You.

Father, please have pity on these shameful children here. We know that the time has come when we should forget what we used to know, when we should deny our self-serving excuses and be reborn. We know that no historical sorrows will be resolved without indemnity conditions.

Please help us realize that a time will come when we will stand in the positions of Cain and Abel before Your ideal. Help us see that the nearer the historical time of the end draws, when the body rebukes the mind and the mind succumbs to the body, the nearer the time comes before our very eyes when we can rise by connecting from the individual to the family, the church, the society, and the world.

Aware as we are of our ancestors who did not know the time and who created a mournful history, we are still in a position in which we may be easily used as a tool for maintaining the evil history. We know that we have very little to be used in building goodness. Allow us the heart by which we can shut our mouths, even when we want to talk; we can endure before disagreeable sights, and we can plug our ears when we hear objectionable things.

Our minds, which should be oriented toward Heaven, are wandering in confusion, and our bodies cannot find a place to stay. Yet we know that You will not forsake us but will lead us to Your bosom with the hand of grace. Father, we eagerly hope and desire that You will arouse in us the heart by which we can prostrate ourselves before You and plead with You.

Make us the people who can wail about themselves, afraid of lacking shimjung and becoming traitors toward Heaven and deepen the age-old sorrow. We must grieve over our hearts, more than over our brothers and sisters. The desire to help them lest they fall into a sad situation like ours must spring up from our hearts or else we cannot go over the last hill. We know this, so Father, at this time please admonish the hearts of the beloved brothers and sisters.

We eagerly hope and desire that You will guide us to see that now is the time when we should realize the purpose and hopes of the providence, as it has been restoring us. This is a time to analyze, plan and keep what we want to establish and to make a determination before You. Father, on this holy day, bless the countless numbers of humankind and Your sons and daughters gathered here.

Although there are many sons and daughters who call You Father, true sons and daughters are extremely few. Who can stop this sorrow and console Your grief? We know that there is no one on earth. We know that the moment must come in the last age of history and on the final day of hope when the true sons and daughters, with such an ideal and connection to Your shimjung, can go to You and be embraced by You and boast of themselves, representing the cosmos.

Father, guide Your sons and daughters here to reflect upon for whose sake they are here, to serve whom. Let them thus abandon their frivolous attitudes and become meek and humble before Your loneliness. We eagerly pray that at this time we can feel Your core sorrow and experience Your troubled heart so that we can console You and call out for You.

Many brothers and sisters are scattered around the country at this time, kneeling down and praying before You. Father, You know their situations. Please do not forsake them. Become their master and protector. Please share all their worries and console them, making this hour a time of joy in which to sing of Your glory. As these unworthy souls attempt to bow down to You, directly consecrate us and keep Satan away from the beginning to the end. We pray this in the name of the Lord. Amen.

Prayer

Father, although our path is rugged, we see that the day of hope when we can meet a heavenly person by following this way is not far off. Although our legs are tired from walking this road, we see that this is the inevitable course of life because You have traveled it.

We have realized that when the eager heart that can call out for You arises in us, You are there, looking at us with greater desperation. We realize that the footsteps which follow Your voice are not easy, leading us to walk an unknown course, groping our way step by step.

We cannot help lamenting for not having become loyal sacrifices before the will due to our shortcomings. We cannot help sighing whenever we look back on the sad history wherein we failed to end suffering and bring joy to You. Please forgive our past defects as we prayed for blessing in such a state.

Father, if there are sons and daughters who can see Your desire to regain humankind and Your disappointments, they cannot wish for their own good fortune and insist upon their opinions before You. Please forgive us, the disloyal children who forgot Your historical sorrow tens of thousands of times.

A new history will begin and hope will be fulfilled the moment we can call out for You out of shimjung. Heaven and earth will rejoice; we will become one with You. Therefore, we cannot help feeling frustrated and remorseful over the fact that the base of our heart is not in a position to be seized by such a shimjung.

Father, look with sympathy upon these people here calling out for You. If they have been loyal to You, You will not forget them, nor will You remain unaware of someone being mistreated for Your sake. Father, help us not to forget that although we may have inflicted You with worries, You have never given us any troubles.

How can any sorrow on the earth be greater than the one You feel as You console a sad person? How can any pain on earth be greater than the one You feel as You give solace to someone who betrayed You and fell into suffering?

We have heard that, without standing upon Your dignity and authority, You have been hopefully coming to numerous good ancestors of ours throughout history, crying out and pleading with them to understand Your shimjung and situation. We, however, have prostrated ourselves before You as ones who cannot represent history and who have no means with which to praise the historical substance as goodness itself. Help us to confess our shame at this time and to realize how we have been abused by Satan.

Since there are many disloyal people and no loyal ones for the providence, You are worried today and tomorrow, unable to share Your providential heart. Father, we eagerly hope and pray that we will come to realize Your situation at this time. As we have prostrated ourselves here, please enable us to think about where our hearts are. Are our hearts not running toward emptiness, although You want us to move on the foundation of the heavenly will and shimjung? Do we not remain in a position of sorrow, lacking purpose and direction? Are we in a position to receive the lash of Your worry? Please lead us to repent.

Please enable us to declare that we are moving toward the garden of goodness, fighting for the sake of the mission. Enable us to realize that we are the ones You are trying to find, and to show You clearly that we are trying to be found by You. Father, we eagerly hope and desire that this will become a time when we can make the determination and consecrate ourselves.

Please gather in the scattered hearts and recreate them so that they long for the original hometown. Before inheriting Your blessing, we would like to inherit Your sorrow and become heroes of sorrow, making the determination to come forward to serve You.

Father, You have driven us to a place where we face denial by others, a place we dislike. We see that You were the one who started the work of goodness and You are the one who will complete it. We know that without connecting to Your will the providence for which You called and gathered us cannot be fulfilled. We ardently desire to be water, fire, oil and a humble sacrifice every day in sight of the will.

We know that we should become oil and fire to burn away the evil world and that we should be meek and humble before goodness. Since You restore us through such laws, Jesus taught that those who seek to be exalted will be debased, and those who seek to become debased will become exalted, upholding the heavenly way with sacrifice, service, meekness and humility.

Let the heart arise in each of us through which we can be deeply moved by the center. Let us realize our shortcomings, become infinitely humble before You, and offer all that we have as a sacrifice. Let this heart extend and reach the heavenly heart. Father, we eagerly hope and desire this.

Countless people are wandering, not knowing the time. Please guide the course of their fate. Please have pity on the thirty million people who boast of a five-thousand-year history but who are in misery. We know that the course of this people has been a blood-stained one, and they are a pitiful people who have been fighting against those who hinder the march of goodness.

Having established such a people, Heaven has foretold the providential will to them and told them the time of the providence. Father, who has told them about the one center! Please give guidance so that Your ever-increasing sorrow can be lessened through this people. If they do not have the condition for this, we who have realized the will and shimjung first can hold Your heart and suppress Your sorrow.

Let our hearts run toward You tirelessly now. With the heart that misses You and desires to hold You, a child-like heart, let us love You infinitely. Please remove from us all ideologies, concepts and consciousness that are colored by evil.

Let the original mind and original nature appear at this time so that the original image can be revealed. Please make us people who can bring pleasure to You, people whom You can embrace again and show proudly to the whole cosmos and Satan. Beyond that, help us to bow down our heads before You.

When You look for such an image in the last days, although we only have small and flimsy voices, we should be able to say, "Father, You came to us with the sorrow of all people. Here are the unworthy people. Have pity on us." Please allow us to feel our shortcomings and examine ourselves, repenting for our unworthiness. We cannot answer Your call and cannot raise our faces.

Father, we eagerly hope and desire that You allow us to become pioneers of the heavenly way and to fight sternly against all those who bring down the dignity of the heavenly soldiers, with our heart toward You and with anger and impatience against the unjust. Let us do all this, even though we may have to be sacrificed.

Please allow this to be a time when we can serve You. Bless with equal grace those who are praying with lonely hearts. Please rule over everything from beginning to end. Let us experience Your deep, broad and lofty holy image surrounded by saints and angels beyond number. Please allow us to see You with our eyes and to hear You with our ears. Allow the Holy Spirit to appear in substance. We pray all this in the name of the Lord. Amen.

Prayer

We have learned from the word how painful a sorrow is that has left a nail hole in the heart. As we read the word, we feel ashamed and yearn for the anxious image of Jesus. Allow us to be able to sympathize with the sad life of Jesus, who did not even have one friend who could cry with him. We know that no one has experienced the heart of Jesus as he looked upon the humanistic disciples and the tragic reality of the human world.

Father, what was the hope of John the Baptist as he practiced asceticism in the wilderness, surviving on grasshoppers and wild honey? His entire hope and the center of his heart were to receive the coming Messiah. After witnessing to the Messiah, he received the heavenly mandate to become one with him. John the Baptist should have said, "He is in my heart and I am in him; his heart is my heart, and his life is my life." In other words, they should have become one, with Jesus wholly reflected in the heart of John the Baptist.

John did not succeed in this, however. From the misery of prison, John the Baptist sent his disciples to the Messiah and asked, "Are you he who is to come, or shall we look for another?" (Matthew 11:3) even after having witnessed to him as the son of Heaven with his hands uplifted before the multitude. This was a historical tragedy and a sorrowful scene God could not forget.

The course of John the Baptist remains in the flow of history. As we struggle to find a new ideal and prepare ourselves for the new history, enable us to put ourselves in the position of John the Baptist. We have learned that throughout history, people chosen by Heaven rejected the heavenly will. Today we eagerly hope and desire that You will not let us repeat the historical errors or lose the will for which You prepared them in the wilderness.

Today Your beloved sons and daughters have gathered here. Please open their hearts now, and let them realize that they have nothing to show in sight of You. Father, we eagerly hope and desire that You allow our minds and bodies to be prepared so that we can hear Your words of admonition, inherit the sorrowful heart of Jesus, and receive the new unknown hero of the ideal with a heavenly heart.

Father, we eagerly hope and desire that, at this time, we will become powerfully seized by a woeful heart, worrying who will be the hero to protect this age and which nation will remain, yearning for both. As we live our lives, responding to and going along with the words and voices we hear, now is the time for us to re-examine our path and come to a new awakening.

Help us to escape from worrying about ourselves, deciding between life and death in chaos and confusion. We know that this is an untrustworthy society and world and that now is the time when we should awaken, hold onto Heaven by recognizing ourselves, and transform our hearts to be immersed in the trustworthy world of the ideal.

Please let us pursue a new self. Bearing in mind that we are in such a situation, let us overcome the hills of sorrow and receive the images of joy.

Let us long for and harmonize with that world. Give us the strength and courage with which we can fight, feeling woe for the present grief-stricken society with its lack of freedom. If there is an eternal and absolute Heaven, we eagerly request that You will give us the ability to push away all evil.

When Moses was driving the sheep in the wilderness of Midian, although his hands held a mere stick, he was carrying the new determination, hope and ideal which were to decide the fate of the Israelites. This was the single-mindedness of Moses, who lived in the wilderness for forty years with such a hope and ideal.

As we are in the place where we can hear the word and meet the one for whom we have hoped, we know that our appearance before him should be new. We know Your word, "I am in you, and you in me." Knowing this, we eagerly hope and desire that at this time we can say, "We entrust everything to You. Please recreate us, and use us as a sacrifice according to Your pleasure."

Father, I do not want to say anything. I have to open my mouth, however, because You have allowed this time for speech. Father, we eagerly hope and desire that at this time we will be surrounded only with the loving heart that longs to see Your image and desperately desires to be near You and live with You so that the glory of re-creation can be revealed.

Please lead us all so that we can start with the one and end with the one, and prevent Satan from infiltrating at this time. We pray all this in the name of the Lord. Amen.

We live our lives today led by the heart, by our situations, or by some hope. We know that as worldly life is, so is the way of Heaven. If we acknowledge that we cannot leave this position, we cannot deny that our lives do not start with our individual selves. We should consider how our social circumstances and courses of faith undergo gradual changes under a certain plan of the whole, proceeding toward a certain purpose.

The Reality of Fallen Life

If there is someone who can claim to have succeeded in life and who is proud before the providence, we can surely see that he is not someone who lives in the present world of chaos. No such person has appeared in history and certainly no such a one has ruled history. We yearn to find such a self in our hearts, and we pursue it repeatedly through ideologies and the vicissitudes of life.

A family should form centering on such an individual. Centering on such a family, a society should form that can exalt and bear witness to Heaven. Centering on such a society, a state and world should form. We know that history has been flowing, searching for an individual who can say, "Father, look at me. Father, hold on to me. Look at me and forget all the historical sorrow."

Owing to the human fall, "I" have not achieved the hoped-for self, struggling on a mysterious path in lamentation and frustration. Moreover, we are grieved, wondering by what means we can hasten such a self into being and thereby transform the society, country and world in which we live. We should never forget that humans are fighting today and will fight tomorrow, this year, and in coming years for the sake of the moment when the self that betrayed the hope can determine and find the long sought after self, proudly showing it to all things and proclaiming ownership. Considering such a destiny, we must know how big a responsibility we carry.

When Adam and Eve were growing up in God's bosom, they had confidence in everything. After violating the heavenly law, however, their confidence vanished. We should look at the tragic and intricate details here. God, who could not give up humankind, presented a movement to restore them because He took responsibility for having created them. This was a religious movement.

The Correct Attitude of Life
in the Time of the Second Coming

Although human beings fell, the law created by God as the ideal of creation and freedom, with which we can boast of the original self, has remained unchanged deep in God's heart from before the creation. No one, however, has explained God's heart. No one has proclaimed God's ideal.

If Heaven exists for the sake of humankind and people are created for the sake of Heaven, the world of the ideal where God and original humanity can live, which has been hidden in the heart of God, must necessarily appear. We know from history that rather than walking a normal path, God has been going through a course of twists and turns for the sake of fallen people. The Bible tells us that God has been following a complicated course since the time of Cain and Abel.

The flow of history will run toward the one ideal world in the end, and God will surely drive people toward it. It is certain that the human conscience is prompting us to run to that world in haste today and again tomorrow. No one can deny this. We should recognize that the moment God's and our ideal meet is the moment of humanity's hope and the purpose of God's providence.

Heaven foretold the last days to religious people, especially Christians. He told them that this was the day of the Second Coming and that the hero of this day would be the Lord of the Second Coming. Thus, we cannot deny that this day is the point of the final settlement of God and humanity's hope.

In what kind of shape should we be? The problem comes down to this: how should we be? Hitherto, there has been no logic, no religion to truly teach us this, no one to bring our hearts into order. Such is the human situation. Our hearts are changing every moment. Social life and ideologies and philosophies change according to the time and place. Considering that faith is a process of finding the absolute and eternal self that can stand as a representative of the entire ideal, it is important for everyone to worry about what kind of heart to have, what road to take, and what to organize and establish in this extremely complicated world.

The problem is where your eyes are directed in the present moment when we cannot tell where the awaited sun will rise. We should align our minds and bodies carefully, with all our efforts, in the direction of the sunrise.

We must proceed, examining it carefully, because the destiny of humankind should be concluded on such a path. We are living a life of faith within the confines of such a relationship. That is why the title of my speech is "The Path of Faith which Should be Examined Carefully."

The Self which Should be Absolutely Denied

Do you have a self? Can you claim that with confidence? If you have a self, what has the self gone through? Can it go through the individual and environment? Can it go through the society, country and world? Furthermore, can the self go through the way of Heaven, if there is such a way? Unless you can respond with confidence, you should deny yourselves absolutely.

Since this is the situation of humankind, you should wander in search of the direction of the heavenly way, how its settling point will manifest itself. The heart to do this should be more intense in you than anything else you claim or have confidence or in which you take pride. The more one boasts of oneself and moves in a self-centered direction without realizing this, the more he will appear to be a traitor of history in the last days.

We are unworthy. We are driven around and swept up by our situations. Can we then confidently ask the heavenly way to support us? No. We cannot have such confidence. Our ancestors also tried to find Heaven with steps that lacked confidence. We know that for this reason, whenever they followed God's orders, they were careful in each step, in every day's life, and in every night's sleep. If one cannot live like this, it is possible that in the final moment he will end up steering away from the heavenly will although he has served it, and will end up turning the will over to the satanic world.

Since the family, nation, state and world have no confidence, none can claim to be unchanging before the heavenly way. Since we are in such a situation, we should be careful in our daily life, in our yearly life, and throughout our whole lives. We should walk, realizing that the movement toward goodness consists of taking such careful steps.

History is progressing from the individual to the clan to the tribe, the nation, the state, and the world. The numerous clans in the past had their ideals and opinions. When the age changed from that of the clan to that of the nation, however, all the philosophies of the clan age were subsumed by those of the national age; the philosophies of the national age were subsumed by those of the age of the state; those of the state age were subsumed by those of the worldwide age. Those of the worldwide age will be subsumed by those of the heavenly way. We should know that history has been moving toward the single point of unity in this way.

As we cannot deny this fact, the problem is in what position I am living, moving and standing today. If the place where you stand now is the point of the final settlement, the problem is simple. If a task of history remains that calls for another transformation, however, you will only stay in the middle without arriving at the final destination of the historical, providential ideal of faith.