Individual Course Of Life

Belvedere

We are all destined to go through a course of life. Let us think for a moment about exactly which point our course of life starts. We can think of this in different ways, but of course, in one respect, it starts in the mother's womb.

Many people contend that life on earth is the entire period of life, but actually, there is life inside the mother, life on earth, and, thirdly, eternal life.

Before we are born, we have parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, and so on, back to God, who is the original ancestor. Your beginning does not start with your birth but traces back many, many generations.

America is special because it is woven of strands from all over the world, and probably you Americans have parents of lineages that never came together before.

Each cell is a continuation of many generations of ancestors from both sides. Many, many elements are inherited by each individual.

The physical life of each person starts with a tiny cell from both the father and mother, cells that have an abundance of elements. What color would each cell be?

If the best color we could imagine would be white, would the cell be all white or contain many different colors that all together make white?

It would be made of all different colors, deriving from the ancestors, and if it were magnified, it would look like a composite of all mankind.

The problem is whether the meeting of these cells is based on the pure love given by God. Instead of traveling an ideal path of growth and love, each parent in history has come through a course of abnormal turbulence. Each individual contains that kind of tangled history.

The meeting of two extremes, such as a man and a woman, can be compared to the Arctic and Antarctic coming together. The earth has magnetic fields that give and take, and a similar process goes on in man.

Each individual has a subject and an object within himself that have give and take, but the question is whether he is then a great man or an insignificant man.

One way of distinguishing a great man from a lesser one is that the great man has experienced many circumstances or situations. The more varied and complicated they are, the greater is that man's history.

If there had been no fall, wouldn't God have gone to the place where all the descendants of the first ancestors could meet?

How great that occasion would be!

Everyone attending that meeting would enjoy the fruit of happiness, an explosion of the ideal, and then all existence would be a spark of the ideal.

Would Adam and Eve also be happy, or just indifferent?

How about God, the angelic world, and all created things?

We can say that the moment that Adam and Eve are happy will also be the moment when God and all creation can be happy.

What is the energy that is generated when subject and object meet? It is energy for the realization of the ideal. Electricity is generated by give and take, of course.

Which would be more powerful: electricity or the power of give and take between Adam and Eve?

How can you confidently say that electricity is not stronger?

It can be understood by the fact that electricity can only flow through a conductor, but love can go everywhere and through everything. Love gives off sparks whenever it meets something.

Have you ever thought about what would make God happy?

He might enjoy the variety of beautiful scenery from nature, the wild animals, or the complexity of the microscopic world. Perhaps part of God's enjoyment comes from the variety He sees, but what if He were to view everything through glasses of love?

His creation is already beautiful, but seen with love, each entity becomes magnificent. In love, even the smallest thing is exciting, but without love, nothing is very thrilling. If there is laughter there as well as love, it will be multidimensional laughter.

When we remove the element of love from all goings-on, can we say that anything is ideal?

The ideal and happiness will fill anything to overflowing that they are put in. Here is one concrete example: if you are hungry and eat enough to be only half full, are you happy? But if you eat to complete fullness, then you have no more urge to eat, and you feel happy. If you are going to fill something, what would you fill it with?

If something is filled with power, you might be afraid the container would break, so power cannot be the source of happiness. Perhaps the container could be filled with much material, but would it be happy? What would everyone like to be filled with to be truly happy? True love.

But can true love fill everything?

Women's hands are small and beautiful, but they can sometimes be. Sometimes, in a wrong mood, their small mouths just won't budge. Sometimes their eyes are terrible, like the eyes of a snake.

Sometimes those pretty ears are plugged up and won't listen. Even when there is utmost urgency, those feet sometimes won't budge.

Sometimes wealth and power are offered to a woman, and sometimes knowledge, but she is still going here and there, up and down. But if someone could offer to fill her with true love at that moment, she would forget everything and just melt.

Does a person who is in love stiffen up or relax?

Even the coldest-looking person will open up the door of his heart to love. All his actions will be unified and focused by love.

Love has to be the speediest, greatest thing on earth, and when two loves collide, they will explode like an atomic bomb.

Will two individuals who are in love remain passive after the explosion? No, they will be totally harmonized. What could bring all people into unified action? Nothing we can find could do this except love.

Imagine a soft, downy quilt made from love. It would contain fantastic colors, so would it be a good color or a bad color?

The more you imagine it, the more elated you will be. That elation will spread out in all directions, yet in love, there is always just one central point.

You have seen pictures of veterans returning from Vietnam, and their families are so happy that when they embrace, they turn round and round. At that point, the central point is not the woman, but the man who has picked her up.

Love is not a vague area but has a central focal point, which is the ideal. When it is still, then perhaps it reveals many colors, but when it is going around at tremendous speed, it is only one color.

If something has seven colors but is whirling around, it looks white. The fastest give-and-take results in whiteness. But white people are not white as a result of give and take! Even though a person's ancestry may be stained, if he can give and take in an ideal way, it will be beautiful to see, regardless of his ancestry.

Where do we come from? At what point are we born? Will you be born far away from or right at the central point? Man is naturally born from that point, whether he chooses to be so.

You feel good as soon as you realize that, don't you?

You are not born as a bystander or a person of secondary importance, but as the center and master of love. The best of a mother's and father's love is united, and out of that center, their children are born. They are the center of both and are aggregates of their lives.

Neither your father nor your mother is the center, but you are the center of both. Without you, their love would never have come into one.

Actually, it was for you that all ideal things took place between them, and you are the purpose and center of it. Thus, your parents are firmly attached to you, and when you move, they have to follow. Because that bond is so strong, you can claim the same rights as your parents.

A child can say that no matter how perfect his parents think they are, without him, they cannot be happy. When you check closely, he is right. If he is not there, then they cannot be as happy.

The child is the result, and the parents are the cause, and only when they have harmonious interaction can they feel love. Through the Principle, we know that whenever a subject and object exist in give and take, some power is inevitably created.

Together they form a greater object to the greater subject, which is God. It is only through the child's becoming one with his parents that together they can be an object to the greater subject. Whenever that happens, there is a light glowing throughout the universe.

This also provides a simple explanation of how a motor turns. There are plus and minus terminals, and once the motor starts turning, it goes faster and faster. One aspect will push and the other repel, and as the motor goes round and round, it gains momentum. When love goes round and round, it is no longer a small power but will fill the universe.

Were you born as the result of a conflict somewhere?

You should be the result of love. Wherever a mother or father is feeding their baby, they kiss him, clean his nose out, and when changing the diaper, they don't even mind if something splashes into their mouth; they just spit it out and remark that it has a taste they never tasted before. There is no way the baby could offend them because, at that moment, love overwhelms them.

In looking at their baby, the parents feel again the love they gave. The baby feels that love as well and holds tightly to them. The parents and baby just want to absorb one another.

Breastfeeding actually drains nutrition out of the mother, yet she can give away those precious nutrients and still be happy. The baby is happy too when he sucks the milk.

When you think that you are the result of this fantastic love, are you happy to be born? There are degrees of love, so how happy are you? Are you crazy happy? Don't you want to shout, "Look at me and how precious I am"?

Aren't you worthy to be proud?

You have many cosmic reasons to be proud because you are the result of love, so you are justified in protesting when anyone belittles you. God will take your side. When you really know that you are the result of love, even God will have to acknowledge it.

In His laboratory, God could not develop anything more fantastic than a person who is the result of love. We can easily conclude that anyone who tries to foster love will be a good person; whoever tries to destroy that love will be the worst evildoer because he destroys not only himself but the universe he represents. Now you know why suicide is such a terrible sin.

Now that you know what your value is, could you ever think that way again? In no other church does the congregation get up early on Sunday morning and go out in the cold rain to hear their minister, but it's worth it coming here on Sunday, isn't it?

You are the unified body of your parents' love and life, tied to them with an invisible string. Again, who am I? "I" am one with my parents, bonded by love. We are participants of love with our parents, the unified body of our parents' ideal.

That ideal includes peace and happiness and all the desirable elements. There are many desires and activities in human life, but for a parent, nothing, not even his own advancement, can compare with the happiness of recovering a lost child.

Who are you?

You are the unified body of parents' life, love, and ideals. Although it's invisible, the strongest bond is that of life, love, and ideals with parents. It means that your parents cannot become happy without you.

No power, not even God, can cut the tie between you, and all existence on earth wants to protect and cherish that bond. Therefore, to love, cherish, and respect your parents is the most worthy thing in your life. Why? Because when these two have give-and-take, the universe will glow with light.

An Oriental is saying that blessings will come to a harmonious family, and now you know the very reason for it. If this is true, then for the parents to separate or divorce is nothing less than cutting their child in half with a saw. The public law of the universe won't allow that.

Happiness draws farther and farther away from such a parent. For this reason, divorce is impossible in the ideal world. Those whose parents are divorced or separated, raise your hand. Do you feel as though you are cut in half? If there are millions of such families in a nation, that country must eventually perish.

Now you know your value. Parents follow you wherever you go, don't they? Please say, Father and Mother, you are too close to me. To say that would be a sin.

Whatever you want to do, first you think of your parents and want to bring them to a valuable place. This is normal thinking. If your mind tends to go the other way, that's the beginning of the fall.

Your eyes are alive because of your parents, not yourself. When you grow and mature, it is not for yourself but for your parents. When you think that way, are parents something nice to have and to be grateful for? In the long history of this wide world, I am the only one to teach this. It would take hours and hours to elaborate on all the details of this.

How many parents do you have?

There happen to be three. Your body is made of material, so all the creations are your first parents. They are the first elements that gave birth to you.

Actually, the material elements are meant to exist in love, and that means that our cells cannot be peaceful when we are angry. All the elements of the material world exist in you.

Your second parents are those who gave birth to you. Through them all, material elements were gathered to compose you. Though they can be masters of your life, they cannot be masters of your love, however.

From God. God's role is to universalize love in all things for eternity. God exists because He is the subject of love. Altogether, we have three sets of parents.

Your life in your mother's womb is the state when all materials are gathered. This is the stage where love of material is realized. The physical world supplies all the elements necessary for you to come into being.

You live for ten months in your mother, then for a hundred years on earth, then for a thousand years and eternally thereafter in the spirit world.

Just as material is gathered in the womb, so the spirit is developed during life on earth. A child is taught by his parents, who supply things of an invisible nature for their child. Those elements will enable the child to connect horizontally in relationships with all other beings and are finally consummated in his marriage.

Parents will be responsible for the child until he marries.

What is the nature of marriage, actually?

That is where the child inherits his parents' love. That is also where he inherits the essence of all the lessons he has learned, such as how much his parents have loved him. By knowing how much our parents love us, we become capable of loving others. A mature man is capable of receiving love and of giving love.

Birth as a baby is the first birth, but the transition that society calls death is the second.

That's where all the best elements in the spirit world-love of country, family, and individual-will come to you and automatically be unified. This is the nature of the spirit world. In the womb, the baby breathes through the umbilical cord and lives in an environment of water.

Once born, the baby breathes air. The transition from living in water to living in air is birth. How do we breathe in the spirit world? All our cells breathe love in the spirit world. Wherever we go, we are content, and there is no complaint or discontentment in that world. God exists above us, so that's why man walks erect instead of horizontally.

Because man is physical, he basically likes material things, like money, and wants to have the ideal here on earth. That ideal is love. Our course of life is to connect these three points into a straight line.

You begin with parents' love, and centering around that, you develop love of family, love of country, and love of all the physical realm. We are supposed to lead our lives as centers of all three loves. Even the most harmonious family today is not aware that it should be the center of all society and all the universe.

Strictly speaking, if you do not take good care of your family, it is a sin against your society and nation.

You never thought your position would be this significant, did you?

Logically, the perfection of the family with love is the base for the perfection of the nation. We find it is easy to love our families, and you should easily be able to extend that love to the world.

First, we have love of material and then love of man, and then we become the center of love in the universe and go straight to the center of God's love. We begin from love, we mature in love, and we become the fruit of love.

Do any of you remember how difficult it was for your mother to give birth to you?

How could you be taught how difficult it was? You will only know by giving birth to your own baby.

Why did God set things up so that many things in life are enjoyable, like eating, love, and sleep, yet giving birth is so painful? He did that so He could see glowing love.

When you throw an electric switch, the electricity initially surges through the circuit in a great burst, then settles down to a lesser but steady current.

Likewise, the first creation involves a tremendous explosion of power and sensation. In childbirth, a woman experiences many feelings of anguish and hardly knows if she is dead or alive, but when the baby first cries, she forgets her pain and experiences her first feelings toward the baby.

If childbirth is very difficult, then automatically you feel much love for the baby, despite yourself. Like the first electricity in the wire, your first love is a great surge of affection for the baby, stronger than the pain.

Does the pain of childbirth bring more happiness or agony for the mother?

The father won't ever know, certainly not as much as the mother would. Mother really knows the taste of love because she has had many children.

You might imagine, too, what an adventure birth is for the baby, who loses the umbilical cord that has been his lifeline and leaves the water that surrounded him. The baby would feel, "This is the end of me!" Only after birth would he realize that it was not unhappiness at all but a new happiness.

In the mother's womb, there was only one pipeline, the umbilical cord, but after birth, there are two-his nose and mouth.

One day, he has to give even that up. Just like a baby would have preferred to stay in his mother's womb if he had a choice, so would we want to keep living on earth after a life of a hundred years or so if we don't know what the future holds.

A dying man might struggle to stay alive and only face death reluctantly, but then all of a sudden, he is in a different world, a world where he is feeling entirely new sensations.

The first thing he realizes is that in the spirit world, he is released from the bonds of the physical world, and elements of time and space no longer exist for him.

In the spirit world, travel from one corner of the universe to the other is instantaneous, like a spark flashing between two electrical poles. Like finding a station on the radio, all you have to do is tune yourself to the proper wavelength, and everything that you want to experience will come to you.

The fact that there are three levels on your face shows that there are three phases of life. The mouth represents life in the womb, or the water phase; the nose represents life on earth and breathing love; and the eyes, which can move freely, represent life in the spirit world.

All parts of the body are composed of three stages, even your fingers. You have a hand, lower arm, and upper arm; a head, torso, limbs; feet, calves, and thighs. The mouth has three stages: the upper lip, the lower lip, and the demarcation between them.

The nose has two nostrils, which become one inside. You have two eyes, whose optical nerves become one inside the brain. Actually, the eyes are connected in four positions.

Three stages and the number four are everywhere. Your ears represent four directions as well. A baby in the womb wraps his thumb around his four fingers instead of protecting the thumb by holding it inside his fingers.

The thumb represents God, so the baby is attesting to the fact that God is the center of the universe. The four fingers with three bones each represent twelve months, or the four seasons.

We anticipate eternal life in the spirit world, which is represented by the eyes.

Through the eyes, we enjoy beautiful scenery and can judge height and depth. The eyes are the most important sensory organ in our bodies.

Even in life on earth, we have to have some ideal images within us. We have many activities, like running, eating, working, and so forth, but love is the most important. Therefore, when we direct our love in the spirit world, we can go everywhere and be welcome.

We are born of parental love and inherit that love by experiencing it ourselves.

Once we become perfect in love, we advance to the center of God's love. In other words, these two stages of love are preparation to experience God's love so that we can fully resemble Him.

These three stages are the eternal center of the cosmos. The diameter of love in perfection should be larger than these two stages can accommodate, even in the spirit world. The realm of perfect love is actually big enough to encompass anything that enters it.

We always have to be aware that every effort is directed toward experiencing and improving love, that the whole purpose of life is for us to reach the center of love.

Originally, man should not have had to try hard to reach that point, but because of the fall, religion had to come into being. The purpose of religion is to redirect a person to this destination. A true religion provides a focal point where all things want to center on God's love.

Our response to parental love is strong, but our response to a spouse is even stronger, and love toward God is even stronger still.

If someone were to step on the path of God's love, he would soon forget about parents, wife, society, and nation because the desire to pursue this love would be so strong. His body and feet would automatically start walking in this direction despite himself, and the only way for his wife to be there would be for her to follow him. If she refuses, then she has gone astray.

God created the Unification Church for the sake of true love of God and of mankind. Before you joined the Unification Church, you were anchorless, with your eyes, ears, and mouth all going in different directions. But in the Unification Church, they became focused on one point, even though you didn't consciously think about doing that.

Even if you go back home to your old bed, your nose will smell what the Church is doing, your ears will hear the happenings here, and your eyes will see them. As soon as you wake up, the first thing you think about is the Church, and only after you come to the Church do you remember that you didn't make breakfast for your family. Everything else becomes immaterial when you have found the source of life.

The members in Korea had the experience that when I prayed strongly for them, they felt drawn to me just as though to a magnet.

If I spoke fluent English, I could probably do that here, but actually, it's probably better that it doesn't happen to you! Even though you have really changed only a little, the American people think we are being different, and they persecute us.

If I were to give you that electrifying experience, however, you would probably just go out on the streets, laughing and shouting. Then the Unification Church might be persecuted even more! No one who was not a member of the major religions has ever understood them; a person has to be part of it to understand.

Everything we do is founded on cosmic history, so our work is very logical and scientific.

How could anyone in the world imagine that?

Why did you come to sit on the cold concrete? You are not here to oppose anyone; you are here to pursue the ideal of love. That makes us very different.

You wear three-dimensional glasses, but the glasses I see through are very thick and multidimensional as well. I heard an American member saying that he had worked hard on MFT for four years and hoped very much to be blessed with a Japanese sister, but instead, he was matched with an American.

He was blaming Mr. Kamiyama in a way, who had said that if a person works hard for the dispensation, then anything he wants can happen.

But I knew that an American was better than a Japanese for this brother. I want to ask him to wait until he has been married for many years and then come to thank me or to complain.

Also, he shouldn't care about how happy he is with his wife. The children they have are what matters. At one time, Adam and Eve were the only two people in the whole world, and they didn't know that what mattered most to God was for them to form the four-position foundation.

If my father and mother hadn't liked each other and insisted only on their own happiness, would I have come into being?

My mother was very active, and my father was more of a scholarly person. My mother intuitively decided what was good, while my father waited and reasoned everything out slowly before making decisions, so they were always in some conflict over decisions.

If they had both been of the same aptitude, then I wouldn't have inherited both elements in good proportion. There is no highness or lowness; what makes something high is that something else is low, and there is harmony between them.

If my parents had been divorced before I was conceived, how could they have faced God, who would scold them for messing up His dispensation?

Here in America, parents call us heretics, but still, the Unification Church is indispensable. American parents try to kidnap their children from the Church, but in Korea, a husband would wait in an alley and try to kidnap his wife from the Church, or a wife would kidnap her husband.

That husband or wife would run as hard as they could back to the little church where I was. A husband might lock his wife in the house to keep her from going to the Church, but somehow she would escape and then run back to the Church.

At that time, this kind of thing was like crows eating the newly sown seed, but today this kind of thing is like taking a melon out of a field of melons that are ripe and ready to be eaten. You think Church life is difficult now, but it is nothing compared to the early days.

If you think it is difficult now, then you don't know what difficulty is. The only way to know difficulty is to look at the situation I experienced with the very early members.

If someone is wandering around wondering if he should leave and then he finally goes, what tragedy is that?

Of course, it is sad for that person, but how could God's eternal plan and love be affected by that one person? Would the eternal love of God change? No matter who leaves, I will continue.

I had experiences with all types of people before I came here. I saw many people pledge their unchanging loyalty after experiencing the love of God here, but then spiritually I would say to them, "Let's see how many years you can sustain that."

The love of God is eternal, but would those people be willing to suffer eternally?

Imagine that all four billion people in the world were men, except one woman. Would they all compete to win her? Would you think, "I am just one out of four billion, so what use is there in trying to compete?

A normal man would fight for an equal chance. If there were four billion females and only one male, would you just give up, thinking that there were many others who had a better chance?

If there were four billion men and women but only one Church of Love, what would they all do? When they began to compete, would they think, "I am from a democratic country, so I have to have three meals a day, eight hours of sleep, a good insurance policy, and a car"? Or, knowing what the significance of the goal was, would they give up all their old habits?

If a man of prosperity, who has grown fat with his easy life, competes with a man who has lived in the mountains and caught his food barehanded, who do the odds favor? Can you choose what you like and don't like about the Church?

Where on earth is there a church that keeps such long hours?

You might wonder why the sermons are so long and why people don't greet you at the door after service, shaking your hand and saying nice things about you.

Don't you think I have thought about these things as much as you have? I already thought about doing all of that. If you wonder why you get persecuted if things are really so good here in the Unification Church, then let me ask you, who has been persecuted more? You or me?

Who has suffered more, you or me?

Am I leading a more comfortable life than you? If it is difficult for you, know that I have had much more difficulty. If you suffer, I have more suffering now. not even counting the past.

If you would rather die than go on, know that I have felt that way even more strongly than you. How can you say that no one here understands you? How many of you doubt that you can go on living like this for the rest of your life?

All of you feel that way, don't you?

We are in a small boat in a big typhoon. If you are in the prime of your life and in top condition, and if you are pursuing this goal, then you have to run. But if you are not prepared in the ideal way, how can you keep going?

If you think that before you die, you have to visit each of 70 million homes at least once, you have to start running because you have only a little time left. The best way is to think that if you work ten times harder, then you only have to visit seven million homes; if you work one hundred times harder, then only 700,000 homes; and if you work 1,000 times harder, then you only have to visit 70,000 homes.

We are blessed by knowing about indemnity. Indemnity is the only realistic way to shorten our suffering. You can work harder and then add more hardship on top of what you already have. That concept makes this work more practical.

Even if you are not completely successful by the time you die, America will sympathize with you one day, and certainly God will recognize you. The entire spirit world will know how hard you are working. You are not alone.

Can you even think about trying to get blessings without working hard?

How sacrificially have you worked for God and mankind and brothers and sisters?

You have started to complain and criticize before thinking about that. Such a man deserves the punishment of receiving more difficulty.

You go this path of love as an individual, not with a spouse or even your parents.

This is why, traditionally, the road of religion has been a solitary one. When you are getting married, do you get together with a friend first? We begin and conclude as an individual. What place does your best friend have in your Church life? Even your parents have their own way to go.

In this country, parents often chase their children out of the house when they reach 18. That is good only if the parents have supplied them with enough love, and in the name of the child's own individual perfection, they chase that son or daughter out.

It is meaningless if they do so without having given that love. I don't look at you as individuals but as representatives of a segment of the world. I think of you as representing hundreds of thousands of other people, and with that thought, I feel I will introduce you to Heavenly Father. I don't recognize you and encourage you just because you work so hard.

If you have the urge to blame God for all the persecution and suffering you get, then know that I have felt that urge many more times in the past years. But I never, ever complain, and that is why God is grateful to me. We are all going down the path of the ideal.

If you complain early in the course, then what is the meaning of it? We are on a difficult road because no one else is there, but if you stop early, then you are more likely to find yourself slipping even farther back.

If you pick up again but start complaining, you find yourself even farther back than before. Don't you understand that this is what's happening to you?

In the world of love, one word can be most destructive, such as complaint. We resolve never to complain throughout our lives. No one can evade this course. If we don't make much progress this year, then it will be extended to next year.

We very much want to terminate it while we are still on earth, but if you complain, then you have to start over again. How discouraging it is to find yourself even further back than when you started!

If you are only a few steps from the final destination, then you complain about how miserable you would be when you had to go back to the starting point. This is a fearful thing because cosmic law is so strict.

Is the course of our individual life straight, or does it wander around?

This is the destined path for all mankind, and if we go to the spirit world only partway down the road, then we have to pick it up there where we left off. Completing it there will be much more difficult than on Earth.

While we have a physical body, our path is very short, so there is not a lot of extra time for anything else. You have to feel this. Each one of us is going that path, but how fast and how seriously we go is the question.

Our seriousness has to be reflected in prayer. I am the only example you have to follow, and to shorten the difficulty, you have to run hard even though your physical circumstances are not ideal.

The hope we have is found in the home church. What do we do in a home church area? You have to supply your home church with the essential elements for their particular stage of growth, just as though they were in the mother's womb. The person who is already born spiritually has to be given much love.

You have to be exemplary in showing this life to those who follow and have confidence that if they follow you, then one day they will go to the bosom of God's love. You have to be confident that you are doing as God does, supplying all the elements they need. I feel the same toward you and your children.

I am determined to provide for your children who are not yet born, planning what businesses we need to provide income for them in the years ahead. Not only that, I am planning for schools and in what way we will teach them. I am not thinking as much about my own children as many people think I should.

The ultimate judge is God. God knows that no one on earth understands me now and many people don't like me, and He is the only one who knows I resemble Him. If I were to take from you for selfish reasons, it would only harm me.

You have only vaguely known the course of life before this, but now that you know it concretely, you can follow it step by step, and eventually you will resemble God.

What will you do then?

You can stay and live with God and share whatever privileges He has and the work He does. This is your lifetime work, which needs to be completed in the name of eternity.

Going this path is homework you should do before going to the spirit world. If your homework is not done, you are not qualified to go to class the next morning. The spirit world is your school, so you have to prepare the homework.

If you don't do the work, then you have to come back and work through people on earth, which is much more tedious and discouraging.

The only way you can come back to earth is spiritually, so how can you do the homework?

It is millions of times more difficult because you have to go back and forth constantly. You really have to understand how precious it is to have a physical body.

Imagine how fantastic life with God will be. If you think how fantastic it would be to live in a king's palace in Europe, then life with God is hundreds of times more fantastic. Seeing the best show on earth is nothing compared to life with God.

We are preparing for life in that world. If an American spy goes to Russia, what law does he live under? He pretends to follow the law of the Russians, but inside, he is loyal to the United States. He realizes that his mission may cost him his life, but he has to try.

We are citizens of the heavenly kingdom, which has a law different from the satanic world's. We won't break any laws here, but we have a much higher aspiration and loyalty.

We have a great purpose to achieve, so we have to be men of imagination, as agile, sensitive, and shrewd as serpents, yet innocent as doves, like the Bible tells us to be.

Can we just do whatever we want and say whatever we want?

If a man has done great work for America, he can freely visit the White House. Have you ever thought that you are an agent of the heavenly kingdom?

If a heavenly agent is interfered with by satanic law, just as Iran is illegally keeping fifty American hostages, would God just sit tight and look on? I am an ambassador from the heavenly kingdom to America.

Would the spirit world do nothing if heaven's champion and his followers were overwhelmed by greater numbers of people who oppose them? You cannot compare millions of unrighteous people to one righteous man. When you realize that doing one wrong thing can affect millions of people, you have to be serious about your situation.

You are working in the heavenly embassy here in America. Would you only want to be the janitor? There are many different ranks you can hold. It is easy to say you would hold the high position, but is it easy to qualify?

If someone needs to sacrifice, then you should step forward voluntarily. Would you want to be weak and helpless all the time, needing someone to nurse you along, or would you rather be strong and mature and work on your own?

This life is one orderly stage you cannot bypass; once preparation is complete, then real perfection is expected. We would much rather know what is ahead and just push through instead of wandering about and leaving the outcome to chance.

Do you believe or do you know that the spirit world exists?

Life in the spirit world is even more vivid than life here. All things are possible in the spirit world as long as they are acceptable in God's plan. It is a place where we can have a banquet for everyone at the same time, and all the preparations will take only a second. The way of life I am teaching you is all in preparation for that, nothing else.

Eventually, everyone will make the transition from this world to the spirit world. If we carry out what the cosmic truth teaches us, we will be received in the palace of the heavenly kingdom.

If I told you only this part, then you could hardly believe me, but I have explained the basics of life, and so it is easy for you to believe in this conclusion.

Who will come to meet us, and where will we go?

I want you to be people who can be welcomed by Jesus and the saints as honored guests. Who would you want to introduce you to everyone in the spirit world-Jesus, Confucius, or God Himself?

How nice it will be when this introduction can take place, with all the important people of history there to greet us. God will introduce you and tell in detail what you did on earth.

Certainly, God will want to introduce the one who has worked hardest for the Unification Church. I know who will introduce me at a great ceremony to all who are present.

The spirit world will welcome us from the bottom of their hearts in a spectacle quite unlike anything we see in this world. From then on, their outlook toward Earth and their hope for its future will be different. Day by day, I am closing in on that point.

How would the maximum you can do compare with what I have done?

You know how much difference there is. Are you a member of the Unification Church, which has the same standard that I am thinking of?

If an ex-Moonie speaks about the Unification Church, does he know a fraction of what the Unification Church ought to be? The difference between reality and what he knows is like the difference between man and insect.

If people form their opinion of the Unification Church after listening to such a person, they will believe it is too unpleasant to tolerate. An ex-Moonie lives in a different world than we do.

Even today's Moonies are not up to the standard of members of the Unification Church. You are more like candidates to be Moonies who are still working hard to become real members of the Unification family.

The blessing should take place only after you have finally reached that standard, but time won't wait. You must realize that you have to close the gap between the standard and reality.

If the Church had only the standard you uphold, it might as well perish. As quickly as possible, you have to leave these uncertainties behind and get a real start. We are always going forward with a purpose in mind, not waiting to see where events in the world will lead.

If you sleep comfortably, it is only because you don't know the spirit world. You have to go through this course of life and do your very best while I am still on earth with you.

Once I leave America, there won't be any opportunity to see you and speak every Sunday morning as I have been doing. If I were to spend only one year in 120 nations, it would take 120 years.

If I spent three months, that would still be thirty years. No one can tell me that I should stay in America all the time. It would still take ten years if I stayed only one month in 120 countries. The day is coming when you won't be able to hear me speak.

If you really know the importance of my words at this time, how could you doze off? All the happenings here are recorded in the spirit world, and if someone is dozing off, then their recording will show that.

How annoyed all the people attached to you in the spirit world will be to see it! What will they say when they testify that you dozed off when you heard me speak? How would you overcome that shame?

What I am saying is not just for you but for all societies and the whole universe. Everyone watches the American President when he speaks on television. This sermon is of historical importance, yet you doze off. I have the highest standard in mind when I talk to you. I am speaking to history.

You can never know when you will go to the spirit world. After you find yourself in the spirit world, you will know clearly for the first time that what I said was true and it will be a source of regret.

If you make excuses, saying that because of your husband or family, or because you had to go to school, you could not do everything, you will regret it later. The path ahead of us is a grave one, and my concern is to shorten the time. We have to know that this is the point of history we are standing on.

When you go to the spirit world, your wife or husband should testify that you worked harder for the sake of God than anyone else he or she worked for.

Our children should testify that we worked so hard for the sake of God and the dispensation that we hardly had any time for them, and it seemed we didn't care about them at all.

They should even be able to say that you loved God so much that they couldn't even copy you. That's what everyone in the world will have to say about me one day. When my own children say that I loved the 36 couples more than them, then they will be the fortunate ones.

I have been pushing everyone to work hard for the sake of the country. You might think I am pushing you hard and not paying much attention to you as individuals. But when America is recovered in the sight of God, then you will be the masters of this nation.

Koreans know that no one has worked harder for Korea than I have, and the Japanese will soon understand that no one has worked harder for Japan than I have. We do not treat white and Black people separately, but make them all work to the same degree.

You should work harder for America than any past patriot. This is the standard I have upheld all the time, yet many people call me names and oppose our work.

Former members are being manipulated by various groups for some hidden purpose, but they don't realize that. Those members never really cared about God, so after three or seven years, they just drop away.

The standard for being a good Unification Church member is to go through incredible difficulty for seven years and longer. Then I can begin to trust such a person. You are still being trained, and you are not even on the track yet. Do you think you will survive until you are put on the track and really start to work hard?

Will you be barely breathing, or will you be very active?

I have gone this course of life like everyone else. There are many things I am attending to all at one time that you don't even know about. Many people predict that the Unification Church will dwindle and become dispersed, but it will never happen. People don't believe it can happen, but the Unification Church will prosper and grow. This is how it has always been.

It's easy to say we live for the sake of mankind and God, but actually giving the effort is something else. Have you ever shed sweat and tears? Remember that it will never be wasted but will be returned.

This is a good time to challenge yourselves. Are you ready to go through the course of life necessary for establishing the Kingdom of Heaven on earth? Those who are determined will never complain. Raise your hands.

Arrogance has no more place than complaint. You always have to feel lower and lower, not higher. What is your reason for becoming lower? It is because we are perpetually making ourselves a living offering. When we eat, it should be done in that position, and when we speak, it should be under those conditions. Whatever we do should be with that heart of being a living offering.

When you make yourself an offering, it becomes possible for other people to live.

Can such an offering have any complaints?

Did Isaac protest when Abraham was about to kill him? He didn't even think that he was supposed to inherit Abraham's position. Those who never thought that they wanted to be assigned a prominent position, raise your hands.

Any member who writes to his or her fiancé that he knows of an easier job for that person is really Satan. If someone has an easy job physically, such as in an office, he has to have the heart to feel for members who work harder. MFT is a basic qualification for all members.

Recently, there was an applicant for seminary who had a 4.0 average in college, but because he had never done fundraising, I excluded him from seminary for the sake of tradition.

Being arrogant means always thinking about yourself. If other people are complaining against you but you are standing firm for the sake of the Church, then you are in the position of a living offering.

You can be determined that you will make people complain about those neighbors who do not work for mankind, yet complain about you. You shouldn't despise them or blame your critics, but pray about them and love them even more. Whoever can do that is automatically a live offering.

How loving it is if you can say, "Just blame everything on me." If the offering sheds blood and dies, then for the first time, everyone will understand him and bow down. This is the nature of being an offering, so you should not be afraid or disappointed at what happens to you.

It is a difficult position to begin with, and it always receives criticism, moreover. Even though people may criticize me now, after I die, all of America will bow down.

This is my own credo and philosophy of life. As an individual, I made myself an offering in ways that no one understood, and it wasn't until I was well along on the family level that individuals began to realize what I had done.

When I was on the tribal level of sacrifice, families could understand what I did on the family level. Only after I started to work for the world could the nation begin to understand what I did for the nation. This is Korea's situation now.

People may abuse you because they do not know that you are an offering, but they will pay the price for that. Most of us have underwear that is completely worn out, and those who don't live that way ought to.

It would be even better if you were too busy to wash, and the lice found a home on you! Those lice would be the source of your biggest award in the spirit world. At one time, I did not just pick the lice off my body but brushed them away by the dozens, leaving a red streak where my blood was crushed out of them.

If your shoes and socks and even the soles of your feet have holes for the sake of humanity, it will be the source of honor and decoration for you in the spirit world.

Being tortured for the sake of God will be your source of pride and respect, and any scars and handicaps will shine like diamonds.

If a martyr's motive for suffering is to enable himself to go to heaven, he had better change his motive quickly before he dies so that he is dying for mankind instead.

Then he will find himself in paradise instead of hell.

You should not think that you must work hard so that you can be blessed in three years; you should work with the attitude that even if you die, you must work hard, and then blessing will automatically follow.

I am still going strong after all these years. If a husband and wife talk together and decide they should drop away from the Church, wait and see what happens to them.

Don't get exhausted, don't complain, and don't be arrogant or self-centered. When you work hard day in and day out, but still you are not sure if you have done enough, then ask God, "Father, have I done enough?"

If he doesn't answer, then you know you have to try harder. But if God sees that you have done enough, then certainly He will say, "Yes, you have done enough."

Much money is necessary to move the world significantly, and economic work takes much of my time. However, there are always more expenses than income; MFT money provides but a fraction of what is needed. I am not indebted to the American church; it is the American church that is indebted to me. I am more serious than any other member, including the President of the American church.

It is surely a miracle that I have managed to meet all the deadlines for payment in the different areas we are working in. I don't own any bank to dip into. Have you ever thought, sitting here every Sunday, that I am doing all this? I don't want to go into detail, but this money thing is rather burdensome.

I can clearly see the help that the spirit world gives in this area. It would be humanly impossible to carry it out otherwise. There are many dramatic incidents in which the spirit world inspired people to give money; a man might just walk in and give his life savings, and sometimes the president of a company will bring in a sum of money.

If I were raising money for my own sake, then certainly the spirit world would never help like this. We are in a joint venture with the spirit world.

I have an uneasy feeling when I know how hard a situation the Japanese and Korean Churches have and then look at how America receives what I am giving. I feel that if Americans continue as they are, then they may be punished. As soon as I finish my part of the mission here in America, I will leave without even saying goodbye. Will you slow down after I go or continue to work hard?

We are going to break down the walls of hell and let all mankind come into heaven if they wish. We can do that only as a result of our hard work; that is the hardest job we could imagine.

Whether difficult or easy, this is the way we have to go. I push you hard like this so that one day I can bring each of you to the same place I am going in the spirit world. I told my own children that the other day.

Some people might say the Divine Principle is just a fantastic story, but no one else in all history has ever been able to solve all the historical problems and questions that the great thinkers have tackled century after century. This is too good to be just a story.

You call me your True Parent, don't you?

Parents and children have the same origin and are inseparable. Where does that relationship come from? Only from the love of God. This meeting point, where parents and children love God, is where the relationship comes to exist. We are the participants of' love. The parents' ideals are firmly interwoven with their children's ideals.

Our objective is to fill ourselves to overflowing with love. Then, even if someone is trying to pull your nose off your face, your ideal will continue. When you are suffering, I automatically suffer. I could never make you suffer if I did not.

We have to feel how sorrowful God and the spirit world are, if for no other reason than because they depend on us. How could we not be sympathetic? I have opened up the all-encompassing way, and that is to suffer. There is a way to satisfy all the necessary conditions when we suffer

This is the third Sunday of 1980. This year will be a glorious one if we reach out to become a living offering without complaint. Once you get the knack of it, you will gain speed and move faster and faster, even with a heavy load. This will happen with love, which God supplies us.

That's the only worthwhile thing for us to do; there is no other capability we have. Those who realize this in their hearts, raise your hands. No one except the Moonies could do this.

I wish all blessings and health upon you.