Let Us Become God’s Elite Soldiers

Because of human beings, God has, until now, been unfolding, through the process of history, inner battles and outer battles that we cannot imagine. That is, in the invisible world He fights against Satan, and in the visible world He unfolds the battle through people on the side of goodness and people on the side of evil.

If we now bear the responsibility of fathoming God’s will toward Heaven and of recognizing God’s inner circumstances, then we must bear the history of God’s inner and outer battles on God’s behalf. You must know that otherwise this whole battle is not victoriously concluded through human beings as God desires.

What must we do to become Heaven’s elite soldiers who fight on behalf of God’s will? First, we must be united by an ideology centering on God’s hope.

What is it that God’s purpose in dispensing and fighting for six thousand years seeks to accomplish? It is to raise us, who are living in a sinful world, up to a position of glory like God’s own. You must feel to the marrow of your bones that God has come forth dispensing, being anxious in person while sacrificing countless prophets and saints to accomplish that will. Otherwise, we cannot know God’s circumstances.

Then what will be the center of the hope God desires, the center of the whole circumstances that God, facing human beings, desires to have found? It is to raise all people to a high position on His behalf. For this, God has toiled until now.

The hope of God, who dispenses through long history, forgetting His own difficulty to save us worthless human beings who have fallen into sin and been seized by Satan’s temptation, is to find and establish one true person who, as God’s substance, can furnish God’s character (性相) and inherit God’s will of seeking to govern all things. We must grasp through experience such a heart of God with mind and body.

Thus, finding and establishing one true person who can inherit God’s will is the center of the whole circumstance of the will God desires, and all human beings in the end walk to complete this one center. Such a hole will remain with us.

Therefore, we must be grateful for such a will of God throughout our lives, and our loyalty toward the will must not change.

Even in the world, if some person, so that a friend may succeed or advance that friend and set him in a position of glory, resolves upon death and endures every difficulty and toil, that friend will regard that person as the benefactor of his life and will not forget his gratitude toward that person until he dies.

God has carried out inner battles for us worthless human beings to bestow upon human beings the glory of advancement, whether human beings knew it or not. In other words, you must be able to grasp through experience with your minds and bodies the fact that God, while passing through the process of history, has undergone every toil and every anxiety and every pain to advance each one of you to a position of glory, governing all things on God’s behalf.

So you must be connected to that one center at which God’s inner battle is converted into your inner battle and God’s outer battle into your outer battle. You must bear in mind that otherwise you cannot become God’s elite soldiers.

We have repeatedly acted discourteously (無禮) before God, who has thus been waging a cosmic battle. Today you would be able to pay any sacrifice whatsoever if it were for yourselves. But when we reflect on to what degree we have sacrificed for these teeming multitudes and human beings, or for the countless spirit individuals who have gone to the spirit world, we cannot but realize anew that we are insufficient. Therefore, we, who possess a heavenly bond, must hold a heart that can sacrifice ourselves for all things and all people, inwardly and outwardly.

You must know that the one whom God sent to this earth as the central being for such ignorant human beings was precisely Jesus Christ.

For Jesus Christ, who stepped forth representing God’s inner circumstances, the center of his hope and the center of his living were solely centered on God. In other words, Jesus modeled upon the heart of forbearance by which God endured while undergoing much toil for human beings, and modeled upon the public content of God, who does not work for His own glory, and modeled upon the principled content of God, who does not desire battle, and desired to be able to bestow love before all things and all people on God’s behalf and to appear furnished with the authority of the heavenly kingdom.

Not only that, Jesus did not wish that the joy he could feel and the hope he could hold and the glory he could receive should become his own alone. You must know that Jesus wished that his hope and glory be accomplished and manifested in all fallen human beings and toiled for a lifetime of some thirty years for the accomplishment of that work.

Therefore, we must model ourselves upon the form of Jesus Christ, who appeared taking responsibility for the battle for building the heavenly kingdom, of Jesus Christ who came as the center of heaven and we must receive the whole of the ideology Jesus held as our ideology.

If we cannot model upon Jesus’ love and advance toward eternity, the hope God desires will not be connected to us. You must bear this fact in mind.

If it is our road of destiny that, as such elite soldiers of Heaven, we must pass through a course of battle and reach the consummation of history, we must break through such a road of destiny. But in breaking through this, various adverse conditions will block our way. Furthermore, there will be countless invisible workings of Satan, and upon the earth we will collide with the opposition of many human beings.

Yet even on such a battlefield, if we are God’s chosen people who must furnish the autonomy God permits and fulfill our responsibility, we must outwardly furnish ideological unity and, at the same time, in the actual sphere of living, become people who know how to endure and overcome whatever suffering we meet, just as God endured and Jesus Christ endured.

We must hold the hope that, through one hour of joy, we drive out the anxiety that wraps our bodies, and our souls can be filled with joy. We, who must eternally keep even a bond of one hour rather than ending with a bond of one day, must be able to attend to the unchanging center as an unchanging goal by furnishing a foundation of a bond like the unchanging bond formed between God and Jesus. For that, we cannot but hold unchanging patience.

Now before us there remains a course of hardship, and this course has become an unavoidable course. We must model ourselves upon the character of Jesus Christ, who came to this earth and offered a lifetime of some thirty years to break through this course in person and who witnessed to truth without regarding even death as a problem and who sought to establish truth.

Further, we must model ourselves upon the forbearance of God, who, while passing through the long span of six thousand years to find one individual self of ours, collided with every hardship and underwent every grief and who did not stop the battle with the enemy but continued the Providence even while giving up His beloved only begotten son to the cross.

Furthermore, you must know that Jesus Christ, upholding that will by which God had thus endured inwardly and outwardly, came forth furnishing a qualification by which he could stand as the protagonist of endurance before infinite suffering, and that is why he could pioneer this road of the will even while resolving on the cross.

You must know that if Jesus Christ, while being hung upon the cross, had become one pushed aside before that suffering and become a servile and cowardly one, Jesus Christ’s course of the cross could not have appeared to us as the road of life.

Jesus was a possessor of character who, knowing himself to be Heaven’s elite soldier taking responsibility for God’s whole Providence and representing four thousand years of history, could endure and cross over all that suffering even at the cost of losing his life, even though there was the hardship of having to cross over the road of death.

That such a Jesus underwent suffering was not because God deliberately drove him to it. Because Jesus was one who fully fathomed the heart with which God had toiled and endured for four thousand years for his sake, Jesus did not seek to avoid this even at the cost of losing his life, even though the hardship of death drew near.

We too, who must model upon such a Jesus and become Heaven’s elite soldiers, must become people who, even though countless sufferings collide with us, do not avoid that suffering but can endure and overcome it. Hereafter there will be battles for us in which we must fight with a hundred, and there will be battles we cannot but fight on the level of a people.

Further, there will also be a battle representing heaven and earth, and the bearing we must hold as Heaven’s elite soldiers with such a battle before our eyes is to furnish the power of endurance by which, whatever battle of suffering may draw near to us, we can grasp through experience the heart of God, who entrusts this battle to us, and break through it with dignity. If not, we cannot stand as fellow workers (同役者) of the victorious God in the historical course of passing through the battle of toil. We must bear this in mind.

Today you must completely analyze and examine yourselves, who believe in Jesus, and reflect on whether you have become people who can bear together with Jesus the responsibility of the suffering that remains in the Cosmos. Jesus Christ, who stood before God’s will, walked a course of suffering because of the countless people who stepped forth opposing God’s will. And Jesus was one who himself took responsibility for that suffering so as not to hand it over to the saints of later generations.

At this time, placed in the Last Days (끝날), even though cosmic suffering and cosmic battle block the course you walk, just as Jesus Christ, who took responsibility for history and even for the destiny of posterity, fought with all his strength and crossed over the pass of cosmic suffering of his generation, you too must become ones who can fight with the conviction that you will take responsibility for cosmic suffering and overcome all this suffering and settle every condition by which Satan can accuse, and thereby will by no means leave this suffering as an inheritance to your descendants. You must know that if you have no confidence to do so, you cannot stand before God as God’s elite soldiers, as victors of glory.

And we must become people who, while at the same time being able to step forth saying we will endure and wage the cosmic battle, know how to cast ourselves away. Now is a time when we must endure more than at any other time. There must be no obstinacy or assertion centering on oneself. If there is an assertion we must hold, it is an assertion for the sake of accomplishing the one will God desires.

That is why we, who must become Heaven’s elite soldiers and lay an eternal foundation of victory, must know how to cast away ourselves. When Jesus came to this earth, he came having received from God permission to enjoy all glory. Furthermore, he was one who possessed all the emotions a human being can feel and was one who came holding the emotion of wishing to enjoy glory. But before God’s will was accomplished, before God blessed, and before all the human beings upon this earth were blessed, Jesus could not enjoy glory.

That is why Jesus and the Holy Spirit, who went to the spirit world without having fully accomplished the will, have until now been carrying out the Providence of salvation in the spirit world to accomplish the will they could not fully accomplish upon the earth. You must know that Jesus is thus one who is not for his own individual self. Jesus was one who, in the lifetime of some thirty years upon this earth and likewise in his spiritual life through two thousand years, did not live a life of being for himself and setting himself up.

Jesus’ hope was solely to attend to God and to find and set all humankind upon the earth before God and to meet that one day when all humankind could rejoice. For that work Jesus sacrificed himself and offered up his whole life.

For us, placed in the Last Days, to win victory in this final battle, just as Jesus Christ fought for two thousand years solely for public righteousness (公義) while sacrificing all of himself, we too must cast away everything private and find and establish the law of public righteousness and thereby be able to be offered as a sacrifice that God can receive with joy. You must know that otherwise we cannot stand upon this earth in a form furnished with the qualification of a victor, having taken over Jesus’ hope.

God too has until now been fighting Satan inwardly and fighting evil people outwardly, but that is not a discourteous battle, nor is it a battle outside the law. In other words, God absolutely does not fight outside the law of heavenly principle. Jesus Christ, likewise, did not wage a battle outside the principle of heavenly law.

Therefore, even when we must wage a cosmic battle at the Last Days, we must know the law of the heavenly bond. And thus, we must become people who know how to fight centering on this law.

You may not know it, but Satan, too, cannot set up a discourteous law and wage a battle outside the heavenly bond. That is why, when one sets up a condition of restoration and fights Satan, if a human being departs from God’s will, Satan accuses. Not even Jesus could be an exception. When one departs from the law, Satan accuses without pardon.

For you too, who must pass through the battle of restoration, if you do not clearly know Heaven’s law, you will be unable to meet the glory of victory as elite soldiers standing in the place of God and Jesus. The two thousand years of Christian history since Jesus died prove this.

Jesus and the Holy Spirit are fighting Satan spiritually, setting up conditions according to Heaven’s law from a position of being able to commune with God’s inner circumstances. Yet among the human beings upon the earth, no warrior can stand in place of the heavenly bond in this battle with Satan and whom God can recognize. In other words, Jesus is lamenting because in this battle there is not one single person who stands in place of Heaven and in place of Jesus and fights according to Heaven’s law.

That Jesus could comfort the heart of the Father in the spiritual world and that God could entrust to Jesus the four thousand years of battle in which He had fought Satan was because Jesus and the Holy Spirit know God’s inner heart and circumstances better than anyone.

Since Jesus is thus taking responsibility for the spiritual battle, the physical, outward battle must be borne by the saints upon the earth. Therefore, we, who must take responsibility for this battle, must have one shield of victory by which we can fight according to Heaven’s law, just as God and Jesus were able to set up conditions of victory according to Heaven’s law in the battle against Satan.

Otherwise, God and human beings cannot gain eternal victory in the battle with Satan. Not only that, you yourselves will have no way to block the forces of Satan, which have fought in opposition to God’s law in the invisible world for six thousand years. You must know that if we cannot block this Satan, we will in the end be defeated in the battle with Satan upon the earth as well.

Therefore, we must find and establish the law by which God fought Satan and by which Jesus and the Holy Spirit fought Satan, and furnish a standard by which we can fight Satan according to that law. By becoming so, we can at last fathom the heart with which Jesus Christ endured, and can grasp through experience the course of life of Jesus Christ, who became a public offering. But if in the battle with Satan we do not become ones who know how to fight according to Heaven’s law, first, God cannot recognize us, and even less can we be recognized by Satan.

You must bear in mind that if we human beings cannot establish on this earth the one day when Satan can acknowledge his defeat and thereby conclude this battle, the outer battle and inner battle that have been fought for six thousand years cannot be completely resolved centering on us.

If we are God’s elite soldiers who can step forth representing the heavenly kingdom, there is a weapon we must furnish as God’s elite soldiers. This weapon is not some force or power that can exercise violence but the Word that God gives to raise human beings up to a position of glory like His own. Therefore, you must furnish this weapon of the Word and digest that Word as your own. Next, you must furnish a victorious character that even Satan can acknowledge, with unchanging faith. If you cannot furnish such things, you will not become God’s elite soldiers who take responsibility for the cosmic battle.

Now, with such a battle before you, there is something about which you must return to yourselves and think. It is whether you yourselves have become ones qualified to be able to overcome the whole suffering that represents six thousand years of history. And it is whether you can step forth before Satan as selves who, leaving behind all selfish thought, set forth God’s law of public righteousness (公義) and do not move unless it is public righteousness.

You must furnish the legal standard of the heavenly bond as a condition by which you can fight and win victory representing the heavenly bond. And thus you must become sons and daughters of God whose victory Satan in the invisible world testifies to first, even though I do not boast or set myself forth; and even though those you fight are wicked people, they must rather be able to testify that you are sons and daughters of God. You must know that only by becoming such people can one escape the long course of battle and become one qualified to face God’s glory.

Even though we have been called by God, God did not call us for our individual selves. He called us in the hope that we would become individuals furnished with a cosmic character. To find human beings furnished with such a form, God has worked and dispensed for six thousand years.

If today you have understood such circumstances of God, you must furnish a character by which you can step forth as a vanguard commander in this cosmic battle with Satan.

After furnishing such a character, you must in actual life set the members of your families in the position of a heavenly clan and further set the people before the will, and further still be set up in a form that can appear in place of the humankind of the world and the millions upon millions of saints. You have a responsibility to furnish such an unchanging law of the heavenly bond and to work for the building of the kingdom of heaven.

Especially you who have gathered here, unlike others, bear a responsibility standing in place of God and Jesus Christ. Do you know what that responsibility is? In this world, the teeming multitudes are living, and among them, pitiable people are groaning under Satan’s yoke, and your responsibility is to liberate them from Satan’s yoke as God desires and make them eternal sons and daughters of God. Therefore, you must become sons and daughters who offer up hour by hour before the Father with the firm conviction that you bear a responsibility to fight, giving your whole body and mind, to liberate those pitiable people and raise them to God’s position of glory.

Meanwhile, all things too are hoping that the six thousand years of the history of battle may end and a true son bearing God’s glory may appear. You must feel such a heart for all things. And thus, when you come to accomplish God’s glory, you must have even all things take part in that position of glory.

Further, you must feel that the countless spirit individuals in the spirit world are in lamentation and sorrow and must make it so that by your establishing a standard of victory, they too may receive the benefit of having established a standard of victory. You must be able to take responsibility for them until you establish such an eternal standard of victory.

You must become sons and daughters of God who bear such responsibility. Before you bear this responsibility, the One who bore this responsibility is God, and the one who is unfolding this battle is Jesus Christ. Therefore, all of us who have been called must strive to resemble them and bear this work and must awaken to being Heaven’s elite soldiers who, as sons and daughters of God, can shoulder this cosmic responsibility and fulfill their responsibility to win victory in this battle.

To fulfill this responsibility, you must endure infinitely. You must hold the resolve of heart: “Even if Jesus Christ cannot endure, even if God cannot endure, I will endure.”

Just as God and Jesus fight to establish the law of public righteousness, we too must become Heaven’s elite soldiers who can step forth with a sense of responsibility to hold our face and dignity lightly and to establish only Heaven’s law. You must know that unless many such elite soldiers of Heaven appear, Satan cannot be removed.

Those who have been raised by God for such a mission today are precisely we ourselves. Therefore, to set before God the countless people who are afflicted in this cosmic battle because of Satan, we must become elite soldiers who, whether it be a road of endurance or a road of death, do not mind any condition whatsoever but, when Heaven’s command falls, resolutely obey that command and step forth.

If we do not become such elite soldiers of Heaven, we will not fulfill our responsibility as those who are chosen, and we cannot restore this earth as an eternal garden of victory.

You must bear in mind that only when we become Heaven’s elite soldiers and win victory does an age of peace come upon this earth in which God can eternally rejoice and, at the same time, Jesus and the Holy Spirit can eternally rejoice and even we ourselves can rejoice.