CSG 9.3
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1When a priest performs a ceremony, if the people do not attend, he should consider it his responsibility. So if people do not come, you should strike yourself, shed tears on their behalf, and pray that God will forgive them. You should think that the people stayed away because you are a sinner, and repent of your sins representing the people and the nation. If you pray on a wooden floor, that floor should never remain dry; it should be soaked in tears twenty-four hours a day. Then God will guide you to the ones to whom you should witness. When they come to see you, you should serve and attend them as a servant, as if they were kings and queens. You must do so because you as a sinner need to remove your sins. The more you serve and attend them as kings and queens, the faster you will indemnify your sins. When you go down below them and serve those sinful people as if they were Heaven, you can set many indemnity conditions.
2The people who are in the position of Cain need to support the priests. The priests are the ones who make offerings to redeem the people. Since they do so to redeem the sins of those in Cain's position, those people need to make offerings to their Abel and support him. In return, Abel must offer his life for Cain. Cain's offering is based on material things, whereas Abel's offering is based on the people. They become one at that point and the groundwork for restoration is laid. The high priests who represented the people of Israel were in the position of Abel. Hence, by paying the price of hard work to restore Cain, they could claim the people in Cain's position as their portion. They claimed people, not material.
3An altar cannot be set up unless the high priest fulfills his responsibility. It requires a priest. An altar cannot be prepared without a priest. What then, is required for you to become a high priest? You need to belong to a blessed group of people whom God loves. Otherwise, you cannot attain that position. In Israel, the priests were from the tribe of Levi. Not just anyone could become a high priest. The Levites did not receive their own share of the land; the only thing that belonged to them was the temple. At the center of the temple was the altar, and it was on the altar that the sacrificial offerings were made. The only thing the chief priest could claim as his share was the sacrificial offering, and this only after he had made the offering on the altar and thus benefited the people with redemption.
4What should the Unification Church do? At the present time, we should stand in the same position as the Levites. That means we should possess nothing of our own. Then we can be in the position to become high priests. Each of you ought to become a high priest with a temple. After you obtain a temple, you need an altar. After you have prepared your altar, you need to make offerings. To save people during the Old Testament Age, God had the high priests kill sheep and heifers and offer them as sacrifices. He even asked Abraham to offer his most beloved son as a sacrifice. Now, however, what do you love the most and deem most precious? It is your own self. That is why I am asking you to offer yourself as a sacrifice.
5Consider the people in leadership positions. They cannot be happy just as they please. In fact, they are often quite miserable. Why are they miserable? It is because they feel that they are always in debt. They are always thinking, "I must be good to the members in my church," and always feel indebted to them. When a leader sees that one of his members is miserable, he or she should talk to that person all through the night with concern about that person's life. If that person is in a life-or-death situation, it is the responsibility of the spiritual leader to block the way to death, even at the cost of sacrificing himself. The leader needs to stand in such a position. Thus, the leader should consider whether he or she is living for the sake of the members, and how much he or she loves them. A leader should not think of the members as strangers, but as family. They are like branches of a tree, and should be well cared for so they can grow.
6The person to whom you witness is called your spiritual son or daughter. That person is your own branch. How much have you endeavored night and day to nourish that branch? To do so, you need to become either the trunk or the root. If you are the root, the more branches there are, the more nutrients you will need to absorb from the soil to supply all that the trunk and branches require. You will need to constantly nourish them, without rest, to meet their needs and help them grow. If you are limited and unable to supply the nutrients that the branches at the top require, those branches will wither and die. Hence, you need to have something within you that connects to the bounty of life that surrounds you. If you are grateful for your life, life will always spring up and flow through you. Although your circumstances may be painful, you need to preserve a sanctuary deep in your heart where life can dwell, a nest where you can find peaceful rest. Then God will be with you.
7It is important to take responsibility. Yet you live without realizing that you have to shoulder responsibility not only for this era, but also for history. You need to realize, "My ancestors, my current household, and my future descendants all depend on me." Therefore, as a spiritual leader you must not think you are free to do as you please. It is your obligation to live in keeping with the one way, even when you are surrounded by enemies. What is the one way? It is none other than following the way of the heart and teaching the way of filial piety. Even when eating or sleeping, you should be immersed in such a heart. Then you can develop.
8You do not know how often I have shed tears because I missed you family members. God has also shed many tears as He sought His true sons and daughters. When a person comes to your church, you should never think, "How large a donation is this person going to make?" To think only about money is the viewpoint of a Pharisee. A church leader who thinks that way will never prosper. You leaders must love people rather than their money. When you love people, money will naturally follow. Nevertheless, most people's thinking is the other way around. Also, some leaders say that you should witness only to people who are young and handsome, but this is wrong! The church is an extension of the family. In families there are grandmothers, grandfathers and middle-aged women and men, as well as young people. If the Unification Church consisted of only young people, this situation would need to be corrected.
9When something good is available, a spiritual leader should strive to use it for the benefit of all his people. If his people already live in good circumstances, the leader should be able to give them something of greater benefit. The leader should always be in a position to give something. From this perspective, God deserves our sympathy! If you ask world-famous spiritual leaders whether they feel truly happy, they will reply that they do not. They are in a position to give at all times, and they have to deal with people from various social classes. It would be simple if they had to deal only with people who are like themselves, but in fact they need to deal with many kinds of people because they are to live for the sake of all. Problems arise when they cannot give everything to all people at all times.
10God, who has been taking responsibility for the providence of restoration, is the most pitiful of all beings. When people receive something, they are often not content; they want something more. If so, from whom? They want something from a particular central figure. If all those who follow God desired to be recipients, God would be in trouble. Whether they desired love or some other precious gift, if everyone tried to make it their own possession, He would be in big trouble. That is why He has emphasized conditions that involve relationships. In your life of faith, you are faithful not for yourself but for the sake of others; in interacting with and loving others, you do so not for yourself, but for them. Accordingly, you should follow the way of faith, live for the sake of others, and love based on this public standard. You should set such a standard in your life. Therefore you need to become a more public person.
11The mission of a leader is not only to propagate or sow the Word but also to reap it. The act of propagating the Word is the same as sowing it, but the leader must also reap it. The leader needs to water the sprouts, nurture them and pull out weeds, so they can flower and bear fruit. The leaders mission is accomplished only when the fruit has had time to ripen, and is ready for harvest. Hence, a new leader should not uproot a plant that someone else has sown. Instead, the leader should nurture it well. Though it was planted by someone else, when the leader nurtures it well and harvests it, it will be stored in his heavenly storehouse. Nevertheless, instead of thinking like this, a new leader may uproot it and replant it as if it were his own, without understanding the former leader's character or overall method of guidance. As a result, the plant may die. He should not do this.
12In all respects, the most active members are the mainstream in the church. Those who are in charge of the church are like the Levites of Israel. The Levites did not have a share in the land. So who gives a salary to the ministers? The congregation does. To maintain their livelihood, church leaders need to demonstrate to the church members that they bring a higher value. In other words, a church leader needs to become a sacrificial offering, able to inspire the church members so that they joyfully donate and even offer to bring food. This is the way of a church leader. By practicing the heavenly way, I came to learn this law.
13God cannot help but watch you, the people who need to take responsibility to reform the environment that can be His foundation. Unification Church members who serve in public positions in all departments must have a heart of restoration; otherwise they will not be able to transform this world into the heavenly kingdom. In this world full of tears, we must build this movement while shedding tears. Then we must expand it from a national movement to a worldwide movement. True Unification Church members and leaders are those who shed tears. Since the Fall led to tears, we need to be restored through tears. Therefore, do not cry for yourself; instead you must shed tears for humanity centered on God. The more such tears you shed, the closer you are to the realm of Heaven's heart.
14In following the path of faith, you should not insist on going your own way. On the path of faith you have to climb up step by step; you are following behind many leaders in the spirit world who took the spiritual path during their lifetimes on earth. You cannot form a relationship with Jesus until you have surpassed his three disciples, Peter, James and John. Trying to do so would be like approaching a person of higher rank and introducing yourself; that would be impolite. In this respect, in leading a life of faith you need to know the quickest way to glory. That way is finding and following the special paths of those who took responsibility to cultivate their spirituality.
15The church leader must build a bridge between the Will of God and our day-to-day lives. One who pursues a personal agenda cannot become a church leader. A leader is responsible to serve as a bridge between God's Will and the people. Therefore, that leader should live for the sake of the believers who come to see him or her. A church leader exists for the church members and, focusing on the Will of God, is responsible for their psychological well-being and spiritual life. A leader guides church members based on his or her area of responsibility. Thus, if the leader is in a high position from God's point of view, members who unite with that leader can also rise to that high position. When your leader offers devotions for you and prays for you and for the forgiveness of your sins, through that prayer you can attain the same standing as the leader. This is why people wish to be prayed for by someone who has received special grace. In this manner, your leader builds the bridge for you to find your way. However, the closer we get to the Last Days, the closer we approach the time when the internal issues of the spirit world will manifest on earth. At that time there will be many religious leaders who can personally carry out Heaven's work.
16People today are so indifferent to others. In their everyday relationships, they seldom respect one another or the bonds between them. Regardless of gender or age, people tend to have the attitude that dealing with others is a nuisance. If you view others as a nuisance, you cannot walk the path of righteousness. For God to carry out His providence of restoration, He needs not just the Republic of Korea. He needs to connect all people throughout the world; for this reason God is deeply interested in us. That has been one of the most important goals in God's providence thus far. If we are truly a group of people gathered to accomplish this goal, we should be willing to stand with God and take the same interest in people. We should relate to people not just superficially, but with a deep heart. Then we will be in a position to form true relationships and genuine bonds.
1When I am even a little late for morning pledge service, I cannot hold up my head for the rest of the day. Such is the kind of life I live. Throughout that day and week, I cannot get a grip on myself. The following week I wake up early and offer devotions tenfold or even a hundredfold to indemnify my lapse of the previous week. Only after I have set such a condition can I feel at ease. This is how I live my life. What a difficult life! I may look impressive when talking to you, but to be able to do that I must live a life that is full of restrictions, with no way out for weeks and even months on end. Is it a private life or a public life? It is a public life. You have no idea what a difficult position I am in as a religious leader.
2My history will not be written while I am alive; it will be written only after I pass on. If I did anything that cannot be recognized publicly, based on the Principle, then I will be in serious trouble. The question is whether the content of the Principle supports my way of life. If my life is thought to have gone in the wrong direction, I will end up losing everything I have achieved. That is why a person in charge is in a difficult situation. A leader should not be the first to go to bed, no matter how tired he or she may be. He or she should not lie down until everyone else has gone to bed, and should be the last to finish praying. A leader should lead a life of faith and offer devotions, even if it means living in poverty with hardly anything to eat or wear. Such is the position of a leader. When a leader lives that way, he or she cannot go wrong, no matter what others think.
3Even when you do something as ordinary as eating rice, you should consider whether your act of eating is public or private. When you eat a meal, eat for the thirty million people of Korea and for the people of the world. If you try to make the world exist for the sake of Korea, Korea will be reduced to ruin. If you try to make the world exist for the sake of the United States, the United States will be brought to ruin. The United States can prosper only when it exists for the sake of the world.
4Which should be higher, our direct relationships of love in the fallen world, or our indirect relationship of love with God? We should place our indirect relationship with God higher than our direct love relationships in this world. If that is not the case, we need to elevate our level of love. When we form that bond with God, we create a place where everyone longs to be. It is a bond and a relationship that people respect, whether they want to or not. Then, what can we learn from it and what should we do? We should learn how to love humanity. In today's world, many view our Unification Church members as having no bond with Heaven and no relationship with God. We may appear so to them, but in fact we have that bond and we have a profound relationship with God. Since we have attained such a position, we need to manifest the love that God desires to give humanity.
5You who call each other church members should love each other more than you love other people, more than you love the things of this world. By truly loving one another you create the environment of love that can expand to the world. In this regard, the important thing is how much you appreciate the life of each member. Ask yourself how much you value each of your fellow church members. Even in the fallen world, when a person is going through difficulties other people help by giving whatever they can. If we cannot surpass that level of bonds and relationships, in the future we will be absorbed back into the fallen world. In that case, we cannot become the foothold for God to establish the bond that He so greatly hopes to make with all people.
6You leaders need to be clear in your standpoint. Otherwise you will have a negative impact on your members. Whether you are in charge of a business or a church, you should be able to always love all the people with a public mind, that is, a caring heart, as though God had sent them to you. Care for your members as you would care for yourself, according to the law of public-mindedness. If you have the position of a leader, you should love all the people under your charge more than you assert yourself. Your standard in this matter should be higher than any existing relationship in Satan's world today. Otherwise we cannot realize the kingdom of heaven that we desire.
7If you do not attend church three weeks in a row, you might even encounter an accident. If you do not attend church for one week, a second week and a third week, you will not feel at ease. You will not be able to say what is really on your mind, so instead you will lie. If this happens repeatedly, you will grow estranged from the church and eventually you will cut yourself off completely. As can be seen, although we witnessed to numerous people, many of them were lost because we lacked a good follow-up system to take care of them. Therefore, rather than focusing on giving Divine Principle lectures and making new relationships, you should take responsibility for those who connected with us in the past and raise them to bear fruit.
8As a public leader, your attitude is an important issue. Heaven is in the highest position. That is why Jesus said, "Whoever loves father and mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me." (Matt. 10:37) Jesus said this to indicate he held the highest position. Heaven strives to love us and establish a bond with us from this highest position. Thus, when you go out and introduce God to other people, how should you approach them? First, do not treat them with disdain. Someone may look plain and simple, but, although you cannot pinpoint it, you may get the feeling, "He is like my elder brother," or, "She is like my elder sister." Or perhaps when the person turns around, you may feel, "I have seen this person before." Surely such a person is meant to have a connection with you.
9When you witness to someone, how much importance do you place on that person's life? You need to reflect on this issue. A doctor is responsible to examine and strive to cure any patient who comes to see him. It does not matter if the doctor himself is ill. If that doctor is the only person who can cure the patient's ailment, and if the only way to cure the ailment is by performing surgery, then it is the doctor's duty to forget about his own pain, take up a scalpel and work for hours using all his medical expertise to save that person's life. Such a doctor can be called a true doctor of doctors. If that doctor died immediately after completing the operation, he would be regarded as having ended his life as a true doctor. And if that last patient were cured, that person would never forget what the doctor had done. The patient would even speak of it as the last words to his or her descendants.
10Leaders of this age should not consider themselves great. They should know that they have attained their positions thanks to the merit and sacrifices of their many ancestors. They should not think of themselves as great and claim they have the right to take what belongs to others because they deserve it. Rather, leaders should have the attitude that they must live a public life. A political party should not put itself ahead of the nation; rather, the party should put the nation first. Likewise, the Unification Church should not put itself first, for it exists to save the nation. The Unification Church should not exist to own the world; rather, it should be a church that exists to save the world. When that happens, Heaven will always be with the Unification Church. Church leaders need to understand this tradition as they carry out their work. I am telling the leaders not to think they have risen to their present positions because they are great.
11The world in which we live needs to be governed by law. Based on the law, matters are distinguished as right or wrong. Then what about the universe with God at its center? What will be the law by which we distinguish right from wrong? It will be the law of public righteousness, of living for the greater good. This will determine what is good or evil. Even in the family there are laws. Whether something is right or wrong is determined based on the family law of the greater good. The parents are in charge of upholding their family law. Hence, they cannot violate that law, and they are responsible for dealing with any such violation. If the parents do something wrong, the entire family will be affected. This also holds true for any society, company or organization. Each has its laws, and it depends on the leader whether the entity is for the public or private purpose, for good or for evil.
12The leader of an organization bears public responsibility. As the person in charge, he or she has to take full responsibility. He or she should uphold and follow its rules and regulations. The leader guides the organization as its subject, which determines whether it will go the way of goodness or the way of evil. The same is true for the ruler of a nation. A nation's ruler is its subject figure who shoulders full responsibility to ensure that his nation upholds the law, which should be based upon the law of public righteousness. That ruler needs to be fully prepared for this role in all its aspects, both internal and external. Thus, leaders should be able to govern by the law of public righteousness, to uphold that law and influence all citizens of the nation to fulfill their responsibilities under it. Otherwise, from the perspective of the law of public righteousness, the ruler cannot represent the entire nation.
13The world is surely heading toward unity with the central figure and the public will, centered on the law of the greater good. People in both the physical world and the spirit world are following this same path. Even God cannot just do as He pleases. Having set up the law of the greater good, God can firmly secure His position only by maintaining the centrality of that law and fulfilling His public duties and responsibilities in accordance with that law. He cannot assert His authority by ignoring His own law. The same is true for us, regarding the laws of the family, society and nation.
14You may think you deserve to take the money that people have earned and donated, believing it is your due. In fact you are stealing the money, and you will be punished. The money that people offer is more fearsome than poison. If they earned it by shedding tears, going hungry and becoming thin, and you do not treat it with a deeper heart than that, you will be ensnared by that money. If you have not attained the standard of goodness to properly handle the money that was offered with devotion before Heaven, your children will pay the price. It will harm them and consume them. That is why you should regard public funds as precious. This is true everywhere in the world. If the sons and daughters of well-known revivalists or religious leaders go in the wrong direction, it is because those parents incurred such a debt. I know this. That is why when people bring an offering, I do not receive it with my own hands. I tell them to take the money and use it for some purpose without informing me about it. I can live without receiving that money. Or when I do receive such money, I do so in the name of God. I receive it saying, "I will use this as public money." I do not lay hands on even a cent for my private use.
15To hold a public position is a daunting task. Those who hold a public position cannot live with selfish motives. When I give a sermon, if other pastors speak for an hour, I ought to speak at least ten minutes more. When mountain climbing, I have to be able to claim that I have taken at least one step more than others; otherwise someone will accuse me for not making a proper condition. That is why I have been living such a pitiful life. I can never live a comfortable life, just taking it easy. Since I live with such caution, Heaven also treats me with caution and heavenly fortune treats me carefully as well.
16A church leader should never be dry-eyed. The most pitiful and sorrowful person in the world is a church leader. When I think about God's heart and the providence of restoration, I often feel that God is to be pitied. When I think about all I need to do on the path of restoration, I feel so sad that I choke, my throat closes up and my heart bursts. Many times I feel as if I am about to faint. Without such a heart, I could not have lived for God and carried out His work. When passing by a village somewhere, if I happen to see something bad, I think, "I will let it go right now, but you wait and see. Later I will clean up this place with my own hands." That is the kind of person I am.
17You need to pray a lot. Without praying, you can neither win God's sympathy nor receive His help. That is because if you are focused on yourself, you do not have a basis to receive sympathy. This is something to feel sad about. However, if you become someone with whom God can sympathize, you will never be lonely. Even if you lie down in your room in the dead of winter on a cold floor that feels like a block of ice, you will not feel miserable. Was that not the reason Jesus prayed a lot? If you do not have time to pray, you should pray while you are walking down the street, or you can witness instead. That is, you can witness to others, substituting that for your daily prayer.
18Leaders need to give, not receive. When giving, they should not give the same thing over and over. They need to give something new. It is difficult to give sermons, isn't it? In giving lectures on the Divine Principle, you can just repeat what it says, but giving sermons is difficult because you should not give the same message repeatedly. When parents feed their beloved children, they pick and choose a variety of nutritious foods. Likewise, you should not give the same message again and again. If you have nothing to give, pray to receive inspiration from God. Then feed what you have received from God to your church members. Discuss with Him what to feed them.
19You certainly represent God. Sometimes you may pray without being entirely aware of the content, yet you are deeply moved by your own prayer. When you are in such a state, everyone present will be captivated by God, and will recognize through personal experience that God is the driving force and the source of life. Through that experience, they will come to feel that they absolutely need God. To give people such powerful and moving experiences, your prayers are absolutely necessary.
20People in charge should never be arrogant. A leader should be like a parent, a mother or father. The leader is a representative of God. The leader needs to invest greater effort than anyone else, day and night, and take responsibility to resolve all kinds of situations, whether spiritual or physical, internal or external, with a sincere heart. He or she should be the one to whom others come for advice, the subject partner of heart that people love more than they love their own parents. Without the ability to lead in this way, one cannot fulfill the mission of a leader.
21You should be loyal to your society, loyal to your church, and loyal to your family. What is the purpose of the church? It is where you shape and cultivate your character. You need the church because of the Fall. Your family and society are not sufficient to perfect your character. You cannot perfect your character just the way you are. You may have gone to college; you may even have earned a doctoral degree, but it does not mean that your character is ideal. That is why you need the church. Through me, you need to establish a bond with the new Parents and become their new children. Then you can begin your family anew, bring it under God's dominion and advance toward a new world. In doing so, the church serves as your foothold. Otherwise you cannot be successful. Your new family is formed through the church, and a new society is also created through the church.
22What is the basis for asserting that a person is upright? An upright person brings together the heart of Heaven and the heart of the people at one central point. You ought to be such a person. At church you should offer all your devotion to win a central place in the hearts of its members. For this, you need to invest all your heart and soul. You should offer devotion beyond what you offer for your family, school or personal success in life. That is why Jesus said, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind." (Matt. 22:37) You should love God with all your devotion and all your soul and all your heart.
23The church exists for the purpose of saving the nation. Christianity, however, does not know this. Christianity believes that the church exists for the purpose of going to the kingdom of heaven. Even that purpose is for the individual. This has resulted in nations, like the United States, that embrace individualism. The Unification Church is striving to reform the world that consists of such nations. We witness to others not for the prosperity of the Unification Church, but to make the nation prosper. Religious people should not simply dwell within a nation, but work to save it. Judaism declined because it lost its leading role in saving the nation of Israel. The policy of the Unification Church is to work for the sake of the nation.
24The church is to seek and establish God's nation. Its purpose is not to seek and establish the church. God's original ideal of creation is to make this world a unified world centered on that nation, and therefore the aim of the church should be to seek that nation. How do we do this? Cain and Abel must become one. Unless Cain and Abel become one, we cannot establish the nation.
25You blessed families should know that your mission is truly great. You need to be parents who can influence your sons and daughters. This is your first mission. To do so, you have to be thorough in conducting your church life and public life, and you should be exemplary in your personal life. These are absolutely necessary in training your children to go the way of the providence in the future.
26Which type of life is more internal, the habitual life you lived in society before joining the church, or the life you have lived since joining the church? When asked such a question, you may answer that it is your church life. Yet how seriously have you valued your internal life? Some think they are going the way of the Will, and lightly say, "What I am doing now is for the Will" Can God dwell there? As I have walked the path of the Will, my main focus has been to seek the place that God can dwell. Where is the central place where He can reside? How can we unite centered on that place? How can we create harmony there? How can we establish a foundation of unity at the place that God can officially recognize, and how can we adapt ourselves to it internally? These are the questions I have focused on as I have pioneered my way until now.
27Nonbelievers may simply base their social lives on their families, but people of faith need to base their social lives not only on their families but also on the church. Nonbelievers desire recognition and fame in their social lives. People of faith, in contrast, should place greater importance on their church lives. Social life and church life can be likened to the positions of Cain and Abel. Social life, being external, is Cain-like; whereas church life, being internal, is Abel-like. Therefore, your social life should become a reflection of your internal life. It should be the object partner. Your internal church life should become the center of your external social life. If you cannot stand in a position to be publicly recognized by God in your church, you cannot represent God in your social life. Therefore, the question is whether you can be publicly recognized by God in your church.
28Some people do well in their church but not so well in society. Conversely, there are others who do well in society but not so well in church. Those who do well in society but not in church do not possess the essential qualities necessary to bear spiritual fruit. Who is better, a person who does well in church or a person who does well in society? It is those who do well in church. Those who have the qualities that can bear fruit can go forward with hope for tomorrow, but the relationships of those who lack those qualities cannot be fruitful.
29The offering of devotions is a lifeline for people who take the path of serving God. Like a water pipe that carries water from the source, the offering of devotions should be constant. The leader who is responsible for a church should be united with at least three men and three women among the members. Unless those seven people including the church leader are always united in heart, the church cannot grow. It is not enough for the leader to unite with three people who suit his taste. The leader needs to strive to unite at all times with one person who is the most close to his heart, one person who is the most distant from his heart, and one person who is in the middle. That unity should reach the point where those three people offer devotions for their pastor.
30When a church leader goes somewhere on a speaking tour, he or she should not go alone. During the tour, there should always be people praying for success behind the scenes. In particular, during my speaking tour, what would happen if you knew where I would be speaking and you prayed, offering devotions for me? In that case God would certainly be there working with me.
31A leader needs a base for his or her activities. Unless that base is stronger than the places where activities are carried out, he or she cannot prosper. When you look at a tree, its branches sprout and extend from the trunk. The trunk is bigger than the branches. Similarly, without a base of operations, a ministry cannot grow. Church leaders need to understand this. It is the reason they need to bring three men and three women into total unity to support the church. When they all act as one, they can become the greatest nucleus for the development of the church. They need to maintain that structure for the sake of church activities. When each of the six people in that structure forms a trinity with three other people, they will naturally become a group of twenty-four people. When the three men each form a trinity, they will naturally become twelve people, and combining the trinities of the three men and those of the three women adds up to twenty-four people. With the church leader as their subject, they become inseparable. The amount of devotion the church leader offers for those people determines how much they in turn offer devotion for the leader.
32To become a true leader, you need to formulate both internal and external strategies for your mission field. Employing those strategies, you should digest the difficulties of your mission field with the heart of a true parent. To devise your strategies you need to collect various types of materials and study them, and to succeed in your mission field you should make greater effort, sleeping less than others. What determines whether a community will be drawn to you or not is the amount of encouragement you give the people and the positive conditions you make for them. No one likes to be indebted to others. The same is true of me. You need to consider what you have to do to carry out your parental responsibilities, both internally and externally. And you need to consider how to maintain a relationship with God.
33A leader needs to offer devotions. Only if you truly yearn for God can you pray all day long. You have to yearn for Him more than for people. Your heart of love and reverence for Him should never waver. You should long for Him with an indescribable feeling, thirsting for Him like a hungry baby wanting its mother's milk. At such times, although others are unaware of it, you will subtly receive spiritual food.
34People will never miss you unless you miss them with all your heart. Therefore, as a pastor, you should always wake up early and wait for people to come to see you. You should open your door by four o'clock in the morning and hear the first crowing of the rooster. If the rooster crows before you get up, you should be upset and say, "Hey, you rooster, how dare you get up before me and crow!" Unless you live this way, the members will not wake up early in the morning and yearn for you as their teacher and leader. Nor will they pray for you. If they have no reason to do so, you will never have any results.
35A tower built with sincere effort will not collapse; it is a matter of sincerity. How much have I yearned for you? No matter how much I explain it to you, you cannot understand. That being the case, how much have you yearned for me? How much have you yearned for the sons and daughters of God? How much have you yearned for the family and the people, the nation and the world of His hope? You do not know what it means to yearn for all of this. Money is not the issue. Even if you seem like a beggar, if you yearn for people, that in itself is glorious. Forgetting about worldly success and working to pave the way to Heaven is glorious. That is a marvelous thing.
36It is right for people to give food to the hungry. Even if it is food you obtained from begging, you should still share it with others, for that is an honorable thing to do as a human being. If you have plenty of food at home yet grumble at a hungry person who asks for a meal, your household will not last long. You should just provide such people with free meals. While doing that, you should also express concern for them with a public heart. That is how you can receive blessings. If you provide many people with free meals and at the same time demonstrate concern for them with a public heart, no one will dislike you.
37If you are the first to welcome new members to the church, you will be blessed. But you have to serve them and help them settle down completely until they can sustain a life of faith on their own. When you do that, you will participate in their victory. If you have that kind of relationship with more than ten people, when you find yourself in the jaws of death, they will come to your rescue. You will reap such benefits. This is how you will be blessed. That is why you should be hospitable to new visitors who come to the church.
38Think about your past and present and ask yourself: Does your past stand as the subject partner, or does your present? If your past and your present cannot form a subject-object relationship, you should look toward the future as the subject partner of hope. What happens when you slack off and cannot devote yourself with hope in the future? In that case, you will inevitably view the past as the subject partner and the present as the object partner. Therefore, in your life of faith you should not just let the grace you received in the past slip by. As you walk the path of faith, you will encounter lax times without realizing it. When that occurs, you can deal with the present reality by taking your past life of faith as your subject partner. Read again the diaries you wrote in the past, or reflect on what you experienced during your prayers when your life was filled with grace. You need to revive the heart you had at that time, and repeat what you did back then. Then you can make a resolution with a motivation even greater than you had in the past.
39As you walk the way of the Will you should have a subject partner, someone who represents the entire church, someone on the side of truth. But what if you do not have a relationship with such a person? You need to compare your present life with your life in the past, and if you find the past to be better than today, you should bring your past life back into your present. The question remains, how can you rekindle the determination you had back then? How can you re-experience the heart you felt back then? How can you re-create the circumstances of that time, when you fought your way through? If you cannot resolve these issues in your own prayers, you should find a way to resolve them by taking some kind of action.
40While walking the way of the Will, you can easily become estranged from the church. It means sometimes you are not within the church, but are living centered on yourself. If you are not within the church, that is, if you do not center your life on the church in all aspects but stand in the position of a third party estranged from the church, then you will drift away. The church will no longer stimulate you, and your ties to it will weaken. Then inevitably, although you did not intend it, you fall into a situation where your church life becomes lax. What then should you do? You need to work for the sake of the church in all aspects and unite with its leader. You should not isolate yourself from church activities, but instead be active and keep pace with the leader. By fighting your way through while keeping pace with the leader and fighting evil, you can experience the circumstances faced by those at the forefront, the decisions that they make, and the conditions that motivate them. When you do that, you will not only follow in the footsteps of the leaders representing the church, but will even arrive at a position ahead of them.
41What must the Unification Church teach? It should teach about the relationship you should have with me. Once you have an internal relationship with me, you can set up a clear model for applying it to your external relationships. You have to absolutely value your relationship with me. Otherwise you cannot establish the realm of the absolute object partner, the most precious position in the church. Then what should the Unification Church actually do? What you and I feel in our hearts should be the core, and then we should apply that core to our relationships. Then, what should I do? My part is to share what I feel about God with you. Thereupon, although you do not know what I know, you will know what you feel about me and that feeling will be your own. That is how you cultivate the field of your heart and mind, and open the door of your heart and mind. However, even when you have finished cultivating the field of your heart and mind, that is not the end; you should then apply this to your own relationships.
1Have you ever prayed for a church member after he or she has visited you? Have you ever thought of that person throughout the night and prepared under the light of a kerosene lamp the words you would like to share the following day? Have you waited for sunrise, longing for that persons return? If you wait like that, that person will surely come. When that happens you will realize, "Wow! This is the true meaning of devotion. If I offer sincere devotion, I can move God!" If you desperately want someone to come and you pray for that person for three hours with total unity of mind and body, he or she will start to feel restless. A desire to come to the church will stir in that person's heart. That kind of thing is possible.
2When you offer devotions for your members, rather than praying for many people at a time it is better to pray for each person individually. The difference in results between praying for many people and praying for one person at a time is very clear, like the difference between east and west or north and south. As a subject partner, pick one object partner and draw a line to that person. Then you should be able to determine all four directions. Focus absolutely on the relationship with that person until all four directions are secured. Only then can a sphere be formed.
3If people are to serve God while living on earth, they need to travel the way of the saints who laid the foundation for religions. We should realize that, as a matter of course, we too have to go the way that the many religious leaders of the past have gone. We have to want to travel this road and be determined to do it. If you unite with all the past religious leaders, you will naturally find your place in the world of the Principle, the world of religion. Having made that foundation, when you pray you will rise to a position that transcends the sphere of religion, and you will shorten the distance between yourself and God. That is why, even though you walk a religious path on earth, you still need to offer devotion. Some people need to offer much devotion, while others, thanks to their good ancestors, can simply go straight along the path that their ancestors hoped for. What did their ancestors hope for? They sought the same world and purpose that religions have been seeking.
4The goal of religion is to find one true man, one true family, one true nation, and one true world. This is the purpose of religion, and it is also the purpose of God. It is the purpose of the providence God has been conducting in this world. If we stand on the foundation of the devotion of past religious leaders, we can connect with God's purpose. The people of any particular religion do not follow only that religion's founder, but also the many believers of that religion and the leaders of all nations that identify with that religion. If that religion has a worldwide foundation, many global leaders will want to follow it too. Thus the distance between religious people and the spirit world can be reduced.
5In the Last Days it is not enough to learn from only one person who received grace; you should compare the teachings with those of many others who also received grace. You need to be wise about finding the best methods to elevate your spirituality on your own by meeting spiritual leaders with higher truth. However, many people of faith today do not know this. They need a comprehensive outlook; they need to effectively compare and analyze to find the fastest way for themselves. So when you travel a new path, do not just go along with it.
6Do not always seek to receive grace. Do not always try to drink water from a well dug by someone else. Follow the stream until you find a new spring of pure water. By the same token, when you conclude that the leader who has been inspiring you has reached his or her limit, you should offer greater devotion than that person did at the peak of inspiration. Then you will surpass that person. People of faith today do not know this.
7What kind of place is heaven? The answer is simple. Briefly, it is the world where people who lived for others go. People who lived for themselves cannot enter heaven. Only those who lived for God and the world can go to that place. Whether you are a church leader or a member, no matter how faithful you have been and no matter how much devotion you have offered, if it was all for yourself, you will be unable to enter the kingdom of heaven. On the other hand, if you lived according to the original way of the Will and followed the principle of living for the sake of others, you will surely go to the kingdom of heaven. That is, from the time you reached the age of maturity, if you lived for the sake of others and for God, and if you went the way of death for God and humanity, you will indeed go to the kingdom of heaven.
8Whether you are a local church leader or district leader, you have to know how to read people. You should be able to glimpse their spirituality and tell what level they are at. The tasks that a spiritual leader needs to perform are very difficult. That is why you must pray. When you pray about what is on the other side of the mountain, images of what is there should appear in your mind. But to reach that level, you need to offer devotion. A church leader has to know the spiritual state of his or her members even before they do. A person who seriously offers devotion is able to know what has happened to them.
9Long ago, when I was leading a church with a gathering of about four hundred people, I called out the church members' names one by one. I knew their spiritual level right away. I saw those with a high spirit standing upright above the horizon; those with a lower spirit stood slanted and those whose spiritual level was lower stood upside down. In order to have this kind of spiritual experience you need to be in tune with God. You need to resonate with Him. When you play the geo-mun-go, a Korean lute, if one of its strings is even the slightest bit loose, the instrument will be out of tune and its sound will be discordant. We must create resonating harmony.
10Never mistreat a person who offers devotion to Heaven. When a family member from the countryside brings me even one apple, I do not eat it casually. Treating an object offered with devotion in the wrong way cannot be forgiven. Ignoring a single-minded heart of devotion is an inexcusable sin against heavenly law. Do not treat things that contain someone's devotion carelessly. If something contains 99 degrees of devotion, you have to offer 100 degrees of devotion before you are qualified to touch it. Suppose the leader of a certain group accepts things offered with much devotion but does not connect them to Heaven. Then the more the members of that group offer devotional conditions, the more quickly the leader and the group will decline. That is why some spiritual groups prosper for a span of time but then quickly go to ruin. It is because they disregarded Heaven's way.
11The greater the number of people praying and offering devotion for you, the more blessed you will be. However, to have many people offering devotion for you, you should first give all the blessings you have to others. Unless you do that, not many people will pray for you to receive God's blessings. The person who has ten people offering devotion for his or her sake is someone God will remember. The church consists of a group of people who have created an environment of such devotion. It is a place where people say, "Let us expand the environment by encouraging one another to go to a new level."
12Church leaders should not offer devotion for themselves. They should be offering devotion for many thousands of other people. They should lead people to reach a level of devotion that is not only for their families but also for their nation and even for the world. A church leaders eyes should be fixed not on his own family and church members. He should have the heart to go out to the country and world while appealing to Heaven, "Please combine my devotion and my church members' devotion to make a path on which we can serve the world." If a church leader establishes unity with his members and has a reciprocal relationship with them in this manner, God will surely come and dwell among them. God comes when the church members and their leader become one. However, this happens when they unite not for the revival of their church but for the revival of the nation.
13This is the era when we should restore the people. If the Unification Church members' devotion does not surpass the era of the family, then the leader must take responsibility to offer more devotion. If this does not happen, the church will not be able to break through to the level of the people. However, if even one person is able to go to this level by investing all his life and love, just as God has invested His boundless life force, then the Unification Church will develop through him. However, if there is no one like that, we will remain stagnant or retreat. For the church to develop, there must be a driving force behind the scenes. This means someone must invest life and soul, becoming a sacrifice to lift the Unification Church even beyond the people and the nation to the world. You should know who that person is. In sacrificing himself, that person should invest not only his life and soul but also all his love. Unless such a person exists, the Unification Church will not develop to the world level. This is the viewpoint of the Principle.
14When you follow the Will, you have to invest your life completely. You have to invest your life force and the power of your love for a higher realm, beyond the nation and the world. Your life force and the power of your love become the elements that enable you to pioneer the path to grow the church. There will be people who struggle so much when having to face the destiny of the Unification Church and to embrace all the sorrowful circumstances on this earth. If so, even if you offer all manner of devotion for them and give them all manner of thanks and appreciation, it still will not be enough. Nevertheless, anyone who criticizes those members and ignores them will eventually perish. When you see that the Unification Church is growing you should feel endlessly grateful. At the same time, you should feel how lacking you are and pray, "I am at this level today, but please give me strength to become better." You seasons come and go. If during the autumn and winter you are unable to discover the life force and the power of love that are deep inside you, you will be unable to meet the coming spring and fully blossom. It will then be the end of the road for you.
15Suppose that the founders of religions and the leaders who followed them were unable to fully prepare the path for people on earth to go to the good spirit world. Nevertheless, if someone continued pursuing that path for people on earth, while offering sincere devotion, God would protect that person. This does not mean God would protect him or her all the time. Rather, it means that when that individual faced the situation where his or her predecessors failed, or encountered a similar situation, if he or she offered devotion, God would lead that person to break through the predecessors' failed circumstances. This is how God works to advance humankind to the point where we can directly receive His grace.
16There have been people who were responsible to lay the foundation for the way of the Principle, but who could not fulfill their responsibility. Subsequently, based on the numerous spirits who went to the spirit world, God established a foundation to pass down the same responsibility and bestowed His grace so that the successors on that path could overcome the previous failure. At that time, God did not think of His own situation. Rather, He worked based on their offering of devotion. God worked so they could climb up step by step.
17A church leader is in the position of a parent. Parents cannot go to sleep before they have put their children to bed. Unless they get sick, they cannot go to bed early. The parents' heart is such that they shed tears worrying about the future of their sons and daughters who are still immature. When their children experience difficulties in life, the parents will not go to bed without first praying for their children. Likewise, church leaders should feel so concerned about the members that they are unable to sleep. In the quiet moments of early morning or late at night, they should tearfully offer devotion for the church members. That is how leaders can lay a foundation. After raising the members in this way, as their children, what should church leaders do? They should inspire their members to become patriots who live for their country more than for their church. Leaders can do so only if they, in the parent position, set the example.
18Upright parents, before telling their children to do something, first educate them properly with love. If you live that way, God will not be able to leave you even if He wants to. If you become that kind of person, you will have a mysterious and strong power that will automatically attract others' attention. People will have to be interested in you. In the winter, when you make a fire in the stove, people will flock to it. No one has to tell them which stove is hot and which stove is cold; they will know. In the same way you have to become a person that other people flock to. You need to establish your own foundation based on this tradition. Then, with sacrificial determination, you must expand it to a family foundation and then connect it to the tribe and the nation. This is the path that Heaven takes.
19What should you do if your leader does something wrong, or makes a mistake? You need to wholeheartedly work with that person to correct the situation. If the leader is beset with problems and has to leave that position, you will become the successor. If you are that kind of person, you will advance wherever you go. No matter how bad your leader may be, if you continuously attempt to unite in heart, that leader will surely be replaced one day. If you are ordered to do something impossible but accomplish it anyway, the leader who gave that direction without personally having fulfilled it will not be in that position much longer. The person who orders others to do what he or she has not done can be likened to a bud that has stopped growing, but the person who faithfully carries out those orders is like a growing bud.
20People who are always indebted to others are the rejects of society. No one likes them. They are treated as outsiders. You should not say that a particular leader is bad. Rather you should think, "Under this leader I have a good opportunity to fairly demonstrate my ability and let my results shine." Do so, and everyone around you will recognize you. If your leaders are capable and guide you in detail, how can you claim your own results? Deficiencies in a leader give you a good chance to shine. That is why I am telling you not to complain when other people do, and not to draw back when others do. When the leader dies, you should even have the heart to lead the funeral service for that person, and put flowers on his or her grave. This is how you emerge as the owner.
21When you go to a high mountain and pray, you should be able to hear the voices of people around you calling out, "Save me!" You should also sense your ancestors in the spirit world imploring you to save them quickly. They are calling out to you because they want you to fulfill your responsibility for them, as their high priest. That is a role of the high priest, and you have to fulfill your responsibility. A high priest cannot say, "I have a headache," no matter how bad his headache is. He cannot say, "I am exhausted," no matter how tired he is. He cannot rest until God permits him to rest. If he is unable to fulfill his responsibility he has to pay indemnity, and thus falls ill. To avoid that, he may even need to put himself in the situation to be persecuted. A high priest needs to eat the kind of food that beggars eat, and climb up from there. Also, he should start by wearing the humblest clothes. In this way he should restore everything in every field. If he wants the nation and the people to become one with him, he has to start at the bottom before he can go up. He has to experience the misery of the people. Seen in this light, I am often thankful for the persecution I get. The noise that the outside world is making about us enables my family and our church to pay all the indemnity that needs to be paid.
22As a leader, you have to suffer. Suffering means that you are making indemnity conditions. If you pray without sleeping and offer other devotional conditions, what will happen? And if you work hard without resting and do your best to pay external indemnity, what will happen? Attend other people as your kings. That is also paying indemnity. Suppose you attend a very difficult person as if he or she were your lord. Even if that person does not accept your heart of sincere devotion, God will accept it. If that person does not want to follow the Unification Church and leaves, you will inherit all the blessings that his good ancestors had stored up for him. It is a daunting strategy. You will receive all his blessings. You will harvest them and gather them in.
23The Unification Church teaches that the individual sacrifices for the family. If that is so, that family too will naturally pay indemnity. Then it will surely be blessed and prosper, and the person who sacrificed himself more than anyone else will become the center. The one who benefited everyone around him will surely become the leader. Do not offer devotion for your own success, or to receive blessings. Rather, offer devotion to be given the grace to become the person who can take responsibility for the whole. You should know dearly that the heavenly principle and history require that we take this path. It is based on this principle that the Unification Church teaches that the individual sacrifices for the family. We do not say this arbitrarily, If you sacrifice yourself in this way, you will become the center of your family. Your family will be blessed and will pass on these blessings to your sons and daughters. Later, when your family expands into a tribe, your family will become the central family of your tribe and the center of all its blessings.
24The person who offers the most devotion becomes the center. God's blessing will manifest through that person. The higher a broadcast antenna is, the farther it can transmit radio waves throughout the world. Even if it is only a few inches higher than others, it can transmit beyond all other radio waves and reach the whole world. We can apply exactly the same logic to the offering of devotion. That is why you have to offer a lot of devotion, investing yourself and forgetting about it. Because this is God's Principle of Creation, the person who invests more than others, and forgets having done so, becomes the eternal leader.
25You have to pray. You can offer two types of devotion: for the people and for God. As a spiritual leader, you are in the position of a mediator who links God's life force with the people. Hence, the results depend on how much devotion you offer. If you are completely focused on the cause, placing God at the center of all you do, then the complete result that God desires can be manifested through you. The church members will unite with you according to the degree of your oneness with God. The members will unite with you to the degree you have become one with me. For this reason, you cannot help but think of me as your lifeline. God may be somewhat difficult for you to grasp, but you can think of me even when you are asleep or walking on the street. Try to keep me in mind at all times, day and night. Then the door of the spirit world will open to you. Forget about your own situation. Offering devotion is the fastest way to do this. If you offer devotion, your members will have spiritual experiences involving you. The result will reflect the cause.
26A minister should pray for each member of his congregation at least once every three days. I spent nearly three years in Hungnam prison, yet even in that situation there was not a moment, from when I ate breakfast in the morning until I went to sleep at night, that I was not praying for members. Even if members left the church I continued to pray for them. Then those people came to me spiritually and, weeping sorrowfully, told me the reasons they left the church. I could not help feeling sorry for them, especially those who confessed that they left me because they were too weak in the flesh. Even though they left me that way I continued to pray for them.
27When I pray for a church district, I do not pray for the leader. Instead I pray for the members who are dedicated to that leader, who serve as a support base for the leader and are working hard. I do this so that the Will can advance further. I do not praise a district leader when he or she fulfills a responsibility; rather, I praise the family members who enabled that leader to be praised. Leaders, you should pray for the members who are cooperating with you. Do not become indebted to your members in heart. When your members are suffering on the frontline, as their leader, you need to think of them even when you are eating. You should think of them even as you put your spoon in your mouth, and swallow your food with tears in your eyes. The words, "Heavenly Father, please look after them," should automatically emerge as a prayer in your heart. If you lack this kind of heart, you cannot advance.
28You leaders need to be single-minded, but for what? Is it to eat? No. It is for your mission and your responsibility to resurrect lost lives, one by one, as God's sons and daughters. It is to bring them out of the evil world and into the kingdom of heaven. Try living with that sense of mission more seriously each year; then nothing will be impossible. If you are an absolute subject partner, absolute object partners will appear. Therefore, as the subject partner, you need to pray for your object partners. If a person you are praying for gets up early, you have to get up even earlier and offer devotions. Then that person will immediately notice that someone is praying for him or her.
29A leader's position is one of offering devotion. In the morning, you have to pray for at least twenty people. During the day, you have to think about and pray for more than seventy people. You have to eat and live with the members. People are most focused when they eat and when they go to sleep. This is because when you eat out of hunger and go to sleep out of fatigue, all your nerves are focused. On the other hand, when you wake up your nerves are in a state of relaxation, and you are less focused. Thus you should pray for the Will with as much presence as when you eat and when you go to sleep. One prayer with such mindfulness is better than several prayers at other times of the day.
30You leaders should always keep your members close to your heart, as though you were eating and sleeping with them. Then you will come to intuitively understand each person. When your perception becomes keener, you will be able to read clearly both those who are near you and those who are far away. Once you look at them you will instantly know their inner situations. As a spiritual leader, if you are so dull that you do not have this kind of ability, how will you be able to guide people? The question is, how much devotion have you offered for each individual? You need to understand what Jesus meant when he said, "For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life?" (Matt. 16:26) He meant that each human life is more precious than the whole universe, and he dropped the anchor of his heart in each person. When you arrive at the state of Jesus' heart, you will forget about the world and fight for each individual life on a one-to-one basis. You will search the deep valleys for that life, with its unparalleled value. Then you will finally recover that new life and gain a new member.
31You need to know the greatness and power of prayer. You may think that you are just one person praying here on earth, but incredibly, your prayer can mobilize the spirit world in the other dimension, the limitless world, and establish new bonds. Prayer acts like a magnet. When you become a leader in the future, your prayer can be so powerful that if you pray twenty-four hours a day for the members with the unshakable belief that your prayer will work, you will see it happen. Prayer really has that kind of power. That is why Jesus is quoted in the Bible as saying, "For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them" (Matt. 18:20) Hence, if three people join together in prayer, they have great power.
1As a leader, you must not avoid difficult situations; rather, you should overcome any situation. If you cannot proactively master your environment, how can you accomplish Heaven's Will? God's strategy is to have you go through trials, even to send you to prison, in order to raise you to stand so firmly that no one can bring you down. If you have experienced this in the past, thinking about your previous misery will enable you to endure present suffering and go forward. In Hungnam labor camp, every year I was given an award as an exemplary worker. God had me go through that course in order to train me. With that in mind, I am now training you. When suffering children ask for something from their parents, who cannot provide it, how miserable those parents must be. Thinking of God in that position, I have endured a course of pain and suffering; therefore I can handle any situation. Suffering without any purpose has no value, but doing so for God's Will is more precious than any amount of gold. This is my asset. That is why I never prepare my sermons. I have only to speak the truth from my own life experience, and people cannot help but be moved.
2As a leader, when you go out to witness, you should feel as though your flesh and bones are melting away. Then go to the pulpit and give a sermon with a prayerful heart, thinking, "Father! I am so unworthy and inadequate. Nevertheless, You have to rely on me to do this, and I am so sorry." Do not be centered on yourself. Consider that you are a member of God's special task force, dispatched with God's official endorsement to represent True Parents and heaven and earth. Before giving a sermon, I spend more time praying for the members than for the sermon. I pray, "Father! I must lead these people and raise them up. What should I do? Should I go this way or that way?" After offering that devotion, I give a sermon as my heart leads me. If the heart is absent, there can be no life. The way through the valley of the heart is painful and miserable. Thus when looking for a teacher, do not seek a teacher of knowledge; rather, seek a teacher of the heart. The more you dig into the valley of the heart, the more you will find tears and the less you will find yourself. The closer you get to your final destination, the larger God's Will and purpose will become and the smaller you will become. As long as you are becoming smaller and the Will is becoming larger, all problems can be resolved.
3You can call yourself a high priest only when you go through a process to become a sacrificial offering with the heart of a parent and the body of a servant. To become a high priest, you need to have a child who is willing to become a sacrifice. If you do not have a child from your own direct lineage that will do that, you should at least have a spiritual child. The worship service is the time to make offerings. It is when you report to God about your past and make atonement. Therefore, the worship service is not a time when you can expect to be free.
4How can you travel around, going here and there for twelve months of the year, and casually go up to the pulpit saying, "Brothers and sisters, let us sing hymns," then speak about how Father is such and such, and then pray? If you act like that, the heavenly nation will never be realized and people will never be resurrected. Look at a mother in labor when she is giving birth to her baby. Doesn't she go through so much pain, feeling as if she is about to burst, with her face contorted in so many ways? If a mother goes through so much when giving birth to her physical baby, you have to be more serious than that to give birth to your spiritual children. When you leave the pulpit, you should be sweating and in tears.
5Spiritual leaders cannot do their work without having spiritual experiences. They should not prepare their sermons by reading books. Do you see God when you read books? Is God in the midst of those books? No, He is not. Because God dwells in a mysterious spiritual realm, you have to connect with Him through the Holy Spirit. Faith is most precious if it includes spiritual experiences. Therefore, people who join the Unification Church usually have such spiritual experiences. In fact, they must have these experiences. These kinds of phenomena are very for the Will, Heaven will be with you.
6I have such a direct and close relationship with God, I have no need to worry about preparing my sermons. You too need to train yourself to be like this. Sometimes I have to meet and speak with famous people, even up to ten times in a day. I must talk about a different topic each time, depending on the occasion. But do I prepare my speech every time? At such times, I am fully aware that I am an offering. I have no concept of "I" or "me" or "mine," I am in the position of a total offering. It is a very solemn position. It is a heavenly principle that people standing in front of an offering should bow their heads. God is present at the altar and exercises His dominion there. You should think, "Before this altar today, I offer all my heartfelt passion, all my strength and all my effort." Then you open your mouth and speak with greater sincerity than ever before in your life. When you do, God will help you. An offering is made from a serious position.
7Do not think lightly about the sermon you are going to give on Sunday. Do not just say, "Where in the Bible shall I read from? What hymns shall we sing? Bring out the hymns! Bring out the Holy Songs!" Base your sermons on your knowledge of people; use real life experiences and relate them to comparable passages in the Bible. Give an interesting sermon that compares personal experiences with the content of the Bible. Then listeners will be captivated. Since your sermon relates to them, they will like it. Do not attempt to prepare your sermon by reading books. Even books come from people. People themselves are the originators of books.
8One memory continues to linger in my heart. When I was being taken to the labor camp in Hungnam, I had to trudge along a stream through a valley, chained to thieves. That memory is still so vivid. I cannot forget the time we walked along that winding path in the valley. It left a strong impression on me. Those steps were heading toward a different world. I really wondered, "In the future, what paths will I have to walk each day? After serving my time in prison, what will I need to do? What should I do during my prison life?" It was going to be difficult, but I was ready to go there. Actually, that time was a good opportunity to come to a new realization about myself. That is why this memory stays with me.
9Once I worked on digging a tunnel at Hamhung. As I worked, I became so hungry that I could hardly lift up my pickax, and so completely exhausted that I was on the verge of losing consciousness. After going on like that, you cannot imagine how happy I was when I heard, "Time for lunch!" What a feeling in that moment when I threw the pickax on the ground and turned around to eat! I have countless stories like that in my life. I have been through indescribable suffering. However, you need to understand that all those miserable situations did not destroy me; instead, they will shine throughout history. That is why I am saying you should keep going on, collecting stories that God can cherish as treasures. When you open up and tell the people of the world the true stories of your sufferings and tribulations, in just ten minutes you can move them to wail in tears. It will be far more effective than a one-hour sermon on another topic. Where can you find a sermon topic better than this? That is why I am telling you not to worry and, until you are thirty, go through as many hardships as possible.
10When you give a sermon, do not just decide on the title and then get up to speak. The basic standard is that you should select the title in prayer. You cannot move people with a sermon based on a prepared title. If you want to make people cry, you should shed tears in prayer before the sermon. When you pray, you should be thinking about all the kinds of people who might come that day. You should also be thinking about the situation in Korea and how to improve it. Then you will be able to foresee, "Today, these types of people will be coming." Bearing all this in mind and having prayed tearfully, when you come to the pulpit you will be able to move your audience to tears. If you have written a letter with tears, it can make the recipient cry. In the same way, you should become a motivating force in the position of the subject partner in heart. Without doing that yourself, expecting others to shed tears is unreasonable. Therefore, when you go to the pulpit you should know that it is a court of judgment. If you are unable to improve despite your efforts, you need to repent. If you are unable to inspire others in an hour-long sermon, you should repent for three hours. If you deliver a poor sermon and cannot inspire the people, you have to repent three times more than that.
11As a leader, you should listen carefully to your members when they share their situations. You need to take notes about their testimony and know how to use it as material that can be helpful for everyone. If a member has moved your heart, make the lesson of their testimony the topic of the Sunday sermon. Pray about that topic and convey your inspirations to the members. Always live in attendance to Heaven. Your sermon should never be focused on yourself. If you refer to books to prepare your sermon, Heaven will not work through you. Your sermon will fall flat. The seed of life comes from Heaven. It does not come from people or their knowledge. That is why you must shed tears before you give a sermon. Only by shedding tears and taking the position of a parent can you bring the children to repentance. In order to make others shed tears, you should first open the gate of tears. Your tears open the gate of their tears. Only if you open that gate can they finally shed tears. Only if you shed tears of repentance can the gate of repentance open for others.
12Always think that you are indebted. A person who thinks this way is public-minded. This is because you have not taken full responsibility and others have had to, on your behalf. As you look around at the congregation, think, "As I was not able to do the job right, my members are doing it for me." Up to now I have been bearing the suffering that the entire Unification Church membership had to endure. But from now on members will have to face all kinds of incidents, one by one, at all levels -- the individual, family, tribe, nation, and even the world. I have been through a difficult course, but now all members throughout the world must face their own challenges. From this perspective, we share a common destiny. It is a serious matter that the spirit world is directly listening to the words of those who are guiding the members for a public purpose. This should not be taken lightly. It is the same for me. When something good happens to you, before talking about it or laughing with joy, first think of Heaven. Likewise, when you face sorrow, first think of Heaven. When you face something sorrowful, if you can say, "I am suffering on behalf of Heaven," you can bravely go beyond that sorrow.
13When you endure sorrow, you will surely be rewarded. During the course of paying indemnity on earth, if you shed tears of sorrow while truly being in the position of goodness, you will eventually shed tears of joy. On a scale of one to ten, if you experience sorrow at the level of ten, the happiness that will eventually come to you will surpass that scale, to the level of one thousand. Because we have such experiences in our life, we can continue our life of faith. If after you endured sorrow to the level of ten you received joy only at the level of one, it would dissipate within a few days. But in following the path of Heaven, if you truly persevere through sorrow, true happiness beyond your imagination is bound to come. If you do not have a chance to feel it or receive it, such joy will come to your wife, your children, or your ancestors. So do not do anything thoughtlessly. Live your life with the attitude of attending God at all times. Always consult with Him. When you feel frustrated, sit down and pray. Sleeping should not be the issue; working should not be the issue. Praying must become your way of life.
14If possible, I try not to write out my speeches. I normally speak without a script. If you speak from a script, Heaven may not be able to work fully. Hence, even if you write a script, you should not memorize what you write. You should not recite it line by line. Only by speaking from your heart can you enter the realm of resonance with God. Then your mind and body can unite in the atmosphere of God's grace, in an environment where Heaven can relate to you. In such a state, you cannot have your own opinions. Sometimes I stand in the position of an object partner and sometimes in the position of a subject partner. If I stand as a subject when I should be in the object position, I ruin the atmosphere. That is why I need to pray. When I appear at the podium with a heart of tears, I immediately know how to reach those at all levels, and what to talk about that day.
15After you have given a sermon, you should struggle with an unbearable feeling of shame. That is how you can develop. If you stand at the pulpit and give the same habitual sermons you have given for ten to twenty years, you will run dry. Do not just speak your own words. For ten to twenty years you may have based your sermons on your notebook, but you cannot generate life from that. That is why I tell you, do not speak your own words but always cultivate new words, the Word of Heaven. Even if it includes content that others already know, you should always speak the Word of Heaven. That is why you should forget about the script. Exercising this kind of spirituality is crucial. So when I get an inspiration at midnight, or even at 3 o'clock or 4 o'clock in the morning, how can I sleep? My sleepiness dissipates instantly. Resonance, or stimulation from the spirit world, transcends sleep. It goes far beyond the world of sleep.
16When Unification Church leaders give sermons, you need to be motivated to invest all your heart and body. You have to move and inspire heaven and earth, audiences who are beyond the past, present and future. If you lose that motivation, you will end up just following current trends. You will become more and more secularized. Therefore, you should speak representing Heaven. Further, do not conduct research in books for your Sunday sermon. Rather, select the title through deep prayer. When you pray to find the title, you should be moved as if you have regained new life. In such a state, you should feel a sense of urgency, as if you are about to make a decisive proclamation that will determine the future of the nation, whether it rises or falls into ruin. In other words, you must speak as if you are making your final proclamation at the execution ground. Speak as if it will determine success or failure. It is the same with prayer. Have the seriousness of a criminal who is going to the gallows. When singing a hymn, although everyone knows the lyrics and the melody as well as you do, to move the hearts of people you should thoroughly understand what the hymn means. Then sing to convey its deep content. Resonate like an echo! Sing with an expansive and resounding voice that touches people's hearts and changes their attitudes. You have to sing hymns like that in order to move the public.
17When giving a sermon or a lecture, you need to present something new. You have to stimulate your audience. Through prayer, you need to supplement what is lacking, even placing your life on the line to close the gap. Even when you are just walking along, have a mind to seek for something new. For instance, do not just go to the church, but have a heart to learn something new, to make a new atmosphere. Do not always take the direct route to church; try going a roundabout way. Although you may need to head south, try a route to the north. Why? It is to find a new path. If you are not too excited about doing that, try rearranging the furniture in your home. After many months have passed, do not just leave things as they are; try to move things around. Then new ideas will come to you. We definitely need to do things like that. Vary your prayers as well. Depending on where you pray, whether in front of the pulpit or way in the back of the church, the feeling is totally different. The feeling is also different when you pray in the midst of the congregation. Therefore, seek to make changes in the environment.
18When giving a sermon, if you repeat the same one, the members will take notice and feel upset. Likewise, when you give lectures on the Divine Principle, people will be annoyed if you always lecture in the same old way. It is because people feel the changes of the four seasons -- spring, summer, autumn and winter -- depending on the season you are in. People are not always in a good mood just because it is morning. Even if they do not have any worries, there are days when they are unusually depressed. In spite of the bright sunlight and crisp weather, there are times when you yourself may feel depressed. At those times, how can you uplift your spirit? If you do not find anything stimulating to change it, you might descend to a state of even greater despair. Therefore, you have to either stimulate yourself from an opposite direction or find something stimulating and overcome your depression. You need to find ways to be in control of your life every day. Otherwise, in the future, you will not be able to guide the numerous souls that are lost.
19We human beings were created through the Word, flesh and spirit. Hence, we should first align with the Word, next cultivate our character, and then do spiritual work. That is the correct order. If we put spiritual work first, we would have to pay great indemnity because the first stages were skipped. You should be moved by your own sermon. You need to be moved by your own prayer. You should give the sermon in a state where you receive God's mercy and grace. You can enter a state of grace by appealing to God about the pitiful situations of the people, who have to connect through someone like you to receive life and grace. To arrive at such a state of grace you must repent and, through suffering, seek the path of Heaven. In walking that path, you should not have any enemies.
20In giving a sermon, do not give your devotion to everyone at the same time. Do not think that you have the public in front of you and are delivering the sermon to them. Rather, think that you are giving the sermon to one person. If that one person receives grace and sheds tears, that grace will spread to the whole. Your church could not develop until now because you have been giving sermons that floated in the air, with no roots. Since there is no base to absorb your sermons, there is no way for witnessing to be successful. To gain a foothold, a church leader should cultivate his personal foundation. When I give you a certain direction, the members will move only if the church leader sets the example by moving, even at the risk of his or her life.
21Everything in the world can be material for your sermons. If you suffered many ordeals, you can explain in your sermon what you did in those days. Therefore, a church leader should have experienced many difficulties. He or she should have gone through a lot of life training. He or she needs to have experienced times as a poor laborer, a beggar, or a high official holding a position in the circles of authority. Then when you share your actual experiences in those circumstances, especially the trials you experienced while serving in a public position, people can feel them as very real.
22When giving a sermon or a lecture, rather than preparing for it by reading the Divine Principle many times, once you have reached a certain level of understanding of the Principle, you should be immersed in the Word. That is, you should experience how profound that teaching is and what an incredible course of sacrifice I had to go through to discover it. If you can really feel it, you are bound to shed tears. Once you enter the realm of God's deep heart of restoration, you will discover the root of unspeakable situations. Without realizing it, you will be pulled into a fog through which you may have to tumble and struggle alone. That is when you have to firmly secure your position as a subject partner representing God. From that point on, you can become a subject partner and God's work can begin. It does not happen without a foundation of cooperation from the spirit world. If you are unable to enter that state, you must pray. You have to offer devotion for that to happen.
23When lecturing, unless you know the Principle thoroughly, you cannot have the foundation of heart to influence your audience. To have that heart, pray ahead of time, "Father, today I will lecture on this title." Then, as you lecture with a prayerful heart, you need to feel the kind of heart that God would feel. Discuss with God as you lecture, saying, "Whom do You want to resurrect today through your Word, as the object partner You need? If there is a person here whom You have long awaited to meet, I will do my utmost not to lose that person." If you think, "I'll just lecture as I have always done", you can convey the content but you cannot resurrect people. You can never revive them.
24When you stand at the pulpit in front of the public, your heart must feel as though you are going to an execution. It should be similar to the heart of a man who stands before the judge in a court of law, solemnly waiting for him to render his verdict. Therefore, when you stand at the pulpit, you are like a sacrificial offering, responsible for many people's lives. If you speak well you can save their lives, but if you utter a wrong word you could kill them. To utter a wrong word is the same as a doctor who gives a wrong injection; it can take a life. Thus, standing at the pulpit is the most daunting position. Heaven is present in that position.
25When you lecture, do not think that you are just speaking the words of the Principle. You are telling my history and God's history. It means that ultimately you are speaking in order to inherit that history and become one with it. If you lecture the Principle ten times, you will become ten times deeper. More than saving others, you are meant to become closer to God's history and my history. That is, if you lecture ten times, each of those ten times brings your heart that much closer to God and to me, and each of those ten times makes your heart that much deeper. The same goes for prayer: the more you pray, the more your heart will grow deep and wide. You will become higher by the same degree. The higher you become, the more you will develop your heart, and the more you will be given opportunities to grow in oneness of heart with God and with me. Conveying the Word and teaching church members gives you such an opportunity.
26I used to pray until I had calluses on my knees. I would pray for more than twelve hours a day. I would bring up issues and then pray to resolve them, as if in a showdown with God. I had these experiences so often that it became like a habit. As soon as I faced an issue, I would already know what the outcome would be. I could feel it. You should not give sermons by reading books. The spirit world, the original world, is not meant to be mobilized based on books. The basic principle is that the spirit world is governed by love. And restoration refers to the perfection of character based on love. We are moved, and our character is engrafted to Heaven's side, when love occupies the central position. It does not happen by knowledge. Therefore, do not read books to find something to speak about. If you give a sermon that way, you cannot resurrect people.
27You need to struggle to decide on the title of your sermon. It is a serious fight. If you decide on the title by going over a book one week before giving the sermon, Heaven cannot work through you. That has nothing to do with you. That is why it will never work. Therefore, you should regard the process of selecting the title for your sermon as a life-or-death matter. When you stand at the pulpit, search among the audience for a person whom Heaven needs to separate from a life-or-death problem. You should know in advance who will come for this purpose. If you get it right, the spirit world will be open to you. I never select the title of my sermon days in advance. I usually decide on the sermon title less than ten minutes before coming out to begin the service. I should feel resurrected by the content of my sermon first. Only when I have that experience can I stand in a position of confidence. Thus when I stand before the congregation, I will have secured my posture. Then I can begin to communicate with the congregation. I cannot do so with everyone at once. At first I connect to one or two people. If one person can be moved by that connection, everything can be turned around; then it expands to everyone in the congregation.
28If you want to move an audience of hundreds of thousands of people, do not write a script. As a spiritual leader, you need inspiration. That is why your tears must never cease. You should be able to speak from a deep heart, such that tears burst forth without you even realizing it. Never lose that heart. If you lose it, you cannot resurrect people. This is a serious matter. How serious have you been to save one life? Compare yourself to a doctor. When a surgeon goes to the operating table, a person's life is on the edge of his scalpel. You as a leader are responsible for many lives. You should recognize that you who are dealing with many people's lives are in a position far more serious than the doctor who is handling just one person's life. I am not saying this just casually. If you are not that sincere, you are nothing but a swindler.
29Do not expect to move the congregation through your sermon. Rather, it is you who should be moved first. You need to be inspired by the content you are delivering. You should think that you are giving a sermon to yourself. If you, as a person of high spirituality, are moved and inspired by your own sermon, then the congregation will go wild, receiving amazing grace and inspiration. Therefore, giving the sermon serves to cultivate you, not others. It is for your own growth, not for others. Therefore, you should quote my words as much as possible. Even more than praying, you need to read the books of my sermons. Read a sermon that inspires you once, twice, three times, and then speak focused on its key points. That would be better than studying for several weeks. The books of my sermons contain an enormous amount of material. My prayers, especially, have very profound content that you cannot access on your own.
30Before going to the podium, first think about the posture you will take when you stand before the audience. Then think of a way to impress the audience within the first five to ten minutes. If the audience does not incline toward you within the first five to ten minutes, it will be difficult to move them. That being the case, it is important to know what to start with. Begin with a topic that catches everyone's interest. Or begin with something totally irrelevant, unusual or unfamiliar. Employ a strategy to draw them to you, so that they will want to listen to what you are saying. You need a strategy to draw them in.
31Study people to figure out whether they are open-minded and cooperative or narrow and inflexible. By finding out the sorts of topics intriguing to a person, you should be able to discover his or her personality type. Study by making comparisons: "Ah, that person is the same type as this friend of mine. Among the one hundred people I know, he is like so-and-so." Select three or four people of different types and test how they respond to your sermons. Choose them from different categories, for example, a humble person, an arrogant person, a passionate person and an indecisive person. Then observe them. At a certain dramatic moment you may shed tears, or when you are preaching about forgiveness, for example, your expression should show your emotion. In this way, you should be able to move that person. You are fighting an invisible battle. For a person who has poetic sentiments, you can recite a poem. Recall a suitable poem, and during the sermon take a minute to recite the poem, losing yourself in poetic sentiment. For a person with literary sentiments, you can whisper to express intense emotion.
32Wherever you are, when you lecture the Principle, whether it is Part One or Part Two, your lecture should be seamless and smooth. The Principle should become like a formula for you. If you use this formula to comprehend the whole world of phenomena, the knowledge you acquire will be so vast. You should find the Principle so interesting that you want to stay up all night reading it. If you are intoxicated by the Principle to that extent, it will bring internal growth. You will see progress in your daily life as well. Unless you study the Principle with that level of focus, you will hardly make any progress.
33How can you become a great lecturer? Go listen to famous lecturers around the country. Record their lectures and evaluate them. Choose their best points and write them down in your notebook. Always have piles of the tapes you recorded. Collect the witty and useful materials from tens and hundreds of their sermons and use them whenever you give lectures. Then you can become a great lecturer. You should lecture more than eight hours every day. Lecture to even one new guest.
34If you can shed tears when holding the Principle book, you can move your audience. Become a person who clings to the Principle book, staying up all night reading it, begrudging the fact that time is passing, and having amazing experiences from page to page. After you have had such experiences, try giving lectures while intoxicated with the Principle and see how spirit world moves the audience. Without fail, people will have new and moving experiences. If you are dead, things will lose their life force and atrophy, but if you are alive, things will definitely develop. When they develop, new things will come into existence. That is a natural law.
35When you lecture, what do you want to give to the listeners? And when you speak, what message do you want to convey through your words? When you use your hands, what impression do you want to make with your gestures? When you do anything, what impact do you want to make? You need to have answers to these questions. Even when you walk a difficult path, always think of the legacy you will leave behind. Though your path may be arduous and tiring, to leave a legacy you have to be full of spirit and fun. You cannot afford to wallow in exhaustion. The more difficulties you face, the more you need to pay attention to this matter.
1Considering the current situation of the Unification Church, we cannot expect any innovative developments in the future as long as the leaders cling to the same methods they have been using thus far. We must not just hold on to old ways of thinking, old attitudes, old methods of witnessing or existing approaches to faith. This is because these methods have not met our expectations in bringing results. It would be different had we achieved good results. However, since we have not, we should abandon our conventional faith and life, as well as witnessing methods, and transform ourselves into new and different people. Unless we come up with a new attitude of faith, a new attitude in life and new activities, it will be difficult to bring new development.
2We all need to grow. However, before we pursue growth, more important is cultivating a pure heart. Therefore you need to take the time to pray and offer devotion. You should not offer devotion just the way you are. First you need to clean up your past. If your old concepts persist, you should consider where those concepts could drag you. You who are immersed in old concepts and stubbornly cling to them must evaluate yourself, and determine whether your past was pure. If you believe you were pure, consider whether you have been good and whether you are currently situated in a good position. Also, you need to evaluate whether your desires are pure. What is pure goodness? It is not living for your own sake. It is not strengthening yourself. Goodness is serving and attending God, as the owner of goodness. The owner of goodness is God, not fallen people.
3When you go out to rural areas to witness, you should first attain internal unity with the people of that village. Internal unity refers to unity of heart. Then you need to attain unity with their life and thoughts. This means that your mind and body need to unite centered on God, as a reality in daily life. In other words, the mind attains a state of total unity with God, and then the body surrenders to the mind. That is how you connect the three points of formation, growth and completion. Do not follow this path just as an individual, but also take people with you as you travel this path.
4Some church leaders believe they have reached the standard of Heaven's perfection and demand that others serve, attend and honor them. This is very wrong. The position of a parent is to serve others rather than to be served; to live for the sake of others rather than to have others live for them. From the viewpoint of brothers and sisters, a church leader is in the position of Abel. From the viewpoint of a parent, a church leader is in a parent-child relationship with members. That is why it is very wrong for a leader to think that Cain should serve him or her in the position of Abel. For what does Abel exist? Abel exists to restore the position of a parent. Therefore you cannot become Abel without first having the heart of a parent. That is the principle. Yet many have forgotten that their position is to become a parent, thinking of themselves only as Abel in a relationship between siblings. You need to rid yourself of that wrong concept as quickly as possible.
5We have plenty of content by which to grow. We are also fully equipped with the favorable conditions and environment that have been given to us in this age. Then why are we unable to grow? It is because we are not adding anything to the people of this age or to the environment they are living in. Simply put, we are not benefiting them in any way. Although we are unable to benefit others materially, if we can make people feel deeply that they can benefit from us spiritually or mentally, then they are bound to come to church even if told not to come.
6Why is our church not growing? It is because the church fails to take care of new members to the end. Instead of showing greater interest in them as time passes, the church pays attention to them only when they are being witnessed to. Once they join the church, they are neglected. The church needs to pay attention to new members for at least three years, no matter what. Why is this the case? People's spirituality develops gradually. Their state when they first listened to the Principle is different from their state one year later. After a year they are able to understand the multidimensional content of the Principle both internally and externally. The more deeply they understand its content, the thirstier they become. They have a craving to learn more about the Principle, and they will want to meet people who can teach them about it. Therefore the church needs to invest more time in such people. It needs to make a detailed plan about how it will satisfy the internal cravings of their hearts.
7Why can't the church grow? It is because its leaders do not live for the sake of others. Therefore the spirit world does not cooperate with them. The leaders know how to tell the members what to do, but they do not know that they need to run errands for the members. Therein lies the problem. The church cannot grow because the leaders are not willing to live ninety-five percent of their lives for others.
8Witnessing is the activity of leading people to leave Satan's world behind and follow the path to Heaven with a smile. It is an activity to guide them to the heavenly kingdom. When you try to witness to others, I see you telling them forcibly, "Come, come," regardless of whether they want to or not. You should not do that. People are spiritual beings. So, as an experiment, try praying for a certain person. Try loving that person sincerely and shedding tears with an anguished heart to bring that person before the Will. Then study what happens. The issue is how you can truly advance to the position where you can love that person more than his or her parents do. It is a battle. The issue is whether you can win over that person by demonstrating a heart greater than that of his or her mother and father.
9Abel is in the plus position whereas Cain is in the minus position. In relation to Satan's world, you are in the position of plus, or Abel. Witnessing is to bring the plus of Satan's world to obey, so that it can become the minus of Heaven's world. Thus, witnessing is the act of creation. That is, it is to re-create that person so that he or she unites with you. Therefore, you should be glad to witness to him or her. You should do it joyfully. When God created heaven and earth, did He do it out of joy or sorrow? He did it out of joy. Likewise, you should invest amazing love for that person rather than thinking about the difficulties and hardships of witnessing. Thinking that you exist for others, if you care for others you will become their subject partner. You can re-create others by investing yourself. When their re-creation is completed you become their subject partner, and they will all happily bow their heads before you.
10How should you witness to people? Do not just wander around aimlessly every day. Visit one hundred homes and choose ten of them, and out of those ten homes choose one person. Then concentrate on conveying the Word to that one person. I tell you, focus on the goal of witnessing to one person a month. To attain this, you must offer devotion and work hard during that month. After witnessing to that one person, you should tell him or her, "Just as I have done for you, you should witness to your relatives with devotion." If you establish such a tradition and guide others to do the same, you will certainly do well. By following this uniform method of witnessing to one person per month, a horizontal expansion of witnessing will unfold from one person to another, and membership will markedly increase.
11You say that you go out witnessing, but what is witnessing? It is showing the way. You are showing the way for the world to return to God. How wonderful this work is. If you ask a person's original mind, "Where are you going?" it would reply, "Oh! After passing through this world, I shall return to the heavenly kingdom." You are pioneering the way for people to do just that; how marvelous this task is!
12Religion until now has been focused on individual salvation. However, that kind of religion is bound to decline. It will come to an end. Even if it has become a worldwide religion, it will have to be resurrected once again. It must do so at all costs. Religious believers, Christians in particular, maintain their faith in order to save their individual lives. But for what purpose? They assert that they will be saved and go to the kingdom of heaven, but they should not have such a purpose. Even if you go to the kingdom of heaven, what are you going to do there all by yourself? You should be living a life of faith that aims to bring all humankind with you into the kingdom. If you live that way, you cannot help but witness to others even if you are told not to witness. You cannot help but practice goodness, even if you are told not to.
13You go out to witness not only to save Cain but also to save yourselves. In other words, witnessing is the path of taking action to receive certificates from God and Satan. You should strive, even fight, to make the conditions that will entitle you to receive those certificates. You should witness with this understanding. But did any of you understand this when you went out witnessing? All of you have been going out without knowing why. Hence the greatest enemy is not Satan, but yourself. You stand in the position of the enemy; therefore the enemy Satan chases you. For this reason, always keep in mind that you yourself are the enemy. That is because the enemy manifests through your own body. To put it another way, because we are connected to Satan through our bloodline, our bodies stand in the position of the enemy.
14If by offering your life you can overcome evil, God's love will come to you and you will recover your life. This is the formula. It is like placing weights on a scale: if one side goes down, the other side goes up. If you eliminate much evil, good will go up; if evil increases, good will go down. You will receive love to the same extent as the evil you eliminate. That is also why God told you to love Him more than anyone else. He told you this because the more you love Him, the more love you can receive from Him. You have loved God, and that is why you can receive more love from Him.
15When you are witnessing, you ought to devote yourself and pray, clinging to God and shedding tears, "Please guide me so that I may not fail You in connecting with this person whom You have prepared for me today. Please allow me to become a person whom everyone here can welcome and who can motivate each of them." Try going out witnessing with such a heart. If you neglect to do this and go out unwillingly, even if you meet the nicest person in the village, that person will reject you and drive you away. You need to go through such experiences in your daily life. You need to realize on your own through experimentation, "Ah, God is with me in this situation, but He is not with me in that situation." You can then develop yourself and cultivate your character to reach the world of God's heart. It is no good if you just sit around harboring greed in your heart and thinking only about what you can gain.
16Witness to people through your boundless giving. When you have done so, those who do not respond will be summoned by Heaven. They will have no excuse. Once goodness is sown, it will always be reaped. Hence when a good person calls you, if you do not respond to that person, you will face consequences. Although goodness has extended its hand, if no results ensue, that neighborhood and even the neighboring villages will be entangled in the snares of Satan. When you go out witnessing in a certain place, the ancestors who have good connections there will try to gather their descendants and guide them to meet you. Because they know the basic principle they try to guide their descendants, even by appearing in their dreams.
17Have you ever wept and prayed all through the night for the sake of the person you are witnessing to? I am asking whether you have shed tears for that person more than you would at the death of your father or mother, or even your lover. If you have not, then you should. You should weep bitterly throughout the night. If only you could save one life, is there anything you would not spare? Money, clothes or a house would not even be an issue. Be crazy about loving people.
18To witness, you need to study people's psychology. You should be able to tell whether a person would like something just by looking at his or her facial expressions and manner of walking. Learn the formulas to analyze people's emotions. You should be able to tell just from listening to your wife's footsteps whether or not she has had a good day. When your wife comes into the room, suppose you asked her, "Why are you upset?" She would be at a loss for words because it would seem you already knew everything before seeing her. You should live your life in such a way. When you pray for someone out of interest, that person is bound to take an interest in you.
19When you go out witnessing, your heart should be totally different from yesterday. In other words, you should think as you start the day, "In the past I went forth with such and such a heart, but today I resolve to undertake the work with a new heart." By thus changing your resolve and your motivation you will surely bring good results. However, if instead you set out more depressed than before, with a heart worse than yesterday, you will inevitably retreat. The more you continue working in such a way, the more destruction you will bring upon yourself. Moreover, if you spread that negativity to everyone else, no matter how great your purpose and how strong your inner resolve, you will find yourself completely stuck, at a standstill, and unable to advance, no matter how hard you try.
20All people, regardless of who they are, need to walk the path of restoration centered on the Word. On that path, before you can reach the position to indemnify the national level, you first need to complete the indemnity on the tribal level. Then you can appoint someone to stand on your behalf and defend you from opposition by the tribe. He or she can also defend you from opposition by other families. Once you have set up your tribal representatives, they can stop all such attacks. That is why we are witnessing. Even when we have climbed up high, we still need to establish successors and expand the ground on which our successors can follow our path. They too will defend us from opposition. That is why it is necessary to witness.
21We do not witness with weapons; rather, we witness with love. Our victory is based on saving Cain through the love of Abel. It is to restore with true love those who were conquered by false love. This is the only way we can return to the original world, a world devoid of conflict. If we were to witness by any other means or method, Satan would still have some tricks left up his sleeve; he could employ other means and methods. Jesus, even on the way to his death, until the final moment of his life, established the way of love. Since he was not able to completely establish the course of saving Cain in his lifetime, through his death he demonstrated the way to open the gate to Cain's salvation.
22We do not witness to benefit the Unification Church. We witness not to save our church, but to save the nation. Furthermore, we witness to save the world. Our purpose is different from that of Christians. They witness for the growth of their own denomination, but we do not witness for our own sake. Even if the Unification Church were to become perfect in and of itself, it needs ultimately to find the way to save the nation. If we walk the path to perfect the nation, even if we have to abandon the church, we move to a higher level of perfection. Since that path is more worthy, we need to seek the nation even at the sacrifice of the church.
1In the church, you should know how to discern who is Abel and who is Cain. Between any two people, one is surely Abel and the other Cain, Among three people, two of them could be either Abel or Cain, but of the two, one is the chief Abel or chief Cain. You should be able to clearly distinguish them. Cain and Abel should not be disunited or divided. One is the right hand and the other is the left hand. Therefore regardless of your position, you should find and attend your Abel figure with the belief that his God is also my God, and God loves me and loves him as well. In this way, you should do your best to avoid making the mistake that Cain made.
2The principle of Cain and Abel is great. God's true love is such that He desires to save the youth of the nation even at the sacrifice of His own children. Because God's heart has this nature, unity can be achieved only in the world of such heart. You can be united only through love, by living for the sake of others. If your love is not for the sake of others, Satan can walk right through it and bring destruction. Since this is God's hope, the hope of all things and the hope of humanity, how can a person who strives to realize this ideal come to ruin? Heavenly fortune will protect such individuals, and God Himself will protect them as well. So even if they go to a place where death awaits, they will not die, because all things will follow them. They may appear to perish and disappear, but I have discovered that they find a new way to progress and leap forward. It is because they are going the way of true love, and nothing can obstruct or block that path. Even Satan submits to it.
3When Cain and Abel made their offerings to God, God received Abel's offering but did not receive Cain's. It seems that God took a different stance toward Cain than toward Abel, but you should know that this was not the case. If Cain had had even a slight feeling in his heart that he should go through Abel, who represented Heaven's position, God would have accepted his sacrifice. This means that God intended to treat them on an equal footing at a later time. God wants you to go over the universal hill of lamentation and stand before Him as the one sacrificial offering that He can delight in and rejoice over. You should build an Abel-type altar for the restoration of all creation in the universe. There, as an Abeltype sacrificial offering, you should offer not a lamb that you slaughtered, but your actual life.
4The mission Abel has to fulfill is more important than anything else in the course of restoration. The figure of Abel was set up within the Will as a consequence of the Fall. Had there been no Fall, there would have been no need to set up the position of Abel. Abel cannot be Abel by himself. There is no Abel without Cain. Furthermore, to be chosen as Abel, a person needs to go through a period of preparation. In other words, he or she needs to go through a period of time to determine that he or she stands on Heaven's side. The Unification Principle terms this the period to establish the foundation of faith. It is the period when the sacrifice is offered. Abel offers the sacrifice so that God and human beings, who have been separated, can again form a bond of heart. Then Abel can also form an external bond of heart.
5What should Abel do? He should become one with God and love the archangel. Thereby he should win recognition from the archangel Satan and make him testify, "You are a child of God, and therefore you are certainly His heir." At this time, the person in the position of the archangel is Cain, and the person in the position of Adam is Abel. As a result of the Fall, false parents came into existence. The work of restoration is carried out by dividing the archangel and Adam into Cain and Abel. In short, the work of restoration is carried out by setting up Abel in place of Adam and Cain in place of the archangel. To become Abel, you first need to become one in heart with God. When you have become one in heart with God and He is well pleased with you, then He cannot help but love you.
6In order for you to become Abel, you need to find and recover Cain. Until you have recovered Cain, you cannot become Abel. Accordingly, in a position representing God, you need to go through the positions of servant of servant, servant, and adopted child, and then rise to the position of child. Only by doing so can you establish the condition for Cain to submit to you as Abel. Then you can finally complete the responsibility of a son who can stand before God, and if at that point Cain takes a cooperative stance, you can then advance to the position of a parent. Thus there are two reasons for which you need to witness: First, to set up someone in the position of Cain, and second, to secure the position of Abel. Thus, you who are witnessing from the position of Abel stand in the position of God. Moreover, with God at the center and on behalf of Jesus, you are restoring what your ancestors failed to accomplish in the age of restoring the position of the servant.
7No matter how much you are loved by God at this moment, if there is no Cain standing beside you, you cannot become Abel. Where can Cain and Abel be found? It is not in a comfortable and good place. Why do we need Cain and Abel? We need them for restoration through indemnity. How do we carry out restoration through indemnity? We have to become sacrificial offerings. Our body and mind should become one, we should become one with God, and then become one with the sacrificial offering. Finally we need to bring Satan to that place and bring the restoration to a close. Thus we need to settle it once and for all.
8How does God determine Abel? It must be in a way that Satan cannot accuse. What can Satan not accuse? It is oneness with God. This occurs not in joy, but in sorrow and difficulty. In other words, Abel must be willing to die in the most miserable situation. That is how you, as Abel, become one with God.
9From the perspective of the Principle, who is Abel? He is the center. God should be able to enter his core and dwell there. Have you become Abel? To become Abel, first you have to obey. You must obey God and become one with Him. In order to become one with God, you should do everything He tells you to do. Surely you cannot become Abel unless you do all that God tells you to do. Even if you already did ninety-nine tasks, if you refuse to do one task, you cannot become Abel.
10The fight between God and Satan takes place over people, who form the center of the universe. God continues working to transform us even as we sway to God's side one day and Satan's side the next. The Unification Church is battling between good and evil, and between Cain and Abel. The providence of restoration is none other than the fight between Cain and Abel. Everything is connected to this battle. Why then do I keep bringing up the issue of Cain and Abel as the representatives of history? It is because this is a fundamental issue. It is centered on the family. The problem of Adam and Eve and the problem between these brothers caused the breakdown of the family. That is why I am trying to restore the family centered on the issue of Adam and Eve and that of the two brothers. I am trying to return them to the original point. The key to history lies in turning them around. That is the key. That is how crucial the issues of Adam and Eve, and Cain and Abel, are.
11You need to know how to distinguish between Cain and Abel. Between any two people, one is Cain and the other is Abel. This is the case even among Unification Church members. Then, which person is Cain and which one is Abel? Abel is the one who is injured, whereas Cain is the one who injures. For instance, if you were to approach someone who is just standing there and say, for no reason, "Hey, you, rascal!" then those few words would make you Cain. Let me give you another example. Consider parents who have two sons. Suppose the parents consult with only the first son, and he represents his parents in all matters. If he hits the younger son, although the latter did nothing wrong, the parents will naturally stand on the side of the younger son. This is the standard to judge good and evil, but in today's society people do not understand this. The one who harms others is certainly Cain.
12Among Unification members, if you belittle someone who is working hard and offering devotion for the church, saying, "Why is that person's behavior so strange?" you immediately become Cain. This is how Cain and Abel set themselves apart from each other. Those who are criticized and harmed although they did not commit any wrongs are always Abel, while those who criticize and strike others are always Cain. This can happen even by uttering just one word. In speaking, the one who says something that benefits others is Abel, while the one who says something that harms others is Cain. If you praise others, you bring benefit rather than loss. However, if you say something to profit yourself, it is tantamount to harming others. Thus, the position that benefits others is the public position, whereas the position that benefits oneself is the private position. In this way we distinguish Abel and Cain, and good and evil, based on who is public-minded and who is private-minded.
13The person who is more public-minded is Abel. Among Unification Church members, there are those who believe they are Abel because they joined the church earlier. However, although they joined earlier, if they are not public-minded, they are Cain. Cain himself was born first, but because he didn't take a public position, he had to follow Abel. The Abel figure is the one who stands in a more public position. To walk the public path, you need to maintain relationships with brothers and sisters. What I am saying is that, in walking the public path, the horizontal relationship is important. Even in going to the kingdom of heaven, the problem usually does not lie in becoming one with God but in relationships with brothers and sisters. The secret to going to the kingdom of heaven is to follow the public path.
14Leaders think that they are automatically Abel, but that is not the case. Abel is the one who saves Cain, and he can go to the mother only after uniting with Cain. Therefore, even if you have not become one with the leader, once you unite among yourselves for the sake of the leader, the leader will come to you. That is why Jesus said he would be present wherever two or three gathered in his name. From now on, our focus on leaders needs to be replaced by a focus on members. Likewise, the head of a family needs to emphasize the members of the family rather than himself as its head. Otherwise, heaven cannot come about within that family.
15You could not have been born as Abel if there were no Cain. You need to understand this above all. Abel is in the position of Adam. That position means, first, that Abel needs to have the love of God. The Fall was the failure to form a bond with God's love. Second, it means that the archangel figure is Cain, and needs to unite with Abel. Before Adam came to exist, the archangel was already there. Likewise, before Abel was Cain. After God lost Adam due to the Fall, He established Abel in the place of Adam. Originally, Adam should have become one with God, and the archangel should have become one with Adam. Had this happened, there would have been no Fall. Hence, restoration is the work of patching up the failure of Adam to become one with God and the failure of Adam and the archangel to become one. Thus restoration requires that Abel become one with God. You can become Abel only if you have first received God's love.
16How many people have lived based on God's viewpoint of life? Sometimes I see you vent your personal anger on your church members and say anything you want to say. You need to know that in a relationship between brothers, the person who was born first is in the position of Cain. Without saving Cain, you cannot become Abel. That means you cannot become the restored Cain. Abel is in the position of the restored Cain, once he saves Cain; that is, eventually he has to stand in the position of the firstborn son. To be able to attain that position he needs to restore Cain, the elder brother in Satan's world. Abel cannot restore Cain by striking him and forcing him; Abel needs to move Cain's heart to submit voluntarily. Abel needs to show him a new view of the world, a new view of the nation, of life, of the future, of character, and a new lineage and heart. In short, Abel needs to show him something entirely different.
17Abel should take a stand that he is willing to die for Cain, to devote his entire life for Cain. Otherwise, Cain will never submit himself to Abel. Only when Abel stands in the position where he is willing to die for Cain is Cain able to return to him. That is why Jesus taught, "Those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it." (Matt. 16:25) These words apply to both Abel and Cain. For Abel to save Cain, he should risk his own life. Otherwise he cannot save Cain. Cain too needs to be ready to die in order to follow Abel, Otherwise he cannot truly follow Abel.
18The first son belongs to God, as does the second son. What a tragedy that God cannot claim us as His and we cannot call God our Father! It is something we must change. How can we do that? We have to go to the world of the archangel and prevail. The archangel's world represents the realm of the adopted child. As long as you remain in that realm, although you are in the position of Abel, you are still a son or daughter of fallen Adam and not of God. You may stand in the position of a restored archangel, but not in that of a son or daughter of God. That is why your root must be pulled out and replanted. For this purpose, you are destined to return to your hometown and stand in place of your ancestors. That has never been done so far. Then you need to reclaim the right of the eldest son. Thus far, there has been no subject partner who could do that. Amazingly, however, we now have true sons and daughters who have placed True Parents at the center of their lives. Thus, you need to be in harmony with them horizontally.
19Who follows the path of indemnity? It is not Cain, but Abel. If there are tears to be shed, Abel should shed them first. If someone has to go hungry, it is Abel who does so first. If someone is to be cursed at or struck, it is Abel. In this way Abel follows the path of indemnity. When a new person joins the church, someone in the Abel position needs to take responsibility for and guide that person. He should stay up all night listening to his or her stories. In the position of his or her father, he should discuss that person's concerns, shed tears and pray for him or her. When the new member sets out for home, that Abel should go along, because otherwise he would feel uneasy. When morning comes, the Abel should go and wait in front of the new member's house. The one in the Abel position has to be willing to do all these things. Abel must be a person who likes people, who likes Cain more than anyone else. Then Cain can easily follow Abel's footsteps, although they both take the path of indemnity. Thus you should walk the path of indemnity.
20In the relationship between Cain and Abel, our final goal is the restoration of lineage. The root of the archangel's lineage that we received from birth must be exchanged for the root of the original Adam's lineage. False love corrupted that root. Since that root is connected to Satan's love, life and lineage, it must be severed. We need to receive an infusion of God's love, life and lineage. That is why it is written in the Bible, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind." (Matt. 22:37) What does it mean to love with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind? It means that you have to totally invest your love, your life and your blood. To offer devotion means to love God. Therefore, to love God with all your heart, all your soul and all your mind is the first great commandment taught by Jesus. It defends us against the bloodline of Satan's world. This issue is of fundamental importance.
21Until now you have not known the tactics of God and Satan, but now you do. Abel is struck first, but later can claim back what was lost. Satan seems to win by striking first, but in the end he has to return what he took, and more. Although the evil side might conquer the other party by striking first, it will not prosper. Instead, it will lose what it has taken, including even what is good under its dominion. By analogy, the way God works can be compared to a chef who makes a sweet rice cake but has to hand it over to a robber. Then when the chef takes it back, he or she finds there are powdered beans as extra topping on the rice cake. For a time evil can flourish in the position from which it strikes goodness, but that does not mean that Heaven's side will be vanquished.
22You Unification Church members stand in the position of Abel because you know the Principle. That is why you should be the first to confront Satan, fight against him and separate yourselves from Satan's world. It means that you must come into the realm of God's love. However, that is not all. You should be willing to sacrifice yourself to appease the grieving heart of God and the sorrowful hearts of your brothers and sisters who are tied to Satan's world. Sacrifice yourself willingly for them, and at the price of your life try to deliver them from Satan's world. The providence of restoration advances when Abel makes sacrifices. Remember this formula; it is a key component in the advancement of God's providence.
End of The Mission of a Church Leader