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CSG 11.2
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1When you come early for church service, the extra time is an offering to God. Its value is beyond compare and cannot be purchased even with ten thousand pieces of gold. Therefore if you come late to the service, it is as if you are stealing that time from God. You should be on time for the service. It will enable you to indemnify what you have failed to do. That way you can still stand before God. Then you can come closer to Heaven with a better heart than you had the day before.
2Please do not say, "I am going to church because of so and so." People who say, "I am going to church for my beloved sons and daughters" or "for my beloved husband or wife" will not be able to sustain their faith. They should rather go to church for God's sake. Why then do you go to church? It should be because of God. You should go to church to make God your own and to find God's love and make it your own.
3When you go to church to worship God, you need to wear holy robes. I am not talking about outward clothes, but about the holy robes of the heart. If your heart overflows from within when you hear the sermon and sing the hymns, Heaven will work through you. When the fallen ancestors were expelled from the Garden of Eden, they shed tears of sorrow. In contrast, when you encounter God, you should be able to shed tears of joy with a smile on your face. Nevertheless, people cannot shed tears of joy upon meeting God unless they have first shed tears of sorrow. I am telling you, do not lose God. Do not lose sight of God, whom you've seen with your own eyes. Do not lose God, whom you've heard with your own ears. Do not lose God, whom you've touched. Most especially, do not lose the God who came into your heart. As long as you do not lose Him, no one can interfere with your connection to God. No person, no matter how great and powerful, can separate you from God once He has entered your heart. Therefore you must attend God, who penetrates the heart so intensely.
4God has led history for the purpose of saving you. So you should thirst for God's grace and learn to inherit it. You did not join the Unification Church based on your own merits; you joined based on the sincere devotion that God, your ancestors and the church offered on your behalf. The Unification Church has been working very hard in order to find each one of you. This huge debt must therefore be repaid.
5What is the purpose of keeping the Sabbath holy? It is ultimately to bring salvation to humankind and to establish the nation that God desires. Christians keep the Sabbath holy to sanctify themselves and to strengthen the church's purpose of saving human beings. The reason we observe the Sabbath is to advance the path to salvation. But more importantly, it is to save all humankind and seek God's providential nation and world. This is God's ultimate desire.
6Human beings must like what God likes. God designated the seventh day as the Sabbath day and declared it a day of rest, which we also observe. Yet although six thousand years of history have passed, God Himself has not been able to rest. He has not been able to take pride in His own Sabbath. Even Jesus, despite emphasizing the importance of the Word of the Gospel, which includes the Sabbath, could not enjoy even one day of glorious victory. All he could do was cling onto history and battle through the providence for the past two thousand years. Therefore he has not had a day when he could express his pride before God, a day when he could take his rest with all humankind. Since God and Jesus have never been in the position to take rest, we cannot rest either. Therefore, before the Sabbath comes, we are bound to confront wars, to experience pain, and to face death. Only after we overcome these hardships with resolute determination will we be able to taste the day of Sabbath.
7When you come to the church, you must bring all your family members with you -- your parents, wife and children. You should also bring along your older brother, older sister and everyone else. How many bloody tears have you shed to witness to your parents, your cousins, your in-laws and other more distant relatives? Have you ever desperately struggled and prayed all night long with all of your devotion, offering yourself as a sacrifice, in order to guide even one person to God? This is the question. You must become the center of your environment in order to move forward.
8Now the Sabbath day (Ahn Shik Il) has passed, and the Day of Complete Settlement and Attendance (Ahn Shi Il) has come. However, even on the Sabbath day God did not want to rest. He came to re-create human beings, and there was still so much more indemnity that needed to be paid. Since we are saved through attendance rather than through the Sabbath day, Ahn Shik Il, we call it Ahn Shi Il. Because we are saved through attendance, if we simply use Ahn Shi Il, Unification Church members everywhere will understand its meaning. Thus by keeping the eighth day, we embark upon an amazing era. By observing the eighth day as Ahn Shi Il, we are blessed to pass through the gate that opens to the ideal heaven and earth and enter the world of attendance. That will bring safe settlement to the Blessing, and a new beginning.
9When you gather on Sunday and offer bows, you are not restricted to the place where I am. The many Unification Church members working on this earth in different nations face the headquarters where I am, offering all their devotion and praying with tears. They do it even when the people of the world chase them and drive them into a corner. We should praise those who offer such sincere prayers by saying, "Amen!" Members at the headquarters have responsibility not only to serve and honor God but also to represent the hearts of those members around the world. Hence before Sunday service you should prepare yourself for three days with the heart of anticipation. You should desperately pray for the happiness and well-being of all people and resolve to connect them to the authority of resurrection and life that can revive them. With such a mind you should enter the church door and attend the service with heartfelt emotion, choked with tears for God.
10When you are offering devotion, you must not come late to the service. If you do, you should be so ashamed that you cannot hold your head high and should feel that you are the sinner of all sinners. You must pledge to be on time for the service and offer even greater devotion than others. How can you call out, "Oh, God!" when you do not even come on time? You should not offer your devotion in order to be seen by others. Let it be an offering of devotion that you come to church on foot rather than by car. Instead of just praying after you arrive, you should pray even more earnestly before you come. This is how you can offer devotion that no one else sees. The more you distance yourself from your surroundings and from the desires that secular people pursue, the more your devotion will accumulate.
11You must absolutely honor the words you speak when you come before God. How can someone who does not keep his or her promise be given grace? Such people will give up along the way. God does not randomly visit just anyone but relates only to those who earnestly yearn for Him. At the very least you should be on time for the service.
12Some among you are parents and some of you are children. Regardless, when coming before God, being punctual is more important than anything else. Again, I underscore that you must be on time. If you are unable to observe the appointed time for worship, you are bound to miss out. God wants a sanctified environment and an utmost pure heart. If you fail to be punctual and then sit in the back, then even though you sing praises, God does not want such praise from you.
13When you enter a sanctified, holy place, you should first pray for God's sake. It is the time when you are to meet the Lord, so first you should pray for God. Next you should pray for Jesus. Only by praying for God will you come to understand the heart of God, the heart that He experienced throughout history. Only by praying for Jesus will you come to understand the heart of Jesus, the heart that he experienced throughout history. Then you should pray for the multitude of Christians who fought for the Will. Following each and every footstep of the innumerable saints and sages since the Fall of Adam and Eve, you should pray to God, "Please allow me to become an offering to liberate them from their bitter sorrow." Then you should pray to the saints and sages, "Please cooperate with me. I know you have bitter sorrow on account of the work you left unfinished on this earth, but I am living to fulfill it." After that you can pray for your beloved children and then pray for yourself. That is the way of heavenly law.
14Whenever I pray, I pray with a heart that exclaims, "Father! You have always been guiding me!" I pray, feeling responsible that today I must save even one more life for God. I pray as one standing at a crossroads, where I can either bring a life to the Father or be manipulated by Satan. When I preach, unlike other preachers in the world, I do not pick the topic of the sermon and prepare it in advance. I just try to say what the Father wants me to say, according to what He needs at the time. If I feel I have not met that standard, I pray and pray, investing my whole being and praying desperately with tears. I pray worrying about the path that each of you must go.
15You must offer devotion from the position of conviction, declaring, "I have absolute faith!" You must stand in the position of having absolute faith in God and the Will. Only when you stand in that position will God cooperate with you. When you pray, you must have no doubts that your prayer will be answered. You should be able to pray, "Father! I am the only one who remains. Without me, this nation will be ruined and this world will be ruined. O Father! I am the only one who remains at this crucial point, despite Your toiling for six thousand years. I am the only one who is close to fulfilling Your Will. My position is that crucial. Although I am not yet fully prepared, still You have given me the order. Therefore I will prepare myself with the conditions and foundations that will enable me to follow that order on behalf of my people. Is it not for Your providence of restoration?"
16When you pray, you should first pray for your nation, then for the world, for the angels and your ancestors in the spirit world, and then for the liberation of God. Without knowing what you should do and how the fortune of this world is changing, do not just pray, "O Lord, please send me to the kingdom of heaven." That is not what you should do. Today, in order for you to liberate Jesus from his pain and suffering, history must testify of you: "You deserve our sympathy." Your ancestors must testify of you: "Among our descendants, you alone stand tall. You saved all of history" and then go even further: "You accomplished the missions of a son and a parent, of a loyal subject and a filial child, by taking responsibility for your people at this time."
17You should pray, "If I cannot become the son or daughter You want me to be, I will walk the path of a servant to save Your sons and daughters. I will lay rocks and boards to build a bridge or place stepping-stones so Your children can cross over." If you pray like that, God will support you. The prayer, "Take care of my sons and daughters," is not a prayer God can support. You must first bless the saints of the world and then pray for yourself, in that order. Otherwise no matter how many times you pray, your prayers will have no effect. You must know how to pray. Those whose faith is for their own benefit will abandon God after they receive blessings, because their goal is to receive blessings. Once they do and things are going well, they will fall away.
18As you receive grace and experience the spirit world, you will naturally know what to include in your prayers. Then if you study the contents of your prayers and compile statistics of their results, you will notice that the method and content of your prayers are improving, becoming more public. Fallen human beings would fall flat on their backs if they tried to pray for world-level issues at the beginning stage of their prayer life. They first pray for the salvation of those who are closest to them -- their beloved parents, sons and daughters and spouse. However, as time passes and their prayers develop, the content of their prayers changes. What do people who know about God's Will pray for? They do not pray for their families; they pray for the world. Also, they know where they are, what kind of situation they are in and where God wants them to be, and they are determined to pioneer through paying indemnity at the position where God wants them to be. Such people are wise.
19When you pray, pray for the specific people or the particular matter that is on your mind. Do not just pray in general; you need to keep those people or that matter in mind. Then you establish a relationship of subject and object partners, and the law of giving and receiving begins to unfold. A subject partner and an object partner give and receive, and by praying diligently and offering full devotion, you create a place where that reciprocal action can take place. Also, you should pray with a sincere heart that reaches beyond the thousands of years of human history. It is sacred and marvelous to call out to God, offering devotion with a heart beyond the thousands of years of history and in total oneness with Him inside and out. When you do, you will become substantially one with God. Then the single word "Father" that you call out will carry the greatest beauty within it.
20People whose prayers are the same today as they were yesterday are not really leading a life of faith. Even though you see the same thing every day, you should notice something different about it. Then you can enter the mysterious world of faith. Once you enter the incredible world of faith, you can discover a new world. Although you do the same thing, praying every day, because you have come to like it and find it enriching, you will grow in your faith as you continue doing it.
21When we share rice cakes in the presence of True Parents, this act of sharing means that we become one with God in spirit. That is, we become one body with Him. Eating rice cakes together means to influence the parents to become one, the family to become one, relatives to become one, the world to become one and those whose mind and body are divided to become one. Unification Church members should offer pledge service every week. The day to offer pledge service is a holy day, and on a holy day we partake of holy food. The reason we share this precious holy food is to alleviate the bitter sorrow of God, who did not have a chance to experience that in Adam's family, due to the Fall. Pledge service is conducted in this format, with the heart of offering congratulations and best wishes to God and True Parents, in order to relieve God's pain.
22Unification Church members are expanding the pledge service from the level of Adam's family to the levels of tribe, people, nation and world. By expanding it so, it becomes a ritual to support the world to become one by attending God. Therefore all week long you should eagerly await the time for eating the holy food as if it were all you wished for. Offering and sharing the holy food is a time to attend God; it is a time when you can relate directly to God. Therefore blessed families throughout the world should honor this time and keep it as a tradition.
23I established pledge service, and it is truly amazing that all of you are able to have pledge service with me every day. By showing that True Parents honor this ceremony, I want blessed families to respect this ceremony and pass it on as a tradition to their sons and daughters. You must teach your children that pledge service is a crucial time for the family. Through this ceremony we can create bonds of heart, connecting the children with their parents face to face in the family and also connecting them vertically with the True Parents. Altogether these relationships form the four-position foundation and link three generations as one. This is the time when the four-position foundation and the three generations can become one. You must teach this to your children.
24All of you should do pledge service with your family every Sunday. It is the ceremony in which blessed families make their declaration. Satan cannot invade such families. That is why we recite My Pledge. We are to be proud of the one sovereignty, proud of the one people, proud of the one land, proud of the one language and culture centered on God, proud of becoming the child of the One True Parent, proud of the family who is to inherit one tradition and proud of being a laborer who is working to establish the one world of the heart. By this proclamation you announce that you have no relation to Satan's world. It is a proclamation ceremony that lets you resolve the mistakes you committed, or responsibilities you did not fulfill, during the week.
25How beautiful it is to see a mother and father holding their child's hands and sitting together in prayer! We must set the tradition in our families of offering bows in the morning to greet God and True Parents. Offering three bows signifies that we go to meet True Parents, who then bring us to meet God.
26Even if you are alone, when you offer a bow to God and True Parents, do not think that you are doing it by yourself. When a man comes to offer a bow, he should think he does it with his wife standing beside him. Likewise, when a woman comes to offer a bow, she should think she is doing it together with her husband. If the man and the woman think this way, it shows they are united as one. It signifies that blessed members should become totally one.
27All families should display True Parents' picture. The family should bow before it together, forming a four-position foundation. Three generations ought to bow. The four-position foundation involves three generations. Three generations should offer a bow -- grandfather and grandmother, mother and father and children. After establishing a four-position foundation, when you bow in the name of True Parents you are outside the domain of the Fall. In this situation, because God has direct dominion over you, you have established a realm of liberation. Hence all the good spirits in the spirit world can come to earth and protect you, just as the archangel was meant to protect Adam's family. We have entered such an age.
28When you bow during pledge service on Sunday, to whom are you bowing? You are bowing to me, your Teacher, and to your family. You bow to serve and attend the Heavenly Parent and True Parents as the King and Queen. You bow to inherit the kingship from them. You are busy and occupied with many things, yet what could be more important than that? Children should bow to their parents, and parents should bow to each other. You parents must teach filial piety to your children. In this movement, the lives we lead should be models to others.
29When you offer a bow, you who are on earth are not the only ones offering it. Because we focus on the spiritual realm, the heavenly kingdom and God, it is certain that blessed families and the angelic world become completely one and bow together. Furthermore, if you are sincere and earnest in heart for your beloved ones, then your mothers and fathers, even your friends who have gone to the spirit world, can be brought down to join you. You can bring down more than 72 generations and as many as 120 generations. You have not yet been able to establish a national-level foundation, but once you do, all this will be possible.
30The Family Pledge never existed in history. Now that the Family Pledge has appeared, families under Satan's dominion living on the earthly plane will have no place to go in the future. The appearance of the Family Pledge signifies that I met the standard of having indemnified four thousand years of history through the forty years that have passed since the victorious foundation made during the Second World War was lost. On this forty-year foundation, the kingdom of heaven can now begin on earth. The recurring phrase in the Family Pledge is, "Our family...by centering on true love." You recite this phrase repeatedly throughout the Family Pledge. "True love" here refers to God's love. It means that we are connected to true life and true lineage by the true love of God and True Parents.
31Previously we recited My Pledge, but from now on we will recite the Family Pledge. In history there never was any such thing as the Family Pledge. This is an amazing fact. Now that the forty-year course of restoration through indemnity has been brought to an end, the time has come when the world can move centered on me, Rev. Moon. This is why the Family Pledge has emerged. The worldwide unified Christian cultural sphere established after the Second World War was destroyed, but now centered on me it has been restored, although conditionally, based on my victorious worldwide foundation.
32The term "Family Pledge" has appeared for the first time in history. The Family Pledge was established because the family was lost by a man and a woman. Therefore God and humankind must establish the model family that can be welcomed based on the original standard of the family that has nothing to do with the Fall. Unless we do, we cannot build the heavenly kingdom on earth and in heaven, which is composed of families that God can rejoice with and dwell with on earth and in heaven. Hence it was inevitable that this pledge would be established.
33The objective of the Family Pledge is to create the backbone of the family. What are we trying to do through the Family Pledge? We are trying to attend the Heavenly Parent, who is like the backbone of the family. If we find His true love and love Him, God will come and visit our family. We should bring our mind and body into oneness and become couples whose minds and bodies are united. Then God will come and visit us. If our mind and body are fighting, God will never come to us, not ever. True love cannot exist under such circumstances.
34A witnessing leader or pastor is like the high priest of his or her region. A church leader prays for the people, even losing sleep. As the high priest makes offerings in order to save the people, the church leader must toil and offer full devotion. To find the necessary answers, the church leader must become one with God. He or she does so by becoming a sacrificial offering. Church members are not the sacrificial offerings; the pastor is. From now on your leadership should be comprehensive, not just intellectual. Members are the flesh and pastors are the bones. The flesh should cover the bones well so they will not be exposed.
35After working hard for a public purpose, I fall asleep without realizing how tired I am. Then in the morning I wake up totally refreshed. From this experience I realize, "Ah, this is the principled way to live a life for Heaven!" If I were to think, "I slept only three and a half hours last night when I should have slept at least six hours," my entire body would feel as if it weighed a thousand or even ten thousand pounds and would feel pains all over. That is why I tell you not to have such thoughts.
36When I stand before a person who is totally devoted, I am at a loss for words. As the leader of the Unification Church, when I am considering which of two people is better, I do not consider which of them is better-looking, but rather which has a better inner orientation. I examine whether their mind is public or personal. If you walk the path of public life embracing this principle, you will never perish. Therefore be mindful of how you manage things, how you treat people, and how you attend Heaven.
37When you take your first step in the morning, you should consider whether or not it is for a public purpose. And when you go to bed after finishing your daily work, you should reflect on whether the day was spent for a public purpose or a personal one. Furthermore, at the end of the year you should look back at your past year, or at your entire life up to that point, and reflect on whether you led a public life or lived just for yourself. It is based on this criterion that life and death are weighed on the scale of judgment. Keep this principle in mind, so that at each step on your journey you will exercise good judgment and keep to the public path.
38Once you take up a responsibility, the next thing is to fight and struggle. You must persevere in that struggle even to the death, saying, "I am willing to give up my life." In your lifetime, you should lay the foundation to bring at least three people who oppose you to natural submission, and in this battle you may not use any means or methods that are not acceptable to God. Also, in the service of God's Will you should not lead the life of a taker. Rather, you stand in the position to give.
39When you become a leader, you have to stand truly in the position of a doctor who tries to cure a patient's illness. If an ill person's spiritual situation begins to deteriorate, you have to make an effort to cure the person's heart, shedding tears day or night, oblivious to time. That is a spiritual leader. How many nights have you stayed up trying to save lives? How busy have you been trying to save lives? When you go to the spirit world, such deeds will become the objects of commendation. The barometer of character will reflect them.
40Even if a member falls away, you must never be discouraged. A very interesting phenomenon occurs when a member falls away; someone else who resembles that person joins the church. He or she has a similar personality, similar speech and even a similar way of walking. From every angle, the new person who joins bears an amazing resemblance to the person who fell away, and yet is much better. When you see such a phenomenon, you can understand that sincere investment of devotion is never lost. This is absolutely true. When you become acquainted with someone, you must not think the relationship ends at simple acquaintance. Especially if you met that person based on Heaven's guidance, you should never forget him or her. If the person stops coming to the church, you must not cut off or malign him or her. Even if the person falls away, never abandon that person.
41Before you speak or teach, first you must feel God's heart. Do not just talk. Instead, put God's heart first before your words. You should always be humble. When you give a sermon on Sunday you should do so with the intense feeling and focus of woman in labor. You need to direct all your attention to it. Standing behind the podium, you need to feel like a pregnant woman on her way to the delivery room. If you reach that level of heart, you need no other preparation. The issue is not the content of your sermon or how well you speak. The issue is whether your heart has reached that level.
42During the sermon, a boundary line is drawn that determines whether someone is bound for heaven or hell. Suppose a person comes to our church thinking, "I've always wondered about the Unification Church. Let's see how it is!" But if the sermon is disappointing, he or she may think, "What kind of sermon was that?" The sermon has, in effect, cut that person's lifeline. Therefore you should regard giving the sermon as a momentous matter, even more so than a judge rendering a verdict in court. You have to understand that as a preacher you are in a fateful position that can make many dozens or hundreds of people stand or fall. If you are a leader with a certain responsibility, you should not neglect it and thereby cause your subordinates to disrespect you. You have to invest your efforts so this never becomes the case. That is why it is difficult to be the person in charge. It is an extremely daunting position in which everything about your identity is exposed and revealed.
1After you joined the Unification Church, you learned the term "restoration through indemnity." To accomplish restoration through indemnity there must be a sacrificial offering, and in making that offering you must have a heart of devotion. It would be wonderful if you could simply do things the way you think they should be done, but God cannot receive your offering based on how you think it should be made. That will never happen. The offering for the indemnity condition represents your very life; it is sacrificed in your place. Therefore you need to become one with that offering, and love that offering. When you make an offering and that offering is sacrificed, you should shed tears in your heart, feeling the same pain it does. This can be likened to Abraham offering his son as a sacrifice. You too ought to present your offering with a heart so connected to it that the link cannot be severed. You need to make a sacrificial offering from this position. That is why you should offer what is most precious to you. When you make a material offering, if you offer something used or left over, you will be punished. In that case, it would be better if you had not made the offering at all.
2If we look into the background of tithing, it is quite fearful. In biblical verses about tithing, we are told to offer God one-tenth of what we earn. Those of you who question tithing, please know that offering only one-tenth of one's income is as if one offered everything. Suppose you want to put on a feast to celebrate your parent's sixtieth birthday or the king's birthday. You would prepare a whole cow or pig, the best you could find, and offer all of it at the feast. Yet would they eat it all? Certainly not! Of course, they would accept and receive everything, but they could not eat it all. In fact, they would eat very little. Still, offering it sets the condition that they received everything and ate it all.
3A tithe means that by offering one-tenth of your material possessions to God, you make a condition equal to having offered all you have. Although you do not offer everything to God, the onetenth that you offer with sincere devotion nevertheless holds that value. By offering one-tenth as holy, God considers the remaining nine-tenths holy. The person who tithes will never perish. As the days go by, his storeroom will be filled with abundant material blessings.
4If you want to make a relationship with God by offering devotion before Him, the offering you make must be totally pure and brand-new. You cannot make a devotional offering with leftovers. Thus when you tithe, your tithe should be pure, something in which you invested your utmost heart and mind. That is a sacrificial offering. A sacrificial offering should be pure. If you are to offer your son, you must offer your best son. This is because your offering represents yourself.
5If you tithe with sincere devotion, you will never starve to death. Your descendants will never suffer for want of material things. This is principled. However, you must invest devotion in your tithe. This is the essence of faith. Offering your tithe casually is not acceptable. Your offering represents your own life, so you have to offer what is most precious to you. The most precious thing to a human being is his or her life. Hence a sacrificial offering should be made as if you were offering your own life. That is why, by offering material things for the sake of restoration through indemnity, your sins can be washed away.
6The number ten belongs to God. Human beings own the numbers up to nine. The number nine has been considered a bad number because all the numbers up through nine are under Satan's dominion. Thus today, if we return the number nine to God and connect it to God on earth where Satan is the lord, then God can have dominion over us. In this way, God can restore all the numbers up through ten. Thus if you believe in God and bring the number nine to Him, all possessions within the realm up through the number nine can be separated from Satan's realm. That is how the term "tithe" came to exist.
7God does not need money. Money is needed only as an object for making conditions so that fallen human beings can form a relationship with Him. Is it for God's sake that you are making donations? God does not need money. Any time, twenty-four hours a day and seven days a week, God can make as much gold and as many diamonds as He wants, so why would He need money? God needs it only as a condition by which to save all of you. So instead of thinking that you are making a donation for God, think that you are donating for your nation or for the world. You are offering donations to fulfill the purpose of saving others. You are not offering them for God's sake.
8It is by no means easy to nurture another human life. You cannot do it without devoting yourself. You cannot do it with things you have already used. Nor can you do it with leftovers from the food you have eaten. You must firmly reject that concept. This is even more the case if an offering is for God. You should offer the first portion of anything to God. You ought to offer to God what is pure. He will not be with you if you offer something impure. He will not be with you if what you offer is not brand-new. You must not use leftovers to make sacrificial offerings, because leftovers are defiled. Anyone to whom God gives special grace would immediately recognize this. That is also why I discourage you from going to defiled places.
9If after offering devotions you receive a special blessing, you should always offer a donation of gratitude to God. Heaven does not want petty cash. It must be money for which you invested your heart and mind with devotion. You should not just casually donate the money you find in your pocket. Before you donate, you should keep it with you at least three days as a way of sanctifying the money. You should invest your life and assets. I offered all my possessions to God. With the things I offered created a bridge for all the material things in the world to cross over to God's side. Anyone who does the same will prosper for eternity. That person's descendants will be blessed.
10When you handle donations and offerings that were given with heart, if you do not recognize their value they will judge you. Even a king can perish if he errs in his conduct by mistreating someone who is dedicated to God. By mistreating that person, he will be considered a traitor to Heaven. For this reason, I do not treat lightly anyone who makes devotional offerings.
11Whenever a special event is celebrated, on that day you need to bring a gift and offer it at a place that displays the Unification Church flag and True Parents' picture. You should dedicate the commemorative gift on behalf of your people, nation and family. This is not something for me to take for myself but rather to give back later to your country and descendants. Whenever you celebrate a joyful occasion or throw a banquet for a special event, you must prepare something with sincere devotion and dedicate it to God as an expression of your heart to repay Him. That is a life of attending Heaven.
1From now on, you should do Hoon Dok Hae. You need to buy books for it and establish a regular schedule. Your family members should gather for Hoon Dok Hae. Even when I am alone on a mountain, when it is time to do Hoon Dok Hae, I do it by myself. When it is Hoon Dok Hae time, if you are sleeping you should wake up and do it. In the future, God will not treat people who are ignorant of the Principle as His true people.
2My words will connect you with me. The more deeply you understand them, the higher the level you will reach in offering your devotions and the more the heart of God's love can dwell within you. That is why I am asking you to do Hoon Dok Hae every day. The person who says the taste of Hoon Dok Hae is better than food, that Hoon Dok Hae is better than making love, will grow infinitely. These words are a collection of the serious and intense moments of my life that were proclaimed before heaven and earth.
3No one knows the value of God's words as much as I do. Up to this time, all these words were veiled, but you should know that I had to overcome life and death situations in order to deliver these words. They are imbued with God's heart, spoken during the most serious of times. Once I start speaking about the hidden stories behind them, the spirits who were moved in the early days to be involved in those events will be connected to us. Then you will feel overwhelmed by emotion and receive enormous grace. By reading these words we again recollect those stories, and this can awaken those spirits who worked before and inspire them to continue working with us. Then the cooperation of the spirit world working behind the scenes in our time can result in works many tens and hundreds of times more powerful than before.
4The mother and father of a family should do pledge service and set an example for their children so they too will be eager to attend. When children see their parents eagerly awaiting this time with joy, they should be able to say, "We want to learn what our mother and father are learning!" We parents should leave such an example for them. Children should also see their parents hold Hoon Dok Hae gatherings. The words shared there are not available anywhere else. Since I am the one who inaugurated Hoon Dok Hae, they exist only within the Unification Church. You should establish the tradition that you enjoy attending Hoon Dok Hae so much that you forget to eat, and that you would pass up meeting a guest or anyone else if it interfered with Hoon Dok Hae. This is how to put your family on the right path. You have to establish such a tradition for your sons and daughters.
5The words are to flow. If you stop their flow you will have a cross to bear. They will become a burden for you and cause you to collapse. Hence you should enable them to flow to your mother, your father, your cousins, your neighborhood and so on. The more they flow, the more they will expand, and by your results they will become a huge river. Then wherever you are, with these words you will be influential enough to make a great impact on your area.
6The Chinese character hoon (訓) of Hoon Dok Hae consists of two characters combined: "words" (言) and "stream" (川), which mean "the words that flow." Therefore these words do not die. If water remains still for just one week, it will begin to stagnate. Therefore water needs to flow. If a father hears these words, he should teach them to his sons and daughters. If a grandfather hears these words, he should teach them to his grandchildren. If a mayor hears these words, he should then teach them to all the citizens of his town. They should flow like water, from higher ground to lower. Hoon Dok Hae is the eternal business of sharing God's words. The Chinese character dok (讀) consists of two characters combined: "words" (言) and "sell" (賣). It means to sell the words. Even if you give these words to a thousand people, you will not suffer any loss. This is an eternal business. The money you gather will eventually run out, but these words will never run out.
7The Chinese character hoon (訓) consists of two characters joined together: "words" (言) and "stream" (川). The stream is water. Water flows. Water lives only when it flows. As the character hoon symbolizes the Word as water, the words need to constantly flow in order to remain alive. When water is still it stagnates. As water flows from higher to lower ground, the words need to be passed along over and over. To be clear, water has to flow; water that does not flow becomes murky. Pure spirits dwell in clear water. Hoon Dok Hae is like water. If you trap water, it will turn foul. The character dok (讀) combines the characters for "words" (言) and "sell" (賣). Accordingly you should give or "sell" the words as if you were a salesperson. This meaning lies within the word Hoon Dok.
8When you share my words with others, you become their ancestor. Convey my words to people who are enslaved to the fallen world, and to the spirits who have fallen into hell. Then this will happen. If you do not know my words well, buy a collection of my speeches and share it with them. The more you share the words, the greater wealth you will accumulate. By conveying the words to people, you become their eternal ancestor. Your heavenly fortune, position and rank in heaven will be determined according to how often you shared the words and how much effort you made to re-create people into citizens of the heavenly kingdom. That is why I am teaching you this incredible truth. The words of Hoon Dok Hae are the words I have spoken, but they are not my own words; they are the words of heaven and earth.
9It may seem as if I speak at random, but in fact my words fully explain the Principle. Before long I will have to go to the spirit world. That is why I am now reviewing the content of the words I spoke with all my heart and devotion over the course of the past fifty years, to evaluate how they will impact the world after I pass. I am the champion of Hoon Dok Hae. From whom did its words originate? They originated from God. Since I know this truth, I cannot take Hoon Dok Hae lightly.
10Prepare in advance the Hoon Dok Hae content relevant to each of the 365 days in a year. A unified Hoon Dok Hae program must be implemented throughout the whole world. You should be able to say, "The Hoon Dok Hae reading for today is..." Whether eating or occupied with work, whenever you have the opportunity, you should discuss and converse on the content for that day.
11From this time forward, Hoon Dok Hae should be the ultimate form of education. You must read the content again and again. Mark the words by numbering them as you read, so the next time around you can read important parts that previously took you one hour in just thirty minutes. This can be done easily. This is how you should educate people to cultivate their spirituality through Hoon Dok Hae. The books I leave behind are your teacher. I am telling you to study them, not just read them.
12Do Hoon Dok Hae during your lunch break or whenever you have spare time. You should read first, and then have the group read out loud in unison, keeping the same pace. Train yourself by reading at home. Then you can keep the same pace at church when you lead the group to read together in unison. Husband and wife as a rule do it together at home. If the husband attends Hoon Dok Hae service at church, he should tell his wife which part he read that day. Then she should read that same part so they can keep on the same page.
13How can you get the maximum benefit from doing Hoon Dok Hae? After passing out the Hoon Dok Hae books, begin by having one person read aloud. Then have the reader call on someone else to read, and so on. Train them to do it this way. If ten people gather to do Hoon Dok Hae, make sure that one-third of them asks questions on the parts they are interested in. If there is not enough time, allow just a few people to ask questions and then discuss each one. This system of learning is more effective than a lecture. If you read a Hoon Dok Hae book this way three times, you will clearly understand its content.
14When doing Hoon Dok Hae, it is better that the participants take turns reading a portion of the book rather than just one person reading it to the group. Decide up to what point each person in the group will read, and then designate the next person to continue. While reading the book, each reader should be moved by his or her own voice. If readers cannot feel moved by themselves, they need more practice. Therefore anyone who may be designated to read should practice reading the book at least ten times before reading in public. I do the same thing. When I have a speaking tour, although I know the content of the text I wrote, I still make the effort to saturate the words with a prayerful heart.
15From now on, whenever you do Hoon Dok Hae, do it in a group and share the reading aloud among multiple readers. One person should read one section and then designate another person to read the next section by calling out his or her name. Establish the tradition of calling each person to read next by name. You can address important points or questions the group wants to raise. You can set the standard, saying, "In today's Hoon Dok Hae the content to be studied is this, and we must absolutely maintain suchand-such as our principle."
16I have lived according to the Will, trying to build the kingdom of heaven on earth and in heaven by fulfilling the dutiful way of loyalty and filial piety and the dutiful way of saints and divine sons and daughters. This has brought me into a precious relationship with God. In order that you do not fall short of that standard, each of you must establish and uphold it within your family. Only by doing so will you return to the Garden of Eden, where God will allow you to be in the realm of His direct dominion. Only this standard will spread out in thousands, even tens of thousands of branches and remain forever. In order to bequeath the tradition of the True Parents, I started this tradition of Hoon Dok Hae. Until I did so, you did not know anything about the True Parents' situation.
Fin de Church Services