Cham Bumo Gyeong: Episode 75

Cham Bumo Gyeong
Book 4: Salvation through the Holy Marriage Blessing
Chapter 1: Overview of the Marriage Blessing
Section 2: Qualifications, The standard and conditions
Section 2: Qualifications, Paragraph 11

Section 2. Qualifications

The standard and conditions

True Parents said that one should participate in the marriage Blessing ceremony only after working long and hard to become eligible. Blessing candidates should be admired by all people both in the heavenly world and in the earthly world. Additionally, they must fulfill certain basic requirements, such as maintaining purity, attending Divine Principle workshops, witnessing, fasting and offering devotions. True Parents have also said that a couple should commit to one another only after obtaining parental consent.

1  You who are preparing for the marriage Blessing need to critically reflect on your life. Many of you have your own viewpoint about it. You may think, “It is customary in the church to receive the marriage Blessing. I have fulfilled all the necessary conditions, and it has been a few years since I joined, so I ought to be qualified to participate.” But you should not think that way. Instead, remember that God has been looking for 6,000 years for sons and daughters who can receive His Blessing. On the Blessing day, God can recover these lost sons and daughters. Through them, the meeting point will be prepared where God’s love can be connected. Thereby, the horizontal foundation is made on which God can expand His Will. How many of you are aware, in your hearts, of God’s deep yearning to welcome the day of the marriage Blessing?

2  We know that Satan invaded Adam and Eve. When Satan dominates God’s sons and daughters and takes them away, God is robbed of His dignity. Thus, in order to give His Blessing, God must find a couple who can surpass the standard Adam and Eve achieved before Satan’s invasion. Therefore, you cannot focus on your own rationale as to why you should receive the marriage Blessing. The marriage Blessing should begin from a place of God’s choosing. This is the attitude fallen people should have. If you do not realize this, you will not become mature sons and daughters. If you make a mistake in this area, your descendants and even ancestors will face Satan’s accusation.

3  After you join the Unification Church, you are not allowed to date. The Human Fall involved a love relationship between a man and a woman that excluded God. Separating from God, they kept their love exclusively between themselves. Nowadays people assert that since they live in a free society, they can get married on their own, but this is wrong. If Adam and Eve had not fallen in the Garden of Eden, they would have been married in God’s presence. God would have been the officiator. When Adam and Eve were young, they were immature, relating only as brother and sister. But as they grew older and became mature, it would have been obvious that they were growing physically, and they would have realized that they were meant to have a conjugal relationship. When the right time came, God naturally would have brought them together in marriage. Their wedding was to have been held in God’s presence. The owner of love is not Adam or Eve. The owner of love is not you. It is God.

4  Love is one. There is only one husband and one wife in a love relationship. If you have dated and had illicit love relationships before getting married, you should repent. As long as you continue such behavior, you cannot enter the realm of God’s love. Originally, your first experience of love should be with God. It is important that you separate so completely from your past love relationships that you cannot even remember the names of your past lovers. Even in your dreams your experience must be such that even though it seemed so real back then, now you cannot even remember who it was. Otherwise you are not ready to receive the marriage Blessing. Do you realize deeply that you should love God more than you ever loved anyone in the past? Love the Will to the point that your love for True Parents comes spontaneously from your heart. It is the Principle that you should love God and True Parents first. You cannot maintain the concept of love you had in the secular world.

5  There are many things you have to get rid of. After you join the Unification Church, you should not think, “I know exactly who I want to marry.” People who think this way are still on the leash of Satan’s love. You must get rid of that mentality. Just as Adam and Eve, as one man and one woman, were growing up pure, with only platonic love, you should focus on loving God as your Parent, and receive True Parents’ love. Once you achieve such a position, the unity of the spiritual world and the physical world is possible. This is the Principle. This is how the Principle works.

6  In the marriage Blessing, it is heaven and your parents who decide your partner. In other words, Adam’s Father, God, should decide who your partner will be. In that sense, the tradition of marriage as practiced in Korea is a method that is very close to heavenly law. In Korean tradition, you cannot get married without your parents’ permission. This is absolute. Therefore, if there is someone you come to like, you have to report it to your parents right away. Before saying that you like some person, you must get approval from your parents. At that point, with their permission, you are allowed to date that person. If you date someone and report everything, it is not a sin. However, dating someone without reporting is not acceptable.

7  The most precious Blessing is when a pure woman and pure man get married within the will of heaven. That makes God happy. Such people have the greatest fortune in the whole universe. Such people have a foundation to be successful at anything in the whole world. On the other hand, those who could not remain pure will be filled with such regret that their whole being is in turmoil and they feel the need to repent to such a degree that all of heaven and earth would be turned upside down. They must purify their minds and bodies and say to God, “Father, I am consumed with shame, what shall I do?” Then God will say, “Yes, I know your heart. I will forgive you. I am happy that you are striving to transcend that painful state.” You should participate in the marriage Blessing only at the point at which you have earned the sympathy of God, who knows everything, and whose forgiveness endures within you.

8  Usually, ideal things are to be found not in the here and now, but in the future. What can we call an ideal marriage partner? A marriage is not ideal simply because the partners like each other. You and your partner are ideal for each other based upon your ability to give birth to outstanding descendants. This ideal can be realized when two very different people are joined together. From heavens point of view, what kind of person would be the most ideal partner? The best result is produced when two people who are so extremely different that they hate each other, eventually come too really like one another. If you are willing to take such a difficult path for God and His Will, blessings will come to you.

This is the complete reverse of the secular view of marriage. If you are grateful to receive a person who is your opposite, and you say you will love this person completely, with God’s love, no matter what kind of man or woman he or she may be, God will be happy to let you marry such a person. I have blessed a number of members this way. If they can live in unity, their children will be great masterpieces. If one generation is difficult, the following generation is blessed. You should think that your ideal partner is to be found not in heaven but in the dungeon of hell. You have to look at your bride or bridegroom in this way.

9  The marriage Blessing is not for the sake of just the people standing there together in the ceremony. Each of these men and women should have such a standard that they are qualified and capable of establishing, without fail, a new family that represents their clan, people, nation and world. The family of a Mr. Kim, for example, does not exist for the sake of the Kim family but represents his people and nation and even the world. Without such a family, the marriage Blessing cannot be realized. Adam and Eve, the ancestors of all human beings, were not just two individuals; they were the origin of history. Their deeds were not to have ended just with them. Through them, a new family, new clan, new people and new nation were to have come into being. The marriage Blessing is the place where such a worldwide foundation could be determined.

10  In order to receive the Unification Church marriage Blessing, you need to fulfill several conditions. First, you need to make a condition of restoring all things of the creation, the material world. Next, you have to make a condition to restore yourself by separating from Satan, and third, you need to restore three spiritual children. You must have at least three spiritual children. Why? This is due to the Fall. To restore fallen humankind, you need to go through the re-creation process following the Principle of Creation. If you do not fulfill all of this in seven years, you will not be able to participate in the marriage Blessing. Because of the Fall, you have to be re-created and return to God’s side. In order to be re-created, you have to stand in the place of God as a creator. To re-create humankind, you need to bring material things to God’s side. Through those material things, you can go through the process of re-creating yourself. Therefore, you must carry out economic activities for more than three years. You need to go into the world to restore these material things that will re-create you. While making this foundation you sacrifice your body.

On that foundation, you have to win a battle over Satan by witnessing for three and a half years. No matter how hard Satan may persecute you, you should not fail. You should restore yourself so that you can stand in front of God eternally. At the same time, you have to find three sons or daughters as your spiritual children. This is because you need to establish a connection to receive the cooperation of the spirit world. Without fulfilling this condition, you cannot become a perfect, unfallen, original couple, and without becoming a perfect original couple, you cannot enter heaven.

11  Those who have fasted know that it is not easy. But in order to become a full-fledged church member, you have to do a seven-day fast in prayer. Ordinary people think that if they do not eat for seven or eight days, they will die. Why do we need to do this kind of thing? It is to have confidence and confirm that we are risking our lives for God and humanity. Also, we fast with a strong conviction that it helps separate us from Satan. As we abstain from food, we eliminate our fear of hunger. Fasting for seven days is a great tradition that gives us the conviction to move forward toward one global goal.