Cheon Seong Gyeong: Episode 223

Cheon Seong Gyeong Book 8: Life of Faith and Training
Chapter 1: What Is a Life of Faith
Section 2: The Purpose and Goal of a Life of Faith, 23
Section 3: The Path of Faith, 01

(23)  Because he was crucified, Jesus could not become the True Parent with a physical body. Although God's lineage was spiritually established, the manifestation of True Parents, who have both spirit and body, could not be realized. The spiritual True Parent, Jesus, is limited to the spirit world, making only spiritual salvation possible. He did not accomplish physical salvation, namely, redemption for the sins committed in the flesh. Accordingly, Christianity has only had a spiritual father and a spiritual mother—Jesus and the Holy Spirit. Therefore, when the True Parents come, we will need to be born anew through them, conditionally or symbolically reentering the womb of the Mother. For that sake, we have been groping our way forward on this course.

(24)  Between the spirit self and the physical self, the spirit self is the more important. The physical self has a lifespan of seventy to eighty years in the limited physical realm, after which it decomposes. However, the spirit self transcends time and space. When you understand the historical responsibility that human beings are meant to fulfill, you must fulfill it. No matter how much you enjoy your life while living in the flesh, your body is destined to perish. Fleshly life is inevitably going to end.

(25)  John the Baptist did not attend Jesus on the family level. Therefore, Jesus had to indemnify this on John's behalf.  Likewise, because the Christian cultural sphere did not attend the returning Lord, I, in the position of John the Baptist, had to establish the Unification Church in place of Christianity. Hence, at the time of the Second Advent, the Unification Church is similar to Judaism on the global level. The United States, which is in the position of Israel, and the free world, should have become one with the Unification Church, but they are opposing it, as is Korea. Until such unity transpires, the Unification Church has no nation and can only carry out the providence of spiritual salvation, just as God carried out the providence of spiritual salvation through Jesus in the New Testament Age. If in the Last Days, Christianity, which has the global spiritual foundation, totally unites with me, then establishing the physical foundation will be no problem at all.

(26)  We first need to free ourselves from Satan's world. We should also develop emotions differently from those of worldly people. That is, we must deeply experience God's love spiritually and hate what Satan loves. We must also sacrifice ourselves for the sake of the entire world. If, centering on me, you are victorious on the individual, family, tribal, national, and global levels, we can recover the spiritual Israel and the chosen people and establish them as the Third Israel. When this happens, God can save humanity spiritually and physically through us.

(27)  Which is more important: spiritual standards or physical standards? We should not place physical standards in the primary position. Though the flesh exists for the spirit and the spirit for the flesh, do not cling to ways of the secular world. You should take the more meaningful position by concentrating your spirit and flesh on the essence of life. This is the path for those who uphold the Unificationist worldview. As it is, there are many people who care more about the body—about what to eat and where to live—than about living according to a spiritual standard.  Everyone is caught by the conditions they create.

Sharing our lives with True Parents

(28)  What is the one foundation that can be the starting point for the realization of God's hope and humanity's hope? What is the one foundation that, for believers, marks the starting point of victory? The origin of God's bitter sorrow is that human beings descended from the false parent, Satan. Therefore, we must become people who can obey the True Parents, based on our sacred relationship with them. This will finally liberate the cosmos and open the gate to the heavenly kingdom.

(29)  A true family consists of a true man and a true woman who become true husband and true wife and then true parents of true children. Our core purpose as a man or woman is to become a true parent and as a couple to become true parents. After becoming true parents, we have sons and daughters and establish a family. This is why, in the Unification Church, we say, "Let us have faith in True Parents" and "Let us believe in True Parents." We needed to say this because we weren't certain that what we believed was true. But once we know with certainty, we move beyond the point of mere belief or faith. Formerly, we believed because we did not know with certainty; now that we do, we no longer need to simply believe.  Furthermore, until now we did not know why we were born, what it really means to become a husband or wife, the significance of children, and what family is all about. But now we no longer need to believe in True Parents' family because we can know True Parents' family. We know True Parents, so we no longer need to just believe in them. Put away the concept, "I believe in True Parents," and instead think, "I know True Parents." With that, we can share our lives with True Parents. We can live with them.

(30)  The Messiah is the perfected True Parents who have nothing to do with the Fall. When the True Parents appear, they become the axis by which God and human beings can be linked to each other. God is the spiritual True Parent, and when Adam and Eve reach perfection they become the substantial True Parents on earth. Because of this axis, there is unity. Religions until the present did not have the standard of True Parents; hence, there was no way for them to link human beings with God on earth. Therefore, religions have advocated offering devotion so that believers could establish a standard upon which to build a reciprocal base with Heaven and meet the Lord in spirit. For this reason, many believers have lived their lives cultivating their spirituality by making repeated conditions of devotion, gradually building their own spiritual bridges to encounter Heaven.

(31)  Every single human being must follow the path to sever from the false love, false life, and false lineage they were born with and to live a new life by being engrafted into true love, true life, and the true lineage. Religions emerged to help us subjugate the body and forge unity between the mind and body. Therefore, as a religious believer, it is important that you attain the state of mind-body unity while living on earth, become one with your spouse in true love, and give birth to sons and daughters who can go to the kingdom of heaven. How can people give birth to true sons and daughters who can enter the heavenly kingdom unless they live a life of faith? This is why religions emerged for the subjugation of the body and for the unity of the body with the mind. They are to bring people into unity with the True Parents through an engrafting process. This is how false olive trees are transformed into true olive trees that bear true sons and daughters who, after completing their earthly lives, will proceed to the eternal world, the kingdom of heaven. This is the ideal of creation.

(32)  True Parents advanced from the lowest level of hell up to the height of heaven and are moving forward with true love. When we follow True Parents' will and become one with them in heart and one with their ideal of life, there will be no distance between us and True Parents. Then what they have erected and indemnified vertically will unfold for us horizontally. The standards of the eight stages are required only until redemption is accomplished on the eight levels—that of an individual, a family, a tribe, a people, a nation, the world, the cosmos, and finally, the level of God's liberation. When all that is accomplished horizontally, individuals will be able to freely advance to the family level, our family to the level of the tribe, and our tribe to the level of one people. We start from the individual level, advance to the ends of the earth, and then come back.

Section 3.  The Path of Faith

(1)  Because human beings are born as descendants of the fallen first human ancestors, we can neither find the path to God nor enter the heavenly nation unless we overcome the obstacle of the Fall. Furthermore, as beings encumbered with fallen nature, it is impossible to find the way to reverse the Fall on our own. In order to reverse the Fall, we cannot rely on our own power but must rely on the power of a third party. Such is the plight of people living today. Fortunately, Heaven has not forsaken us. Throughout history Heaven has toiled, taking responsibility to guide us in reversing the conditions of the Fall.