Cheon Seong Gyeong: Episode 9

Cheon Seong Gyeong Book 1: God
Chapter 2: The God of Heart and True Love
Section 1: The God of Heart, 10-23

(10) God is struck first and then claims what is His.  You should be the same.  Because of us, God has had to endure the miserable course of the providence.  We need to understand God's heart in history, always wanting to say to us, "I want to talk to you; I want to work with you.” God does not forget us; He waits for us.  So we have to think to ourselves, "God, when can I participate in Your providence of restoration?" We have to find the platform upon which we can live together with God.  We have to find the way to think like God, speak like God, and act like God.

(11) God is the Creator of all things, but He is also our true Father.  That true Father will come to find us.  No matter what difficulties we face, we have to keep on going.  We have to persevere as we overcome the twists and turns of destiny to grasp our true Father's hand.  We have to persevere until we call out, as our last words, "My Father!" with our hearts overflowing with the hope that He maintained throughout history and we maintained throughout life.  We have to march on, even if we face the path of death.  In the Last Days, when a group of people appears among all humankind that runs excitedly to the Creator and absolute God, calling Him "my Father, " God's new providential work will begin.

(12) What is the ultimate purpose behind our striving for higher goodness, greater beauty and deeper love? It is to build a relationship in heart with God, our Creator.  As we do, we need to examine whether agreement exists between God's heart, which moves based on relationships in accord with heavenly law, and the human heart, which moves in accord with human morality.  We find that they are often in conflict and discord.  Morality in today's society is going in a different direction from that taken by heavenly law, which manifests according to the path of providence.  This is a result of the fall.  We must comprehend the sorrowful fact that, because of the Fall, the heart of God, the heart of heavenly law, and the heart of human morality are in conflict.  When we grasp that this is the real situation besetting us, our society and our world, we have to halt on the path on which we have been walking.  We need to envision a world of creation revived, envision the heart of the Creator, take a second look at the reality of our society, and review our own mind and body.  Otherwise the world based on a new teaching and a new heart will not appear in human history.

(13) If you want to be a brave soldier for God, you have to know God's heart.  After all, if you want to be a patriot, you have to know the king's heart.  If you want to be a son or daughter of filial piety, you have to know your father and mother's heart.  Naturally, you have to know God's heart if you want to be a brave soldier for God.  You have to know the heart of God before creation, His heart during the process of creation, and His grieving heart after the Fall.  You have to understand the sorrowful heart with which He has been leading human history toward restoration, and His heart of hope for a new world after restoration is completed.

(14) God's heart, as we in the Unification Church understand, is long, wide and deep.  We need to understand God's heart before creation, His heart at the time of creation, and His heart after Adam and Eve fell.  We need to understand the huge nail driven into God's heart at Adam and Eve's Fall.  We need to understand how deeply God has grieved since the Fall, and how plaintive His heart has been as He walked the path of restoration.  We need to understand how brokenhearted our Heavenly Father has been as He sent His own children along the tragic path of death, leading them through a course requiring much endurance in order to restore the world.  Guided by God's final central figure, we must ultimately clean up the sinful world and liberate God from His heartfelt pain and sorrow.  Only then will God's Will be accomplished.

(15) The history of the providence of restoration shows us that God has been bringing fortune to the world.  In the beginning, God created the vast universe and placed Adam and Eve at its center.  When God created Adam and Eve, He made them with all the elements of His creation, and then He bestowed even more upon them.  The most important gift that He gave them was heart.  Heart is the center of the four-position foundation, and its core is love.  Heart is the core and most important base for all beings.

(16) What is the difference between heart and love? We usually think of love as a feeling like floating in the air, and we think of heart as related to the soul.  But in fact, heart extends in four directions.  Therefore heart, more than love, is central to everything.  Heart manifests as the result of having gone through the process of love.  Heart is thus the center of the multidimensional world.  That is why the Unification Church envisions and strives to create a world of heart more than a world of love.  The center of everything is heart, and the family is absolutely necessary for cultivating it.  We cultivate the four realms of heart in the family, and they must connect and unite centering on God.  This connection and unity expands from the levels of the individual and family to the community, nation and world.  Thus restoration cannot be completed without heart, because without it, no one can establish the central position.

The God of heart

(17) The God of heart has been sorrowful throughout six thousand years of history.  He felt wronged by the disbelief of our ancestors.  Now we should offer prayers that comfort God, who feels so wronged and sorrowful.  This is why God is saddened when He faces the attitude of the people of the Second Israel, who are scattered around the world.  In this time, God needs a group of people to emerge who can grab Him by the sleeve and say, "Father, is it true that You have come to be so woeful and to feel so wronged in heart?" God will grasp their hands and respond, "Yes, my sons, my daughters!"

(18) The Bible includes the epistles written with symbols and parables that refer to the bridegroom seeking the bride.  Why has this symbolic message been so difficult to decipher? It is because it is from the God of heart.  Not everyone can comprehend the meaning of the Bible.  Only the bride and bridegroom themselves can decipher it.  Only those who are ready to attend God wholeheartedly can understand.  Those who are not prepared will not grasp it.  What is the true meaning of this embedded message? It shows the passage to the door through which the bridegroom enters the heart.  Parents' heart for their child remains the same from the time the mother nurses her baby to the time the child has grown old and grey-haired.  The heart does not change.

(19) Christians say, "Oh yes! Christ must come again on the clouds.” How awesome that would be! If it were true, people like us would not have to suffer.  If that were the kind of faith we were supposed to have, our faith would surpass that of any minister or church elder.  As for offering devotion, we would offer more than anyone else.  But if the Lord were to come on the clouds, what would he do? When we examine Christian history, we see that Christians have focused on spiritual matters, and many willingly gave up their lives for Christ.  Because Christianity had no earthly foundation, Christians had to suffer tribulation and death at the hands of sovereigns in many nations.  Looking at this alone, we could feel wronged and angry.  Nevertheless, if the Lord were to come again spiritually, on the clouds, what would he do? Would he save only the Christians, secreting them away, while abandoning the non-Christians? God is not that kind of being.  As in the biblical parable of the prodigal son, God celebrates His prodigal son more than his dutiful first son.  Such is God's heart.

(20) Let us understand clearly that although God is the great Lord and King, He has been starved in heart for six thousand years.  We have to comfort God.  Although God really has felt like destroying this world with one stroke of judgment, He has held on to His purpose, His hope and His desire for the earth.  Keeping that in His sights, He has persevered as He suffered again, again and again.  This is the God we must call our Father.  We must call Him our Father not as a name or title, but because we feel that way about Him in our heart.  A new teaching must emerge on this earth that will move people to relate as blood kin, parents, and brothers and sisters on a global scale.  As they do, they can learn loyalty to God, creating a bond with God in heart that enables them to act centering on Heavens heart.  This heart is beyond time and space, beyond peoples and nations.  Without such a teaching, this world will break apart.

(21) Now human beings have nowhere to go.  But we have to face a final showdown, so we cannot just wallow in despair.  Now a movement of truth has to arise, inspiring us to advance into a new heaven and earth with the genuine truth.  We need a standard bearer who can guide us on this one and only path of life, to clean up our deplorable environment, which we face with hopeless despair, and to pursue the true way.  We have been following this or that ideology, looking for the truth.  It is only when the complete truth emerges that this world can be united completely.  Once we learn this truth, we can and must perfect our character and our heart.

(22) Through heart, we need to understand God throughout history.  God was a God of heart when He created all things of creation.  We need to understand God's heart at the time of creation, after the Fall, and during the course of history.  You believe in God, but do you understand His heart? You absolutely need to.  Next, you have to understand God's hope in each age as well as His heart in each age.  In this way you can come to understand God's heart for the future.

(23) We have to feel the sorrowful heart of God.  He had to watch Jesus dying on the cross after striving to fulfill his mission with such intense devotion and dedication.  Jesus came for the sake of humankind and the universe.  He came to dissolve God's sorrow, complete God's Will, and subjugate Satan.  But disbelievers hounded Jesus from one corner to another, and in the end he had to carry the cross on Golgotha.  Can you imagine Jesus' heart at that time? Yet even when he understood that God's promise and desire, of which he was the center, would be shattered and his life would end on the cross, Jesus did not betray God.  He remained loyal and devoted to God to the end.  No one believed in Jesus, but he paid no heed to this.  He kept moving forward, bonded to Heaven on the path toward his life goal.  Ultimately, Jesus' historic life became the path of hope for humankind.