Pyeong Hwa Gyeong: Episode 239
Pyeong Hwa Gyeong: A Selection of True Parents’ Speeches
Book 5: Absolute Values and New World Order
Speech 28: The Life of Jesus from the Perspective of God’s Will and God’s Warning to the Present Age, pg 864-867
The thief on the right and Christianity
If the democratic world is internal, then the communist world is external. If the right wing is internal, the left wing is external. The Messiah who is to come has no choice except to appear upon the internal foundation of the democratic world, which respects God. The Messiah will build a movement that absorbs the external environment and unites the various cultural spheres centering on the mainstream Christian cultural sphere. Such a movement is to be carried out at the end of history and cannot be looked upon as coincidence. Because such a motive was planted, it leads to such a result.
When Jesus was crucified, he died along with the man on his right, who was a thief and a murderer. If the thief had not been there, Jesus would have lost his relationship with the earth and humankind. Even though he himself was near death, the thief on the right defended Jesus. In human history, who was the last to take Jesus’ side? It was not Peter, not Jesus’ father or mother, not the nation of Israel and not Judaism. It was only one person: the thief on the right.
One individual alone maintained this relationship. While facing death, one man transcended death and placed all his hope in Jesus. That was none other than the thief on the right. You need to know that were it not for the thief on the right, Jesus would not have been able to resurrect and resume his providence on earth.
As Jesus was bringing to a conclusion four thousand years of history and more than thirty years of his own life, there was only one person who connected with Jesus and attended Jesus as the one who embodied his most fervent hopes, even as he accompanied Jesus on the path of death. That was the thief on the right. The fact that the thief on the right had this position means that he surpassed the disciples. He was superior to Peter.
Although the thief did not know Jesus’ teachings, his heart directed and empowered him to attend Jesus at the moment of death, until he breathed his last. Peter, James and others of the twelve disciples, by contrast, knew Jesus’ teachings and even pledged to become new persons. Ultimately, they were not able to achieve this. You have to know that, for this reason, the thief on the right became a central character in human history, a man who represented the earth and salvaged the future.
Is there any account in the Bible that depicts Jesus as having prevailed completely against Satan by setting conditions on the individual, family, tribal and national levels? He did not prevail completely on all these levels. That being the case, do you think Satan will submit to someone who believes in Jesus? Do you think that Satan, the supreme king of false wisdom who has accused God, violated His Will and ruined His providence for six thousand years, will go away just because he is told to do so? Those words need to be accompanied by the right of inheritance.
We need to gain the right to inherit this history. We must inherit the tradition and foundation of Adam, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Jesus and beyond, and represent the historical sacrificial offering. Only then can we confront Satan, shouting, “In the course of history you lost to Noah; you lost to Jacob; and Moses subjugated you! I stand on the foundation of all their victories and have inherited the entire tradition of providential history. So be gone, Satan!” Only then will Satan retreat.
If you simply pray, “Be gone, Satan!” it will avail you nothing. Do you think that Satan, who has been accusing people for six thousand years and has trampled upon God’s providence and devastated the providence of restoration, is going to retreat just because you say he has to do so and that you believe in Jesus? Not at all. You need to have the ability to say, “I am without a doubt a person whom God has sought with a heart connected with His history. I am a person who has been grafted into the sacred and holy body of Jesus.”
You need your name recorded on the book of inheritance that Jesus received from God. God’s book of inheritance records those who inherited God’s heart as experienced through the four thousand years until He could send Jesus to this earth. Instead of defeating Satan on the cross, you need to be able to subjugate Satan and be victorious over him without being hung on the cross, take on a body of flesh and be resurrected in substantial form. Those who thus are recognized as substantial inheritors can enter the kingdom of heaven.
Jesus built the foundation for spiritual salvation
Until now, Christianity has not been able to pursue the kingdom of heaven both in the flesh and in the spirit. Christianity has had no choice except to yield the physical world and attend Jesus as the spiritual Messiah, setting spiritual salvation and a spiritual kingdom as its goals. The people of Israel had a nation and possessed national authority as the chosen people. Worldwide Christianity today is in the position of the Second Israel only as a spiritual nation and has no national authority. Christians have no country. We stand in the realm of the Second Israel with only a spiritual foundation, not a physical foundation. Because Christianity was not able to accomplish the original Will of God by bringing the kingdom of heaven on earth in both spirit and flesh, there is no other way except for the Lord to come again.
I want to make one declaration to you here today. The crucifixion was not God’s victory. Instead, it was Satan’s victory. You will remember that Jesus said to those who arrested him in the garden of Gethsemane, “But this is your hour, and the power of darkness!” (Luke 22:53). THe cross was the place where the nation that God had prepared for four thousand years was lost, the place where the messianic calling of Israel was lost, and the place where the followers of John the Baptist, the twelve disciples, the thief on the left and everything else was lost.
Christianity was not there on the cross. When did Christianity begin? Jesus resurrected after three days and spent forty days meeting the disciples he had lost, who in his hour of passion had turned against him. The Holy Spirit descended on the disciples, and it was then that Christianity began. Christians for the past two thousand years have believed in Christian teaching without knowing that it came into existence not by the principle of the cross but by the principle of the resurrection. If you realize this fact, then you must repent. Because it began on the foundation of Jesus’ resurrection, Christianity has been strictly spiritual.
Let us consider this based on Jesus’ words. If God’s Will was to be fulfilled by Jesus’ death on the cross, the prayers he offered in the garden of Gethsemane would not have been appropriate in his position as the Messiah. This would be truly astounding. How could he, as the Messiah, pray three times, “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; yet not what I want but what You want”? (Matt. 26-39) If Jesus had come to die, wouldn’t Judas Iscariot have been rewarded? How, then, will you interpret Jesus’ words, “It would have been better for that one not to have been born,” (Matt. 26:24) which he spoke in regard to Judas Iscariot?
What would have happened if Jesus had not died on the cross? The nation of Israel would have followed the teachings of Jesus and would have stabilized and endured. Judaism also would have remained. Jesus knew that if he died on the cross, multitudes of people in future ages would have to follow him on the way of the cross, and they would not be able to do so without shedding their blood. Many Christians would have to suffer and, even when the Lord came again, he would have to go the way of suffering.
This is the reason why Jesus had to pray as he did in the garden of Gethsemane. Christians today say that Jesus prayed for deliverance because he had a physical body and feared the pain of death. Was Jesus such a trivial Messiah?
Ladies and gentlemen! What, then, did Jesus mean by saying, “It is finished,” when he died on the cross? Jesus had come with the mission to save both spirit and flesh, although he realized that he could not complete the perfection of God’s Will in a world in which there was no foundation. He made of himself a perfect offering in order to establish a condition for spiritual salvation and allow that providence to begin. Having completed that, in the end he said, “It is finished.”
FFWPU, USA