Rev. Hwang's sermon from May 20, 2001, at the Headquarters Church in Chungpa-dong, Seoul

The Old Testament records God's providential history centering entirely on the nation of Israel. Among the thirty-nine books of the Old Testament, only one book, that of Jonah, actually talks about how God's grace can reach not only the Jews but the gentiles as well. Other than that, the entire Old Testament is based on Jewish superiority, and sees history through the viewpoint of that people.

The Jewish people went through tremendous suffering. Their one and only hope was the Messiah. In the midst of suffering, they earnestly believed that when the Messiah came, he would save the Jewish people and destroy all the rest of the world. With such a fervently nationalistic view of the Messiah, they waited for Jesus. They thought that when Jesus came, heaven would break apart with thunder and lightening. However, Jesus was born in humble circumstances near the coast of Galilee. They simply could not believe Jesus was the One.

After recognizing that Jesus' words were totally different from what they had expected the Jewish leaders ended up in despair. How could he be the one? Inevitably, they all fell into disbelief.

However, those who followed Jesus were full of seemingly endless hope. Most of Jesus' followers were Galilee natives. Galilee was the most troubled area in Samaria.

There were three different sects within Judaism. There were the Sadducees and Pharisees, who were closely tied with political power. And the Essenes that did not want anything to do with those who were in power and led extreme, ascetic lives praying and fasting in the wilderness. John the Baptist was of that tradition. They continuously fought in their own way against Rome and the political power supporting it.

The Sadducees and Pharisees mainly worked in the southern land of Judah around Jerusalem. The Essenes and other patriots usually stayed in the dry land of Samaria. Galilee was one of the well-known areas of Samaria. It was a land full of pain and hopelessness. Those who lived there were mostly outcasts from the mainstream political and religious traditions.

The Mosaic Law was the law of the land at that time, but it was only kept by those who could afford to keep it. It was almost impossible for people like farmers and fishermen to keep some of the laws, like those pertaining to the Sabbath and cleansing. So, the land of Galilee was filled with those who were looked down upon as sinners by the Jewish leaders in power at that time.

Right there, in that wilderness, one man started speaking about the Kingdom of God. When Jesus met Peter [and Peter's brother, Andrew], he told the uneducated fisherman, "Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men." Peter was probably one of the social outcasts who did not keep the Mosaic Law. At that time, fishermen could never keep the law regarding cleansing. They had to sell their fish every day in order to survive; they probably could not keep the Sabbath either.

To such a humble man, the exhortation to become a fisher of men must have been like an experience of thunder and lightening-an awakening. Even he could be a righteous man giving light to the world. So he threw away his fishing net, something his life had depended upon, and followed Jesus.

Most of the followers of Jesus had backgrounds just like Peter's. Above all his other important teachings, Jesus taught them to love their enemies and not to judge others. Jesus healed lepers; and a hemophiliac who had suffered for thirty-eight years was healed with one word from Jesus. Those demon-possessed were freed from their demons. A woman who had bled for twelve years stopped bleeding just by touching Jesus' cloak. There were also other miracles. The miracle of feeding the five thousand with five loaves and two fish. Witnessing those miracles, people were full of expectation and hope.

All the hope turned into despair at the time of the crucifixion, however. Just before he entered Jerusalem and faced his crucifixion, Jesus stayed one night in Lazarus' house. Who was Lazarus? He was a beggar.

Lazarus' younger sister was Mary Magdalene, a former prostitute. In such a humble house, he spent the night. There were only twelve disciples with him at that time. Once, so many people had followed Jesus, but in those final days, he was left with only a very small circle of people. In the end, Jesus died on the cross, between two thieves. At the time of his crucifixion, his disciples watched him from a distance. Many others watched his death, too. The disciples might have expected some kind of miracle thinking, "Our Lord is the Messiah, how could he die with those robbers? It cannot be."

However, no miracle occurred and Jesus simply died on the cross after sorrowfully crying out, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" The disciples all thought it was the end of everything. They scattered in despair.

After the crucifixion, Peter went back home to the coast of Galilee thinking, "I must have been out of my mind for these three years with Jesus. Now I need to get back to my senses and get on with my life." The community of those who followed Jesus was crushed after the crucifixion.

Three days had passed. Peter had already gone back to fishing to make a living. That day, he could not catch a single fish. Someone shouted at him. "Did you catch any fish today?" "No, not really," he replied. "Then why don't you cast your net over here?" He did what the stranger had said. This time, he could not even haul in his net it had so many fish in it. The Bible says he had netted a hundred and fifty-three fish. In awe, Peter looked more closely at the stranger. And there sat the resurrected Jesus.

When Jesus died on the cross, Peter had to witness his beloved teacher dying helplessly. He was driven into despair thinking, "It has all ended in vain. I followed him for three years like a crazy person...." How thrilled must he have been to meet the Jesus risen from the dead!

After that, Jesus appeared in numerous places. After encountering the resurrected Jesus, all his disciples came together again for forty days.

After forty days, Jesus ascended to heaven. You can read about it in the book of Acts 1:1-5:

"In the first book, O Theoph'ilus, I have dealt with all that Jesus began to do and teach, until the day when he was taken up, after he had given commandment through the Holy Spirit to the apostles whom he had chosen. To them he presented himself alive after his passion by many proofs, appearing to them during forty days, and speaking of the kingdom of God. And while staying with them he charged them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Father, which, he said, 'You heard from me, for John baptized with water, but before many days you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit.'"

In other words, it was time for them to wait. After the forty days of his work on earth after the resurrection, he said, "But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth." (Acts 1:8)

"And when he had said this, as they were looking on, he was lifted up.... This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven. Then they returned to Jerusalem from the mount called Olivet, which is near Jerusalem, a Sabbath-day's journey." (Acts 1:11-12)

Here we read, "a Sabbath day's journey." The Sabbath day's walk shows how strict the Sabbath law was. According to the law, one was restricted to walking less than a 1000 steps on the Sabbath day. It is okay to walk 999 steps, but one more step than that is strictly forbidden by the law.

Once again from the Bible we read of the day of Pentecost: "In those days Peter stood up among the brethren (the company of persons was in all about a hundred and twenty), and said, "Brethren, the scripture had to be fulfilled, which the Holy Spirit spoke beforehand by the mouth of David.... And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance." (Acts 1:15, 16 and 2:4)

After the day of the Pentecost, Peter changed. "But Peter, standing with the eleven, lifted up his voice and addressed them... 'these men are not drunk, as you suppose, since it is only the third hour of the day.'" (Acts 2:14)

Peter is saying this completely intoxicated by the Holy Spirit around nine in the morning. Before, he was not a confident man, but now intoxicated with the Holy Spirit, he could not be silent about his faith, so he started to speak out loudly. However, people must have thought him strange or crazy. He had to tell them that he was drunk not with alcohol but with the Holy Spirit.

After Jesus' resurrection, the disciples gathered and were worried about whether the Holy Spirit would really descend as the Lord had promised. However, the day of the Pentecost came and all the disciples were possessed by the Holy Spirit and had astonishing spiritual experiences. From that day on, their witnessing activities began and Christianity was born.

Two thousand years have passed since the day of Pentecost, the descent of the Holy Spirit. We are now waiting for the day of New Pentecost. Father finished his speaking tour, begun on February 25th, on April 17th. Father emphasized that "When the day of the Pentecost comes, a new providence will begin and we should start to actualize the original world of Creation, a new community." What we need to do in our life of faith is to prepare for that day.

The Pentecost occurred during what had, since before the coming of Christ, been an important traditional Jewish time of celebration every year. This, the most important seasonal occasion in the Jewish tradition, was Passover.

Passover is just like Liberation Day (Aug. 15th) in Korea. It celebrates their liberation from Egypt. At Passover, they gathered together in the main temple in Jerusalem to celebrate and to give thanks to God.

Beginning from the day of the Passover, and for forty-nine days after that, there was a period of collecting the first fruits and then, on the fiftieth day, of offering them. It was a harvest festival, a day to express thanks for the harvest of the year. However, in Christianity, fifty days after the resurrection of Christ, the day of the Holy Spirit's descending became the day of the Pentecost.

After the fifty-state speaking tour in the U.S., True Parents set the day of Pentecost as the fiftieth day from the end of the tour. What should we do? Now is the time for us to prepare for the amazing historical providence of the day of Pentecost.

At this important time, we should determine the direction of our life of faith. As we are harvesting the providential fruit, as Father has told us to, we should seriously think about what we are leaving behind for future generations. History can be a very good teacher. God has worked through history and important prophesies have been received throughout history. History shows us the onward progress of the work of God on earth through times of hope as well as of despair.

The Israelites endured a dark period of four hundred years in Egypt and then were liberated into an era of daylight. However, later on, they kneeled before the god Baal, and this resulted in captivity in Babylon for four hundred years-another dark period in their history. Their only hope was the coming of the Messiah. When the Messiah came for them, some of them received the light, but most of the Jewish people remained in darkness. Even those who'd been brought into the daylight through Jesus' ministry lost all hope after his death on the cross. They fell into the deepest darkness.

Three days after his death, Jesus was resurrected, bringing daylight to his disciples again. But after Jesus' ascension to heaven, they were again fraught with anxiety and worry. It was not until the descent of the Holy Spirit that they found they could live in daylight without the direct presence of Jesus.

We are no different. Whether we look at our individual life of faith or the entire community's religious course, history is indeed restoration through indemnity. A period of indemnity is clearly reminiscent of the night and a period of restoration suggests the daytime. As night has followed day repeatedly, periods of indemnity and of restoration have come and gone up until the present day. But we have now reached the point where the night can no longer continue. Of course, everyone is different. And everyone is accountable for how he conducts his own life of faith. Therefore, everyone is at a different stage of providential development. It may very well be that most of us will still have to go through periods of both night and day.

Thanks to True Parents' victorious achievements, we have reached the final stage in the history of restoration through indemnity. From now on, the time of the light will go on forever.

Spiritually speaking, history has reached the point of eternal liberation. Having concluded the time of praying in the name of Jesus, then in the name of True Parents, we now are in the time of praying in our name as a member of a central blessed family (chukbok joongshim kajong). We will not go back to the time of praying in the name of Jesus or True Parents.

How should we be living our life of faith at this time? We must think of what we will have left behind when we are gone. Father has told us not to pray for him any more; he is willing to risk his life for victory in God's providence, so it doesn't matter to him if we pray for his life or not. He told us to pray for ourselves rather than for him. He wants us to be able to leave something really valuable behind and to stay loyal to God eternally. The only true way we can render devoted service to True Parents is to become true children.

Recently, I heard Mr. Kim Young-ook, a well-known scholar who has re-popularized the Korean annals [1,893 books comprising reports made between 1392 and 1863 by objective, professional historiographers as a record of events and society in their time], talking about Confucius on television. One day, a disciple asked Confucius, "What should I do to express my filial piety?" Confucius responded, "You must keep healthy. There is nothing else you need to do." It is not what we as children give or offer to our parents that makes our parents happy but that we grow up healthy and become good people of integrity. That is the biggest joy for our parents. True Parents' love is not so very different from that. We may think that what is important is how much we give True Parents externally, but True Parents' sincere wish is for us to be true, heavenly children.

What should we leave behind after we go to the spirit world?" Father gave us four directions: The first you will find on page 59 of Blessed Family and Ideal Kingdom, Korean version, in the speech "What We Should Do in Our Lifetime":

"The legacy we can leave behind for eternity is how we actually lived our lives. If we live only for ourselves, it cannot be a legacy. But if we live for the world, God's will and heaven, only then do we have something worthwhile to leave behind as our legacy. You must try every minute of every single day of your life to connect to God's will in order to be able to leave a meaningful legacy from your life. No matter how great a difficult obstructs your path, you should be able to make a strategy to overcome it and to recapture the highest hill. So you should be concerned not about the present but the future with earnest hope. You should have a big enough heart to be curious about the outcome after all tribulations pass. When the outcome is shockingly more impressive and fruitful than the tribulations we have to go through, we win."

I agree that living for others is a legacy that will remain for eternity. The memory of everything we've experienced fades away, but the love we give remains forever in others' hearts. What others remember of us is what really matters in the end. We cannot fairly judge our own lives, but others can. What others say about us really defines whether or not our lives have been meaningful and valuable. What we do solely for ourselves is never remembered by others. What we do for others has real eternal value as True Father has said.

True Father has taught us how to go up the hill, taught us to live for the future. When we are in the middle of hardships, if we decide just to dwell in them, the suffering cannot end. We should think of what is to come after we go through the struggles. We should think of how restored we will be after going through the indemnity period. In other words, we should be able to overcome the present reality with hope. If we overcome our difficulties with this kind of future-based point of view, we will be able to leave an eternal legacy behind. That is Father's basic teaching for us.

Father's second direction, which appears on page 61, is:

"We should have something to leave behind even at this moment. We should really practice the way of filial piety and of a loyal patriot centering on God's love. We should be the subjective center that everyone automatically wants to assimilate into. Those who have a big enough heart to embrace everyone will never perish. If we pray in a locked cell for God and for the world, we can have a one on one encounter with God. There are numerous people in this world, but you can meet God one on one when you sincerely pray representing all the people. We should try to make such a meeting possible. You cannot stay ordinary and be remembered in history. Those who can disregard their own lives for the sake of God's will and the world are the only ones who will remain to the end. Even if they perish, they will be the very last ones to perish."

One-on-one, heart-to-heart relationships between God and people and among individuals are the only things that last forever. Brothers and sisters, what is a heart-to-heart relationship? The opposite of a heart-to-heart relationship could be called an "institutional relationship." Heart-to-heart relationships go beyond any institutional boundaries. Institutional relationships are based on calculating mutual interests. Heart-to-heart relationships do not change under any circumstances since they are based eternally on God. In the Bible, we can see that the relationship between Jesus and his disciples was more like an institutional relationship. It was a relationship based on the institution of a teacher and his disciples. However, Jesus' relationship with Mary Magdalene was a heart-to-heart relationship. That is the only lasting relationship.

We are bound by a variety of relationships-our relationship to brothers and sisters in the church, our relationship to the secular world, our relationship to our tribes and so forth. We need to look at the quality of our relationships. Do we have actual heart-to-heart give and take with brothers and sisters in the church? Do we meet just because we happen to be in the same religious community? Do we really have family-like ties to one another? True Parents have taught us that the only lasting and valuable relationship is the heart-to-heart relationship.

This is Father's third direction to us, found on page 62:

"If you live only for yourself, there is inevitably a hopeless ending. But if you live for your people and the world, there is always hope. If you live for your people and the world, you may lose in the present, but you will be remembered in history by the people and the world you risked your life for. The suffering you had to go through for the people and the world will be engrafted into the heart of so many throughout history. So your suffering will be historic suffering. And the stories you leave behind will the truest examples to follow."

The suffering we endure for the sake of the world is something of eternal value that we leave behind. That is all that lasts. The suffering we endure for ourselves cannot be remembered in history. The suffering we endure for the sake of our people and the world has incredible value.

Finally, Father concludes on page 63:

"Even if you have to suffer, if you really invest all of yourself, you will never perish. You won't be accused in the spirit world and can live happily there. You can surely build a victorious worldwide foundation. So do not be afraid at all and do not hesitate. Be strong and brave."

When you are strong and brave, True Father tells us, you live a life that has eternal value, you do not perish-you leave a legacy.

This is the message Father gave the members at the headquarters church right before he left Korea, in the 1970s. True Father's parting message to us when he left for America thirty years ago was that we ought to have something of eternal value to leave behind. Father has now harvested the victorious fruit of the providence in America and will be coming back to this country with the heavenly fortune of the Pentecost.

For the last thirty years we have been investing in this country with the view that it would be the chosen nation. Now is the time to settle accounts. We need to check how much effort we have poured into putting into practice what True Parents have taught us and into leaving a legacy of value.

If we have not built up heart-to-heart relationships, never really practiced living for others, never really endured suffering for the world or ever really been strong and brave for God's will, we must make a new start right this minute. We must live honorably.

When True Father asks, "How well have you lived?" We need to be able to answer with pride.

[Originally published in Today's World, May 2001]

 Download entire page and pages related to it in ZIP format
Table of Contents
Information
Tparents Home