Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi

he began asking his disciples saying, "who do people say

that the Son of Man is?" and they said, "some say John the

Baptist, and others Elijah but still others Jeremiah or one

of the prophets." He said to them, "But who do you say that

I am?" and Simon Peter answered and said, "Thou art the

Christ, the Son of the Living God." And Jesus answered and

said to him "Blessed are you, Simon bar Jonah, because

flesh and blood did not reveal this to you but my father

who is in Heaven."

Exposition of the Divine Principle,

Introduction, Page 12.

With the fullness of time, God has sent one person to this

earth to resolve the fundamental problems of human life and

the universe. His name is Sun Myung Moon. For several

decades he wandered through the spirit world so vast as to

be beyond imagining. He trod a bloody path of suffering in

search of the truth, passing through tribulations that God

alone remembers. Since he understood that no one can find

the ultimate truth to save humanity without first passing

through the bitterest of trials, he fought alone against

millions of devils, both in the spiritual and physical

worlds, and triumphed over them all. Through intimate

spiritual communion with God and by meeting with Jesus and

many saints in Paradise, he brought to light all the

secrets of Heaven.

Good morning, brothers and sisters. During last week I got a lot of

calls from many of our brothers and sisters, and also letters and

faxes, and visits. So as regional director, I determined that at least

I have to be share with you at a regional directors level, what I

learned from God and our True Parents. But this morning, I have invited

our brother Tim Elder to translate. Welcome [Applause].

The words of the Bible that Rev. Schanker just read for us from the

gospel according to Matthew have many inspirations for us. The passage

that was read is a part of a conversation that took place between Jesus

and his disciples just before he was to be crucified while he was on an

evangelical mission at Caesarea Philippi. The disciples did not realize

this yet, but Jesus already knew that within days he was to be

crucified. And Jesus wanted and needed to at least establish the

condition of having people know who he was before he died. So Jesus

turned to his disciples and said as you go around witnessing what do

people say about me, who do they say that I am? And some disciples said

"oh they say you are John the Baptist and others say that you are

Elijah and so on." And some people say that you are a prophet. But

Jesus was not really interested in what the people thought. What he

really wanted to know was what his disciples thought, so he asked them

directly "Who do you think that I am?" and that is the subject of

todays sermon.

And then Peter who was the first disciple gave a clear answer. He said

"You are the Christ, you are the son of the living God." Then we have

to pay close attention that Jesus gave in response. He said "Blessed

are you, Simon bar Jonah, because flesh and blood did not reveal this

to you but my father who is in Heaven." In other words he was saying

that when you confess and say that I am the Son of God, you are not

saying this from your flesh and blood but because of God who is your

father in heaven.

Peter was a descendent of fallen men. He had a fallen blood lineage and

he had a fallen physical body. And as a fallen person he had certain

limited spiritual senses. So by his physical senses and by his flesh

and blood he could not recognize Jesus and confess that Jesus was the

son of God. Recently in one of Fathers sermons there was one with the

following subject. The subject was, "Do you know me? Do you believe in

me?" Two thousand years ago, how many among the disciples who followed

Jesus knew who Jesus was? Anyone who truly knew Jesus would certainly

have truly followed Jesus. But as we know through history and through

the lessons of the Bible, when it came to the point where Jesus was

dying on the cross, there was no one there to follow him.

During Jesus public mission, many people followed him around, many

people had their diseases cured by him, many people witnessed his

miracles but why then at that final moment was no one there with him?

If people had really known who he was, and though Peter confessed at

this moment, if Peter had really known the true meaning of what he was

saying then certainly they would not have turned against him. Peter did

not really understand who Jesus was until after the crucifixion, until

after Jesus resurrection when the Holy Spirit opened his eyes and

finally then, only then could he recognize who Jesus really was. Just

before the crucifixion, Peter turned to Jesus and said, "I believe in

you Lord, I believe in you Lord, I really truly believe in you Lord",

but then after that he turned against Jesus and denied him three times.

And Jesus prophesied that before the cock would crow the following

morning that Peter would deny him three times and it in fact turned out

that way.

Today, I know that there are many members who are concerned and worried

about the many things that have taken centering on the True Family, the

True Parents' family, during the past week. Many people have been

surprised and many people are concerned. During the past 20 years, 30

years or even longer since we joined the church we have overcome all

kinds of criticism and persecution. But no matter what persecution, no

matter what criticism we received our fundamental, our basic belief was

never shaken and that is why we are all here today.

But the reason that many people are concerned and worried and

struggling today is because the persecution or the criticism is not

coming from outside but because it is a situation that is occurring

inside. We are today in the same place where that occurred 2000 years

ago. Jesus was crucified on the cross. Many people never thought that

Jesus would actually be crucified. And when it finally actually did

turn out that way, almost everyone turned against Jesus and only Mary

Magdalene and a few others, a handful of people kept his grave.

And I think that today, True Parents are in the same situation where

today they are on the cross. For the last 20 or 30 years we have

believed in True Parents and we have followed them. But we have to

think about how we are going to understand ourselves, how we are going

to see ourselves in this particular situation that is occurring today.

I think that this is the time where the faith that we have kept for the

past 20 or 30 years comes to its ultimate conclusion, its ultimate

fruit. So what I want to suggest to you is to think very deeply about

who True Parents are, because without knowing who they are I think it

would be very difficult for us to survive this situation in this time

today.

I think people who truly understand who True Parents are will find

themselves in the same fate and in the same position as True Parents

and through that experience they will find themselves drawn closer to

True Parents. People who do not see themselves that way then I think

will have more and more spiritual difficulties in their spiritual life.

I don't intend to go into the details and talk about all the detailed

matters of everything today, for example whether or not all the

allegations made in the book are true or not.

There is one word that Jesus left for us before he died on the cross.

He looked at all the disciples and followers and he said, "Don't cry

for me, but cry for your descendents and for yourselves." There is a

certain objective fact here which we can look at from two different

perspectives. For example, the first would be then to have the

conclusion first and to interpret all the facts in a way that leads up

to that conclusion. Or we can look at various facts and then arrive at

a certain conclusion based on where those lead. The first is inductive

reasoning and the second is deductive reasoning.

When we first decided to go this way, we did so as a result of

deductive reasoning. We looked at many things and as a result of

various things that we saw and heard and facts that we came into

contact with we decided, "Okay, therefore, True Parents must be the

Messiah and I will follow." It was a deductive process. Then once we

began to follow what is required of us, then it is the opposite, that

we look at things in the opposite direction. I have heard of several

instances where people have said they that are beginning to doubt

fundamentally whether True Parents are the Messiah. In that case, such

a person should go back to the point where he or she first entered the

church.

As Jesus said to Peter we cannot with our own flesh and blood

understand the providence of Heaven. As it says in the general

introduction to the Divine Principle, the True Parents have come with

two missions. One of those missions is to restore all the past history

through indemnity. It is to recover all that has been lost. In other

words, they have the responsibility to indemnify all the things that

the central figures throughout history have failed to accomplish. We

are living in the process of history. What kind of history is it? It is

the history of providence. What kind of providence? It is the

restoration providence. It is the history of restoration through

indemnity. And expressed in Korean it is eight syllables, Tang Gam Bok

Gui Sub Li Yeok Sa . That is Tang Gam meaning indemnity, Bok Gui

meaning restoration, Sub Li providential, Yeok Sa history. Those eight

characters in Korean describe all of this mission.

After the fall of Adam and Eve, God established many central figures,

after Adam there were Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, and Jesus to

True Parents. And there are many things that True Parents need to bring

to a conclusion within their lifetime. First of all, in order to

accomplish the work, they have to know God. And without knowing Satan,

nothing can be accomplished. And who in history has known God more

deeply than Father knows him? And no one and no doctrine in history has

revealed as much about Satan and about the motivation of Satan and

about the actual visage of Satan than what True Parents have done. As a

central figure in restoration history there are two things that he has

to do and one is to bring back, recover, restore fallen man, and that

means the liberation of God.

For a human being to restore other human beings means what? It means to

restore what was lost in the Garden of Eden. In other words it means to

restore the blood lineage and to restore the love that was lost there.

We often read the Old Testament. Everything in the Old Testament is a

description of the providential process by which preparation was made

to send Jesus as the Messiah. Restoration is not simple. In order to

have restoration the reverse course of the Fall has to be taken, and we

know that this history of restoration began within the family of Adam

and Eve.

The essence of restoration is to recover the lost love, the lost blood

lineage and the lost life. Because Adam and Eve fell, the descendents

of Adam and Eve were no longer the direct descendents of God. They were

all the descendents of the archangel, and so our blood lineage, the

basic essence of our blood lineage is not that of God. So without

knowing exactly what original sin is, there is no way for us to be

restored, and only True Parents have exactly identified what the

original sin was. It was the creation of a wrong blood lineage, and

unless a condition is established to restore this mistaken blood

lineage there is no way that the Messiah could come to this Earth. And

that is the entire history of the Israelites. Why was Jesus able to

come to Israel as the Messiah? We know that it was because of the

victory of the three generations of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and we

know that especially beginning with the family of Jacob, there was the

full scale work to restore the blood lineage. This was based on the

victory of Abel's sacrifice in Adam's family.

Today, many people are concerned especially about two particular

points, and I have received these questions. One of these has to do

with the contents of Nan Sook's book. I think that with regards to the

content of that book, we have to understand what the motivation and the

intent was of the person who wrote that book. True Parents have

released a statement in their name saying that they very much regret

the situation that is taking place, centering on Hyo Jin's family, and

have asked that people give them time for healing. People have a

tendency to believe negative things. I think that the proper position

for Abel-type people to take is if we as people who have been on this

way of faith for 20 or 30 years, try to look beyond the allegations and

try to look at the more fundamental aspect of this. I believe that

Father's speech of September 21, the transcript and also the video,

will be given to you soon. But I think that the key is who do we

confess True Parents to be, and who do we believe the True Parents to

be.

As I said a moment ago, the first of True Parents' missions is to

restore the 6000 years of providential history, and the second is to

establish a Kingdom of God on Earth, the ideal Kingdom on Earth. We

don't need to go into the details of the establishment of the ideal

Kingdom of God, we are actually living that today and we are a part of

the process. As far as providential history is concerned, we can think

about them in terms of what we know about them. This is part of the

responsibility of the Messiah, someone who knows God and someone who

knows Satan, who goes the way in order to restore fallen man, and to

liberate God. How incredibly difficult that must be!

Jacob went that course in a conditional way, and Moses did, and Jesus

and now finally ultimately, True Parents are going that same way, as

the last ones to go that way.

A moment ago I said that Father preached a sermon, do we know True

Parents and do we believe in True Parents, but if there is anyone here

who thinks that they know True Parents, I would like to see your hand.

We may know them externally, but can we really know them in the deepest

way, in terms of their mission with God, and in the relationship with

God? Father has sometimes said it this way, that no one understands, no

one knows. My children don't know, and Mother doesn't know. There are

many things, providential things, that only Father knows about, only he

can resolve without anyone else knowing. So that is why faith is

emphasized.

We can make judgements of good and evil based on our own standards of

morality and ethics which are based on what we have learned in the

world at large, but those are based on our own horizontal common sense

that we have acquired as a member of the society in general. We cannot

make judgement on providential things based on that kind of common

sense, and we have seen many examples of that in the Bible. The most

vivid example of that is the example of Tamar, the daughter-in-law of

Judah. There are actually four adulterous women in the ancestry of

Jesus whose acts actually helped to establish the conditions for the

Messiah to come. Tamar was the daughter-in-law of Judah, the wife of

Judah's son, but she received a direction from Heaven to have a

relationship with her father-in-law, and Jesus was the descendant of

that relationship. Can anyone in society throw a rock at that?

The four gospels of the New Testament include all the positive and good

things about Jesus, but that was not necessarily a record of Jesus'

life, but was a confession of the faith of the disciples who wrote

those gospels. In coming to believe in Jesus, one of the most difficult

things for the disciples was how could a person from Nazareth be the

Christ? How could such a person be the Messiah? If you have been to

Israel you know that Nazareth is a very small village, and everyone

knew about the background of Jesus' birth. Father has said that Mary

already knew from her father, her father already told her the things

she would have to do, by revelation he received that, and people in

that age all knew that Jesus was born as an illegitimate child. Partly

because of that people in Israel even today do not believe that Jesus

was the Messiah. That was one of the largest stumbling blocks in

getting people to believe in Jesus as the Messiah, that is, the

background of his birth. So in those days, by the common sense of the

general society, it was impossible to confess Jesus as the Messiah.

Another good example. In the Old Testament, let's look at Numbers

chapter 12. This is talking about the situation just before Moses was

about to send 12 men into Canaan. Moses had already married but with

the direction from Heaven, he took another woman. At that time Miriam

and Aaron his strongest supporters criticized him very harshly. In

chapter 12, verse 4, it says (Num 12:4):

'And suddenly the Lord said to Moses and to Aaron and

Miriam, "Come out, you three, to the tent of meeting." And

the three of them came out." Miriam; and they both came

forward. And he said, "Hear my words: If there is a prophet

among you, I the Lord make myself known to him in a vision,

I speak with him in a dream. Not so with my servant Moses;

he is entrusted with all my house. With him I speak mouth

to mouth, clearly, and not in dark speech; and he beholds

the form of the Lord. Why then were you not afraid to speak

against my servant Moses?" And the anger of the Lord was

kindled against them, and he departed; and when the cloud

removed from over the tent, behold, Miriam was leprous, as

white as snow. And Aaron turned towards Miriam, and

behold, she was leprous.'

And here I want to concentrate especially on verse 8, where it says,

"With him I speak mouth to mouth, clearly, and not in dark speech". In

other words, there was a direct channel of communication between God

and Moses. And brothers and sisters, I want to ask you today, do we

believe that our True Father, Rev. Sun Myung Moon, communicates

directly with God, or does he communicate with God through someone

else? [Directly] In that case, if we believe that there is a direct

communication, then with respect to the work and the deeds that Father

does, we have to look at them from the providential viewpoint.

Today I want to say to you that within our church, within our

congregation, we need to reaffirm and make sure what we believe in, and

then to the world outside, we need to prepare ourselves so that we can

go out and proclaim proudly the content of our faith.

As we approach the year 2000, all of history is coming to a conclusion

at a certain point. Many prophesiers and prophets have said that the

year 1999 will be the year of the final judgement. We are living in a

time of great judgement, and we are also at a stage now where our faith

has to be brought to its ultimate point. So let us not try to judge

based on our own flesh and blood, or on our own common sense reasoning.

There is nothing that True Parents do without reasons that lie in

providential history, and if we believe in Father and believe that he

is the Messiah, then we also have to believe in the things that he

does.

You have seen in the Bible where Jesus says, "If you cannot believe in

me, then look at the things that I do, and believe in my deeds." I

think that each of us has our own different way of coming to the

conclusion that True Parents are the Messiah. As the Messiah, there are

two things that he has to do. One is to recover human beings. But

before humanity can be restored and recovered, there are things that he

has to do as the Messiah in order to achieve that position of True

Parents, and True Parents are not in a position to explain all those

things to us and it is not necessary for him to do so. He has told us

everything about the public course that we need to take, and he does

not speak about the courses that are not our responsibility to follow.

In the course of history, there have been many religious leaders who

have received revelations about polygamy, Joseph Smith would be one

example, and others too. Some of those people then told their disciples

that they should also do the same. The True Parents have to make right

all that was wrong beginning with Adam and Eve and then go back and

then stand in the position of Adam and Eve. That is the eternal

position that Father and Mother are standing in today, and he has

already described that process through many, many speeches.

Today, I would like to introduce to you one sermon, in which Father

talks about the essential part of the change of blood lineage. Today,

Father is in a position where whether people believe it or not, he has

a responsibility to speak the truth, and so there is some of that

content that was in the speech that he gave at the anniversary of the

founding of the Washington Times on April 16, 1996, "View of the

Principle of the Providential History of Salvation"

(http://www.unification.net/1996/960416.html) and he has spoken about

this in his nationwide speaking tours, and he spoke in great detail

about the situation about the restoration of Mary. He spoke in great

detail about the aspects of Mary's mission that she was not able to

accomplish. He also spoke in detail of this in the speech, "The Meaning

of the Day of Victory of Love" which was given in São Paulo, last year. On page 22 of this speech, he revealed all that can be revealed about the situation of Adam and Eve. If you want to have a more intellectual understanding of this, you can go into bro

ther Damian Anderson's web page, and click on 1997, and click on this speech, "The Meaning of the Day of Victory of Love", and you can read that for yourselves. (http://www.unification.net/1997/970102.html)

The essential most important aspect of the restoration is the

restoration of women, that is the most important aspect of God's

providence. The fall of Eve led to the fall of all of humanity and that

has led to the situation where all humanity has a fallen blood lineage.

The Messiah is sent by Heaven, and there has to be a representative

from Earth, and Eve has to be in the position where no matter what

happens, no matter what the circumstances are, she will absolutely

believe in the Messiah, and believe in Heaven. This is the course that

Mother has come. This has been true since 1960, since their Holy

Marriage.

During the period from 1960 to 1967, Mother was married but she was not

in the position of the wife, she was in the position of the daughter,

and during that time she had to go the course of rising up from being a

daughter to becoming a wife. We have heard some things about how Mother

accomplished this heartistic victory and how Father led her through

that course. It was a very difficult and steep course. For example,

she could not even enter Father's room without his permission, that

even though she was a wife, she was actually in the position of servant

of servants, and she had to rise up to the position of wife. It was on

the foundation of Mother's victory in this course that God's Day was

proclaimed in 1968. It was in 1992 then that it was proclaimed that

Mother was really then on the same level, completely on the same level

as Father. I will read just a part of that proclamation:

"Because of this process, I could not raise True Mother until 1992.

Because women are talkative, a woman has a great possibility to

disclose providential secrets. Therefore, after accomplishing all

things for 40 years, from 1952 until 1992, with the liberation of

women, True Mother could stand beside me with equal qualifications.

From that time I began a three to four year course of handing over

my authority to True Mother. I am going such a way now until this

year. By this year, everything has to be done."

This sermon by Father, "The Meaning of the Day of Victory of Love"

contains a great deal about Father's course to accomplish this. The

content that he has taught us is very simple, that we can believe and

follow. There are many things that Father does not and cannot talk to

us about. These are providential things that only the True Family need

to know. Beginning with the 36 couples and all the way until now, the

direction that he has given us has been blessing. The direction we have

received from Father is to unite as a couple, and to establish an ideal

family. We do not understand the various indemnity conditions that have

taken place in order to bring us to the point where we can now have the

ideal family. I think that some day there will come a time when Heaven

can reveal these things to us, one by one, but it cannot be revealed

and announced before the time has come. The situation of Heaven's

history of restoration though indemnity cannot be understood and cannot

be approached from the common sense point of view of the fallen world.

It was only recently in the 1990s that Father began to talk about the

situation of Mary, and about the more detailed situation of the

background of Jesus' birth. He could not talk about this during the

1970s or the 1980s. And he spoke of the situation of Leah and Rachel,

and how this related to Mrs. Won Bok Choi, and others, which could not

be revealed before. I believe that if we read the words that Father has

given us, the answers to what concerns us today are contained within

those words.

To conclude, I would like to say again, we are in the position today of

having realized the Completed Testament Age providence together with

True Parents, and I think that if we understand who True Parents are,

then all the questions to all our concerns will come out naturally. And

there are many ways for us to understand True Parents. Of course, we

can go back to Father's words, and read the words, and understand again

who Father is. Only the Messiah can tell us about God and about Satan,

and about the formula course for restoring original sin. And only the

Messiah could have done the things that True Parents have done over the

last 40 years of providential history.

The word I would like to leave you with finally is that what we need to

do today is to pray. This is one shortcut to understanding who True

Parents are. That shortcut is to read True Parents' prayers. Read ten,

twenty examples of True Parents' prayers. When Father speaks, when he

stands up and gives a sermon, he may speak in parables and symbols, but

when he is praying, he is speaking directly with God, so there are no

parables and symbols there. There is only direct speech there. Though

Father's prayers we can see how absolutely and how completely Father

knows God. We can see to what extent and how absolutely God and True

Father are one, and how much and to what extent, how absolutely Father

and Mother have established oneness between themselves. The most

important thing is for God and True Father to be one, and for Father

and Mother to be one, and for the parents and their children to be one,

that is a priority.

Of course, with regards to the things that are taking place in the True

Family we have to be very sad. I would like to speak very simply, and

in a very common sense way about this. Recently, many wives came to

Upshur House for the 40 day IOWC course. They left behind their

husbands and children, and at the end of the 40 days it was time for

reflections and this kind of topic was mentioned then. For 40 days, the

mother was not home, and so now the children are just in a mess. First

of all spiritually they could not have a center, and in a physical

sense, no one was controlling them, no one was disciplining them. If

this had taken place so that the parents could go off and enjoy

something by themselves, then this would have been a crime. But for two

providential reasons, True Parents not just for 40 days, but for the

entire lives of their children were not able to really take care of

them as much as they would like to have done. I know that there are a

number of people in our congregation who have had opportunities to live

closely with True Parents.

Father from the time when he was 16 years old and accepted this mission

until today, there is not even one hour that he has spent for his own

private purpose. We know that Father is a person who lives for the

liberation of God and who lives for the situation of the providence

with every cell of his body from the top of his head all throughout his

body every second of every day, and that we know that through his words

and we know that through his prayers and that is the reason that we

have followed him up until today. Father gave the responsibility for

his children to us who have received the love from Heaven. There is

also their own portion of responsibility. Just from a common sense

point of view, just think about the situation of a household where the

father and mother are not present, in America. And think about what

would happen in your household, if this were to happen and the parents

were not able to be at home to discipline or control the children. In

this American environment, what would happen to the children then?

We have to accept this pain as our own pain, and the pain of this

family as the pain of our own families. This is the pain of True

Parents, it is the pain of God. In the end, the final answer to our

questions have to come from Heaven, and we have to receive it ourselves

in prayer before Heaven. I think it is not a coincidence that President

Clinton who represents America externally and the True Family are going

through similar things at the same time. Right now, heaven is carrying

out the grand finale of providential history in which all 6000 years of

history are being indemnified. This will end with the final judgement,

and this is a time that a great spiritual hurricane is coming.

Certainly with earthly physical strength, we cannot stand that, and we

will not be able to stand it with secular and general common sense. We

have to ask heaven for wisdom. We have to ask heaven for our answers,

and we have to look for our answers through the Holy Spirit. Because

the True Family is in this situation right now, the spirit world is in

an uproar, and people who pray give us all kinds of warnings. We have

also heard warnings directly from True Parents. We have to think very

deeply about our own thoughts and actions, and we have to be very

careful in what we say. We are at a point now where we can either if we

are not careful throw all our past life and the things that we have

done into the trash, or else we can stand firmly on the side of Heaven

and stand at a perpendicular angle and be connected with God.

I would like to thank you that almost everyone is praying with the

attitude of love for True Parents and concern for their situation.

Among the crosses that True Parents have to bear, the most difficult

cross to bear is the cross of love. That which was lost as a result of

love has to be restored, regained through love, and how incredible all

the situations they have faced must have been in that course. That

cannot be judged based on common sense standards. And they do not want

to leave for their children the course of indemnity that only they are

going and they need to know about. That is why they are parents of

love. Love is sacrificial love. Love is not expressed through words.

Do parents express their own struggles to their children? If True

Parents have a situation which they know has to be restored in their

own lifetimes, they are not going to pass this on to their own children

through their words.

I would like to say that True Parents already previously predicted that

this kind of situation would arise. And so after the proclamation of

God's Day, they have gone through a series of providential indemnity in

order to defeat Satan and in order to create a new God's Day. I think

Father would say something like this now, "Don't worry about me, but

worry about yourselves, and worry about your own descendants."

Let's open our spiritual eyes, and let's come together with True

Parents at a 90 degree angle with our spiritual senses. If necessary go

in through deep prayer, and if necessary, approach them through

fasting. But in any case, we are in the same boat as True Parents

today. If the way that we have come is the right way, then we cannot

feel embarrassed about what we have believed. Father has said that

there will come a time when there will be things that you cannot

believe in no matter how hard you try, but you will have to believe in

them. That is the lesson of history. That is the lesson of Ham.

The actions of Ham from general common sense were quite justified, but

from the providential viewpoint, we know that his actions were a

decisive mistake at a very important turning point in providential

history. Our confession is that Father is a person who will not

compromise even one bit away from the providence of history, who will

not turn even one step away from that.

Father has said with respect to Nan Sook, we have to pray that she will

return, that she will come back. And we have to understand that we need

to educate our children very well. We were very shocked to hear the

story about Un Jin. The only way to know about Father is through the

Divine Principle. The same with Nan Sook. She was too young. And it was

very difficult for them at their age to understand Father as the

Messiah, and to confess Father as the Messiah. All the dark forces of

history that have tried to destroy the heavenly families throughout the

course of the providence have now all come together in order to strike

at the True Family. But no matter what happens, certainly Father will

never step back, he will never retreat in the face of this. Heaven will

always continue to go forward in the providence. There will come a time

when the providence is finally victorious and Father has said that the

suffering that his family is going through will be a sacrifice for the

sake of the victory of the cosmic providence. And I hope that your deep

thoughts and deep prayers will bring you to the course that you can go

ahead. Let us pray.

[Prayer] Heavenly Father, we now realize what kind of

original family you have been looking for. We also realize

that from now on, we are destined to work toward that ideal

family with all our hearts and all our strength. Please

guide us and bless us so that we can live a pure life, with

a pure blood lineage to become people who are embraced

deeply in your eternal love. When we realize how much

suffering you have been going through in the process of

history, in order to restore this heart, we have nothing to

say to you. Father please purify those of us who pledge

ourselves in front of you, with the determination that we

will offer everything to you. We are really grateful to you

for the grace and love with which you have been protecting

and guiding us so far. We thank you, Heavenly Father, for

having taught such a wonderful heavenly secret. We now

stand in the situation in which people in the secular world

cannot even dream about, and we dont know what to offer you

in return.

Father we now clearly realize that we must wholeheartedly

offer ourselves to You on Your altar as substantial

offerings. When we think of how much you have been

suffering, we can never fully express our hearts of

gratitude. Also, we are truly grateful to our True Parents

for giving us such a blessing and grace. We pray that from

now on, we really will go forward with determination and

gratitude. Please guide us and encourage us, so that we can

help each other knowing that without our spouses, we tend

to fail. We have to protect each other, pray for each

other. We have to become truly the most intimate friends,

intimate closely related brothers and sisters, parents and

children, so that we can become qualified to build the

world of original love and great glory.

We have now heard about something very awesome, that is,

the change of blood lineage. It is a fearful thing when we

think of how difficult the course of restoration has been.

We have come here totally ignorant, but we have been

following you. We have been going this way filled with a

stubborn attitude, thinking that all the glory should

belong to us. When we think of the past, how foolish we

have been. The more we understand, the more we realize, and

we feel ashamed of ourselves. We really dont have any place

to hide. Everything belongs to heaven and to True Parents.

We need nothing more. Please guide us. We pray this in the

name of our True Parents. Amen.

(This prayer comes from the book "A Life of Prayer" by

Rev. Sun Myung Moon)