THE WAY OF GOD'S WILL
Rev. Sun Myung Moon

ON THE
WILL OF GOD

VI. Suffering, Offering,
Obedience

1. Suffering

Anyone can keep going in an easy situation, but do you have a philosophy which can enable you to meet the worst hardship?

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To endure hardship means to secure your position.

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The root of a plant which we planted with suffering can only be pulled out by someone who would suffer more than we.

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The degree of prosperity is in proportion to the degree of suffering.

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Even though you are persecuted, don't die or get exhausted, but bless him who beats you for seven generations.

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Before the age of 30, there was no day when I was not hungry. How could I have eaten and slept in comfort before the foundation was accomplished which I had sworn before God to establish?

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You are a fruit of 6,000 years of history. Unless you suffer more than all the prophets and sages who emerged in history, you will forfeit the position of being able to stand before God.

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We did not join the Church in order to enjoy ease. As God's representatives we will be whipped, go through hell and pain, and become victorious in spite of these circumstances. In other words, we are a group of people who were gathered in order to inherit God's cross.

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The Kingdom of Heaven is the place where only those who have triumphed over the suffering of hell can enter.

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Those who suffer unjustly will surely triumph some day.

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Life of suffering => Life of consolidating => Life of heightening.

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The victor of all suffering is the king of glory.

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Don't show that you suffered. Store many hidden treasures.

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You cannot govern the whole under one idea from a high position but from a position below average.

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Let us become a group of people who, subjugating all hardships, long for the blessed and promised land and get excited to run toward there. In fighting we must not be pushed and overthrown by our envirornment. Instead, we must become a group of people who can march forward and survive.

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What is important is not the fact that the Unification Church is the encyclopedia of ideas but the fact that it is the encyclopedia of suffering.

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Work to feed those who are hungry even though you may have to go without food yourself. They will remember it to the marrow of their bones.

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A tower which is built with the utmost sincere effort cannot fall down. Neither God nor Satan can take it away from you.

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Suffer much, shed many tears, be ill-treated much, and you will enrich yourself on the heavenly side.

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Heaven allows you to suffer now so that you may have eternal riches in the eternal world.

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Weep with heaven. Never shed tears for yourself.

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When there is a miserable situation, never think it's someone else's business. And when something joyful occurs, don't think it is for yourself alone.

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Be calm even when enduring hardship. You should not lose your head even in a difficult situation.

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Don't expect to be understood. Store your suffering in your secret place. Rejoice over things you can't see.

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When the standard of mind is different from the standard of the Will, man suffers pain and internal conflict in his life. Therefore, the way of sacrifice and endurance has been pioneered by religion. No one has accomplished the purpose of goodness without endurance.

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Forget your hunger by having an ever stronger desire to fulfill the Will.

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We suffer so that we may open the way to eliminate the suffering of others.

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Fallen man doesn't worry about the purpose of his existence itself, but only about the things he needs to maintain it. But Heaven definitely helps those who work hard for the whole purpose, not worrying about their own livelihood.

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Only suffering can subjugate both God and Satan.

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Woe comes to those who suffer in the satanic world, but happiness comes to those who suffer in the world of God.

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The only way to survive is to suffer.

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Fight with the confidence that you will never die until the day when all mankind sheds tears in seeing the land which we suffered to restore.

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Undergo hardships, but don't die or get exhausted.

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Heaven allows us to suffer unspeakable hardships so that we may realize deeply that the way of restoration is impossibly difficult, and so that we may not repeat the Fall again.

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Even when going to the cross, Jesus endured with the heart which could say, "My Father, not as I will, but as Thou wilt." When God saw that heart, He lifted Jesus up to His glory. Therefore, Jesus is praying that everyone who works with the same heart as his may be raised to the same glory.

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When I went to prison I didn't dwell so much on my suffering, but confidently saw it as a good chance to demonstrate my ability.

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You must build a foundation which will enable heaven and earth to recognize the fact that you suffered for the sake of the Will and to sympathize with you. Then neither God nor Satan can accuse you.

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Since the path we have been treading is for God, the universe and all mankind, the period of our suffering corresponds to the whole period of human history.

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When you are undergoing suffering, don't cry out. The living God knows your situation all too well, even though you don't tell Him about it. If you weep and pray sorrowfully for yourself, God will become more sorrowful and bear a double burden. Up to today God had not a single person who could understand His great sorrow and pain in history. He has endured them by Himself. Comfort God first. If you do so, He will embrace you and shed tears of joy.

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I know your suffering only too well. But where is the parent who will ask his child to serve him with 50% filial piety? A parent wants his child to serve with as much filial piety as possible. You must understand that since I have served God with 100% filial piety I cannot be proud before God of the child who has served with only 99%.

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This is the place where those who have already dedicated themselves for the sake of the Will are gathered. Therefore, it is impossible for you not to make unity centered on the Will. You must unite with one another, overcoming miserable and difficult circumstances.

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Be beaten obediently, be trampled upon obediently and be pierced obediently. Yet don't die, but survive.

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Satan is fighting day and night. Are all of you fighting day and night too?

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Let us enable heaven and earth to shed new tears.

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Where we suffer, even God hangs His head.

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We have to go the path which even Satan cannot go, for we have to put him to rout.

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Only go through that suffering which I can remember.

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You become an important person through suffering.

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God makes you suffer so that you may become free from accusation.

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From now on we have to shed tears of joy.

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Man's painful life is unavoidable, because due to the cosmic Fall his mind seeks hope but his flesh seeks this present reality.

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Let us, the Unification Church members, grow by being beaten. If we are to grow, let us grow straight and true.

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Suppose you were paid a salary for your suffering. Who would pay you? If you were to get paid, you would be just an employee of God.

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God wanted to make you suffer so that you could not be proud of your defective self and so that He might place you in a position beyond Satan's accusation.

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He who does not avoid suffering but welcomes it is a person who goes the path of God.

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As long as we shed blood, sweat and tears, there remains capital within us. There are only blood, sweat and tears for the budget of the Unification Church.

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I am an encyclopedia of suffering.

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It is suffering that enables us to pass through God's judgment and Satan's accusation.

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Those who have not fought cannot feel the heart of a victor.

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If there is anyone who calls God by understanding His sorrow, which is bigger than the universe, then God will call that person His son or daughter.

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In order to free yourself from the load and debt which you were made to shoulder, you have to cut off your brotherly or parent-child relationship with Satan.

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To sacrifice means to fight. Fighting is a means or method to bring forth unity.

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God makes you suffer to the extent that He can say to you, "You belong to me."

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A great person becomes a responsible person by marching forward ceaselessly. In the mind of God it was not decided that Abraham be a loyal subject. On the contrary, God blessed him as if He promised to do so because it was only Abraham who showed faith at that time. But it was not the final blessing.

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Jesus' suffering lasted 33 years. Moses' suffering spanned 120 years. But the suffering of the One is such that heaven and earth surrender to Him and even Satan is impressed with Him. Therefore, the world will belong to Him. This is the suffering of God.

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A bright future is restored to mankind only when Family members suffer so that spirit men and earthly men may cry.

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My strategy is to make Satan speechless, and to subjugate him by means of the suffering which you are always undergoing.

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Development comes to you when you neglect today's suffering and march ceaselessly for the sake of future happiness.

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As I was starting the mission given to me I thought that I must cross over paths such that every cell in my body would cry out.

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I want to make you God's sons and daughters. You have to become God's sons and daughters. For this reason, birth pangs or suffering are not to be avoided in this process. He who intends to make you God's children has to win, and you have to be defeated. Thereafter you will be entitled to be God's sons and daughters. After that, with filial piety as God's children, as His chaste men and women, and as His loyal subjects, you should take charge of one aspect of His ideal of creation.

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If you think that you have to suffer more, even after you have passed through a certain amount of suffering, you will be able to lead this nation.

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The liberation of resentment through indemnity begins with tears. You have to refrain from being in a glorious position and have God remember you who are in a lowly position.

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Loyal subjects, chaste women and dutiful children do not emerge at ordinary times but in difficult situations.

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Do not be disappointed if you have no external result for your painstaking effort. What matters is how much sincerity you have invested in it.

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We have to inherit historical suffering. The wider the scope of history, the more historicity is added to internal heart, and the more difficult it becomes to inherit historical suffering.

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Do not deplore having become such a miserable person. What matters is whether there is a way for your situation to be approved and guaranteed historically.

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The life of a person who has walked a complicated and crooked path is more profound and tasteful than that of a person who has walked an uncomplicated and flat path without suffering.

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No one endured more than God, and no one suffered more than God.

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When you have something sweet while you are eating something bitter, it is really stimulating, no matter how little it may be.

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The main current of a river, without returning to itself, collides with the parts nearest to the riverside and is the first to get wounded.

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Trial and pain are not my enemies, but the material which can determine great value.

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Absolutely do not regret the past steep course you walked centering upon the Will of God. It is your property. You have to choose another steep path even while you are on the present steep course.

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Anyone can become a child of filial piety before God. But the path of a true child of filial piety is that of a person who is alone and takes the responsibility for difficult things.

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The path of pioneering is that of adventure. The only weapons are effort and a fighting spirit.

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The path a pioneer seeks is not centered on the present days, but is the path which always searches for the contents of future value. Only in this way can development and hope be maintained for eternity.

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We have no way to stop the person who willingly toils.

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The greatest joy comes when you pass through the climax of sorrow.

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A snake cannot grow without casting off its skin. It has to go through a stone wall in order to shed its skin. In the same way, man should go through a course of indemnity in order to shed the skin of sin which he wears.

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Indemnity works well only when it is done through someone God loves. Therefore, God indemnifies centering upon saints.

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If you seek a nation of happiness, you have t sacrifice yourself by living in an unhappy nation.

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Those seeds which have no vitality to overcome winter cannot see a new, hopeful start with the new spring.

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In this world you cannot know what prison life is like unless you are imprisoned. Why? Because there is nothing which is not precious in a prison.

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In order not to shed tears of regret after the establishment of the Will of God, you now go a path of repentance in tears. You cannot see a high mountain without going through a deep valley.

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Grace not accompanied by suffering will flow away.

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2. Offering

Never complain. Indemnity is fulfilled only through obedience.

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If you feel mortified because you as an offering are placed below the standard of your birth, God will be sympathetic for you and Satan will not be able to accuse you.

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"Bad things are mine, and good things are yours. Bad things are ours and good things belong to our nation." With this spirit you can conquer the world.

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Because an indemnity course is the period of offering, during that period you must not have the consciousness of your own existence.

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It is most important for you to establish a standard of hard work that will prove you have done all you can do to the best of your ability.

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Jesus was the purest offering in the life of heart and in the life of offering.

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We must always be reaching out for difficulties and distasteful things.

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You cannot become an offering if you are looking for sympathy in your circumstances.

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If you want to obtain glory, take over a burden of troubles responsibly.

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Those who take on the responsibility of God's Will should never want to be at ease from the beginning. God gives you more severe training than Satan so that Satan can never be able to invade you.

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Suffering is painful, but it is short.

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As an offering, you must rejoice only after God, who receives you, rejoices, and after those who receive blessing through you rejoice.

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Your first feeling in the morning decides the outcome of the entire day. Try to make God happy by becoming the first to sacrifice in the morning.

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In order to pay indemnity for yourself, it is necessary to tread the course of suffering in the positions of a servant, an adopted son and a true son. This then becomes a condition of glory because you work in place of God.

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Jesus was a pure offering all through his life. A pure offering is a pure first thing, not touched or seen by others. Therefore, you must dedicate yourself as a pure being with all your heart, all your mind and all your will. You will never be able to experience the love of God if you devote your second-hand heart, mind and will.

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Try to make God anxious. If you win His sympathy, all problems will come to be solved.

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Do you have any former attachments left in the life you are going to dedicate? If there is the slightest trace of a defect in the offering you place on the altar of God, Satan will accuse.

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It is necessary to offer yourself to Heaven unconditionally and entrust yourself to the Will. Since God is your Father, He knows best where you should be and leads you to the place of joy and fulfillment.

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Since God in His generosity revived me who had died, without price, my life is no longer my own but belongs to Him. What is the best way to give my life for the joy of God? With this spirit, you should search for the place to die gloriously.

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Unification soldiers should abandon their awareness of ordinary life. Live each day by dashing over obstacles.

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The age of the Second Advent is the age of the heifer. A heifer devotes all her loyalty to her master and fulfills her task of propagation during her life. Moreover, she gives her bones, skin and flesh after her death. There is no part of her body which is not offered.

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If you are trodden upon together with the Will, which is good, you will never lose. You will accomplish the Will even before you know when and how.

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Heaven wants the whole rather than just the individual to be an offering. In order to make a desirable offering, unity of your whole life, action and ideal is necessary.

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An offering symbolizes obedience and surrender. Therefore, it is selfless, does not have the consciousness of possession, and does not resist even on the verge of death.

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It took Heaven 6,000 tearful years just to find and train each one of us. Therefore, we members who have found the Will must serve for six or seven years, shedding tears without any recompense. When I was 16 years old, I started this path, setting my goal of working forty years and being ready to die.

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Who can become a Stephen in the ideal of unification? Don't expect any comforts, but look for hardships before you receive glory. If so, God will be with you and you will find companions.

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Be a person who is unconditionally utilized by God. It is when you dwell within God's heart so deeply that He can use you that you can receive His blessing.

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You should be able to thank God, even though He may put you through the kind of whipping or storm in which you can restore within a year what takes others ten years, and within ten years what takes others a lifetime. God wants to visit such a person.

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If you die for the nation, you will be able to be resurrected when the nation is resurrected. If you die for the world, you will be able to be resurrected when the world is resurrected.

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God always sent those whom He trusted the most through the steepest way. This is why many people He loved were sacrificed.

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We have to know that when man sets up a condition of indemnity of lesser value, God takes the responsibility of making up the deficiency of the condition. Because it takes God a certain amount of time to set up the rest of the condition, the indemnity is prolonged until His preparation of it.

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Personal indemnity may be paid through material. For that purpose, we have only to do goodness by sowing material things before the realization of a purpose.

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He who bears the indemnity of the world will receive both the blessing which is due to the world and the blessing due to him.

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Indemnity is never consummated unless you dash and fight.

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I go the way of restoration through indemnity, while you go the way of the Principle.

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First be struck, then steal the blessing. If Satan strikes you who have done well, hitting you over three times, then Heaven will strike him.

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We are offerings. First God, who has received them, can rejoice, and then all mankind who have been redeemed. Then after that, we, the offerings, rejoice.

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It is a fundamental rule that an offering should always be offered on the front line and not in a peaceful situation.

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Reconstruction cannot be done without an offering. Re-creation is done beginning with something, although creation starts from nothing.

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The purpose of an offering is to liquidate the debt of sinners. Thus, it is in the position of giving something to others.

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To offer material is to indemnify the Old Testament Age; to sacrifice the flesh is to indemnify the New Testament Age; and to serve the, Will of God with heart and tears is to restore the Completed Testament Age.

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We did not join the Unification Church to receive happiness but to give the world the yeast made of the happiness we took from ourselves.

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3. Obedience

Be obedient to commands. Although a command may not be just, be obedient to it. By following the command, you will be able to take over the authority of the commander.

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If you do not carry out Heaven's command on the individual level, how can God give you blessing on the family level?

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Absolute obedience and absolute surrender automatically put you in the position of an object. Jealousy and envy put you in the position of conflict.

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The loyal subject and the treacherous subject originally belong to the same class of people. But the former is obedient to his king's will, while the latter is self-centered. The loyal subject walks the straight path, and his beginning and end are always the same.

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It is God who has enabled you to have a heartfelt mind, so you should bow before Him with that mind. You must also feel sorry before Him and His Will.

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God is looking for a historically obedient person. Be a person who is obedient to commands and who awaits even bigger commands.

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It is natural to be obedient to a superior, but you must be able to obey and feel ashamed even before a child's command.

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To be obedient means to become one with the subject and take part in his glory.

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Until now God advised but did not command. The time has come when He commands, but the number of those who receive His command will be extremely limited.

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The ultimate determinant of success or failure is loyalty alone.

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God can never ignore those who are truly loyal. What matters in the end is not your knowledge or position, but the sincerity with which you love God-given circumstances and make much of time. Look at Yoo Kwan Soon [a girl who advocated a movement for the independence of Korea]. She had nothing to be proud of, but she was loyal when the nation failed to be loyal and even when she faced circumstances that would make loyalty impossible. Thus she established a standard of loyalty for this nation, didn't she?

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After the period of loyalty comes the period when we present our offerings, which determines success or failure. The central figures who were responsible for the history of restoration did not fail in the period of loyalty but in the period of offering.

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It is true that genuine happiness and glory sprang from where people were most sorrowful, miserable and agonized.

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A nation will never perish if its leaders and followers communicate with one another in genuine tears in pursuit of one common purpose. Moreover, how could mankind ever perish if our tears and God's would blend as one? Men are destined to weep in the Last Days, whether they cry tears of sorrow or tears of joy. What sort of tears will you cry?

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I will not thoughtlessly receive your sincere loyalty. If my sincerity is less than yours, I will be smitten by God.

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What is not true can never remain in history. Give truthfully. The Israelites should have obeyed Moses absolutely until the destruction of the seven Canaanite tribes. Until the Lord establishes God's sovereignty in one nation and restores other nations through it in the Last Days, you must obey him absolutely.

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When you make a deposit in a bank and then want to make a withdrawal, you must go through a certain procedure. How much more complicated must be the procedure to restore a life already dead? Since you don't know the particulars of this difficult procedure, obedience is the wisest way.

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Before God there should be three kinds of people: those who are adventurous, those who are loyal, and those who are obedient. If we belong to none of these categories, we cannot enter the Heavenly Kingdom.

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Everyone can and must be obedient, but not everyone can submit himself. Indemnity can be done only through submission.

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You who are following Heaven should not clamor against what I am doing when you are only judging from appearances.

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Don't complain against God. Your complaint would become a sin which could hardly be forgiven.

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When you are accused for some reason, make a sincere effort to indemnify more than what you are accused of.

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