by Carl Redmond-Warilla, Australia
It is a singular and most peculiar problem this world has to face, and more specifically, America. This great nation, blessed by God, committed the grievous sin of actually imprisoning the Lord of the Second Coming. It is a virtually unpardonable crime, which can not be atoned for even if thousands of generations were to pass. With what kind of response-ability do we face such a situation today?
Two thousand years ago Jesus Christ, the Son of God, was crucified on the cross. He had done no wrong, and yet he was treated as a criminal. The world as it was then, received him, rejected, him, digested him, and spat him out as something or someone distasteful. History sighed, lamented and rolled on.
It would take a person lacking in rudimentary intelligence of good manners, to pass off such doings as the "predestined plan of God," even scurrying through the Bible for passages which may seem to support such a viewpoint. If they are so sure, as indeed some Christian ministers are, that such devious actions were "God's will," then perhaps they would do the same thing today if he were to return. It is a shameful thing, when confronted with the truth, to insist that violence is God's Way.
And yet this is precisely what happened. Return he did, yet there was no "Golgotha Hill" awaiting him. Starvation, deprivation, torture, character assassination, mocked by the supposedly intelligent media who portrayed him as a monster, and then in the land of "milk and honey," the Promised Land, America, tried in a court, found "guilty" by a jury, and sentenced by a judge to prison.
The question I would ask is: What kind of sin did he commit, this Only Son of God? What kind of atonement could be offered for so unpardonable a crime? They imprisoned the Lord of the Second Coming. Next thing you know they will be telling us, as before, "it was God's will."
Life goes so very fast for most of us, slipping away in precious seconds, minutes, days, months, years. Before we know where we are, it is surely all finished. In its path, there is nothing, only silence and a landscape waiting to be written on by the few mortals that next get the opportunity to make use of their precious existence on this planet of ours.
Wake up sleeping world! Wake up each one of us! Let us truly realize both in the church and out of it, the unfathomable crimes of humanity. This, the major one, locking up the Lord of The Second Coming, interrupting his precious life on Earth by eighteen months and-for that time at least-throwing away the key!
Each one of us should feel to the bone the responsibility of seeing our Lord suffer. Washing dishes, scrubbing floors, washing dirty dishrags until they became as new, setting tables in a cafeteria. For this purpose he came to the Earth? For this he lived?
Life goes so very fast. There is hardly time to think. Innocent people suffer when others regress. Let us repent most sincerely for the sins of others. At least if we cannot repent for our own misdeeds, we can try by feeling some responsibility for others. In everything there is an internal cause. It is easy to look at others and say "It's your fault." What kind of responsibility do we ourselves take for events that transpired?
There are wrongs to be righted. Up to now, not much has been done to right them. What kind of response can we, as the Unification Community, make to ease the sufferings and indignities of this thorny path?