Sun Myung Moon
June 4, 1970
By offering a tithe from your material possessions to God, you can establish a condition equal to having offered all that you have. Even if you do not offer everything to God, offering a portion of it with all of your heart and mind will enable the rest to be considered holy. The person who tithes will never perish. As days go by, his storage room will be filled with more material blessings.
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I am at a loss for words before a devoted person. As leader of the Unification Church, when I am considering which of two people is better, I do not take into account who is handsome, but rather I look at the direction of their mind. In other words, I see whether their mind is public or personal.
Parents should set a good example in their life of faith. In their family, they should show their children, in their prayer life or family worship, a life of faith that is exemplary in every way. They should help children realize the importance of Pledge time. It is not enough just to hold Pledge service during that hour. As parents, they should teach their children about God's will.
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You should keep the official time for services. Then you will surely prosper.
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Whether or not you participate in church gatherings will become an issue; whether or not you fulfill your responsibility in church activities will become an issue; and whether or not you become a good example as a parent in front of your children in family life will become an issue.
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In order to educate children, parents should first practice accordingly. The parents should be a model of loyalty to God's will. They should stand in the position where the children regard them with such awe so that they would not utter a word against whatever the parents say. If not, the children will not follow them.
In regard to church life, children will observe their parents and compare their actions with what they understand of God's will and the Principle. When children see that their parents neglect church responsibilities and do not live according to headquarters' directions, while at the same time expecting their children to live in a principled way, then they will surely sneer at their parents.
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First, you should be meticulous in your church life. For this, you should strictly observe the official hours for worship. You should be a good example by attending service at the official hour.
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Parents should set a good example in their life of faith. In the family, they should show their children how fervently they practice all aspects of a life of faith, including prayer life and family services. They should help the children recognize how important the time for Pledge is. They should not just hold Pledge service at that particular time, but as parents, they should also teach their children about God's will.
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Blessed families should teach their children how to offer the Sabbath day to God by showing them an exemplary life of offering devotion from the break of day in order to prepare for the service. But in reality they do whatever they want to do. They do not pray, offer devotions, study the Principle, or witness in the name of a life of living faith. If the Sunday Service starts at 10:30, they should leave for church at 9:30 or 10:00. Instead of doing this, they leave home late and rush into their seats in the middle of the service. Such a family will be accused. As parents, no matter how much they educate their children, it will not influence them at all.
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Think about it. How many people come before Sunday Service and help prepare for it? Many are just arriving when the sermon is about to begin, after the singing of the holy songs. How can we call such people followers of God's will? No matter how well they make excuses, they are living a private-minded life, not a public-minded one. There is nothing we can hope for or expect from such people. Therefore, you should seek a fresh understanding of God's will and go forth with the resolution to be conscientious in public life and to be a good example in private life.
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All Blessed Families, without exception, should arrive before the church service starts and create an atmosphere of grace for the many types of people who will attend, so that they may experience grace. If you create a foundation of heart to support the minister before he comes up to give the sermon, the speaker will be stimulated by the fervent expressions on the members' faces. The number of such members determines the development of the church.
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Pledge service should not be done only on Sunday mornings. Basically, we should do it every day. When you rise in the morning, you should first do Pledge service facing headquarters. It is an official ceremony. However, if we do Pledge service like that every day, there can be adverse effects. In order to avoid these side effects, as a condition, we do pledge only on Sunday mornings and on the mornings of the first day of each month. Ideally, we should be doing it every day.
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There are morning meetings everyday between the king of a nation and his subjects. In a Korean family, the children first greet their parents when the parents rise in the morning. Isn't this part of Korean tradition? In order to indemnify fallen history, you should establish the finest set of laws among all laws, including the laws of filial duty to one's parents. Even for a nation, you should establish laws superior to the highest existing standard.
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In Korean society, during the three-year mourning period after their parents have passed away, the children offer meals to the departed spirits of their parents every morning and evening. Also, whenever they go out or return home, they give a greeting towards the altar of their parents. Aren't there such traditions in Korean society? You have to do better than that. Does what you do now precisely fulfill the formalities of Heaven from the viewpoint of God's will? It does not. Far from it.
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You should consider public anniversaries and events of our church as part of your very own life and mobilize yourself. Families who do not do this are failures as Blessed Families.
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Just as I instructed at the time of the 1968 Blessing of 430 couples, you also should become tribal messiahs. You must fulfill this mission. For instance, the 36 couples from the Kim tribe should be organized centered on members of the Kim family who have already received the Blessing, just as the 36 Couples are organized in the church around me. If it is too difficult to establish 36 couples, you should at least become the ancestors of 12 couples. Then you should become the ancestors of your tribe and organize your tribe into twelve branch tribes. When you accomplish this, your entire tribe will be included in those twelve branch tribes, thus becoming a tribe of your direct lineage.
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When you work in an agricultural community, you are not to work alone. A husband and wife together are to report the day's schedule to God before going out to work, and they are to report to God after work and then eat dinner. You should know how strict is the God-centered standard of life that regulates all these things. There are rules of family life for women and for men, respectively.
The path you should take is one of systematizing the great heavenly rules and then following them. You must follow this path. Should you not do so, then your life will lose its meaning.
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You can now build up a tribal foundation in your lifetime. How glorious this is! You should be grateful to know this. Yet, if you cannot fulfill that responsibility, your family will still be held accountable for it. In this respect, of course, the responsibility of the family is important, but now families should take upon themselves the mission of tribal messiah.
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You must pray. In deciding the time to pray, you should try praying at daybreak, in the morning, at lunch, in the evening, and even at eleven or twelve at night. When you lead a life of prayer like that for many years, you should know which period of time is the best time for you to pray. Knowing this, you should offer devotion to God at the time that is right for you.
If possible, you should pray with a person who has a high standard of grace. By doing so, you will receive grace through that person. If your husband has a higher standard of grace than you and if he leads an exemplary life of faith, you will come to receive grace because of him. After receiving grace in this way, you will look upon your husband as the most handsome man in the world. In reverse, if the husband receives grace through his wife, his wife will surely look most beautiful to him; she will be the most beautiful woman in the world. This is how couples should have been.
Thus, when you are awake, you want to see each other, and whisper to each other throughout the night. That is not something that brings ruin but rather prosperity.
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You should shed tears and enter a serious state of mind that melts the bone marrow and calls for a one-toone showdown. You should enter a state where you can have give and take with God with such an obedient mind that God cries when you cry and you cry when God cries. Whatever happens, you should be able to do that. To do so, you need to pray. You need a root and that root is prayer.
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When offering devotion, you must enter a position of absolute faith. You should enter the position where you have absolute faith in God and His will. God cooperates with you only when you are in such a position.
When you pray, you should not foolishly doubt whether your prayer will be answered or not. You should be able to pray, saying: "Father! I am the only one who remains. Without me, this nation and world will disappear. Oh Father! I alone remain in this state of commitment for the foundation, for which You have toiled for six thousand years. Am I not the only one who is close to Your will that will surely be fulfilled by You? Although my position is important as such, I have not prepared myself yet. Still, you have given me the order. Thus, I will prepare myself with the conditions and foundations enabling me to follow that order, and I will represent this entire people. Isn't this Your providence for restoration?" Prayer is needed even for fulfilling goals.
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A long time ago, when the families of loyal subjects received something good, they first offered it to the king of the nation. That was the rule of the life of loyalty in Korea. From that perspective, Korean courtesy reflects something central to heaven that cannot be found in any other nation. Confucians follow the teachings of Confucius, and there is quite a lot of traditional conduct prescribed in Confucian teachings that is close to heavenly law. You should ask your descendants to perform a sacrificial rite for you in the future. So far, the regulations of life and the procedure for holding a funeral have not been established centering upon the Principle, but once the standard is established in the future, you should follow it.
You should develop and protect the vitality of life in order to survive and grow, no matter what kind of storm comes, overcoming your environment and taking root deeply, centered upon the belief that God is always with you in every situation. If you become like that, it will not be a problem for God to set up His laws. But if you do not develop like that, it becomes problematic.