Our lifetime and the issue of eternal life

Sun Myung Moon
November 27, 1978

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How long do you think you'll live? Everyone probably thinks they'll live up to the age of about seventy or eighty; they don't think that they'll die before then. You just want everything. Even though you may believe you'll die when you're eighty or a hundred, there's no knowing if you'll die tomorrow or even today. You may think because you're young, you will live at least another forty to fifty years. You may want that. Did God guarantee that to you?

You should think that you might possibly die soon, perhaps within a year. Therefore, you should make all preparations during this short time. You should live with such thoughts. The shorter the time you think you have, the happier you will be, and the less you have to lose. Your sincere preparations during this time become the building blocks of your home for your eternal life. Have you ever loved God with such a short time in mind? You want to become one with Him and love Him, but you cannot. God says to you, "Love Me!" If you die after having lived this way, then you will become the master of eternal life.

If you thought that you would die two years later, how serious would you be? You would start visiting cemeteries and attending funeral services. It is absolutely necessary to do this in a life of faith. That is why those who seek to gain their life will lose it and those who seek to lose their life will gain it. The Principle applies here. If you think of dying for God's will and for heaven during the short time of your life, you will live eternally.

Within the same principle, consider how grateful a man would be who, thinking he would die single and unmarried, received a loving wife before his death? How happy would a man, who died without being married to anyone, be if he were suddenly resurrected and able to marry?

Until what age will you live and die? What would you do if you had to go forth to immediate death under God's order? You should leave something behind that God could praise. Then you would feel that your time is too precious to spend sleeping and eating. You would not have any time to worry even if you wanted to.

With regard to the matters of life and of eternity, you can live your lives with greater value the more you think of life as being short. What value comes from loving an individual, a family and a tribe? It creates a textbook for loving all humankind. It is a textbook for loving everybody in the spirit world that transcends time and space.