The path that pastors must walk

Leaders and Jeong Seong

The path that pastors must walk

If you are to become pastors and become the pastors who are God’s sons, you must always have in your mind the questions. ‘what will God think of this? What will True Parents think of this?’

When you cannot serve True Parents personally, you must endlessly pray and study Parents’ Words. Also, you must do exactly as Father has told us to do, feel the Shimjeong of God, and become spiritually brighter. No one can attain such states without doing so.

The Bible tells us that to love the Lord is to follow the words of the Lord. It means to obey the word of the Lord. Father said this very frequently. That is why there is joy in ministry.

You may not feel like you have what it takes to become a pastor, but if you stay aligned with Heaven, the environment in which you find yourself will infinitely raise you. You should understand that the very fact that you are working as a pastor, and not working in the outside world, puts you in a very holy position. Please think what a blessing it is for us, as pastor, to wait through the week to see the members on Sunday, worry about what we will say to them when we see them, and what kind of sermon we will give.

In my life-long course of following the Will, I’ve experienced many types of persecution, including being expelled from my school and being ridiculed by others who called me ‘crazy.’ However, I told myself that my efforts of giving people Words and offering them salvation is more rewarding than any other occupation in this world. I regard this work as the happiest of all.

Female members of our church who gave birth told me that the second generation children born into blessed families are not confident about becoming pastors and doing ministerial work. They asked me how they could make their children become more confident about walking the pastoral path. I told them that the pastor’s course is not long. It is like rice seedlings that only need to grow a short while before they are transplanted into the rice paddy.

As we all know, Washington Times is our Newspaper company. Washington Times once held a photography competition and one of our members took the first prize. Do you want to know what that picture was? It was a picture of an old hunched-back . Priest walking in a chapel holding a lamp. We proudly presented the first-prize picture to Father. However, Father said “For someone to work as a minister until his back becomes hunched like that that is a cruel thing. Pastors must have the kingship as well.”

The priests in the Old Testament poured oil on kings to anoint them. The position of priests was very high back then. They would receive God’s voice and convey it to the kings. Therefore, how high should the position of a pastor increase? They should attain higher position than kings. They must be the king of all kings.

Isn’t this Father position? Pastors must be able to control kings and nations. Therefore, pastors must attain the highest level of character and shimjeong. How could they have the right of kings and be able to control nations without first becoming like True father and True mother?

Walking the course of becoming pastors therefore is the highest level a path one could walk on as a human being. People live 80 to 100 years which is really nothing. I will become 64 this years and I feel my life has just zipped through time. This is why we must not set a goal that will end with our physical lives. We must look to our eternal life. The spirit world, which we will enter after our death, is a place of infinity. We cannot die or run away.

If we are to be able to hold our head up high in the spirit world and be in a more glorious position, we have to make adequate preparation on Earth. I heard that Father also asked Mother to raise their fourteen children as pastors. He said that there is nothing more rewarding than the work of guiding the people of the satanic world to become the people of Heaven.

Father told us that the state of our physical bodies will be determined by how healthy we were inside of our mother’s wombs as fetuses. When we see a baby weak or unhealthy, it is because their health was bad when they were in their mother’s womb. We say that the state of health of a fetus determined the fetus’s next 100 years of life on Earth.

Then what is this Earth? Father said that we live inside of a bag of water when we were just fetuses. Then he said that this earth, where we live with our physical bodies, is the bag of air. We take whatever we made on this earth for about hundred years and go to the spirit world, which is a world of eternity. When we realize that our lives on earth are the preparation for the eternal world that we are set to enter, will we be able to loosen up and let things slip? We will jot be able to live our life so lightly.

Then what is the most non-damaging kind of life? It is the path that Father walked, the course of ministry. even if you were to walk the course of ministry, you would not work as a minister for your entire life. There is a second generation child who happens to be spiritually very bright, and he said that “Pastors will work as politicians in the future.” Pastors must jump into the field of politics. Pastors must become congressmen and even presidents.

The pastors that we have seen so far looked very miserable because they had to walk the course of indemnity. There is a sacrifice for each age in the history of the providence. The reason the blessed families in 1991 had to return to their homeland was that there was a historic indemnity that had to be made. Father was in great pain whenever he heard that many of the members were experiencing hardships because of it.

What did Father say at that time? “I don’t have the luxury of worrying about a hundred or two hundred of members going financially broke. I have the responsibility of finding tribal messiah, of restoring nations and the world. As such is the case, I do not have the luxury of worrying about sacrificing the family members that I love. If they follow me, they will never die. Great people will come out of their descendants and there will be sons-and daughters-in law who will join my own descendants one day in marriage.” Father blessed them in this way.

I was in America when the order to return to our homeland was given. How did I feel at the moment? I felt “Father is searching for the loyal subjects, good sons and daughters, and faithful husbands and wives who can represent this age.”

So those who complained failed the test, but those who held back their complaints and returned to their homelands were ‘Grade A’ students. We would never be able to tell the difference between people if we put them in the same place. But if we shake the environment a little, empty seeds will be flung away but the good seeds will remain. This is why Father shakes us as hard as he can whenever the providence is about to embark on a new beginning and separate the bad seeds from the good one.

There may be among you who serve your parents who have gone back to their homeland and experienced a lot of hardship, but if your parents can endure the suffering, then great people of heaven will be born in your bloodline. Therefore, please do not criticize or complain about the things that Father does. If we want to know, we must pray to God and find the answer ourselves.

How great could it have been if Noah second son Ham did not influence his brothers when he became ashamed of his father’s naked body? His influence on his brothers led to his fall. If we are unaware about something, God gives the answer to our question if we keep asking him even to the point of resembling a fool. ‘Father! I do not know this. Please teach me so that I may know.’ Also, we must pray as if we are having a conversation with God instead of just praying like a monologue. Who is the owner of our prayers? It’s God.

The one who listen to our prayers most seriously is God, our parents. If we keep praying sincerely, the level of our Jeonseong reaches a certain point. That’s when God will certainly answer our questions. Therefore, we must wait while believing that God listens to our prayers. It is important to believe and wait.

If we ask a question to someone, we don’t get a complete answer. Therefore, we must find our answer in the Words, and find the answer in the midst of our secretive prayers with God. It is very important to keep asking twenty four hours a day. ‘God, what do you think about this? Parents, what do you think about this? This is what the Words say.’

We should always pray as if we are speaking to an actual living person. Don’t just pray in one direction and conclude, ‘Aju!’ Also we couldn’t pray all night long even if we wanted, could we? I have many good experiences about this so I know this well.

“Father, I have so many questions that I am unable to understand. I must solve this problem, so please come to me in my dream and give me an answer or at least give me your response through inspiration.”

Then I certainly have special dreams. If I don’t dream, then sometimes my mouth moves automatically when I wake up. If listen to myself speak, I come to realize that I am not speaking out of my own conscious but I am speaking the answer the answer to the question that I asked a day earlier. I find the answer sometimes suddenly in the words of members, sometimes even from passerby. Though most of them come through inspiration. It’s really fun to have those kinds of experiences.

I have a mink coat when I was in New York. Mother gave this to me. The coat even had Mother’s name. I was serving Mother when Father went to Danbury and Mother gave me a ring and a few suits and also a mink coat during that time. I don’t wear the mink coat as much now because I want to preserve it.

It was a cold winter day but the heating system of New Yorker Hotel, which I was in at the time, was so good that I did not not know how cold it was outside. That may have been the reason but God keep giving me a direction to “wear the mink coat because it’s cold outside.” So I kept mumbling under my breath, “I don’t want to!”

It was on the day when Father was going to cut the tape for this new extended building of our newspaper company. Korean pastors were getting ready to go to the occasion. I did not wear the mink coat because I felt as if someone would steal it if I hung it somewhere. There are many thieves in America. So even though my heart was strongly urging to me to wear the mink coat, I refused and wore something else.

The wind was blowing so hard that I stepped outside the building but I want to come back in as soon as possible and go to my room on the 31st floor to put on my mink coat. Then the Korean pastors were complaining that they were going to be late because of me. They told me to get in the car quickly and shoved me inside the car like a crate. When we arrived at the place where the event was happening, it was freezing cold but no one was able to actually enter inside. Everyone was standing at the front of the building. We had to wait until Parents arrived and could only get in after Parents cut the tape. I almost froze to death.

Only then I begin to pray. “Oh I’ve put myself into this ordeal because I didn’t listen to Heavenly Father command to wear the mink coat, I’m so sorry.” It became so unbearable cold that I had to ask the security if there was anywhere I could go to avoid the wind. He pointed me to the back door. So I snuck inside the back door like a rat and fled from the wind for a moment. I quickly went back to where I was only when I received a news that Father was coming. Just like this, Father teaches us everything from what to wear to what to eat only if we open our antenna.

I want to tell you an interesting story about Ilhwa’s ginseng extract. One member who works as an oriental medicine doctor told me about Ilhwa’s ginseng extract. I consumed the extract for a long period because I had constant constipation. Yet I followed the doctor’s order and quit drinking it about a year ago.

I had hemorrhoids but I never saw blood. When I quit drinking the ginseng extract, however, I would see blood in the toilet when I was done with my business. That never happened before but it was becoming a constant occurrence, at least two or three times a week. I could not tell anyone about this. Isn’t it embarrassing to tell someone about things like that in America? I was embarrassed about showing my ailment to a doctor. I did not have any medical insurance. I did not have any money, and I felt it would be very difficult for me to explain my condition to a doctor in English. So I couldn’t go to a hospital. Of course, I could have someone with me to translate but I did not go nonetheless.

A month, two, then three months had passed but the bleeding would continue and I would see blood two or three times a week. Maybe I lost a lot of raw nutrients with the blood but I felt devoid of energy and very poor in general. I asked about this symptom to a person I know and I was told that this may be a beginning symptom of intestinal cancer, colon cancer, and hemorrhoids cancer would first show the symptom of bleeding. I became uneasy but I only prayed because I still didn’t want to go see a doctor.

“Father! I’ve never seen blood until now but why I do I continue to see this?”

I only prayed like this continuously. Then one day, I received an inspiration that told me, “Hey, Gil Ja! You never bled when you were drinking Ilhwa’s extract, right?”

When I thought about it, it was true. I would still have irritations because of the hemorrhoids but I never bled. So I mumbled like a crazy person: “You are right, Father! Someone told me that the ginseng extract is not for me so I haven’t had it for over a year now.” I mumbled to myself like this. I started drinking Ilhwa’s ginseng extract and I never had another similar instance since then.

Ilhwa’s ginseng extract is very good medicine. A mother among our 36-couple members experienced something similar. Mother’s normally think that they have to feed their babies the Yong three times. The Yong is a medicine that creates blood and parents feels that not being able to feed Yong to their children three times means that they haven’t fulfilled their duty as parents. However, this Yong is very expensive. It became very inexpensive these days its price used to be very steep. She had three children but she just didn’t have enough money to feed Yong to her three children. She was greatly worried.

Then Father appeared in her dream one day and told her ‘Why do you worry? Just do these two things. First, offer a Kyeong Bae at 5 o’clock in the morning every day. Be very strict about the time and make all of your children participate too. Then Heaven will protect you spiritually. Also, make them drink ginseng extract they will be protected from all diseases.’

The time when we offer Kyeong bae on the first day of each month and 5 o’clock on Sunday is the time we can become closest to God. So we should let our children participate in the Kyeong bae session even if they cry.

This is something that happened during the engagement ceremony for the second generation 36-couples. I was serving Parents at the time and Father asked two things.

“Did your parents ever complain about the Unification church? If so you do not have the right to be here. Secondly, did you participate in the 5 in the morning Kyeong bae session without fail? If not, then you do not have the right to be here.”

We must therefore dutifully observe the Kyeong bae session strictly and guide our children to do the same. Father tell us to guide our children to participate in Kyeong bae as soon as they began to walk. Mother is so strict about this that she keeps the tradition of making her grandchildren participate in the Kyeong bae sessions even if they cannot walk. Mother would make the parents cover them in blankets and bring the children to the sessions.

As we can see from this, God has already prepared ways for us blessed families to lead a healthy life style but Satan invades us spiritually and we suffer physically from diseases because we do not observe these ways. Father therefore said, “Blessed families will never starve to death if they just follow what Father tells them to do. It is because heaven will protect them.

We should also tell other members to have the picture of True Parents inside their houses and hang the Tongil flag in their house. When we look at the page 237-238 of the 9th volume of “True Parents life course”:

“Pictures of True Parents symbolize True Parents. So if you put a picture of True Parents inside your house, your ancestors come and offer a Kyeong bae at 3 o’clock in the morning. The realm of angels will serve. They live together with their descendants who are on earth. The condition of Shimjeong centering on True Parents has been established so now the ancestors in the spirit world can come down and cooperate.

The Tongil flag represent Unification Church. It represents the physical Unification church. It represent the individual also, but it also represent our tribe, and our nation as well. It further represent the Unification Church and the entire humanity.”

“do you know why we hang that? It is for your own fortunes. It is same as Moses telling his people to smear their doors with blood to avoid the curse of death of the first-born son when they were about to escape from Egypt. Try to hang the flag in your house. We are now in the age where the good spirits can protect their descendants.” (Page 355 of the same book)