First 100-Day Training Session
Master Speaks
Translated by Mrs. Won Pok Choi
Good evening! We just had a telephone call from Korea; that is why we were delayed. Welcome home to Belvedere. I thank God that you are safely back. I can imagine that you have such long stories to tell each other, to tell me; I will be hearing from the State Representatives, Itinerary Workers and Mobile Team Commanders. But in case I don't have enough time for all of you, you must excuse me. I want you to feel my heart, and feel that my heart is reflected on your mirror; and God's concern for you, love for you, will be felt on this occasion, and I hope you will be able to go back refreshed, strengthened and revitalized. Some may have thought, "What a man! Master is stirring up the whole thing, and I cannot go on like this." In that case, excuse me. This is the last day of March, spring is here, and I hope the spring is everywhere, in every part of the earth.
Youth have so much to do with spring, and I am very regretful that you cannot enjoy the spring of your age; but in another sense, I can imagine that you are enjoying spring in the ultimate sense. I have to use my interpreter, and I am apt to look this way -- but don't you misunderstand, I keep sending my mind to that side.
This evening my subject is "Victory or Defeat in Accordance with the Time Element." Now is the time when we must conclude whether it will be victory or defeat, on the individual level, on the group level (like ours), on the national level and on the worldwide level. The situation in the whole world is like this. More so with the providence of God -- but in the outside world, also, the time has come for a final decision on serious matters. We who claim to be sons and daughters of God are grieved over the fact that our first human ancestors fell to darkness. We must solve this problem because we are God-loving people. A defeat or fall can come about when we are vague in our sense of purpose, in our sense of the direction or goal.
If our first human ancestors, Adam and Eve, had known the purpose of God's creating them and what their goal was, and if they had had the sense of responsibility to carry out their mission according to that, they could not have fallen. We are the descendants of fallen ancestors, and we have the hope of restoring ourselves to the original position. But to do that, we must be enlightened by an understanding of what God's purpose was in creating man, and what our part or mission is in realizing that, or making it an actuality. We are here for the restoration of that which, in the beginning, our first human ancestors failed to carry out and our forefathers, including all the saints and prophets, left unaccomplished; it is for us to accomplish those things. We have to make right what was turned upside down; return those things turned upside down to their original position like this. But we feel this is no easy job at all. Unless we excel Adam and Eve in carrying out our responsibility and attaining the goal -- carrying out or realizing the purpose of God's creating man -- we cannot accomplish our mission.
In the providential history of mankind, Adam fell on the individual level; Noah fell on the family level; Abraham on the tribal level (clan level); Moses, on the national level; and Jesus, both on the national and worldwide levels. All those things are not a history of victory at all. But when we think of centering on the man Noah -- he kept his faith, trying to carry out his mission for 120 long years -- but we have to excel his faith. Abraham was the father of faith, Moses was a man of faith, Jesus was the son of man, trying to carry out his mission at the cost of his life. But they are, in a way, failures. So, in order for us to accomplish our mission, our whole-sided mission, we must excel them in many ways. It makes it difficult for us to carry out our mission; but when we pour out our whole energy, our whole being, into this providence project, we can get the cooperation of the spirit world, making it possible. We must turn all things upside down like this, making it a reality, and making it a success. Jesus had a strong sense of purpose in his mission, but ours must be even stronger than that.
When you closely examine what you are and what you are doing, are you on that standard, and do you have a stronger will power to carry out your mission, with the strongest sense of purpose and responsibility? We must be able to elevate the standard of our mission, of what we have carried on, ever higher and higher. Some of you are State Representatives, some are Mobile Unit Commanders, and others are I.W.'s. You are not doing things on the individual level, you are representing so many people under you.
God is here, watching your work, and He expects something great out of you. But His heart is agonized to see the possibility that you might fail your mission. In watching over what you are doing, He always compares you with Adam, with Noah, with Abraham, with Moses, with Jesus and He is anxious to have you carry out your mission in a greater way than they did. If He finds you unqualified for that, He will be agonized to see you, grieved, sad. First of all, we must have a clear, strong sense of the purpose stronger than Abraham had; stronger than Moses, Noah or Adam had. Ours must be greater and stronger and clearer than theirs. What can make it greater? We can say that our faith determines it; but faith can fade away along the course. God cannot trust you unless you have gone through those things for several years, until you have gone through your mission for several years at least. He wants you, as the leaders of groups, to be able to animate the power in the people under you. He wants you to be really dynamic, to arouse people's attention, to emit the light of love and life, and Heaven wants to be stimulated by you. Sometimes He feels: "I must wait and see if they can carry out their missions," and He is more or less disappointed.
In the olden days, as in the time of Moses, God could actually work a miracle in leading the people under Moses -- but why is it not so with us? Unless God can find one stronger or more dedicated than Moses, God cannot do that. This being the close of the age, the Latter Days, God is anxious to help us more than ever; so, if He finds you greater than Jesus, greater than Moses, greater than all those passed away saints, He will surely be working with you. Thus, Satan, who caused Adam to fall, is still here and would accuse you, saying to God, "Well, let me see how faithful, how dedicated your children are. They are here, claiming that they are going to restore the whole world back to Your bosom. How strong are they? ... I will wait and see." And, every minute, he is ready to accuse you. In that case, would God be confident enough to let him accuse with all his might, with all his colleagues mobilized, accuse you of anything with your having no condition for which to be accused? Is God confident about you? Are any of you here confident enough to make God strong before Satan able to say that? If there is anyone here who can readily say, "I am such a person," raise up your hands.
I could assign you to do something of one third the importance of what Noah, Moses or Abraham went through and you would shrink back and feel so burdened, and feel that it is almost impossible, and that you want to escape. How can God trust you in that case? As time goes by, up to the present moment, God wanted to trust Noah; He wanted to trust Abraham more than He did Noah; to trust Jesus more than He did Abraham; and He would like to trust us more than He did all of those people. Yes ... trust us. We must be so trustworthy to Him; and can we keep asking God, "'Give us strength, give us faith"? Can we ask that? We are the fruit of all those people, so we must excel them in many ways, as I said. Then, in what sense are we greater than they are? We can be different from them and greater than they are, when we pray to console God's heart -- instead of praying for help like those passed-away saints did.
In praying to God, we want to console Him, we want to even encourage Him from our part, we want to stimulate Him and make Him happy. I want to ask you if you have been doing that. If you have been in despair, shrinking back to a confined place in your heart, grumbling and complaining, you are a failure there; instead of doing that, you must be able to encourage God, console God's heart, stimulate Him. You must be able to do that. You must be confident enough to be able to carry out your mission without God's help. You must have a clear sense of purpose and strong sense of responsibility to be able to carry out your mission in place of the passed away saints who failed to do so. In taking the responsibility, don't try to leave your responsibility on someone else's shoulders; try to win it out, try to carry out your own mission, and day and night be thinking of that. Every minute, you must be able to try hard to carry out your own mission without leaving it to someone else.
We can safely conclude that if you are like that, God is ready to help you any moment -- even if you don't want His help. So God is on your side, working more than ever with you. If you have that strength, that faith, that dedication -- then without your asking, God will be there to work with you, to work through you, and you will have the strength and confidence that you can make your mission a success. Each State Representative here, population wise, represents some four million people. With that in mind, have you felt a deep sense of responsibility from them? Have you ever felt that you are responsible for those people and that your every action, every thought, every word will determine whether or not they will be saved? That is the great problem/question. If, with that attitude, you have been struggling hard, day and night, waking or sleeping for this mission, the whole spirit world cannot but be mobilized in your aid. What makes it that way? In that case, you are in the position of Adam or Eve before the fall. You are in accordance with God's will; so those who are in the position of the Archangel must help you and minister to you. In other words, you are in the position of Adam and Eve, sons and daughters of God, having nothing to do with sin, conforming entirely with God's will.
Then, since those passed away people on the spirit side are in the position of the Archangel, they are compelled to minister to you and help you -- or else they are not carrying out their mission and will be punished. Among the vast numbers of spirit-men, those who are on the side of good are compelled to help our movement; and they are, even in the spirit world, fighting against the Satanic power. So they will be helping us and our group cannot but have success and victory.
So, whenever you feel that you have not quite ... that you have failed in bringing in people, don't blame God, don't blame the nature of the people, don't blame the nature of the city blame yourself. In that case, have you ever repented and bowed down before God, begging His forgiveness, begging like a sinner before Him -- have you ever felt that way? In that case, you must be ashamed to even look at the nature around you, to see the people around you. You must be ashamed of yourself, ashamed of your being able to eat, ashamed of your being able to wash your face. Every minute of your life, you must be feeling that. If you focus your attention on one point, and if you pour out your whole being into your nation, you can even sense what is to come and in what way you can approach people and witness to them, how you can convince and persuade people. You must re-examine yourself, analyze yourself, criticize yourself and recruit yourself re-educate yourself.
You must be more than a poet in communicating with the things of nature. When you visit a place of scenic beauty, you can talk to them, saying, "I am sorry you are still in travail, waiting for the perfected sons and daughters of God to have dominion over you. I am going to do that for you. I am going to be a real son, to be able to soothe you and love you and know your value. Well, I am spiritually low now, ragged like this; but when I come to see you the second time, I will be elevated like this, and you will rejoice to see me, and I will communicate with you from the highest level." You must be able to talk back and forth with nature. Sometimes, when you see the sunrise, the glory of the sunrise, you can cry out to the sun, saying, "I will make you glorious, because I am the son of God! And once I carry out my mission I will be able to really appreciate you and make you really glorious, to shine over all human beings, like I do, in the spiritual sense. I will make you glorious because of me." Could you say that to the sun, to nature?
During the night, in deep nocturnal meditation, did you ever try to resolve, to be determined in your mind, to succeed in carrying out your mission and accomplishing what was left unaccomplished by the passed-away saints and becoming the dominator of light, eliminating or erasing the darkness? Well, were you confident enough to claim that, and cry it out to the darkness? When you look at the chains of mountains, can you cry out, "I am the son of man; I am the first one to be able to really appreciate you. You are there always meditating over things of beauty, but I am here to create beauty and to restore all human beings with beauty, love and everything." When you hear the chirping birds, when you see the reflecting ribbons of river, have you been able to face God, have you been able to sing the glory of God, saying, "This is my garden, from my Father, who created it for me; and I will beautify this place and I will beautify myself. And by perfecting myself, I will glorify God and bring all the children of God back to His bosom." Have you ever felt that? If you don't have that kind of experience, you are not qualified to be State Representatives, or I.W.'s, or Commanders on the mobile teams. If you have been grumbling, saying, "'Well, I am forced to do this, I want to escape from this. I am reluctant to do this," and you can barely drag yourself on then you are already a failure.
Once you are assigned this great mission, why don't you be qualified for your mission? ... and after carrying out your mission and glorifying your ancestors, glorifying the passed-away saints and glorifying God, seek another place where you can help out people with other missions? If you are like this, would God not love you and look for you, to console your heart? In that case, God would confide His heart to you and everything of value, which has been stored away, will be taken out by God and given to you. Unless you are a person God needs, you prayers will not be answered. Those who really feel that they are needed by God, will you hold up your hands? Is it true -- are you really so? Are you imagining it, or are you really so? Is God really in need, is our Master absolutely in need of you? Are you the people needed by the Unification Church, are you the people needed by the people of this world?...does the state need you? [YES!] I can see that you are not too confident, because your "'yes" is not strong enough. You must reawaken yourself to the fact, and you must recruit your strength.
You must be confident enough to feel that you can crush the people with both hands like this, and you can be responsible for those four million people under you, in your state. You must feel that, once you kick at them, they will be crushed under your foot; kick at the mountain, and the mountain will be crushed into pieces. You must be able to say, "Once everybody, anybody, appears before me, you cannot leave me without being defeated or being absorbed by me."
I said that my subject was going to be "Victory or Defeat." Then who will be the victors, and who will be the defeated? Who are going to be the victors? [WE ARE!] And who is going to be the defeated? [SATAN!] Yes, Satan. And the whole population of each state represents the Satan's side. Isn't that true? [YES!] Well, your answer, as I see, is in the affirmative but after one year work in some of the states, there is only a handful of people, and in some places, I find that only the State Representative remains. You have taken three meals a day, for one year -- that is 1,080 meals you have taken -- but some of you have done practically nothing. What can I say to you? The very food can accuse you. So, this must be a grave question. You must be more serious than God; you must be more anxious to carry out your mission than God is to have you do it. You must hate yourself for that more than God would. Have you gone through that feeling? You take things for granted and no change can come about ' and no difference is there from yesterday, today and the days to come. If you have not been able to bring in members, you must at least be able to leave something that no one else could do. If you are a failure in that state, when we next send someone as State Representative to the people there, they will be scornful of the newcomer, the new State Representative, and say, "I am afraid he is going to be a duplication of his predecessor." Well, before leaving your post, you must be able to at least leave something that could never be done by other people. You can do that at ,least. If you fail to move the hearts of the people, try to move the rocks, move nature, praying the whole night on a mountainside, talking with God. Always, the question comes to your own self: you must have a strong sense of being a warrior and soldier, fighting for the sake of the state for which you are responsible. Then, after the battle, after each war, you must be able to cry out, "My battle today was a victory!" While the people of the state are in utter darkness, in despair, in the dungeon of hell -- you must be able to let the people think there is light, and once the light shines out it will be warmed up, and they will be animated. Have you left that kind of thing to the state? Yes or no!
You must be able to find yourself always improving, better every day, every moment. And you must have been changed a lot for the better. Are you like that? Do you have that ambition? In my prayer, I can sense that for the first few weeks the mobile team members were so anxious and even fearful before God as to whether or not they would be able to carry out their missions and they were so anxious to carry out what was assigned to them -- but after a few weeks they have become somehow settled, not in the good sense, but in such a way that they have become lax and do things in a habitual way. That is not the way you should be. That being the battlefield, every moment is so precious, so important and you must be well armed, first of all, with a sense of responsibility. Every minute, a new sense, a stronger sense of responsibility. You must be stronger in your ambition, sense of responsibility and sense of purpose, because there is Satan -- who can come and attack you at any moment. Anything alive has to grow; cessation is the eve of retreat. You must go on, advance forward -- you must be able to find yourself ever increasing, ever progressing. You must be able to say to yourself, "I was a failure last year, but it was not in vain -- it taught me a lesson, and this year I must plan to do this and that." And after this year, if you find it is still a failure, you have learned another lesson from this, and you can grow in that way, and you can finally make your mission or project a success. You have learned the principle that where there is a perfect subject there is sure to appear a perfect object. If you are really aggressive and ambitious in carrying out your purpose -- which is God's then the ground for you to work on will be provided. And it's natural for the object to come about for you as the subject. And, since you are a better self than what you were yesterday, then you are entitled to more things. Since you have improved, and you are better than what you were last month, you can hope for something greater. Then, have you been lending attentive ears, attentive eyes, looking for something greater, some greater project for which you can be responsible? You must be so attentive and so anxious to carry out your mission that when you see, for instance, a yellow car coming from a distance, you will imagine, "There must be someone whom I can witness to, and bring into the movement. God must be sending at least one in that car; will it be a woman, will it be a man, will it be a girl or a boy?" In anxiety, you are waiting for someone to come -- and a miracle will happen, and the car will happen to stop before you, and a prepared person will come out and you can speak to him. And he is the very person for our movement. Have you ever done that? Suppose, on the contrary, the car passes by, and your heart is saddened; and without your being conscious of it, tears run down your cheeks, and in deep prayer you console God's heart and say, "Oh, Father, I know that You have gone through when You have failed to restore Your children," and to that prayer God will surely respond or answer. You would say, "Oh, Father, I feel so discouraged, I feel so dark, so low -- but have You not gone through all these things all throughout human history, for 6,000 years? Well, I can recruit my strength." And before the table, eating your supper, you can be in utter devotedness; and you can eat your supper, and God will be with you, strengthening you, and you will feel God's love there.
If you are intoxicated in doing things, if you are almost crazy over the joy of bringing in members, the spirit world will work for you, people will see visions, will see you in their dreams and wait for you to come. If you have the attitude that you are waiting for a lost child to come back to you, and you set out in search of lost children, and you set aside a portion of your candy or any delicate edibles -- with a waiting heart you set something like that aside for your spiritual children to come and relish -- if you are in such a mood, with such an attitude, with a parent's heart, waiting for lost children to come back to you, God will be with you and you will be able to find at least one. From my experience, I can readily tell you that if you are in that mood, you cannot fail to find your children, spiritual ones. All through the night you would stay up the whole night in meditation before God and the tick-tock of the clock would have a strange influence on your ears. You can fancy or imagine that every second there are new lives coming into the world. You can say that at every second there are so many people dying away, and you can cry out to the clock, "Don't you ever feel, don't you ever sense that there are many lives dying away?" And you can even listen to your own heartbeat, and every moment you are so anxious to bring to life the "dead" people -- and you will be really serious. Every morning, when you wake up, try to count your pulse: one, two, three, four, until you count your age. In proportion to your graveness, seriousness, your pulse will say something to you.
Well, every moment, the more numbers you count, the more you are nearing the end of your life -- have you ever imagined that? But if you have joy, happiness and courage, the beating or pulsation will encourage you more and more. In every pulsation, you can feel God, and you can feel that your life is here -- and with that animation, you can work the whole day and turn the whole world upside down. If you are conscious of your eyes blinking, twinkling every moment, then you will feel God or life there. When you walk, pace by pace, you want to pound against the earth; you can feel courage and you can feel you can crush the earth and all people under your feet. If you are powerless, your pace will be that of the defeated -- so you don't want to be that. You must be able to encourage yourself every moment. A moment, a second may decide whether you are the victor or the defeated. You must not forget that. We can never know which moment will determine whether we are going to be the victor or the defeated. Sometime, a burglar may come to you, pointing a pistol at you -- but after a moment, you are going to be the victor. Sometimes something great is happening -- but the next moment you are going to be defeated. You are very happy, with broad daylight smiles, really laughing but who knows but that you are going to be defeated in the next moment? You are very hungry like this, and you can think of nothing else but eating; and then, at that very moment, who knows, you may determine whether you are going to be the victor or the defeated. How anxious have you been to achieve victory? How long have you been waiting for victory? How long have you been struggling to attain or gain the victory? Have you been doing things at the risk of your own life, risks on the verge of life or death for that victory? Have you ever tried to gather your strength and get cooperation of your parents, your brothers and sisters, your relatives and friends, to make your mission a success, a victory? Have you been able to get the people around you to come to your rescue, or to aid you in that mission? Have you been able to love the people around you, and miss them as you would miss a bowl of food when you are hungry? Have you been forgetting to sleep and eat, in your search for people? Have you been losing weight in your anxiety to find spiritual children? Have you ever experienced loving your spiritual children in such a way that you would hate to see them leave you, so that you would stop them and give them everything you have, and tell them interesting stories to stop them from leaving -- and would do just anything for them, to draw them to yourself? Have you ever slept with your clothing on, in meditation, thinking of the people you miss, your spiritual children? In that case, when you wake up in the morning, you don't feel rested, but you are so anxious to find out about your lost children -- so that you even forget your fatigue. You would fall asleep just as you are, clad, and then find yourself in a vision, all illuminated, all turned into white, glorious, as though you are in the palace of God. You can have that kind of experience. Then you would weep and sob in gratitude before God and all through the night; even though you sit up the whole night, you will never feel fatigued, never feel tired, and you would be only grateful toward God.
If you have that attitude, in that mood, the whole spirit world will be mobilized, and will go in advance to reach people and get their minds prepared for you. You must have that kind of experience; you must be rich in those things. You must have that kind of experience, so that in missing your spiritual children you would weep (that is a typical expression) ... you must have three types of fluid coming out: tears, mucus and spittle. When you are utterly sad, when you are intoxicated with love, something like that, then you will experience those three kinds of fluid coming out. Have you ever loved someone, missed someone, with that experience? When you are in that mood, it is more than something you experience when you are in love with some girl or boy. He has the experience of loving one of his spiritual children so much that, upon his leaving, he would hate to let him go alone, so he would escort him, walk him half way to his home -- and then he would come back. That person would miss him again and he would walk him back, and all through the night they would walk back and forth on the way. Well, there is nothing to laugh at -- it is really a serious moment. In that case, you are intoxicated with love. You must have that kind of experience. You should not be just like so many other cases, in America -- once you say goodbye to someone you forget about them -- that's not the way it should be among our group.
In searching for people, you must be able to do so in tearfulness, missing them with an attitude such as I have spoken about. Then you must go beyond the level of the individual thing. After you have found one person, you must be able to find a family, a whole neighborhood, a clan, a nation, and the whole world; in that way, we advance forward. These are going to be the foothold for God to work on, the foundation on which God can perform His part. So you must not feel that you are all alone; God is always with you. If you are a perfect object to God, He will be working with you. God is ready to give us the most precious things; we must resemble God, and be ready to give out all we have, our most precious things, to others. Then your foothold will be widened, your environment will be smoothed out, and you can pave the way -- not only for yourself -- but for other people to follow you.
Last year, I was able to meet many senators and congressmen; and this year, I have met more of such people. After my conversation with them, I could determine or figure out what is going to happen in this nation. More than anything else, I tried to find out how many people they have around them, and how broad a foothold or foundation they have built. I wanted to know how anxious they were to meet people; and when I found one who was really nonchalant and indifferent about people, in meeting me or other people, I could determine his fate. It means they must be attentive in searching for anyone, to provide greater things for him; he doesn't know if one who is seemingly nobody will come to visit him, and through this person he will be destined to success or victory. There are quite a few people who left a good impression, a wonderful impression, on me. Among them, I counted first level: first one, second, third. And the next time I meet them, the second time, I can compare what they are at that time to what they are now. Well, if I find a certain one never changing in that attitude, or who wants to receive people even more, I can work with him -- I can make him world famous, with God's help. They can never dream of my thinking of them like that. Sometimes I deliberately do impolite things in front of them. Let those who have ears to hear, hear; let those who have eyes to see, see. You never know who will be for you and who will make your fate different; there may be a sick man, an old man, coming leaning on a stick, and he may be the very person to help you -- you can never tell.
Whenever you meet a person, you must now think that he may be a savior, he may be a great help to you and a judge over what you are; if you have that attitude, you can never fail. Don't be a slave to your mood; when you are cross or mad at someone, if you say a harsh thing to him, that might determine your defeat. If you are cross at someone, unkind to someone, that may determine your fate, an ill fate. I want you to be always humble, kind, loving and understanding of others, even though the person visiting you may be a cross or evil person -- even unforgivably evil. God can then turn him and use him to help you, to make you a success. When you go out to witness to people, an old person may come along, like this...you may hate the idea of having to speak to that person, and will simply pass by. That is not the attitude you should have. Who knows ... his son may become the president of a nation, his grandson or great-grandson may be the most famous leader. You must be such a person that that old man will speak to his children about you: "Well, all through my life, being a crippled person, I have been ill-treated, and faced with so much agony and sadness in my heart; but once in my lifetime, I met a gloriously wonderful youth, and this person is so-and-so, and you must remember him for my sake, and do your best to do everything possible for him." He may leave a will before his death -- who knows. From that you may be able to become associated with his grandson, and you can -- who knows -- you might even marry him in the holy blessing. Well, that kind of thing could happen. The children of those old folks may be your future husband or future wife -- nobody can tell. So, you can never mistreat anyone, however shabby or ragged-looking that person may be; and you must think that whomever you meet, whomever you run across, has something to do with your fate. You must not mistreat them; more than anything else, you must not be nonchalant, you must not treat them as if they had nothing to do with you.
Let's consider the case of Joseph, Mary's husband. He was a righteous man, you know that -- but could he believe what he was told in his dream by an angel. His fiancée was pregnant, and he was agonized in heart. If he were an ordinary person, he would have forgotten what he received in the dream, would have been nonchalant about it, and would have denied its being the truth. But he believed in that, and did as he was told in the dream -- to take Mary as his wife. You have dreams, and some dreams will come true may be one out of a hundred, one out of ten might come true -- how could you believe in what you had in your dream? But Joseph was a man of faith, and he believed that God would instruct him, teach him what to do, how to do things; he believed in his dreams, and he was serious enough to do things as he was told. John the Baptist was a great person, prepared to receive Jesus. There had been so many prophets and saints who had received revelation from God, but John the Baptist saw, not in a dream, but with his very eyes, a dove descending from heaven and alighting on Jesus. And a voice came from heaven, saying, "This is my glorious son with whom I am well pleased." And he believed in that. I can see some dozing off like this ... but who knows...at this moment your fate might be decided.
Out of the thousands of words from Master, this one word might be planted in your heart like a seed, to flourish and to make you a victor ... who knows? Well, if you are sleepy, go ahead and fall asleep. I know you are tired, I understand that; but I am all the more so. Because I have gone through so much fatigue and so much sleepiness, I can understand you. It is because we are tired that we need this moment.
The time element is so important that, if you can grasp a moment, you can be a victor; on the other hand ' if you let it go, you will be defeated. I warn you not to be overjoyed when happiness comes to you; and don't try to escape when misery and heartbreak come. All of it is for you. Please be aware of the fact that you are responsible for everything that comes to you; and if you can meet with it and win over it or conquer it, you are going to be the victor. You will at least learn a lesson from the experience. You are responsible for the occasion; and if you are victorious over the difficulty, you must be able to pass it on to others, and you must be able to link it to your goal. If you are deeply sympathetic with a person in need of that, then it can turn his fate upside down like this, and you will have won the truest friend.
I will tell you one of my experiences In prison. Someone beside me knew -- I don't know how but somehow knew my birthday. I am greatly indebted to him, as to many others. You can never imagine how miserable life is in Korean prisons, under the Communist or Japanese regimes. For example, people are so hungry there ... and some die eating, with their mouths full of rice, and do you know what happens?...he has still a mouthful of rice, and the prisoners around him hurry to get that rice out of his mouth, and would relish that rice. You can never imagine. And some would have visitors give them a handful of rice powder -- they would never take anything in the whole world for this, they would never let it go for the whole world. But if Master received some of that rice powder from his visitors, he would give it out handfuls or spoonfuls to everyone there. And out of all those people, one, after eating a portion of it, would save a tiny bit, put a tiny amount aside. And when that had accumulated to this much, he remembered Master's birthday; and on that day, he did something with the powder. He made a dough out of it, molded it like a cake or pudding, and celebrated Master's birthday right there in the dungeon. Master can never forget this person; he wants to meet him in his lifetime. Master is going to repay him. When I remember him doing such a thing for me, I repent, I feel regret, and say to myself, "Why did I not give him more? He was doing this for me, even though he did not have enough out of that small portion I gave him. Why did I not give him more?" I always recollect that scene.
When I think back on that experience, I always imagine that God must be feeling the same. If I receive so much blessing from God, in such abundance, I must put aside some portion to be returned to Him and He will be all the more anxious to give to me and to bless me with more abundance. If you are ready to return some portion, at least, out of what you have received, to God; and if you can do that in a miserable condition, not in a blessed involvement, but in a miserable condition; if you can return joy and gratitude to God; then you are going to be blessed all the more, and God will miss you, will never forget you, will be ready to help you at any moment and you are going to be a success. My topic this evening is "Victory or Defeat in Accordance with the Time Element." When is the time? The time and the hour are here. Now is the time, now is the hour. What you hear at this moment, what you see at this moment, what you think or say or do at this moment will determine whether you are going to be victorious or defeated. So be awakened to this fact, and be aware of the fact that what you are doing at this moment will determine your fate. Our victory, unlike others, will be connected with God; and our defeat will belong to hell. So I warn you to be clearly oriented, in this thing, to be a victor in the end, and return glory to God. You are here, and you all look alike. But in God's sight, there are people who are going to be victors, other who are going to be defeated and there are some to whom God will say, "It would have been better if you had not come at all." You must remember the purpose, the responsibility and the time element which can determine your victory or defeat. Shall we pray.
[Master's Prayer]
