Tarrytown, New York
Master Speaks
(Translated by Mrs. Won Pok Choi)
My topic this morning is "How to Become a Responsible Person." Everybody wants to be a responsible person over others. Among responsible persons there are those who are supported by others, and those who are not supported by others. There are many kinds of persons responsible over others. Some are responsible over ten people, or a hundred people, over an organization, over a nation, and even over the whole world.
Seen from the viewpoint of God's providence, there are people responsible over internal things and people responsible over external things. Which kind of responsible persons are more important? Many young people think that they want to be responsible over a nation. Each one thinks that he wants to be the most important, capable leader of the nation. He especially wants to cause his nation to develop and progress more than ever, and thinks of many ways to do this. He must have the capacity, potential, or power to do this, and he will have many ways to apply the power. He must know how to organize and develop. Before taking action he must study the situation closely and see how things have been developing in his nation. Then he must use some power or capacity to cause progress to occur. He wants to leave what is already good and either improve or revolutionize what has been bad or not desirable.
A person who is responsible over others must have a certain capacity. He must have not only the power or capacity to take responsibility but also the power to cause things to develop. He must be efficient and capable, and he needs strong leadership ability; then he can cause his people and his organization to grow. His ability cannot be perfected in an instant, but he must have much experience. Through education we will inherit the knowledge which other
people have accumulated, and then we must put it into practice ourselves. We must first have the knowledge, and then put it into practice until it is proven. Unless what you have is better than what others have, you cannot be responsible over others. Naturally we come to the conclusion that people who are more capable than others will be responsible over them. Whether the group is large or small, it doesn't matter. The same principle applies.
As I said before, there are people responsible over external things or worldly things, and there are those who are responsible for internal or spiritual things. We can easily define that those responsible over spiritual things are more important. Then over what kind of things are you going to be responsible? You will say, "I want to be responsible over internal or spiritual things." By spiritual things I mean you must be responsible for the eternal life of other people and the internal thing on the spiritual level. In the realm of external things you can go through experimental processes and if you fail you can repeat the task, but the spiritual level of things is different.
On the spiritual level of things, if you fail in your experiment, in your first attempt, then you cannot shift it easily to another process. As for the problems of life or love, we must be very serious in handling them. In order for you to become responsible persons over those problems, you must closely study what they are, and you must take them seriously. You must learn from predecessors or from those who are experienced in the field. You must learn good points from the leaders. For instance, if there are ten leaders, you must learn from all of them. Suppose you have ten such leaders or one hundred such leaders. You must absorb what they have that is good and you must discard what they have that is bad. In such a way you should learn.
All you trainees, after having been trained in this center must go out either to the field in the United States, or to other countries, your respective countries, and then you must take the responsibility over so many people, according to your capability. Even in the United States, when you want to become a world leader, you must learn how to lead people right here in the arena, and you must adopt good points from other experienced people.
Then what must be your attitude in adopting or inheriting those good points from others? If you go on criticizing everything, there is no end to that and you cannot learn very much. Suppose you have ten leaders around you, and when you are always critical and never believe what they say, you are not apt to learn much, but if you believe in what they say, and if you just try to understand their experience or their heart and understand and adopt their good points alone, then it makes it easier for you to develop or improve. You can either analyze or criticize other people only if and when you have the same capability or more capability or experiences.
Those who are capable of rightly judging people, or who believe in those who you think are capable and adopt good points from them, you have the capability of improving faster than others. Before anything else, you must have the inherent capability of having those people believe you or trust you, so that they will give you the knack of the things or the secret that they have learned. You have friends, but even among close friends you have secrets and you sometimes refrain from telling others your secret. It is human nature that you wouldn't like to tell others your secret unless that person is very receptive and will adopt and apply it in a good way, so that your secret or your way of doing things will be profitable to him or to her. In that case, we must be able to judge whether or not that person is going to use your secret or the knack of the thing in a good way or in a bad way.
What we know now is that we must have those people trust us and have them believe that we are going to use what we learn in a better way and for a bigger purpose. That alone is not enough. We must be able to synthesize those things, and after having been experienced in those fields we must evaluate matters and improve on that tradition or foundation.
In order for you to be a leader, you must have the ability to organize, but more than anything else, you must be the person who is the center of love. It is simple to ask what kind of personality God has; we can first of all say that He is the person who wants to believe or trust people, while they are not trustworthy.
When, in the Garden of Eden, God commanded Adam and Eve not to eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, He wanted to trust these people. Of course, there were many things for which God could not trust them, but He tried to trust them and put them in the position of His children whom He could rely on. In creating the universe, too, of course God created the universe for Himself, but mostly, or in another sense, He created the universe for His children, Adam and Eve. God wanted to give love, a love of untold value, to those children who were yet immature.
In order for you to become responsible leaders, you must be equipped with external qualities, of course, but then the next thing, or the most important thing to come, is to know how to love them, lead them in love. People need a leader over them who is responsible for them and who will take care of them. So they want to believe that the leader is for them, and that the leader loves them. These qualities are indispensable for a leader, a genuine leader.
When you are going to become a leader in our church or in the outside world, you will find that there are many things which you cannot leave to trust or rely upon. People are apt to betray you while you have been believing them and trusting them and relying on them. When you are betrayed by those people, if you are utterly in despair and are so discouraged that you cannot rise up again, then it means you must retreat from leadership.
However hard you may struggle to be a good leader and give out your love and your whole being to the people, sometimes they not only betray you but they would try to use you. When the leader's love towards his people is self-centered, and if he calculates on what's coming as the reward, he is apt to be discouraged at the moment when he is faced with rebuff, and then think that he is not for these people, and he will retreat from his position.
When you are responsible over financial things, it is easy. You calculate and you say you have obtained so much profit, and you think you have done your part. But for spiritual leaders, things are different-and more important. In the financial matters, if you have acquired what you have planned, then you are successful. But on the spiritual level of things, even though you have won some people's hearts, if others complain or others are in low spirits, and if you cannot distribute your love evenly and people are equally happy, you are not a successful leader.
As a spiritual leader, you must not be satisfied with their response, and even though your group is happy for the time being, you must add more things to them and try to make them happier and still happier. The greatest of all the spiritual leaders being God, you can well imagine how difficult God's situation is. Do you imagine that the great spiritual leaders of the world always feel happiness in their hearts? If you can get them to be really frank to you, they are always distressed, they are always unhappy or miserable. It is because a spiritual leader always has to give away what he has, always be giving. He has to deal with so many types of people all the time, and if he cannot give things out to them, in that case his love must not be one-sided, and his love has to be fulfilling to every kind of person. There are all kinds of people, and if they cannot feel contented or satisfied, what would he do? Problems are apt to arise there.
Seen from this viewpoint, God is the loneliest one and the most pitiful one, because He's responsible for all humanity. Those who receive are not easily satisfied. On the part of the giver, he has no one to receive from. He wants to receive from the central figures, the great leaders of the world. So God must be the one who has all things and all qualifications. If God would find all the people just wanting to receive from Him, He would have difficulty. He is of course ready to give whatever He has, but if all the people would want to receive good things from Him, for instance love-well, everybody wants His love-He will be put under a great strain. Then He must emphasize how to carry out your mission, and He would want you to trust not for the sake of yourself, but for the sake of other people, those whom you are going to trust, and give love for the sake of other people and do everything for the sake of those who are under you.
When we trust other people, we must trust them on the public level, and we must love people on the public level. I must again say that leaders must trust people for the sake of them and sacrifice for the sake of those people, and love for the sake of those people, not for themselves. If you want to have public things connected to you, you must make it for a bigger group or for a bigger public. If you can personify trust or belief, belief will ask something of you. If you would ask the belief, saying, "Well, belief, what kind of person would you like to believe?" he would say, "I want to believe or trust people more for the public. " If you would personify a sacrifice and ask him, "For whom would you like to sacrifice?", he would say, "I want to sacrifice myself for the people who are more for the public, not for themselves. " The same thing applies for love. When you ask love the same question, love would answer you, "I want to love the people who are more for the public. " By people who are public, I mean those who stand on the individual level of things, tribal, and national level of things, and only think of the things on the worldwide level.
Trust or belief in the truest sense is trust for the public and for the greater public and the super-public, or the greatest public. Sacrifice and love, are, without exception... God; being of absolute goodness, He is for the public; He is absolutely for the public, the greater things and the greatest. That's what places Him in the central position.
Suppose you are on the central point, where you have every direction radiating from you, and all distances are equal. When you are a leader, you are the central figure, and being the central figure means your bearing is right in the middle and you don't put more stress on certain people, and you are not favoring certain people and not others. You must be even and fair. In order for you to be able to move other people, manipulate the people, you must lose yourself or deny yourself. What you eat, where you live, and what you wear must be well balanced with others.
You are now being trained at the center because you are going to be leaders over other people later on. And how to lose yourself, how to deny yourself is the first question that comes, and you know that you have the strong "I" conception. If you have too strong a personality, you must try to erase that. If your personality is etched, you must scrape it out or rub it in such a way that your personality will be rounded. As a leader you cannot say, "My principle is to sleep eight hours a day." You cannot say, "I cannot go on without eating three meals." You cannot say, "I must be treated well and they must respect me." You cannot never dream of being that kind of person as a leader. If you are the leader over so many people, if you think of things in the self centered way, never thinking of the public, then just wait and see-you will lose the quality of the leader and people won't respect you. You may be so clever as to be able to cheat them and pretend as though you are a great leader, and that may pass in the outside world, but in the spiritual movement that cannot be, accepted. The spiritual world will work in the group, and the people will lose trust in you, and they will somehow feel like disliking you.
If and when you are a leader, if you feel easy and not out-going, not standing in the vanguard of others, then you can safely say that you are losing the quality of a leader. You must be able to find yourself being always anxious to do more things, and you cannot just sit with folded arms and with easy heart, but you feel like working more than your people and for the people, and then people will respect you and you will be strong leaders. You can cultivate more leadership.
In the Bible we read that we must love God with all our heart, with all our sincerity, and with all our might, and if we lose that quality you are not for that mission. So I can safely define that when you are a leader over 100 people, you are and you must be the most wretched and unhappy and miserable person of them all. If you are responsible over 1,000 people, you must be the most miserable one of them all. More than that, the responsible person, the leader, cannot get rid of the burden at any moment. You are heavy laden with the burden of responsibility. But fortunately, when you are the spiritual leader, there are assistants coming from the spiritual world. In that case, the leader's life must be that of great faith and deep faith.
In the face of difficulties, you must be able to get the willing cooperation of other people and respect and trust from other people. If you lose that, you cannot go on. You must be able to arouse the attention of people and get them either interested in you, trusting and believing in you, and to love you and sacrifice for you. And conversely, you must be doing the same for them. Sometimes you are discouraged by your people and you can call out and say, "I am discouraged by the people, but you know what I am, and I hope you can trust me and you can love me, and I love you so much. I rely on you." And then you can even get spiritual cooperation from nature which will strengthen you.
However small a thing or a person may be, if you rely on it or on him and put out your love and energy and sacrifice for him or for it, then certainly something great will come from it or him. All things considered, the leader's position is the most difficult one. His is a position of weakness and helplessness. But when you are weak or helpless for the sake of others, you are safe. You will be aided by the vast spirit world and you will have many deep spiritual experiences which will strengthen you. If you are ready to receive spiritual cooperation from above, then you, by going through those kinds of experiences, will find yourself being successful as a leader because you have cooperation from the spirit side.
I can readily understand Jesus' heart when he said, "If you are not like these little children, you cannot enter the kingdom of God." He was faced with difficulties and he was disappointed by people not believing in him; because of their disbelief he would turn to the children, and when he saw small children he would talk to them saying in his heart, "You know me and you can believe me, and I love you, and I can rely on you. " They are so innocent and so pure, he saw a quality in them which entitled them to be of the kingdom of heaven.
When you pray to God, you cannot be boastful of your title of leader, by saying, "Oh, God, I am the leader of such and such a group. Please do this for me." That kind of prayer cannot be heard by God.
You must be able to put yourself in the position of children crying to God, calling for help, and denying yourself. You have no "yourself" there, but you should just rely on God, seeing Him as the only existence in the world, then you are sure to be answered.
Leaders on the external level, or on the worldly level, think that their role is to give commands to other people. But for the internal leaders-(what he means is spiritual leaders)-things are otherwise. Your responsibilities will be assigned when you are able to put yourself in the position to be given orders, and obey and fulfill others' needs.
What surprised me in the United States when I first came here was that you must make an appointment to see doctors. Immediately I thought that patients must have a disease or ailment according to a timetable. I could see that doctors make appointments from a self-centered point of view. Doctors are those who deal with people's lives, so in case of need they must be alert and attend to patients the whole day long, or around the clock, even 24 hours a day.
Spiritual leaders must go beyond the limits of time considerations and must be able to deal with people at any moment of need. Even though you have to sacrifice your sleeping hours, you must be ready to help others. You must not think of your meal hours as fixed. You must cultivate the attitude that every moment of your life is for other people. If you have that kind of attitude as a leader and put it into practice, you will be a good or successful leader.
When you look at bad points in other people or bad things being done in your group, don't be too impatient and too quick in judging people or doing away with or disposing of them. But wait, and you encourage good points in the people and good things that are being done there, and then reserve your judgment to the end, and you must hope that that person will correct his mistake. It is very likely that you will find a person doing wonderfully, but if you had cut him off years ago he wouldn't be there, and he would almost rebel against you, but he is now doing a good job after having repented and corrected his mistake on his own.
With all these things in mind one can say that leaders are in the most miserable position . . . apt to be nagging at you. However in good harmony and love they may be living, even their living room is open for so many people, so when someone knocks at your door, the leader would receive just any people at any moment to his living room, and to his bedroom, or anywhere. So your home will be a public place. When the visitors urgently need you, you must see them. At that moment you are really for those people and not for your wife. So you must look as though you love those people more than your wife. And the leader would like to sell whatever his wife has that is good and use it for needy people. And then what will become of his home? If the wife were not understanding a rupture might occur in that family.
You should realize that this is not a short-term difficulty, but it will go on for your lifetime. How many families can sustain it and endure to the end and maintain a good attitude, helping each other and liking the idea? This is the leader's position in which you always have to carry the cross.
If the people close to you say things for your sake, and they love you and sacrifice for you, you would tell them rather to sacrifice for the people whom I want to sacrifice for and love the people whom I love. At the table, before taking your first mouthful of food, you must think of your people first, and when you are going to buy clothing for yourself, you must think of your people first. Even at bedtime hour you must think of your people and how tired they must be, and then everything will be a cross for you. You are so tired that you take a nap for a while, and you immediately feel ashamed or guilty.
When your attitude as the leader is that as I have described, then spirit world will be sure to be mobilized in cooperation with you, so you will be a successful leader. You must use your whole being for the sake of others. You must re-evaluate yourself to know if your eyes have not been misused and have been used for the sake of others; and likewise with your ears, your nose, your mouth, your limbs. All things, when they have been used for the sake of other people, will make you a success. Otherwise, you are a failure.
In order for you to be responsible leaders, I have enumerated many necessary qualities. Are you confident you have them? (Yes.) In order for you to become that kind of leader, you must have good training. Before your becoming a responsible leader over 1,000 people, you must train yourself to be a good leader over one individual. You must ask yourself, "Do I have one person who can really believe in me, who can really rely on me, and who can really look up at me as a leader or teacher?" If you have gone though all those tests or experiences and have such qualifications and are sent out to the field, you must start by winning the heart of one individual on a perfect level. If you are going to be a perfect leader over one individual, then you must be responsible over his well-being, including criticism of his bad points and uplifting and encouraging his good points. You cannot just say, "I am responsible over your good points but not over your bad points," but you must be responsible over the whole person of that individual. What makes you separated from him or divided from him is always the bad point, not the good point. So you must be able to encompass and be responsible over the bad points as well as the good ones. You must be able to help him eliminate his bad points, then he will be a good person, helpful to you.
Then you must always ask yourself this question, "Can I be responsible over a single individual on the perfect level?" If you are qualified for that you can further be responsible over your family as the good leader, the perfect leader in that situation; then there is no problem for you to be the leader of a bigger group. If you are going to be the perfect leader of your family, it means you have to bear the cross for the members of your family. If the family members are responsible for their own problems, so much the better. But if they cannot be, if you take responsibility for their shortcomings, then they must obey you and they must rely on you for that, at least. So you must train yourself for that. If you are a good leader in your family, there is no problem for you to be the leader of your church. In that case, you must think of the church members as though they are your own family members and be ready to take the responsibility over whatever shortcomings they have; then they can rely on you.
Instead of having other people responsible for themselves or for each other, you must be responsible for those people or their bad points. In that case, your people must willingly come under your guidance. The same thing applies to a national leader. You must ask yourself the question of whether you are qualified for those things; you can judge yourself whether you are a good leader and a qualified one.
When I am working for the nation of the United States, if I trust and love this nation more than God would, what would happen? The conclusion is that God cannot judge the United States too soon. Unless God can give more than that which the leader gives to this nation, He cannot judge this nation and judgment will be delayed. Do you follow me? (Yes.) So it is simple to know in what way we can lead this nation; we must be responsible for the shortcomings of this nation, for it's difficulties. What are the most difficult points in this nation? What are they?
First is the ruin or the crisis in the Christian world. We must be responsible for the corruption in the Christian world. In this nation, not only the Christian ideology, which was the founding ideology of this nation is being corrupted, but also the families committed to that ideology are being corrupted, are collapsing. If families are collapsing, it means the nation is collapsing. The God-denying ideology of Communism is infiltrating the nation and undermining the hearts of the people and separating them from God. Those three important questions are the most crucial ones.
We must be a strong group of people, ever progressing, while the Christian world is being corrupted. While in the Christian world even the Christians are almost ruining the nation, we, coming out of Christianity, must be able to save this nation. We must be a different species of Christian. Are you different from them? (Yes.) Then there is hope for us. How many years would it take us to save this nation? How many hundred years, how many thousand years? How many years? You may say we can save this nation in ten years' time, and you already imagine that you can rest after that. You must be ready to work for this nation, for your lifetime. Are you that responsible? (Yes.) Then you are hopeful people. Go ahead and do that.
Family disunion and rupture is another problem as I have said; because of that problem young people are leaving their homes, there are adolescent problems, problems of delinquency. How would you deal with them? We must do things conversely from what they are doing; when I order you to do so, you will go back to your homes and restore your family, restore your neighborhood, relatives, and other people. Would you be able to do that? (Yes.) While you do that job, you must not be like your parents, like your family members-physical family members, of course-and you must not be persons like your relatives or neighbors or friends. You must be 180 degrees different from them.
The worldly ambition of people is to be financially successful, but your ambition must be different from theirs; it must be almost opposite to theirs. In the outside world, people, especially Communists, want to slander others and find fault with others; even though you have no such fault, they will pretend that you have. What would you do in fighting against them?
In order for the Communists to grow so fast, they did not mind about what measures used, but we must be more fearful or much stronger than those people. It takes a leader who is strong enough to be able to sacrifice for the sake of other people and bear a heavier cross than his people and be equipped with the many attributes I have enumerated.
What I have so far done in this nation, making our movement conspicuous in the public eyes, will long remain when you inherit this mission and carry it out. You must be able to revitalize the Christian world, reunite families and maintain harmony as the lowest or smallest unit of the society or nation, and you must be able to annihilate Communism, exterminate it and make all the population of the world God-loving people. It may not be as easy as it sounds. You cannot do it with folded hands. The whole population of America is anxious to do the job, but they have so far failed to do it, and the handful of people in our group want that, so we have mobilized for that mission. With this in mind, can your hearts be at ease and say, "Everything will be taken care of by our Master. His leadership will do everything, and we can just sit still with folded arms, hands, doing nothing. " Can you do that? (No.)
You must put yourselves in my position at all times and be responsible leaders over some group at least; then you will feel my heart and do the same. Jesus was the representative who bore the cross instead of letting others do it. He was the only historical figure who willingly volunteered to bear the cross himself and to be responsible for other people's lives, and to be connected with them through eternity on the spiritual level.
From that point of view, you must fancy or grasp the picture of how you are going to act when you are responsible for all the population of the world in the future. When you have to fight against the Communist power, it may be even easier. But when you want to absorb them and win their hearts and make them to be what we are, then what are you going to do with them? If you fight against them and win over them by power, they will not be conquered in the real sense, and they can gather up their strength and come against us. But in time after winning over them, we must be able to absorb them and make them into our members. Unless we establish the principle that we can trust them, by loving them and being responsible for their eternal lives, we are not real victors.
The Communists, in their way, are thinking of erecting a kingdom of their own. But by going through untold sacrifices, we- will save them and restore them and show them that the kingdom we mean to erect is far better than what they dreamed of, and they will be convinced and persuaded. Unless we do that they won't be convinced. Isn't that true?
Then what is the greatest problem in the whole world, in the universe? What is that? What must be that? Satan. Who will be responsible over Satan? (We will.) It is easy to say we. Can you say so? (Yes.) It is not so simple as it may sound, but can you be responsible for him? (Yes.) It is desirable that we can say before God, "Don't worry about Satan. We'll be responsible for him and we will conquer him and bring him before you. " In that case, you must be able to get God to trust you and rely on you. Are you that qualified? (Yes.) Can you be responsible over Satan? (Yes.) That means you must behead him and bring him to me? (Yes.) But think of God; He has left him alone without beheading him, for 6,000 years, the Satan who has constantly been accusing man. Then what would you do? If there is any such person, God must be the person who hates Satan most, more than anyone else. It took the omnipotent God 6,000 years to annihilate Satan, and He has not yet completed it. And if we are going to take care of him, how much more difficulty do we have to go through? When you say you are going to be responsible for Satan, do you think that Satan will easily come to his knees before you? (No.) I think that who will really be victor over Satan is the problem.
One secret in winning over Satan is to be able to do what Satan can never do. The quality of Satan is that he is most able to destroy things. He is especially interested in destroying good elements. If you are stronger than Satan, to be able to win over him, you must be able to destroy what Satan has. Which is easier: to destroy what is good or what is bad? (What is good). Is it easier for a good person to become bad, or for a bad person to become good? (Bad person to become good.) Which is right? For a good person to become bad is easier. To tear down is easier to do than to build up.
Satan was the most vicious entity who destroyed the goodness of God's children in the Garden of Eden. Can you be responsible over that fierce enemy of yours, Satan? (Yes.) Before answering me with affirmation, have you ever stopped to think how fierce the battle may be, is going to be? If you have all the Communists in your hands, all the Satans in your hands, would you welcome them and say, "What may come is here, and I am ready to fight against and win over them. " Can you say that? (Yes.) If that is true, you are going to be the savior to the Communists, the savior to Satan.
We have such a vast job ahead of us. In order for us to be qualified enough to do that we must be able first to trust them and to sacrifice ourselves for the sake of those people, and be ready to love them as though we would our own people. First is trust, second is serve, next is love, and last is sacrifice -trust, serve, love, and sacrifice for them. There is no other way possible for us to win over them. Do you like the idea? (Yes.) You must readily accept those things. You must be able to trust them while they don't act kindly. You must be able to serve
them. You must be able to love them and sacrifice for them. And that you must do out of your heart, from the bottom of your heart, not unwillingly, not reluctantly, but out of your heart, from the very bottom of your heart. Can you do that? What do you think God would do, in what manner? Have you ever stopped to think of that? Even for God, it is a most difficult job.
God Himself would want to prove Himself reliable and would trust them, serve them, and sacrifice for them to the fullest extent. When you can trust a person while he is not trustworthy, when you can serve a person when he is not worthy, when you can love those people when they are not lovable, and when you can sacrifice yourself for the sake of those people when they are not worth sacrificing for -unless you can do that, you are not qualified as a responsible person.
When God had to leave Jesus in satanic hands and had to let him be killed, it was a demonstration of His love towards mankind; even at the cost of His own loving son, He had to trust the people that sooner or later they will be saved, and serve the people in giving out His son, and love the people to the extent that He gave His own son and sacrificed His son for the sake of those who came against him. This kind of attitude will qualify you as the responsible leader.
Would you want to be that kind of leader? (Yes.) You must realize it is a difficult job. But if you are willing to accept the responsibility and carry it out, then you will be relied on by God and be trusted by Him. God is in the position to do the job, and since He is an invisible entity, in place of Himself He sent the Messiah to do the job, and we must follow him, and walk with him as the example. And after we will have erected the kingdom of God on earth, to whom are we going to leave it? To the whole of mankind, of course. You know that half the world population is Communist. In a way, it means we are going to leave the kingdom we will have erected to Satan himself. By that time the Communists and Satan will not stay our enemies, but they will be convinced of our trustworthiness and be touched by us and be absorbed. Can you understand? (Yes.)
On God's part, He will have us go through three stages in order to meet Him, or in order for us to be able to erect His kingdom. We must be able to erect a kingdom for the world: first, for God-loving people, and then for Communist people. That means we must make the Communist world into the kingdom of heaven, and the satanic world, Satan, into the citizens of the kingdom. If and when we will have erected a certain stage of the kingdom of heaven on earth, do you think the Communists would be willing to come and live as citizens in that kingdom at first? (No.) Then in our world, we must have a stronger economic system than theirs, and a stronger political system and a greater culture than theirs in order for us to be able to absorb them. After having absorbed the Communist world and having them move into the kingdom, then do you think Satan would like to come and join? (Yes.) Yes? It is the nature of Satan to oppose anything good at first, at least. He has been ever corrupting or destroying what is good and the world under the providence of God, and he will try to have His last attack on the kingdom of heaven.
God Himself cannot excuse the origin of sin, Satan. Then who can excuse him or forgive him? The one who is in the position of Adam, after restoring Satan, must be able to bring him to God and say, "I have restored Satan, the last one of Satan, and brought him to your bosom; please beat me and punish me and do anything to me in place of him, and then forgive him," and then alone God's resentment will be cleared away and He will feel like forgiving Satan. So the cross we are going to bear will be of that nature.
With that kind of concept in his mind, even on the cross, Jesus had to pray for his enemy and bless them. Would that be an easy job? (No.) If it is that difficult, can you really be responsible for that? After joining the movement, in a year's time, some are heard to be exhausted, and some run away, falling away, so can I trust you? (Yes.) Recently, I have been in the boat fishing all the time. Sometimes I would take Japanese members, American members, members from other countries. I would test them and I would see how much difficulty they can stand, without sleeping, just doing the same thing all the way through. Allen is having a difficult time; he is the navigator on the boat, and I am sure after the day's work without sleep, around the clock work on the deck, he will get exhausted and say, "Oh, what a man Master is. He would just drive me all through 24 hours." I am doing that not because I want to catch fish. I want to set up the condition that I have loved the sea more than anyone else. When I catch fish, I do it as though I catch Satan, and I would free some of them, and when I catch them, I always dream or fancy that I can feed the trainees, feed our members.
After two days' work with me on the boat, I heard some say that I am an iron person, an iron man. I am no such person. I am no iron person or super man. I am just like you. What I have different from what you have is that I have a clear purpose ahead of me. I have the strong determination not to let it go unless I attain the goal. Nobody else may understand me, but that's no problem for me. That's the only thing that I have different from you. Whatever thing I once begin to do, I will cling to it until I make it a success.
Suppose we personify the boat, and my intention is to make the boat confess that he has the most wonderful owner. The boat itself, if it has a spirit, must want to set up the highest record of having caught so many fish a day. And the boat would want to travel more miles than other boats. That's my way of thinking.
In the year 1965 when I traveled through 48 states in 40 days, I would sit next to the driver, and for instance, when we traveled towards Key West, the driver had to drive until two or three o'clock in the morning, and I would just keep waking him up and pinch him. Why did I do that? Because I knew we were not on a tourist trip. From that very moment I planned for what we are doing now. He dreamed of the day to come when he was going to speak to vast public audiences, or to the crew on the ship, or things like that. In the future, I will have a marine business, too. I will become the greatest fisherman of all. I am going to erect a marine company.
In order for you to be able to lead people, the crew on the boat, or business men, you must know things about them more than other people. Among the laborers, the crew laborers, laborers on the boat, laborers in the factories, laborers in the mining area, miners, and farmers are most important. You must go through experiences in order to know the people. I have had the experience of working in mines. I know how to drill into tunnels and drive the pegs-what do you call them-to set up the-supports. Don't think of me as a religious leader, an ordinary religious leader. I don't like that idea. There is nothing I have not experienced. I am good at every athletic endeavor. I am good at making friends. Wherever I go, I immediately make friends with people around me. I am experienced in many fields, and because of my having been trained in this way, I can do the job which I am doing now. In doing anything and everything, I will compete with the experts. Would that be easy for an ordinary man to do? But for what purpose am I doing this? It is because I must lead those people in the future.
Even in the prison cell, in less than three days, I will make them obey me, make the cell mates obey me, because that is the contracted form of evil society, and I grasped their nature and background, and I can easily manipulate them. By going through that, I built myself as the qualified leader, and it is a difficult job, of course. In doing that, I hear their story and I am deeply sympathetic with them, and I would cry with them, and in that way, I want to touch their hearts, and they are moved.
Up to the present moment, I have tested so many people. With a certain standard, when I test them, they fail to meet my standard sooner or later, within three years' time. Then what about the American youth? Can you pass my test? (Yes.) I have recently heard that-I don't know how many-some state representatives, one state representative or commander on the mobile team for the state has disappeared without saying anything. That's a disgrace to the honor of what he had been, whether it is a male or female member. Would you do that and disgrace a female, or disgrace your sex? It is easy to say, "No. " In order for you to become a capable leader, you must plan the schedule for your whole life.
Whenever I read the newspapers and read that some criminals are sentenced to death, I study their background and want to know whether he or she has done that for a greater purpose. If one is going to be sentenced to death for the sake of what he did with a purpose, he must not have regrets; he must not try to be absolved. Can you be that cool and collected when you are faced with difficulty? (Yes.) I doubt it.
What I am doing in the United States is at the risk of my life. I am that serious. When your ambition is to save so many nations and the whole world, can you imagine that you can do it without risking your life? You may wish that you would live a happy life and make others live a happy life, but that's almost impossible. In order to save one worldly nation, to win independence, so many people have been martyred and denied themselves, and eventually were killed; how much more difficult it must be to erect the kingdom of heaven.
What I want you to do is to do your very best at the post to which you are assigned. Don't try to complain or don't try to defend yourself. Be grateful that you are still alive. Without that kind of strong determination, you can never be able to save a nation. If you are going to save the nation, you must be stronger than the nation, and of more value than the nation. If that nation has one thousand years of history, you must have in your mind that you can wait and fight through even one thousand years if you are given the time. If you are not ready for that, you cannot save the nation.
So I want you to realize how difficult a job we are going to take on from now on; be ready for that and become reliable, trustworthy leaders. When I look at my people working in the garden or doing anything, I always think, "If I were they, I would erase the time concept from my mind and think of that just as my job and there is no one else but myself to do the job, and then I can just work on and on without stopping after a certain hour. " Only those who have experienced would know how almost sacred it is to love work and work until you are exhausted and eat at the spot of your labor, and lie down in sleep, lie down and fall asleep right at the place of your labor. Then your meditation, your prayer to God on the spot will be heard and answered. It is a great thing of beauty, even though at that time you are all dirty with mud and you are perspiring all over and your face is dirty like a discarded doll's, things like that. But that is a great thing of beauty in God's sight. How beautiful it must be; you can picture the scene.
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to inherit from me. When you see me doing that, and you respect me and like me and love me, from what 1, through what I am doing you can imagine what God is like and what God would think of me and think of you when you follow me.
In order for you to be capable leaders, you must be trained, well trained, both on the physical and spiritual levels. In the established churches they seek for spiritual salvation alone, and they are thinking of the world to come after their physical death, and in preparation for that they work hard, of course, but we want to make this world into a better place to live and into a Godly kingdom on earth. So what we are doing is different and more meaningful than what they are doing. Your gifts and talents are limited. If you want to have your people suit your taste and interest, how many people you will miss. The number will be limited, so you must try on your part to adjust yourself to them and win them.
So I want you to be awakened to the fact that you must readily receive any kind of command or training that is required of you here, not unwillingly but willingly, from the bottom of your heart, and you must not think of your not being able to do that. You have the ability for that. I will give you an example. I have the confidence that I can make an amateur, or people who have been nonchalant about their job, make them into an expert in any line of work. Expertise is nothing else than how many times one has repeated the same thing, and you can become experts, specialists. Of course, there are differences because of an inborn gift between gifted persons and ungifted persons, but if you are not gifted in some line, you can work twice as much or three times as much and you can obtain your goal.
In my school days I had a friend who thought that he had a poor memory, so he would try to memorize the whole lesson he learned in class. From morning to night he would repeat the same thing until he could memorize it all. At first, he had the lowest grade point in the class, but at the time of the commencement, graduation, he was the top honor student. So steadfast endeavor, persevering efforts, will make you into experts. You envy genius, but if you can memorize by reading, for instance, a lesson once, and some other people memorize the same thing by repeating it the whole day long, whose memory would last longer? In the long run, for instance, at the time of graduation when you are asked questions about what you learned in the freshman or senior years, the second person will answer most of the questions, not the first. Don't you ever think that you can only be a poor lecturer, that you can never be an excellent one. How many more times you repeat the same thing, read the same thing, or practice on it will determine your qualification.
A few days ago David Kim told me that some of the trainees here are too old to memorize all those things, and it's almost hopeless for them. I thought in my mind, "That's not the way the director of the training center should talk or should think. " You can ask the person a question, "Have you ever tried to relish or absorb the teaching as though you would over a bowl of food when you are starving to death?" This is my way of thinking. If you are given a job, or if you chose a job, you will cling to it until you attain success, or else you will even die by doing, in doing that. You will do it to the end of your life. If there is any prize left over in God's hands, he will be willing to give it to me. Once you start doing things, you must cling to it until you attain success, and then there is nothing you cannot do.
I am now doing three kinds of things. When I do them, I am so interested in doing them, and in face of difficulties I don't mind the difficulties. I only am anxious in attaining the goal, to attain the goal. So I want you to be perseverant to the end, and in listening to me too, I want you to be patient. Let us pray. (Master's prayer.)
