PDF file: 20210404_Grand Spring Service_Kyoshu-sama
Congratulations everyone on today’s World Church of Messiah Grand Spring Service.
First, I would like to thank all the staff at Grand Nikko Tokyo Daiba hotel for their understanding and cooperation as well as their tremendous support. It is thanks to their support that last year, we were able to hold Meishu-sama’s Birthday Service here, and today, again, it is their support that made this service possible. For that, I would like to extend my sincere gratitude to everyone at the hotel. Thank you very much.
As we heard in President Narii’s greeting just a moment ago, today, April 4, is Easter, the day celebrating the resurrection of Jesus Christ and the day of utmost importance for Christians.
Meishu-sama said that he wants to work in concert with Christianity, so we have to think: what does the resurrection of Jesus Christ mean for us?
The one and only God, Lord God, is the true God the Father for us all.
The purpose of creation of Lord God, our God the Father, is to bear His own children each with the name of Messiah, that is, to make all humanity His very own children.
To this end, before starting His work of creation, God first accomplished, in heaven, the work of atoning for the sins of humankind, forgiving, saving, resurrecting us, and making us Messiahs, His children. All these were first completed in heaven, just as Meishu-sama explains “the law of the spiritual preceding the material” in his Sacred Word.
After completing His work in heaven through using us, God made a place known to us as “the world,” a place that was a part of and inside heaven, and a place where time, space and dimensions existed.
And then, entrusting us with the breath that was imbued with His wish and His power, God sent us to the world and made each one of us into one who possesses consciousness.
God allowed us to carry our consciousness because He wanted to make each one of us His own child.
But it is precisely because we were allowed to carry this sense of “I,” this sense of being independent and separate from others, that we came to hold the misconception that our soul, consciousness and life were ours even though they actually belonged to God. We forgot that others and we, the ancestors and we, and all creation and we are in fact joined as one in God’s body, and we have not been able to escape from the way of living that suits our own convenience and prioritizes our own yardstick of good and evil.
Even though we were one with God our Father initially, a big gap, a strain if you like, was formed between God and us, and it became impossible for us humanity to return to heaven where God dwells. In short, we became sinners in the eyes of God.
No matter how much effort we put in, in no way was it possible for us to correct the strain that was formed between God and us.
But God had mercy on the likes of us.
Out of His never-changing and unfailing love, God sent Jesus to the world whom He had chosen in heaven beforehand in order to correct the strain between God and us and to grant His forgiveness to humanity.
God chose Jesus to bear the sins of humanity of the past, present and future and put him on the cross. On his part, Jesus offered his blood to God, asking for the forgiveness of sin. Then, God accepted it as the blood of atonement and granted forgiveness to all humanity, proclaiming His verdict that we are all innocent.
God proclaimed that we are innocent so that He could welcome all of us, without exception, into His heaven and make us His children.
After putting Jesus on the cross, God sent Jesus to the world of the dead, raised him from the dead and made him be born anew as the child of God, the Christ, the Messiah. God, in short, resurrected Jesus.
By resurrecting Jesus, God established the path of making not only Jesus but also all humanity His own children—the work that He first accomplished in heaven.
What a great, deep love and grace this is!
In order to bring this grace to as many people on earth as possible, God sent Meishu-sama to the world.
Meishu-sama fervently preached to us the importance of faith in the invisible God, founded World Church of Messiah, and through the Sacred Word such as the “Unification of God and a human” and the “Second Coming of Christ,” he led us closer, little by little, to truth.
And finally, by being born anew as the Messiah, Meishu-sama, with his own body and being, bore witness to why God resurrected Jesus and, at the same time, entrusted us with the divine work of saving all humanity by working in concert with Christianity.
Now, both Meishu-sama and Jesus are breathing with the breath of resurrection, are working within us and are using us to accomplish God’s will.
Our souls witnessed and were present at the time when Meishu-sama was born anew, revived in the eternal life and resurrected.
Our souls witnessed and were present at the time when Jesus resurrected, too.
Our souls are already welcomed in heaven.
We need to understand the gravity of being used in the work of salvation together with Meishu-sama, Jesus and many others—the work of making all humanity be born anew as children of God, Messiahs, of reviving everyone in the eternal life and of resurrecting everyone.
Since God is the Creator who lives eternally, all that exists is alive, too. Nothing is dead.
We were sent to the world only after being entrusted by God with His eternal soul and breath.
But we forgot this, and just as we use the expression “life span,” we assumed that life on earth was the only life, moving far away from the life of God.
All of us humanity were trapped in the notion of “death,” and in the eyes of God, we were like dead beings, not living ones.
Even though we were like this, God granted His forgiveness to us through the atoning blood of Jesus. Not only that, through His power that raised Jesus from the world of the dead, God delivered us who were trapped in the notion of death and turned us into living beings.
This power of God’s life penetrates everyone and everything.
Wasn’t Meishu-sama convinced that this power of life penetrated him? Wasn’t that why he was able to revive in the eternal life of God and be born anew?
The power that made Jesus revive is the power that made Meishu-sama revive.
And this power of life exists in our breath.
In our daily life, we breathe in and out without giving it much thought, but our breath is not ours; it is that of God’s eternal life—that which made Jesus revive, that which made Meishu-sama revive.
Now, at this moment, we are breathing in and out with this new breath, with this breath that can revive everyone and everything.
God allows us to breathe not only unconsciously but consciously as well. For, through using our sonen and breath, God wants to advance His work of remaking everyone and everything anew by welcoming them all into the Church bearing the name of Messiah.
God is breathing within us, or rather, He is breathing at the center of each one of our consciousnesses.
The breath that God breathes out is the breath we breathe in. The breath that God breathes in is the breath that we breathe out.
When God breathes out, let us breathe in that breath from the center of our consciousness. When God breathes in, let us breathe out to the center of our consciousness.
When we breathe in, let us determine in our mind the thought “May the breath of God that revives everyone and everything be shared with all” and have the thought of imparting God’s breath to all the cells in our body. When we breathe out, let us determine in our mind the thought that “I will return to where You are, O God, as one who, together with everyone, has been forgiven, saved and made into one who lives.” In our daily life, let us try to breathe in and out with these thoughts in our mind.
In this way, let us believe in the will and power of God that are embedded in our outgoing and incoming breaths, and in the name of Messiah, which is one with Meishu-sama, and in the name of Messiah, which is one with Jesus, let us serve in the work of salvation—the work of making all humanity, which is one with all creation, be born anew.
Thank you very much.
