First Love, June 7, 2020

Reflection of Dr. C. S. Yong's Morning Devotion

Message: First Love

June 7, 2020

By Rafael E. Ablong

Dr. Yong’s topic tor today’s morning devotion is “First Love” or Chut Sarang.  Central to this message is how to restore the three Biblical eras of the Old Testament, the New Testament, and the Completed Testament in our life. In this message, he strongly poured out his concern for all of us by elaborating the details the processes by which human beings, after the Fall, should undertake to move away from Satan’s realm into the realm of God’s Heavenly Dominion or Chun Il Guk, where no trace of sin and Satan can exist.

These are the salient points of his message today. I am sorry if this is very long.

1. To attend to Heavenly Parents and True Parents, we must endure the danger of death at least three times in our life. This is the path all of us must take to regain our value by passing through the historical challenges of the Old Testament, the New Testament, and the Completed Testament eras in the course of restoration history, during our lifetime. We must do whatever is necessary to overthrow our current environment together with True Parents so we can remove the Satanic blood in our lineage. Dying three times is the only way to regain our original value and restore what was lost in the Fall of our first human ancestors.

2. No matter what, we need to unite with Heavenly Parents and our current environment and situation. And find a way to reach Him. Without meeting God, fallen man cannot solve his fundamental problems. The purpose of our life is to meet our eternal, Heavenly Parents. Even though, we desire to meet God. We have already become carriers of fallen blood lineage.

3. Since the fall and death of Adam and Eve, how many people have returned to God’s bosom? It is extremely difficult to meet Heavenly Parents. So to find and reach him, Father said, we need to die, shed off and completely deny our old self so we can go back to our original self and return to God’s bosom. Divine Principle clearly explains what death and resurrection means. Because of this, it is very impossible to go back to God’s bosom. So we need to prepare to die, resurrect and be reborn.

4. Without death, resurrection, and rebirth, we cannot attend to God as our Heavenly Parent. We need to die for the Old Testament era, the New Testament era, and  The Completed Testament era. So we need to go through these conditions of “dying” in each of these eras.

Adam and Even died in the Old Testament Era because they eat the forbidden fruit.

5. To restore the Old Testament in our life, we need to overcome our carnal or bodily desire for sex and fornication. The goal of Satan every day is to have all human beings lose their purity. His main purpose is to rape any girls or any boys and to kill their life so he can take them to his dominion. This is why keeping our purity is always a serious issue of life and death. 

--Satan stealthily looks at every opportunity to rape your spirit of purity and dignity before God. He assaults us every second, every minute, every hour, every moment of our life, day and night. He is always thinking and working hard on how to make free sex or Chapter 2 environment. His goal is always rape and fornication. That is why keeping our purity is not a simple matter. Why did Adam Eve die? It is because they ate the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Disobeying God’s commandment or engaging in an illicit sexual relationship was the cause of Adam and Eve’s death,

--So that, if you keep your purity and study the Divine Principle. God will attest to you, you are better than Adam and Eve. The sexual relationship was external but the reason was internal. Spiritual fall was the cause of the physical fall. So the physical fall was just a result. So, before Adam and Eve committed the physical sin they already committed spiritual sins so many times. So to prevent the physical fall, we need to be spiritually and internally pure.

--Free sex is our number one enemy. That is why Father suggested instead of free sex, we should practice absolute sex or sex between husband and wife only, centering on God. so once, you commit illicit sex. You will eternally die. That is why to attend God and True Parent we need to “kill” our physical desires especially or sexual desire. This means that once we have kept our purity, we have already restored the Old Testament Era.

--Satan attacks you spiritually first. When you wake up, Satan is already waiting for you. He has already confirmed that you belong to him through sexual thinking. Once you think sexually, you have confirmed to Satan that you belong to him. Without any reason, you continuously develop this kind of thinking, and Satan teaches where to find this place you can fall. He is very clever even to teach you where to commit homosexual sins. He will teach you how to tempt another person to fall into you. 

--To dominate the physical body and to keep our purity, we need to go to the frontline. We need to train our bodies to keep our purity. 

6. In the Old Testament era, Adam died after committing sexual sin.  In the New Testament Era, Jesus came as the second Adam. Why did Jesus die? He died because the Israelite people did not recognize him. They insulted him and said so many bad or evil things against him. They persecuted him.

--To restore the New Testament Era, we need to overcome any kind of persecution and misunderstanding, trials, and difficulties. People followed Jesus at first because he was performing miracles. Blind men were able to see. The deaf men hear, and he made a dead man come to life. Jesus was the Lord and the Messiah, yet he was persecuted and crucified.

--When the disciples repented and truly believed in Jesus' resurrection, the Holy Spirit came down and everybody experienced a rebirth. This explosive spiritual experience gave them a very powerful sense of belief and conviction that Jesus was the Messiah, the Saviour of All humankind. This kind of conviction, made them overcome so many trials and obstacles. Even if they were fed into the lion's mouth or even if they faced a violent death. They sang songs of praises and testified to the Lord Jesus. They were defeated physically but later on by the strong spirit of Christianity they were able to take over the Roman Empire, and the Vatican. Anywhere the Christian saints and martyrs preached, people bow down and have a change of heart. They became the heavenly examples of the restored words, “veni, vidi, vici” or “I came, I saw and I conquered” when Rome bowed to Christianity. Their spirit became the leading force in the 2,000 years of Christian history.

--Therefore to overcome death, experience resurrection and rebirth in the New Testament era, we need to overcome all kinds of persecution, trials, and difficulties.

7. The Completed Testament era is an era of attendance. Attendance here means we attend God and True Mother every second, every moment of our life. To overcome the Old Testament Era, my body is the offering. I need to overcome physical temptation or the trial of Adam and Eve. I need to keep absolute purity in this era. To restore the New Testament Era, we need to overcome all kinds of persecution, trial, and difficulties.  To restore the Completed Testament Era, I need to offer my parents, my couple, and my children or my family.  The person who receives the first love and stays until the very end will receive salvation. 

--Centering on the Completed Testament Era, after the blessing, we need to overcome: husband and wife trial, physical children’s trial, Cain-Abel trial, True Children and spiritual groups trial followed by the trial of True Father and the trial coming from True Mother.

-Before True Father passed away, the H1 trial and the trial coming from spiritual groups like the Oh group, the Okamoto group, the Nakayama group, and others occurred.  After True Father passed away, the H2 trial began.

--Externally, my blessing is great because I am blessed to a Japanese. Externally, it is great but internally, there are so many trials to overcome.

--Why people lost their faith in the church. It is the trial from the True Children. Because of the True Children, many people lost their faith. We directly got a trial from the true children but we survived and we are stronger now. We learn from experience and we grow wiser each time.

8. We are now living in the Chun Il Guk Era. True Father’s wish for us is to unite with True Mother to be triumphant. If our faith shakes from the little tests and challenges, we will fall away. We are so lucky to have True Father and now True Mother leading us. True Mother attended True Father for 60 years as his wife. Nobody has attended True Father longer and closer than True Mother. So naturally, she should be leading our movement. Her training and experience from True Father put her in a better position and qualification to lead us more than anybody else on the earth.

Finally, we have to follow True Mother absolutely to succeed over all the trials and challenges of this age. We should be eternally grateful to have received the blessing. I have to focus more on the positive points of my life with God and True Parents that I can be grateful of. These things will keep me alive and growing with God.

I am so grateful to receive the marriage blessing with my wife. Through her, I realized so many good and wonderful things. This blessing gave me a lot of things I did not ask for, hoped for, or intended to have. I don’t think I would have this kind of blissful experience without her although it is internally challenging sometimes especially in the early years of our marriage. I do believe that creating Heaven on Earth together is like facing a rough storm in the beginning, some little tough times in the middle, yet only laughter and happiness stays at the end. 

Restoring all the eras during my lifetime on earth may be difficult but I believe with God and True Parents,  I can do it. I will be victorious. This is easier said than done but it comes with solid experience. I have experienced God many times inside and outside my body. I felt his presence during my appendectomy operation in 1996. I felt him during my early years in Japan when I had four different jobs in five different places at different times of the week, day, and night. I felt God’s presence when I was taken by ambulance in 2007 because my body cannot move anymore due to stress and fatigue from overwork. I thought I would die, but I didn’t. I will keep my faith to Heavenly Parents, True Parents, True Mother, always no matter what situation I will be in. I will keep going on this path because this is where God had led me.

Thank you so much, Dr. Yong, for giving me hope to overcome my physical desires; to overcome persecution, trials, and difficulties; to overcome the trials of attendance and central figures. Thank you so much for making us believe in our innate capacity to overcome evil and sin through the Divine Principle, True Mother’s parental guidance and leadership through you. Thank you so much for making me and others realize the stage we are in and the things we need to do to overcome Satan and ourselves in every era of our life. 

Please continue to be healthy and strong. We love you not because of your position but because of how you relate with us just as how True Parents have related with you. May God keep you and your family in His Loving embrace wherever you go and whatever you will do. Thank you, thank you so much!   

--Rafael E. Ablong