The Kingdom of Love (1)
That is a real feel good title, isn't it? That just makes you feel warm and fuzzy inside. Kingdom of Love. But we have to understand what kind of love Jesus talked about, because there are types of love. So let us go today to Mark 12, and let us read this together.
Mark 12. 28-34
"28. And one of the scribes came, and having heard them reasoning together, and perceiving that he had answered them well, asked him, which is the first commandment of all? 29. And Jesus answered him, The first of all the commandments is, Hear, O Israel, The Lord our God is one Lord; 30. And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength; this is the first commandment. 31. The second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love they neighbor as thy self. There is no other commandment greater than these are. 32. The scribe said unto him, Well, Master, thou hast said the truth; for there is one God, and there is none other but he. 33. To love him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the soul, and with all the strength, and to love his neighbor as himself, is more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices. 34 When Jesus saw that he answered discreetly, he said unto him, Thou art not far from the kingdom of God. And no man after that durst ask him any question."
Amen. Durst! Durst ask him any question! So this is a really interesting episode here and I think it's an episode that we have all heard about. It is, commonly quoted, commonly mentioned in lectures and presentations. It is interesting here because the Scribes are the ones who are now challenging Jesus, both the Scribes and the Pharisees are challenging Jesus, asking him these kinds of questions in this chapter. Therefore, Jesus answers here, of course, what is the first commandment Jesus is talking about? The first commandment is, of course, "the Lord our God is one Lord. And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, soul, mind, and strength". We usually just say that very quickly --- "heart, soul, mind and strength." But really, look at how it says, "Love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, with all thy mind, with all thy strength." Notice that emphasis? It is a real different emphasis.
Then, of course, "Love thy neighbor as thyself." Now that is the point on which we usually focus, and but I want to go down to the part where the Scribe answers and replies, and he almost repeats to Jesus what Jesus has said. "Well, Master, thou hast said the truth, for there is one God, and there is none other but He."
I think today, it has been a long time since we have looked at current events. You know, even before I gave my "Breaking the Silence" sermon, we would look at many current events. But we haven't looked at a lot of current events during the sermon period for a while now, and we've been looking at the economic policies, or the political processes, or the nature of the Kingdom. And also understanding and differentiating between socialism, communism, oligarchy and free societies, etc. So, general studies. But it's also very important to not separate this from our current events, our current time. Because our current time is the "Last Days", we are in a very serious time.
When Jesus is answering these questions, he is also in a time of great chaos in the Roman Empire. Remember, Rome had just collapsed 44 years before Jesus came, and literally, 27 years before Christ comes, that is when Augustus says, "I'm the ruler, and I’m the living God of the earth." So the Roman Empire is groaning because it had just been a republic, it had collapsed over a period of hundreds of years, and now it is in this new hegemonic period, a new conquest period, and a new imperial period. There are all this contexts, in which Jesus was speaking.
Remember, the Roman Empire was not a monotheistic empire. If you see in the movie that came out just recently about Jesus, "Risen," remember that? And you can see Pilate, and you can see the main character was a Roman legate; he was a soldier, a leader of a battalion. And before he goes out to war, he has this little statue. And it's this little statue of Ares, and he's praying to the god Ares, "Whoo, God of war, give me strength…" Like this.
So we have to understand that the context of ancient Jerusalem is that it was surrounded by polytheism, surrounded by deities of every sort and size. Historically, there were the deities of Babylon and all those remnants still existing. Baal in different forms, and child sacrifices in different forms. There was temple prostitution being connected to the divine Aphrodite and the female goddess. All those kinds of things were real realities in Rome. So the Roman imperial class and the Roman elites would go to these temples, they would offer these incenses, they would be offering these things to Hera or to the different goddesses, and they would engage in temple prostitution. They would have sex with the young women who were the prostitutes in those temples. And they would contextualize that saying that it was a spiritual experience, and they would give gratitude to Aphrodite, the goddess of love for giving them this "incredible spiritual experience" of having sex with this prostitute.
So this is the context, we have to remember the context in which this verse is being said. And Jesus says, "Hear o Israel, the Lord our God is one God." One God. So, what was Jesus facing, even at this time? He was still facing relativism. There were so many gods. "You can be a god, I can be a god, there can be god over there, there can be a god for this and that, there can be a god for anything." It is a relativist picture. So we sometimes think relativism is a new type of philosophy, theological relativism. But it's not. It is an ancient one. And those ancient concepts of the various gods that are there with varying standards and varying morality, then of course, create moral relativism.
So then you have the temple prostitution. In Greek culture, it was very common that young boys would be raped. They did not call it rape, but, they would be raped by their teachers. This was a way for the philosophers to train their young men. And seeing women as defiled, and bleeding every month, having their period, and so not able to enter into the temple; seeing them as impure, the Roman culture and the Greco-Roman culture saw male-on-male amorous relationships as the highest.
In fact, you would study with your students, you would study philosophy with them, you would study the gods with them, you would study these things, these higher level and higher order thinking, and you would be intimate with them sexually. So you would share all of your knowledge, all of your wisdom, but also all of your sexuality with your students. You understand, this was part of the culture of the Greco-Roman world. It was a normalized part of that sociology. Does that make sense?
Now, you see this now, after the gay agenda comes in, and the legalization of gay marriage, etc., then you have the transgender issue that is pushing very strong. That was the big issue before all the riots started breaking out. Then, of course, we talked about the pedophilia cases where they called it "minor attraction syndrome." "Oh, our community, we suffer from "minor attraction syndrome", we are highly discriminated against, but we are people too." Same words that the gay community used, to legalize homosexuality are being used right now by the pedophile "community," can you call it a community? The pedophile "mental patients" are there saying that they are being discriminated against, using the same type of language to guilt Christians and guilt people with conscience to not stand up against them. Wait a minute, no, no, no, you're not taking my child out! No, you are not taking my five-year-old child out. You are going to have to kill me before you do that!
Then, of course, now the new one is "genetic attraction syndrome." And there is this one girl, she was adopted away, and she tried to find her dad, and they connected via Facebook, and they quote "fell in love" and then there's a story now about that. And there are a whole bunch of them coming out and calling themselves the "genetic attraction community." "We're also people too and we're highly discriminated against." What happens is that they use the same patterns as the gay agenda. The gay agenda is, brought in to deconstruct sexuality, deconstruct gender, and deconstruct morality. Then once that happens, all craziness breaks loose, with the animals and bestiality. People come and say, "Oh, I can marry my dog." This is real; this is not like "Twilight Zone" movie stuff. This is happening in our midst, it is insanity. It is literally happening like that.
But you have to understand that these are not new forms or new disorders. These were present and very common in the Greco-Roman period. This is really the culture of the ancient satanic kings of the past. It is a cultural remnant which is now becoming mainstream. A culture underground that had to be hid underground because Christianity wiped it out. Except for the Catholic Church that got infiltrated and then of course became pedophiles. The Christian movement had at least wiped this out, on the surface, very powerfully. So it is was an underground movement now becoming mainstream, bringing these things out into the open, talking about these things as if they are real issues and not seriously deformed ways of relating with somebody.
So Jesus is talking about this in the context of that moral relativism, that type of theological relativism, cultural relativism, and of course, under the imperial power of Rome now. Where now it is a hegemonic period, that is an empire, now that is trying to expand again because, it is starting to collapse. So as it is collapsing, it wages wars and it is trying to bring external enemies in so that the populations don't complain to the politicians and they keep busy on the wars. So this is a common standard procedure in these types of totalitarian systems, but this is what Jesus was living under, and certainly Christ felt it. He was constantly being chased down, not only by the Jewish Pharisees, but by the Sanhedrin, which were the judges who worked for the Roman Empire. They worked with the Roman Empire in order to collect taxes and adjudicate matters between the Jews, but really they would get permission from their Roman prelates and the Roman officers would communicate with them quite frequently. So that we know, is a historical fact.
So this is a very similar context to that which we are in now. Gay marriage was not openly, supported by the Roman Empire, but it was openly done. Not necessarily marriage, but homosexuality was an openly practiced institution even within the higher-level orders of the intelligentsia, intellectuals and academies, and schools of learning. They were, also places of sex, just like when you go to college, there are places of sex. If your kids go to college, watch out, there are places of sex. So it is in that context that Jesus is saying "the Lord is one God." He is one God, and that is very important because He has one standard. He has one nature, and anything opposed to that nature, God hates. So because God loves his children, He doesn't want people to rape his children. Because God loves the families that He creates, husbands and wives, the institution of marriage, he does not want that to be raped. He doesn't want four wives per man, he doesn't want eighty wives per man, he doesn't want eighty men per woman, whatever it is, right? He does not want the gay marriages, the transgender marriages.
There are now apparently, how many, 50 genders? 72 genders? There are not that many genders in Star Trek, okay? 72 genders, my goodness! Star Wars does not have that many genders. Give me a break! Ridiculous. So it's just insanity, this is literally the craziness, the wacked-out world, literally mentally ill world that we are living in, and it was very similar to this world.
So Jesus is saying, "God is one." From a freedom society perspective, and from the perspective of the Constitution, this is critical. This is also critical in a real understanding of True Parents, because you see what happens ---- if True Parents truly are one, but if they have equal authority, then what happened will happen. The Han Mother can come and veto everything Father said to never change. Right? So effectively, that means that she has more authority than him. But in the reality, everybody who is in Father's household, everybody who knows Father directly, it's all documented on video ---- that's why they don't want to release the videos --- Father is the absolute subject.
So there's one center. True Parents is one center, Father is the center around which Mother has to rotate. And all the other objects must rotate around that one center. That one pillar, that one standard is critical, because when we deviate from that by even one step, we start becoming relativists. So once you move from one to two, you're already practicing relativism. Once you move from monotheism to ditheism, you have relativism. And the inevitable downhill spiral from one to two to a hundred gods, to thousands of gods is one hundred percent guaranteed, it's inevitable. It cannot be avoided because you have now just relativized the Creator. You have relativized the subject partner.
So in a freedom society why is that important and why is that important from the perspective of Cheon Il Guk? If God gave you your freedom and your human rights, which are outlined, in the Cheon Il Guk Constitution, if God gave you those rights and He is the one true God, He is above all gods, He is above all peoples. He is above all nations and He is above all governments. He is sovereign above all things, and then the rights that you have received are what is called in philosophy "divine rights." These are rights that cannot be taken away. Or "natural rights" is another term for this. Rights that cannot be taken away by any person, organization, station, political power, etc. They cannot be taken away. Even another deity cannot take them away because we received them from the one true God; we received them from the King of Kings. Does that make sense?
It seems like a very minute point, but it is very important in terms of the Cheon Il Guk Constitution, the different points that Father outlined for the Constitution --- protecting God's lineage, human rights, and not abusing public funds --- all those things which are now delineated in the Cheon Il Guk Constitution. The beginning point of all that is the one true God. We are not talking about a one true God that has an object partner that is as great in authority as Him, and then can change His laws. That can change the gifts of freedom and responsibility He has given humanity. Do you see how huge the consequence is when we depart from the one true God? Now the tyrants will always win. Always they will win. Once you depart from the one true God, the dictator has won. Caesar has won. Those who wish to be god on earth have won. They do not have to submit. They also can be a god. So that statement, for Cheon Il Guk's existence, is critical because that's where you get the whole concept of natural rights for the citizens of Cheon Il Guk. This was the concept of natural rights for the U.S. Constitution as well. A Judeo-Christian understanding of Yahweh and Jesus Christ.
And without that key, as Kook Jin Hyung says very clearly many times, "without God you will never have freedom." If we have freedom because everybody here agrees --- I love his example, he calls it "the dictator principle" --- if everybody here, let us say there are 100 people in this room, and 99 of all of us vote that we should have freedom, but there is one person who says, "Screw that. You guys all vote for peace and freedom. Screw you. I am going to kill you all. I'll kill you all and I'll be the dictator." You see what I mean? Do you see the problem? The dictator will not abide by a majority's perspective on freedom or the use of force. He does not have to. He can determine his own laws. You see the problem? So the "dictator principle" always wins. If human beings can decide their human rights, the dictator will always win. Because there is always going to be one psychopath or a couple of psychopaths who work with sociopaths who say, "Screw you, weak dummies. I'm going to amass all this military power, and I'm just going to kill you all, anybody who opposes, and I'm going to be a totalitarian dictator." Right? There is always going to be that demon in the room.
So the dictator will always win unless freedom comes from a transcendental source, and not from a human source. Your freedom cannot come from human beings agreeing. If that is the case, then as soon as 51 percent agree you should have no more rights, you have lost. You are now being ruled over by slave masters. Does that make sense? It's very rational, it's very logical, it's philosophically very sound. The dictator principle will always win unless we have a transcendental starting point for freedom. That is right there. There is one God, there is a God above all the false gods people believe in, or themselves. There is a God above that, and that God is not a tyrannical god who wishes for us to be slaves. That God gives us freedom and responsibility; He gives us human rights that are, delineated in His Constitution that is given by the Messiah's direct kingship bloodline. Delineated straight out.
So this battle, this theistic battle versus, in this case, not a non-theistic worldview, but a polytheistic worldview, is very similar to what we have today in the modern world. Because it is not that people, believe in Athena and Zeus and Thor and all these old gods. They believe in new gods. They believe in new things that they are searching for. You know the whole trans-humanist movement. They will become gods. They believe they will merge with robots and the super elite will have internet technology ability directly from the brain. And so they will be super human. They will have ability to look through walls, because it will be imbedded within their brain function. And they will become god. And I've showed you some clips months back where we had some of the top, white-bearded, old scientists saying, "We will be gods and nobody will stop us." Like literally out of a crazy villain, James Bond movie, saying, "I will be god, you will not stop me."
So we have new forms of that. Not Athena and Zeus and Aphrodite --- new forms. New forms of worship. New forms of demonic possession, but done in different "modern" ways. But all really the same spirit, it's the same end goal; the end purpose is the same ---- worship of the self, the pleasure of the self, living for the self. The glorification of the self.
So Jesus is battling this. In this world today, we find the same thing and he says, "Love God with all your heart, with all your understanding, with all your soul, with all your strength." You know, if we are to love God with all our heart, soul, strength, we have to really give up our preferences. This is the hardest thing about loving God. You have to give up your preferences. If you want God to be this romantic, Casanova, always making you feel good, and always just encouraging you and just telling you what you want to hear all the time, then you want a puppy dog, you do not want God. You want a puppy dog to come, and even though you hit it, it runs up to you and is all, "Oh, thank you God, I'm happy to see you again, give me a Scooby snack." You want a puppy dog. You do not want God. If you want God you have to accept Him how He is. He is the creator of the universe, He is the creator of your own human rights, you have to accept how He is. You have to accept that He is the creator, He determines the standards, He determines the laws of the universe, the physics of the universe, He determines the mathematics of the universe, the architecture of the universe. He determines it, it is not you.
So we have all these people in the modern day who say they want God, but they want a genie in a lamp, or they want a Lady and the Tramp, a puppy dog. It is either Beauty and the Beast, Lady and the Tramp, or Aladdin. This is the type of thing that they are craving, not an actual relationship with their Creator, who through that relationship, will form you and mold you, will shape you, sometimes in a painful way, sometimes in a way in which you don't want to be shaped. Sometimes in a way that will challenge you and hurt you, in terms of making you stronger -- your emotions. And God will bring you to be somebody you never believed you could be. That only happens not when we try to make God a puppy dog, but when we accept Him on His own terms. And accept His revelation.
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