1981 Sep-Oct Joint Issue

Sons and daughters of God,
Are you well within the blessings of the Word and the grace of life given to you?
The time has come for the heaven and earth to make proclamation of the revolution as they yield the ripened fruits to be harvested. Yet, my heart breaks in being unable to make a fruitful sound although I claim to believe in and testify the seeds of life., I pray that you will drink this sorrowful confession with your lips of love and water the land with it when the eternal Harvester comes to level the ground and plants the seeds that you offer up.
The people with a vision will never fail. I live and will continue to live each day with conviction. I have no doubt that the duty of saving history lies upon the believers. In the past, I heard that it was the kings, heroes, and politicians who shaped history. However, that was a lullaby sung to us as we were raised rocked in our cribs. Now, the kings and heroes have retired into our dreams. The politicians, who are more cunning and out for self-interest than the former, give out their names and titles with the hidden intention of taking everything that he can get. They so often lavishly use the words “leaders” or “public servants” in attempt to hold onto their time; but the generation is already beginning to fade away. This is testified by the political status of every country worldwide today. There is no country that is without chaos and corruption.
There are many shapes and sizes but the problem is just one: the seeds of life. The seeds?the heroes of history?struggle to stand on their own like a forest of firs between heaven and earth, but their arms and feet are grappled and hindered. How can chaos not be inevitable? The minds are rising up like the tropical storms near the equator, or like the blizzards of the north and south poles, but they are appeased with money, deceived with theories, handicapped through education, and intoxicated in the arts. How can corruption.be unavoidable?
When the seeds of the Word come to realization on their own, so that they act on their own accord and not because of someone else’s ruling, volunteer to serve the whole and not just for that someone in particular, and endeavor solely to fulfill their duty and not in hopes to receive compensation, history will come to life and mankind will eternally become the ruler of the new universe, the sons of the Word. If we fail to do so, then the fate is decided.



The issue is, where do we find the new seeds? Therein lies no greater Word than the Word of Jesus Christ: “The humble in heart will inherit the earth.” In actuality, Jesus is not the only one who said this. Benevolent teachers across the ages and in all countries have said the same.
Then, dear saints of the Word, don’t we have something to think about? Who has become lower than we have in today’s world? Yet we did not lower ourselves in humility. Who did this? It was history. It was heaven. At the end of the 5,000-year-history, our lips are touching the ground.
Why? The Bible states that when history is about to entrust a great calling to someone, it afflicts the person’s body and heart, hindering everything he attempts to do. That is the way to train him to be able to do what is impossible. What is impossible? Having to endure all sorts of affliction implies that it must be for the sake of something that is most essential to saving history. Apparently, it is not for power or knowledge. What human, especially a person desiring to take the lead in history, refrains himself from power and wisdom? Therefore, they are not it.
My beloved brethren, it is humility!
Why? The cause of disputes and destruction always lie in power and knowledge. This most certainly results in conceiving an opponent of power and knowledge who is stronger and more malicious than oneself. Indeed, it is an eternal truth that he who lives by the sword will die by the sword. The greatest sorrow in the history of mankind came when men began to view human relationships as the relationships of domination and subjugation. However, it was the opposite in the beginning; it was originally to acknowledge one another to help one another, and to be unified. Unfortunately, those who were well-off with strength and talents in the beginning made that grave mistake, and that wicked tradition has continued until today as if it were natural. Academics, philosophy, and even religion have viewed in such a way. Only now we have realized just how wrong we have been.
Therefore, political civilization is bound to self-destruct through its own deed, and there must be another breed that is different from the former in order to save history. That different breed must have the trait of love that is characterized by humility. No one, other than a nation or individual already destined to fall, will decline to acknowledge this. I believe that the reason for our absurd suffering lies in this. This has been my conviction ever since my youthful thirties until today.



We presently stand in Job’s place. I’m not saying we are without sin. What human conscience does not know this? What I mean is that this fate we face is absurd. It’s the absurd state of mankind. Therefore, to pass these absurd tests we must reach the state of powerlessness and unconditionality. And that is humility.
Let us get rid of this civilization that reveres power and knowledge as god and think it natural to exploit and prey on the weak and the poor. Nothing but humility and heart of servitude will bring about a new history that stands upon love and peace, the fundamental principle of life. Setting that example is the destiny given to us.
Seeds of the Word! I know this. But, I lack the strength to do it. So I am saddened and ashamed. Perhaps I need to suffer a more severe hardship so that the residue--the residue of this mortal man, the residue of the past tens and thousands of years of history?is ejected from my heart, my nervous system, and my brain cells. Lord, may it be so!
When I was in the fourth grade, I would walk to my friend’s house at night to study. I recall seeing chestnut stands at every side street. Chestnuts the size of my fist would shine like pearls under the light of the Carbide kerosene lamps. As I think to myself, “That is exactly the symbol of a seed…” I remember what my Japanese teacher, Mr. Harukawa said: “The chestnut is a man of the field.”
The yellow fruit that reveals the heart of Mother Nature is protected within the inner layer that has a bitter taste and an outer layer like steel. The entire thing is wrapped in a tremendous prickly shell. There is no mistake that the chestnut is a humble man of the field. “However,” I asked myself, “What about the person who eats it?” Cruel is the fate of the seed like the chestnut which suffers through the four seasons to painstakingly yield the fruit inside only to be eaten by indifferent men as a snack. But truthfully, that is the very seed. The moment I asked about the person who eats it, I forgot I was a seed. This thought arose because I had yet to pull out the sprout of addiction I had developed by politics and civilization. There are many things that seem a waste in nature. This is because nature of life stems from what is peaceful. Nature’s waste is God’s generosity. It’s His limitless forgiveness.
Seeds of the Word, we must know the depth of the living God’s Word in order to survive. Why do you wander about on this earth? Why do you speak only with words of the earth? Let us quickly become the remnants like Joshua and Caleb. The seed is victorious through giving without bounds. That’s the qualification of occupying the land. Let us live as fruits before the great love of God’s administration. The seed of the Word doesn’t fight evil with evil. Facing evil with evil comes from the thought of not wanting to lose. That is civilization. That is politics. Yet, what’s the result? It’s the war and pollution that darken the future of mankind. Didn’t Jesus say, “If you calculate by days you lose, but if you calculate by years you have plenty”?



Saints of the Word, the way of people of the world is the opposite: they seem to have profits in days, but in fact they lose in years. This history is history at loss. And the verdict today is, “How you’ve been punished for challenging the great harmony of nature!” Not just today but this has been testified several times throughout history. It’s just that modernity is all about massive science and we often deceive ourselves in it.
There’s a saying that “A shriveled chestnut hangs for three years.” Does this idiom ridicule the fact that there is no fruit, or is it being sympathetic towards the chestnut, or is it spoken after having enjoyed a seeming fruit inside? Let’s think about this for a moment. My thoughts change when I place myself in that chestnut hanging. Could I be the fruitless chestnut? The idiom is not someone else’s words. It’s the loud cry of the living seed. Our philosophy is contained within there.
The scent of the wild chrysanthemum has now faded away and it’s hard to see any remaining shades of green. But there is the shriveled chestnut, hanging on the old chestnut tree behind the mud hut for three, maybe five years. The sound that cried out on the winter nights, shaken by the harsh west winds! Below that lies the sound of the ravine that cries out in sympathy. Lend your ears to all of this.
Saints of the Word, the chestnut hangs at the end of the old chestnut tree for three years now because it is fruitless; and the feeble chestnut cries even now for its fruit. Don’t laugh at me. I am heeding to too dreadful a command to be laughed at. The sound of the seed is the chestnut in the field. It’s too cruel a criticism to say, “Even the ones with fruit fall. Why does the fruitless continue to hang here?” The seeds of the Word do not criticize. Nor are they sarcastic.
You whose names I do not know, it’s not that the seeds of the Word aren’t falling off the tree. They can’t. We must know there is a great appeal and sorrow in this. It is fine if I cry through the blizzards on a long night. But if I have to keep crying hanging like that even while the flowers bloom in spring and the world is filled with shades of blue and green in the summer, how is it for my greed? Ah, am I not the shriveled chestnut of history crying because I have no fruit! I know what I’m not. I have a thought about being filled with fruit so that I can roll to the ends of the earth and produce 60-fold, 100-fold of seeds to nourish the roots and cultivate the rotten tree. What says that a fruit must go in by the mouth to be called a fruit? You who were hung on a tree on Golgotha of eternity and cried out, “My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?” Who are you? You are certainly not the shriveled chestnut. You are filled in abundance with fruit. Yet why have you put on the thorns and cry like the shriveled chestnut? Yes, was it to call the shriveled chestnuts that are struggling under their burdens of fruitlessness so that through your single glance you may remove the karmic burden of history from them? Then were you going to take them as heralds of the coming Kingdom? Oh, keep me next to You today.

Reverend Abraham Park