Just all day long we're able to fellowship. All day long able to talk about God and Christ, ํ๋ฃจ ็ตๆฅ(์ข ์ผ) ์ฐ๋ฆฌ๋ ์ฌ๊ท๋ฉด์ ํ๋๋๊ณผ ํฌ๋ฆฌ์คํ ์ ๅฐ(๋)ํ์ฌ ๋งํ ์ ์์์ต๋๋ค. and he's in a stage where in his life where he's so in love with the Father. ๊ทธ๋ ๊ทธ์ ไบบ็ไธญ(์ธ์์ค)์์ ์๋ฒ๋์ ๋๋ฌด๋ ์ฌ๋ํ๋ ๆฎต้(๋จ๊ณ)์ ์์ต๋๋ค. So it's so amazing to see and it's so inspiring to see that kind of man. ๊ทธ๋์ ๊ทธ๋ฐ ็ทๅญ(๋จ์)๋ฅผ ๋ณด๋ ๊ฒ์ ๋๋ฌด ๋๋๊ณ ์ ๋ง ๅบๆ(์๊ทน)์ ๋ฐ์์ด์.
So open tender heart uh but uh very very very very very of course powerful indeed as well. ์ ๋ง ๅคๆ (๋ค์ )ํ ๋ง์์ด ์ด๋ ค ์๊ณ ๅฟ่ซ(๋ฌผ๋ก ) ๋ง์ฐฌ๊ฐ์ง๋ก ๋งค์ฐ,๋งค์ฐ, ๋งค์ฐ, ๋งค์ฐ ์ ๋ง๋ก ํ์ํํฉ๋๋ค. So please keep praying for Craig Sawyer. ๊ทธ๋ฌ๋ ็ฅ็ฆฑ(๊ธฐ๋)ํด์ฃผ์ธ์. ํฌ๋ ์ด๊ทธ ์์ด์ผ๋ฅผ ็ฒ(์)ํด. He's invest for child rescue. ๊ทธ๋ ๅ ็ซฅๆๅบ(์๋๊ตฌ์ถ)์ ๆๅ ฅ(ํฌ์ )ํด ์๊ณ They're doing very very important work. ๊ทธ๋ค์ ๋งค์ฐ ้่ฆ(์ค์)ํ ์ผ์ ํ๊ณ ์์ต๋๋ค.
Today, September 17, 2015, is my spiritual birthday. Forty-two years ago I committed my life to God, Divine Principle, and True Father.
So today seems like a fitting and proper day to rededicate myself to God, Divine Principle, and True
Father.
Therefore, I hereby resign my membership in HSA-UWC and FFWPU led by Hak Ja Han.
I will henceforth align myself with God, Divine Principle, and True Father as they are being expressed through the ministry of the World Peace and Unification Sanctuary in Newfoundland, PA, and the persons of Hyung Jin and Yeon Ah Moon.
I have kept mostly quiet until now because I wanted to be sure.
I believe I have sympathy for both of the sides, but โDecision Dayโ has come for me to decide and stop sitting in the midway position.
Itโs not that I want there to be different sides, but that is beyond my control. I do not want to separate from friends and loved ones who might chose the other side and I hope that will not happen. It is not my intention to cut off anyone and I will not do that. I will respond to anyone who wishes to contact me. I will try to help you understand my decision if you want to know.
Some of my friends may be shocked by my decision. Some of you may feel betrayed. Iโm sorry for that. Please believe me when I say this has been a very excruciating course for me to navigate my way through. It has struck even to the heart of my own family. I was even considering whether I might end up in hell or not.
Please be assured that Hiromi and I went through this whole process together and we are as united in this decision as ever.
How did I go about choosing a side you might ask? Well, last night I watched parts of the Republican Candidates debate on television. There were 11 candidates all presenting their qualifications to be the nominee for President and attempting to discredit the other candidates. How do you choose who to support?
Well, for me, in the end, itโs not about who has the best qualifications in politics or business, whether somebody has the best debating ability, who has the most energy, not even who is young and handsome, or too immature, or who seems to have been faithful for 50 years. I want to know who God wants to be President.
In our church itโs the same. God does not use a democratic process.
Itโs not about what I think or whether I even like the character and style of the candidateโs leadership or personality. I donโt get a vote. Itโs about God. So my main issue is: โWho is the one that God has anointed?โ
I started watching the videos of the sermons by Hyung Jin Nim a few weeks after I heard about the sermon called โBreaking the Silenceโ on Jan. 18, 2015. Up until now I have watched every one of the weekly sermons. Also I have gone up to Pennsylvania several times and talked deeply with my friends who are leaders/members in the Sanctuary Church to see what they had to say about what was going on and about who is Hyung Jin Nim and what does he want. This got me way beyond what is in the YouTube videos.
I watched videos of Mother and read her speeches. I talked to Dr. Hendricks and read Dr. Wilson. I was on Facebook many hours and days and weeks reading the back and forth of members on both sides until I couldnโt take it anymore.
We had Dr. Balcomb and his wife over to our house for dinner. I met with the local pastor and also the assistant pastor. I met with my son who is the Vice-President of FFWPU-USA.
I love all these people, most of all my son, who I will be hurting the most.
.
But I cannot continue in the current FFWPU/HSA because I do not believe what they are now teaching. Iโm going where I think True Father is.
Why I choose Sanctuary Church
1. I believe God and True Father are in the Sanctuary Church.
Clearly True Parents together crowned Hyung Jin Nim and Yeon Ah Nim 3 times as their heirs and successors. That canโt be denied.
Through my prayers and in my heart, God has confirmed this for me. I experience the spirit of True Father at Sanctuary Church. Conversely, I no longer experience True Fatherโs spirit at FFWPU events. This is
my testimony. I know there are many who say True Father is still there. I respect that.
I hope anyone who is reading this will go find out for yourself and not be scared off by warnings from HSA
leaders not to have any give and take with Sanctuary members. Please give Hyung Jin Nim a fair listen.
2. Authoritarian vs. Freedom
I liked it early on when True Father said that the Unification Church would eventually disappear. The current HSA seems to be getting more and more structured, controlling, and authoritarian at the top.
When I was in the Seminary, True Father told us to go out to visit other churches and if we found a better one that we could go ahead and join it. He was confident enough to give us our freedom. I see HSA trying to control who members can talk to, associate with, and what they can read.
Sanctuary Church on the other hand has declared they will not have any hierarchical structure. Everyone can freely associate with others and everyone should try to connect directly to True Father in spirit on their own. Sanctuary Church has just declared a members Bill of Rights to protect members from command and control leadership.
Hyung Jin Nim and Yeon Ah Nim did not choose to be True Parents heirs. It was True Fatherโs will. It seems to me that it has taken Hyung Jin Nim these last three years to come to terms with his anointing and fully accept his mission, all the while constantly learning on the job.
I love his focus on repentance. No one can be a true Abel if he/she is not humble. Thatโs my experience.
3. Absolute Sex
My wife and I spent five years as co-directors of the Blessed Family Department together. We were fully immersed in trying to build ideal families using Divine Principle and learning all we could from professionals in the marriage education field in America. The research and science of building relationships is now huge.
But because the essence of the fall was the sexual relationship, then the essence of restoration will also be found there. True Father called the sexual relationship the โCore of the Universeโ, โthe Base of the
Kingdom of Heavenโ, โthe place where Godโs Love is perfectedโ, and many other equally profound terms. Read page numbers 1287-1288 in Fatherโs Cheong Seong Gyeong. (http://www.unification.net/csg/CheonSeongGyeong.pdf)
Recently I published some of my own insights about absolute sex. http://appliedunificationism.com/2014/02/03/gods-original-design-for-human-sexuality/
The message of absolute sex is important to the salvation of the world and the creation of the Kingdom of Heaven on earth, ideal families, and the ultimate happiness of God and all humankind. Iโm convinced of that.
Hyung Jin Nim gets it. He has made it the number 1 Principle which he inherited from True Father and that should be passed down to each generation.
True Mother and HSA apparently told him to stop talking about it.
4. Portion of Responsibility
I believed for 41 years that True Father and True Mother were one and they had reached perfection. Then in January, 2015, a challenge came to that belief.
I denied it at first. It couldnโt be true. That would mean my whole belief system would come crashing down after 41 years of believing. I had to ask myself what I had dedicated nearly all of my life to. The idea kept bothering me and bothering me for months.
But I had to know the truth. For many days and nights I couldnโt stop thinking about it, going back and forth. It seemed so deeply depressing and sad.
Fortunately I can share everything with my wife. We talked it out and kept each other close with what we were thinking and learning in our search. We came to the same conclusions.
People who study mourning and grief talk about the Five Stages of Grief: Denial, Anger, Bargaining it away, Depression, and finally Acceptance. (http://grief.com/the-five-stages-of-grief/)
I seriously went through all of them and none of them have completely left me.
Finally I got to the last one and now I have accepted that Mother has separated from True Father. Faced with that situation, I still want to follow True Father. I exercise my portion of responsibility and
choose to support Hyung Jin Nim and Yeon Ah Nim and their ministry.
I have learned deeply that no one can interfere with another personโs portion of responsibility. No matter how hard you try, you cannot. God will not. This goes all the way back to the Garden of Eden.
What you believe is deeply your decision and it will be the basis of what you create in your life. If you believe in Buddha, Muhammed, Moses, Jesus, True Mother, or someone else, you can have a spiritual experience with them and even with God.
Is the one true God leading all people by giving them such experiences or are these just experiences of their own desire and imagination? I honestly do not know. But I have to respect each personโs Portion of Responsibility just as God has always done.
Can God be leading one person in one direction and a loved one in the seeming opposite direction for some unseen greater good? I would like to believe that and not think one will go to heaven and the other to hell.
Individual portion of responsibility and freedom are key fundamentals to me for building the Kingdom of Heaven. Organizations in the Kingdom must uphold basic human freedom and rights. Iโm happy to see those being proclaimed by Hyung Jin Nim. I think heโs on the right track for building the world that I would want to live in.
I feel happy and relaxed when I am around Hyung Jin Nim and Yeon Ah Nim and the members of the
Sanctuary Church. I feel like I am โwalking on egg shellsโ around HSA leaders.
5. New Teachings
Lots of new teachings seem to be coming from Mother. They claim True Father and God are inside of her. She is the only-begotten daughter. She was born sinless. Father fell. She is replacing the texts that Father ordained. The new Constitution does not mention the Bible or the Divine Principle. Even Fatherโs picture is gone and only Motherโs is left. There is too much to mention, but it is all there to see and surely more and more will keep coming.
I already wrote a long response to Dr. Andy Wilsonโs โOnly Begotten Daughterโ. (http://101proofsforgod.com/MyResponse.pdf)
Iโm sorry. Iโm not going to follow any more.
I do not believe that Mother is God. And I donโt like where that is going to end up.
Conclusion
OK, well, Iโve gone on long enough although there is a lot more to talk about.
I do not want to separate from any of my friends so I will remain always open for give and take.
But I believe I have prayed about it long enough and gathered enough information. My conscience is clear. I have decided which way I want to go. I do not want to stay in the midway position. I want to follow True Father, my Savior.
I am therefore resigning from HSA-UWC/FFWPU and joining Sanctuary Church. Sincerely,
Jim Stephens
Statement by Hiromi Stephens
I agree with what my husband wrote and I join Sanctuary Church with him after many months of prayer, thinking, and talking with him and my friends.
I have a lot of pain in my heart. But I know this pain is temporary and we will experience a lot of joy with
Heavenly Parent and all our children and extended families. Aju. ่ฑ่ชๅๆ๏ผClick here to download this PDF file - "Our Resignation from HSA-UWC."