Kannon will come from the place most high and descend to the place most low. Then, Kannon will climb up to the place most high again.Sermon, May 1, 1935 Hello, everyone. It is very hot today, isn’t it? As usual, I will be speaking at length, so please feel free to drink water or go to the restroom as necessary—I wonder if you can hear my greeting in the restroom? So yes, please relax as you listen. The Grand Ceremony to Celebrate the Birth of the Messiah happened just a little over two weeks ago, and frankly speaking, I was wondering how each one of you feels now. As for myself, I came to today’s service with this feeling, this passion, this fire burning within me—ten times, a hundred times, a thousand times stronger than what I had at the time of the Grand Ceremony to Celebrate the Birth of the Messiah. And if I didn’t have that feeling, it wouldn’t be fair to all of you who came here in this hot weather. God, too, of course, is an existence that is eternally evolving—today, more than yesterday; tomorrow, more than today; the day after tomorrow, more than tomorrow; and so on. Meishu-sama also spoke about “the perpetual flux of things.” The present you is different from the one-year-ago you. The world today is different from the world yesterday. Not only that, he said that there is actually a difference between the present you and the five-minutes-ago you.And he said that if you do not evolve as such, just as muddy water is stagnant, you will be left behind, sitting longer and longer.Now if this is the case, let’s take a look at the Grand Ceremony to Celebrate the Birth of the Messiah. Rather than five minutes ago, it happened more like hundreds of minutes ago or thousands of minutes ago. (Postscript: Upon calculating, it was actually over 20,000 minutes ago.)So if you consider the time that has passed since then, things definitely should have evolved until today, as everything is perpetually in flux, at all times.Now that the Grand Ceremony has ended, you might think it’s time to take a breather. You might think, “Oh, there’s a minor service today. It’s just the July Monthly Service.” But I don’t think it’s like that.Or some may think that although the Grand Ceremony has ended, the world hasn’t changed at all or we ourselves haven’t changed at all, nothing has changed and that’s fine; that although the world has not changed, our own thoughts and feelings have changed, so that’s good. But that’s not it either.Normally, we wouldn’t think there is a big difference between the present you and the five-minutes-ago you, right? But Meishu-sama saw the world and his own existence differently: “If God is always evolving and if that God is within me, there must be something different between the present me and the five-minutes-ago me.”And then if we think, “Even though the Grand Ceremony has ended, the world has not changed,” then the world will, in fact, not change. That’s because our thoughts create the future.If we think that nothing has changed, then nothing will change. But if we think, “Something is becoming new” or “Something has become better,” then God may give you that kind of future. That’s because our own thoughts, humanity’s thoughts, are creating the future.As such, God is eternally new. He continues to get newer and newer and newer. Meishu-sama is also this kind of person, isn’t he?If evolving eternally were a graph, it would look like a line that rises to the right forever. The line wouldn’t come back down.But if we were to put what humans actually feel onto a graph, it would first look like an upward line—the time we are born until our 20s or 30s. Then after that, the line would start declining, wouldn’t it? I mean, once we hit our 30s and 40s, myself included, our knees start to feel a little stiff or our bodies begin to show signs of wear. Then as we keep aging, we of course begin to get various illnesses.If that’s the case, then the graph showing a human being’s experience does not match God’s graph with a line rising to the right forever. I mean, God’s graph shows eternal advancement. Our own graph shows a complete downhill course. These two simply don’t match up, do they?It’s true that when we look at babies, we feel they have unlimited potential. Or when we look at someone in their teens, we see how they figure out what they want to do and then work hard at it. In that way, God is evolving eternally and is making the future through these young people. We can picture these kinds of things, right? But I’m sure Meishu-sama isn’t talking about that.Ultimately, everyone becomes the downhill graph. A human body has a lifespan after all.Then there’s cancer. The illness called cancer. There is the view that this too, of course, is a terrible disease. Or there is the view, as Meishu-sama taught, that this is a purification, it is a good thing, it is protecting against something that is more serious, it is to maintain the body and to help us live longer, these kinds of various illnesses are developing within our bodies for our good, what a blessing this is.But it is not only that. Including all the above, there is an even bigger view.There is no doubt that after a certain age, our bodies start deteriorating. And on the other hand, God evolves eternally. If we look at this through the lens of our own experience, our life graph will never match up to God’s graph, right?Even if you are told that you are evolving eternally, maybe you have a certain disease or perhaps your mother has dementia—it’s almost impossible to believe that we can eternally evolve, isn’t it?While we may see it like this on the outside, in actuality, we, our true selves, are always evolving, growing younger, more and more and more. We are continuously getting younger, at this very moment. And that’s because God is a being who is evolving eternally, and this God exists within us.Well, I can definitely see how this is difficult to believe. After all, our bodies are very important to us, so we can’t help making that the main focus.But if you look at Meishu-sama’s “Be new, always,” he says we should constantly become new. So within ourselves, we are actually getting younger and younger. This is true for everyone. Always becoming new, always getting younger.If you think about it this way, today’s monthly service isn’t a small-scale monthly service that is happening after the Grand Ceremony. It’s actually something that has evolved since then.From our human eyes, the Grand Ceremony to Celebrate the Birth of the Messiah would be at the very top and monthly services would be below that. But in actuality, today’s monthly service has evolved since the Grand Ceremony. For the world is accomplishing an ever-evolving growth.So it’s not that the Grand Ceremony is higher in rank and today’s monthly service is lower. Regardless of the scale of today’s service, regardless of the number of participants, this is the July Monthly Service that surpasses the Grand Ceremony to Celebrate the Birth of the Messiah. To rank these services in scale is a human-centered point of view, a point of view that revolves around the outside world, a point of view where the line on the graph ultimately declines.But it is not that. Today, we are participating in a service that has further evolved since the Grand Ceremony. And if we do not attend with that thought in mind, I don’t think we’ll be able to receive God’s blessings. From Meishu-sama’s hymns that were offered at the Grand Ceremony to Celebrate the Birth of the Messiah, there was something in particular I thought was really important in one of the hymns:“Finally, / This year, / The peach tree that takes three thousand years to grow / Is going to bear fruit. / There are celebrations both in this world and / In heaven!”There is a peach tree that takes three thousand years to bear fruit. In this year that it finally bears fruit, celebrations in this world and in heaven take place. This hymn is saying that celebrations take place both on this earth and in heaven.This was written in 1928, but I thought it was the perfect hymn for this year, almost like Meishu-sama prepared it for this year when the Grand Ceremony would take place.It’s a hymn about a wonderful grand celebration taking place in heaven and on earth, in an auspicious year. It is the perfect fit for our situation this year.Kyoshu-sama also spoke to us about how the true service is the service that takes place in heaven. Ordinarily, this wouldn’t make sense to us. I mean, we can’t actually see it, this service of heaven.I don’t think Kyoshu-sama spoke about it like that after doing research into Meishu-sama’s Sacred Word, like scholars might do, saying something scholarly like “These kinds of hymns exist, so yes, there must indeed be services in heaven too.” It’s different from that.I mean, of course, I am sure that Kyoshu-sama has been in contact with this hymn, but I would say it is more about him receiving the overall guidance from Meishu-sama.Sure enough, this is because he stands in the position of Kyoshu-sama, and there are various matters including Christianity that Kyoshu-sama absorbed as ordered by Meishu-sama. Through this, Kyoshu-sama was able to reach Meishu-sama’s sense of vision, and mysteriously enough, he is saying the same thing as what Meishu-sama is saying, such as “the service also in heaven.”Meishu-sama said that “there are celebrations both in this world and in heaven.” Which means that since the Grand Ceremony to Celebrate the Birth of the Messiah took place on this earth, the Grand Ceremony has also taken place in heaven.So what exactly is this Grand Ceremony that took place in heaven? All of you know the content of the ceremony that happened here on earth, right? It has concluded, and we know the order of service. There were songs that were sung, greetings and Sacred Word. These things are already very clear.But when we see this hymn of Meishu-sama, we can’t help but wonder what exactly the Grand Ceremony to Celebrate the Birth of the Messiah in heaven is like.We may think that the ceremony in heaven has a similar order of service or starts at such-and-such time, but that’s not it.That’s because heaven is where God exists and a world where everything exists for God and Him only. The calligraphy “The glory of the Lord” is hanging at the entrance today, and as such, in heaven, every kind of glory—the glory of blessing, power, joy, sorrow, breath, life, thought, words—the glory of all things is attributed to God. Heaven is a world filled with joy as well as peace and comfort that human beings cannot even imagine.We say our aim is to get closer to God’s throne, but if we really knew the true state of heaven, there would probably not even be one person amongst us who truly wishes for it. The truth is, with heaven being all too pure and so completely filled with life, if you came into contact with it even for just an instant, it would be the kind of world where you think you cannot possibly go to.Still, God is allowing us to let out words like “I will return to heaven” and “I will climb to heaven,” right?I have to tell you, the actual power of heaven is a power that far exceeds our imagination.This divine scroll too, is not just a piece of paper or some plastic as it is the divine scroll.Even talking with my back faced to God like this is unthinkable from the start, but God is permitting things like this too.As such, at any rate, heaven is a world where everything is attributed to God and is filled with overwhelming joy.And upon our participating in the Grand Ceremony to Celebrate the Birth of the Messiah, we did so with the intention to offer our joy and all our other various thoughts and feelings to God, thinking “I have received the soul of God,” didn’t we? We participated thinking “I have received the soul named Messiah. It belongs to God. Everything belongs to God.” In that case, then it is the same as what you would do in heaven, isn’t it? For heaven is a world where everything is attributed to God.But the Grand Ceremony to Celebrate the Birth of Messiah that takes place in heaven doesn’t particularly start or end at a certain time. The very nature of heaven is praising God for all eternity, together with all humanity. There are angelic existences there too.So the very nature of heaven is, in a way, like the Grand Ceremony to Celebrate the Birth of Messiah. That’s because it is a world where we continuously praise God, saying “I am Your child” and “You are my parent.” I would liken heaven to always being the Grand Ceremony to Celebrate the Birth of the Messiah, so to speak.And so there’s today’s monthly service. What is our purpose for being here?It is the same. We are trying to do the same thing here too, isn’t that so?Whether it is the Grand Ceremony or a monthly service, our posture in participating does not change. So many things go on in our daily lives, don’t they? Before God, we have to lay bare all those things—well, whether we reveal all or not, God is here (pointing toward the divine scroll), and right now, we are all being watched by Him. He sees into the deepest part of our hearts. So we lay bare everything, and God says to us, “Surrender everything that happened in your daily life in June to me. And I will train and nurture you in July too. Is that okay?”Thinking about it that way, if the nature of heaven is the nature of a Grand Ceremony to Celebrate the Birth of the Messiah celebrated for all eternity, and if, for this monthly service today too, we are gathered here to attribute all glory to God, then while today’s service is called the July Monthly Service, it could also be called the “Grand Ceremony to Celebrate the Birth of the Messiah and July Monthly Service.” That’s because we are trying to mimic the service in heaven in this world, aren’t we?That means the upcoming Grand Ancestor Service, too, could be called the “Grand Ceremony to Celebrate the Birth of the Messiah and Grand Ancestor Service.” Well, I’m just talking about the intended feeling with which we should understand the service, not actually voicing it out like that every single time. Plus, in this world, the Grand Ceremony is held only once.But did we have this kind of feeling upon preparing ourselves for and attending this July Monthly Service?Rather, weren’t we making this service out to be a small-scale monthly service that happened after the Grand Ceremony? If so, then there’s already a gap in thinking with God.If we did have that posture, don’t you think that it was inexcusable toward God? Instead, if today, we are able to think that an amazing, brilliant and glorious monthly service surpassing the Grand Ceremony is taking place and that we are taking part in it, then perhaps God will look at every problem we have and impart His blessings to us. So the main topic I’d like to speak about today is related to the Grand Ceremony to Celebrate the Birth of the Messiah. As the Japanese characters in the service name indicate the Messiah descending and being born, upon attending that service, we thought, “I will receive the soul of Messiah, the soul of God, within me. I will serve God.” We attended the Grand Ceremony with these thoughts, didn’t we?About the Second Coming of Christ, it points out to Christ coming for a second time. As such, we receive the soul of Christ that comes to us. We had these thoughts.So we attended the Grand Ceremony to Celebrate the Birth of the Messiah to receive and give thanks for the soul of Messiah, the soul of Christ, that was granted to each and every person of humanity.Well, that is all true, but to be frank, with just that, you are only receiving 50 percent of the Grand Ceremony. 50 percent.What do I mean by this? Don’t get me wrong—it is a wonderful thing to assert “The birth of the Messiah, the Messiah descends—I receive him and I believe in him. I believe in and receive the soul of Messiah. I receive and believe in the Second Coming of Christ.” These are certainly all wonderful.But the thing is, our true self, as Kyoshu-sama always talks about, is not the human self. It is the soul of God. God’s soul is our true self.The moment we see the characters for “Birth of the Messiah,” we think of the Messiah descending and being born, right? The Messiah descends and is born. This is the image we have.But in reality, the Messiah is our true self, and if that is the case, then we are the ones that “descend.” So rather than “I will receive,” our thinking should be more like “I am coming to you!”For the Second Coming of Christ too, we see it as Christ coming to us a second time, right? But as Christ is our true self, we are not the ones being approached a second time, rather we are the ones that are approaching a second time.Think about the song title “You Become Me.” We can understand this from the human perspective too: You, that is, God, become me. But in reality, from the perspective of our true self, it is “I become you.” That is because God, “I,” is our true self.Of course, God is not emphasizing this very much, right? That is, if it were the focus, humans would tend to become arrogant and say, “I am God,” right? That is why God emphasizes the human side that is in the position to receive.But in reality, our true self is God. So we are not on the side that receives but on the side that descends, the side that makes the other receive.“I will receive, worship and serve”—we think that this is the stance we are supposed to take, that this is what faith is. With only that, you will never be born anew. If your focus is on the human perspective, the side that receives, the side that worships, you will never reach the point of being born anew.I mean, in Words of Light, Meishu-sama says, “God is Light, / And where there is Light, peace, happiness and joy abound. / In Darkness, conflict, poverty and disease pervade. / For those who seek Light and prosperity, come! / Come to the Light and call on the name of Messiah! / You, then, will be saved.”Here, he is saying “come.” “Come”—while our basic human stance has always been to say something like “I will return. I will go back to heaven. I will serve.” But actually, we should be the ones who say “come.” Our true self is in the position to say, “Come to me.”And well, when it comes to this, it turns into a difficult issue for us. We think, “This is complicated.” But in truth, it is very simple. And that’s because our true self is the soul of God that exists within us.So this is actually common sense, but because we want to draw a line between our existence and God’s existence, we do not and cannot understand. We scratch our heads, wondering what it means, and in the end, we think it has nothing to do with us.But in truth, for a human being, this is the basic of the basics. I mean, no matter how we look at it, each and every human being cannot live by their own power, can they?Not only that, it was also said in today’s Bible reading (John 10:22–39)—humanity has had the same problem since two thousand years ago.There are some Jewish people condemning Jesus. Jesus says, “I have only shown you good works, so why do you accuse me like this?” Then the Jewish people say, “No, no. We are not talking about your good works. You are a human being, but you make yourself out to be God, don’t you? It is blasphemy and insulting to God.” To that, Jesus responds, “Isn’t it said by your prophets, ‘I say you are “gods”’?”Everyone. You see here? All of us are not humans, but gods.Then Jesus continues, “If God is calling us gods, then what is wrong with my saying I am God’s Son?” The episode went something like that.So are we gods? Or are we humans?In Christianity, I believe that “gods” in this part of the Bible is interpreted as prophets or only those types of specific people. But it is different for us, right? For us, everyone is equal. Everyone is a god, not just a portion of people.Of course, there are differences in roles. There is a difference between the roles of Jesus Christ and of Meishu-sama and then of ours, for instance. But still, we are all brothers and sisters. We are brothers and sisters united by the soul of God. We are gods.This of course is not something to get overconfident about. There is absolutely no dragging God down to the position of humans. There is no making all our wishes come true or fulfilling our own selfish hopes. There is no “do what I say because I am God.” You must be careful of not falling into this kind of thinking.But like so, we have had this problem between humans and God since two thousand years ago. You just heard it now, right? It was considered a problem that Jesus made himself out to be God even though he was a human being. And ultimately, we came two thousand years without having solved the problem. And that’s when Meishu-sama appeared. Meishu-sama.In today’s Meishu-sama’s Hymns, the first one read:“The time has come / When I finally prove to you the truth / In the profound mystery of the expression / ‘God-human.’”Meishu-sama uses the phrase “unification of God and a human,” but this issue with God and human had remained a mystery for two thousand years. I mean, the Jewish people did not know what it meant, and in the end, they ended up killing Jesus, Son of God, right? Two thousand years passed, and the mystery had yet to be solved.Then Meishu-sama said that he would finally reveal the truth in the mystery behind the issue of God and human.But we never thought about “unification of God and a human” as a profound mystery, right? We naively thought that Meishu-sama was like a living god, that Meishu-sama was great, that he was “God-human,” that what Meishu-sama says is what God is saying. This was our understanding. This kind of understanding neither is profound nor involves a mystery. Other religions are more or less the same, simply revering their founders as living gods.But we declare that we can become like the founder.And that is definitely what Meishu-sama was wishing for too. If not, why would he have let all of us do what he himself did, including Johrei?As such, Meishu-sama said that he would finally clarify the mystery about the issue on God and human. I mean, it hadn’t been solved for two thousand years! And at that time, most people could not understand what Jesus was saying and ended up killing him.The second hymn went like this:“O Kannon, / Unimaginable it was that / You chose to borrow my body. / Me, a man of lowly birth!”As it says in this hymn expressing his unworthiness, he couldn’t believe that his body, of a lowly man like himself, would be borrowed by an awe-inspiring existence such as Kannon.This was Meishu-sama’s thought in the position of a human. The “human” part of “God-human.” The thought that this lowly self was not worthy of such a blessing, that he himself was not really an existence worthy to have Kannon descend upon.In that sense, the third hymn is similar in content:“Oh how happy it is to revere the glorious Messiah / Who descends amidst the voices of Hallelujah!”Meishu-sama sees the existence of Messiah, right? He is revering it, right?And within “Messiah” that Meishu-sama mentions, Jesus Christ, of course, is included in there, as we clearly see in the fourth hymn:“Amidst the joyous and resounding shouts of Hallelujah! / The Messiah-Christ descends. / And, ah, it descends so quietly!”Messiah and Christ are one, as you can see.When Jesus said, “I am God,” he of course looks like a human being through human eyes, as Jesus was told by the Jewish people “even though you are a human being.” But the one who was using Jesus, the being whom Jesus was one with, was God. The same being, the same existence that used Jesus, quietly descended within Meishu-sama; it quietly descends within us.And then there is the fifth hymn:“It is I / Who have descended to the world / With authority / To save the sinful!”It says, “I who have descended to the world with authority.”He did not talk about looking up. This time he talks about descending. In the hymn, it says, “I who have descended.”If that is the case, then this hymn is essentially in conflict with hymns like the second or third one, isn’t it?Meishu-sama, “a man of lowly birth.” Meishu-sama, who is happy “to revere the glorious Messiah who descends.” There is this Meishu-sama on one end. And on the other, there is Meishu-sama who says, “It is I who have descended to the world with authority.”In these hymns, Meishu-sama is talking about two beings. He is expressing himself as both beings, isn’t he? As he also describes the descending being God as “I.”And then in the sixth hymn, he says:“When the end of days comes, / All people, without exception, will prostrate themselves before me. / Oh, how I look forward to that time!”This hymn describes that when the end of days comes, all people will prostrate themselves before him.If you didn’t know about the connection between God and human and simply took it as all humanity prostrating themselves before Meishu-sama the human, then you would normally consider this being cultish. If you replaced the “me” with Meishu-sama and interpreted this hymn as a religious founder who is looking forward to everyone prostrating themselves before him, then that religion would be a cult.But look at the divine image of Meishu-sama. (Masaaki-sama points to the divine image on the side of the divine scroll.)When Meishu-sama had this photograph taken, he said to put his abdomen area in focus. Not his face but his abdomen.Normally, the face is put in focus, right? But as the soul of God was dwelling within his abdomen, he gave instructions to take the picture with the focus on his lower abdomen area. So when you look at this divine image of Meishu-sama, you will see that the hand in the same area as his abdomen is very clear in the photograph.Meishu-sama specifically did that, and still, because we didn’t understand his intention and from the idea that “the human Meishu-sama is great” or “only Meishu-sama is great,” the picture of Meishu-sama that we had been using until now was adjusted, by us humans, to put more focus on his face.Changes like brightening up the face area had been made. We ended up doing these adjustments because we didn’t understand what Meishu-sama’s intention was.But Meishu-sama wanted us to look at God that existed within him, not at himself. Through the photograph, he wanted us to look at the existence that was within Meishu-sama, not at the “man of lowly birth.” Didn’t we come all this way trying to find the divinity within this “man of lowly birth”? But it’s not that. With the intention of “I want you to revere the God within me,” Meishu-sama made this picture for us.So for World Church of Messiah, we don’t call it “Meishu-sama’s picture” as a picture of a revered person. We call it “divine image of Meishu-sama” because it is the image of God.The divine image of Meishu-sama at World Church of Messiah is not edited at all. The image as Meishu-sama wished it to be is the divine image of Meishu-sama at World Church of Messiah. “Meishu-sama’s picture” until now was one that was edited so that the focus would go to Meishu-sama’s face.So when you pay reverence to the divine image of Meishu-sama, rather than putting your focus on the outward appearance of Meishu-sama, your focus would naturally go to God existing within Meishu-sama. Meishu-sama originally made it that way.So if you haven’t already replaced your picture of Meishu-sama with the new divine image of Meishu-sama—not that President Narii told me so (everyone laughs)—I think it is better if you do. I mean, this divine image is as Meishu-sama wished it to be, without any editing at all.If you do go with this divine image of Meishu-sama and through this photograph, pay reverence to the soul of God existing within Meishu-sama, I have no doubt that it will resonate with the soul of God within you. For with the intention to have that kind of reaction occur, Meishu-sama made this divine image.With this in mind, we have the seventh hymn, a very well-known one:“Only I. / It is only I / Who have been entrusted with the mission of God / To save the world!”For many years, we interpreted the “Only I” in this hymn as “Meishu-sama, the only one.” Isn’t that right? But it’s not him. Then who is this “I”?It is the “I” that is within each and every one of us, God’s “I”:“It is I / Who have descended to the world / With authority / To save the sinful!” It is this “I.”God is the one and only being. He created innumerable unique beings out of His own uniqueness and oneness. This is not something that we can normally understand by thinking about it. But Meishu-sama plainly said “one God and many gods both at the same time.”In one of his hymns, he also uses the phrase “The Messiah is descending, carrying Jehovah (Yahweh) on his back.” It went like the following:“The world is enveloped in dark clouds. / But look! / Driving them away, / The Messiah is descending, / Carrying Jehovah (Yahweh) on his back!”Messiah is carrying Jehovah (Yahweh)—God—on his back as he descends.So if the soul of Messiah exists within each and every one of us, it means that the Messiah within us is carrying Jehovah (Yahweh) God on his back within us. And as said in the previous hymn, “I who have been entrusted with the mission of God to save the world,” it means that God is telling the Messiah, our true self, us in the truest sense, to save this and to save that within each and every one of us. Isn’t that why each one of us is put in various situations right now?“I am going to save; only I will save”—the soul of Messiah within each and every one of us is saying this. Meishu-sama is expressing this Messiah as “I,” right? Rather than expressing himself as a human being that receives, he is expressing himself as a divine being, as God, as “I”: “I am going to save.”So the depth of Meishu-sama’s Sacred Word is not something that can be easily understood by human wisdom.If the average human mind thought about this, it would end with “Only Meishu-sama is great.” If they heard “It is only I,” it would conclude with “Only Meishu-sama is great. Other religions are no good. Meishu-sama is the only truth.” Now if that were really true, why would Meishu-sama say work in concert with Christianity? Wouldn’t this be contradictory?As such, in the end, when we have a glance at today’s eighth hymn, we have no idea what it is saying:“You have to be a human being / And God at the same time. / You have to be God / And a human being at the same time. / If not, / You cannot save the world.”Meishu-sama is saying in this hymn, “I have to be human and God, and at the same time, I have to be God and human. Otherwise, I cannot save the world.”I know that the content of this hymn certainly seems difficult, as we are not used to this way of thinking. I mean, we’re used to thinking like humans, right?But if we are not like the way it is described in the hymn and we can’t save the world, then that’s a problem for us, isn’t it? We’re not here just to receive salvation, but we are here to save the world, right?I mean, if nothing else, many of you joined Sekai Kyusei Kyo (World Church of Salvation), didn’t you? A Church with teachings that is supposed to save the world, right? If you don’t want to save the world or if you want blessings only for yourself, then there is no need to join Meishu-sama’s religion. After all, Meishu-sama’s purpose is to save all humanity.It is pointless to simply pray and wish for something good. In that case, you don’t have to be a follower of Meishu-sama. You can just go to a nearby temple or shrine, make a monetary offering, and that’s enough.If you really want to save the world—even if it seems like I am saying something complicated—you have to recall the fact that your true self is the existence of “I” in the hymn saying “Only I. It is only I.” If you don’t, then you won’t be able to save the world.So going back to the Grand Ceremony to Celebrate the Birth of the Messiah. Looking at the Japanese characters in the service name expressing the Messiah descending and being born, I believe we, including myself, put ourselves on the receiving end when we attended the Grand Ceremony. But actually, that’s only half of it.When we look at Meishu-sama’s hymns from today, Meishu-sama is telling us the following: “I fully understand that you are human beings. But aren’t you also gods? If not, you cannot save the world.” Then even if belated, we can express our repentant feelings to God and Meishu-sama today at this monthly service for not being able to attend the Grand Ceremony with the thoughts I have been speaking about. We can say to Meishu-sama: “The Grand Ceremony to Celebrate the Birth of the Messiah is also a service for me to remember that I do not only stand in the position to receive what descends. I also carry the divine being that descends; I am the one that descends. The soul of God has always been my true self.” So if our true self is God, what would the graph that I mentioned at the beginning look like?If our true self is God, our life from now on would not look like a line that declines to the right but a line that rises to the right forever. All that is waiting for us is a path that flourishes for eternity.A glorious future we near, right? In Kyoshu-sama’s song, “A New World,” one of the lyrics says, “A glorious future we near!”Now if it is the graph from the human perspective, what is waiting for you is a not-at-all-glorious future. From here on too, a future with many troubles awaits you. Worries about this, worries about that, worries about our own bodies, our families, our children, money—this is the kind of future that awaits you.But if we really carry a divine being, God, within us, there is nothing but progress hereafter.Then we might start thinking, “We may be told all this, but then there’s the reality.” There are various things that we can’t tell others or we have such-and-such disease. We are bound by many things. We have been shackled up.In today’s Sacred Word of Meishu-sama, he says that “Kannon will come from the place most high and descend to the place most low. Then, Kannon will climb up to the place most high again.” That’s what he says, right?We may think that “I am stuck. I am lonely. I am hopeless. Nobody can understand how I feel. I have hit rock bottom.” But this rock-bottom place we are in—this is where God descends too. For it is written that God descends to the “place most low,” right?We have long thought that we were suffering on our own, but that’s not the case. The One who dwells in the place most high comes down to the place most low, that is, the place where we are. Why does God do that? It is for Him to save the place most low. God is saying to us, “You are experiencing this so that we can bring salvation to this.” That’s what He is saying.God descends to the place most low. What is the place most low? It is none other than our lives, isn’t it? In our daily lives, we suffer and struggle, right? But we are not alone in this. The Messiah is with us. He is together with us, descending to the lowest pit. Kannon turned into Messiah, right? So the Messiah is with us.But that’s not the end of it, everyone. Now that you have been to the lowest place where there is no hope, it is time to go back to the place most high, together with the Messiah. That’s what Meishu-sama is saying in this Sacred Word.I am talking about all the concerns you have right now, the very things that you are most worried about. And regarding those things, to put it in one way, you can say, “O God, thank You for sending me here. You are trying to save this place. You want to welcome it into heaven.”God goes from the place most low and returns to the place most high. He does this because He wants to welcome the very lowest into heaven.In the first place, what is the purpose of Kannon’s, Messiah’s, descending to the lowest place? It is to save all the very lowest things, isn’t it?The very lowest things. From our eyes, it would be the unthinkable or things that seem completely useless. Those are the things that will be useful in the place most high—this is what God is saying to us. The things that we think are so low are the things that are useful to God. Isn’t that true, though? We were sent here for salvation, right?As such, it is okay to think, “I offer this to You” or “I surrender this to You.” And in some instances, as we are in the position of God, it is good to think, “I came to save those thoughts and feelings” or “I came to save this.” We can do this even though we don’t understand the meaning of being a god.So instead of only thinking “Oh, no!” or “Please help me,” be bold, recall the hymn “It is I who have descended to the world with authority to save the sinful,” apply it to yourself and then say, “I came here to save the sinful. I came here, entrusted with the authority of God.” And this time, since you will go back to the place most high, you can also say, “I will bring this to God.”Children learn a language by imitating their parents, right? If your parents speak Japanese, you learn to speak Japanese. If your parents swear a lot, you learn to swear a lot too.Now, we say we cannot hear God’s voice. We say we don’t know whether He is talking to us or not. Be that as it may, Meishu-sama is telling us that we carry a divine being within ourselves. If so, you must assume this to be true, act as if you are a divine being and utter, for example, words like “I am here to save people.” Do not say, “Please forgive me,” but instead, say, “I forgive.”At this moment, each of us is facing some kind of problem or issue or we think that our hands are full. But if, in actuality, we are here to save those feelings within us, we must utter words like “I forgive you” or “I grant God’s blessing upon you” to those feelings that are within us.I mean, doesn’t God use those kinds of words? He does not say things like “Please welcome Me into heaven” or “Please forgive Me,” right?So, if you wish to imitate God’s example, imagine what God might be saying and start saying things like “I forgive you” or “I bless you.” If you continue to practice this day after day, you may be able to be born anew as God’s child, just as a human child imitates their parents and one day reaches adulthood.So although we certainly cannot understand God, let us imagine God as a being who would surely do something like that and say those kinds of words. Then perhaps God will characterize us as the graph not with the descending line, but the one that evolves forever, rising up to the right, on and on.Various things happen in our daily lives, and we are in a low place. But God is using all of it and is building a better and better world, a more magnificent world.Not only that, serving God is something that also continues after you die.You continue to serve God with more and more joy, even after you die. So why don’t you start today?If that is the case, then from today on, you will grow younger and younger. I mean, the path of serving God is a path of growing younger forever, a path of evolving eternally, a path to becoming a new existence eternally.I believe Meishu-sama is definitely wishing this from us. We are not existences that suffer, die, end of story. Meishu-sama is wishing for us to flourish for eternity and build a wonderful world, saying to us, “Save the world!”So in truth, the “glorious future we near!” is all of us of World Church of Messiah. Isn’t that right?And needless to say, with God’s permission, if more people can come in contact with God’s light, perhaps our fellow believers will increase.We, truly, have been sent to the lowest place. We have been sent, but it is for the sake of salvation. It is for the sake of salvation, for the sake of the world.I mean, there is no exception to the fact that we all physically wither away. Everyone deteriorates and eventually dies. But all of that, in order to fill everything with life, we are suffering temporarily—that’s all it is. I know, it can be long, and it can be hard. Those are the times when we can encourage each other, and as we do this, let us go forward together on God’s path of salvation.Thank you very much.