ⓒ 2004 WATV

September 25 (Saturday, July 10 by sacred year) was the Day of Atonement double blessed by the blessing of the Sabbath. The people of Zion, who had finished ten day prayer of repentance, gathered at the New Jerusalem Temple with godliness.

According to the regulations of the feast, the joint worship service was held. Mother helped Her children in their weakness. For the children who did not know what they had to pray for, Mother Herself interceded for them, praying Father to smell the aroma of His children's prayers and forgive all their sins. Mother gave thanks to Father for He saved the children by establishing the law of forgiveness through the suffering on the cross. She prayed that the children who were atoned would practice God's sacrificial love and lead many souls to repentance, and asked Father to send out workers into the harvest field of the world and to let the children, who've already been called, take their sickles of word more diligently and gather the wheat and bring it into heavenly barn.

Through the sermon of the morning worship service, all the attendants bore the meaning of the Day of Atonement in their minds. The Day of Atonement originated in the day Moses went down from Mount Sinai with the stone tablets of the Ten Commandments a second time. The high priest entered the Most Holy Place once a year and atoned the people's sins and sanctified the temple. In the time of Moses, the high priest cast lots for the two goats--one for the LORD and the other for the scapegoat. He sacrificed the goat whose lot fell to the LORD for a sin offering, and then he laid both hands on the head of the scapegoat and confessed over it all the sins of the people and put them on the goat's head; the scapegoat was sent into the desert.

ⓒ 2004 WATV

This shows that our sins, carried temporarily to Christ (the Most Holy Place), are carried on Satan (the scapegoat) and that the devil will be destroyed in the Abyss after all. The Chief Pastor Joo Cheol Kim stressed, "Today we pay back our sins to the devil. Let's give thanks to God all the more who handed over all our sins to Satan by triumphing over him on the cross."

During the afternoon worship service, Pastor Joo Cheol Kim gave a sermon titled "Courage Through the Holy Spirit." He emphasized that courage is required in all our life of faith, just as it is required to be freed from sin and receive Christ, saying, "Our forefathers in faith such as Moses, Gideon and David achieved gracious results when they courageously did what God had commanded them to do. During the worldly festival (he indicated Chuseok one of Korean feasts) we must not worship idols. With courage through the Holy Spirit, we must proclaim the glory of the truth of the new covenant, the glory of the new Jerusalem and the glory of the new name to the ends of the earth, as warriors of faith." All the attendants said, "Amen!"

After the worship service of the Day of Atonement, Mother said that all our past sins were forgiven through this feast, and earnestly told us not to sin again. Mother added, "Not to love our neighbor as ourselves is a sin. Our mission is to lead many people dying without hope to repentance and to preach the good news of the kingdom to them." Brothers and sisters gained strength and courage. They gave thanks to God for giving abundant blessing and resolved to fulfill the commandment to love our neighbor.