New Year Message by Kyoshu-sama
January 1, 2017

Enveloped in God’s love and grace, I thank God that we are starting yet another glorious year as His humble servants. Together with all of you followers around the world, I would like to offer my most sincere New Year greetings to God and to Meishu-sama who is with Him.

Happy New Year!

In deep awe and fear of God, I say that within each one of us there is the Consciousness that is the source of all things. This Consciousness is that of God the Creator and of His eternal life. We are filled with it as is all of creation. Nothing exists and comes to exist without it. Meishu- sama recognized this Consciousness as God.

God’s purpose of Creation is to bear a child and become a Father. To this end, God – who is within us – prepared His heaven before He began the work of creating the whole universe. After preparing heaven, there, God gave birth to the spirits that would turn into all the things of the universe and also to the divine spirits that would later become human beings. It was at this time when God inscribed the name Messiah deeply and firmly into each of our divine spirits; into each and every one of our souls.

God then set out to create the whole universe by sending out His spirits of all things from heaven. They were to evolve into vessels or receptacles that could receive a divine spirit and become a human being. As this process of creation reached maturity, God then decided to send His divine spirits onto the earth, place them into the vessels and thus created human beings, all with their own individual sense of selves.

Why have we become human beings, each with our own individual sense of self? It is because we need to make a conscious and free-willed decision to return to heaven – our true home – and acknowledge that God is our true Father. God wants to receive each one of us into His heaven and have us be born once more as His own children – Messiahs. God wants us to serve Him in heaven and inherit His divine work as His children. This is what the Creation of God is and means. And we have to know that God already accomplished all of this work of Creation in heaven. He already accomplished everything.

We have disregarded this God who is within us and who has accomplished everything for us. We took Him lightly, disobeyed Him, stole His Consciousness and used it as our own. We used it and still use it for our own benefit and our own convenient yardstick to judge and know what is good and evil.

We thus sinned against God. But God, out of His love and grace, brought salvation to us and forgave us because He wants to receive us into His heaven as His own children.

God’s love is within us. His forgiveness is within us. The name of Messiah is engraved within us. God is nurturing us now so that we can be born once again as His children. We must never forget that we are saved and forgiven only through the name of Messiah. Let us recall this truth, repent and receive the name of Messiah that is already written onto each one of our souls.

It is God that needs the name of Messiah, not us. God needs it to forgive us, welcome us back into His heaven and become our Father. That is why it is important to us, because it is important to Him in the first place.

Meishu-sama treasured the name of Messiah. Initially, in 1935, when Meishu-sama founded this religion, he included the name Kannon in the name of the organization, Japan Kannon Society. In 1950, he changed the name of the organization to World Church of Messiah, replacing the name Kannon with Messiah.

Around this time, Meishu-sama wrote a tanka poem that reads:

“The world has reached a dead end
And has nowhere to go.
What will become of the world
If not for the emergence of World Church of Messiah!”

It is also around this time that we started to call Meishu-sama by his revered name, “Meishu- sama.” In regards to the name Meishu, he said that “the spiritual sound of the word Meishu is quite close to that of Meshiya (meaning Messiah). Meishu might become Meshiya one day.” In 1950, Meishu-sama composed various tanka poems under the title “Messiah”:

How majestic it is!
The name of Bodhisattva Kannon –
A god of Great Mercy and Compassion,
Has evolved into the name of Messiah!

The time has come
When God starts to reveal His true figure.
He has thrown off the robe of Kannon
And is now being born as Messiah.

I am going to abandon the name of Bodhisattva Kannon.
From now on, I bring salvation to the world
Through the name of Messiah.

I tell you my followers,
Do not underestimate and bear in mind –
The holy name of the Great Messiah is the name
That brings salvation at the end times.

Kannon evolved into Messiah. The essence and the true nature of Kannon has always been Messiah. It is true that Meishu-sama used various sacred names such as Kannon, Miroku, Izunome and so on. But for Meishu-sama, they all evolved into one name – Messiah.

On April 19, 1954, ten months before he passed away, Meishu-sama collapsed from the symptoms of a brain hemorrhage. Several weeks later, on June 5, Meishu-sama told his followers that this incident was “a truly mysterious matter in the course of divine work” and that he was newly born as a Messiah. Ten days later, on June 15, 1954, Meishu-sama held the “Provisional Ceremony to Celebrate the Birth of a Messiah” and demonstrated to us that a human being is able to be born anew as a child of God, as a Messiah.

This Meishu-sama who was newly born as a Messiah is within each one of us. He is always calling to us, saying, “Imitate me! Follow my path!”

Right after he founded this religion in 1935, Meishu-sama wrote the following preface to the first issue of World of Divine Light, the organizational magazine at the time:

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 Bodhisattva Kannon! You, then, will be saved.

Meishu-sama concluded this preface by saying, “call on the name of Bodhisattva Kannon! You, then, will be saved.” The preface above was written in 1935, but as we now know that Kannon has become Messiah, this part should now read:

Call on the name of Messiah! You, then, will be saved.

We therefore must turn to God and voice out the name of Messiah if we want to receive salvation. And Meishu-sama is saying that we must return to God where there is Light. So let us return to heaven, to God, to Light in the name of Messiah that is one with Meishu-sama. We then can attain true salvation in being born anew as a child of God.

Meishu-sama taught us that he was going to build heaven on the earth or project heaven onto the earth. When we use these words, we automatically assume that there are parts of the earth where heaven has not yet arrived and that humans need to bring heaven or light to those parts of the world. We assume that darkness still exists on earth. We assume that only human efforts can enlighten the world and make this earth a better place. We thought that this was the meaning of “creating a paradise on earth.” In fact, almost everyone on earth thinks in this way – that we have to create a better world. But I would like you to know that in doing so, we have been dishonoring God because we have been assuming that God is powerless, that He is sleeping and letting darkness exist in the world without doing anything on His part.

This has to be corrected! We have been gravely mistaken! God is truly all-powerful and has already brought light to every corner of the earth. He already made this world a perfect place. Paradise on earth has already arrived! It has already been constructed! If not, why did Meishu- sama teach us the theory of “purification” in which the love of God exists in seemingly negative things such as illness? Yes, it is true that there seems to be darkness in the world. But is it not the task of the followers of World Church of Messiah to acknowledge that the love of God is in whatever darkness there is in the world? If we do not do so, who will do it?

We create a paradise on earth by acknowledging that there is light in darkness, that God is truly all-powerful and that His power and light have already encompassed the whole world. We have been misunderstanding the Teachings of Meishu-sama in a way that makes us shine and be honored. But is it not our aim to make God shine and make Him be honored? We have somehow abandoned the true God and came to believe in a kind of God who is weak, sleeping and convenient for us. Meishu-sama did not teach us about a sleeping God; he taught us about the true God who is the Creator of all. So let us acknowledge that the earth is already His, that the earth is already enveloped in God’s great Light and return to the true God, to His heaven in the name of Messiah that is one with Meishu-sama.

Let us awaken to the true God and to an entirely new kind of faith! And remember, it is only through the name of Messiah that we are forgiven and saved. God is alive and is within each one of us. Within us, He is advancing His divine work of making all humanity His own children. To this God, I, together with all nature, all ancestors and all humanity, offer my deepest and most sincere praise.

May God’s grace be with you all.