Gospel of Heaven written and spoken by Mokichi Okada
Part 2: Teachings in 1935~3 February 1950

When people convert to another religion, it cannot be helped if they are more or less worried. Here I talk about a letter I received. It frankly describes the change of mind and worries of the conversion in detail, which deeply touched my heart. It would be inevitable that every convert has these anxieties and saving such people is one of the important roles for us. That is why I talked about it. When examining it in detail, the point is as follows. The sender is an influential believer in Protestantism but it is not only the case for Christians. It can often happen to believers in other religions. That is indeed caused because they are caught by a strict religious precept, which says that believers must not be involved with other religions. Now I explain why it happens.

First of all, all religions are divided into two categories; broad-minded and narrow-minded religion. As we always explain, narrow-mind represents fire and vertical direction and whereas, broad-minded represents water and horizontal direction. Therefore, commandments are the priority for narrow-minded religions and flexibility and versatility is the main purpose for broad-minded religions. In this sense, because of a narrow-minded commandment, a person is worried about the conversion. Therefore, if they believe in a broad-minded religion, they are never worried. It means that all religions come from the same origin or God, who is also called Jehovah, god, Tentei, Buddha and so on. God had saints and sages appear as His agent for every nation in every region in every era. They also include Christ, Sakyamuni, Mahomet and so on. They, of course, take different roles; a major or minor but their roles come from the same origin. All human beings are divided into three levels corresponding to their souls; upper, medium and lower one. Therefore, they also need a suitable religion corresponding to their levels. For example, some are not satisfied unless a religion preaches them profound teachings. Some are not convinced unless a religion has faith for the masses, which plays music with a gong and drum, chants sutras or performs a ritual dance. These facts prove my words. Let me give you another example. That is each nation in the world naturally has a different level of tradition, custom, taste and culture. This fact shows well what I mean.

Considering what I described above, narrow-minded faith gives believers the idea of limits and they consequently suffer from it. This is a terrible mistake. The great love of God is not such a limited small one. Nevertheless, most of the religions are narrow-minded at present. It would be said that almost none of them is absolutely broad-minded. If an absolutely broad-minded religion existed, sufferings of today would disappear in this world and Paradise on Earth would have been born. Therefore, all established religions have more or fewer defects and one of the defects is a narrow-minded view as mentioned above. Because of this defect, religions cannot be united into the great love of God but contrarily, never stop fighting each other. They create sub-schools even in a single sector or school and fight fiercely each other. There is no end of their conflict. When looking back to Europe in the good old days, religious opposition arose and it caused a great religious war. From those facts, we can see how terrible a narrow-minded faith is.

Considering those points as above, Meshiya-kyo takes broad-minded view as the main role and narrow-minded as a subsidiary one. Therefore, we don’t have any strict commandments. Ours is free and open. In a word, globalism is our concept, which embraces the whole nations. In this way, we don’t blame for believers at all when they are involved with other religions. They are guaranteed absolute freedom. For example, there is no problem when our believers study other religions. Furthermore, they can freely convert to the other religion if they should find a greater religion than ours. It has also no objection if former our believers who converted to another religion return to ours. Faith means that people feel something rising in the soul and cannot stop believing in something. That is true faith. Therefore, if a religion taught people that conversion is sin and they had to follow its teaching, it would be as if it forces them to keep believing in it by threatening them. It means that their freedom is restrained and they consequently deceive themselves. Such faith cannot serve God’s purpose. You should not forget that true faith naturally arises and never restrains anything. In this sense, Meshiya-kyo takes broad-minded view as the main role. (20 December 1949)

Translated by N.H.