If we were to take the words of the Book of Prophecy (Fudesaki) literally, one would think that God was giving the early followers of the religion the recipe to successful harvesting of crops. In 1838 God descended from Heaven and promised the villagers an abundance of crops. The following is the recipe that most farmers would be familiar with:

Planting seeds + water + weeding + fertilizer = crops

But God was not talking about crops. God was talking about how to spread God’s truth to the world. Crops refer to the number of people coming to our churches. God has given us a special prayer, which he refers to as the fertilizer. This prayer is called the Joyous Service.

First we must build a church, to spread God’s truth. This is like planting seeds for a harvest. Some will build large churches hoping to harvest a large crop, while others may build a fellowship to harvest a small crop. For this prayer (fertilizer) to be effective we must have a pure mind. This pure mind without arrogance, greed, and self-love is referred to as water in our sacred book. But many of our minds are contaminated with evil (greed, arrogance, and self love). God refers to this as muddy water. The removal of the dirt (evil) to make the water clear is necessary before our prayers become effective. This requires the weeding of our minds of greed, arrogance, and self-love. When all four of these ingredients are present, our prayers are receptive to God. God will then bring new members to our churches. This becomes the recipe for spreading God’s truth to the world.

Building a church + pure mind + removal of evil + Prayer = New members