Washington, DC Distinguished Senators, Members of Congress, Honored Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen: I want to express my heartfelt gratitude to you for coming here today. As leaders of this great nation, you possess the responsibility of guiding this country and world into the next millennium. The promise of a peaceful and prosperous future depends directly upon the collective actions we take today.

As we all know, our world today is not a world of peace and happiness, but a world of conflict and despair. We are confronted with the breakdown of our families and the moral decline of our society. We debate the issues over and over again and yet find no solutions. Why is this? This is because a true solution must include God and deal with the root of the problem and not just the symptoms.

To find this root, we must first understand God's purpose of creation and realize how far we are from that original ideal.

God's purpose in creating the world was to experience true love. God created the first human ancestors, known as Adam and Eve, so that they would perfect themselves through true love and, as True Parents, establish a perfect family of true love, true life, and true lineage.

If God s ideal of true love had been realized in Adam s family, there would have been no need for a Messiah. This first family would have served as the blueprint for all families and would have expanded throughout all of history to the clan, nation, and world. This would have been the world of true love, the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth.

Tragically, this ideal was never realized. The bible teaches that the fall of man involves the loss of Adam s entire family. First, the position of True Parents was lost when Adam and Eve became false parents based on false and self-centered love with Satan. Second, the position of true children was lost as well when Cain murdered Abel.

Because the first family became a role model of self-centered love, and multiplied evil rather than goodness, they passed on false life and a false lineage to their descendants, and a false world came into being.

Thus, God's work of salvation had to begin. God needed a man and a woman, representing Adam and Eve, to be restored as True Parents centered on God s true love, so that the True Family could be formed according to His original plan.

To restore the original family, God works to reverse the course of the fall of man to reclaim first the positions of true children, through the unity of Cain and Abel, and then the positions of True Mother and True Father. This pattern of reconciliation of Cain and Abel, as the foundation for restoring the True Parents, has been God s consistent formula throughout the history of restoration.

After the fall, God separated fallen humankind into the two "brotherly" sides of Cain, symbolizing Satan, and Abel, symbolizing God, to work out the hatreds resulting from the fall.

When Cain strikes Abel, God's strategy is for Abel to endure with love, and then embrace Cain and recover the lost blessing. Accomplishing this means that God s side has prevailed over Satan and the position of God has been restored. Following this formula, men and women of God have suffered greatly, and the religion at the forefront of God's providence has consistently received Satan's most severe persecution.

Ladies and gentlemen, because illicit, self-centered love invaded the first family, selfishness and greed have continued to dominate human history. God s work of restoration begins at the individual level. Knowing this, Satan also focuses his efforts on the individual level. This is why self-centered individualism has become the dominant way of life in these last days.

People feel increasingly alienated from those around them, and bear little sense of responsibility for the well-being of their country, society, or even their own families.

Rising divorce statistics indicate that husbands and wives feel little responsibility toward their marriages; parents do not take proper responsibility for their children; and individuals, devoid of any sense of human dignity, fail even to take responsibility for themselves.

In the '60's, idealistic young people rejected the materialism around them in order to seek love and peace, but in the process, they also abandoned morality and responsibility. Today, our society suffers the results: drugs, promiscuity, crime, and suicide.

Of all these, what pains God most is the misuse of sexual love through free sex. Love comes from the stimulation of unblemished emotion, but free sex destroys the purity of emotion. How many of us have been touched by the cruelty of infidelity and divorce? Where is God in all the one-night stands? What about the nightmare of sexually abused children?

While the death toll of AIDS rises daily, our school boards pass out condoms, teaching the myth of safe sex and surrendering to the popular assumption that premarital sex is inevitable. A society that condones promiscuity is absolutely contrary to the will of God. Indeed, where there is free sex, homosexuality, drugs, and alcoholism, the world of true love is far away.

Those who do God's will, on the other hand, live a lifestyle that is 180 degrees different. Throughout history, those who have walked a spiritual path of self-sacrifice have been bitterly opposed and persecuted by the rest of the world.

An example of this is the Unification Church, whose members strive to live a lifestyle of purity and self-sacrifice. Despite severe, worldwide persecution, the fact that our church has risen from obscurity in war-torn Korea, to become a world-level religious movement in only 38 years, testifies to God's continued guidance and support.

Ladies and gentlemen, religion teaches that a wrong can be restored through the process of restitution. In the Divine Principle, we refer to making restitution for a wrong as "paying indemnity."

To make restitution for her wrong actions, fallen Eve needed to take the entire responsibility upon herself. Working in reverse order meant that Eve needed to create unity between Cain and Abel as a foundation for restoring the True Parents.

Abel was God s chosen representative and Cain, recognizing this, should have united with his younger brother. Cain's killing of Abel, however, destroyed any chance of restoring Adam's family. Thus, God had to wait for another woman who could fulfill fallen Eve's restitution.

One of the most significant women mentioned in the Bible was Rebekah, the spouse of Isaac. As the mother of Jacob and Esau, Rebekah held the same position in Isaac's family that Eve held in Adam's family.

Unlike Eve, however, Rebekah understood God s providence and helped her second son, Jacob, to gain the blessing destined for the first son, Esau. Just as Cain killed Abel, Esau wanted to kill Jacob when the blessing went to his younger brother. With Rebekah s help, however, these brothers eventually reconciled in a warm embrace.

This reconciliation was a major victory for God. Nevertheless, it represented only a symbolic purification of God's lineage. The substantial purification of His lineage, however, had to be accomplished in the womb. This is the reason for the paradoxical story of Tamar. By understanding that Tamar, like Rebekah, was in the position of fallen Eve, it becomes possible to understand why Jesus was born of her lineage, the tribe of Judah.

Tamar conceived with Judah, her father-in-law, the twin sons Perez and Zerah. The Bible tells us that the two struggled in the womb for the position of first-born. During Tamar s labor, Zerah's hand was the first to emerge and the midwife tied a red string around his wrist. Then, Zerah's hand disappeared back into the womb and Perez, the younger, was born as the elder! Thus, the younger son peacefully restored the elder son s position even before birth took place.

In terms of conventional morality, the stories of Rebekah and Tamar would be questionable at best. As we now see, God blessed them for their roles in reclaiming His lineage from Satan so that Jesus could be born.

Two thousand years later, Mary, the mother of Jesus, was born of Judah's lineage. She had the responsibility to unite Cain and Abel figures on the expanded family, clan, and national levels through paying appropriate indemnity and restoring Abel to the elder son's position. At that time, it was customary to stone to death any woman who became pregnant out of wedlock. Risking her life, Mary responded to God s call and conceived Jesus.

Because of Mary s faith, and the work of Rebekah and Tamar, Satan could not claim sovereignty over Jesus in Mary's womb. Jesus was born in the position of a true son under God s complete, direct lineage.

That is why Jesus, the first begotten son of God, is the saint of all saints and the ancestor of God's true lineage. His birth represented the conclusion of the national-level Old Testament Age, and the dawn of the world-level New Testament Age.

Mary also had the responsibility to build unity between Jesus and his elder cousin John the Baptist, who were in the positions of Abel and Cain, respectively. John had a great following and was widely respected. His unity with Jesus was crucial for the people of Israel to identify Jesus as the Messiah.

This unity would have laid the foundation for the Marriage of the Lamb. Jesus would have then stood as the True Father of humanity and his bride would have been the True Mother. The Kingdom of Heaven would finally have been established on earth. However, John could not unite with Jesus even though he had received a clear revelation at the time he baptized Jesus. Without the support of John, it was impossible for the Jewish people to believe in and follow Jesus. Alone, Jesus undertook the difficult path of proclaiming himself.

Confronted by the disbelief in Israel, Jesus determined to give his life to achieve spiritual salvation for humankind. However, he knew that Christ would have to come again in order to bring both physical, or earthly, as well as spiritual salvation.

This is why the mind can draw close to God through Jesus, but the body continues to be tempted by evil. Even Saint Paul anguished over the contradiction of the desires of the flesh and the desires of the spirit.

Many great Christian evangelists have also suffered because of this contradiction. At the dawn of the Completed Testament Age, the crucial challenge is to accomplish both physical and spiritual salvation. This requires the Lord of the Second Advent.

God's preparation for the Second Advent required a world-level foundation of successful Cain-Abel reconciliation. This was accomplished through the events surrounding World War II. The Christian Allied countries represented Abel. The aggressive Axis countries, under the influence of nationalistic militarism, represented Cain.

Immediately after the Allied victory, the Abel countries embraced the defeated nations and great strides were made toward creating a unified world of peace centered upon Christianity. It was upon this foundation that God could send the Second Coming.

Despite all of this preparation, however, God s dispensation was not fulfilled at that time. God s representative came to bring His word and, like Jesus two thousand years ago, was met with tremendous persecution and almost universal misunderstanding. Just as the Israelites of Jesus' time awaited the second coming of Elijah on a chariot descending from heaven, Christians awaited the Second Coming by expecting Jesus himself to descend on a cloud from the sky.

At this crucial time after World War II, God instructed my husband to bring a new message of truth to Christians in Korea. Those Christian leaders, however, rejected the possibility that this humble young man had been chosen to bring this new message.

Instead of uniting with him, these religious leaders became jealous of the growing number of his followers. They blindly opposed my husband without hearing him out. They even spread lies about him. Rumors of sexual misconduct and greed, the very antithesis of his teachings, were used to assassinate his character. Tragically, the world rejected God s chosen representative and expelled him into the wilderness.

Because Christianity failed to unite with my husband after World War II, the Christian churches have experienced a dramatic decline in their moral authority. America, and the other nations based on Christianity, also entered a time of serious cultural and social crisis.

Thus, the Cold War began. The world separated again into two worldwide spheres of Cain and Abel, just as it had done during World War II. Denying God, just as the thief on the left denied Jesus, Communism represented Cain. Affirming the existence of God, just as the thief on the right, Christian democracies represented Abel.

The first battle of the Cold War was the Korean War, in which 16 nations of the free world participated under United Nations auspices. It was not until 1988 that the 160 adversarial countries of the U.N. united together in peace at the Seoul Olympics. Finally, in 1991, both North and South Korea, representing the world-level Cain and Abel spheres, joined the U.N. together as its 160th and 161st members, respectively.

This numerical coincidence, and global reconciliation, occurred in Korea because Korea is the nation to which God sent the True Parents.

During the 40-year Cold War period, my husband fought to break down barriers on all levels in order to rebuild the lost foundation to receive the Messiah. All these years, my husband has been completely misunderstood. He has been wrongly imprisoned six times for doing God s work, including three years in a North Korean communist concentration camp. Moreover, the media have mocked him as a monster who brainwashes the young for self-benefit.

Can anyone disagree when I say that Reverend Moon is one of the most persecuted religious leaders in the world? My heart is broken when I think of how my husband has suffered. But he always comforts and reassures, saying that God has deep compassion for those persecuted for doing His work.

My husband and I have purposefully walked a path of indemnity in order to restore the failures of the past. For twenty years, my husband worked to indemnify the Old Testament Age centering on the Korean nation and the Unification Church, which represented the positions of the Israelite nation and Judaism, respectively, 2,000 years ago. On that foundation, we established the Holy Wedding of True Parents on the national level in 1960.

Then, in 1971, my husband and I came to America. This nation plays a very important role in providential history because of her close relationship with Christianity, Judaism, and the nation of Israel. Therefore, over the next 20 years, we walked the path of indemnity to fulfill the New Testament Age and to begin the Completed Testament Age.

Considering that all dispensations in the Old, New, and Completed Testament Ages should be completed centering on True Parents, then Israel, the United States, and Korea share a common destiny as chosen countries. This is why America, representing Christian countries, and the free world should work for the unification of atheistic, communist North Korea, and South Korea, where democracy and Christianity are flourishing.

Ladies and gentlemen, America must realize that God blessed this country not only for herself but for the sake of the world. America s pilgrim fathers did not come here for wealth. They came here to attend God and to maintain a more sincere Christian life of faith. If America fails to remember the purpose for which she is blessed, then her blessing will cease. My husband and I desperately want to prevent this. We must save America.

God has granted my husband and me an understanding of the forces involved in His providential history. The truth which God revealed to my husband is contained in the Divine Principle.

Looking at the history of humankind and the stories of the Bible from the providential viewpoint, the Divine Principle unlocks the answers to questions unsolved for thousands of years. Those who have sincerely studied its contents have found it to be a true gift from God, providing the only true solutions to the problems facing our society today.

Even in the former communist Soviet Union, government leaders and thousands of young people have found their lives renewed through their studies of our teachings. Finally free from the oppression of communist ideology, they are hungry for the spiritual truth to guide their nations.

My dear friends, when the Christian foundation was lost in the years following World War II, God s dispensation was delayed 40 years, until 1992. That is why in April 1992, my husband and I founded the Women's Federation for World Peace.

Last year, with the heart of a True Mother, I travelled to 12 countries in the world including those nations representing the worldwide Cain (Germany, Japan, and Italy) and Abel (America, Britain, and France) during World War II. In these nations, as well as Russia and China, I spoke to more than one million women leaders, uniting them together to create a foundation to meet the True Parents.

Based upon this foundation, my husband and I can now proclaim the dawn of the Completed Testament Age as the first True Parents. Our desire is that everyone here will follow our lead and also become true parents.

The time has come for each family to take up the messianic mission of completing the work of salvation all over the world. After restoring your family, the next step is to restore your community, tribe, and nation. We call this process "tribal messiahship." In the Completed Testament Age, the mother's role will be crucial. She must unite her children and her husband, and link her family with the True Parents. Already we have sent thousands of tribal messiah missionaries around the world. Soon, the original ideal of the family will be achieved worldwide.

In every completed family, grandparents will be in the position of kings and queens representing God and good ancestors. Parents will be in the position of kings and queens representing present humanity, and children will be in the position of princes and princesses representing all future descendants. When all three generations are united, past, present, and future will live together in harmony.

With this understanding, it is also my great privilege to announce to you the establishment of the first True Family. My husband and I, together with our 13 children and 20 grandchildren, are absolutely committed to serving God and humankind. These three generations constitute the central root (grandparents), the central trunk (parents), and the central bud (children) of the tree of life mentioned in the Bible. It is our sincere hope that you will symbolically graft into this tree by joining us in our efforts to create true families, ideal nations, and an ideal world.

As the world enters the Completed Testament era, we will fulfill God s original purpose for creating Adam and Eve, and live with God again. Realizing this, we must accomplish the individual unity of mind and body, the conjugal unity of husband and wife, and the family unity of parents and children. Then we can establish ideal families centered upon God s love.

Last year, in Korea, we held a wedding celebration for 30,000 couples, all dedicating their lives to God, to one another, and to the world. In most families today, parents cannot effectively guide their children, especially on such intimate matters as love and marriage. Yet, my husband and I brought together young people from 131 different nations and realized their most cherished dreams of love in an historic way. Such God-centered families are the very building blocks of an ideal nation and world.

With such families, the symptoms of our decaying society will vanish. As confident children of God, we will no longer be enslaved by the temptations of alcohol and drug abuse. Moreover, by understanding the holiness of love between a husband and a wife, we will possess the moral strength to stand strong against infidelity and promiscuity. Finally, we will work as a whole to eliminate war, racial prejudices, and world hunger. Based upon this foundation, we can realize a world of true happiness, freedom, and peace.

My dear friends, it is my hope that, as leaders of this great nation, you will understand this message with a deep heart and an open mind. I sincerely pray that by fulfilling the will of God, we can all reach the place of God's blessing.

May God bless America.

Thank you very much.