Establishment of a World of True Heart-Centered Culture

I am standing at this podium with deep feeling today on this, the 40th anniversary of the founding of our Church. In 1954, with former President Hyo-Won Eu and several close disciples, we hung the name board of the Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity on a tiny house in Pukhak-Dong in Seoul. That official beginning seems like yesterday, yet forty years have already passed.

The founding of our Church was not for the realization of some personal goal of mine. It was done only to realize God's will on this earth. As I look back, I recall there was much persecution, and I walked many different thorny paths. They were paths that my parents, my brothers and sisters and my relatives could not understand, and I have vivid memories of false accusations from various societies and nations. The most painful aspect was the opposition of the people of the established churches whom God had prepared. Even today some portion of them raise totally unfounded criticisms. Truly I have surmounted many hurdles.

I am so grateful for the protection and guidance given by God's deep love during all these difficulties.

What is the duty of saints who are responsible for God's providence of salvation? What is God's purpose in raising saints? The saints for whom God is searching are not saints who will be honored in history after their death. God is looking for saints who can save this evil world, and who can, in this age, transform it into the world of goodness God longs for.

God is looking for saints who will plunge headlong into the sorrowful world of sin in order to wipe clean the slate of the world's sinful history. He is looking for saints who say they will solve, and will take responsibility themselves for, the problems God is most concerned about-saints who will fulfill the providential will by firmly standing up against the evil of this world.

Therefore the path of such saints cannot be smooth, and it is inevitable that persecution and misunderstanding follow them.

I pledged to God that I would accomplish His will for Him during my lifetime, and asleep or awake I concentrated only on that idea. Disciplining myself, I pledged myself countless times, renewing that pledge in the depths of prison and on the verge of death after severe torture.

God's will does not belong only to those who believe. All people and all of creation are governed by the will of God. God's will is not something vague. The will of God is the purpose of creation, that is, the ideal of creation which was in God's heart from the beginning of time. All things of the universe and mankind were created according to that purpose of creation.

Why would the eternal absolute God need to create? What does God absolutely need? Would it be material things, or knowledge or power? If God wanted any of those things He could make and have them any time. God can control Himself freely. However, the only thing that even God cannot control according to His will is true love. True love can only be found through a reciprocal relationship. One cannot feel love from oneself.

This is the reason God needed the reciprocal material world. God created the world because of the ideal of true love. Whether we look at the mineral kingdom, the plant kingdom or the animal kingdom, even though their levels are different, we can see that they were all created in pairs of subject and object in order to be able to have give and take together, to harmonize together, and to complement each other.

Mankind, furthermore, was created as the representative of and the center of the world of creation, as the closest object of God's love. Since mankind is the object of God's true love, without man God cannot realize His purpose of true love.

From this point of view, we can understand how precious the value of mankind is as the object of God's true love. God established true love, which is His ideal of creation, as the highest and most absolute value. Even the absolute God desires to submit absolutely in front of true love.

Like God, mankind and creation, which were created through such a principle, also became absolutely obedient before true love. All life- energy is interconnected and directed toward the higher level of true love. The order of the universe and the value of each creation are decided through this principle. The relationship of mankind and God, who is centered on true love, is a vertical relationship of parent and child.

Adam and Eve, who were created as God's son and daughter, were first to receive parental love from God and feel the heart of children as they grew. Then they were to grow feeling the heart for brother and sister for each other. Next, after being blessed in marriage by God, they were to become a couple, and through loving one another they were to experience the heart of a husband and wife. Finally, after having children and loving them as true parents, they were to feel the heart of parents and, furthermore, experience the parental heart through which God loved them as children. These kinds of heart-the heart of children, the heart of brother and sister, the heart of husband and wife, and the heart of parents-are called the Four Great Realms of the Heart.

The perfection of mankind requires the complete understanding of these Four Great Realms of the Heart under the true love of God. The foundation for this is the ideal family. The smallest unit of mankind which realizes God's ideal of creation is a family which has realized the Four Great Realms of the Heart. God, who is the origin and the lord of true love, intended to bequeath unchanging true love to mankind from the position of a Father. In true love, by realizing complete harmony and unity, God's true love is completely bequeathed to mankind as His children.

Furthermore, since the right to live together and the right to act together naturally appear as attributes of this kind of true love, as God's children, mankind can move and work together with God.

Thus intoxicated by God's true love, whilst possessing joy and the ideal, each person naturally gives true love to those around him and to his descendants. This was to be the original nature of the creation of the world. Unfortunately, however, the ancestors of mankind fell through the false love of the Archangel and, as a result, they could not become a couple of true love. They had children without God's blessing and became false parents and false ancestors. In this way, mankind's ancestors could not be born from true ancestors or true parents, but were born of a blood lineage God did not want. When we look at the natural world, even though the level is lower, everything is in harmony in the order of love. Only in the fallen world of people could this order not be maintained. All kinds of evil, conflict and suffering have resulted. God cannot abandon this world which is opposite to God's will. So he has been working to restore this evil fallen world to the ideal world of creation. That is the providence of salvation. Therefore, the providence of salvation is the providence to restore the purpose of creation. It is the providence of re-creation. Following the will of Heaven, it has been religion that has played the major role in the providence of restoration. Religion was established for the purpose of restoring the original ideal family, and also the ideal world, centered upon God's true love and "True Parentism."

The Messiah is the one who comes as the True Parent, with the crucial responsibility to get rid of everything which sprouted from the false root that originated from the false parents, and to restore the original ideal world of creation. In order for this world to be restored through true love and true family, first the internal position of True Parents needs to be established. God called me for the sake of the accomplishment of this mission. Because of the fall, the original ideal was not realized. In order to accomplish the providence of recovering that which had been lost, God brought religion into being and also sent the Messiah.

God's unchanging purpose is the realization of the ideal world of true love. The fulfillment of the purpose of religion is the appearance of true love and the ideal family. Conversely, if a religion exists for a purpose other than this, or only for itself, even though that religion may talk about God, it does not have anything to do with God. God and the world do not exist because of religion. Religion was established for the sake of accomplishing God's will to restore true love and the world of true families. My efforts of 40 years in developing interfaith, academic, educational, ideological, cultural, artistic, media-related, scientific, technological and business projects worldwide, are all directed towards this purpose.

I have devoted and invested my life for the accomplishment of all this. I have lived with the heart of the heavenly parent and loved the different peoples of the world more than my brothers and more than my parents who gave birth to me, by surmounting imprisonment and miserable persecution, and transcending the fear of death. The way of true love is the shortest way. In the realization of true love, there can be no conditions or excuses, and nothing can stand in its way.

The only direct way is by sacrificing oneself and giving to others. I am grateful to the many people who show their appreciation for my worldwide achievements. In fact, more important than the external results are the motives and processes by which they are achieved.

None of this work has been accomplished under good conditions or in a favorable environment. All of these achievements are built upon the foundation stones laid with the single-minded conviction to accomplish the will of God on this earth, mobilizing all my enthusiasm and sincerity, and investing everything. Throughout my struggle I have been investing continuously in the growth and protection of this righteous work by standing firm against all the winds of evil.

Ladies and Gentlemen!

The religion God wants to have to govern this age is a religion which stands in the parent position. God wants a religion whose followers live with the heart of parents. I myself have been teaching "True Parentism," educating each person to become a true parent who embodies this tradition. I guide people to first become true parents in the family, then to fulfill their mission as tribal messiahs-the true parents of their tribe. We have to become the religion which embodies and practices the heart of true parents in order to realize God's will in this world of conflict, hatred and evil. Those religions which despise and have contempt for other religions and denominations are a hindrance to the accomplishment of world peace and God's providence. A peaceful world of harmony is destined to emerge. However, what about the reality of the world around us? Even though we say that the Cold War is over, there are so many tensions and conflicts to resolve.

Our task to establish the age of the harmonious one-world family by fundamentally solving the conflicts between races and the struggles between religions can only be accomplished through True Parentism.

We who stand on the foundation of forty years pioneering by the Unification Church, and who have welcomed the True Parents and the Completed Testament Age, must build a new world of true heart-centered culture. Man becomes a substantiation of that ideal and of happiness in the harmony of love that is created when he becomes one with God in a true father-son relationship.

Even though this realm of heart, built with true love, is small, it is connected to the universe and the vibrations of everything happening within it are transmitted to all the creation and the spiritual world.

This is because the entire cosmos, including the spiritual world, exists under the same one principle of the true love of God.

The vertical true love relationship between God and man is the origin of ideal true love in human relationships. The perfection of that love is thus attained in the ideal family of the Four Great Realms of the Heart. A true heart-centered culture blooms in the realm of an ideal family, in which the heart of peace, happiness, freedom and ideals can be felt and experienced in life. In such a world, religion would not be needed. Not requiring a special consciousness of faith, our whole life would be one of attending God and living together in the realm of one heart of true love. That would be the reality of living in the Kingdom of Heaven with God's blessing to "be fruitful, multiply and have dominion over all things."

This is the fulfillment of God's ideal purpose of creation. In order to establish and world of true heart-centered culture, we should develop our personality through education in true love and True Parentism and, under God's blessing, expand the movement that forms families of true love.

The idea couple and family are accomplished by continuously training ourselves through a life of faith in which we practice the true love of living and investing for the sake of others.

This is the only way we can expect to have a bright future for the world and all humanity-by surmounting the habits of extreme self- centeredness, individualism and materialism. This is the only way we can protect people from immorality, the corruption of youth and the breakdown of families.

Only though the family-centered movement of true love, established through International Holy Weddings, can we solve the conflicts between peoples and races. The miracle of establishing ideal families of true love according to the will of Heaven, by overcoming the barriers of religion, has been achieved. Next year, many more religions will participate in the 360,000 Couples International Holy Wedding.

Also, I am educating the image of "mother of true love" through the activities of the Women's Federation for World Peace. When all women conceive and educate their children with the heart of a true mother, ideal families will be realized.

Now the time has come for the women who understand God's will to educate fallen men. This movement will spread all over the world.

Religion carries great responsibility in the process to establish a world of true heart-centered culture. World peace cannot be realized without harmony and cooperation amongst religions. I have been investing all my energy to accomplish this. In the future, too, I will take the lead in breaking down the barriers between religious people, and organize a concerted effort to realize God's will on earth. I will endeavor to help religions see the good in each other by actively supporting the Inter-Religious Federation for World Peace, by distributing World Scripture, and educating people. In future, religious people will realize God's will through practice, cooperating and setting an example.

Many different organizations which I established and have run will become more active. There are many different organizations which have been laying the foundation to solve the substantial and real problems of the world.

The Federation for World Peace, composed of former and present heads of state, will continue to endeavor to mediate in conflicts of this world and the tensions amongst nations, as well as to maintain peace.

The International Federation for Victory Over Communism and the Citizens Federation for the Unification of the Fatherland will continue to be active to digest, with "Godism" and "Headwing Ideology," the philosophies and ideologies which are hostile to nations and the world.

We can foresee that, with advanced scientific and technological development and the communications technology revolution, the future lifestyle of mankind will transcend and reformulate ideology.

From another point of view, environmental problems and global atmospheric problems, brought about by man's boundless desire and self-centeredness in all he pursues, have a direct bearing on either the well-being or destruction of all humanity.

Is there a future for mankind if we leave the leaders of the next generation to think only in a self-centered way and to satisfy carnal desire?

Absolute values centered upon True Parentism and the practice of true love must be established. When man is safely settled on the foundation of a family based on unchanging love, vertically and horizontally connected in the Four Great Realms of the Heart, then the modern conveniences of civilization can truly become a means to happiness.

Therefore, the devotion, educational and practical efforts of conscientious academics expressed through the activities of the Professors World Peace Academy and the International Conference on the Unity of the Sciences, affiliates of the International Cultural Foundation, are greatly needed and valued.

I also have a plan to publish an encyclopedia in an effort to educate the new generation.

My work to maintain various educational organizations and to support academic activities also have the same goal.

Through cultivating Sun Moon University in Korea and Bridgeport University in the United States, I have plans to develop a world university federation. This is an educational foundation for the coming world of true heart-centered culture.

Greeting the Age of Communications, by supporting the mass communications industry-newspapers and broadcasting-worldwide, we are, through well-directed media work, offering social education on a vast scale.

No one knows the heartbreak of God over the situation of starvation in the world.

Up until now I have been developing industrial technology and transferring it to the developing nations. Through this, I have made continuous efforts towards the equal distribution of technology in all countries. Just this year I founded the World Peace Institute of Technology so that it can contribute, along with other existing institutes, to redress the worldwide technological imbalance. For the past twenty years I have been investing in marine business ventures in order to develop a policy of safeguarding the food supply through the efficient use of marine resources.

We have seen some substantial achievements through the activities of the International Relief Friendship Foundation, and the providing of education in agriculture and light industry in Africa and other places. We have also established two foundations for social welfare in Korea this year.

Honored Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen, and Beloved Unification Members!

Before ending my speech this morning, I would like to offer my gratitude to God once more. Throughout my life I have had a pure motivation to live for the sake of God's will. God, who watched over and guided me at all times, has endured difficulties and suffering thousands of times greater than my own.

I offer all glory to God. Furthermore, how could the achievements of the past 40 years be only my own?

I am deeply grateful to the Church members who worked so hard, and to the many who lent their support. God's will, which I began to realize, is actually the original will for all mankind. I therefore ask all of you to become my representatives, and representatives of the True Parents. Please become the inheritors of God's will and multiply the fruits of righteousness and goodness.

So let us make effort to realize quickly the original world of true heart-centered culture that God yearns to see on the earth.

Finally, I would like to express my appreciation to all honored guests from overseas and from Korea for the blessing of your presence on this occasion.

May your families and your work continue to be blessed by the presence of God.

Thank you.