Groundbreaking Ceremony for the original Temple Holy Ground and Interreligious Graduate School of Theology

What day is it today? It is the day of laying the cornerstone of the Original Temple Holy Ground (Bon Jeon Seong Ji) and Interreligious Graduate School of Theology [official names in English are yet to be confirmed]. It is also July 8, 2001. If you think of the numbers seven and eight, you may realize that those are providentially very important numbers.

When God created the universe, he made people on the sixth day, but because of the fall of man, He could never really rest. He could not claim the number seven and had to make a new beginning on the eighth day.

We have the four seasons and twelve months. The central number in the changes of the seasons is thirteen. Thirteen. Do you understand? You can also find examples in the Completed Testament Age that are like Jesus' twelve disciples and Moses' twelve elders. The Unification Church, centering on the number twelve, tried to restore the twelve of Moses in the Old Testament Age and the twelve of Jesus in the New Testament Age and to create the foundation of the family in the Completed Testament Age.

The universe is in motion according to the natural laws created by God, centering on the number thirteen. It works the same way in perfecting individuals, families, nations, the world and the universe. Neither in your carefree daily life nor on your days of more seriously seeking eternal life, have you been able to stand at the center of the universe and administer your life as a responsible and free master. That means that you have not experienced the world of freedom and liberation. However, centering on the number thirteen, the culmination of the providence of salvation, of humanity fervent longing, and of all the cultures and traditions in which people take pride, can be actualized.

Centering on the number thirteen, people had to find out how to serve Heavenly Parents, the center of the whole universe, to serve the Kingdom of Heaven, to restore the relationship with God as the only absolute, eternal and unchanging Lord and to finally complete the providence of restoration in this fallen world. Families, tribes, nations and the world ought to belong to God. We should raise filial sons and daughters to heal God's heart, which was betrayed by His children who fell. We should also raise patriots for God's nation who can work one in heart with those patriots in history who are now in the spirit world, so that they can raise and train many people to be holy children and saints for God.

You should understand that we must educate people by setting up the tribal realm according to God's providence of salvation. No religion has clearly explained that what humanity lost is God's nation and God's family, the foundation on which God could freely love humanity.

Having restored the fallen ancestors, Adam and Eve, who could not create God's family in the Garden of Eden, the True Parents of the Unification Church have the representative family. They have substantiated God's ideal. No one in all of human history could ever go beyond the fallen realm, because no one knew how. Our own parents and all of our ancestors were born and lived in ignorance and confusion. Adam and Eve made a relationship with Satan in the middle of their growth period. Originally they were to grow to the perfection level from which they could know God entirely. True Parents have created the filial family of God that has restored that mistake and achieved the perfection level of the growth stage.

You must understand that religions are institutions of training to restore the unfulfilled ideals of God for His children and to raise filial children for God, and patriots for God's nation. Do you understand?

Jesus was in the position of a filial son of God. He also came as a true parent. Originally Adam and Eve had to create unity centering on God's love, life and lineage. Adam should have represented God's love, life and lineage as the subject and united with Eve. There should not have been any conflicts in their unity. That man and woman, Adam and Eve, who were directly related to God were supposed to grow from the stage of being in God's womb through the stages of childhood, of being brother and sister, of engagement, of being husband and wife, of being parents, of being grandparents and finally of being sovereigns-all eight stages. The original plan for Adam's family was for this.

With the right environment, a tree grows tall and wide. Likewise, in the original Adam's family, the children were to grow to be filial sons and daughters naturally. Such children were to multiply and create a tribe and then a nation. That entire nation must have the right family values directly inherited from the first ancestors, the father and mother, Adam and Eve.

Families of the proper, traditional family values would have been like the bones. And the flesh, the descendant families, would collectively comprise the body, a whole nation. The nation expands to become the world, the world of the filial families of God. In such a world, one on earth experiences boundaries between the physical and the spiritual worlds. They were not supposed to be separate as they are now. Originally, the Heavenly Kingdom was supposed to be built on earth first and then expanded into the spiritual world. All of that was lost due to the fall.

So who is the Messiah or Savior? He is the one who can restore all that was lost. Religions represent all these stages: the individual, family, tribal, national world and cosmic stages. A religion represents one of the original eight stages of Adam and Eve's growth and development. True Parents were to come and unite all religions and to create perfect families of filial sons and daughters of God, the perfect nation and the perfect world of God's original ideal and heart.

The only one who can truly be our Father and King has been God. We did not know that until now. We face the final stage of the providence, and we have not really understood the most important truth connecting a family to a tribe, the tribe to a nation, the nation to the world, the world to the cosmos, the cosmos eventually to God. Do you understand?

Adam and Eve were supposed to be connected to God in blood, as God is the seed of life and the center of true love. God's love, life and blood lineage are all connected. That is the problem. Do you know what God's blood lineage is? Do you know what the original root of God is? How many people here can really say that they are in complete unity with God's love, life and eternal and unchanging blood lineage? How many? This is a big problem. Do you understand?

In terms of the blood lineage, no one can really achieve individual perfection without the proper understanding of God's providence. It is very confusing for people; no one clearly understands how to perfect oneself individually. It is a crazy time in terms of finding God's true love, true life and true lineage. Why? People can be swept away here and there. If you have a month until your wedding day, would you be longing for that day or not? Yes? Even in the secular world [they long for it]. Then how much ought one to long for a wedding day that is so valuable one cannot exchange it for even God or the entire cosmos? One might go nearly crazy with yearning.

In the fallen world what do you call a person crazy because of love? It's called lovesickness. Do you think that someone's love for God should be weaker or stronger than any secular degree of lovesickness? I am asking, Hwang Sun-jo! [Stronger!]

Have you ever heard this kind of speech before? Where will the lovesick heart go? Where? What is its final destination? You men, rascals, where will you go to find true love?

Which part of a man is the most important? Lives are contained in the sexual organ. Do you understand? Through which door is a man's sexual organ to enter? It is through his wife's sexual organ for the procreation of their sons and daughters. You have to say Amen. [Amen.] Do you know how important that is?

Let us now look at women. Women's bodies do not belong to themselves. Why do they have big hips? Why do they have big breasts? They are not for women themselves. Those who sell their bodies or do whatever they want with them are out of their minds.

Some people might ask how Rev. Moon can say words such as "sexual organ" on an official commemoration day. They might then think that the rumor about people dancing around naked in the Unification Church must be true. Well, I do not care what they think.

Will women run away or not, hearing what I have to say? Will you women obey me? Have I educated you to be obedient and blessed you? Those who will not do what I ask, raise your hands. Those who will do what I ask, raise your hands. What I want to say is that you should be the best at loving your own husbands. That kind of woman would surely be one of the ten most important women in the Heavenly Palace.

You are not confident enough to say "no" to me, right? So you have to listen to Rev. Moon because you do not know the way yourselves. If you have to go by yourselves, the difficulties would be too much for you. All the roads are crooked and winding. You can imagine how difficult for you Satan has made those paths to heaven. If you just hold on to the thread I give you, you will surely find the way to be in the top of God's nation. Do you truly believe that?

It is really hot today. You may be only half-conscious. Are you listening to me with the right mind? I felt sorry when I saw you walking up here sweating while I had a ride. I wished that I could have given all of you rides. I am not proud that I was in a position to take a ride while you are walking. I am not that kind of man.

As soon as parents have children, the parents become their children's servants. They give and forget, give and forget for thousands of years. Parents want to give their children everything until they have nothing left. That is a parental heart.

When we understand that God has such a profound parental heart, do you think that God would not have wanted to see His first man and woman create a true family together? Did God ever see that happen? No. Satan may come into your minds and control you at any time. So I will have to have you answer me again. Did God have the experience of seeing His first man and woman create a true family or not? Say it loud. [He did not!]

The most precious gift Heaven allowed us to have is the palace of love, the palace of life and the palace of lineage. That is the most precious thing a person has. Do you understand? [Yes.]

To a husband, love, life and lineage exists only in his wife's sexual organ. To a wife, the only ideal place of settlement is her husband's sexual organ. What is an ideal family? It is where the grandfather, grandmother, sons, daughters, grandchildren, daughters-in-law and sons-in-law can cherish and sing happy songs about God-given sexual organs and can be eternally thankful to God. That is the family of God.

Only by becoming patriots in God's nation, saints in God's world and holy men and women in God's cosmos can people be completely one with God. In that realm, God's life is our life, God's love is our love and God's lineage is our lineage. So whatever belongs to God belongs to us and whatever belongs to us belongs to God.

The family is the basis of the greatest happiness in the world. God has prepared and created our families and blessed us. Out of sheer joy and a grateful heart, we should dance with God along with the entire cosmos.... God lost His family's inheriting His blood lineage, He has had to restore this. That is the kind of families the Unification Church has been raising. What families? [Blessed families.]

Does God want to come into the blessed families or not? God lost everything with the fall. Human beings lost the freedom to move about anywhere in the cosmos with heavenly authority. Furthermore, we lost our Mother and Father. We lost the position of God's sons and daughters. We did not know any of this. Now we must clearly understand this in our hearts.

We have to restore what was lost and to realize the freeing of heaven and earth, liberation, unification and the establishment of God's nation in the world. Those are what our original human desires should be. Our grandfathers, fathers and we should all be kings. Our grandfather is the king of the past, our father is the king of the present in this world. We of the grandchildren's generation are to receive love from our grandparents and parents, both generations, our grandfathers and fathers strongly embracing us.

Such a family should have the traditions of both the spiritual and physical worlds. God has limitless power vertically. We have limitless desires horizontally. We should unite our human desire with God's. In that way, God and people can merit the trophy of love, life and lineage. That is what the blessed married life should be. Amen.

Do you want that or not? [We want it.] Then where is the foundation for that to happen? All depends upon precious manhood. Gold or diamonds are incommensurable in value with that. No one can exchange that for even the entire cosmos. Where blessed husbands, wives, sons and daughters love each other is where God's love palace lies.

God's love, True Parents' love, God's life and True Parents' lives, God's lineage and True Parents' lineage are all centered upon the vertical king of heart, our Heavenly Father....

Fallen people have desires based on their physical bodies. Who has ruled the world? There have been so many monstrous dictators in history. We all have to restore that centering on the one unified essence that can unite all the families in the entire cosmos. That essence is the bones of God's love and it is made of filial families. God's love should be the only base for our families so that our families can be the foundation of the Heavenly Kingdom on earth as well as in heaven. The starting point of building such a heavenly kingdom is our blessed families.

If we have thousands or tens of thousands of blessed families, we can build a tribe. If we have a million blessed families, we can build a nation. If we have a hundred million or billions of blessed families, we can build a heavenly world. What we should remember here is that we should start a movement on earth.

The family is the basic unit of a nation and the world. The nation and the world are expansions of a model family. So, an individual must be a filial son or daughter in a family and then become a patriot. After that he or she should be a saint and holy man or woman on the cosmic level. That is the perfection level. Then, God can totally acknowledge that person as being His true child who can inherit everything He owns. Only then can one be the sovereign of the heavenly world where God's sovereignty extends over the earth and settle in peace forever on earth as well as in heaven. Amen. [Amen.]

So what should you do as the parents of your children? The answer is simple. You should raise them to be filial to you, their parents, to be loyal to their country, to be saints in the world and to be holy people in the cosmos. That is the right way of fulfilling all human aspirations.

We have to restore the entire world from being in the satanic dominion in which the world of the mind and of the body are struggling. And we should inherit the family tradition of true love in order to create the unification foundation to inherit God's nation, world, and cosmos. To achieve all that, we absolutely need to inherit royal authority from God. Say, Amen. [Amen.]

Therefore, with your sexual organs, you must conceive, give birth to and raise filial sons and daughters. And then you should educate and train them to create patriotic families that you can proudly offer to God's nation. That is the highest human aspiration. That is the only way to repay God's love.

Your sexual organs and your conjugal lovemaking are for conceiving and giving birth to potential saints. All filial children, patriots, saints and holy people were born into families, right? So your family should help your children fulfill the role of holy people in the cosmos. Jesus could not marry. Because he could not marry, he had to have the feast of the lamb, which is holy matrimony, after waiting for two thousand years with sorrow in his heart. Because humanity does not have an exemplary family that can be the origin of all lives, the root of all humanity, the entire human race cannot take the right path as families. We can easily be swept away by all the waves and winds from the various typhoons in life.

If Jesus had married, do you think we would need the Vatican? Presbyterians and Methodists say all sorts of bad things about the Unification Church.... And they would be shocked to hear this: Religions are simply a result of the fall. What I am telling you now is that we should create families that are expressive of the ideals of God's original creation. We should find and actualize God's absolute love.

Water that drips into this valley someday will go out to the ocean. The water drops all want to go out to the big sea. Not all can reach the ocean though. However, in the sea, the water evaporates, becomes tiny little droplets. And then these end up coming back to the valley, where they started off. The water moves in a big circle, the unchanging circle of love for thousands and tens of thousands of years. In these kinds of cycles, following universal law, we can see unity, peace, and therefore freedom as well.

As a nation, what does Korea want the most? Peaceful unification. What next, after realizing unification? We have to find the realm of liberation in which each one of us can declare that the family, the nation, the world and the cosmos of God belong to "me". We have to discover the purpose of the human conscience, the desire of the mind, the desire of the body and more. We have found all of these thanks to God and True Parents. Therefore, we must love God, True Parents and the nation by sacrificing our own families. Even if we have to sacrifice our own nation, and even the world to realize God's liberation with total freedom, that is the way we should go, following the heavenly law of the ideal of the original creation. No political power, no money, no knowledge can make this happen. Only true love.

Give and forget, give and forget for eternity. This is the only way to realize God's liberation-through unifying the mind and body, unifying tribes, unifying nations and unifying the world, to settle God's love throughout the cosmos. What is this that we are building here? The original holy palace. What does "original" mean? It is the original home, the original palace for God. We have to overcome all difficulties on our way. You have to have the mouth and ears of a king to be victorious. You have to listen well and talk well. Only God knows the way. Only the Second Coming, the Messiah, True Parents know. Do you want to enter the realm of perfection or not? The position of the king is that of the third stage. Grandfathers, fathers and grandsons are all the same in love. Those parents who give birth to and raise princes and princesses... If their children enter heaven, they can also automatically enter heaven. What do you think? The three generations can enter heaven. Do you understand? [Yes.] Those who want such a blessing raise your hands. Those who fell asleep are flunked!

Heavenly Father Mansei! True Parents Mansei! We all are truly honored for being able to participate in the holy ceremony of laying the cornerstone that marks the beginning of the liberation of God's nation and the beginning point of God's original land which all people on earth and in heaven will honor. We should give three cheers of Mansei to extol and glorify Heaven. Amen. (Applause)

At this point when Heavenly Father, who is the center of earth and heaven, has made one unity with True Parents, we would like to have the ceremony of laying the cornerstone of the heavenly palace for the first time ever in human history. Please accept this ceremony in which the pure hopes of the entire world are contained, with a joyful heart. We sincerely hope and pray that You will accept this ceremony with joy as it is the beginning of our effort to enable You to settle. With True Parents, all the things that need to be done in history should be realized with the help of the spirit world and the physical world, and there should be no obstacles for our descendants. We promise to offer You the completion of the building. As we proclaim our promise, please accept this with a victorious and joyful heart.

I hereby proclaim this with the earnest heart of True Parents. Amen, Amen, Amen.

[Originally published in Today's World, June/July 2001]