Fifty Years on the Providential Path to the Realization of God's Fatherland and the Peace Kingdom

Respected guests, distinguished leaders from 191 nations, ladies and gentlemen, dear members!

Fifty years ago on this significant day - on May 1,1954 - as I was walking this path of upholding God's will, I founded the official organization of the movement for unification. The path I have pioneered for half a century is one no one has really understood. God alone has been my driving force as I have walked this lonely path of persecution and suffering, which is stained with my blood, sweat and tears.

The movement for unification that I have been promoting is entwined with God's desire. Therefore, for the past fifty years, rain or shine, I have not once forgotten my mission in relation to this time and my responsibility to the future.

On this significant occasion today, I would like to reveal the fundamental purpose that God, who is the motivating force behind this unification movement, had in its inception, its destination and its goal.

The Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity I did not create another denomination or sect. I was fully aware that that would not have been God's desire. Fifty years ago, the movement for unification began as the Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity (HSA-UWC); in other words, it began as an association for the sake of unification. Selecting this name, which portends the unification of global Christianity and, further, the unification of religions and of the spiritual world, was in itself a risky step to take. The development of the Christian tradition and the formation of its cultural sphere were achieved through the faith, sacrifice, passion and searching of exemplary Christian saints, leaders and scholars. Despite this, Christianity has splintered into numerous denominations, which are in conflict with one another even today. Under these circumstances, unifying Christianity is no easy task. The unification of religions and, further, the unification of the spiritual world, are even greater tasks.

The concept of unification that I set forth does not just involve superficial unification or unification merely in form. It involves fundamental and complete harmony and unification according to God's ideal.

First, this is achieved through spiritual works. The unification of religions and within the spiritual world cannot be achieved by force or authority, or by any other external condition. When the foundation that allows God to work on earth is laid and the conditions sought by the saints are met, spiritual works can occur. The power to spur good spirits into action lies with God and the spiritual world.

Originally, the spirit self - the inner person of a man or woman - is an entity that would respond to good spiritual influences. However, fallen people, who have dysfunctional spirit selves, have lived in ignorance of the existence of the spiritual world. If their spirit selves can be repaired and purified, all people will naturally be able to experience these good spiritual influences. Thus, we all must be conscious of the spiritual world, and the time when we will be so is coming.

Throughout my entire life, I have been promoting the movement for unification, which supports God and the spiritual world. Through God's working spiritually on earth, unity between mind and body, unity among people, unity between the spiritual and physical worlds, and unity between God and man can be achieved.

Second, unification is achieved through truth and love. I have revealed that the relationship between God and man is that of a parent and child bound by true love. I have also revealed to the whole world the fundamental principles of life and of this universe, the true nature of original sin, of restoration, and of the spiritual world, and the history of God's providence. I have not only done that; I have taught about true love and put it into practice.

True love is investing oneself for the sake of others. This is because, in true love, I cease worrying whether my own good qualities receive recognition; I wish to draw out the greatest qualities of the object of my love. By investing and investing again, the object of my investment will become greater than I am. Yet true love means investing, forgetting that I have invested, and continuing to invest still more. This means sacrificing all of my interests and status. Here, genuine unification can be achieved. The self-centered mind is therefore the greatest obstacle to achieving unification.

For the past fifty years, I have totally invested myself. I have invested everything that I have as an individual; I have invested my entire family, clan, and nation. I have invested the Unification Church; and even now I am tirelessly investing myself for the sake of the world and of all humanity. All of this has been to achieve the ideal that God, who wants to achieve complete harmony and unification through true love, intended at the time of the Creation. God's desire for us is that we live in ideal oneness with him through love. The values of freedom and peace and the lofty vision and happiness that man longs for are only possible when harmony and unity is achieved within true love. The unification movement is therefore the movement for the globalization of true love.

God, the invisible true parent, created us, as well as everything else in existence, in order to establish an object partner for His true love. In particular, we, who were created to be His children, are the beings most precious to the heavenly true parent, who is the subject of absolute love. Therefore, our first ancestors were to be the body and holy temple of the invisible God. They were to be the substantial object of His true love.

Originally, Adam and Eve were to mature into people whose character manifested true love that is based on God's true love; they were to become a true couple and multiply true children in order to become the true parents. If they had done so, they would have perfected themselves as the substantial entity of God's true love, true life and true lineage. If Adam, Eve and their children had perfected a four-position foundation of true love with God at the center, God would have been able to have descendants related by blood through true love, and the ideal family of man would have settled throughout the earth.

An attribute of true love is that it impels those who experience it to invest more in their object of love than in themselves. Therefore, the concept that people, who were created as the object of God's love, might sin and suffer in hell was unthinkable to God. All these things are results of our first ancestors acting against the nature of true love and falling.

Our first ancestors, who were expelled from the original world, could not bear children of true life and true lineage under the blessing of God's true love. People are born without a relationship with God's true love, true life, and true lineage. They are thus destined from the moment of birth to need a savior and salvation.

Salvation means recovering one's original state, that is, restoration. It means our returning to our original state before the Fall and the restoration of the relationship with God that we have lost. Fallen man must inevitably go the path of restoration through indemnity. Therefore, in each era and in each region of the world, God has raised religions and has led humanity along the progressive path of restoration.

Religion is a training center and educational institute to repair dysfunctional man and return him to his original state. Religious teachings are not for the sake of religion itself. Religion is the means to realize God's will, which is to educate and recreate us as His children. It is impossible for God to be contained within the limited doctrines and rituals made by religion. The mission of religion is to cultivate our character through a life of faith that embraces enlightenment and personal growth, so that we can attend God in our everyday lives.

We can graduate from school only after completing a prescribed course of study. In the same way, all faiths should attach greater importance to educating and training individuals to perfect their character, thus raising them to become people of faith, than they do to merely bringing people to a path of faith through witnessing and sermons.

Man was not originally created to relate to God through religion and a life of faith. In the original garden, religion did not exist. There was no need for the formalities of ritual in the original relationship between God and man. It was to be a relationship of a true parent and true child who live as an ideal family, intoxicated in the bliss of true love.

I have tried to teach and offer guidance on this heavenly law and principle through the established faiths, in particular, through the Christian foundation that was prepared by God. Unfortunately, due to ignorance, self-righteousness and denominationalism, God's central providence could not advance but instead met with persecution. Under these circumstances, I was forced to establish the Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity. Without having the purpose of establishing a separate religion, I have, from the early years of this movement, promoted ecumenical and interdenominational activities.

The world has come to call us the Unification Church in place of our full name. Many years ago, I said that I was looking forward to the day when we could bring an end to the Unification Church. That is because the mission of the Unification Church has been to restore and recreate the ideal of God on earth. The ideal kingdom of God, the original world envisaged by Him at the time of the Creation, can only be realized when the mistakes of our ancestors, who betrayed God, are completely eradicated, and when the supra-religious, supra-national realm of liberation and complete freedom is perfected such that the original realm of love - the four-position foundation ideal - ­is realized. This means transcending the mission of any one church or denomination, and perfecting the family ideal of true love. Yet the focus of churches and religions until now has been on individual salvation. No religion until now has ever put emphasis on the salvation of the family.

Crucial to the salvation of the family is receiving and maintaining the marriage blessing ceremony, through which people receive the blessing of God's true love. The ideal of true parenthood, which our fallen ancestors failed to achieve, cannot be attained by the fallen descendants on their own. It is only possible through the savior sent by God; because he is the true parent - the true ancestor that can replace the fallen ancestor. Fallen men and women, who multiplied through the false lineage, which has no relationship to God, and which was received from the first ancestors, can be likened to wild olive trees. They must be restored by being engrafted with the true parent who comes as the true olive tree. The ceremony for this is the marriage blessing ceremony.

On the foundation of pure love education and the true family movement that I have initiated worldwide, I inaugurated the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification on July 31, 1996, in Washington D.C., the capital of the United States of America. Some 4,000 people attended, including many heads of state and high ranking world religious leaders. On that day I officially announced the end of the Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity. With the inauguration of the Family Federation, the providential age in which families may receive salvation that transcends the boundaries of religion, nationality and race has begun.

The Old Testament Age and New Testament Age were not ages for the ideal family. Those ages belonged to the providential age for the salvation of the individual, where the main focus was on individual salvation alone. The age of the salvation of the family is the Completed Testament Age. When families combine as a federation, they move into the age of the providence for the salvation of clans, and beyond that to the salvation of nations. The blessing ceremony eradicates the fallen lineage, which had been the fate of fallen man, transfers ownership of the lineage back to God and brings about a transformation of heart. Indeed, there is no greater grace than this!

Heaven does not come under the banner of a certain religion. Heaven is the place where people who have regained the parent-child relationship of true love with God - who transcends religion - attend God and are intoxicated in His true love. The person who receives the blessing, creates a family of true love and lives in attendance to God can enter heaven along with his clan and nation.

Throughout history people have sought and cried out for their own liberation and salvation. But what about God? Is God not in need of liberation? Does He exist intoxicated in joy? Was it possible for God's heart to be filled with the joy of liberation when throughout history He, as the parent, had to watch as His children groaning in sin and suffering? That has never been the case. God's heart can be liberated and He can enjoy complete freedom in accordance with the degree of the completion of the ideal family and ideal kingdom on this earth and in heaven. Only then can people be liberated and completely freed through a family life of true love. In turn, the creation, and further, the spiritual world, can be liberated and completely freed through us.

Heaven can be likened to a palace of true love where we, as God's children, who are centered on the living God, the origin of true love, can share joy with Him, and respond to His heart. The Family Federation for World Peace and Unification has promoted the true family blessing movement worldwide with the purpose of substantially realizing the kingdom of heaven, which is beyond religions, races and nations.

Respected leaders and beloved members!

Throughout history mankind has dreamed of heaven, an ideal world. But what is the reality that we see today? Society today has become the kingdom of free sex and individualism amidst family breakdown and the loss of values. In such an environment based on fallen man, it is impossible to have the correct view of life and of values, let alone a correct view of the world and the universe. We therefore cannot expect to have hope of creating or perfecting harmony either within the individual or on the level of the whole.

In the past century many people placed their hopes on the utopian movements under the banners of communism and equality. The communist movement created a stir and shook the world, but in reality, the only thing the people in the communist sphere experienced was inequality and exploitation, misfortune and fear, and that movement ended in failure.

On the other hand, a system was built with the dreams of democracy and freedom as the highest values and ideals. But what was the result? This system spurred man's self-centered desire for pleasure and brought about decadence and corruption, imbalance and disorder. The future of democracy is also unclear.

Some have called for the construction of the ideal world through secular humanism or the North Korean Juche ideology, but these ideologies have dehumanized people, driving them to become like animals. There are also those calling for globalization, but this has been promoted from a self-centered perspective and has failed to establish the absolute, vertical values that God desires. Such people now struggle horizontally in the confusion and conflict of relative values. In this way, humanity has been following the path of self-destruction, far removed from the path of one global family, in which genuine happiness is possible.

All these things are a direct result of man estranging himself from God, the true parent, throughout our long history. Thus, the most urgent task for people in the present age, who wander about unable to find an exit from unhappiness and suffering, is to seek out and come to know God - and come to understand original sin and the spiritual world. Alone, the individual cannot achieve the ideal of happiness. It is only possible when he establishes the proper relationship to his family, tribe, race, nation, world, cosmos and God. It is the ideal of God's true love that can bring about the perfection of all these things.

The future world in the new age will not be a world under a man-centered ideology. It will be a world under "Godism," the ideology of our Heavenly Father, under which we attend God as king. Thus, the age of "true parentism," the age of true love is dawning. The age of nationalism has passed. Even a superpower nation cannot exist on its own. Thus, the age of unilateralism has passed. A new age has dawned, when national boundaries will be eliminated and we will live together harmoniously, beyond nation, religion and race.

The core of this coming world order will be true love; in other words, investing for the sake of others. Those countries that go against this heavenly law and adopt a self-centered policy of protectionism will gradually lose influence and in the end, perish. The future world must be one in which religion is the first to take down its banner - ahead of the political realm and secular worlds - to take the lead in practicing true love and compassion. All religions must reconcile and cooperate on an interreligious level and pull forward the reconciliation and unity of nations and races. They must have the heart of our Heavenly Father and be examples in practicing true love.

I created the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification and promoted the true family movement worldwide while unsparingly investing all my resources and human power to prevent war and to realize a world of peace.

For this I inaugurated the Interreligious and International Federation for World Peace in February 1999 as an integrated organization. Through this organization I expanded the foundations of my endeavors for reconciliation between the faiths - endeavors that span many years. Many leaders in different fields, such as politics, economics, education, the arts and non­governmental organizations, have participated in this effort. I have appointed over 50,000 Ambassadors for Peace in 191 of the world's nations. I am promoting a movement for the revival of the United Nations, so that the UN can become an organization that is truly dedicated to world peace.

In October 2003, I founded the Interreligious and International Peace Council, the "Peace UN," and expanded its activities as the central organization for the realization of a world of peace.

Not only that, in accordance with heavenly fortune and on the victorious foundation of devotions offered in the heavenly and earthly worlds, I offered God his kingship in January 2001. It was a historic event of liberating God as the eternal king, and the king of all kings. Through this, God's sovereignty of goodness substantially expanded its territory to all corners of the world.

Fifty years have passed since the launch of the Unification Movement as an official organization! The first stage of the Unification Movement was a period in which it was active mainly in the religious sphere dealing with individual salvation. The next stage was the movement to find and establish true families, the basic unit of heaven. The movement will continue on to work for the restoration of clans, and to have an impact in local communities, until all people on earth and in heaven receive the blessing.

Furthermore, the third stage, the movement to build the ideal world of peace, has already begun in earnest. During the past year alone, I devoted my efforts to lead sixteen initiatives, large and small, for peace in the Middle East. These initiatives aside, the entire world is scrutinizing my activities including the peace and unification movement for North and South Korea, the UN revival movement or new Peace UN movement, and the peace movement of the 50,000 Ambassadors for Peace worldwide.

Distinguished leaders from all walks of life!

The current era is a period of great transition in history. We will experience remarkable changes during this century. In particular, there will be a great awakening in the following three fields: First, although the modern trend is exceedingly materialistic, humanistic and atheistic, there will be a sudden increase of interest in and awareness of spiritual phenomena. This will enable us to experience remarkable works from the spiritual world that will change the course of history.

Second, along with this deepening spiritual experience, humanity will gradually come to realize the divine value and social significance of the family as the basic school of true love. This realization will come from the painful experiences of family breakdown and the abnormal transformation of the family throughout the world during recent decades.

Third, on the foundation of the development of our spirituality, the hope and corresponding efforts for peace will increase markedly. Human relationships will not be bound by national, racial or religious boundaries. A remarkable change will come through which all people will live for the sake of each other and feel that they all are brothers, sisters and neighbors living together.

These are all the providential works of the living God. God is developing the spirituality of man and on this foundation he is establishing a family of true love. On the basis of that family he is working to create a genuine and everlasting ideal world of peace.

The time has truly come for us to build the ideal world longed for by the original nature of humankind; the time has come for us to build God's fatherland and the peace kingdom where we can attend the God of true love as the king of absolute values. Since we are in this time of tremendous heavenly fortune, I sincerely ask that you all become those who build the peace kingdom in accordance with the ways of heaven.

I pray that God's blessing will be upon you, your family and your nation.

Thank you.