Pyeong Hwa Gyeong / 평화경平和經

I would like to praise the recent establishment of the ecumenical and interdenominational Association of Religions in Korea. Through the Association of Religions in Korea, I hope all religions will achieve greater harmony and so form a strong spiritual foundation for our people.

In addition, I would like to thank those of you who have founded the Association of Religions in Korea for having included in your group the Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity, in the spirit of mutual cooperation. I sincerely thank you for visiting our headquarters in spite of your busy schedules and challenging circumstances.

I sincerely ask that the Association of Religions in Korea vigorously pursue activities that go beyond denominations; furthermore, that it will be an axis that can play a central role in Korean society, and that by standing in the vanguard of a new and beneficial movement it will contribute to the renewal of that society.

The Unification Church was founded according to the Will of God

Now, what I would like to briefly tell our guests here is how the Holy Spirit Association was founded. I believe the force behind my founding the Holy Spirit Association came from the Will of God, or the Divine Will, more than merely from human will.

As you well know, human society today and in history does not advance based just on the will of people. On the contrary, society advances toward one goal that is based on a greater Will, which is centered on God. From that viewpoint, if the Holy Spirit Association were founded only by the will of human beings, I do not think it would contribute much to the world, to the future or to the flow of history. Accordingly, I founded this new religion based on the Will of God.

Religion, I believe, is the institution that is able to combine the Will of God and the will of humanity. Religion not only has to have God at its center, it has to embrace everything all people are longing for.

Then, what is the Will of God? The Will of God is not focused on any particular society; it goes beyond societies and nations. We cannot complete the Will that God desires unless we adopt such a viewpoint. We can understand this by looking at human history.

In this sense, the will of humanity also must not be focused on any individual’s will or single group’s will. To be one with the Will of God, it must be put into a greater context at the world level. I believe the mission of religion is to unite these two wills internally and externally.

Then what is needed in order to bring God and humankind into oneness? There must be something that is able to unite the love of God and the love of human beings. The love through which human beings can become one with God is not centered on a particular individual, a particular society or a particular nation. Rather, people have to achieve a bond of heart that loves humankind and the world, going beyond particular nations.

In this sense, the Will of God and the will of human beings must be bound together in the form of a religion, and the center of this religion must be love. This love must be a love that is not exclusively for any particular society or nation; rather it must be a love that goes beyond the world and beyond everything. Without this, a religion cannot be true and will lack the foundation to have a global presence.

This is why until now history has moved forward with saints at the center. These were people who took their stand in relationship with the Will of Heaven and not just the will of human beings. Their goal was to benefit not only a certain people, but the entire world, and even beyond the boundary of the world. It is the task of saints to teach this way of life. With this duty at its core, religion can connect the Will of Heaven with the will of human beings. So the saints established the standard for binding the human way to the foundation of heavenly law. However, only teachings that transcend the boundaries of the world can be called the teachings of the saints. Based on these ways, human beings today have established the way of humility and morality.

God longs for a global family of love

When we look at things from this perspective, if God and human beings want to become one, then what is the central point where the two can come together? What is the decisive center that can connect the love of God and the ideal love for which humankind hopes? If God exists, it can only be the place that is closest to God. The base to make contact with the love of God is not a base of love centering on the individual. Unless it is a base of love that can embrace the world, the love of God and the love of human beings will not be able to connect.

Then, where is the most intimate place where the love of God and the love of human beings can bind together? It is the place where God’s Will is at the center and the will of human beings follows it. That is to say, it is the place where God’s love is at the center and the love of human beings adjusts to it. When we seek the position that can be the most intimate, with the love of God at the center, it would be the position of becoming a true son of God.

If there were a true son of God like that, with that son at the center, a true daughter of God would be needed. Then with that son and daughter at the center, it would be necessary to seek a true family that God can love, a true tribe that God can love, a true society that God can love, a true nation that God can love and a true world that God can love. With this understanding, I started the Unification Church of today based on the issue of how to unite the relationship of love between God and human beings on a global standard.

The love of God is surely realized only after going through a historical course, and we know well that the saints pioneered that course at the cost of their lives. So the saints have been guiding humankind until now with the teachings of God, which are centered on the heavenly way.

Then until now who would be the greatest saint among all the saints who have come and gone in history? Of course the teachers of the Confucian classics would be important; but more importantly, we need a religion that teaches how God and humankind can be the most intimate. So which religion teaches that content? When we consider the religions that have endured until today based on this question, it seems to me that Christianity was introduced from a dimension higher than other religions. So the Unification Church was started based on Christianity.

Let us examine Jesus in the context of this question. When he related with God, he did not relate with a nebulous Being; he related with a tangible being who was an intimate part of his daily life. So when Jesus related to God, he called Him “my Father.” In the realm of affection, there is no position higher than a father. So Jesus opened the way for the relationship between God and human beings to be that of parent and children, and he laid the foundation of heart Jo be able to bind them together. This tells us that in order to realize a world united by the love that God desires, there must surely be a foundation of affection, and this foundation of affection must be even beyond the parent-child relationship.

This is why Jesus called God, “my Father.” He called out, “I am His only Son, who had to come. In the whole universe I am the only person who can receive His love.” In view of this, Christianity more than any other religion is based on the heart of God, gives concrete guidance and envisions God clearly and intimately. Jesus said, in effect, “I am the bridegroom; you are the bride.” More than in any other religion, I consider that this illuminates the best starting point for developing the relationship of oneness with God. In addition, the first-century Christians who followed and believed called each other brother and sister. It was a new religious concept that all people are brothers and sisters.

The world of love that God is hoping for cannot be realized without absolutely achieving this standard of love. The world of love, the final goal, must be established through individuals whom God can love, through the family composed of such individuals, through the tribe composed of such families, through the society composed of such tribes, and through the nation composed of such societies. Without having that kind of loving foundation as a base, the world cannot be bound together in love. This surely has to happen in the course of history.

Restoring the original relationship between God and human beings

History has advanced through the guidance of the saints and righteous people. Therefore, the question now is how today’s societies, which represent the world and human history, are aligned with the teachings of the saints. If God exists, He would have had a purpose at the beginning, He would have gone through a process to achieve that purpose, and that process would head toward realizing one world. If Heaven is behind that providence, then we cannot help but think about the issue of how to unite God’s purpose with the historical course of humankind, who must follow that providence.

This being so, how can we build the relationship God originally intended to have with humankind? And how can we bring human affairs to have God’s love at the center? We have to consider how we can unite our worldview with the Will of God and with the overall relationships in the affairs of individuals, families, particular societies, and particular cultures. We formed the Holy Spirit Association with this original motivation. We will not just deal with those affairs; we will also bring it to the context of understanding that God is our Father. The issue of whether we have the intrinsic power to unite the world into one depends on bringing the world to the position where it can receive Heavenly Parent’s love, centering on this teaching.

In a family, there are parents, husband and wife, and children. With these it becomes a base for happiness. The purpose for God seeking human beings is certainly so that God can find His own happiness. Accordingly, when God seeks happiness, it can only be found in a place with human beings. Only when God and human beings establish a relationship can there be a point of unity. Just as we feel happiness when we possess all the emotional content from our family, God too feels happiness when He dwells in such circumstances.

With this awareness, Jesus asserted Christ would have to return. For two thousand years Christians have embraced the ideal of the Second Coming and have been waiting for the time when Jesus would come again. What is the centerpiece of the Second Coming? This can be considered to be the Marriage of the Lamb. Then, what is the Marriage of the Lamb? It is left vague, yet it is no less than the beginning of the love that is to unite God and human beings. From the human viewpoint, it is a man and a woman becoming one. These two people are bound together as one and head toward the ideal world. Without preparing the foundation in this way, where humankind can go forward searching for the love of God, the goal of a world centering on God’s love cannot be realized.

Therefore, when Jesus comes, he must establish the family that God is hoping for, and that family must be a true family. Until now, human beings have sought true love. False love must not be present in the family or society. Therefore one true family must appear that has at its center the love of God that all people can share, a true family whose core is the greatest love that all human beings are longing for. Without such a family of love, the tribe of love cannot be formed. If such a tribe is not formed, the society of love cannot emerge, and without such a society, the nation and the world of love cannot be realized.

Therefore, in the providence of salvation that God has bestowed upon humankind, I consider that the highest level human beings can experience and the highest ideal level God is seeking for is in the family. Thus, in the Unification Church we have the terms “Blessing” and “holy wedding ceremonies.” I am sure you have heard these terms many times.

Then, through what principle is a true family bound together? A true, original man and a true, original woman must be brought together centering on God. The Unification Church is teaching this kind of concrete concept. Such a family does not center on the individual. Instead, its focus widens to represent and encompass the world.

Families with that kind of focus and accomplishment in the realm of daily life have to be established on this earth. Unless this is done, a new society, nation and world cannot be established. Because I believe this, the Unification Church has become the church that is being talked about so much today. It is finding a starting point to make a new beginning for the world, with the love of God and the love of human beings at its center.

The religion the world needs

There have been many disparaging rumors recently. However, I would like to tell you clearly one thing: the Unification Church will not fail. That which is humanistic will not succeed. If a religion secures the love of God and the path of the heavenly law of Heaven’s Will, it will not fail. For there to be truth, there must be a strong ideal. That is to say, the value of truth appears through content that is undeniable and useful in forming relationships.

Until now, religions have had as their goal the salvation of the individual, and they have taught how to save the individual from evil. However, the world does not need a religion that places the individual at the center, but one that is able to prepare a foundation for family salvation. The salvation of the family begins when it can receive and secure the Will of Heaven and be recognized by the will of humankind. If a family appears that can endure any trial, from the position of having combined the love of Heaven and the love of humankind, the religious movement based on it will spread throughout the world. This movement would not have any particular place or any special society like Korea at the center. It would be a movement that has the concept of the family at the center and goes beyond the society and nation. A religion carrying out a movement like that will be absolutely necessary for the future.

As you know, the United States has taken a leading role in this age of history based on democracy. America was established by the Will of Heaven. If it was established as a nation and called to exemplify and propagate democracy, that call could not have been for the sake of America alone. America is a part of the world, and God cannot allow the form of democracy as practiced by that specific people to lead the world.

If America had gone forward taking spiritual responsibility in the democratic world and had stood in the position of helping weaker nations through its politics, economy and culture, it would be able to rise to today’s challenges on the world level. If it had stood in the position to save the world even at a great cost to the American people, America would surely be leading the world.

However as you know, America put forth the “Nixon Doctrine” and implemented a policy of retreat. It took the position that Asian problems ought to be left to Asia. Because this position did not go beyond the limits of democracy and was a retreat, America will not be able to avoid the world’s mistrust.

It is the same for communism. Russian communism has erected an enormous system to dominate the world, with the Slavic peoples at the center. Undeniably, this communist ideology stands in the position of evil. Nonetheless, its system could eventually surpass democracy. Although the communists have their eyes on the people of the world, they have yet to present the realm of the ideal of communism. This being so, what is the way of Heaven and the highest good we can hope for humankind? If a religious body appears that has a new view of the world that goes beyond the nation and beyond any society, then centering on that teaching, from our individual lives up to the global level, we would have principles for daily life that are one with the heavenly way.

For this reason, if I may take Korea as an example, it must have a mission for the entire world. Hence, Korea should be able to live for the sake of the world. At this point in time, when the entire world is coming together and intermingling in the realm of our daily life, what is it that Korea, America or even the world is looking for? A nation that does not attain the standard of existing for the sake of the world, or that insists on its own ideology, will not be able to deal with the great global tide that is bringing changes in this era.

We surely need a system of thought able to lead the world to the Will of Heaven. Many nations, many religions, many societies, many tribes, many families and many individuals will have to be incorporated into that world. I feel the time is coming when we need a movement with the teachings that can do that.

Then is this possible? Can all of this be bound together? In the future, if you have a chance to study about the Unification Church, you will come to know the answer.

What is the problem that prevents this world from being saved? Society itself is not the problem. It is human beings that are the problem. The world consists of individuals, like each of you, whose minds and bodies are fighting against each other. Therefore, it is inevitable that materialism with its view of history based on matter, and idealism with its view of history based on mind would emerge worldwide. Such a time is called the Last Days.

What is different about the Unification Church?

At this point we need to come up with something new in order to realize peace and unity. Even in the world that is to come, the issue is ultimately each of us. We are the cause of the problems. Then, the question is, how can we plant within ourselves the base of an unwavering, self-confident heart by which we can overcome any obstacle coming from any circumstance, and resonate with the incoming tide of the new history? Also, how can we apply this understanding to our own life?

The problem we run into every day is the battle between our mind and body. This battle is not limited to ourselves; it also affects the family. If we look at our individual self, our mind and body are in conflict, and if we look at our family, our spouse is the same, so it is as though there are four people there, not two. If there are ten people, and all ten are mind-body conflicted, there are going to be divisions.

Only love can bring people together and bring the heavenly way and the human way together. I have been struggling for many years to practice this way of love, analyzing how it can be substantially learned by experience, with the Principle at the center.

In the future, what is the teaching that will remain in the world? Is it teaching that works for one’s particular society? No, it is not. The leaders of the Association of Religions in Korea have gathered together here today, but if each of you were to develop the association just for the sake of your own religion, the association will not succeed. Rather than honoring your own religion now, you need to pursue a greater love that is able to embrace many religions and is able to connect nations and unite the world.

If God exists, if He had the choice of saving either Korea or the world, which would He save first? Although He needs both Korea and the world, and although Korea does need to be saved, His Will would be to cast Korea aside and save the world. Taking this as our standard, the way of human beings who wish to follow the way of goodness or faith is the same. Do not approach things focused on your own self. You must give yourself up. In this way, when you live beyond the society, you become a loyal patriot. The person who is able to live beyond the nation, in their spiritual work and in daily life, both inside and outside, becomes a saint.

In this sense, as Korea seeks to be a new leader as we then approach the Pacific era, if it pursues policies only for the sake of Korea, it will not succeed. Korea has to pursue policies focused on the good of Asia. On the foundation of those policies, Korea has to pursue policies focused on the good of the world. Actually, the world only needs one nation, if that nation’s policies, religion and everything else were going forward in that spirit.

The reason the Unification Church has developed is because it understands that for the individual to be happy the world must first be happy, and that for the individual to be truly saved the world must first be saved. This is different from the established religions. If there is something to be learned from religious beliefs, it is that instead of making our perceptions conform to our own concepts, we ought to establish a relationship with the emotional side of the Will of God, focused on the world.

I know you have heard rumors about the Unification Church. However those rumors are not the problem. Today, if the thirty million people of Korea or its many religious groups could prosper by striking Reverend Moon of the Unification Church, then they ought to strike me. What I am hoping for is not the salvation of Korea; it is the salvation of the world. If God’s Will is to save the world, Korea must make itself able to save the world, and the Unification Church must make itself able to save Korea. Then the Unification Church and Korea will prosper.

Religion must be able to save the nation and the world

What is evil? It is acquiring things centered on oneself. What is goodness? It is surrendering one’s self and giving boundlessly. Only a person of goodness can stand in the ranks of the saints. If we look at history, many great men and women dedicated themselves to the nation. If we look at Korea, people like Admiral Lee Soon-shin were clearly in the ranks of greatness. When we see that he dedicated himself to just one particular nation, Korea, we realize that although he was a great man, he could not be a saint. One cannot become a saint without dedicating oneself to the pathway that is taught on the foundation that is God Himself.

As you know, the more that religious leaders embody the way of the saint, the more they will transcend their particular society and nation, and even transcend the world. That is the way of the saint. It is living each day of one’s life from that perspective until one has lived one’s whole life from that perspective. I started the Unification Church from the perspective that if one lives like that, one will triumph.

The Unification Church in its history has suffered the persecution of three governments. As we grew, we were oppressed by the Liberal Party, the Democratic Party and even the revolutionary government. Furthermore, as you know, we have been oppressed by the established churches. Even the leaders of the new Association of Religions in Korea who have come here today have considered the Unification Church doctrine a heresy. Why was the church deemed heretical and why was it censured by society? There are rumors that Rev. Moon, the leader of the Unification Church, is a dictator. And people say, “He works only for the development of the Unification Church.” I formed the Federation for Victory over Communism, set in motion major national initiatives and large-scale social activities, yet even those were criticized as self-serving. The slander circulating among the general public says, “The Unification Church is only publicizing its own sect; the Unification Church is working to promote its national ambitions.” It is this attitude about the Unification Church that is the problem.

If we cannot become a religion that can save Korea and the world, we will end up losing in the end. If people hold the concept that, “That denomination cannot be trusted,” it will fail. I hope you understand that the essential question for the future is how to recover the tribe, society, nation and world, starting from an ideal family, through a united movement of religions.

I founded the Unification Church with the purpose I have described. I know very well that as a new religion we are in many ways inexperienced, and so we receive criticism from society. I think that everything you can criticize has already been criticized. But I would like to point out that this person named Moon is not the kind of person you think he is. We had our own problems when we started this group, but as time passed we have reached a new level that can be seen today.

Finally, one thing I would like to tell you members of the Association of Religions in Korea is that the Unification Church is not a religious body that will be indebted to the Religions Association. The Unification Church also will not be indebted to Korea, nor will the Unification Church be indebted to the world. On the contrary, it is my conviction and the conviction of all the members who are actively working to achieve our purpose, that we will be a religious body to which the world, Korea and the Religions Association will themselves be indebted.

Despite this, I must say there may have been many times when people focused on statements we made that were misunderstood. From now on, if anything like this happens, I hope you will please relate to us as brothers and sisters and work with us, understanding the good intentions of this organization, so that together we may contribute to the nation and the world.

I thank you for giving your time in this way, and I will now conclude my greetings.

The Foundation of the Future World

February 1, 1990

Olympic Fencing Gymnasium, Seoul, Korea True Father’s Seventieth Birthday Celebration

I thank you for gathering here today, in spite of your busy public and private schedules, to create such a grand occasion in celebration of my seventieth birthday. I am particularly grateful for your heart to celebrate the fact that my life has been centered on the Will of God.

Seventy years with God as my motivating power

Many distinguished speakers have praised my work generously. Today’s occasion would have little significance, however, if its sole purpose were to applaud my past accomplishments. The substance of our celebration ought to be determined by the degree to which my work up to now is reason to have hope in the future, the degree to which my work can brighten the future of humankind, and the degree to which it is related to the providence of God, who governs the entire cosmos.

Throughout my life, I have been running at full speed to pioneer a course never before traveled by anyone. It is already widely known that on an external level, I have been continuously buffeted by opposition arising from a lack of understanding. Within the realm of my heart, however, I have been in a constant state of tension, fighting every minute and every second to stay focused on how I can accomplish God’s desires during my lifetime. My life has been so intertwined with God that I can never speak of it without reference to Him. Because my life has been directly connected to the fate of the nation and the world, I have shared every aspect of it in a deep give-and-receive relationship with God. As I now recall how I shared with Him my deepest sorrow, my greatest pain, and my most exalted joy, I offer my deepest gratitude to God, with a heart that perhaps cannot be fully shared with anyone else. All the glory of this day I offer up to the living God, my Father.

It is true that the foundation I have laid around the world is an astonishing accomplishment. However, I take less pride in the external and visible aspects of this foundation than in the fact that no part of this foundation has been established centering on myself. Each part is geared more to the future than the present, more to the benefit of the whole than the individual, and more to the larger purpose than the narrower purpose. The value of this foundation lies in the fact that God was its motivating force, and that it was established under God’s protection even under the severest hardships and most turbulent vicissitudes.

A life dedicated to others

My seventy years have certainly not been an easy course. I had no friends in the world and no mentors. I traveled this course alone and survived many treacherous moments. Time and again I persevered even when death seemed certain. The only reason I did not lose courage under such circumstances was that I maintained a deep communication of heart with God. The content of the conversations that took place in that profound realm are beyond anyone’s knowledge. I can only say that God always softly whispered His advice to me, and that He was the motivation for my life. He was even more than that. He was life itself. He was the source of my life energy.

I never had the time to lend my ear to what others were saying about me. I never had the time to take my gaze off of God for so much as a second. I was never concerned about public opinion of me. I had no thoughts other than those of the earnest desires of God. With every cell in my being in unity with God, I lived with an almost fanatic determination for the purpose of bringing His ideal of creation into reality.

Ladies and gentlemen, what do you suppose is God’s earnest desire that I have dedicated my life to fulfill? Had it not been for the Fall, God would have been the invisible Heavenly True Parent and all people would have been His children. Each person would have become a true life form, receiving love and a lineage of goodness from God, the Parent of vertical true love, and Adam and Eve, the parents of horizontal true love. Also, by practicing true love, people would have been able to transmit the seed of life to their descendants.

The Fall occurred when the first human ancestors were unable to fulfill horizontal true love under the auspices of God’s vertical true love, allowing instead an invasion by the archangel, which led them to false horizontal love. Consequently, God lost the children He loved, and people were placed in a position where they had no alternative except to be born into the world as dysfunctional life forms, embodying a contradiction between their minds and bodies. Satan has used the condition of horizontal love as a curse to unjustly control people on all levels, from the individual to the world. God, on the other hand, in an effort to return all people to their original state, has been carrying out His salvation providence. In accordance with the Principle, He has been working toward the natural subjugation of Satan, and He has been working through the Messiah to engraft humankind into His lineage.

I know that God has been investing Himself fully into the providence of restoration, which is actually a course of re-creation. In doing so, He has been totally investing His true love, just as much as when He sacrificially engaged in the original act of creation. I have therefore followed His Will and have offered my entire life to putting into practice these basic principles of true love and living for the sake of others. I have led my life thoroughly in service to others within the Will of God, investing myself fully and continuously. The foundation I have now achieved is a result of these efforts.

Advances in modern technology have already led to tremendous changes on the planet Earth and are likely to bring about even greater changes in the future. As a result of these advances, we are faced with an acute emergency that requires us to pool our wisdom to find solutions. Contemporary civilization now stands at a major turning point.

To deal with this situation, we first need to transcend national, racial and religious boundaries, so that we can make cooperative efforts on a global scale. This is necessary because today’s problems, such as environmental pollution and overpopulation, are global in scale.

Second, today’s social ills, particularly the deterioration of ethical and moral standards and the deterioration of our humanity, including threats of racial and religious wars, all have their roots in human nature. Thus, solutions to these problems need to be approached from the perspective of bringing about a revolution of human consciousness and of renewing human nature. It is not a matter of simply making changes in social institutions and structures.

Practicing the teaching that the world is one family

Ladies and gentlemen, all the activities I founded around the world are models of movements that transcend national barriers, work to tear down the walls between races, and are interreligious in nature and global in scale. Unificationists around the world carry with them a new worldview that is the result of a revolution of consciousness, with God’s true love at its center. They are already living as one human family.

The only place in the United States where there is no racial friction or barriers among races is the Unification Church. Here, blacks and whites rise above their historical hatreds and struggles. Missionaries from Japan, the United States, and Germany went to their mission countries without knowing anything about their partners. Once in those countries, they dedicated themselves together for their mission work.

As you know, we have been investing our financial resources generously to convene annual conferences that foster unity within and between the major religions, such as Judaism, Christianity, Islam and Buddhism. Eminent leaders of various religions have commended me highly for these efforts.

Also, we can point to situations such as that of a Korean man in a farm village who received, through the international Blessing ceremony, a Japanese bride who had graduated from a famous university in her country. His entire village held a feast to congratulate him.

Every gathering sponsored by the Unification Church, wherever and whenever it is held, is devoid of racial conflict or prejudice. The church members, regardless of which part of the world they are from, have undergone a transformation of character by following the philosophy I teach. They no longer live in a self-centered manner. Rather, now they live for the sake of others. They are exemplars of citizenship in the ideal world.

On a quantitative basis, the Unification movement is less than adequate. Nonetheless, what we have accomplished until today has profound significance in the history of the universe. Have not the teachings of many saints and sages in history sought to achieve such results? Are not many people of good conscience in today’s world trying to find guideposts that will enable them to lead lives of goodness? How many young people today are wandering in search of new possibilities and dreaming of a brighter future for the world? And how many young people like that have become discouraged in their search and have broken down in frustration?

I invite everyone to come and see for yourselves. Come and observe without prejudice. Examine for yourselves this foundation that is motivated not by human concerns, but is built with the intimate presence of Heaven’s Will. Design for yourselves a brighter tomorrow. Build for yourselves a wholesome system of values.

Observe the members of the Unification Church around the world. See how all of them, young and old, are filled with joy even as they each navigate their courses with total dedication. See how, in particular, the young people of the church maintain the highest ethical and moral standards even in the midst of a corrupt society, taking pride in what they do. I see the young people of the Unification Church as representing the hope of humanity and the hope of God.

I will follow the path of service all of my life

Let us think for a moment from a viewpoint that goes beyond narrow sectarian and religious interests. If the Korean people could undergo a transformation of character according to the philosophy I advocate and begin to live their lives dedicated to others, how would that affect the future of the nation? Would the unification of North and South Korea be a difficult task under such circumstances? And if all people of the world could accept this philosophy, would that not guarantee a peaceful and prosperous world? My philosophy of living for the greater purpose is not meant to bring about the development of the Unification Church for its own sake. God and the world do not exist for the sake of the church. It is the church that must live in service to God and the world. Even now, I continue to seek the way of service, and I intend to dedicate my entire life to this path.

Thank you again for your congratulations. I hope that today’s occasion will be much more than a celebration of my seventieth birthday. I hope it will be an opportunity for you to learn of the universal path of righteousness that requires us all to live for others. I pray that God’s blessing will be upon your work and your families.

Thank you very much.

In Search of the Origin of the Universe

September 15, 1996

Olympic Fencing Gymnasium, Seoul, Korea

Establishing the Family Federation for World Peace

Speaking tour in 185 Nations

(Given on True Father’s behalf)

With the end of the Cold War, new hope for peace and justice has spread rapidly across the globe. Leaders unable or unwilling to acknowledge the new international realities are being swept away by the tidal wave of change.

As we stand at the threshold of the new millennium, I believe it is time to review our traditional patterns of thinking and boldly seize these new opportunities. Thus it is my great honor to share with you my lifelong advocacy for world peace and true family values.

God is the origin of the universe and love

In this world there are two kinds of human beings: men and women. Can they decide to exchange positions? Was your birth as male or female based on your personal desire? Or were you born that way irrespective of your personal preference? The sex that we are born with is an absolute and is not a matter of choice. We did not plan it or choose it, yet we were born of a specific gender without knowing the cause or process.

Thus it is undeniable that no matter how great a person may be, he or she is not a causal being but a resultant being. Therefore, the first causal being must exist. Who is that causal being? Is it male? Is it female? You can call that first causal being God or by any other name. However that causal being has to exist. Some of the most famous people in the world are gathered here today. You might say, “Where is God? Show me, and then I will believe.” However I counsel you not to deny the existence of that causal being.

The topic of today’s speech is, “In Search of the Origin of the Universe.”

If we go deeper and deeper in our search for the origin of the universe, we arrive at God. We come to know that God possesses the dual characteristics of masculinity and femininity. How did the universe begin?

Let us set aside our discussion of God for the moment and consider humankind. It is clear that humankind is composed of men and women, who relate as subject and object partners. In the mineral kingdom, atoms and molecules are composed of positively charged atomic nuclei and negatively charged electrons. Flowering plants reproduce through the union of male and female reproductive cells produced in the stamen and pistil. Animals exist as male and female, and human beings, as men and women. When we examine created beings, whether in the mineral kingdom, plant kingdom, or animal kingdom, we observe that beings with plus and minus characteristics on the higher level exist and develop by incorporating beings with plus and minus characteristics from lower levels. Why does this phenomenon take place? It is because the existing world is responsible for perfecting human beings, who are meant to be rulers of all creation.

In the mineral kingdom, plus and minus characteristics, functioning as subject and object partners, unite guided by the ideal of love, thereby enabling inanimate matter to exist. Likewise, in the plant kingdom, stamen and pistil generate reproductive cells that function as subject and object partners. When they unite guided by the ideal of love, a seed for a new plant comes into existence. Current research in microbiology shows that even bacteria exist with plus and minus traits.

How do beings with plus and minus characteristics unite as subject and object partners? By kissing? Love is not a concept. It is a substantial reality. Where can love actually settle? Gathered here today are famous presidents and distinguished guests, but there is something that all of you need to bear in mind. You need to be aware of what characterizes a man as a man and a woman as a woman. The answer is, the sexual organs. Does anyone here dislike their sexual organs? If you like them, to what extent do you like them? Until now you may have thought that it is not virtuous to appreciate the sexual organs, but from now on you need to appreciate their value.

The unchanging laws of the universe

What will the world be like in the future? If it is a world that absolutely respects the value of the sexual organs, will that world be good or bad? Will it prosper or perish? This is not a joke. When God was creating human beings, into which part of the body did He invest the greatest creative effort? Was it the eyes, the nose, the heart, the brain? All these organs eventually perish, do they not?

What is the purpose of the Family Federation for World Peace? If all people were to look beyond the traditional categories of what is virtuous, religious or normative by human standards, and absolutely respected the value of the sexual organs, they would earn God’s warm applause. Then, what kind of world would it be? When we are born as male or female, who is the owner of our sexual organ? Actually, the owner of a husband’s sexual organ is his wife, and the owner of a wife’s sexual organ is her husband. We did not know that each person’s sexual organ is owned by a person of the opposite sex. This is a simple truth that we cannot deny. Even after history has progressed for thousands of years, this truth will not change.

Every man thinks his sexual organ belongs to himself, and every woman thinks her sexual organ is her own. That is why the world is perishing. Everyone is mistaken concerning the ownership of their sexual organ. We all think that love is absolute, eternal, and dreamlike, but when we come to understand clearly that the ownership of eternal love lies with the opposite sex, the world will not remain in its present condition. There are numerous scholars and people with Ph.D. degrees, yet not one of them has thought about this.

Can any of you deny this point? If you ask your parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, the first ancestors, and even God, who is the origin of the universe, they will all agree with this. It is a universal law. This truth will remain no matter how many billions of years the universe exists. The natural conclusion is that when you stand before God, He will judge you as righteous or unrighteous according to this immutable law.

Even the Fall of Adam and Eve originated with the violation of this law. Both Adam and Eve erred by thinking that their sexual organ was their own possession. Think about it. Would God chase Adam and Eve away because they ate a literal fruit? God is not such an irrational being. God chased them out because they did not meet the most basic criterion by which the universe operates. Owing to their mistake regarding the original point of love, they could not be acknowledged anywhere in the universe. In the mineral kingdom, plant kingdom and animal kingdom, the positive and negative traits, or the male and female sexual organs, are reserved for the sake of the complementary partner of love. Adam and Eve were unaware of this. Then why do the sexual organs exist? They exist for the sake of love. Male and female exist in order to find love.

God and humankind are in a parent-child relationship

What are the characteristics of God? God is absolute, unique, eternal and unchanging. Then who is the owner of love? The owner of love is not man or woman. The owner of love is God. On the foundation of love and through love, God and human beings can unite. This is because both God and human beings absolutely need love.

Then, what kind of love does God need? God needs absolute love. What about you? It is the same for you and me. Just as God needs absolute, unique, unchanging and eternal love, we too need absolute, unique, unchanging and eternal love. Apparently, we all resemble God.

God Himself has masculine and feminine characteristics, or positive and negative traits. Human beings, who were meant to be the substantial object partners of God, were created as men and women. When a man and a woman get married, they become substantial plus and minus partners, and together they represent God. God’s Will is that when we get married, we need to unite completely on the horizontal plane, with God’s vertical love as the center.

The human body, representing the earth, operates in the horizontal dimension. On the other hand, the conscience always operates in the vertical dimension, as it seeks the higher perspective. Thus human beings irresistibly seek the point at which they become one with the vertical standard of God. That point needs to be the center, and man and woman have to meet each other at that point.

Thus when a person, born from that center, grows up experiencing the love of a child, the love between brothers and sisters, and conjugal love, that person’s mature body represents the earth, and that person’s mature mind centers on God. At this ultimate point, mind and body become one vertically and horizontally, thereby establishing a base for happiness. God, the Absolute Being, will rejoice only in that place, with absolute love at the center. In that place, husband and wife, who are love partners, will rejoice as well.

When the relationships of parent and child, husband and wife, and brother and sister, representing north and south, east and west, and front and back respectively, achieve perfect unity with that single point as their center, an ideal, spherical shape is generated.

Thus, people in the East have an adage that parents and children form one body. Furthermore, they consider husband and wife, as well as brother and sister, as forming one body. What is the basis for that traditional wisdom? All of that is made possible when the three types of relationships form a sphere, extending in all directions, with true love as their center. Those relationships need to form a sphere with a single center. There must be only one center. Unification is possible because those relationships share the same center. The relationship between God and us is a parent-child relationship. Thus, we need to become one with God, with true love as the center.

God and human beings in unity

Ladies and gentlemen, how lofty is human desire? Your mind wants to reach higher than God. No matter how lowly a person is, he or she can desire a world even greater than that of God’s desire. As a beloved son or daughter of God, if you say to God, “Father, please come,” will He not come? No matter how plain a man’s wife may be, if he really loves her, he will naturally go to her when she calls. With unity founded on true love, the husband will respond to his wife’s beckoning, the elder will follow the younger’s call, and the younger will follow the elder s call. None of them will ever want to separate from the other.

If God were alone, would He feel lonely or not? How can we know that He would feel lonely? Ladies and gentlemen, do you have love? Do you have life? Do you have lineage that comes from sperm and ova? Do you have a conscience? You affirm all these things, yet have you seen love? Have you seen life? Have you seen lineage? Have you seen the conscience? Have you ever touched these things? You are aware of their existence, although you cannot see or touch them. You know them only through your intuition. By the same token, even though you have not seen or touched God, you cannot say that He does not exist.

What is more important, that which is visible or that which is invisible? I am sure you realize that the invisible is more important than the visible.

You can see and touch money, however you cannot see or touch love, life, lineage and conscience. We all have them, so why can we not see them? It is because they are one with us. When your mind and body are in perfect balance, you do not feel them.

Do you feel your eyes blinking? Try counting the number of times you blink over a period of three hours. Do you count the number of breaths you take every day? Touch the left side of your chest with your right hand. Do you feel something beating? You can feel your heart beating. How many times each day do you hear the sound of your heart beating? Through a stethoscope, your heartbeat may sound like the booming of a bomb going off. Yet, when we are busy, we can go for weeks and months without feeling it. Think about it! We immediately feel a small fly sitting on our head, yet we cannot feel our heart beating, although its movement is a hundred times greater than that of the alighting of a fly. It is because we are one with our own body.

You may consider it rude if I share this with you, however I would like to give you some unusual examples. You use the bathroom each morning. When you defecate, do you wear a gas mask? This is not a laughing matter, but a serious one. If you are near someone else defecating, you will quickly move a good distance away. However, when you smell your own feces, you barely notice it. This is because the fecal matter was one with your body. Therefore, you do not experience it as offensive.

When you were young, did you ever taste the dried mucus from your nose? Does it taste sweet or salty? It’s salty, right? Since you can answer that, you must have tasted it! Why did you not feel that it was dirty? That is because it was part of your body. Reverend Moon has figured out something that no one else in the world has known. When you cough up phlegm, you sometimes swallow it, right? What about you who have gathered here today? Have you ever had that experience? Be honest. Why do you not feel it is dirty? It is because the phlegm was one with your body.

We all eat three meals a day, breakfast, lunch and dinner. If you go about twelve inches down from your mouth, there is a fertilizer factory. By eating three meals a day, we provide raw materials for that fertilizer factory. After knowing that, can you still put food into your mouth? We know that there is a fertilizer factory in our stomach, yet we live on without feeling its presence. Why do we not feel it? It is because it is part of us.

God’s purpose of creation

In the same way, we have love, life, lineage and conscience, and because they are one with us and in balance, we do not feel them. Likewise, we do not feel the pressure of the atmosphere that surrounds us. God too has love, life, lineage and conscience, and like us He cannot feel them by Himself. Because they are completely in balance, God cannot feel them. That is why God also needs an object partner. We can appreciate the necessity of an object partner from this perspective. When one is alone, one cannot feel oneself. However when a man appears to a woman or a woman appears to a man, the stimulation of love and lineage will erupt like lightning and thunder. You have to be fully awakened to this. We have been living without knowing this truth. We have not understood that God absolutely needs a partner of love.

Then who is God’s love partner? Is it a monkey? We are resultant beings, but can monkeys be the beings that caused us? Can monkeys be our progenitors? Don’t even utter such nonsense. For life to begin from an amoeba and reach the human form, it would have to pass through the gates of love on thousands of levels. Does life progress automatically? Absolutely not. It is the same with all animals. The division of species is very strict. No one can infringe on the separation of species.

If materialists who believe that monkeys are our ancestors try to crossbreed a human with a monkey, do you think they can create a new life form? They will fail, no matter how many thousands of years they attempt it. Why will it not work? You need to think about that.

Then what would God need? What part of your body would God need the most: your eyes, your hands, or all five of your senses? Within Himself, God has both masculine and feminine natures, although to exist as Father, His being is that of a male subject partner. With this in mind, would we say that God needs a love partner?

Then who or what within God’s creation could be His love partner? Would it be a man by himself? Or can a woman by herself become God’s love partner? What kind of partner does God want? Does He need a partner with great wealth, or knowledge, or authority? No, none of these things matter. God wants a love partner. Thus, God wants to appear and meet us at the place where husband and wife unite through their sexual organs.

Why is that the place where man and woman unite, with God at the center?

It is because love is absolute, and that is the place where man and woman have the absolute desire to unite. From a horizontal perspective, a man, who is in the plus position, approaches that center, and a woman, who is in the minus position, also approaches that center. In God as well, the masculine and feminine characteristics, or plus and minus aspects, are united as one. That union in God, as a bigger plus, becomes one with a bigger minus, namely, the union of man and woman. The question turns to the conditions by which that larger union can come about.

What is marriage? Why is marriage important? Marriage is important because it is the road to finding love. It is the road to creating life. It is the road on which the lives of a man and a woman unite into one. It is the place where a man’s lineage combines with a women’s lineage. Through marriage, history emerges, nations appear and an ideal world begins. Without marriage, the existence of individuals, nations, and an ideal world has no meaning.

This is the formula. Man and woman need to become absolutely one. Parents and children need to become absolutely one with God, loving God and living and dying with God. When they die and go to the spirit world, the place to which they go is called heaven. However, no individual, family or nation has fulfilled that ideal. The world and humankind have not established that ideal, and for that reason the kingdom of heaven that God desires is empty. All people who died until now fell into lower realms, even into hell. No one entered the kingdom of heaven.

From this perspective, we can see that even Jesus, who came as the Savior of humankind, could not enter the kingdom of heaven. Instead, as the Bible says, he went to paradise. (Luke 23:43) To enter the kingdom of heaven, he would have needed to form a family. That is why Jesus said he would come again. Jesus needed to marry, form a family, serve and live with God in that family, and then enter the kingdom of heaven with that family. He could not enter the kingdom of heaven by himself. Thus it says in the Bible, “Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” (Matt. 18:18) We have to solve our problems on earth. Since the disease was contracted on earth, it has to be cured on earth.

The truth that can overcome the fallen world

Human beings descended from the Fall. Therefore we dwell in the realm of the Fall and cannot enter the kingdom of heaven without making a foundation to rise above that realm. No matter how difficult the task, human beings in the realm of the Fall have to overcome that realm. Thus Jesus said, “Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.” (Matt. 10:39) In order to traverse this road of death, we have to penetrate it and rise above death at the risk of our entire lives.

Your families are in the realm of the Fall. Your tribes and nations are in the same realm. Therefore, you have to engage in the struggle and win. The Fall occurred in Adam’s family. Did Adam and Eve have children before or after they were chased out of the garden of Eden? They had children after they were chased out; they created their family without any relationship to God. How can you go to the kingdom of heaven without knowing that? It is inconceivable. You cannot achieve the ideal through ignorance. This is my warning to you.

Pray to find out whether Reverend Moon’s words are true. No one knows how much hardship I endured to find this path. Although I committed no crime, I suffered through imprisonment on six different occasions to find this path. Through this truth, I am able to educate precious young adults and transform them in the matter of an hour. Some say that I am brainwashing people, but in fact I am enlightening them with logical truth. Before my explanation of the existence of God in scientific and logical terms, atheists are silent. On the other hand, Christians try to entrap and destroy us, crying “heresy” because our doctrines differ. Nonetheless, this so-called heretical cult is on the side of truth.

Satan hates whatever is on God’s side, and God hates whatever is on Satan’s side. Has anyone in the world liked Reverend Moon? You came here only because you know about what I am doing. You did not come without knowing that.

Youth in the former Soviet Union also saw and learned of what I am doing. Living in an ideological vacuum, they are now equipping themselves intellectually with a Unification perspective, using comprehensive ethics texts in middle schools, high schools, universities and even prisons. Three thousand six hundred schools in the former Soviet Union are using these texts. They believe that my teachings provide the only way to overcome the corrupting influence of the decadent Western culture of homosexuality and free sex. They are proclaiming, “We have to surpass America, which opposes Reverend Moon!” They want to move ahead of America in supporting the work of Reverend Moon.

Illicit sexual relationship is the root of sin

Ladies and gentlemen, do you love God? Would God enjoy watching Reverend Moon engage in these activities? Can the teachings of the Vatican harmonize with the teachings of Reverend Robert Schuler, who also attended the inaugural convention of the Family Federation for World Peace? Their teachings differ. Then ask God whose teachings are true.

What does it benefit me to tell you that your understanding of Jesus and Mother Mary is wrong? However you need to understand one fact very clearly: without being loosed on earth, it will not be loosed in heaven. Reverend Moon, who knew this at an early age, has devoted his entire life to walking this path for liberation. Was Jesus supposed to have married? Yes, Jesus was supposed to have married. Is Jesus a woman or a man? Would Jesus not have wished to marry a daughter of God?

During the creation of Adam and Eve, God granted them their personal sexual organs. Why did He do that? Would not God have blessed them in marriage when they reached maturity? The problem lies in their Fall. Due to the Fall, their blood lineage was transferred from God to Satan. Therefore, God chased them out of the garden of Eden.

Originally, Adam and Eve were to have become God’s body, in the position of God’s bride. The Fall, in a sense, introduced a disease into God’s body and ideal, as Adam and Eve behaved as God’s enemies. Can you imagine how much God’s heart suffered as He watched this taking place? The human Fall opened the grave in which people buried themselves. It was an act of expropriation. It was the root of free sex and the origin of individualism.

What kind of nation is America today? It has become a nation of extreme individualism, a nation whose people are excessively pursuing their private interests, over-indulging themselves, being gluttonous, and practicing free sex. Does God favor these things? What is the outcome of the lives of such extreme individualists? They abandon heaven and earth, the world, their nation, their society, their extended family and even their grandparents. Beyond that, they lose their parents, and brothers and sisters. Therefore they live as gypsies and wander around like vagrants, with no place to go when it rains and snows. So they are driven to end their lives by suicide. That is the result of extreme individualism.

The original mind does not want to protect this extreme individualism and exaltation of privacy. The original mind wants to live receiving love from the universe, the nation, our village and our parents. However, because people walk the opposite path, their conscience becomes dysfunctional and they feel a contradiction with their own original mind. Thus more and more people would rather die than live, and they commit virtual suicide by taking drugs. We are witnessing the truth of the proverb, “You will reap what you have sown.”

What seed did Adam and Eve plant in the garden of Eden? It was the seed of free sex. Can we deny that? It is the reason they covered their lower parts after the Fall. Do not even children know what they need to cover up, for example, after they have eaten some cookies hidden by their parents? This is how human nature functions. If the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil were a literal fruit, then Adam and Eve would have covered their mouths or hands. So, why did they hide their lower parts?

I am an intelligent man. I am not doing what I am doing because I am inferior to you. We cannot deny that the Fall was an act of fornication. To restore the Fall of Adam and Eve, it is logical to say that we have to take a path one hundred eighty degrees different from that of the Fall. Owing to the Fall, we inherited a lineage that leads us on the path to hell. That is why the Messiah has to come.

The returning Lord has the mission to raise up true families The Messiah comes as the owner who forms a family in the garden of Eden as originally intended by God. We need to understand this clearly, based upon logic. The Messiah needs to first create a family that serves God. Through this family, he has to establish a nation. Therefore, the family is the key. On the foundation of the Messiah’s family, there needs to be an engrafting process. The problem can be stated as, “Who can save me from this world of death?” That is why we need to take a path in a direction opposite to that of the Fall.

Consider the Old Testament era. To indemnify a wrongdoing, the principle applied at that time was, “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.” (Exod. 21:24) Now think about Rebekah, the wife of Isaac, who had two sons, Esau and Jacob. Did she not help Jacob steal the blessing by cheating her elder son, Esau, and her own husband, Isaac? Why would God love such a woman? How can we have faith in such a God? Until now, no one has been able to answer these questions. I am the first person to provide the answers, because I am the only one who knows all of God’s secrets.

Now, let us discover the dividing line between heaven and hell. Is it up in the air? Where is it? It is your sexual organ. This is a serious matter. The sexual organs turned heaven and earth upside down. Who can deny it? The Divine Principle, the teaching of Reverend Moon, explains this issue in the chapter on the human Fall.

If you doubt this explanation, ask God. You cannot reject the Divine Principle, which includes content beyond your wildest dreams systematically presented and logically explained. If you are wondering whether Reverend Moon will go to heaven or hell, you will find out after you die and go to the spirit world. And if you feel upset by my talk tonight, just go there to find out. You have to realize that I overcame death hundreds of times in order to find this path. I brought God to tears hundreds of times. No one in history has loved God more than I have. That is why, even if the world tries to destroy me, I will not perish because God protects me. If you step into the realm of the truth I teach, you too will gain God’s protection.

If you use your sexual organ as if you are wandering aimlessly and without direction, it will undoubtedly lead you, as its owner, to hell. By the same token, if you use your sexual organ according to the standard of God’s absolute love, you will be led high up into heaven. That is a clear conclusion.

Today, we face a serious youth problem because Adam and Eve, during their youth, planted the seed of free sex in the shade, through their Fall in the garden of Eden. In the Last Days, which is the time of harvest, we see the worldwide phenomenon of rampant free sex among youth.

Satan knew that the Lord of the Second Advent would come in the Last Days with the strategy to save all people, who are in the realm of the Fall, by lifting them up to the realm of absolute love with God’s true love as the center. Satan, who is an archangel, cannot present any standard of love other than free sex, which he introduced in the garden of Eden. Therefore, we see that through free sex the entire world is being stripped naked and shoved in the direction of death. All people, as the archangel’s descendants, are being forced to walk this path in the Last Days.

Because all men and women are descended from Adam and Eve, who fell under Satan’s dominion in the garden of Eden, Satan can boldly claim in front of God the right to do whatever he pleases with them in this world. God knows what Satan wants. Through free sex, Satan wants to stop every last person from returning to God. In other words, Satan wants to destroy all human beings and solidify hell on earth. Is not the world in which we live today hell on earth?

Therefore, we will find the road to heaven by going in a direction that is exactly opposite the direction leading to hell on earth. When the Lord of the Second Advent comes, he will lead us to heaven by showing us this reverse path as the way to save the world. Then what is the road that is the exact reverse of the way of free sex? The path of free sex was laid because of the false parents. Therefore, True Parents have to come to lead us on the right path. God cannot intervene. No authority or any military, economic or political power can do it. False parents caused it. Therefore, it requires the scalpel of True Parents to cut it open. True Parents have to operate with their scalpel; that is the only way humanity can be saved.

The one who sinned has to indemnify the sin. It was in the family that a false marriage took place, which corrupted the lineage at an angle one hundred eighty degrees opposite to the true lineage. Therefore, in order to open the path to heaven, True Parents have to come and bestow marriage that is in exactly the opposite direction.

Realizing a peaceful world through pure love and the true family movement

Then, what did God expect from Adam and Eve? God expected them to unite through “absolute sex.” You world leaders gathered here tonight, please learn this truth and take it back to your home countries. If you start a campaign to secure absolute sex in your country, your families and nation will go directly to heaven. Where there is absolute sex, absolute couples will emerge naturally. Words such as free sex, homosexual and lesbian will simply disappear.

Reverend Moon has lived his entire life overcoming a suffering path to initiate this global movement. Now is the time when I should sound a fanfare of victory and move the entire world. Therefore, I am grateful to God.

The family builds the road to world peace. The family can also destroy that road. Adam’s family destroyed the foundation of human hope and happiness. Therefore, when we establish the Family Federation for World Peace, the road going in a direction that is one hundred eighty degrees opposite to that of Satan’s world will be opened, and for this we can only give thanks to God. Without following this road, there is no freedom, happiness or ideal.

I wish that you would appreciate the central value of the sexual organ. When it is absolute, unique, unchanging and eternal, you can use it as your foundation to know God. You need to realize that this organ has to become the foundation of love, life, lineage and conscience. You also need to realize that the kingdom of God on earth and in heaven will begin on this foundation.

If all men and women acknowledge that their sexual organ belongs to their spouse, we will all bow our heads and be humble when receiving our spouse’s love. You should receive love only from your partner. There is no real love other than love for the sake of others. Remember that we can find absolute love when we absolutely live for the sake of others.

When you return home, please plan to wage a war against Satan’s world. Wherever you may go, try to spread Reverend Moon’s message through television or other media; it won’t harm you to do that. What force can turn around this world of hell? It is impossible to achieve this change unless human beings use their sexual organ in accordance with an absolute, unique, unchanging and eternal standard centering on God’s true love, which is absolute, unique, unchanging and eternal. God is the original owner of our sexual organs.

Let us all go forward together for this common cause. Let us become the vanguard that will actualize God’s true love. This is the very mission of the Family Federation for World Peace. Now, please return home and affirm with your spouse that your sexual organ is absolute, unique, unchanging and eternal. Proclaim that your sexual organ truly belongs to your spouse, and the organ that your spouse has protected so well until now is truly yours. Also, please pledge that you will live your life with gratitude and in eternal service to your spouse. God will dwell eternally in such families and, with them at the center, will multiply a world-level family.

I sincerely hope that each of you will participate in the upcoming marriage Blessing ceremony of 3.6 million couples. By doing so, you will form a true family that can register in the kingdom of God on earth.

Thank you very much. Amen.

The Cosmos Is Our Hometown and Our Homeland

February 2, 2000

Cannon House Office Building Caucus Room, Washington, DC, USA

Second American Century Awards Ceremony

Respected members of the United States Senate and House of Representatives, members of the diplomatic corps, recipients of the American Century Award, whose contributions help make this country the most blessed by God,

Ladies and gentlemen:

I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude that so many leaders from a wide variety of fields in American society have gathered here today to celebrate faith, freedom and family. As founder of The Washington Times Foundation, I commend all of the award winners. All of you are champions who through your service have made significant contributions to improving the quality of life for all Americans.

I also want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for recognizing my life achievements and congratulating me on my eightieth birthday. I am particularly grateful to God, who has been my constant companion and protector, and to Him I offer all glory and honor.

I have lived my entire life with the earnest desire to solve the many problems related to actualizing God’s ideal of creation. When I came to America in 1972, I saw this country was facing a severe crisis that affected the world. On my first evangelical tour of all fifty states, I declared that God has three major headaches: the threat of communism, the lack of cooperation among religious people against evil, and the moral crisis afflicting youth.

Our responsibility as human beings requires that we meet God halfway and fulfill what God has asked us to do in the areas of freedom, faith, and family. Because God loves America, I initiated many organizations, including The Washington Times, to respond to these challenges.

I devoted myself because I know His heart

I am grateful that God gave me the opportunity to serve America, because American-led United Nations forces, in the process of saving my country during the Korean War, liberated me from a communist concentration camp where I had been imprisoned for preaching the word of God.

Since receiving God’s calling as a boy of 15, I have delved into the meaning of God’s Will and fought against tremendous odds to fulfill the providence of restoration for the sake of human salvation.

I came to realize that God does not sit on a throne of glory and grandeur. Instead, God is a God of deep sorrow and profound suffering, who endeavors to save His children, who fell into hell. As a result of the Fall, human beings fell into spiritual ignorance. This meant that humanity was fundamentally ignorant regarding God’s existence, the meaning of human life, and the entire universe. People did not understand how they needed to live their lives during their time in this world while they have physical bodies. They did not understand that there is a spirit world and that life in the physical world must be lived so that it would properly prepare them for the spirit world.

Knowing God’s Will and heart, I worked with single-minded determination as I devoted my entire heart and energy for the accomplishment of God’s Will, without regard to the time of day, changes in the seasons, or the environment around me. As I look back on the eighty years of my life and all the difficulties and persecution I received, I realize I would not be here with you today were it not for the help that God has given me throughout the years.

I have spoken publicly on some ten thousand occasions in many places around the world. These speeches have been published in a series of more than three hundred volumes. On this very significant occasion today when I am meeting some of the most distinguished leaders in the United States, I would like to share the essence of the guiding principles in my life and work under the theme, “The Cosmos Is Our Hometown and Our Homeland.”

The cosmos was created as an enormous house where human beings would live as the masters. Human beings, who are at the center of the universe, live in the context of relationships, fundamentally those of parent and child, husband and wife, and between siblings. The parent-child relationship can be described in terms of a vertical axis between above and below. Since a husband and wife are on an equal level, their relationship can be described in terms of a horizontal axis between left and right. We can say that sibling relationships are on a third axis between front and back. Every individual exists within the sphere created by these three axes. If the ultimate points on these axes are numbered 1,2,3,4,5 and 6, then God exists in the seventh position, at the center of the sphere. This is how God can guide us in our daily lives, even while existing at the central position that cannot be seen.

The ideal model of existence and true love

Since the Fall, human beings have existed in Satan’s realm of bondage and suffering. With God’s help, people can be set free. They can mature as true sons and daughters, meet their mates, and become true husbands and wives. They can go on to have children and become true parents. This should be the normal course of human life. Thus, we cannot reject the concept of true children, of true husbands and true wives, or of true parents. To do so would be to violate a fundamental principle of the universe, thus destroying our own existence. Each of us has to participate in building a true family consisting of true parents, a true husband and wife, and true children, which is the model for the ideal existence.

In the context of the family, people need to fully receive the love of true parents and of a true spouse. Then, they need to fully receive the love of true children. Money, knowledge, power, or physical force cannot bring such human relationships to their completed form. Only the true love of God, which brings balance to the world, can do this.

True love is a force that invests and gives completely. It is a giving force, not a force that only receives. True love is total giving, to the degree that we ultimately reach a point where there is nothing left to give. Reaching that “zero point,” enlarges our capacity to receive, much more than we gave. This process of giving and receiving will achieve a balance that continues forever. Relationships of giving and receiving produce a world where people live for the sake of others, centering on true love.

All beings in heaven and earth exist in a mutual relationship with other beings so as to form a world of true love through giving and receiving relationships. In mutual relationships every giving force causes a returning force, and this is what gives eternal stability to the central point. God exists in the central position of true love giving balance to the entire universe. It is the position of the “lucky” number seven. Heavenly fortune advances by the process of receiving God’s true love and returning it. Within such relationships the flow takes the form of circular motion, as love, air, water, and light go round and round and return to their original place.

The homeland of faith, peace and unity is the hometown and homeland

Ladies and gentlemen: What makes someone a good person? We can answer this in many ways. We could say that a bad person is someone who takes whatever he is given and keeps it for him or herself. A good person is someone who adds to whatever he or she is given and passes it on to others. No parent wants his or her child to grow up to be something less than that parent. We all want our children to be better than ourselves. Also, a husband would like his wife to be better than himself, and a wife wants her husband to be better than herself. Further, an elder brother and younger brother would each want the other to become better than himself.

We all want to give back something more than what we receive. This is our fervent wish as parents, as husbands and wives, and as children. It is also the fervent wish of all things in nature. Ultimately, it is the fervent wish of the entire universe.

Moreover, those whose hearts are so wide that they can say, “the cosmos is my hometown and my homeland,” will be welcomed by the cosmos. We can conclude, then, that in order to become God’s true sons and daughters we have to be welcomed by individuals, by families, by nations, by the world, and finally by the cosmos.

That being the case, where would you most like to go and live? I think you would like to live in the original homeland where you were born. Broadly speaking, our original homeland refers to the planet Earth within the cosmos, and wherever God can be found.

God is the founding Parent of our homeland. Our homeland is the earth as God originally intended it to be — a place where parents, siblings, and children who did not commit the Fall would live together. This was to be a place where black people, yellow people, and white people would live together in harmony.

Who is the parent of all these different races? There is only one parent.

The God who is with us wherever we go in the universe is the Father of humankind. Thus, it would be a mistake for anyone to think that white people, black people, or yellow people are the masters of America. God is the master of America.

Differences in skin color are nothing more than the result of our ancestors having had to adapt to different climates and environments in different parts of the globe. In areas with large amounts of snowfall, we find mainly white people living. In places such as Africa where the rays of the sun are particularly bright, we find mainly black people. Fundamentally, though, people are the same. The color of our blood is the same. Our flesh and bones look the same and we all have the capacity to love. Thus, there must be no discrimination based on race.

This is why the Unification Church has been working through the international holy marriage Blessing ceremonies to create unity and harmony among the races. In accordance with the natural principles of universal love and equality for all people, we have performed many interracial marriages. When a black person and a white person marry, it is like the North Pole and the South Pole coming together in unity. When a yellow person and a black person marry and have children, both parents contribute their good attributes and their descendants are better as a result.

Where there is love, there can be no strife. We come from many different hometowns and homelands. Yet we can all agree that our homeland of faith, peace, and unity is the world of God’s true love.

True love, true life and true lineage are crucial

Nothing is more important in the human world than true love, true life, and true lineage. True love leads to true life and true lineage. True love cannot be fulfilled unless it results in a true lineage. Love without true life is false love. True life is conceived within the context of true love and true lineage. Thus, true love, true life, and true lineage open the way to eternal life. God’s ideal for creation is for each of us to become true individuals and pass on true love, true life, and true lineage to our descendants.

God is the ideal being and the Owner of eternal true love, eternal true lineage, and eternal true life. Those who resemble God become His true sons and daughters living in the kingdom of heaven.

Why do men and women get married? They do so to link together the past, present, and future in the tradition of true lineage.

Before the Fall, Adam and Eve could relate to God freely and directly, however this was no longer possible after the Fall. Likewise, because of the Fall, Cain and Abel, the children of Adam and Eve, could not inherit God’s blood lineage. They inherited Satan’s lineage instead. This is why Jesus said in John 3:3, “unless one is born anew, he cannot see the kingdom of God.”

People need to know that they have inherited a false life through a false lineage, which originated from a false love relationship. God feels pain and sorrow when He sees the promiscuous sex and homosexuality that are so prevalent in our world today. When people realize that they have inherited the position of the enemy of love, life, and lineage, they will be filled with shame.

God’s nature, though, is to love the sons and daughters of His enemy even more than His own children. God has invested himself completely without expecting any return, and will continue this process until all the children who were taken from Him have been restored. This is God’s providence of salvation.

For God to bring a fallen person back to life, He must provide a life force more powerful than false life. How grief-stricken God must be, tormented by the misery of each baby brought into this world through the false seed resulting from the Fall! Such children have multiplied to the point that there are now six billion fallen human beings in the world.

Human beings are created to pass through three stages of life: in the mother’s womb, on earth, and in the spirit world after death. The planet Earth, where the physical body lives, is similar to the mother’s womb. In the same way that a fetus grows by receiving nutrition through its mother’s womb, we grow on earth by eating food taken from the creation. That is why we have to love the earth as our mother.

In the spirit world, light as bright as the sun shines continuously. If a person were in space somewhere in the solar system, the sun would shine on him or her continuously. That is the way it is in the spirit world. The light of love in the spirit world is constant and unchanging. Love does not change, whether it is day or night, at the North Pole or the South Pole. The spirit world is the world of love filled with the true love of God. The spirit world is also like a storehouse in which the fruits of our hard work on earth are stored. Our life in the spirit world will reflect our accomplishments on earth.

The returning Lord comes as the True Parent

During the course of God’s providence of restoration, Jesus was the only one born with true life directly connected to God’s true lineage. Accordingly, no one among fallen humanity has ever entered God’s realm of direct dominion, either on earth or in the spirit world. That is why God has been alone, leading a lonely and sorrowful existence. Hence, the world became a place where people and all of nature are sad.

God has been searching for one person whom He could trust, one man who could purify the fallen lineage of humanity and transform it into true life. That man is the Messiah. He inherits God’s true love and brings liberation to all humankind. The Old Testament Age after Adam’s fall is the history of the people chosen to receive the Messiah. God’s Will was for Jesus to come as the Messiah to the chosen people of Israel, for all people to be grafted on to Jesus’ family, and for this family to expand to encompass the world. However, due to the disbelief of his contemporaries, Jesus died on the cross, leaving this process as an ideal to be accomplished at the time of the Second Advent.

The returning Lord stands in the position of the True Parent of humankind and recovers the position of one who embodies God’s true love. When he fulfills the position of the Parents of Heaven and Earth, this will bring God’s providence of salvation for all humankind to completion. The Messiah begins by forming a family that attends God more gloriously and with greater filial piety than the family that Adam and Eve would have formed had they not fallen. The Messiah is the head of the family that represents the core of the ideal for a new humanity that begins by linking to the lineage of true love through the life of true love. The Messiah connects blessed families to the kingdom of heaven on earth and in heaven so as to expand and complete the kingdom on earth and in heaven.

Therefore as the True Parents of all humankind, the coming Messiah must renounce the love of the fallen satanic world and fallen human ways. The Messiah must establish the path and tradition of a perfected man and woman, perfected family, clan, people, nation, world, and cosmos linked to God’s true love. All humankind must receive the new Blessing through the love of the True Parents and inherit a family with a new lineage. There is no way to do this except by true love. This is how the hellish world of Satan’s dominion can be supplanted and overcome.

All humankind has to go through the following eight-stage process of restoration and recover their positions as God’s sons and daughters. Everyone will restore eight stages: the periods of gestation, infancy, siblings, fiancé and fiancée, husband and wife, parents, grandparents, and finally king and queen. We need to understand that we were born with the ultimate purpose to become princes and princesses who inherit everything in the kingdom of heaven.

Becoming completely reborn

Ladies and gentlemen, it was originally intended that each man would meet a woman as his wife and become a king, and that each woman would meet a man as her husband and become a queen. As a prince and princess of heaven, they would inherit everything in heaven. To restore the kingdom of heaven, every person must start at the bottom of hell, and work his or her way up through an eight-stage indemnity process until unity is established at every stage. This is possible only through the Blessing of the True Parents, who come as the Messiah. Therefore, blessed couples have to become “plus couples” who contribute for the sake of others in the world.

To become completely reborn, we need to practice absolute faith, absolute love, and absolute obedience centering on God. I have personally practiced this throughout my life. When God created the universe, He acted with absolute faith. God created us to be His absolute partners of love. Absolute obedience means that we invest ourselves completely to the extent that we give up all self-centeredness.

Furthermore, we totally forget about the investment we make and invest all over again. We continue this process until we reach the zero point, having no concept of self. Since God poured out all of His faith, what is left is zero; since God poured out all of His love, what is left is zero; since God poured out all of His obedience, what is left is zero. Nevertheless, Heaven’s true love is such that the more it is invested the more it grows. We must come to resemble God in this way.

Even if our love is rejected, we must continue to love more; even if we invest everything that we have, we have to continue to invest until we can make our enemy voluntarily surrender. Our Heavenly Father walked such a path, and the Parents of Heaven and Earth walked such a path.

The person who invests love continuously without expecting a direct return becomes a central person, who can inherit everything. He or she becomes the person of greatest filial piety. In a family of ten people, including a grandmother and grandfather, the one who lives for the sake of others the most will become the central person. The same principle applies with respect to patriots in the nation and to saints in the world. The more one invests without expecting a direct return, the higher one can rise as a patriot, a saint, and a divine son or daughter of God.

Since the beginning of human history, God has lived more for the sake of others and invested Himself more than any being. God has continuously invested without expecting a direct return, and God will continue to do so for eternity. God is the King and Ancestor of all those who live for the sake of others.

The reason the Unification Church could become a worldwide religious group in such a short time is that its members have worked hard according to this principle. When I reflect upon my life totally committed for the sake of humankind, I can testify that it truly has been the focus of opposition from billions of evil satanic forces in both the invisible and visible worlds, as well as from numerous religious leaders and many governments. Yet because I lived for their sake, I eventually came to stand at the center.

I lived for those who opposed me due to their inability to understand the truth, and I invested myself for their children. I lived for the sake of governments that persecuted me. In time, they came to respect me. From this, we can learn God’s strategy, in contrast to that of Satan. God’s strategy is to take the blow and initial loss, then regain everything in the end. Satan often is the first to strike, however he loses in the end.

The significance of the large international weddings Under this principle, I blessed many millions of young couples from all continents in the international Holy Blessing ceremonies, as a means to save all humankind and establish one world under the one God. When the West and the East come together in marriage, the greatest cultural conflicts in the world will be overcome. When an American and a German marry each other and become husband and wife, perfect harmony will be created between those two nations, even though they were once enemies.

I gave the Blessing even to those now living in the spirit world. In order for the kingdom of heaven to be realized on earth, the cosmic realms of the spirit world must also be liberated, and only True Parents on the earth can do that. The first human ancestors, Adam and Eve, sowed sinful seeds as false parents. The Messiah must liberate humankind both on earth and in the spirit world, by coming as the True Parents.

Even God alone, although omniscient and omnipotent, cannot untangle the problems brought about by the wrongful blood lineage of humankind. If God could accomplish this alone, He would have saved His children a long time ago. In fact, God would not have allowed the Fall to occur in the first place. However, God is a God of Principle. This means He cannot interfere in the responsibility given to human beings. Accordingly, the returning Messiah, who comes as True Parents, must give rebirth through true love to humankind, whose blood lineage was defiled by the original sin.

When viewed from this perspective, the international Blessing ceremonies are not being conducted simply to bring young men and women together as husbands and wives. They are holy ceremonies through which people are reborn as God’s true children through the original seed of life from God. The principle is that restoration requires indemnity, and we have passed through the stages of individual indemnity, family indemnity, tribal indemnity, people’s indemnity, national indemnity, worldwide indemnity, and universal indemnity. Now, finally, we have arrived at the time of liberation for both the spirit world and the physical world.

The world is divided into tens of thousands of ethnic groups. Relationships are broken between parents and children, husbands and wives, and brothers and sisters. Even the religious world was divided into the four great cultural spheres of Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, and Confucianism. However, we have now entered the age of cosmic unification. This is because, having passed through the Old Testament Age, the New Testament Age, and the Completed Testament Age, which is the era of completion, we have now entered the age in which to establish the realm of the fourth Adam.

In other words, we no longer live in an age dominated by nationalism, or even in an age of globalism. These have already passed. National purpose and global concerns still exist, of course, but we now live in an age when the universe is to be united with the one God. By becoming the hometown of blessed families, the planet Earth will become one with the spirit world, and the kingdom of heaven will come about on earth and in the realm of eternal life.

The cosmic expansion of true love is the completion of the new millennial kingdom

Ladies and gentlemen, with the arrival of the new millennium, at midnight on New Year’s Eve, I proclaimed a message for the New Year entitled, “The Cosmic Expansion of True Love is the Completion of the New Millennial Kingdom.” “Cosmic expansion of true love” means that heaven and earth must become a “house” of true love. The new millennium is a time when we complete the building of God’s kingdom throughout the world.

Since the cosmos originated from God, families, tribes, peoples, nations, and the world have to work to complete this “house” of love, which stands as a partner to God. They can do this by each establishing their own houses of love according to the Principle formula and by becoming one with each other. Nations need to be houses of love where all families can enter, and the cosmos needs to be a house of love that embraces the world.

The family of true love is particularly important, because it is the core of the cosmos, which is our enormous house in the kingdom of heaven. Within the family, the husband is the house of love for his wife, and the wife is the house of love for her husband. The parents are the house of love for their children, and the children are the house of love for their parents.

God’s kingdom is the place where the ideal of true freedom blossoms, and where humanity’s hopes are fulfilled. It is a place inhabited by true families that are the fruit of true love, true life, and true lineage. Its establishment marks the beginning of the millennial kingdom, overflowing with eternal true love and true happiness.

I have promoted true family values, because the family formed by a union of a true man and true woman where God can dwell is the center of the cosmic realm where heaven and earth can rest. This is the garden of Eden mentioned in the Bible, and it must be realized on earth.

The new millennium is the time to complete the six thousand year history of the providence for the salvation of humanity and build the original heavenly kingdom centered on the ideal of creation. It is the Completed Testament Age, when the promises of the Old and the New Testaments will be fulfilled. This means a new heaven and new earth, where “he will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, and neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain anymore.” (Rev. 21:4) It means a time of unconditional true love, when all people will be able to drink the water of life that is as clear as crystal.

When God’s kingdom is established, it will be a time when the spirit world and the physical world will be open to each other. The direct dominion of the living God is to begin through restoring the right of the eldest son, the right of parents, and the right of kingship. This will open a new era of God’s transcendence, imminence, abundance, and sovereignty.

The earth is the hometown of all humankind, and the spirit world is the eternal homeland where all people will eventually arrive. Finally, the time has come for the global family ideal to be realized on the planet Earth centered on the Heavenly Parent. This will move us beyond “One Nation under God” to “One Cosmos under God.”

Please understand that the fundamental relationship between God and human beings is that of parent and child. On that foundation, please take an active role to transform the cosmos, that is, the spirit world and the physical world, into “our hometown and homeland.”

Once again, I thank all of you distinguished American leaders for your presence here. I would like to conclude by expressing God’s desire that people of the world of all colors and races will come to live as true brothers and sisters and build the new millennial kingdom of love, peace, freedom, and righteousness. I believe that God prepared America for this very time to help lead the world into this new era.

May God’s blessing be with you and your nation. Thank you.

The True Land for a King

February 17, 2002

Olympic Fencing Gymnasium, Seoul, Korea Commemoration of True Parents’ Birthday

Distinguished leaders from around the world and honored guests from Korea:

So many have come here to congratulate my wife and I on our birthday, and I would like to express my sincere gratitude to you for coming. On this meaningful day, I shall speak on the topic, “The True King.” I will convey to you an image of how God originally intended that we live our lives, based on the ideal by which God created all beings in the universe and from the standpoint of God’s Will.

“Living for the sake of others” is the root of how all beings in the universe are organized. God, who is the king of wisdom, created all beings to exist by the principle of living for the sake of a partner. God established this as the basis of the heavenly principle and the key to creation. The world of true ideals, true love, true happiness and true peace is not just God’s ideal for His creation. It is also the fervent desire of humankind.

The path that leads to the realization of this ideal is none other than living for the sake of others. True love emanates from people who live their lives for the sake of others, and it is only among such people that true happiness, true ideals, and true peace are brought to reality. So the source of ideals, the source of peace and the source of happiness and love can be found only in the place where life is lived for the sake of others.

People cannot become one with each other when they say, “I exist for my own sake.” Without achieving oneness with others, there can be no peace, happiness, ideals, or love. When members of a family each live with an attitude that they exist for the sake of the other family members, peace and happiness will live with that family.

Let us examine first the relationship between husband and wife. What characterizes a true husband? If there is a husband who was born for the sake of his wife, lives for the sake of his wife, and dies for the sake of his wife, then that husband would be a true husband. A true wife, likewise, would be a wife who lives for the sake of her husband according to the same principle. If a true man and true woman who seek to live for the sake of the other come together as husband and wife, then that couple would be an ideal husband and wife. Such a husband and wife would be the first truly happy couple. Such a couple would be capable of becoming the subject partners of eternal and unchanging true love. In addition, such a couple would be able to receive God’s love directly, to live with each other as partners in the peace of God, and to be God’s ideal substantial object partner.

What about the life of parents? The heavenly principle is that parents rear and educate their children with a spirit of sacrifice and service. They live for the sake of their children and die for the sake of their children. It is only natural that such parents would become true parents. The children, then, would take after such parents and follow the path of true children, that is, the path of truly dutiful children. What kind of a child is the truly dutiful child? He or she is the child who is born for the sake of their parents, lives for the sake of their parents, and is ready to sacrifice his or her life for the sake of their parents.

When people live their lives believing in and practicing the principle of living for the sake of others, families will become families of peace, families of freedom, families of happiness and families of love. Societies will become societies of peace, freedom, happiness and love, societies that accord with the original ideal. The same is true with the nation and world. It is God’s principle that freedom, peace, happiness and love will come to us naturally and spontaneously if we are unwavering in our practice of this standard all the time, everywhere, and in every action.

Even in the context of a life lived for the sake of others we need to consider the priority in the relationship between subject and object partners. If we examine God’s creation, we see that God stood in the position of the first subject partner and invested everything. In order to carry out the creation God took the position where He lived for the sake of others. God, who is the King of wisdom, applied this great principle even from the beginning in order to establish the original standards of peace, happiness, ideal and love, which are based on investing and existing for the sake of others. When the subject partner gives everything to the object partner and presents the model of a life lived for others, the object partner will automatically be willing to offer even his or her life for the sake of the subject partner.

Love comes from the object partner. Without an object partner, there can be no happiness or peace. These categorically come to us through our object partner. The love and the ideal that a person receives from his or her object partner is more precious than their own life. He or she prepares in humility in order to receive this precious love. In other words, when living for the sake of others we need to be humble. Then there will be eternal life and prosperity. By thus living for the sake of others, the heavenly principle will be operating in their lives.

It does not matter how many religious scriptures are extant today. The single phrase, “live for the sake of others,” stands tall above the teachings of all scriptures. The sixty-six books of the Old and New Testaments, too, are ultimately crystallized into this one phrase, “live for the sake of others.” That is the reason Jesus said, “For whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted” (Matt. 23:12), “Many who are first will be last, and many who are last will be first” (Matt. 19:30) and “Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.” (John 15:13) In these words, Jesus was explaining the value of living for the sake of others. He was saying that through such a life, the kingdom of heaven is manifested, God is manifested, God’s love is manifested, and God’s peace, happiness and ideal are manifested.

If we consider the relationship between a man and a woman, we see that neither man nor woman was born for their own sake. Each was born for the sake of the other. Each was born so as to exist for the sake of the other, live for the sake of the other, and if necessary die for the sake of the other.

Look at this world, in which men and women live only for their own selves! How can we say that a world where men mistreat and look down upon women is a world of freedom or a world of peace? How can we say that a world where women shun men and say they will not bear children is a world of happiness? A husband and wife are meant to share in a life of true love, living for each other’s sake and loving each other no matter the circumstances. This is the ideal and purpose for which God created men and women.

A dictator who imposes on others can never bring about freedom and peace. Think of how many people were sacrificed so that that one person could establish himself as a dictator. The life of a dictator is that of sacrificing others for his or her own sake. In other words, it is the direct opposite of a life of true love, of living for the sake of others. That is the reason that all dictators throughout history begin in unhappiness and ultimately end in unhappiness. This is a fundamental truth of the universe.

Respected ladies and gentlemen, we all need to follow the heavenly principle of living for the sake of others. Please consider this when you look at what is going on around you. In a family, the person who lives for the sake of all the family members and dedicates his or her life for the family to a greater extent than anyone else will naturally become the center of the family, even if he or she is the youngest member or most distant relative of the patriarch. If a difficult situation arises, everyone in the family will want to discuss it with that person and gain his or her support.

This teaches us the heavenly principle that the person who lives for the sake of others to the greatest extent becomes the central figure. He or she becomes the responsible person. This is also true for a society or a country. If there is one person dedicated to the organization or the country, who serves its members or citizens more than anyone else does, then the other members need to show a certain humility that enables them to attend that person as they would attend the Lord and as they would attend God.

When you go to the spirit world, you will see that because God, as the central existence, lives for all beings in heaven and earth, you will willingly submit to Him. Even after tens of millions of years, you will still want to remain under God’s dominion. In fact, the state of submitting to God will be the state of your greatest happiness. You don’t need to take my word for it; when you die you will see for yourself.

Humankind today is ignorant of this. People live without knowing that when they submit to the One who truly looks after them, they enter the realm where they enjoy true happiness and peace. Let yourself feel, “The all-knowing and almighty God is my Parent. He exists for me.” Let yourself believe that the true love of God, the highest form of love, exists for my sake. Then you will find a serenity that you have never experienced before.

When we expand this principled formula beyond locality and nation to the standard of the entire world, without a doubt we will find ourselves in a realm of heavenly love, an ideal world of peace, the world of happiness that humankind has desired. Such a world can be called the kingdom of heaven on earth.

Ladies and gentlemen, I have said that those who live for the sake of others will be under Heaven’s protection and will become central figures. My life is a good testimony to this fact. People around the world refer to my wife and I as the True Parents. The path that led us to this point was not an easy one. I completely dedicated my life to Heaven and humankind. Even though I was opposed by my parents, my relatives, the church, the state and the world, I never lost hope. I never stopped living Heaven’s teaching, living for the sake of others. The path that my wife and I have led as the True Parents has been a lonely path that went from one extreme to the other. Yet, as a result, the “true love movement,” reflecting the image of how I have lived, is spreading like wildfire across the world. Millions of families, by living for the sake of others, are being reborn as true families of peace and happiness. Families that live in attendance to the True Parents are increasing in number around the world.

It is my hope that everyone gathered on this precious occasion will also practice the true love of “a life lived for others,” which is the heavenly principle revealed to this age. In that way, Heaven will bless you as central figures and responsible persons, and you will experience eternal peace, freedom and happiness.

Thank you very much.

God’s True Love and Restoring His Relationship with Heaven, Earth and Humankind

February 6, 2003

Jamshil Indoor Gymnasium, Seoul, Korea Commemoration of True Parents’ Birthday

Respected current and former heads of state, leaders from the religious, political and academic worlds, representatives of one hundred and eighty- nine countries, family representatives, ladies and gentlemen:

I would like to truly thank all of you who have gathered here to congratulate me on my eighty-third birthday, and my wife, Hak Ja Han Moon, on her sixtieth birthday.

Above all else, I would like to return all this glory to God, who has protected and looked after me until this day. You cannot explain my life without God, and at this truly meaningful occasion I am speaking to all of you today with gratitude to God in my heart. The title of my talk today is, “God’s True Love and Restoring His Relationship to Heaven, Earth and Humankind.”

A new understanding about God

Throughout human history, all people have talked endlessly about God, the Absolute Being. They have praised Him and worshipped Him in many different ways. Others have felt free to evaluate Him. Some have even declared that there is no God or that God is dead. However, there has not been one instance in which God Himself appeared directly saying, “This is how I have lived.” There have been many people who have prophesied that, with the development of science, the population who believe in God would dwindle. However, the number of people who believe in God in contemporary society is not diminishing, for God is the living origin of all things, the Creator, the True Parent of humankind.

The God I have been teaching about is not just some vague or obscure God. Ever since the time I first truly experienced Him at the age of sixteen, when I was anguishing about the meaning of life and the universe, I have lived my whole life in communication with Him. The living God’s promise and my absolute faith in Him are the driving forces that have preserved my life during times of suffering, even when I was at the brink of death.

I searched every corner of the spirit world. There I met the five great religious founders and many other saints and sages, and I received their official recognition of my mission. Ladies and gentlemen, God is the most decent and modest being, and He is the True Parent of humankind. He is the origin of all our lives, and He is the Being with whom all people need to establish a relationship. Also, the one thing you all must know clearly is that the spirit world, the world where we will all go someday, does exist. Do not doubt the existence of the spirit world, and do not settle for merely a vague belief in God.

I have set a record in sponsoring many “God Conferences,” something with no parallel in history. The first three conferences that I held in the 1980s were attended by representatives from each religion and denomination as well as by outstanding theologians and scholars of religion. They caused a great sensation.

There were three main points I wanted to teach through these conferences. First, although each faith has its own special and unique character, religions actually have many more points in common than differences. Second, the conflict and disharmony that exist between religions is due to the narrow-mindedness of believers, and it is definitely not the intention of the Absolute Being. Third, God desires the realization of true love rather than any emphasis on doctrine or ceremony.

The papers and discussions presented at these conferences are still being used today as a textbook in the top theological seminaries of each denomination. From that time forward, a spirit of sincere dialogue and cooperation among all denominations began. Before this time, the high walls erected between them had blocked such dialogue and cooperation. Since then I have invested a great deal of resources each year to expand the International Religious Foundation and the Interreligious Federation for World Peace in each country and throughout the world.

For three days, beginning on December 26 last year in Washington, DC, I held a God Conference on a different level. During that time, under the theme “God and a World of Peace,” 312 participants gathered, including religious leaders from all corners of the world and also representatives from politics, academia, the media, business, culture and the arts, and from various NGOs.

God is not just the God of believers. He is the God of all people. Especially at this time, we are living in an age in which God stands before the world not just as some vague and abstract Being, but as a God with a definite purpose and Will. It is an age of great change, when all people need to awaken to this God. All people need to awaken to the fact that the contemporary world is being sucked down into a maelstrom of individual, family, national and world-level problems, which we will never solve if we ignore God.

At this conference, the 312 participants adopted a resolution declaring the following: First, that they would recognize God and True Parents as the True Parents, True Teachers and True Owners, and establish them as the vertical axis of absolute value for the individual, the family, the nation and the world. Second, that they would cooperate with and follow the resolution of the five religious founders, and all the saints and sages in the spirit world, to join together and help people on earth bring about the completion of God’s Will. Third, that they would actively support and participate in the movement to realize true love, the movement to reform the United Nations, and with other initiatives of the True Parents to realize the ideal of world peace.

God’s Will is the completion of the ideal of creation

The ultimate purpose of religion is to recover the original Parent and the original homeland. The word “religion” does not have humankind as its prime object. Rather religion is the teaching in which God, the Parent, is established as the center. Then there is a certain course through which we establish a relationship with God and mature in a life of following God. Holy men and women have to support the Will of Heaven and proclaim what Heaven has preordained.

True religion has to teach people about God. True religion must not espouse vague ideas about God; it has to be able to give a clear picture of God so people can understand Him. Any religion that compromises the relationship between God and humankind cannot be called a high-level religion. Such a religion ultimately will decline.

True religion has to teach people how to know God clearly, how to become one with God, and how to build the original world of creation.

The purpose of religion is to bring about a world without sin, the ideal world where we make original relationships with God.

God is not seeking a religious world. He is seeking His ideal world of creation. The purpose of religion is not for religion itself; but it is rather to realize the world of God’s ideal. So we have to think about the original purpose and ideal of creation. God created the world, so it is necessary to explain His ideal of creation.

What do you think God’s Will is? It is to complete His ideal of creation. What do you think God wanted to achieve through creating our first ancestors, Adam and Eve, in the garden of Eden? God, who is the essence of love, created human beings because He needed a partner of love.

We were created as the true sons and daughters of God so that He could realize His ideal of true love through us. The original pair was created to grow into a true man and true woman, become husband and wife, create an ideal family, and then build an ideal nation and world. To repeat, centering on the true love of God, they had to perfect the ideal family and expand it to build the ideal world. However our human ancestors fell, and this destroyed God’s ideal of creation at that time.

Accordingly, the purpose of religion is to find a true person, a true family and a true nation, and build a true world where all people can live together in peace. This is the purpose of God’s providence for this world.

Religion is seeking a world of goodness. However, a world of goodness cannot be realized without first establishing a country of goodness. And for a country of goodness to appear there must first be a good society, and before there can be a good society there must first be a good tribe, and before there can be a good tribe there must first be a good family. And before there can be a good family there must first be a good man and a good woman.

After the Fall of Adam, there ensued the four-thousand-year history of Israel. What was its purpose? Regardless of the world’s external developments, internally the sole purpose of this time period was to find one true Adam and one true Eve. God’s deepest grief and resentment was that due to the Fall, there was not one son or daughter who could inherit life and blood lineage centering on His love.

Owner of love, life and lineage

The Savior whom God sent to this world is the person whom God made to be the owner of true love, true life and true lineage. According to different points of view, this person has been called the Savior, the Messiah, or the Lord. He comes as the Savior to rescue all people in this world from poverty, suffering, war and evil, and, centering on the Absolute Being, pursues God’s Will for salvation. He is the mediator who will connect all religious people to God’s way of life. He came to the First Israel as the Messiah. Now, he comes to the Second Israel as the Lord of the Second Advent to complete God’s providence of restoration. The terms Savior, Messiah and Lord of the Second Advent have all been used centering on the course of salvation and restoration.

Fallen men and women are born and live in conflict and sin because of their connection to the false parents, the false ancestors. To restore them to the position they were in before the Fall does not mean that everything is accomplished. The Will of God, the original hope of humankind, is for each human being to become the ideal person of God’s originally intended world of creation, and to complete the ideal world of creation. This means that after a man and woman achieve God’s ideal as individuals, they will then become a husband and wife of true love and then true parents.

In order for this to happen, God absolutely needs the True Parents as the source of His true love, true life and true lineage. So in order to complete God’s providence of salvation, it is not enough for one man to appear as the Savior, the Messiah, or the Lord of the Second Advent. The True Parents have to appear as husband and wife, who resemble God completely and who have completely realized His true love. In the same way that God first created Adam and took a rib from him to make his eternal partner, Eve, God’s son must first appear as the restored Adam, and then restore Eve. Then after recreating her, he has to realize the ideal of true love with her, so that they perfect together the role of True Parents. True Parents established the connection of humankind’s true love and true life to the Source. They are the model and ideal of all true husbands and wives and all true parents.

Humankind’s sin and suffering originated from the false love of fallen ancestors, who themselves were born as the fruit of the first false parents and false ancestors. Therefore, people can only be liberated from their connection to the Fall and complete the ideal after the coming of the True Parents. People have sought eagerly for the original ideal of humankind through religion. That ideal is the True Parents, who come to fulfill God’s ideal of love.

The goal of religion is the re-creation of human beings

We can say that a religious life is a course for remaking people. If there had been no Fall, religion would have been unnecessary. A religious life transforms people whose minds and bodies are in conflict due to the Fall into peaceful people who live in harmony and who will be God’s substantial object partners for eternity. It is the course that enables fallen people to change into original people of true character, resembling God.

When we look at our mind and body, the body is largely the base of the evil spirit Satan, and the conscience is the base of God. Generally speaking, the body directs the mind. Religions provide ways to weaken the body’s control over the mind. Religions teach that we need to deny our body. Thus, religions urge us to fast, to serve, to sacrifice ourselves, to go the way of suffering and even to offer our lives for the sake of righteousness. This is the logic behind the seemingly paradoxical teaching of the Bible, “Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.” (John 12:25) If you live only according to the desires of your body, you will go the way of death into hell; however if you deny your body and enter the realm of a liberated conscience, you will have eternal life and be welcomed in the kingdom of heaven.

The person who is unable to bring his or her mind and body into oneness, and who allows this struggle to continue, will be unable to adjust to God’s ideal world of love, where there are no boundaries. Usually people say that in order to go to heaven or paradise, you have to believe in their particular religion. I tell you that heaven is the place for God’s children whose mind and body have become one centered on His love.

The love of the fallen world is usually a love centered on the self, a love fixed not on the mind but on the body. The body is the devil’s nightclub. Originally, your mind is supposed to take the subject position, representing God, but instead your body has become a stronger subject and plays with your original mind as with a puppet. This is what you have to change. Religion is the repair shop that God made to fix this. It is the repair shop that remakes people into completed individuals of true character, whose mind and body are one for eternity.

Religion teaches us not to rest but to pray unceasingly. The devil doesn’t rest; he uses the body as his horizontal stage twenty-four hours a day. As God is in the vertical position, He can only work through the vertical mind.

In order for your horizontal body not to be controlled by the devil, you need prayer and devotion to make your mind stand in the vertical position. By doing this you can receive power from God three or four times greater than the power of your body. And if you live a life of sincere prayer and devotion for three to five years, you can liberate your mind from the body’s horizontal and habitual influence. .

Religion is the means to fulfill the providence of restoration Respected leaders, ladies and gentlemen, leading a religious life is not something you can prefer to do or not to do. Fallen men and women were born with a connection to fallen parents through fallen love that is centered on Satan. Therefore, without exception all people absolutely need to pass through the repair shop of religion, meet the True Parents and establish a connection of true love and true life with them.

There is one important point you need to know. When you go to the repair shop, you cannot stay there forever. You need to come out reborn. While the religious life is the required course for all humankind, it is not the basic purpose or whole purpose of life. The ultimate purpose of human life is to graduate from the religious life, a life of restoration, and live as a men and women of the original world of creation.

Religion came about only because of the Fall. Hence, does it make sense to say that the sole purpose of life is to live buried in a religion? If there had been no Fall, how would men and women originally have lived? Human beings are originally the children of God. Thus we are destined to live with true love, realize a true family and establish one world of freedom, peace, unity and happiness. We are supposed to live in the kingdom of heaven on earth.

God did not originally create men and women to have them break down so that He could repair them as His children reborn through religion. Do any parents want to see their children suffer in conflict, while endlessly repenting of their sins? Do you think the original Will of God the Father, the omniscient and omnipotent Lord of creation, was that His children suffer in sin?

This fallen world is not the world God originally planned. The first ancestors’ disobedience prevented God from realizing the world He had originally planned. However, God is absolute, and His Will is also absolute. Thus God will realize His Will as He had intended in the beginning. This Will is for complete recovery to the original state. This is why God’s providence of salvation is the providence of restoration, the providence of re-creation. Religion is the central means for the providence of restoration, however people are not just supposed to meet True Parents and go through the course of a religious life. They are supposed to become God’s children, establish a Parent-child relationship with Him, attend God, and build a world where the values of faith are inherent in their daily life. No one in history revealed this precious truth, namely, that people must graduate from religious life. Knowing this truth from an early age, I did not want to create another sect or denomination.

Background of the founding of the Family Federation

It was because Christianity, which was the central religion of God’s providence, did not accept my teaching of Heaven’s way that I had to create the Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity. Although it was an association, not a sect or denomination, the Christian world continued to deny, to persecute, to label us heretical, and to turn its face away from us. As our movement grew, the world began to call us the Unification Church rather than use the long official title. That is how we became the Unification Church. For many, many years I have lived in hope of seeing the day we could take down the church sign. I even prophesied about that day. Finally in 1996 we took down that sign and started the Family Federation for World Peace.

This was a very important event in the history of humankind. It was the beginning of a new world. It marked a change from the old world, where people lived with the burden of sin inherited from false parents. They were living in suffering and conflict, practicing a life of faith in which the only way to find God was through prayer and repentance. But with this event, the world changed. From then on, people could be reborn by receiving the Blessing from the True Parents, and go forward reporting to God about what they were doing.

No one who knows the course I had to take to follow the command of Heaven and fulfill my mission as the True Parent. In order to give the grace of the Blessing freely on earth and in heaven, I had to break down walls in this world and in the spirit world. I had to contend with Satan, the being who throughout history has been acting as the false master, controlling people and disobeying God. Do you think it was easy for me to bring him to complete surrender?

I could not establish the position of True Parents without first gaining Satan’s formal surrender. But now that it is done, the privilege of the Blessing can reach all the people in Satan’s realm of death, including everyone in the spirit world, according to the will of the True Parents. Now all people on earth are able to cross over into true love’s realm of life. This miraculous age has begun.

We should live as true children of God

Ladies and gentlemen, let us unite with Heaven’s blessing that has come to us. I call upon humankind to graduate from the religious life, receive the Blessing of true love, establish a true family, and keep the standard of a true child throughout their lives. Those who receive the Blessing on this earth and live a life of true love can enter the eternal homeland of the ideal world, namely, God’s nation, the kingdom of heaven.

What do you take with you when you go to the spirit world? Is it money? Power? Do you take your knowledge or reputation with you? These things belong to this world, and you must leave them all behind when you enter the higher realm. They have absolutely no value in the eternal, original world, and you cannot take them with you.

The spirit world is the world of love. The true love you experience and share on the earth, having received grace through the Blessing from the Parents of Heaven and Earth, is the most precious thing and the only thing that counts in the spirit world. Please study more deeply about the spirit world, and, through your life as a blessed couple, become children of God who perfect true love.

What I teach is not based on any human teachings. And I do not educate by giving moral lessons, or in any conventional way. I am instructing you by speaking frankly, with words of life based on God and the heavenly way.

If God has given the mission of True Parents to me, you have to understand that the relationship you have established with me today is most precious and meaningful. Please keep my words today deep in your heart.

May God’s blessing be with you and your families, and may He be with you in your public life.

Thank you very much.

To Realize the World of Peace

February 6, 2003

Lotte Hotel, Seoul, Korea

True Parents’ Birthday Congratulatory Banquet

Respected former heads of state, religious, political and academic leaders who have gathered from around the world, honored guests from the diplomatic community, and esteemed leaders of Korea:

I would like to begin by congratulating you on the results you have achieved for world peace through the Summit Conference, and I wish to convey deep appreciation for your many expressions of congratulations on this occasion of President Hak Ja Han Moon’s and my birthday. I offer all this glory to God, who has protected us until today.

On this meaningful occasion, I would like to share with you my convictions about realizing a peaceful world. In view of our hope for world peace, there has never been a time when understanding between religions and reconciliation between religious people were more urgent than they are today. The precious teachings of our religions are the source of the wisdom that has brightened human history. However, believers of all faiths tend to have three weaknesses: one, they tend to be unrealistic and oriented largely toward the hereafter; two, they can be narrow-minded and sectarian; and three, they can be extremist.

True religious leaders, however, have to be able to embrace all people with open minds. The real duty of all religious people is to overcome the lines of division crippling the human race, in particular the walls between religions. Religions must not exist for the sake of their own success or for the salvation of their believers alone; they need to exist in order to accomplish the Will of God. Religious people should never be narrow-minded or seek their own gratification. When one lives with a loving heart, all walls break down. The great founders of all the religions understood this and tried to accomplish this ideal.

God is the origin of true love. Because the fundamental character of true love is to unconditionally seek to live for another, true love always seeks a partner for relationship. It is from this point that we can properly understand God’s motivation and purpose for creation. God brought forth the created world as His partner for relating in true love. And in all the creation, God set human beings apart as His closest partners of love, His very children.

The significance of the first person, Adam, was not just as an individual; he was also to have been the origin of the family, tribe, people, nation, world and cosmos of true love. God’s ideal of creation was a world of harmony and unity, in which each person would live for his or her partner in a realm of true love. Nonetheless, before this ideal of true love could be realized, the first ancestor of humankind disobeyed God during his time of growth to maturity and fell through false love.

Due to the human Fall, strife ensued between God and human beings. Confrontations and conflicts ensued between God and Satan, between people and Satan, and among people themselves. The fact that there have been so many different nations and so many conflicts in human history bears witness to this. We can begin an ideal world only through a movement that is able to overcome and go beyond the origin of these myriad conflicts. And the only way to resolve these conflicts and struggles is through altruistic and sacrificial love, that is to say, through living for the sake of others.

The realization of the ideal nation of God begins with individuals determined to love their enemies. The way to win over enemies is not through superior strength. It is possible only through the power of true love, by which we can embrace them. If you plant soybeans, soybeans grow; if you plant red beans, red beans grow; and if you plant the seeds of red flowers, red flowers bloom. In the same way, if you sow the seeds of Satan, which contain the germ of revenge, a tree of revenge will grow, and if you sow the seeds of goodness, which contain the germ of loving the enemy, a tree of goodness and of loving the enemy will grow.

If a nation arises consisting of people who have a mind to love their enemies, it could become the ideal land that God desires. It could become the model for humankind to follow. For the last thirty years in America, I have been devoting myself completely and without resting to solve such problems as the breakdown of the family, sexual immorality, the decadence of youth, the decay of ethics, and the decline of Christianity. In spite of my many efforts, Americans, including many Christians, misunderstood me, persecuted me and eventually even imprisoned me. The negative attitudes and vicious slander against me continued unabated. Yet, I refused to be caught in negative feelings of hatred or resentment, and I continued to live a life of love, giving consistently to those who persecuted me.

No matter what my situation, in my heart of hearts I consider God’s love and Will to be the most important things of all. Because of this, as time passed more and more Americans, and especially Christians, realized the value of my teachings and life, and I can see they are changing their way of thinking about me. In a public speech, I directly told them, “Christians must respond to their mission to realize the Will of God, who is their true root. Christians must change their attitudes and their ways of life.” The founder of Christianity taught, “Love your enemy.” If Christians cannot fulfill this basic principle, the only way left for them will be one of continued decline. If that decline persists, it will be because they abandoned the sacred teachings of Jesus that give us true freedom.

If, however, the Muslims and adherents of other religions are able to realize a higher level of love than Christians in terms of morality and living for others, their enemies will be subjugated through the mighty power of true love rather than through material strength. I have always told the leaders of the Western world that they must not disregard or overlook the 1.3 billion Muslims and the 3.4 billion followers of the Indian and East Asian traditions, as well as the people of other religions throughout the world. If America fails to understand the meaning of the existence of these parts of the great human family, how can we expect that America will be able to build a better future and realize a world of peace for our descendants?

For the same reason, how can the Islamic world or the people of other religions look down upon or overlook the importance of the Christian culture? If we scorn each other, there will be no hope. All religious leaders must become leaders in a worldwide movement to realize a higher love that embraces other religions and societies. This is the lofty ideal implicit in the teachings of the founders of all religions. What is the direction of God’s Will in history? The ultimate ideal of God is a world that is peaceful and unified through true love, a world transcending religion, race and nationality; in other words, one family of humankind.

The goal of God is not the victory of one religion or one ideology; it is the realization of a world of love in which all people live in peace, unity and joy. In view of the tendency of contemporary society toward merely external unification through technology and economic development, it is the responsibility of religions to lead the way to internal harmony and unification.

Religions must take the lead and provide the example in this work. History is calling for the harmony and cooperation of the religious world. This cannot be delayed. It is the holy Will of God. If we do not accomplish this, religions will decline. I know this because throughout my life I have taught based upon my direct experience of the heart of God and the Will He hopes to accomplish.

What I teach is not speculation or theory. God is alive and working in history. It is just that due to the Fall, human beings lost their original position, and without being able to relate with God perfectly, they have lived in sin and strife. Although God is omnipotent and perfect, when He has no appropriate partner with whom to relate, He cannot fully express His omnipotence. After our first ancestor disobeyed God, God lost the foundation of goodness to which He could relate. Accordingly, His goodness and absolute power could not be expressed, even as history nonetheless continued.

God is carrying out the providence to restore His position and fulfill the heavenly Will by working to restore human beings to their original state. To restore the ideal of true love, true parents and true family that Adam, the first ancestor of humankind, could not accomplish, God has been carrying out the providence by entrusting key figures with the missions of second Adam and third Adam. God called me early in my life, and my mission as the True Parent is connected to such providential plans of God.

Respected leaders, I would like to ask you to pay close attention to the prophecy I am about to make. Humankind is at a turning point. In the past, the invisible God seemed almost powerless and nonexistent. However, the time has come when the power of God will become manifest in our lives. We have entered that era, a time long-awaited by humankind. The absolute power of God, who is the Lord of the sacred order and laws that really do exist in all things and in the universe, will manifest in amazing ways and be experienced by people in their daily lives.

This is a miraculous era that is possible only because a solid foundation of goodness has been established through the sacrifices and unconditional love of God, True Parents and righteous people throughout history. From now on, people will gradually come to perceive God and to understand the spirit world and the works of spirit people. People will become conscious of their internal person, their spirit self, and their spirituality will develop.

In this way, people will naturally experience the laws of the universe and become true people, having undergone a clear change in their character. In the course of this change, people will learn that God made the existing order of the universe and the relationships among human beings. He made them not to be centered on the self or self-interest, but for an altruistic life of living for the sake of others. People will come to know that God’s ideal of peace in the creation, as He originally intended, is an ideal of unity. God made the existing world for the ideal of partnership. It is based on the premise of harmony and unity. Hence, no ideal of peace can be realized by neglecting or harming the other.

When human relationships extending above and below, front and back, and right and left, all realize harmony, unity, and the ideal of true love by living for the sake of others, complete peace will be achieved throughout the spirit world and physical world. God will attain joy, and so will His partners, human beings.

Furthermore, God wants the individual purposes of all created entities to be realized as part of a larger purpose, the greater good. God established the order of the entire universe so that through the connection of these dual purposes, individual and public, a great harmony and unity can be achieved.

However due to the Fall, human beings, betrayed God and fell into ignorance. They flouted the order of existence that God originally intended, and lived dominated by selfish greed, which is fallen nature. People have been living more for their private gain than the public good, more for their own private goals than public ones. The result is self-evident. This way has not ensured unlimited freedom, peace and happiness. Self-centered people who pursued hedonistic satisfaction or who, hungry for power, engaged in struggle and confrontation with others, are now bogged down in misery.

Now is the time when people must reflect on their lives and listen to the voice coming from Heaven. Through the benefit of His providence, the living God is now drawing near to us. From now on people will have many spiritual experiences they could not have had earlier. That is to say, they will communicate with the transcendent world. Through these frequent spiritual experiences, people will be influenced directly and indirectly. Especially those who experience the inspiration of God and good spirits will develop their spiritual senses centered on God, and they will experience major changes in their character. People who change their character to fit the way of Heaven are the true people of God’s hope.

We all need to practice the true love that liberates us to love our enemies, become true persons who properly understand the spirit world, become true parents and establish true families. This personal transformation is the starting point of the world of peace. This is the starting point of the ideal nation and world God desires. For the person who is not able to become an embodiment of true love or establish harmonious, ideal family life, there can be no ideal world or ideal nation, overflowing with songs of peace and joy, in which he or she can live happily. The ideal homeland God desires will be realized by loving one’s enemies. It will be realized when we establish the tradition of loving our individual enemies, our family’s enemies, our tribe’s enemies, our nation’s enemies, and the enemies of the entire world.

Many people are hoping that the United Nations will solve the problems of the world and will be able to establish world peace. However, the UN operates under some handicaps. The biggest of these is its inability to recognize the importance of religions and spirituality altogether. Thus it chooses a path that compromises its influence. The result is that in engaging with and trying to solve present-day problems of the world, the UN has been one-sided. If this continues, it will not be able to realize its founding purpose, and its relevance will gradually diminish.

In order to realize the ideal of world peace in a fundamental and comprehensive manner, I once again advocate that the United Nations establish an assembly consisting of representatives of all religions. These representatives need to implement the central ideal that their founders implicitly sought to realize, and they must do it with wisdom. They must exemplify true love in their attitudes and behavior and serve as a model for everyone. I hope many leaders will take this matter seriously and continue to strive to establish an assembly of global religious and spiritual leaders within the UN.

I have worked without ceasing my entire life for the sake of realizing the one world family in heaven and on earth that is the Will of God. During that time I have taught leaders, not only of the religious realm but also in the areas of politics, philosophy, academia, business, media and non-governmental organizations, that we have to live for the sake of others. I did not teach concepts alone; I led the way and provided the example.

On that worldwide foundation, I established the Interreligious and International Federation for World Peace and appointed ambassadors for peace throughout the world. This was in order to cultivate leaders who will realize a world of peace and harmony by overcoming the barriers that cause conflict and struggle and by serving as living examples of altruistic true love. In addition, I am building “peace embassies” in every nation of the world as bases for our peace movement and our service movement, and as educational centers to teach and accomplish the vision and wisdom that IIFWP advocates.

I earnestly implore you to re-create your families and nations through true love. I hope you will support and help to accomplish the vision of the Interreligious and International Federation for World Peace, which is working so hard to establish the true, everlasting world of peace that God desires, a world without divisions between nations.

I now conclude my address, with the hope that this conference has provided you with productive and inspiring experiences that will lead to the world of peace being realized even sooner.

Thank you.

God’s Homeland and the Peace Kingdom

January 27, 2004

Jamshil Indoor Gymnasium, Seoul, Korea

Commemoration of True Parents’ Birthday

Respected current and former heads of state, distinguished world leaders, ladies and gentlemen: I would like to convey deep appreciation for your many expressions of congratulations on this occasion of my birthday, which is also my wife’s birthday. However this is not for us; I would like to offer all glory to God, who has protected us until today.

Early in our lives God called us, and we have devoted our entire lives to fulfilling His will. Therefore I cannot accept your congratulations without including God in this celebration! For my address this evening, I would like to talk about “God’s Homeland and the Peace Kingdom.”

God’s homeland lost through the Fall

Ladies and gentlemen, what kind of world would have been realized if Adam and Eve, the first human ancestors, had not fallen? Adam would have become the patriarch of God’s family, the chief of God’s tribe, and the king of God’s nation. From that ideal of Adam, the world that would have begun would have been Adam’s world, having the tradition, language, culture, and lifestyle of Adam. Both God and Adam would have been able to dwell in that world as their homeland.

Unfortunately, human history began with the Fall of the first human ancestors. Our world was reduced to slavery under the dominion of Satan. It was a world that had nothing to do with God. Humankind was originally meant to establish and live in a peace kingdom for eternity, with God as their True Parent. Instead, the human race enslaved itself to Satan, the source of evil, and has lived in a world ridden with sin and suffering ever since. This has brought immeasurable and constant anguish to God.

Please think about this in the context of your own life. Contrary to the will of the Creator, your mind and body are in constant struggle and conflict. Has there been anyone who has completely unified his or her mind and body? Among the six billion people of this world today, is there anyone who has lived according to the original, ideal mind-body relationship, where the body is in complete submission to the mind? What about the societies and nations of today’s world? From the conflict and selfishness rooted in the individual’s mind and body come the barriers that have transformed societies and nations into impregnable fortresses.

Human beings were supposed to live as one family of brothers and sisters, yet we see interracial strife. It is a crucial problem threatening world peace. Each religion began with a mission to revive human spirituality, thereby accomplishing the will of God by bringing humankind back to Him. However, religions abandoned their original mission and became mired in the swamps of prejudice and conflict. This escalated to the point where we see religions being misused as tools for bloodshed and war.

The original mind of humankind leads to the world of peace

Where does our original mind lead us? In the core of our heart, do we desire to live oppressed within the walls and boundaries that surround us? Certainly not! The world that we desire is a place where there are no artificial barriers or boundaries. It is a world of freedom and peace. All people long for that original homeland. It is the homeland that God has sought to establish for thousands of years. It is the homeland that humankind has longed for throughout history. Of course, when we talk about a homeland, a particular nation may come to mind, yet we cannot compare any nation of today’s world to the original homeland.

To establish a nation there needs to be sovereignty, people and territory. History records the rise and fall of nations and countless transitions of sovereignties, accompanied by the sacrifice of a great many lives. Among them were countless martyrs who died in the hope that the original homeland would someday appear. The homeland these people longed for does not refer to the United States, or Korea, or any other nation. The original homeland is not a place based on democracy or communism. In it there is no need for any religion. It is a world that does not commit the folly of measuring the value of a person by the color of his or her skin. It does not allow any form of artificial boundary or national border, including the barrier that divides the mind and body within each individual. These barriers bring pain to everyone.

Ladies and gentlemen, the planet earth is our home, and the entire globe is the homeland that humanity is longing for. For tens of thousands of years, God has longed for this homeland. Humankind has the responsibility to establish a global nation congruent with God’s values, as well as to banish evil from this earth by judging Satan, who has been the archenemy in front of heaven. This is how we will build the heavenly kingdom of peace on earth, on the foundation of goodness. Please remember always that this has been God’s desire, Jesus’ desire, and the desire of our ancestors who walked the path of martyrdom in the course of God’s providence.

True lineage and true love lead to the ideal

The ideal world is not created automatically. Nobody can build it by just wishing it into existence. It is impossible to attain unless we, the offspring of the Fall of the first human ancestors, receive a new lineage through the marriage Blessing and practice a life of true love.

What is a life of true love? In essence, it is living for the sake of others. It is living for the sake of others before you even think about the other doing something for you. It is a life of giving to others and dismissing the thought that you ever gave. It is not giving in hopes of receiving something in return. It is a life where you give and give, so much that you will never regret that you didn’t give more. Even as you give, you bow your head in humility. Thus, Jesus said, “Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.” (John 15:13) He also said, “For whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.” (Matt. 23:12) Even our almighty Creator, God, does not engage in creation and destruction at whim. He abides by the principles of creation that He Himself established.

For this reason I have been conducting the marriage Blessing providence throughout the past several decades. Due to the Fall of the first ancestors, humankind inherited false life, false love and false lineage, and had no choice but to live a false life. Therefore my wife and I began our God-given mission as the True Parents. Throughout our lives we have walked a lonely path to carry out this heavenly decree to eliminate Satan, the devil, through the marriage Blessing providence and, as the True Parents, to bequeath true life, true love, and the true lineage to humanity.

We discovered that God by Himself could not reverse the false blood lineage, because the false parents planted it. Having fulfilled all the necessary indemnity conditions, my wife and I stand victoriously as the True Parents. We have been expanding the true lineage by separating humanity from the lineage of the false olive tree and engrafting them to the true olive tree. A false olive tree will remain a false olive tree, even if a thousand years pass; the lineage can change only when it is engrafted to the true olive tree.

Ladies and gentlemen, the bright age of Heaven is dawning. Please receive my message with hope. The history of the marriage Blessing began with just three couples in 1960 and has now reached 400 million couples around the world. Furthermore, there are more than 120 billion blessed couples living in the spirit world. The field of the true olive tree has now overwhelmed the field of the wild olive trees. All these blessed families are united in living for the sake of others. The life of these true olive trees, embodying the true lineage, is now quickly spreading throughout the entire world. They will realize God’s homeland and peace kingdom. It will be a nation full of joy and happiness, a global nation of freedom and equality without walls or national borders.

Building the kingdom of peace under the banner of the Peace UN

To fulfill this heavenly providence, on October 3, 2003, I founded the Peace UN in New York City to develop initiatives that will revolutionize heaven and earth. We are building God’s homeland, our homeland, by educating all six billion people on this planet, giving them the marriage Blessing, and making them see the entire globe as their home and our home.

Our goal is set. The flag of the Peace UN is already waving high. Shouts of victory are erupting across the world. Victories are being won in America, Europe, Israel, Palestine, Japan and Korea. Nothing is impossible with God, and the numerous martyrs, patriots, saints and sages in spirit world who are with us.

It is said that those who have faith will be blessed. On this significant day, I would like to ask you to engrave this message deep in your heart. I pray that you may receive the grace of the marriage Blessing and create a great revolution of lineage. I sincerely hope that you will become brave soldiers of Heaven, courageously standing on the front line of God’s providence in order to build God’s homeland on this earth, so that the peace kingdom may prosper for all eternity. Thank you very much.

Fifty Years on the Providential Path to Realize God’s Homeland and the Peace Kingdom

April 30, 2004

Marriott Hotel, Seoul, Korea

Banquet on the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Founding of the

Family Federation for World Peace and Unification

(Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity)

Respected guests, distinguished leaders from 191 nations, ladies and gentlemen, and beloved members:

Fifty years ago on this memorable day, May 1, 1954, as I walked the path of upholding God’s Will, I founded the official organization of the Unification movement. The path I pioneered for half a century is a path no one has really understood. God alone has been my driving force as I walked a lonely path of persecution and suffering, stained with my blood, sweat and tears.

The Unification movement 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 nor my responsibility in this time and going into the future. The motivating force behind the Unification movement is God. On this significant occasion today, I would like to reveal the fundamental purpose that God had in its inception, its destination and its goal.

The Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity (HSA-UWC) was not created as another denomination or sect. I am fully aware that God never desired it to be so. Fifty years ago, the Unification movement began as the Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity; in other words, it began as an association with the purpose of creating unity. Selecting this name, which signifies the unity of global Christianity, the unity of religions, and unity of the spirit world, was fraught with risk. 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, some of which are in conflict with one another even today. Under these circumstances, unifying Christianity is no easy task. Unifying religions and, further, unifying the spirit world, are even greater tasks.

The concept of unity that I set forth does not just denote superficial unity or unity merely in form. It denotes fundamental and complete harmony and unity according to God’s ideal.

First, this is achieved through the work of the Spirit. The unity among religions and unity in the spirit world cannot be achieved by force or authority, or by any other external condition. The power of mobilizing the Spirit lies in God and the spirit world, but it can only be utilized when we lay the foundation that allows God to work on earth and when we meet the conditions sought by the saints in heaven. However, the actual power to spur good spirits into action lies with God and the spirit world.

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

Throughout my life, I have been promoting the Unification movement, which supports God and the spirit world. It is supporting God’s spiritual work on earth to achieve unity between mind and body, unity among people, unity between the spiritual and physical worlds, and unity between God and human beings.

Second, unity is achieved through truth and love. I have revealed that the relationship between God and humanity is that of a Parent and child bound by true love. I have also revealed the fundamental principles of life and of the universe, the true nature of original sin, the principles of restoration, the truth of the spirit world, and the history of God’s providence.

In my life, I taught about true love and put it into practice. True love is investing oneself for the sake of others. In true love, I cease worrying about whether others recognize my own good qualities, and instead I focus on drawing out the best qualities of those whom I love. By investing and investing again in my object partner, he or she will become greater than I am. True love means investing, forgetting that I have invested, and continuing to invest still more. It means sacrificing all of my interests and even my status. Genuine unity can only be achieved when I give them up. Therefore, the greatest obstacle to achieving unity is a self-centered mind.

For the past fifty years, I totally gave of myself as an individual. I sacrificed my family, my clan, and my nation. To better devote myself for the sake of the world and all humanity, I have offered the Unification Church. Even now I am investing tirelessly. All of this has been to achieve the ideal that God intended at the time of the Creation, which is to achieve complete harmony and unity based on true love.

God’s desire for us is that we live in ideal oneness with Him through love. The lofty vision that humanity longs for, of freedom, peace and happiness, is possible only when we achieve harmony and unity within true love. The Unification movement is the movement to spread true love to the whole world.

God, the invisible True Parent, created us, as well as everything else in existence, in order to establish His object partners of true love. In particular, we, who were created to be God’s children, are the beings most precious to the heavenly True Parent, who is the Subject Partner of absolute love. Our first ancestors were to be the invisible God’s body and holy temple, and the substantial object partners of God’s true love.

Originally, Adam and Eve were to mature into people whose character manifested true love based on God’s true love. They were to become a true couple and multiply true children in order to become true parents. If they had done so, they would have completed themselves as the substantial entities of God’s true love, true life and true lineage. If Adam, Eve and their children had completed 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 humankind would have settled throughout the earth.

An attribute of true love is that it compels those who experience it to invest more in their object partner of love than in themselves. People were created as the object partners of God’s love; therefore, the very idea that they might sin and suffer in hell was unthinkable to God. It was entirely the result of our first ancestors acting against the nature of true love and falling.

Our first ancestors were expelled from the original world and 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 need salvation.

Salvation means recovering one’s original state, that is, restoration. It means returning to the original state before the Fall and restoring the relationship with God that was lost. Fallen human beings 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 an educational institute to remake dysfunctional human beings and return them to their 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 God’s children. It is impossible for God to be contained within the limited doctrines and rituals established by religion. The mission of religion is to cultivate our character through a life of faith that embraces both 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 need to attach greater importance to educating and training individuals to perfect their character than they do to merely bringing people to their faith through witnessing and sermons. Humanity 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 human beings. It was to have been a relationship of true parent and true child living 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 God had prepared for me. Unfortunately, due to ignorance, self-righteousness and denominationalism, God’s central providence could not advance. Instead it met with persecution. Under these circumstances, I was compelled to establish the Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity. As I had no desire to establish 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 is the original world that He envisaged at the time of the creation. This 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. This is to realize the original realm of love, the four-position foundation ideal. To accomplish this transcends the mission of any one church or denomination; it means perfecting the family ideal of true love. Yet the focus of churches and religions 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 Blessing Ceremony of marriage, through which people receive the blessing of God’s true love. Because our fallen ancestors failed to achieve the ideal of true parenthood, we their fallen descendants on our own cannot attain it. It is only possible through the Savior sent by God, because the Savior is the True Parents, the true ancestors who can replace the fallen ancestors. Fallen men and women can be likened to wild olive trees that multiplied the false lineage that they received from the first ancestors, which has no relationship to God. Engrafting into the True Parents, who come as the true olive tree, restores fallen men and women. The ceremony for this is the Blessing Ceremony of marriage.

On the foundation of pure love education and the true family movement worldwide, I inaugurated the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification on July 31, 1996, in Washington DC, the capital of the United States of America. Four thousand 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 has begun in which families may receive salvation that transcends the boundaries of religion, nationality and race.

The Old Testament Age and New Testament Age were not ages for realizing the ideal family. Those ages belonged to the providential age for the salvation of the individual. Then 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 inheritance of fallen humanity, 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 particular religion. God transcends religion. Heaven is the place where people who have regained the parent-child relationship of true love with God, attend God and are intoxicated in God’s true love. People who receive the Blessing, create families of true love, and live in attendance to God can enter heaven along with their clans and nations.

Throughout history, people have sought and cried out for their own liberation and salvation. What about God? Is God not in need of liberation? Does God exist intoxicated in joy? Was it possible for God’s heart to be filled with the joy of liberation when, as the Parent, God had to watch His children groaning in sin and suffering throughout history? That was never possible. God’s heart can be liberated and 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 released through a family life of true love. In turn, the creation, and further, the spirit world, can be liberated and completely released through us.

Heaven can be likened to a palace of true love. There, we as God’s children, who live centered on the living God the origin of true love, can share joy with God and respond to God’s 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 religion, race and nation.

Respected leaders and beloved members, throughout history, humankind has dreamed of heaven, an ideal world, yet what is the reality that we see today? Society today has become the kingdom of free sex and individualism amid family breakdown and the loss of values. In such an environment based on fallen human beings, it is impossible to have the correct view of life and values, let alone a correct view of the world and the universe. We therefore cannot hope to create or perfect harmony, either within the individual or as a whole.

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

At the same time, others built a system that placed democracy and freedom as the highest values and ideals. It was based on a dream, but what was the result? This system spurred individualistic, 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. Others have promoted the North Korean Juche ideology, which dehumanizes people and drives them to become like animals. There are also those calling for globalization, however those who promote it often have a self-centered perspective. All these have failed to establish the absolute, vertical values that God desires. Hence, people now struggle horizontally, beset by confusion and conflict among relative values.

Overall, 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 are a direct result of people having estranged themselves from God, the True Parent, throughout their long history. The most urgent task for people in the present age, who wander about unable to escape unhappiness and suffering, is to seek out and come to know God, to understand original sin and to know the spirit world. An individual alone cannot achieve the ideal of happiness. It is possible only when he or she establishes the proper relationship within the family, tribe, people, nation, world, and cosmos, and with 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 based on humanistic thought. It will be a world based on “Godism,” the teaching of our Heavenly Parent, in which we attend God as King. Thus, the age of “True Parentism” is dawning—the age of true love. The age of nationalism has passed. Even a superpower nation cannot exist on its own. The age of unilateralism has also passed. A new age is dawning, when conflict will disappear and we will live together harmoniously, beyond nation, religion and race.

The core of this coming world will be true love; in other words, investing for the sake of others. Those nations that go against this heavenly law and persist in self-centered policies with the aim of enriching their own selves will gradually lose influence and perish in the end. In the future, religions will be the first to take down their banners, ahead of the political realm and secular worlds, and take the lead in practicing true love and compassion. All religions need to reconcile and cooperate on an interreligious level to promote the reconciliation and unity of nations and races. They need to have the heart of God 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.

The Interreligious and International Federation for World Peace was inaugurated in February 1999 as an integrated organization, and through this organization I expanded my endeavors for reconciliation between the faiths. These endeavors have spanned many years. Leaders in different fields, such as politics, economics, education, the arts and nongovernmental organizations, have participated in this effort. More than fifty thousand ambassadors for peace have been appointed in 191 nations of the world. 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 world 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, liberating God as the eternal King, and the King of all kings. Based on 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 when 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.

The third stage of 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. The entire world is scrutinizing my activities, including the movement for peace and unity between North and South Korea, the UN revival movement or new Peace UN movement, and the peace movement of the fifty thousand 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 surge of interest in and awareness of spiritual phenomena. This will enable us to experience remarkable works from the spirit world that will change the course of history.

Second, along with these spiritual experiences, 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 arise out of 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 limited by national, racial or religious boundaries. A remarkable change will come, whereby all people will live for the sake of each other and feel that they are all brothers, sisters and neighbors living together.

These are all the providential works of the living God. God is developing people’s spirituality and on this foundation is establishing families of true love. On the basis of these families, God is working to create an ideal world of genuine and everlasting peace.

The time has truly come for us to build the ideal world that people long for in their original minds. The time has come for us to build God’s homeland and the peace kingdom, where we can attend God, who is the basis of true love and the king of absolute values. In this time of tremendous heavenly fortune, I sincerely ask that you become builders of the peace kingdom in accordance with the ways of Heaven.

I pray that God’s blessing will be upon you, your families and your nations.

Thank you.

God’s Homeland and the Peace Kingdom Are Built on the Foundation of the Realm of His Liberation and Complete Freedom

May 1, 2004

Sun Moon University, Asan, Korea

Celebration of the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Founding of the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification (and HSA-UWC)

Respected current and former heads of state, distinguished guests from around the world, leaders from all fields of Korean society: I am sincerely grateful that such a large number of you have taken time from your busy schedules to attend today’s event.

It seems only yesterday that, on May 1, 1954, in a humble dwelling known as the “three-door house” in Seoul’s Buk-hak Dong, a few disciples and I put up a signboard that read “Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity,” and offered a most serious prayer to Heaven. Today, this association has become the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification, which continues its steady development and has mission headquarters in 191 countries. How could anyone describe this as anything other than a miracle of Heaven?

I received God’s call when I was a vibrant, sixteen-year-old youth, and started out on this path of Heaven with unbending determination. It has been a path of indescribable pain and suffering. At the pinnacle of each indemnity offering I had to make sacrifices, for which I shed blood, sweat and tears. It was the path of a lonely man. I had to swallow my bloody tears of desperation and conceal them deep within me in order to comfort the heart of God, even as God was grieving over the tragic situation of the Son He had sent forth.

I have devoted my life of more than eighty years teaching the truth that I received from Heaven. To encapsulate what I have been teaching, I would like to speak today on the topic “God’s Homeland and the Peace Kingdom Are Built on the Foundation of the Realm of His Liberation and Complete Freedom.”

We should clearly know about God and the spirit world Distinguished guests, everything I have taught can be summed up in one point above all else. It is that we must know God and the spirit world with certainty. It is not enough to have a vague concept of God in our heads, like the mathematical formulas that we once memorized. Rather, we need to carve His existence into our hearts, even into our bones. We have to know God’s attributes and His relationship with us. We need to know about the ideal world that He desired in the beginning, and when that world will be brought about. We need to have the same degree of knowledge about the spirit world. The world after death definitely exists, independent of our will, and we need to have accurate knowledge of it, if we are to use our time in this world to prepare thoroughly for the next.

Ladies and gentlemen, please quietly place your hand on your heart and think seriously. If everyone truly knew that God exists and always lived in attendance to Him, what would prevent us from solving the problems in today’s world? I now declare to you very bluntly: God exists and He is our Parent. He is alive and carries out His work in each person’s life.

He exists without form. If you think of Him in terms of magnitude, He is infinitely large, however if you think of Him in terms of precision, He is also infinitely small. Every person has a mind, yet can anyone locate the mind with confidence and certainty? Energy clearly exists and sustains life, although energy is invisible. Likewise, God absolutely exists and is eternal, unchanging and unique. However, He cannot be seen with the human eye, which is part of the human physical body. Because God is the original body of energy, we will not be able to see Him even in the spirit world.

This is why we say that God is omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent. Because He has no form, nothing can prevent Him from going anywhere He pleases in the world of existence. He can pass right through your body without your feeling anything. He can step on you as He passes by while you doze off, and you would not know it.

Think of how convenient that is. What would you do if God were to appear and involve Himself in every little detail of your life? If you had to live with God visible to your eyes, what would you do? You probably would not last a single day before having a nervous breakdown. While you sit here, you cannot see the incredible amount of air that is passing through your body as you breathe in and out. So how could you possibly know how God, who is formless, passes through you as He carries out His work? Rather than foolishly saying, “Show me God and I will believe,” we need to be grateful that God is invisible to our eyes.

Leaders from around the world, do you have love? Do you have life? Do you have a lineage and a conscience? Have you ever seen love? Can you say that you have seen life, lineage or conscience? You clearly know that they exist, but you have to acknowledge that you cannot feel or see them. You know them only because you sense them with your mind. A similar logic applies to the question of whether God exists, or whether a person has or has not seen God. No one can say that because they have not seen God, He does not exist.

When God enters a person’s mind, the mind knows it. When the omniscient and omnipotent God is with you, if you call for saints who died thousands of years ago to come to you, you will be able to clearly see them, even if they are sitting behind a thick wall. When the eternal God enters your heart, such things are possible. Eternity cannot be grasped in the context of time, yet time exists within eternity.

God lost through the Fall

The universe in which we live is shrouded in mystery. The observable universe is estimated to be tens of billions of light-years across. A light-year is the distance light travels in a year at a speed so fast that it can go around the Earth about seven and a half times in a second. Then try to imagine the nature and personality of God, who created the universe and manages it. How large would He have to be, and how heavy? God is the great King of wisdom. By existing without form, He can go anywhere in the universe instantaneously, even entering the eye of a needle.

When we search within ourselves for the best place to receive God, our greatest treasure, the natural conclusion is that our heart is the only appropriate place. No other place can be safer or more comfortable for Him. Our heart can stand in the position of God’s object partner and exist for eternity by engaging in spherical give-and-take action. This is the reason why we can have eternal life.

If the first human ancestors had not committed the Fall, we would have been born from parents possessing an original nature of goodness. Then there would be no argument about whether or not God exists. We would know God’s existence naturally from the time we were born. An infant does not learn how to suckle its mother’s breast while it is in the womb, although it naturally knows how to do so as soon as it is born. Likewise, people born into a world where the human Fall had not occurred would naturally attend God as their Father throughout their lives.

When God created Adam and Eve as the first human ancestors, He wanted to establish them as substantial embodiments of Himself. So He placed His masculine nature in the mind of Adam and His feminine nature in the mind of Eve, intending to keep them there for eternity. This did not mean that God was divided into two. Instead, while residing in the minds of Adam and Eve, He would have existed as a harmonized being of dual characteristics and as a unified being whose love would be in the central position.

As a result of the human Fall, however, humanity lost everything. We fell into a false world. We appear to have sight, but in fact we are blind, not even knowing if God exists. What could be more tragic in the history of humankind? If Adam and Eve, created in the image of God, had grown to maturity without falling, achieved perfection, and acquired the position of the parents of humankind, all people would have been able to recognize the reality of God’s existence through Adam and Eve. It would have been impossible even to imagine people arguing with one another, saying, “God exists” or “No, He does not.” God would have lived with us and shared our emotions for eternity as the Parent of humankind. He would have been the center of our lives and the root of our existence.

We can truly know God only when we feel Him in our hearts and understand the reality of His existence in the course of our daily life. We can know God’s existence through experience. When we know the reality of God’s existence directly from experiencing Him in our daily lives, we will be able to sense God’s Will naturally from moment to moment. We will act in accordance with His Will without being told to do so. We will become people who cannot sin even if we wanted to.

God, who is formless, intended to take on substantial form through human beings. They would have the character and stature of owners who would exercise dominion over all of creation, both in this world, the world of forms, and in the spirit world. This is why our highest priority in life is to know God with certainty.

The world God desires to see

Ladies and gentlemen, let us think for a moment about human life. We spend the first phase of our lifetime in our mother’s womb. The time we spend there, as a fetus, is a period of waterborne life, bathed in amniotic fluid. Although we cannot speak or move about freely, it does not mean that our term in the womb is not part of our life. During this period, we clearly possess life given to us by Heaven, and we prepare for life on earth, which is the next phase. Even though we don’t breathe through our nose, it does not mean that we are not alive.

The human fetus in the womb cannot imagine what life will be like in the next phase, when it is on earth. It cannot imagine a world outside its mother’s womb. It cannot imagine not receiving all its nourishment from its mother through the umbilical cord. Yet when the time comes, our life in the womb comes to a close and we begin life on earth. Whether we like it or not, this happens in accordance with the laws of the universe. Then, a vast new world that we could never have imagined appears before us.

Once our waterborne life ends and our new life on earth begins, the months of life in the womb transition into an earthly life of about one hundred years. We then live in a wide variety of unique ways and prepare for the final phase of our existence, namely, in the spirit world, the world after death. A world that is eternal and endless awaits us; however we who live in a physical body are no more capable of imagining life in the spirit world than we were of imagining life on earth when we lived in the womb.

Prepare in advance for life in the spirit world

Our life of about one hundred years on earth will transition into an eternal world that transcends time and space. In the womb, we received nourishment from our mother through the umbilical cord, and during our time on earth we receive the basic nutrients of food, water, air and sunlight. Once we enter the spirit world, however, we will no longer need physical nourishment. Instead, we will breathe love as we live eternally.

So human beings, without exception, live through three stages: about ten months in the womb, about one hundred years on earth, and an eternity in the spirit world. This is not something we do by our own choice. It is a blessing and grace given by Heaven. What blessing and grace could be greater than this?

When I say you need to know the spirit world well, it is not enough to live with a vague faith in the existence of the spirit world. We have to know how to prepare for life in the spirit world, where we will live eternally, while we live on earth, and our preparation should be thorough. If a child develops a problem while in the womb, it may spend its entire life after birth in poor health. So too, if we do not recognize Heaven’s Will during our short life on earth, and commit sins or perform evil deeds, we will eventually pay the price in the spirit world according to the principle of cause and effect. It means in the spirit world that our spirit self will have to suffer indescribable pain and be subject to indemnity.

Once the physical body has been shed, it will be too late. When the physical body dies, it returns to earth as a handful of dirt. However do you think that our life, our mind, our heart, and our hopes are also buried? That is absolutely not the case. Our life of about a hundred years is recorded, photographed and automatically evaluated without fail in our God-given personal computer, called the spirit self. This is why all of us, during our life on earth, stop and check ourselves again and again, asking our unsettled mind and heart, “Where am I going?”

Saints, sages and spiritual masters spent their entire lives wrestling with such issues. None of them, however, were able to present clear answers. It is true that their teachings have remained with us, allowing religions to form and sacred texts to be published that guide the lives of masses of people. It is also true, though, that we still lack the ability to have dominion over our own mind.

I have revealed the truth about true love

I have toured the world hundreds of times to declare Heaven’s truth and educate people. No matter where I go in the world or what kind of audience I face, I always ask one question. I issue a challenge, saying, “If there is anyone here whose mind and body are not in discord, please raise your hand.” So far no one anywhere has dared to raise a hand.

What does this tell us? It means that we are still slaves to the fallen nature we inherited from our first ancestors, Adam and Eve. We have not yet escaped that yoke. This is evidenced by the confessions of saints and sages, who spent their lives in fasting, practiced abstinence, and persevered on their paths despite incredible suffering. Their confessions that they could not root out the desires of the flesh before they had to leave this world remain as pitiful cries to their disciples, who nonetheless insist on following in their footsteps. The saints and sages are now declaring with one voice that I have brought for the first time from Heaven the truth of true love that they could not grasp, and that their followers and descendants on earth need to follow my teachings absolutely and practice them.

We are receiving a flood of messages from people in the spirit world who regret that they could not meet me while they were on earth and attend me as the Savior, Messiah, Returning Lord, and True Parent during their lives. The resolutions they adopted in the spirit world now echo around the world. In the near future, all religious people will begin to receive revelations directly from the founders of their religions, and there will be a great migration of people who will be guided to attend me as the True Parent. They will gather as the clouds to learn from me the truth about true love that will enable them to unite their minds and bodies. Once they learn the way of the true family, they will with one accord sing praises of eternal happiness, parents and children together as one great family in heaven and on earth.

The world’s communists who insisted there is no God and passed away as sacrifices for the cause of materialism, the world’s intellectuals and journalists who commanded an entire generation, and even dictators and emperors, who brandished the sword of absolute power at the cost of countless lives, have shed tears of repentance before me. Through their messages and resolutions from the spirit world, they begged for forgiveness.

If you still cannot believe with certainty the reality of the spirit world, you may not be sure about whether to believe these messages. To you I say, “When you pass on to the spirit world you will see for yourself!” However, once you go down that path you can never return, no matter how much you may beat the ground in lamentation. Once in the spirit world, a person cannot do anything on his own about the sins he committed while on earth. So your ancestors are now observing your life in tears, waiting for opportunities to help you in ways that indemnify their sins. I am telling you clearly that thousands, even tens of thousands, of your ancestors’ eyes are watching your every step and action, sometimes with tears of heartbreak and at other times with joy. Is there anyone who still cannot believe in the reality of the spirit world?

Oneness with God in heart, body and mindset

Distinguished guests, once we come to know God with certainty and know spirit world not just in concept but also in reality, our life can move forward as smoothly as a car on an expressway. Just as the car will reach its destination safely if the driver follows the rules of the road, keeps his hands on the steering wheel and doesn’t fall asleep, so too we must align our life with the direction of our conscience, which is given by Heaven. This is how our mind and body can unite, and how our character can blossom to reach perfection and bear fruit. Going deep into the mountains will not perfect one’s character, and extensive reading of the sacred texts and philosophy books that line library shelves will not unite one’s mind and body.

God is the great King of Wisdom. He did not place the path to perfection in some far-off place. Rather, He placed it where it is closest to us, in the place that is most private and safe. He prepared and placed that path within our conscience.

Ladies and gentlemen, your conscience is your master. It is your teacher. It stands in the position of your parents. Your conscience is the first to know everything about you. Your conscience knows all your thoughts. It knows them before your teacher, your parents or even God knows them. Think about how much advice your conscience gives you throughout your lifetime. Day and night, every time you have an evil thought, it scolds you, saying, “That’s not right!” It never grows tired as it works constantly to lead you over rivers and mountains.

The conscience always stands as the true master, protecting you and trying to help you. Yet, how often have you gone against your own conscience? What will you do about your body, which thoroughly mistreats this precious, irreplaceable teacher that the universe bequeathed to you? Your conscience was given to represent the Parent who makes it possible for you to inherit original love. Do you intend to idle your life away, embracing only your physical body, enslaved by its desires, and allowing it to trample the conscience mercilessly?

That is why I, too, as I began to pioneer the way of truth, set as my slogan, “Before I seek to rule the universe, I must first rule myself” I discovered that there is only one way to resolve the conflict between mind and body, and that is the way of true love. Unity between mind and body can be achieved only when the body sacrifices itself for the sake of the mind time and again, by living for the sake of others with true love.

When you follow the path indicated by your conscience, your mind will come to embrace the universe. When this happens, you will be able to communicate with your heart. Whenever you start to do something, your conscience will immediately show you the effects of that action. This experience proves that God resides within your heart.

The person who achieves this enters the state of oneness with God in heart, body and mindset. He or she will live in a unified, harmonious world. This is the ideal world, the kingdom of heaven on earth that God desired in the beginning when He created Adam and Eve:

A life for the liberation of God and humankind

Respected guests, it is now more than eighty years since I began my search for such incredible secrets of Heaven and began to walk the path to lead humanity. It has been a lonely and pitiful path, as I pushed my way through suffering and overcame unprecedented difficulties that no one will ever repeat in the future. That path taught me the reality of the omnipresent God.

All of the six billon people in the world are blind. Although they appear normal, they cannot see even an inch in front of themselves. Despite their blindness, philosophers and theologians have pretended as if they could elucidate Heaven’s truth, and this has brought grief to God throughout history. The providence of restoration, which sought people who would live for the sake of God and have compassion for God, never even got off the ground.

I cannot count the days I spent in tears and lamentation after I came to know the world of God’s inner heart. Who could even dare to imagine God as being grief-stricken? He created the first human ancestors as His children and tried to place them in the position of His eternal object partners of true love. However, they committed the Fall. Since then, He has been carrying out His providence of restoration for thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of years. After the Fall God was sorrowful and mortified. Anger exploded within Him. His heart overflowed with grief as He walked this course.

God is the Father and glorious King, but the enemy Satan stole His throne and usurped His position as Parent. Although He is clearly alive and carrying out His providence, people say “He is dead,” and mock and mistreat Him. Still, He has persevered on the path with patient endurance, waiting for the day when people themselves would understand the truth. Please understand that God conducts His providence on a foundation of true love, which involves living for the sake of others, continually for eternity.

For that reason, He did not just annihilate the universe and begin again after witnessing His children descend into the bottomless pit that they dug as a result of the Fall. With the power of His omniscience and omnipotence, God could have judged the world and Satan at once, smashing them to pieces. Though He has this power, He has chosen until now to absorb all the contempt and accusation. He has placed Himself in a prison-like environment, because He is our Father.

The course of self-sacrifice to teach all humankind

Ladies and gentlemen, have you spent even one day before God our Father, shedding tears of sincere sympathy and repentance? Can you stand before God and close your eyes, to avoid seeing Him as He bites His tongue and endures humankind who inherited the lineage of Satan and became his tool? Can you ignore God’s impatience, as He waits for the day of His liberation and complete release?

For this reason, my life has been more serious than any other in history. In walking this fateful course of restoration through indemnity, I had to go the way of perfecting my character to stand as the lord of judgment, determine the sin of Satan, and judge him. I had to say goodbye to four of my young children, whom I loved deeply, as they went to the spirit world, and I had to watch as my remaining children struggled in the wilderness.

I stand before you as one who has received Heaven’s appointment as Savior and True Parent for the sake of liberating and releasing God and, on that foundation, liberating and releasing humankind. I am not here out of a need for money and power, or honor and fame. For more than eighty years, I have lived oblivious to morning or evening, day or night, weathering even the coldest winters and severest snowstorms and rainstorms, in order to move as quickly as I could along the heavenly path. Even in the torture chamber, where my flesh was torn from my body and I vomited blood, I never prayed for God to save me. Instead, my life has been that of a filial son, patriot, saint, and divine son of heaven and earth, shedding tears to comfort God’s heart as He weeps at the sight of the tragic state of His children. I left my parents and homeland behind to follow the straight and narrow path to human salvation, that is, the path of true love that involves living for the sake of others. My life of never compromising and never acting in a cowardly manner may seem incredibly pitiful and bleak from a worldly viewpoint.

No torture or punishment could make me compromise from following the heavenly path. Neither could six imprisonments stand in the way of the True Parent’s search for his children. As I sat in a cold prison cell and watched drops of water fall from an eave, I pledged to myself, “Just as those droplets will eventually bore a hole through a boulder, the day will certainly come when these hot tears that fall from my eyes will melt the heart of God, frozen in grief, and liberate and release Him.” That is how I have lived. It has been a sacrificial course, in which the love that I practiced meant I had to love the enemy more than my own children and offer everything to teach all six billion people in the world.

In following this course, I went to America in the early 1970s and announced, “I have come as a firefighter to extinguish the fire and as a physician to cure the disease.” It is important to understand that, more than thirty years later, humanity has entered a new age. Finally, heavenly fortune is settling on planet Earth. The blood, sweat, and tears that I shed on the course of restoration through indemnity for the sake of human salvation are now beginning to bear fruit.

The fire of true love under God’s direct dominion

In 2001, at the commencement of the twenty-first century, I dedicated the Enthronement Ceremony for God’s Kingship, offering to Him the day of His liberation and complete freedom. This marked the beginning of the opening of the era of God’s direct dominion. On that foundation, the “Coronation of the King of Peace” was held this year on March 23, 2004 in the Dirksen Senate office building of the United States Congress. World leaders of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, and members of the United States Congress, gathered to crown me the King of World Peace. How could this possibly be a result of human efforts alone?

Just as the French prophet Nostradamus had prophesied, and just as the Orient’s greatest book of prophesies, Kyeog Am Yu Rok, clearly recorded, Reverend Moon has come as the one who has received Heaven’s appointment and fulfilled the responsibilities of humanity’s True Parent and the King of Peace. So now, leaders from all walks of life and from all over the world are surging forward in a giant wave to join the ranks of people working to build the peace kingdom on earth. They are acknowledging that peace cannot be achieved without my help. This is true not only on the Korean peninsula, the only place in the world where the conflict between democracy and communism still divides an innocent people and land, it is also true in the Middle East, which has become the most serious and bloody area of conflict threatening world peace.

A true love movement enveloping the entire globe

On April 10 of this year, I declared the complete freedom of the angelic world, the complete freedom of Cain and Abel, and the complete freedom of the Parent of the Cosmos, the Parents of Heaven and Earth, and the Parents of Heaven, Earth and Humankind. I am marking May 1 with the declaration, “God’s homeland and the peace kingdom are built on the foundation of the realm of His liberation and complete freedom.” I am thereby completing many levels of spiritual conditions that are needed for God to exercise His dominion and demonstrate His complete immanence, complete authority, complete power and complete transcendence. Based on God’s liberation and complete freedom, a world of freedom, peace, unity and happiness is spreading across this land. In this respect, there is a special meaning to today’s commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of the establishment of the Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity.

Heavenly fortune is with each of you present here today. Though our time together is short, you can become people of the kingdom of heaven simply by living according to what I have taught you today. First, live with the certainty of God’s existence, to the point that you can feel His presence against your skin. Second, be certain of the reality of the spirit world, and use your life on earth to prepare for your eternal life in the spirit world. Third, live in attendance to your conscience as you would your teacher, your parents, and God.

The flames of true love, fanned by the spring breezes of the twenty-first century, are spreading like wildfire across the earth. International marriages are becoming acceptable among young people belonging to traditionally enemy countries. Just as water, air and light will flow to fill the tiniest crevice, the movement of true love is flowing and covering the planet. Intellectually astute young people are now awaking from their sleep to inherit God’s love, life and lineage and settle in the peace kingdom on earth.

Eminent world leaders, I hope that you, too, will join the ranks of the owners of Cheon II Guk, to “establish His kingdom and His righteousness” (Matt. 6:33) and become a revolutionary army of true love. Please put into practice the truth that true love grows larger the more it is given. Thank you.

Our Mission in the Last Days of Providential History

December 13, 2004

Marriott Wardman Park Hotel, Washington, DC, USA

Coronation of True Parents as the King and Queen of World Peace

Respected leaders from countries around the world representing all religions and nations, let us first gather our hearts together. Let us sincerely offer glory and gratitude to God, the True Parent of all creation and the Lord of true love. Let us make today a day of the greatest value, a day that will be remembered as providing a new foundation for America.

Warning against immorality and self-indulgence

The Cold War held humanity captive to fear and insecurity for half a century. The machinations and duplicity of the communists deceived people of faith and all humankind. That has subsided. We live in a new century. And yet, how secure and happy are we?

Look at the world. Young people, now liberated from the yoke of communism, are enjoying their freedom to such an extent that they are in danger of running pell-mell off the cliff of debauchery. Instead of seeking God’s ideal of creation, they embrace the perspective of selfish individualism and become slaves to free sex. This gives rise to all manner of social evils. Homosexual activists, for example, have hoisted the flag of the gay movement. They advocate marriage between people of the same sex. Put simply, this infuriates Heaven and is an offense to the human race. Imagine, for a moment, a world of same-sex relationships. Humanity would become extinct within two generations.

Those who turn away from Heaven’s Will dig their own graves in the soil of decadence and immorality. The evil of this age has its own punishing consequences, for example AIDS. Even as we sit here, is not this cursed plague infecting thousands, even millions, of innocent people? Is it not casting them onto the path of death?

Another plague, known as divorce, is destroying families and hearts. It is throwing humanity into an unprecedented crisis. Millions of children suddenly find themselves separated from one parent and being raised by a stepfather or stepmother. In some cases, authorities even force these children into foster homes and orphanages. They are not at fault, yet their little hearts are left with scars that will never heal. Who will compensate them for the loss of the parental love that was snatched away?

Then we turn our eyes to the conflict in the Middle East. What began as a struggle between religions is now inflaming the entire world in a crucible of fear over terrorism and murder. Meanwhile, the Korean Peninsula, my homeland, remains tragically divided. Its people still wait with deep longing for the day of its unification. By what means can we possibly save today’s world, where morality and family values have been utterly degraded?

The coming of True Parents

Leaders from around the world, tonight I would like to convey a new message from God to the six billion people living in this age. It is both His commandment and a revelation. The title of this message is “Our Mission in the Last Days of Providential History”

The Fall of Adam and Eve, our first ancestors, imprisoned us within the dungeon of false love, false life and false lineage. We are chained to a history of unfathomable misery and resentment. All people without exception have inherited Satan’s false lineage, with its accumulated sins over a history of thousands and tens of thousands of years. We are trapped by that history, with no choice but to lead checkered lives littered with falsehood and evil. This is humanity’s fate. There is no escape from this predicament, regardless of human effort.

Humanity has longed for the day when someone would save us from our fallen condition. People writhe in agony, engulfed by evil and falsehood, because due to the Fall of the first ancestors everyone is bound to the filthy and dreadful lineage of Satan. Therefore, humanity awaits the coming of the one who is of the lineage of Heaven and has no relation to Satan’s lineage.

This person is the True Parents. They are able to liberate us from Satan’s bondage.

We need to understand that we have Satan as our parent. In biblical terms, we are wild olive trees, separated from the true root. The True Parents are sent as the Savior and Messiah of all humanity with the mission to sever from Satan all the wild olive trees that have been growing for tens of thousands of years and graft them onto the true olive tree. This represents the change of humanity’s lineage. The True Parents come to complete this great revolutionary endeavor on an interreligious and international level.

The True Parents do not appear on someone’s whim, anywhere or at any time. They can come only in the providential Last Days. The term “Last Days” means the moment when the providence of restoration, which Heaven has carried forward throughout history, bears its final fruit. In other words, we meet the era of the True Parents, when humankind can be restored to its original state, only in conjunction with God’s providence.

The providence to save humanity is administered by Heaven, so how can you know at what point you stand in it? Only the True Parents, who come with Heaven’s love, life and lineage, know the providential time. Knowing the providential time, they work in line with it to bring the providence to its conclusion. Only the True Parents come with the authority to govern the spirit world. By this authority they have rallied the founders of the four major religions and myriads of good ancestors in order to take responsibility for your eternal life.

Leaders from around the world! Though you were unaware of it, humankind has entered a new realm of grace. The era of heavenly fortune has arrived. I openly declare to heaven and earth that I have received God’s anointing and have been entrusted with the mission to be humanity’s True Parent. We are now in the Last Days of God’s providence. This is the era of the holy marriage Blessing, by which humanity’s lineage is changed from Satan’s lineage to God’s lineage. Now the Era after the Coming of Heaven is unfolding within the realm inaugurated by the Day of the Victory of the Number Ten Combining Two Halves (Ssang Hab Shib Seungll). In the Era before the Coming of Heaven, those who pursued evil prospered and it was difficult to distinguish right from wrong. Now Heaven no longer has to endure that diseased and disordered world!

Have powerful hope as you live in accordance with the path of Heaven. You can come to resemble God, who is absolute, unique, unchanging and eternal, and have His attributes. Practice a life of living for the sake of others, and you will go through a revolution of character. Following this path will enable us to establish the kingdom of God on earth, that is, the peace kingdom, where we all can live together in harmony. Heaven has longed passionately to see this come to pass.

The mission of homeland liberation

The term “homeland liberation” may sound unfamiliar. You probably think you never lost your homeland, so you have no need to recover it. The homeland to which I refer today, however, is different from the one you usually think of. I refer to the original homeland, the kingdom of God on earth that was lost at the Fall of the first ancestors, Adam and Eve.

What would the world have been like had the Fall not occurred? God would have blessed Adam and Eve in marriage. They would have become the True Parents, producing true, sinless children. This family would have served as the nucleus of the kingdom of God on earth. The children would have formed the realm of God’s third generation. Centering on God, they would have established an eternal kingdom of peace on this earth. Adam and Eve would have become the king and queen of Adam’s tribe, Adam’s people and Adam’s nation, which would have also represented a realm of three generations. Adam’s kingdom would have continued eternally. This would have been humanity’s eternal homeland, the peace kingdom.

Unfortunately, history did not start out like this. The Fall of Adam and Eve orphaned humanity for tens of thousands of years. We lost our homeland and lived like vagabonds, drifting here and there begging for food. Humanity was to have attended God as the vertical True Parent. All the world’s people were to have lived as one family in accordance with the principles of absolute faith, absolute love and absolute obedience. Instead, we find ourselves divided from one another by all manner of barriers of the heart, as well as international boundaries. These were planted by Satan.

What then is the true meaning of homeland liberation? How do we begin to accomplish it? Homeland liberation means to transform this world into a new nation, the true homeland. We will not find this homeland anywhere in today’s world. It emerges through a process of re-creation through love. God’s new homeland has no divisions. It reflects the original creation that bears no relationship to the Fall of humankind. So homeland liberation begins with a life of true love in which we love even our enemies.

If we sow soybeans, we will harvest soybeans, and if we sow red beans, we will harvest red beans. If we sow revenge, which is Satan’s seed, we will harvest an evil fruit, more bloodshed. On the other hand, wherever we sow true love by forgiving and embracing our enemies, trees of goodness will grow. This is the law of the universe, and it never fails.

We find humanity’s true .homeland, the homeland of the true God, through the path of loving our enemies. This path begins with loving our individual enemies and extends to loving our family’s enemies, our tribe’s enemies, our nation’s enemies and the world’s enemies. This is how we establish the tradition of true love, true life and true lineage.

As world leaders, what do you consider your mission? As long as Satan’s sovereignty dominates the world, you do not really have a country. I know there are some two hundred nations in the world, but has even one nation brought God’s Will into reality? Is even one of them a true homeland for God and humanity? The world’s six billion people, through no fault of their own, were born as Satan’s descendants, carrying the false lineage. Irrespective of whether you are citizens of the United States, Japan or any other nation, Satan’s love, Satan’s life and Satan’s impure blood still flow in your body. Unless you remove this stained legacy of the Fall from yourself, you will never realize the dream of homeland liberation. For this, you each need to experience a revolution of character, a true-love revolution.

The three great revolutions of true love

How can we accomplish a revolution of character and come to resemble God? Because we descended from the Fall and are born with fallen nature, each of us needs to go through three great revolutions in order to accomplish the perfection of our character. I call these 1) the revolution through making atonement, 2) the revolution of conscience and 3) the revolution of heart.

The revolution through making atonement means to recover your internal and external right of ownership of true love by completely atoning for the past. After you have done this successfully, you then should live by a standard beyond that requiring any atonement. For this you must purge yourself completely of all the habits and thoughts accumulated during the Age before the Coming of Heaven. It is completed when you accomplish it in your individual realm, family realm and national realm.

On this basis, you can create and perfect an ideal family, a family of true love based upon the absolute values that are the standard for life in the Era after the Coming of Heaven. In God’s family ideal, people perfect these absolute values through the varieties of love in a family, in the relationships between husband and wife, parents and children, and among siblings.

A husband and wife stand in the position of owners of true parental love only after the birth of their children. A man is able to own true conjugal love only after marrying and cherishing his wife. Similarly, the older sibling is capable of owning true sibling love only because of the presence of a younger sibling. Thus in any relationship, it is the object partner who makes the subject partner an owner of true love. To be an owner, the subject partner needs to live for the sake of the object partner, invest in that person with no thought of recouping that investment, and sacrifice for the sake of a greater purpose. This is how we create absolute values that are eternal and unchanging. In this way, parents and children, husband and wife, and siblings bring each other to perfection as owners of true love. By forming these realms of love in the family, the family can settle into an eternal realm of unity. They live according to absolute values, in interdependence and eternal communion with God.

Also, each of us needs to take the revolutionary step of returning all our property and ownership rights to Heaven. Give up your lingering attachments. This cuts all your ties with Satan’s world and separates you from Satan. In exchange, you will inherit all those things and more with Heaven’s blessing. In other words, God will grant you ownership of Heaven’s abundance, abundant wealth that is now separated from Satan and over which Satan can never again claim ownership.

Second, what is the revolution of conscience? It is an inner revolution by which you become absolutely obedient to your conscience. You cannot deny that you endure an unending struggle within yourself. Your conscience, which tends toward goodness, struggles against the desires of the flesh. To bring an end to this shameful inner conflict, you need to clearly understand the conscience and its function.

Your conscience possesses a detailed awareness of your every action, every step and every thought. It knows about these even before your teacher knows. It knows even before your parents know. It knows virtually before God knows. And it tells you the right action to take in every instance.

What results from violation of the conscience? You feel guilt. Dust settles on your soul; it becomes filthy and scarred. The scars on your soul cannot be removed for eternity. They are fearful defects you take with you when you enter the spirit world. Therefore I strongly implore you to work in a revolutionary way to overcome your physical desires, accept the guidance of your conscience and live in oneness with Heaven’s Will. Treasure the unblemished, clean and pure state of your soul.

What is the third revolution, the revolution of heart? God created human beings as His children. What is the tie that binds you and God together? It is the true love and true heart that exist between a parent and child. If a parent and child do not communicate with true heart, how can they possibly maintain a relationship of true love and true respect?

We have lived for thousands of years within the realm of the Fall. Our hearts continue to be enslaved under false parents, who passed on to us false love and false lineage. To remove this yoke, you need to live with true love, continually forgiving, giving and sacrificing. This is the life Satan hates most. By doing this, you return to the realm where God’s heart rules.

If you still pursue the vainglory of the Satanic world, with your heart still bound by selfish individualism, then you are on a dark and dismal path whose end is despair and lamentation. On the other hand, if you lead a constructive life, being the first to yield and give to others, then your heart will be joined in eternal oneness with God’s heart. This requires that you first sever your heart’s ties to the false parent and be engrafted into God’s lineage through the holy marriage Blessing instituted by the True Parents. Through the True Parents, who are incarnations of the invisible God, you will secure the true love and lineage of Heaven.

The mission of God’s emissary

Respected ladies and gentlemen, until today you have led fairly conventional lives. Now, however, I call you to take on a mission as God’s direct emissary.

As individuals, there are many differences among us. We are large and small, wide and narrow, tall and short. Despite our differences, God is commissioning us to become His direct emissaries. Let us be patriots who proudly uphold God’s lineage of goodness. Let us stand resolutely, with Heaven’s authority, and answer the call to liberate our homeland.

How can you qualify for the mission of God’s personal emissary? You need to desire the liberation of your homeland a thousand times, even ten thousand times more than you desire the present reality. You must be determined to liberate your homeland even at the cost of your life. Eating or sleeping, coming or going, every action you take should be for the sake of establishing the peace kingdom.

The Bible teaches, “Strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness.” (Matt. 6:33) Go forward with confidence, because while your external situation may still belong to the realm of Satan’s world, you have been reborn with a true lineage. You are God’s direct emissary for the purpose of establishing the homeland.

Do you recognize God’s plight? He is a Parent who lost His children in one instant and was then forced to suffer a history of mistreatment, blocked at every turn as He sought to fulfill His Will. You should become filial sons and daughters capable of understanding the sorrowful heart of God. How can you be leaders unless you know the truth and practice it?

Leaders of the world, please think deeply about how you came to be here today. Did you simply come partly out of sincerity and partly out of curiosity, hoping to enjoy a Christmas party? Whether you like it or not, you have now received God’s call. I myself suddenly received God’s command when I was a young man of sixteen. I accepted His call, and ever since I have spent my entire life of more than eighty years walking a course of blood, sweat and tears. I did this to rescue humanity from Satan’s dominion and to bring God into a state of true liberation and complete freedom. Just as I did, you too can now accomplish the exalted Will of God for harmony and peace on an interreligious and international level. That is, you can complete the sacred task of establishing God’s homeland.

You and I are one, with the common denominator being absolute faith, absolute love and absolute obedience. You as well as I are to be true parents, and kings and queens of peace. Today heavenly fortune is with you, as it is with me.

We now have the opportunity to establish our homeland that will also be God’s homeland. That homeland requires sovereignty, territory and godly people. God’s lineage of goodness has to extend powerfully throughout that homeland. The pulse of God’s providential history has to be felt there in a way that cannot be experienced anywhere else. If it is possible to build this homeland right now, how can you hesitate? Please complete the mission of being God’s direct emissaries. Please live as prophets who have been given the promise of eternal life.

Lead rewarding lives with no regrets

Ladies and gentlemen, I recently founded the Mongolian People’s Federation for World Peace, a movement to bring together people of Mongolian descent throughout the world. My intent certainly is not nationalistic. This is a comprehensive movement for peace.

People of Mongolian ancestry are the descendants of Cain and Shem, the eldest sons of Adam and Noah respectively. God called Noah’s family to restore through indemnity the historical errors committed by Adam’s family. Now, in the final period of God’s providence, Shem’s descendants can accomplish their mission as the firstborn among humanity. Thus it is a movement to comfort God’s heart of pain over Adam’s family, which lost Abel by murder and waited one hundred thirty years to establish Seth.

It is a movement to make the world into one brotherhood and one family by tearing down the walls of the heart that divide us, so that all humanity might live together in a society characterized by interdependence, mutual prosperity and universally shared values. It is a providential step to hasten the establishment of God’s homeland.

We should return gratitude and glory to God and True Parents. They have enlightened us about the incredible providential age in which we are living. They have even bestowed on us the glorious mission to establish God’s kingship as His direct emissaries. Through all eternity, we will gratefully glorify and praise True Parents, who have inaugurated the Revolutionary Era after the Coming of Heaven. Therefore today we offer this Coronation Ceremony of True Parents as the King and Queen of World Peace. It is unprecedented in history and will never be repeated in the future. True Parents have established the realm of true liberation and complete freedom.

Just as the sun rises with brilliant light in the eastern sky, heavenly fortune is now shining upon all people. The curtain of darkness that shrouded us for tens of thousands of years is being lifted at last. The divine command to complete Heaven’s Will is taking root in your heart. This is a path of destiny, and you cannot avoid it. Therefore, stand up courageously! We have the Era after the Coming of Heaven working with us. You can experience with certainty the meaning of Jesus’ teaching that those who forsake their life will live and those who seek their life will die. Let us resolve heroically to do everything to complete the sacred task of homeland liberation and establish the peace kingdom, God’s ideal of creation on this planet Earth.

Please engrave the heavenly command you have received today deep in your heart. From this time forward, as a leader chosen by God to build the homeland, you must pledge to lead a beautiful and precious life. Everyone here without exception will eventually pass on to the spirit world. You do not want to carry with you any regret.

Today I have conveyed to you God’s message for the new era. I pray that as God’s direct emissaries, His blessings will forever be upon you, your families and your mission.

Thank you.

Complete and Perfect Restoration of

Cain and Abel Brotherhood and the

Ideal World of Creation

February 14, 2005

Cheongpyeong Heaven and Earth Training Center, Korea

Birthday Celebration for the True Parents of Heaven, Earth and Humankind and Coronation of the King and Queen of Peace and Cosmic Unity

Respected guests from home and abroad, ladies and gentlemen: This is the time of a great historical transition. At this moment, flowers of life and love are blooming for all humankind and all things in the universe under the bright sun of the fifth year of God’s kingdom of Cheon II Guk. God’s grace and blessing are upon us.

Ladies and gentlemen, I have consistently devoted my entire life of eighty- some years to upholding God’s Will for the salvation of humankind. After holding more than ten thousand meetings and public speeches to teach the words of truth, today my lifelong ministry is reaching its completion. Generally, we think of history in terms of people and events as they happen. However, there is another way to understand history, from the vertical perspective of God’s providence.

An unprecedented coronation for cosmic unity

Today you all have participated in the Coronation of the Peace King and Queen of Cosmic Unity. This was an event unprecedented in history. History will record this day for eternity. Today we are receiving God’s abundant grace. We are beginning the second four-year course in the providence of Cheon II Guk, which runs from 2005 to 2008. In commemorating this significant day, I would like to inform you about the heavenly laws that we are to know and practice in this age. The theme of my speech is “Complete and Perfect Restoration of Cain and Abel Brotherhood and the Ideal World of Creation.”

Ladies and gentlemen, if Adam and Eve, our human ancestors, had not fallen, they would have fulfilled God’s original intention for them, which was that they perfect themselves and establish a realm of unity with God in heart. They were to have been God’s children and God’s absolute object partners, relating only with Him.

Nonetheless, when they joined with Satan and bound themselves to his lineage, they fell to a lowly status where they had no choice but to deal with Satan as well as God. I am describing the situation immediately after the Fall, when Adam and Eve carried the original sin only and had not yet done anything else evil. They were in a midway position, where they had to deal with both God and Satan.

God then worked to separate Adam’s family, caught in this midway position, from Satan. God began with the children of fallen Adam, and their descendants. Based on the sequence of events of the Fall of humankind, He placed Cain, the oldest among Adam’s three sons, on Satan’s side, and Abel, the second son, on the side of Heaven. God worked this providence of salvation based on the law of restoration through indemnity. Since Satan had a claim on fallen Adam and Eve based on his connection with them by blood, God separated their children in this way. He had them set up indemnity conditions on their own, with the goal of restoring them both to the side of Heaven. Satan, for his part, knew that God had a claim on human beings as their original Creator. Therefore, he could not just seize the fallen people for his side unless they made evil conditions that would allow him to invade them. Thus God and Satan carried out an invisible struggle in the lives of Cain and Abel over the conditions they would make to restore the lineage of true love. This invisible struggle has expanded ever since through the history of Adam’s descendants.

We know from the Bible the tragic outcome. Cain, the oldest son, killed Abel, the second son. Cain should have submitted naturally to his favored brother, yet he did not. How intense was God’s grief, and how bitter His sorrow! Here were His children, whom He had created based on His heart of original true love. However, now Satan had taken them away. True love, the very principle of heaven, was removed from this world. God’s lineage, which would have been passed down throughout the generations for eternity, was destroyed in one moment.

God created as His children Adam and Eve. When they grew to maturity He intended to give them the marriage Blessing, so that they could establish the way of true love. God was longing for a family that He could love as His alone. However, to God’s deep sorrow, He could not embrace His children, Adam and Eve, in true love. Nor could He embrace His grandchildren, Cain and Abel, in true love. God’s sorrow over this has persisted throughout history.

God, Adam and Eve, and their children were supposed to form a family of three generations. Had they established it, the Fall would never have occurred. Satan, who has tormented human beings and ravaged human history for tens of thousands of years, would never have existed.

The beginning of our tragic history

Humankind was to be one great family. God was to be the head of every family, which would live as three generations. Nonetheless, by the end its second and third generations, the members of God’s first family, Adam’s family, failed to fulfill the conditions set for them. They failed in the limited responsibility that was given them as their portion in accordance with the Principle of Creation. Here was the beginning of humankind’s tragic history. Yet God could not give up on His creation. He began His providence of restoration through indemnity in order to find His children, whom Satan had abducted, no matter what the cost. God is a Lord of principles, fundamental rules, and laws. If God had abandoned the realm of three generations that was lost in Adam’s family, it would have been tantamount to abandoning His entire work of creation.

Accordingly, God waited 130 years after Cain’s murder of Abel and raised Adam’s third son, Seth, as a new central figure. Seth had to fulfill the responsibility that Abel did not, which was to establish the realm of the eldest son and also to restore God’s lineage. From that time forth, God called descendants from Seth’s lineage to establish appropriate conditions of indemnity as He advanced His restoration providence to separate humankind from Satan.

God was supposed to rule the cosmos with absolute authority as the true Father, true Teacher, and true Lord of humankind. Yet Adam’s family trampled on God’s ideal of creation and drove God into the back alleys of history. Today, all of you need to understand clearly how the history of separating good from evil centering on Cain and Abel has providentially affected human history. You must be aware of the significance it has for us, as we begin the fifth year of Cheon II Guk.

As the Lord of true love, God created human beings as His children based on the standard of absolute faith, absolute love and absolute obedience. This is the principle for all created beings. When God created, He completely and absolutely invested Himself, absolutely affirming His creation. This is why we human beings, as God’s object partners, must offer our absolute faith, absolute love and absolute obedience to God, who is our Subject Partner.

The same principle applies to the relationship between Cain and Abel, even though they represent the side of evil and good, respectively. It is a heavenly law that Cain, who stands in the position of an object partner, needs go to God through Abel. Cain must attend Abel as a father, master and teacher. Abel, for his part, has to maintain an absolute standard in the position to represent God. Like God, he must embrace and love Cain as he would his own child, with absolute faith, absolute love and absolute obedience. By possessing a character worthy of trust and respect, Abel should be able to induce Cain to submit to him naturally.

This is the heavenly principle for resolving the countless Cain-Abel conflicts that have appeared in the history of God’s providence. Whenever this path was not followed, the conflict, bloodshed and war only continued unabated. With each failure, God had to go through the ordeal of seeing His providence prolonged. The thousands of years of human history bear living testimony to this principle.

I do not have time to explain the details of the events that have occurred in the history of the providence to complete the restoration of the realm of the eldest son and restore God’s lineage. After Seth in Adam’s family, a period of sixteen hundred years elapsed and then the providence moved to Noah’s family. God called Noah as the central figure and worked through his family to restore through indemnity the mistakes of Adam’s family. However, this providence also ended poorly, due to the mistake of Ham, Noah’s second son, who stood in the position of Abel.

God waited four hundred more years and then called Abraham. He was the eldest son of Terah, an idol-maker who symbolized Satan’s world. Abraham’s life is a story of setting conditions to restore the realm of the eldest son and the lineage. Through the three generations of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, God worked a providence to restore in a short time the three historical generations of Adam’s family, Noah’s family and Abraham’s family. Finally, Jacob established the conditions for the restoration of the realm of the eldest son and the lineage. By going into exile and suffering mistreatment, Jacob was victorious in achieving the condition of separation from Satan. Based upon that success, Jacob triumphed in wrestling with the angel and was blessed with the name “Israel.” The relationship between Esau and Jacob was the same as that between Cain and Abel. Through the principled way of absolute faith, absolute love and absolute obedience, and the successful cooperation between mother and son, Jacob was finally able to recover the realm of the eldest son by bringing his father Isaac and elder brother Esau into natural submission to him.

In Jacob’s family, Joseph, who was the son of Rachel, Jacob’s wife on God’s side, entered Egypt and was successful in his course of recovery. Eventually he brought his eleven brothers, who stood in the position of Cain, into natural submission to him; thus he was victorious in the role of Abel. Having become the prime minister of Egypt, he brought Jacob’s family to live with him. What if Joseph had also invited Esau’s family to Egypt? Then the historical struggle between Cain and Abel would have come to an end. Later difficulties, such as the Israelites’ forty years of wandering in the wilderness under Moses, would never have arisen. Upon the victorious foundation of Jacob’s family, Jesus would finally emerge from that lineage, four thousand years after the failure of Adam and Eve.

God united the ten northern tribes and two southern tribes into the nation of Israel, and prepared Judaism. God set up Israel and Judaism in another Cain and Abel relationship to create the environment for receiving the substantial Messiah. God raised Israel in the position of Cain representing the political sphere, and Judaism in the position of Abel representing the religious sphere.

The relationship between John the Baptist and Jesus also resembled that of Cain and Abel. If Israel and Judaism had clearly understood the teachings of the Old Testament, which were given as a guide for the four-thousand- year providence of restoration, they would have united internally and externally. Led by John the Baptist, they would have attended Jesus as the King of kings and True Parent. Jesus would then have been able to build the kingdom of heaven, God’s ideal of creation, within his lifetime. Furthermore, if John the Baptist had clearly understood and fulfilled his responsibility in the position of Cain, how could Jesus have died on the cross? Yet despite receiving direct revelations and visions from Heaven, and despite hearing Jesus’ guidance that Jesus was himself the Lord and Abel, in the end John the Baptist could not meet the challenge of living by absolute faith, absolute love and absolute obedience.

Jesus came as the second Adam

Furthermore, Jesus came as the second Adam. His family was to have been the true ancestors of humankind, passing on the lineage that stems from God’s seed of pure love and pure harmony. God intended to give Jesus His marriage Blessing, in order that he might form a true family that would become the root of God’s true lineage for all the ages.

However, with his death on the cross, once again God was driven to the darkest grief, His hopes crushed. God had sent Jesus, His only begotten Son, to recover the lost position of Adam. God had given Jesus His seal as the second Adam, hoping that he would bring the four-thousand-year history of the providence of restoration to its conclusion. Instead, once again God’s Will was frustrated. Once again, the core that God had established as the central axis of history was pulled out from its root. From that time on, God’s providence of restoration began to intensify.

God never deviates from the track set by the principles and laws that He established at the creation. He cannot lead the providence arbitrarily or capriciously. Consequently, after losing Jesus, who was to have become the eternal Abel for humankind, God patiently endured another two thousand years of history. During that time He prepared the environment and conditions that would no longer permit failure, and on that foundation God finally sent to this earth the person who is speaking to you now, with His seal as the Second Advent of the Lord.

Even so, my life course has never been smooth. Satan is a creature so shrewd and cunning that he could trample even on the heart of the omniscient and omnipotent God. For the past eighty-plus years, my life has run the gamut of ups and downs. Yet by establishing all the indemnity conditions necessary for each stage of the providence, I gained victory at the great transition point of the twentieth century. This was when the conflict and struggle between Cain and Abel that had begun in Adam’s family had expanded into the global struggle between communism and democracy. On the foundation of overcoming that final level of struggle, in the year 2001, I was able to declare the era of Cheon II Guk, the time of true love under the sovereignty of Abel, and to offer God His kingship.

On that victorious foundation, in Jerusalem in 2003 I offered to Jesus his coronation as the King of Peace of the First Israel. In 2004, coronation ceremonies were held in America, the Second Israel, in Korea, the Third Israel, and finally on the global level. Thus, in my capacity as the True Parent of humankind, I was elevated to the King of Peace, transcending religions and nations. Standing upon these providential victories, now in 2005 the world’s six billion people have entered the second stage in the three-stage process of building the kingdom of Cheon II Guk.

Today, humankind is mandated to fulfill three great goals. These are, one, to change our lineage in order to complete the registration providence; two, to transfer the realm of ownership; and three, to inherit the realm of heart. You know that a lamb is obedient to its master even at the moment he puts a knife to its throat. With the absolute obedience of a lamb you need to offer your life to the True Parents, who come as the substantial King and Queen of Peace and your eternal Abel. You must fulfill your responsibility and your course as representatives of the entire Cain realm.

Let us consider where we stand today in the course of providential history. Though imperceptible to the human eye, we are at a point of great transition. Now that we have entered the third millennium, God’s providence is moving toward completion with tremendous speed.

Throughout the years, I have established many organizations and institutions to advance God’s providence. Among them, I highlight the Interreligious and International Federation for World Peace and the Peace UN—the interreligious and international peace council that I founded recently. Their mission is to embrace Satan’s realm. In the position of Abel, they are to liberate the Mongolian People’s Federation for World Peace, which stands in the position of Cain representing Satan’s realm. Thereby they are to bring the world into oneness, so that conflict and struggles between Cain and Abel will no longer stain history.

America, which represents the sphere of the world’s religions, needs to stand as Abel to love and embrace the United Nations, which stands as Cain. In this way, America and the UN will fulfill their responsibility for the cause of world salvation.

Ladies and gentlemen, the True Parents are our ultimate Abel. It is God who designates a person for Abel’s position. It is a destined position that cannot be evaded, even in death. Every Abel is called to plant the seeds of true love, even at the cost of his or her life. Every Abel has to take the path of absolute faith, absolute love and absolute obedience before God. This is because the purpose of this path is to bring about a reversal by bringing Cain to natural submission.

It is our destiny to live in attendance to the True Parents as our eternal Abel. They are the vertical axis, coming as the incarnation of the incorporeal God. The True Parents are the Savior of humankind, the Messiah, and the Second Coming of the Lord. They are the King and Queen of Peace in the kingdom of heaven on earth and in heaven.

The True Parents now are establishing the kingdom of heaven on earth and in heaven. It will be the ideal kingdom, the ideal of creation, which God has longed to see since the beginning of the universe. It is the central kingdom of peace. It will complete the Era after the Coming of Heaven, which opened to humankind in the months prior to 2005, the fifth year of Cheon II Guk. It is a world of liberation and complete freedom. Here, all divisions and barriers that have set people at odds for tens of thousands of years are abolished, irrespective of the reasons and justifications for their existence. Here all humankind lives as one family transcending religion and nationality, and attends the True Parents as their true Teacher and true King.

Now that you know you live amid such tremendous heavenly blessings, what are you supposed to do? How can you prepare yourself to receive these blessings? First and foremost, you have to thoroughly rearrange your life. Begin by discovering the absolute realm of unity between your mind and body. This is how you can perfect yourself as an individual embodiment of truth, unblemished, clear, clean and shining. Clear up all your debts. In other words, achieve a revolution through atonement. Next, you have to be able to live without any shame in your conscience eternally. This calls for a revolution of conscience. Practice a life of true love, of living for the sake of others, such that you do not feel indebted in heart before the True Parents or any other person. In other words, carry out a revolution of heart.

The second thing you need to do is create heaven in your family life. The family is the palace of love. Perfect the four great realms of heart and the three great kingships in your family. Make your family a place that cultivates sons and daughters of filial piety, loyal citizens, saints, and divine sons and daughters. Let it become the paramount place where everyone deeply experiences God’s heart. Let your family fulfill the promise of happiness that you and your spouse made to each other. Your ancestors will descend to your family and guide you on the path toward heaven. Turn your family into a blossom of true love and the very place where that flower bears fruit.

The new heaven and earth where we attend God and True Parents

Ladies and gentlemen, from this time forth your life will not be simple. Wherever you are, whatever you do, hundreds and thousands of your ancestors will accompany you. They suffered bitterly until now because they could not attend the True Parents on earth. Now, for the next four years, they will live with you in order to attend the True Parents substantially through you. They will cooperate with you, their descendants on earth, and support you as their Abel. Their goal is to enter heaven with you.

Keep in mind that while it may be possible to deceive the six billion people of the world, you cannot deceive your ancestors. They will evaluate every aspect of your life. They will determine rewards and punishments based on Heaven’s standard of good and evil. Whether you are joyful, angry, sorrowful or satisfied, please do not disappoint your good ancestors, who will be watching your every move with fiery eyes. The next four years will be a serious time. Jesus, Buddha, Muhammad, Confucius, all the good spirits in the spirit world and your own good ancestors are being mobilized to come down to the earth. They will devote all their efforts to build the kingdom of heaven on earth, in other words, to complete the kingdom of Cheon II Guk.

Let us fulfill our responsibilities as Cains and as Abels. With God above us and below us, in front of us and behind us, and to our right and left, let us live with absolute faith, absolute love and absolute obedience, which is the standard that brought forth the creation. If we can unite and fulfill the way of embracing, forgiving and loving, then the Era after the Coming of Heaven will be the literal peace kingdom, where all attend the True Parents and peace and prosperity reign.

Now, carrying with us this heavenly message, let us depart to spread the seeds. Each of us has to become the creators of this new world, as we go out to plant the seeds of true life and true love and represent Heaven’s family.

Do not be so foolish as to scatter your seeds into the air, to be carried off by the winds of secular vanity and immorality. Seek the humblest and lowest position. Plant your seeds in the deepest and richest soil. Break down the barriers between races, abolish conflicts among nations and propagate the fruit of cross-cultural, interracial marriages that go beyond religion and nation. Let us do mighty works to uphold God’s true lineage eternally. The providence of interracial, cross-cultural marriage shall elevate the Mongolian race and all humankind in the true love of the eternal God.

In the Bible, as Lot’s wife was leaving Sodom, she looked back, disobeying Heaven’s decree, and was turned into a pillar of salt. Today you have received the heavenly decree. The heavenly decree is always a double-edged sword, bringing both blessing and judgment. The choice is yours. Certainly I revealed tremendous secrets of heaven to you today. There is no turning back; the arrow has left the bow. There is no room for negotiation or compromise. The completion and perfection of God’s providence alone awaits us at the finish line.

Let us make every effort to recover the three generations of God’s family that were lost at the beginning with Adam. Let us complete, on this earth in our lifetime, a new heaven and new earth, filled with true love and free from the struggle between Cain and Abel. Let us complete the peace kingdom, where we shall live as one family. Let us pledge to live in the eternal peace kingdom in attendance to the True Parents.

Thank you very much.

The Restoration of Our True God’s Homeland

March 4, 2005

Cheongpyeong Heaven and Earth Training Center, Korea

Korea Rally for the Realization of Cheon II Guk

Beloved blessed families, today, in the fifth year of Cheon II Guk, we have entered a significant providential time. You are all opening the way to a new heaven and a new earth in the direct presence of the True Parents of Heaven, Earth and Humankind, who stand on the foundation formed by the success of the Coronation of the Peace King and Queen of Cosmic Unity. Today, with the cooperation of the spirit world, you have all been called here urgently as key leaders who have important roles in building the kingdom of heaven on earth and in heaven. You have been gathered here to help to build the ideal world God intended at the time of the creation, in other words, a world of peace.

We are here today in the third month of the fifth year of Cheon II Guk at the Cheonseong Wanglim Palace, the original holy ground. At this important time in history I would like to speak about God’s most earnest desire, the restoration of the homeland of our true God. You need to understand this message that I convey from God, and put it into practice in this age. A new spring is upon us, the Era after the Coming of Heaven. Please open your hearts and welcome this deeply meaningful spring day.

Seeking God’s kingdom and His righteousness Dear members, God has revealed to us His kingdom and His righteousness, yet the people living on earth have been unable to receive them. Nonetheless, God’s kingdom and His righteousness remain the hope of humankind today and the hope of all those who ever lived on earth throughout history.

This hope-filled kingdom, and the righteousness flowing from that hope, remain our final goal and purpose, yet why are these still unfulfilled? It is because of the human Fall. God and human being were to have become the center of God’s kingdom and righteousness. Yet instead, because our first ancestors fell, God and human beings were alienated from each other, unable to form any relationship. Due to the Fall, human beings lost the heavenly lineage and instead became Satan’s children who inherit Satan’s lineage.

The human race fell into ignorance: ignorance of the true parents and true families that were to be the center of God’s kingdom and His righteousness, and ignorance of the true nation. For this reason, God had to labor throughout history to awaken humanity and teach us about the true parents, the true family and the true nation. Finding God’s kingdom and His righteousness remains our ultimate hope and goal.

Dear members, there are more than two hundred nations in the world today. Yet among these numerous nations, there is not one that God can call His own homeland and that can receive His complete love. For this reason, the purpose of God’s providence, spanning more than six thousand years, has been to completely re-order this fallen world and re-create the kingdom of God.

Throughout history, the purpose of God’s providence has been to build His kingdom. Until that kingdom is established, God will not be able to complete His Will for the restoration of humankind. First, however, there must be a central nation based on a central religion. This is why during a certain historical epoch, God sought to establish a nation of His own. The Bible records this effort as the providential history of the chosen people of Israel and Judaism.

The nation of our hope

What kind of nation do we yearn for? It is not like the nations any of us live in today. We will part with those nations someday. However we still do not have God’s nation to live in. A person without that nation does not have an original hometown. A person without God’s nation does not have a real nationality. A person without God’s nation has nowhere to truly register his or her existence. Therefore our task in this life is to create God’s nation.

Only when we have God’s nation will the tradition we establish live on through our descendants for eternity, and will the effort we have made while shedding our blood and sweat live on. That nation will be a monument celebrating Heaven’s labors. In it, the evidence of God’s glory will endure on the earth. However, if we fail to find that nation, everything we have done will have been in vain.

For this reason, you need to understand clearly that today our most critical task is to seek and establish God’s nation'. You must live always with the conviction, “Our family protects the nation that True Parents love. Thus, I have to become a filial child of True Parents and walk the path of a loyal citizen of that nation.”

Let us seek the path that fulfills our true desire. On the foundation of God’s nation, let us establish the kingdom in which we will want to live for all eternity. It must be a world in which everything we possess also belongs to the cosmos, a world in which whatever we have belongs not only to this age and to the past, but is also guaranteed to belong to the future. We have to envision this ideal hometown and kingdom in our minds, establish its righteous laws in our lives, and then live for the sake of that kingdom and its righteousness.

Do you have such a kingdom? If you do not, aren’t you trying to establish it? What did I say this kingdom is? It is an ideal, unified and peaceful nation. It is a nation where all six billion people of the world live as one family. It is the peace kingdom, where eternal peace and prosperity reign in glory. It is there we attend the Peace King and Queen of Cosmic Unity as our true lords, true teachers and true king and queen.

All the world’s families, tribes and peoples will offer their support to this kingdom. The entire spirit world will rally to it. The founders of the great religions and our good ancestors will observe and support every move we make to establish it. I say to you, if as individuals you unite your mind and body, you can unify your families, tribes, peoples, nations, world and cosmos.

Heaven’s Will begins on earth

God must fulfill the purpose of His providence on earth without fail. What will be the result? God will save all the people of the world and reign over them as parents do over their children. God’s Will and providence have yearned for this.

If you die without restoring a nation on earth during your lifetime, you will not attain the value of a true person belonging to the heavenly kingdom. You need to go to the spirit world on the foundation of having lived under the reign of God while on earth. That is the original standard, which God has upheld since the time of the creation.

Dear members, to this day I have lived without any interest in worldly things. My lifelong desire is summed up in the following statements: “Let me die in the kingdom that God protects. If I fail to live in that kingdom, my entire life will be miserable. Therefore I will seek that kingdom and live there, even if only for one day, before I die.”

I have walked this path with the heart to sacrifice thousands of days for the sake of that one day. I am marching forward, even while you have been resting unaware. If you do not rise up, I will have to mobilize people from other nations to accomplish this purpose. If this nation does not move to achieve it, I will have to resort to bringing in many members from abroad. No matter the cost, we cannot fail on the heavenly path to bring the fruits of the age of Cheon II Guk. There can no longer be any compromise, delay or extension due to Satan’s interference. The literal completion and conclusion of God’s providence has to take place in my lifetime. We are on the final leg of God’s providence to fully establish the peace kingdom, which is the ideal God that has pursued since the time of creation.

Think about the unfortunate situation of a people without a nation. They are always exposed to aggression. Helpless to defend themselves, they are subject to repeated attacks. Where can we find the kingdom that God desires? Where can we find the kingdom that can become God’s resting place? This is the question.

The reason we shed our blood and sweat for the people of this nation is ultimately to establish the eternal heavenly kingdom. In that kingdom, there will be prosperity for all. Countless generations to come will sing its praises, even unto eternity.

The children of God’s direct lineage, those who uphold Heaven’s laws and commands, will rule the heavenly kingdom. They will rule on behalf of God, representing His kingship. The kingdom’s political system will transcend both democracy and communism. Once established, it will endure forever.

Considering these things, isn’t it shameful that you have not yet become citizens of that kingdom? You ought to lament that we do not yet have such a kingdom. You must deeply regret that you are not yet able to live there. We all need to repent for not having established that unchanging sovereignty.

In order to establish such a, sovereignty, nation and territory, God established predecessor sovereign nations. We are well aware that along the way a great many people have died. Countless nations have perished. Myriads of people have been sacrificed and numerous sovereignties come and gone. Among those who were sacrificed for the heavenly cause were many souls on the side of Heaven who no doubt yearned for the establishment of that kingdom and world.

We know that Satan, not God, came to dominate history after our first ancestors fell. Originally God was to have been the master of this world. The children of God’s direct lineage, having matured through a relationship of love with God, would have formed a true family. If this family had been established, the tribes, nations and world descended from that family would have constituted a world under God’s dominion, a nation under God’s dominion, families under God’s dominion and individuals under God’s dominion.

Nonetheless, you need to understand that because of the human Fall, everyone from individuals to families, tribes, peoples, nations and the world, came to oppose God. This is our fallen world and fallen history.

If we leave this world as it is, we can never achieve the eternal world of true love based on the ideal of creation that God originally sought to establish. God can only restore His original authority by fulfilling the ideal He originally intended at the time of creation. Therefore, God set this ideal as the standard by which He would put this evil world into order and lead it to become a true world. This has been God’s providence in dealing with the fallen world.

Today there are more than two hundred nations throughout the world belonging to the fallen sovereignty. Among such an array of nations, not one of them qualifies as a nation fulfilling God’s hope.

Unbeknown to humankind, God has been conducting His providence through history to establish one nation that could fulfill His Will. He created Adam and raised him toward perfection in the hope that through that one individual He could establish a heavenly sovereignty in the family, society, nation and world. Yet due to the Fall of that one man, Adam, history shattered into countless pieces. The history of the providence of salvation has been about restoring order and reconnecting the pieces.

Since Adam was the first ancestor of the human race, losing him was tantamount to losing all humanity. To restore what had been lost, God had to call and raise other individuals. Each individual whom God called had to be willing to leave his or her tribe, people and nation in Satan’s world. He or she had to become a true person who could give even their life for God’s Will.

Jesus and the central figures of providential history

Dear members, all religions ultimately share in common the goal of realizing God’s Will. As an example, let us look at the familiar history of Judaism and Christianity.

Noah belonged to a tribe, yet he was not attached to it. He belonged to a nation, yet he put aside his concern for it. Instead he sought the nation of hope on his own. Noah went through all manner of trials and adversity in seeking and trying to establish that nation.

Although Noah had relatives and belonged to a certain people, of greater importance to him was his pursuit of God’s kingdom. God desired that Noah overcome his individual circumstances and seek His kingdom and His righteousness. How great were the difficulties Noah faced in surmounting that course of 120 years, as season followed season without a day’s rest?

Unsupported even by his family, and in the face of all the slings and arrows that beset him, Noah persevered all those years. He clearly understood the principle that if he yearned more for eating and drinking than for God’s kingdom and His righteousness, he would have to pay a heavy price.

God found Abraham and Sarah, led them to leave Ur of the Chaldeans, and then asked them to leave Haran. They journeyed to Canaan and then to Egypt with a heart of unconditional faith and obedience, not knowing where they were to live. When the Pharaoh took Sarah away, she did not bear resentment toward Abraham, nor did she betray him. In this way, their hearts were unchanging as they headed toward the nation of hope, even amid severe persecution.

Let us take Jacob as another example. He believed in the blessings God gave him, and he believed in God’s promise of a nation and people of hope. Nobody could bend his firm conviction. Through him, God’s Will expanded from an individual to a family to twelve tribes. From them prophets would come forth, raising the banner of hope before the world. »

What kind of life did Jesus lead? Facing the disbelief of the people and persecution from the religious leadership, Jesus lived as a wanderer. In the end he perished on the cross, making himself a sacrifice, yet not even this could fulfill God’s hope to save humankind both in spirit and flesh.

The Messiah comes with the mission of breaking down all the walls in heaven and on earth and creating a unified world. God’s Will is to establish a nation whose philosophy accords with the heavenly principles, transcending all the nations of the fallen world.

When God created Adam, His desire was not just to dwell within Adam as an individual; it was to establish a family, tribe, people, nation and world through Adam. As the Messiah and second Adam, Jesus tried desperately to establish such a nation in Israel, yet he could not due to the people’s disbelief. The consequences for Israel were tragic.

Hence at the Second Advent, the Lord comes with the responsibility to become a perfect Adam and complete the mission of the Messiah. Once he becomes the perfect Adam, he is responsible to complete a family, tribe, people, nation and world in keeping with the role of the true Adam.

Time and again in history, God sent central figures to earth and worked through them to establish one absolute nation, yet time after time the people were unable to succeed. Nevertheless, the history of restoration continues as God endeavors to find righteous people. He seeks people through whom He can administer, advance and fulfill this task.

We must therefore be grateful to God, even if He has to sacrifice each of us, and even if He has to sacrifice our families, tribes, peoples and nations. Only when individuals and nations of righteousness emerge can a new world come into being. It does not matter how much individuals have sacrificed in the past; until God’s nation is established, sacrifices on the part of individuals and even of families, tribes, peoples, nations and the world will have to continue.

Our mission

Dear members, what is your purpose for being alive on earth today? It is to love the nation and the world. God’s purpose also has been to love the nation and the world. However if we remain citizens of a nation without sovereignty, we are pitiful. That is why Jesus said, “Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear?’ For it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things; and indeed your Heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But strive first for the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” (Matt. 6:31-33)

God sent Jesus to earth as His incarnation, representing the heavenly lineage to fallen humankind. In other words Jesus was the first person to come to earth who could fulfill the hope God had nurtured throughout history. Four thousand years after Adam, God raised Jesus on earth as His, the true seed, who grew up in the family of Joseph, a Jewish family.

Yet Satan, having already established entire nations, was attacking the heavenly side. Therefore the heavenly side also needed a firm foothold on the national level. The fruit of God’s toil for four thousand years was this one nation within the evil world. Heaven toiled to prepare Israel for that purpose.

Dear members, Jesus came to earth in search of God’s nation. He came in search of one nation, yet due to the disbelief of Israel and Judaism he could not establish that nation. He came to establish a nation on the physical as well as on the spiritual level, except he could only establish a spiritual kingdom. Therefore Christianity today still does not have a substantial, physical nation of its own on earth.

This means God does not have a nation on earth He can call His beloved homeland. He does not have a citizenry He can call His beloved citizens. The foundation for God’s kingdom has not yet been established on earth.

Christians even now are a people without a nation or sovereignty. As Christians witnessed for their faith, wherever they went they were subject to persecution and martyrdom. Christianity developed through the blood shed by its martyrs. That was how Christianity began and how it grew.

The days of persecution requiring bloodshed may be drawing to a close, however they have not disappeared yet. The Christian belief in the Second Advent of Christ arises from a deep yearning for a true nation. It anticipates that, based on Christianity’s worldwide spiritual foundation, the Lord will restore and establish the substantial nation that was lost.

Dearest blessed families, humanity has entered the Era after the Coming of Heaven, when we are receiving heavenly fortune anew. In front of the new heaven and new earth, the vortex of disbelief and betrayal that has troubled the earth is withdrawing. In the fifth year of Cheon II Guk, spring is coming, and soon it will be in full bloom. The time has come for all blessed families to arise with firm resolution.

Let us fulfill our providential responsibility to unite all six billion people of the world into one family. We shall do this by lifting up the Interreligious and International Federation for World Peace, which stands in the vertical position of Abel. The Mongolian peoples, who are the root of some seventy to eighty percent of the world’s population, stand in the horizontal position of Cain. Through the marriage Blessing, we shall then bind together as one clan. This will completely break down the walls between races, the barriers between religions and the conflicts between nations. In this way we will build Cheon II Guk.

God has given His full authority to me as the Savior, Messiah, returning Lord and King of kings. These titles are summed up by the terms “King of Peace” and “True Parents.” Cross-cultural, international marriage Blessings is the only way to bring humankind together as one global family that transcends races, nations and religions. What other way is there to make one’s enemy of yesterday into one’s blood relative of today, and to make people of different traditions and cultures into one great family?

Dear members, first and foremost I ask you to give the Blessing to your family and tribe and to establish your tribal Hoondok Church. The success or failure of the Family Federation, the reunification of Korea, and the creation of one global family depend upon this initiative.

We must quickly break free from the customs and mindset belonging to the Era before the Coming of Heaven. Practice a life at high noon, in vertical alignment with God, casting no shadow of sin, and offer yourself in absolute faith, absolute love and absolute obedience to God and True Parents. You will then enjoy eternal peace and freedom as a citizen of Cheon II Guk. Your descendants will pay tribute to you and take pride in your achievements for eternity. You will live eternally in attendance to True Parents, even in the spirit world.

Please engrave in your very core the message I have given you today. As you depart, resolve to be the elite ambassadors of Cheon II Guk, who will open a new heaven and new earth. Let the fire of true love ablaze in your hearts guide you. Have heavenly courage, and push forward on the path of a true owner, true teacher and true parent!

I pray that God’s blessings will be with you and your families. Thank you very much.

Establishing the Kingship of Original True Love from the Self to the Cosmic Level

May 1, 2005

Cheong Hae Garden, Yeosu, Korea

Fifty-first Anniversary of the Founding of HSA-UWC

Respected leaders of the Mongolian Peoples Federation for World Peace who have come from around the world, distinguished guests from Korea and abroad, beloved leaders and blessed Unificationist families:

On this significant day fifty-one years ago, May 1, 1954, I founded the Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity (HSA- UWC) here in Korea. Korea had been ravaged by three years of war. At that time the vast dream of the Holy Spirit Association, to unify global Christianity and restore humankind’s relationship with God by bringing all the religions and ideologies of the world into unity, seemed almost impossible.

I was only sixteen years old when I received Heaven’s call to take up this work. The people of the world misunderstood me and gave me cold stares, yet I could not pay them any attention. My entire life’s work has been dedicated to fullfilling God’s providence in accordance with Heaven’s mandate.

Distinguished guests, human history began on the wrong foot, starting with Satan’s treacherous betrayal. God, the True Parent of all human beings, created Adam and Eve as our first ancestors. He wanted them to grow and mature to become His true son and daughter through their taking personal responsibility. Nevertheless, Satan induced Adam and Eve to commit the Fall. In so doing, Satan completely destroyed true love, which is God’s most precious and noble gift to humanity. The Fall was caused when Satan ensnared our first ancestors by an act of immoral love. It was the world’s first and greatest tragedy.

Please pay attention to the decadence that is raging throughout the world like wildfire. Satan is the king and god of immorality. This fact is recorded in the Bible. The people of the world became slaves to Satan. As a result they lost their sense of direction and have been struggling throughout the six thousand years of history. Now the poison of free sex has infiltrated even into your own living rooms in the form of wife swapping. For that matter, what shall Heaven do with the countless young people who reject their sacred right and duty to give birth to children, or who practice homosexuality, or pursue lives of extreme individualism? These actions are destroying the family, the highest and noblest institution, which was given by God. When a grandfather and granddaughter or a father and daughter commit incest, how can there be any atonement for that despicable crime?

Today let us take an honest look at ourselves. Let us recommit to the noble duty of establishing true families, by which we can preserve and fulfill true love, true life and true lineage as given by God. The six billion people on earth have been degraded to their lowest point; let us advance the movement for restoring their status.

Of first importance is to educate the younger generation to know and practice Heaven’s Will. Our young people have to deal with a culture of extreme individualism, a culture lost in a swamp of free sex and homosexuality. For this reason, we have to teach them thoroughly about pure love, pure lineage and a lifestyle of purity.

Dear guests, if we lose the younger generation, there is no way to guarantee the future of humankind. And yet we cannot carry out an educational movement of this kind by human teachings and human efforts alone. If we consider history, we can see that Heaven, in the background, has been guiding humanity to this day. God experienced unfathomable grief and lamentation when He lost His first son and daughter, Adam and Eve; nevertheless, despite His grief, He has pursued a course to save them. God raised central figures of His providence, only to watch as they made mistake after mistake and betrayed Him again and again. Yet, God has not given up on humanity and has continued to advance the work of restoration.

God guided the history of separation from evil, beginning by separating Abel from Cain in Adam’s family. Now, on the worldwide level, God is advancing the restoration of His lineage by bringing together and uniting the Cain-type realm, which represents the relatively evil side, and the Abel- type realm, which represents the relatively good side, heaven.

A few days ago, I officially announced the “Finding the Original Root Movement.” It seeks to establish the true love, true life and true lineage of Heaven, because therein lies the fundamental root of the human race. For tens of thousands of years human beings have lived as false olive trees. The True Parents came as the true olive tree. Now the human race can be engrafted through the marriage Blessing to the True Parents and be engrafted with the root of the true olive tree. This is a revolution at the providential level.

In this context, I have designated the more than seventy percent of the world’s population that has the Mongolian birthmark to represent the Cain- type realm, and designated the Interreligious and International Federation for World Peace to represent the Abel-type realm. I am having them explore the path to reconciliation and unification. This will constitute a movement to create a new heaven and new earth. Through the Blessing given by True Parents, humanity will be re-created as a realm of kinship consisting of families bearing the Mongolian birthmark and sharing the blessed lineage.

Dear guests, more than half a century has passed since I first put up the sign of the Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity. It was at the time when I first appeared on the earth as the substantial True Parent, having previously received Heaven’s seal of approval. I have worked for the sake of fulfilling God’s Will ever since, and only He knows how much blood, sweat and tears I have shed.

Now, a new heaven and a new earth are emerging. The kingship of peace centered on God is starting. In this era, even Satan, who had reigned since the beginning of history as the king of betrayal and falsehood, has surrendered to Heaven. We have entered a realm of restorative grace.

Peace does not come about where there is conflict. Reconciliation and forgiveness are the prerequisites of peace and an ideal world. What we must do now, in order to find unity, is break down all walls and even abolish national borders. You need to remove the condition of conflict that divides your mind and body. The moral training of Confucianism and Buddhism can be a resource for this task. This means achieving the original state in which the body completely submits to the mind and you are freed from pangs of conscience. We need to end the conflicts in every field, the remnants of Satan’s work, beginning at the level of the individual and extending to the levels of the family, society, race, nation and religion. You are called to establish Cheon II Guk, the peace kingdom on earth and in heaven, which is the ideal God envisioned at the time of creation.

A year ago today, in this very place, I declared to heaven and earth that the Era before the Coming of Heaven had passed and the Era after the Coming of Heaven had arrived. Today, one year after that declaration, the world is going through many rapid changes. Countless leaders throughout the world are stepping forward in response to my call for a peace movement based on true love.

The core of this true love movement is comprised of middle-school-age, high-school-age and college-age representatives of our second generation. It is spreading throughout the world under the banner of lasting love. Satan, the evil power, has surrendered, so there is no one who can stop this pure love movement. Hundreds of billions of our ancestors in the spirit world have been mobilized to help us. It is only a matter of time before the eternal peace kingdom is built on earth. You all need to have hope and march forward with full force.

The more effort you make, the sooner that day will come. Jesus said, “For whoever would save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” (Matt. 16:25) You need to invest all of your effort to expand the realm of families having the blessed lineage, families who are in a direct lineal relationship with God.

With solid resolve, let us race forward for another half century toward the higher ground of peace. Heaven will protect you all. You will be victorious!

Today I am giving each of you Heaven’s noble mandate. From now on, wherever you go, whatever you do, please remember that you are one true family, united around the central axis of God and True Parents. Please remember that Heaven will work through your conscience, and that you can mobilize your good ancestors by living an altruistic life of true love.

May God’s blessings be eternally with you and the true families you will create anew.

Thank you very much.

The Value and Significance of the Family Pledge

June 13, 2007

Cheon Jeong Gung, Korea

First Anniversary of the

Cheon Jeong Gung

Entrance Ceremony and Coronation

Beloved blessed families:

Today, on this meaningful occasion, I would like to explain about the providential value and significance of the Family Pledge. It serves as Heaven’s most precious and blessed guideline, given to us to guide our lives.

The Family Pledge: the guiding principle and constitution of God’s kingdom

The fact that we now have the Family Pledge is truly the greatest of all blessings. It came from Heaven as a gift to all humanity on May 1, 1994, the day when the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification (FFWPU) was inaugurated. The Family Pledge was given when the Completed Testament Age was proclaimed, bringing fulfillment to the Old Testament Age and the New Testament Age. It is to serve as a milestone, a guiding principle that pierces through the darkness of the Era before the Coming of Heaven and opens a new heaven and a new earth in the Era after the Coming of Heaven. In this time, when we are to create a new heaven and a new earth, it is the blueprint for the building of God’s kingdom of peace and unity.

The True Parents of humankind had emerged victorious from the battles they had fought throughout their long course of indemnity lasting forty years from the time I founded the Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity (HSA-UWC) in 1954. On that foundation, we were no longer required to recite “My Pledge” as individuals. Since then, we have been required to recite and practice the Family Pledge instead. We do so together as true families. True families are the basic units that can enter triumphantly into the kingdom of heaven.

This Family Pledge is drenched with the pain and suffering of God and True Parents, and it needs to be recited with tears. It is something that people must recite forever, long after they discard the mask of religion in the fallen world and attain liberation. This is because the family is the basic unit of the kingdom of heaven.

Ladies and gentlemen, have you ever heard the words “Family Pledge,” anywhere in the world? It has appeared for the first time in human history. In the beginning, God lost the true family through the Fall of the first man and woman. He had created the first ancestors of humankind to be His children. That is the absolute standard for fulfilling His ideal of creation. Since God has the providential mandate to fulfill His ideal, He proclaimed and instituted the Family Pledge.

It is God’s blessing that you are the ones who can become models of all true families, of ideal families on earth, and return eternal joy to God. This is what you can establish with the Family Pledge. It is an essential tool for building the kingdom of heaven on earth and in heaven, where your families can live while directly serving and attending God.

The precondition to properly recite the Family Pledge is first and foremost to attain a state of complete mind-body unity, which is the state of “one heart, one body, one outlook and one harmony.” To do this, we have to reach the standard of perfecting our character by absolute faith, absolute love and absolute obedience. Our body needs to fully obey our conscience, which was given to us as our first parent, teacher and owner.

Furthermore, all of our family members have to perfect the basic framework for the unity of mind and body, the unity with True Parents, the unity of husband and wife, the unity of parents and children and the unity among siblings, centered on God’s Will. In other words, all of us are to perfect a sphere of unity in true love. Only then, can we recite the Family Pledge. That is why the Family Pledge serves as the absolute standard and the constitution for creating the kingdom of peace and unity in heaven and on earth, as we go beyond the Completed Testament Age.

From now, people will succeed in life not only as individuals but also as families. This means that only true model families that acquire the recognition and respect of all people can stand in a position to lead the world. The perfection of the family is Heaven’s greatest and highest blessing and a fearsome responsibility. It is the cornerstone for building Cheon II Guk. Creating true families is the shortcut for acquiring citizenship in God’s kingdom.

Beloved blessed families, the Family Pledge is the greatest of all prayers. It is the record of True Parents’ complete victory. It is the code of law that reveals the teachings of the Completed Testament Age, the age of “justification through attendance.”

At the heart of the Family Pledge is the true family, which exists within the framework of true love. The Family Pledge serves as a bridge connecting our lives to God. To recite it is like an explosion of true love that completely captivates God. The Family Pledge is the energy and wisdom that brings true love to the center of the connections between the vertical and horizontal, north and south and front and back, initiating eternal spherical motion. The Family Pledge is the key to the gates of the kingdom of heaven. No key made of gold or silver can open the gates to the kingdom; only the key of a true family perfected through true love can open those gates. That is why all eight verses of the Family Pledge have as a primary clause, “Our family. .. centering on true love.”

Ladies and gentlemen, the age of justification by attendance means the time when we attend God in our daily lives. Doesn’t the first of the Ten Commandments revealed in the Bible teach about loving God? In the Era after the Coming of Heaven, God is revealing Himself in front of all people through the True Parents. That is why the movement that attends the True Parents represents Heaven’s authority and power and is superior to any force in this fallen world. We need to become people who live lives of attendance; this enables us to see the living God with our own eyes and experience Him with our own senses.

Because of the Fall of our first ancestors, this is the first time in history in which True Parents can govern. The True Parents have emerged as the original root, and through an inward relationship with them we are able to enter the new world. That relationship can bring Satan to submission. It is the center that will liberate even God. You all need to offer thanks for the amazing grace of being able to live together with True Parents and directly receive their instructions.

When you are completely one with True Parents, you will prosper. The same applies to your nation, people, tribe and family. The True Parents are the embodiment and encapsulation of all glory in heaven and on earth. Once you clearly understand their value, would you exchange the True Parents for all the money in the world? Their value is such that they cannot be replaced even at the price of your life.

Explanation of each verse of the Family Pledge

The first verse of the Family Pledge is “Our family, the owner of Cheon II Guk, pledges to seek our original homeland and build the kingdom of God on earth and in heaven, the original ideal of creation, by centering on true love.”

You should know that reciting this verse of the Family Pledge is proclaiming one of the greatest pieces of news in all of history. The “ideal of creation” refers to the ideal world with God at the center. It was God’s ideal of creation that humankind build the kingdom of God on earth and in heaven. However, since that ideal could not be attained due to the Fall, we have to achieve it through restoration. Thus, centering on our original homeland, we must build the kingdom of God on earth and in heaven, the original ideal of creation.

Because the family was lost due to the Fall, we need to build God’s family through the course of restoration. This is not one individual’s task. It is rather the task of families, the owners of Cheon II Guk. This is what it means that by centering on true love, our families have to “seek our original homeland and build the kingdom of God on earth and in heaven, the original ideal of creation.”

The “original homeland” referred to here is the homeland centered on families. That is why all of you have to return to your hometown and establish God’s kingdom on earth and in heaven there. Once you restore your hometown, your nation and the world will be unified naturally. Then there will be nothing further for you to worry about.

Once the kingdom of God on earth and the kingdom of God in heaven are one, people who have lived on earth in a united family centering on God’s true love will continue living in that family in the heavenly kingdom. We no longer live in the age of individual salvation. Religions, Christianity in particular, speak to the salvation of the individual, however that will not suffice. God’s Will is for the salvation of the family. Restoration has to occur in the family because the Fall destroyed the ideal for the family. Now for the first time in history all this can be resolved. The family has finally entered the era of settlement.

It is as families that we must build the kingdom of God on earth and in heaven, the original ideal of God’s creation. Because the kingdom was lost due to the family, we have to restore it as families. The original homeland is centered on families, not on a nation. That is why I tell you to return to your hometown. If you still have a family there, go back to your hometown and build God’s kingdom on earth and in heaven there. Once we restore our hometowns, our nations and the world will naturally harmonize. We will establish the heavenly kingdom on earth and in heaven automatically. It will unfold centering on true families.

“Our family... pledges to... build the kingdom of God on earth and in heaven, the original ideal of creation.” Here we say, “build.” Why do we use that word? It is because we must create God’s kingdom; it will not come about by itself. We ourselves must build it. This current world is already hell on earth and it is connected to hell in the spirit world. We are to create a world that turns this world around 180 degrees.

Again, it is the mission of all families who have received the marriage Blessing from True Parents to seek the original homeland and build the kingdom of God on earth and in heaven, the original ideal of creation. We complete the building of God’s kingdom not as individuals but as families. This is your first pledge as blessed families.

The second verse of the Family Pledge is, “Our family, the owner of Cheon II Guk, pledges to represent and become central to heaven and earth by attending God and True Parents; we pledge to perfect the dutiful family way of filial sons and daughters in our family, patriots in our nation, saints in the world and divine sons and daughters in heaven and earth by centering on true love.”

“Our family... centering on true love.” The words “true love” refer to love that appears where there is unity between mind and body, between husband and wife, and between parents and children. If you do not practice this standard of true love, then you will surely be miserable when you go to the spirit world.

That is how fearsome the Family Pledge is. You must live by it always. In your family, if the father violates even one part of the Family Pledge, then the mother and children become jointly responsible. The entire family would have to take joint responsibility for it. This is the significance of the fact that Eve’s fall brought about the fall of Adam’s entire family.

This verse of the Family Pledge also states, “by attending God and True Parents.” We human beings were originally to attend and honor God and True Parents; however we were driven away as a result of the Fall. Due to the Fall, we lost the value of our existence. By attending God and True Parents, we regain it.

God is the vertical True Parent, and the True Parents, the perfected Adam and Eve, are the horizontal True Parents. We are to be born from the union of these two sets of True Parents. On the foundation of the two sets becoming one, we can also achieve unity and connect to God and heaven. By attending God and True Parents, everything can be accomplished.

What kind of families “represent and become central to heaven and earth”? They are the ideal families that God envisioned prior to the fall of Adam and Eve. A representative and central family in heaven and on earth refers to a family that represents heaven and grows its relationship with God on earth in expanding circles through eight vertical stages and eight horizontal stages. What I mean is that the family comes to the position where it represents God in heaven and the True Parents on earth united at a 90- degree angle.

You need to become the center in such a family by becoming a filial son or daughter. Not only that, you need to become a patriot who lives for your nation, you need to become a saint who lives for the world, and you need to become a divine son or daughter who lives for heaven and earth. “We pledge to perfect the dutiful family way of... divine sons and daughters” means that each family member, as an individual, needs to attain the position of a divine son or daughter. When such divine sons and daughters gather together as members of the same family, they form a family of divine sons and daughters. This is what we are pledging to do.

In pledging “to represent and become central to heaven and earth by attending God and True Parents,” our family needs to make a resolution that it will fulfill the dutiful family way of filial sons and daughters in the family, patriots and virtuous women in the nation, saints in the world, and divine sons and daughters in heaven and earth, everything that Heaven desires. We are saying that as parents we will educate our children, as citizens we will educate the people of our nation, and as saints we will educate the people of the world. By helping them qualify to become members of God’s family in the heavenly kingdom in heaven and on earth, we become divine sons and daughters and constitute families of divine sons and daughters.

That is why we say, “Our family, the owner of Cheon II Guk, pledges to represent and become central to heaven and earth by attending God and True Parents; we pledge to perfect the dutiful family way of filial sons and daughters in our family, patriots in our nation, saints in the world and divine sons and daughters in heaven and earth, by centering on true love.”

The third verse of the Family Pledge is, “Our family, the owner of Cheon II Guk, pledges to perfect the Four Great Realms of Heart, the Three Great Kingships and the Realm of the Royal Family, by centering on true love.” Adam and Eve would have fulfilled the four great realms of heart and the three great kingships had they not fallen. If not for the Fall, they would have fulfilled these and become God’s royal family. This part of the Family Pledge refers to restoring fallen people and making them into the royal family. Families who receive the marriage Blessing need to fulfill this mission.

In the ideal, conjugal love should only take place among people who fulfill the four great realms of heart and the three great kingships. A man and a woman need to fulfill these before they share love with each other. Otherwise, it is not right for them to love each other. Yet during the course of restoration, conjugal love has been part of what was needed to establish of these realms and kingships. That is because man’s need for woman, and vice versa, is absolute.

You blessed families have to strive every day to fulfill the goals of this verse. However, you cannot fulfill them with only a theoretical faith. It is not enough to imagine that you will be able to fulfill these goals simply because they are set out in God’s Word. You have to work toward them by dealing with practical situations that you encounter directly.

God’s ideal is the formation of a great cosmic family The fourth verse of the Family Pledge is, “Our family, the owner of Cheon II Guk, pledges to build the universal family encompassing heaven and earth, which is God’s ideal of creation, and perfect the world of freedom, peace, unity and happiness, by centering on true love.”

God’s ideal is that the world becomes one family or household under God. If everyone who recites the Family Pledge actualizes the four great realms of heart and three great kingships, they will not remain separate families; rather, they will become one great family under God. To establish one family under God is what it means “to build the universal family encompassing heaven and earth, which is God’s ideal of creation.”

To give you an example from nature, when there is a low-pressure system with a deficiency of air, air from a neighboring high-pressure system flows in and fills it up. Similarly, water in a high place will automatically flow down to fill up a low place. Balance, to become level, is the ideal.

In the world today there are advanced nations and developing nations. In the advanced nations, people have an abundance of things and end up discarding leftovers, whereas people in developing nations lack many things, especially food. Many even starve to death. Twenty million people die of starvation each year. Do you think that is God’s desire? When advanced nations do not give out of their abundance to developing nations, they block the universe’s natural system of giving and receiving.

If this continues, the advanced nations will not be able to avoid divine punishment. Heaven will not let this go unnoticed. Already signs of judgment are appearing in various places. One sign is the prevalence of sexually transmitted diseases; another is drug and alcohol abuse. Others are free sex and homosexuality. They are madness; the human race can go no lower. God detests such behavior the most; Satan, on the other hand, praises such behavior the most.

I have been leading projects to save the tens of thousands of people who are dying of starvation and malnutrition each day in the developing nations. I am calling the people of advanced nations such as the United States, who live in a consumer paradise, to willingly go without in order to restore balance. Despite all the disorder of the human race, the natural world is constantly trying to maintain balance.

When we pledge to “build the universal family... and perfect the world of freedom, peace, unity and happiness,” the word “freedom” does not just refer to the freedom of the individual. It refers to the freedom of all people as one family under God. The same goes for the words “peace,” “unity,” and “happiness.” “Happiness” refers to a world where all people live happily. That is why we need to develop movements in villages, towns and cities throughout the world. As they build wealth, we need to inculcate their people with the ethical norm to share it with others.

Ladies and gentlemen, a world of one universal family is a world filled with families who have received the marriage Blessing. When you go to the spirit world, you will find people living together from everywhere on the planet. There, all five colors of the human race are intermingled. Yet, who among those people has truly prepared themselves to live the family ideal that can unite the past, present and future? If you prepare yourselves in that way, you will become central leaders in the spirit world. That is why you must train for this while you are on earth.

The basis of that training is mind-body unity. There are many people in this world who betray their conscience and act according to their body’s desires. They hoard money, commit fraud, come up with schemes and defame others. However, the money accumulated in this way will eventually come back around to strike them, like a rod of judgment.

Likewise, no matter how learned a person may be, if he or she gained that knowledge to use it for their own sake instead of for the greater good, that knowledge will come back around to strike them. In the spirit world, such people will make their way to hell.

We need to live for the sake of the world upholding the ideal, God’s ideal, of one global family. If we disregard the world and live only for our own sake, the world will judge us.

I have not asked you to recite the Family Pledge centering on “my family.” You must offer your pledge centering on “our family” Everyone is equal. I, Rev. Moon, make this pledge representing “our family,” that is, on behalf of all families. That is why we say, “Our family, the owner of Cheon II Guk, pledges to build the universal family encompassing heaven and earth, which is God’s ideal of creation, and perfect the world of freedom, peace, unity and happiness by centering on true love.”

The fifth verse of the Family Pledge is, “Our family, the owner of Cheon II Guk, pledges to strive every day to advance the unification of the spirit world and the physical world as subject and object partners, by centering on true love.”

When thinking about anything, we must first think about the spirit world. It is in the position of the subject partner, while the physical world is the object partner. Do you think there are more people living in the spirit world or on earth? The population of the spirit world is far greater than the population on the earth.

The spirit world relates to the physical world as subject partner to object partner, and yang to yin. In the same way, the mind is in the position of subject partner and yang in relation to the body, which is in the position of its object partner and yin. The mind represents the spirit world and the body, the physical world. If we act in a way such that we do not recognize the mind and the world of the mind as the subject partner, we are bound to go to hell. If previously we lived by allowing our body to lead our mind, now we must live so that our mind leads our body and subjugates it. I am saying that such a time has come.

In our daily life, we need to be aware that the spirit world is the subject partner. This means that our task on earth, the object partner, is to perfect ourselves so that we may establish the foundation for perfection when we pass into the spirit world. There is a direct relationship between the two worlds. The spirit world is linked to us every day of every year throughout our entire life. But only by perfecting ourselves on earth does it become our second sphere of activity and a place where we can peacefully abide when we go there.

In other words, “the unification of the spirit world and the physical world as subject and object partners” means that the two worlds must constantly move towards oneness. To “strive every day to advance this unification” means that we must help the two worlds progress toward this unity. We are urged to do it quickly. We must not stop. If we do, we are already backsliding toward hell and death.

Stagnation leads down to hell, whereas pushing forward leads to development. When relating to God’s providence, to sleep long hours and be lazy, gluttonous and self-indulgent are not acceptable. We must keep ourselves busy. Life is short. Run without resting, just as I do. Run even without sleeping. Only then can you be connected to the world that we all hope for. How can you be connected to that world when you are not even thinking about it? We need to always be busy and always concerned; this is how oneness is brought about. We need to think about both the spirit world and the physical world, for they are partners.

The sixth verse of the Family Pledge is, “Our family, the owner of Cheon II Guk, pledges to become a family that moves heavenly fortune by embodying God and True Parents, and to perfect a family that conveys Heaven’s blessing to our community, by centering on true love.”

“Our family pledges... by embodying God and True Parents” means that your family is to embody God and True Parents. Families that embody God and True Parents are the families that mobilize heavenly fortune. When we say that we pledge to “become a family that moves heavenly fortune” and “conveys Heaven’s blessing to our community,” we are not saying that we want to be blessed by God and enjoy a good life just for ourselves. We are saying that God’s blessing is for all people, so that all can ultimately become part of God’s royal family. We are saying that everyone needs to become a citizen of God’s kingdom of Cheon II Guk.

We are making a vow to become a channel of God’s blessing, sharing it equally with all the people of the world. The family of God and the True Parents is one family. Although there is only one set of True Parents, there are many blessed families throughout the world, and God wants all of them to become channels for sharing the blessing of God and True Parents with others. You must work to become such a family. This means that you are striving to bring everyone to receive many blessings.

The seventh verse is, “Our family, the owner of Cheon II Guk, pledges, through living for the sake of others, to perfect the world based on the culture of heart, which is rooted in the original lineage, by centering on true love.”

In our path of faith, the most important point is not to defile the original lineage. That means your descendants must not stain their lineage, as Adam and Eve did when they fell. That is what is meant when “Our family pledges... to perfect the world based on the culture of heart, which is rooted in the original lineage.”

The world in heaven, the world on earth and the world of True Parents’ heart are all meant to be one with the world of God’s heart. That is what is meant when our family pledges, “to perfect the world based on the culture of heart.” This is our ideal. The culture of heart cannot be two; it must be one. The cultures of the fallen world are complex and various. Without establishing the world based on the one culture of heart, there is no way for us to connect to God on all levels from the individual to the family, tribe, people, nation, world, and eternal world.

Without establishing the culture of heart, the individual, family and tribe cannot be connected. Without a world based on the culture of heart, there is no way for us to make connections from the individual out to the cosmos.

That is why the world has been going up and down in a zigzag, unable to reach the final destination even after thousands of years. However, in the world based on the culture of heart we can reach that destination right away. This is possible, because true love is there.

Completing the realm of liberation and complete freedom The eighth verse reads, “Our family, the owner of Cheon II Guk, pledges, having entered the Completed Testament Age, to achieve the ideal of God and human beings united in love through absolute faith, absolute love and absolute obedience, and to perfect the realm of liberation and complete freedom in the kingdom of God on earth and in heaven, by centering on true love.”

You have to make the royal family a reality in your family, by becoming a couple where both of you are united in mind and body. This is God’s ideal for the creation, which is fulfilled in the Completed Testament Age. God’s kingship begins in the family where man and woman are united in true love. Originally, Adam’s family was to have been God’s royal family. From there, God’s kingship would have emerged in the tribe and expanded to the people and the nation. This kingship would have automatically continued on into the eternal spirit world. From its beginnings on earth, it would have connected with that kingdom for eternity.

The words “Completed Testament Age” refer to our having advanced into a new age. The Completed Testament Age is the time when the world will unite and create a peaceful world that begins with the family and progresses to the tribe, people, nation, world, and even to all of heaven and earth. It represents the whole; it is not confined to the family unit. We could only enter the Completed Testament Age once we had gone beyond the level of the world to embrace the whole cosmos. Through becoming new families that perfect the four great realms of heart and the three great kingships, we can go beyond the realm of the world and achieve the model required for the Completed Testament Age. When this happens, the world will become one unified world, the ideal heavenly kingdom of peace.

Ladies and gentlemen, the words “absolute faith, absolute love and absolute obedience” are essential for realizing God’s ideal of creation. Based on absolute faith, God began creating all things. He initiated creating for the sake of His object partners of absolute love. Absolute obedience means that there is no awareness of self. It is a state of absolute zero, complete nothingness. When God empties Himself and returns to nothingness, a natural circular motion begins. Having given everything out and with nothing more to give, everything will return to you. This principle—that everything returns to you after you invest completely—is the origin of interaction in the universe.

For this reason, do not insist on your own way. If you do, you will be giving yourself to the devil. Do not allow Satan to use anything that comes into you through your five physical senses. Use your eyes, nose, mouth, feet and hands as if they were God’s. Live your life based on this standard of absolute faith, absolute love and absolute obedience. Then God will always have compassion for you and assist you. When you let go of yourself, God will be with you.

Ladies and gentlemen, when God created you as His absolute partners of love, He totally invested Himself. He created you because He needed you as His genuine object partners of love. As long as God did not have a substantial form, either in the physical world or in the spirit world, He was unable to relate to His children. That is why He needed to acquire a physical form. That form is that of perfected true parents.

God began His creation because He wanted beloved object partners on earth whom He could love. That is why God created human beings as His absolute object partners of love and granted us the ability to reproduce, so that we might live for eternity through our descendants. This is the essence of God’s creation.

God is the root of love, life and lineage and the root of the kingdom of heaven on earth and in heaven. Had Adam and Eve not fallen, God would have entered their hearts when they married and realized loving oneness with them. God would have become the vertical True Parent and Adam and Eve would have become the horizontal True Parents. We would have been born with the flesh and blood of these two sets of parents. Our mind would have become the vertical self and our body the horizontal self, and that being so we would have led lives based on one heart, one body, one outlook and one harmony.

By perfecting the unity of our mind and body, and achieving unity with God in love, we will become His sons and daughters. Once we are in this parent-child relationship, we will be God’s princes and princesses. In that parent-child relationship with God, we will inherit everything from Him. When we, His children, become husbands and wives and unite totally based on true love, we will become a family that lives in attendance to God. That family is the foundation for peace and the ideal. When a man and woman, each being one half, unite together, they become the base for fulfilling God’s ideal of love as His partners.

Men and women are beings of infinite value. When they perfect true love, God also perfects true love and completes the world of His ideal, where His eternal, ideal love dwells amid the creation.

In the relationship between God and Adam’s family, God was to be the first generation, in the position of the grandparent. Adam and Eve, in the position of parents, would be the second generation, and Adam’s children, their sons and daughters, would be the third generation. In the same way, when three generations are firmly secured in your family, your grandparents stand in the position of God in His kingdom. They also are in the positions of the king and queen of the original physical world and spiritual world. As parents, you stand in the position of the central king and queen representing the present kingdom of Heaven on earth. Your children represent the future; they are in the position of princes and princesses who will inherit the kingdom of heaven on earth and in heaven.

Adam’s family and clan were to live as the royal clan with God as its center. After their life on earth, its members were meant to go to heaven and live in the eternal world.

We will be able to fulfill this purpose. When we live on earth and attend our grandparents, representing heaven, as if they were God, attend our parents as the king and queen of the present world, and love our children as the future princes and princesses, we will dwell together with them after we go to heaven. In heaven all our desires, hopes and happiness will be fulfilled.

The eighth verse of the Family Pledge shows us the way to live in the kingdom of heaven on earth. It is a path that is possible only through a life of absolute faith, absolute love, and absolute obedience. At the time of creation, God totally invested Himself with absolute faith and absolute love based on the standard of absolute obedience.

Ladies and gentlemen, your conscience comes first, preceding your parents, your teachers and even God. Many people do not realize its value because the body has been dominating the conscience. That is how it is in this fallen, hedonistic world, a world in which most people focus on experiencing physical pleasure and having fun. Those who depend solely on money will be lost. Those who live for pleasure end up in reckless love relationships that lead to ruin.

We lost the true love that was supposed to be created by the unity of God and human beings in absolute faith, absolute love and absolute obedience. The first human beings were supposed to become perfect, having nothing to do with the Fall. They were supposed to create that realm of unity with God. Yet they lost everything.

That is why we have to establish the realm where heaven and earth are in unity. We need to dissolve all the sorrow that we caused God for not having done so. Without releasing that pain and suffering, neither God nor human beings can be liberated. I have been resolving all of this, internally and externally. That is why I call this the perfection of restoration. It is the completion of restoration. I am proclaiming this now, so that I can bring restoration to a conclusion in the right way.

The constitution of your family is the tradition of heaven

Beloved blessed family members! The question now is how you will guard the pure and true lineage that you have received from God. Even though the Garden of Eden was an undefiled place, still the Fall occurred there. How much more difficult it will be to protect the pure lineage in this evil and corrupt world of sin. So, the people born in this sinful world, no matter how much they suffer, have to take responsibility such that the children of future generations receive and maintain the marriage Blessing. It is their responsibility to create a pure and pristine environment that will never again be defiled.

Consequently, your families must not engage in old worldly habits. What is the best way to live for the future? It is essential to live an exemplary life for the sake of your descendants. It is also necessary to thoroughly educate them. Despite difficulties during the wilderness course, the people of Israel overcame the seven tribes of Canaan. In the same way, you have to gain victory in your own battles, no matter what hardships you have to endure. As parents, you must establish the way of Heaven, even if you have to die doing so. If you live for the sake of Heavenly Parent and the True Parents, your children will be blessed with heavenly fortune and will naturally come to inherit the heavenly tradition.

The people of Israel entered the land of Canaan, and later perished. Why? It is because they eventually succumbed to the prevailing environment and adopted its habits and customs. The Israelites were tempted by the extravagant lifestyle of the Canaanites, who ate better food and enjoyed a more comfortable life than theirs. The Israelites ended up coveting power and began to place their priorities on wealth and knowledge. They even began to marry Gentiles, as long as they were from rich families. In this way, they betrayed the spirit of the chosen nation and ended up losing the heavenly tradition.

The lessons we learn from the Family Pledge come from universal, cosmic principles, not from any form of individualism. We must face the various hardships that befall us in our lives. We need to boldly break through our circumstances and gain victory. To do this, we need to strengthen our families with the tradition of the Family Pledge.

It is not a task just for your family for a single generation. You have to establish a firm and solid heavenly tradition over at least three generations. Your mission is that of establishing a lineage that secures the tradition of the chosen people from generation to generation.

You have to broaden your base of true love and unite the hearts of all peoples. Light a candle, offer incense and pray to become a family that will unite the hearts of all peoples. Live and die to create a bond of true love with all peoples and with heaven and earth. If you live this way, God will protect your family through all ordeals and tribulations. It is God’s desire to plant His seeds of love in such families.

Ladies and gentlemen, you have to establish the victorious tradition of a true and good family based on the Family Pledge. The life that you lead in this revolutionary Era after the Coming of Heaven must be one of a victor. The bright light from the Pacific Rim era is illuminating your path. God, the source of true life, true love and true lineage, is with you, whether you are in the homeland of the Korean peninsula or anywhere else in the world. True Parents, to whom God has given the Blessing of eternal value, are guiding you on your path. Be assured that there is nothing you cannot accomplish on the path ahead.

May God’s blessings be with you and your family for eternity.

Advance without Ceasing

September 17, 2012

Cheongshim Peace World Center, Korea

Special Unification Church World Leaders Assembly for Victory on Foundation Day

(True Mother’s speech)

Distinguished guests from home and abroad, and blessed families around the world:

Today, we come to an exceedingly important turning point in God’s governance of His providence. It is unprecedented, historic and revolutionary.

My husband, the Reverend Dr. Sun Myung Moon, the returning Lord, Messiah, Savior and True Parent, who came as the root of the lineage of original goodness, has departed for the spirit world. Consequently, we now stand at a providential renewal point at which we have to inherit True Parents’ realm of victory and build the ideal kingdom of peace, one family under God.

Manifestation of True Parents

After being with True Father my whole life, his ascension from our midst brings me indescribable pain and sorrow. I know it is the same for all of you. Moreover, we cannot begin to fathom how sorrowful the heart of God is over the passing of True Father, who is the original substance of eternal love and the True Parent of humankind.

From another perspective, however, this is a time of hope. True Father worked in accordance with the heavenly laws, which God established at the time of the creation of heaven and earth, to conclude, complete and perfect the providential tasks on earth that no one in history had been able to fulfill. He is now transitioning to the spirit world to exercise dominion over both the spiritual and physical worlds and to initiate a new dimension of God’s providence. No spoken or written language known to human beings can possibly express the flood of emotion we experience as we stand at this juncture in the providence.

As you are well aware, Heaven led me to meet True Father in the pure and pristine years of my adolescence. By the providence Heaven had prepared, in the flower of my youth at the age of seventeen, I received the grace of the True Parents’ Holy Wedding, which holds historic significance throughout heaven and earth. I became True Father’s companion on the providential path, attended him throughout my life, and worked with him as we walked the way of the providence, which is governed by heavenly law. Although I was young when I set out on this path of the providence, I invested my entire being in fulfilling two primary missions. The first was to bring an end to God’s providence of restoration through indemnity, which was rife with bitter sorrow, within my lifetime. The second was to attend Father throughout his life in order to complete the realization of the ideal world of God’s Will.

God’s providential history of salvation has progressed continuously since the Fall of Adam and Eve, the first human ancestors. No one, however, could complete the providential course of restoration through indemnity, and humankind could only wait for the True Parents to come.

True Parents’ course began under desperate circumstances in God’s providence at a time when Satan reigned with full authority, exercising his sovereignty over the spirit world and physical world. What Satan, the progenitor of evil who had maintained dominion for six thousand years, feared most was the emergence of the True Parents, who would become the progenitors of goodness. You can imagine how Satan would fiercely and desperately oppose this and employ all manner of brutality in an effort to prevent it. Prior to establishing his position as a True Parent through our Holy Wedding in 1960, True Father passed through a providential course of immeasurable indemnity. True Parents were to come to humankind only once in history. Once they assumed their position through the Holy Wedding, they became the True Parents for all eternity.

True Father began his providential public life course at the conclusion of the Second World War in 1945. Heaven had prepared Christianity, especially Korean Christian spiritualist movements, on a foundation of two thousand years of conditions that Christians had made. Christianity should have fulfilled the mission of the providential bride by attending and upholding the returning Messiah, whom Heaven sent as the bridegroom, and then should have opened the providence of attending the substantial Bride. However, Christianity was unable to complete this providential responsibility. As a result, Father lost the entire providential foundation, both the spiritual foundation, the two thousand year history of Christianity, and the substantial foundation, the victory of the Allied nations in World War II.

Under these providential circumstances, fraught with immense difficulties and challenges, True Father had to act alone to once again carry out the providential course of restoration through indemnity, starting from the bottom of hell in the Hungnam Special Labor Camp. He endured and finally overcame Satan’s vicious attacks to establish a foundation of victory by separating from Satan. On that basis, True Father established the Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity as the providential bride, in place of Christianity, and on that foundation, he received me as the substantial bride and conducted the historic Holy Wedding. As a result, in 1960 True Parents’ course could finally commence.

True Parents’ providential course

Distinguished guests, beloved blessed families, how can we describe God, our Heavenly Father, as True Father has revealed Him? God is not an aloof monarch sitting on His throne of glory and honor. Rather He is a True Parent of true love and heart who has traversed millions of miles in search of His prodigal children who fell into a state of death due to sin.

In his speech, “The Settlement of the True Parents of Heaven, Earth and Humankind, who, as God’s Embodiment, Proclaim the Word,” which he so treasured during his time on earth, True Father explained God’s plight:

Ladies and gentlemen, do you have any idea how much pain God suffered the moment human beings, whom He created as His children and into whom He had invested His complete and unreserved devotion since time immemorial, fell and disappeared into darkness, becoming part of Satan’s lineage? Are you even remotely aware that our Heavenly Father, who endured tens of thousands of years of excruciating heartache so great that His bones shed tears and His flesh quivered, had to go through the long, dark tunnel of indemnifying the Fall in order to save His lost children? Have you shed any tears even for a moment, yearning to comfort our Father in heaven?

That is how God is. True Father was the person who experienced God’s suffering with his entire being. With blood, sweat and tears, he triumphantly completed True Parents’ forty-year course, and finally in 2001 he offered to Heaven the Enthonement Ceremony for the Kingship of God.

Distinguished guests from home and abroad, True Parents’ forty-year providential course up to the offering of the Enthronement Ceremony for the Kingship of God was a path that crossed peaks of unimaginable misery. We were in a continuous life-and-death struggle against the Satanic forces of the evil sovereignty. We were repeatedly struck down and had to gather ourselves up each time to continue the battle. It was a course requiring our ultimate resolve, a course for which we had to invest every moment. No words can describe how many times True Father voluntarily chose to go to the bottom of hell. In order to bring the wilderness era to a close, he followed a treacherous course of indemnity that led him to suffer hardship in prison at Danbury. But that is what it took to conclude the six thousand year history of the providence for the salvation of humankind.

Despite being the long-awaited Savior of humanity, True Father led a life of constant indemnity. He endured imprisonment under the Japanese oppressors, North Korean communist authorities and the South Korean Liberal Party administration. What he said to me as he headed off to prison once more, this time in the United States, is still vivid in my memory. “Don’t worry’’ he encouraged me, “a new world of hope will be waiting on the other side of prison.” Despite True Father’s optimism, these incidents brought me overwhelming sorrow. I directly witnessed his noble life up close and walked alongside him. So when he went to prison my whole world seemed to collapse around me. I could only think of his dire circumstances, imprisoned in Satan’s den with his life targeted by communists. I fervently beseeched Heaven to protect his safety and health. Only Heaven fully knows these circumstances in the providence of restoration through indemnity.

The wilderness era finally ended in August 1985 on the foundation of victory established through True Father’s suffering in Danbury prison and the loss of Heung-jin, our second son who represented the True Children. With the Day of Total Victory as a turning point, a new providence began. True Father later met Mikhail Gorbachev and Kim II Sung, communist leaders who were central figures in Satan’s realm, and won their hearts with Heaven’s love.

On that foundation, True Father established the Women’s Federation for World Peace in the position of the providential bride and placed me in the position of the first and only substantial bride in human history to attend the returning Messiah. I began to proclaim to all of heaven and earth the Second Advent of the Lord, the Messiah, the Savior and the True Parents. Based on this, I undertook the providence of mother-son cooperation for seven years while attending True Father, the center of the providence, and offered the successful conclusion to Heaven. Thus began the era of Cheon II Guk, the nation of cosmic peace and unity.

On May 1, 1999, during the Day of All True Things, True Father bestowed a great blessing on me. As he presented me with an award for being victorious in the era of mother-son cooperation, never to be repeated in history, he firmly embraced me and whispered in my ear, “Mother, thank you for your hard work. You have scaled the summit of a great providential mountain.” I was immediately overwhelmed with emotion and began to weep. Memories of critical moments during those seven years, such as having to embrace Cain and Abel while contending with the opposition of leftist students on Korean university campuses, and of enduring all manner of dangers and concerns during hundreds of speaking engagements in one hundred eighty-five nations, flashed through my mind like a kaleidoscope as I received True Father’s consolation and blessing.

Respected peace-loving leaders and family members, I am so proud of you. Looking back, it has truly been an arduous course of restoration through indemnity. True Parents, however, brought a clean end to all of it. They have been victorious and have opened the gates to the era of Cheon II Guk, when the era of God’s kingship, the era of God’s direct dominion, takes root. True Parents moved up from My Pledge to the Family Pledge and brought us from the era of praying in True Parents’ names to that of directly reporting to God in the name of our own blessed central family. They opened the Cheon II Guk era, a new era of the providence, amid changes that previously could not have even been imagined.

On the basis of the substantiation of the culture of heart, we also vertically and horizontally expanded the True Parents-centered system of the absolutely good sovereignty under God’s kingship. Through the Holy Marriage Blessing Ceremony Opening the Gates of Cheon II Guk and the Coronation of the

King of the Blessed Families on the occasion of my sixtieth birthday in 2003, the heavenly sovereignty put down vertical roots. Since then, True Parents firmly established it throughout the world through the coronation of the King of Peace in 120 clans and 120 nations. With the inauguration of the Abel UN through the Universal Peace Federation (UPF), we offered to Heaven the Cheon Jeong Gung Entrance Ceremony and Coronation of the True Parents of Heaven, Earth and Humankind. For the first time in human history, we firmly established the foundation for the substantiation of the ideal envisaged at the time of the creation. With the victory of True Parents’ fifty-year course, we ushered in a providential jubilee year and proclaimed the era of the heavenly calendar, marking 2010 as the first year of Cheon-gi (the Heavenly Foundation).

True Parents’ realm of victory

During the past three years, True Father did not let go of for a single moment the script of his speech, “The Settlement of the True Parents of Heaven, Earth and Humankind, who, as God’s Embodiment, Proclaim the Word,” He treasured this text and would explain it during hoondokhae whenever the opportunity arose. The following is an excerpt found under the subheading “My final words for humankind”:

These are textbooks you will have to read and study even after you go to the spirit world. They are not just teachings that come from the mind of one person; they are textbooks and materials that teach the heavenly way that God has bestowed upon His suffering children for their salvation.

Ladies and gentlemen, I have already mentioned that a life of vertical “high noon” alignment casts no shadow. If our lives are shining, there will be no chance for the shadow of sin to be cast. Those who receive the light will be indebted to the light. I pray that we can now wipe away the tears of people in misery and poverty and lead an illuminated life of eternal true love that dissipates all darkness. The True Parents have achieved ultimate unity, and offered and proclaimed the era of God’s full transcendence, full immanence, full authority and omnipotence upon the standard of their conclusion, completion and perfection.

Who is True Father?

Respected leaders of peace and beloved blessed families: At the dawn of this new providential turning point and new age, my greatest hope is that True Father’s providential stature will solidify. Throughout his life, True Father treasured every second and every minute as he invested his entire being completely for the sake of God’s Will. He relentlessly traveled to every part of the globe and even to the spirit world. It is my hope that his cosmic and providential achievements, the victories he accumulated with his own blood, sweat and tears, will become the eternal standard and example for all humankind.

First, True Father is humankind’s ancestor of original goodness, the True Parent. Adam and Eve, the first ancestors of humankind, fell and became our evil ancestors. As Jesus testified, they are the false ancestors. With the Fall of Adam and Eve, God lost the first created human beings. In other words, He lost His external form.

God carried out the providence of restoration and sent True Father as the ultimate, returning Messiah. Through exercising his own portion of responsibility, True Father illuminated the truth, God’s Word, and completed the providence of restoration through indemnity. Through the Blessing ceremony and the Seonghwa ceremony, he opened the paths of rebirth, resurrection and eternal life, establishing them for fallen people to walk in the physical and spiritual worlds. This enables people to inherit the original true love, true life and true lineage as they were at the time of creation. This inheritance can only come from the True Parents, the ancestors of goodness. Blessed marriage is the gateway for this inheritance.

Second, True Father is the owner of the eternal truth, or the Word. God formed the whole of creation through the Word. The Word is the truth and the substantiation of God. God’s love and heart are manifested in form through the Word. Adam and Eve, humankind’s false ancestors, transgressed God’s Word and committed the Fall. Hence, they were unable to substantiate the Word. Consequently, the Messiah had to search for the Word, the truth from Heaven, as part of his providence for the start of his mission.

In response to such demands of the providence, True Father discovered the fullness of the Word through setting many intense conditions, gaining victory in separating from Satan, and through receiving God’s approval.

Throughout his life, True Father led and directed the providence with the Word. Through the Word, he suffused the world with vitality and life. He lovingly nurtured with the Word while completing the providence of re-creation. As a result, during the jubilee years in True Parents’ course, he completed the eight great textbooks and teaching materials and established the tradition of hoondokhae. This, in turn, allowed the pathway to open up to firmly establish Cheon II Guk through the Word and through the love within our worldwide families.

The authority of the teachings in the eight great textbooks and teaching materials is solely True Parents’, and this must be preserved as the eternal tradition, which is absolute for all future generations.

Third, True Father is the one who completed God’s providence of salvation. As stated in Exposition of the Divine Principle, history is the providence of salvation, which is the providence of restoration. Due to the Fall of the first ancestors Adam and Eve, a world emerged under an evil sovereignty with the false ancestors as the center. Humankind’s misfortunes, anguish, sin, alienation and war, caused by all manner of conflict and hostility, arose from the Fall of those first ancestors. God immediately began the dispensation to restore the world from one of sin and evil to the ideal world envisioned at the time of creation, in other words, a world of peace overflowing with happiness, altruism, service to others and love. This dispensation has continued throughout the course of history without ceasing even for a moment.

Nonetheless, God had to repeatedly prolong the providence of salvation, which continued amid the recurring need for indemnity and restoration, because of the failure of central figures and groups of people to complete their portions of responsibility. Two thousand years ago, God’s only begotten Son Jesus came as the Messiah. He was crucified because of people’s faithlessness. He subsequently ascended, though not before promising that Christ would return.

Two thousand years later, as Jesus intended and promised, True Father came as the returning Messiah and achieved victory in the providential course, paying all the historical indemnity during his lifetime. It is no exaggeration to characterize True Father’s life as a state of ceaseless tension and suffering. He endlessly battled Satan in life-and-death confrontations throughout the providence of restoration through indemnity.

In this way True Father concluded, completed and perfected the providence through a forty-year course as the Messiah, a forty-year course as the True Parent, and a ten-year course as the Peace King, the King of kings.

Fourth, True Father is the Peace King, the King of kings. God’s Will is the perfection of a peaceful, ideal world, a world where all people live as one great family under God. This refers on an individual level to personal perfection through mind-body unity and then the perfection of the family through the oneness of husband and wife, parents and children, and siblings. Expanding this concept, we are meant to create a world overflowing with love and peace, where our societies, our nations and the entire world come together as one.

Since the Fall of humankind, conflict between good and evil has been unending, replicating itself from the level of the individual to the whole of creation. In the end, the divisions between races, nations and religions have brought unfathomable suffering to humankind.

True Parents set as their lives’ providential goals the liberation of God, the salvation of humankind, and the realization of a peaceful, ideal world. They completely invested their lives in order to achieve these goals. Along with religious activities aimed centrally at a revival of spirituality, True Father initiated a peace movement for all humankind spanning the fields of politics, economics, society, culture, the arts, education, the media and sports. He indicated that a true family is the smallest unit of the kingdom of heaven, and he opened the gates to the true family Blessing and to even bless marriages between enemies. He made the ideal of one great human family a reality through the cross-cultural and international blessed marriages, which aim to resolve all conflicts. As a result, we could hold a coronation ceremony in which 120 clans and 120 nations crowned True Father as the King of Peace and the King of kings. Humanity’s dream is now becoming a reality.

Fifth, as the True Parents of Heaven, Earth and Humankind, True Parents perfected God’s position, so that for the first time God could achieve on earth the perfection that He had envisioned at the time of the creation. True Father had begun the providence of restoration through indemnity from the position of a servant of servants. Each victory gradually eroded Satan’s sovereignty while increasingly elevating God’s stature toward its level at the time of the creation.

Two thousand years ago, Jesus revealed that God was our Father and that he was God’s true Son. You are aware that because of this Jesus was accused of blaspheming God, and he suffered the ordeal of the cross. On the foundation of Jesus’ sacrifice, True Parents substantially fulfilled restoration through indemnity on earth and restored honor and glory to God as the original Creator, in other words, as the True Parent who governs heaven, earth, and humankind.

In the course of accomplishing this, True Parents’ providential stature evolved according to the standard of the providence, and on that basis they achieved God’s liberation and complete freedom. On the foundation of the successive levels of the Messiah; True Parents; the Parents of Heaven and Earth; the Parents of Heaven, Earth and Humankind; the King of the Blessed Families; the King of Peace; and the King of kings, True Father proclaimed in 2010 the settlement of the True Parents of Heaven, Earth and Humankind. That is, since God is the incorporeal True Parent of heaven, earth and humankind, True Father established True Parents as the corporeal True Parents of heaven, earth and humankind, who complete and manifest God’s true and essential nature in substance.

Beloved members, Heaven could assist True Father and I as we trod the providential course of restoration through indemnity, and the suffering we experienced on that course is beyond imagination. We even lost four children of the True Family, who became sacrificial offerings for the providence. Who indeed would dare to say they comprehend this painful course of restoration through indemnity? I have dedicated my very being to this work, sharing the joys and pains of life with True Father as his companion, overcoming innumerable trials and difficulties. On that victorious foundation, we, the True Parents, gained the right of equality in a providential dimension, the right to live together and the right to hold the same position, which Heaven bestowed upon us.

Our future path

Respected guests from home and abroad, beloved blessed families throughout the world, according to heavenly law, True Father will now make the spirit world his base and carry out the providence to expand Cheon II Guk while freely traveling between the spiritual and physical worlds. True Father will come down to the physical world as the substantial being of the God of Night and shall preside over the providence in a state of oneness of heart, body, harmony and mind with True Mother, who shall continue to preside over the providence on earth as the substantial being of the God of Day. Through the victory of Foundation Day, Father will be with you in building the original garden of Eden on earth. There is no stopping Heaven’s providence.

At this new transition point in this historic providence, I want to make clear that I have inherited True Father’s victorious foundation and shall stand in the forefront to lead the providence on earth. In doing so, I would like to convey the following to everyone:

First, we must absolutely value the tradition established by True Parents as much as we value our own lives, and we need to pass this down to our descendants in future generations. True Parents established the tradition of love and heart, the Word and principles, the rules and regulations of our tradition, and the tradition of the culture of heart. The hoondokhae tradition of reading the Word, which is the crystallization of True Parents’ course in the providence of restoration through indemnity, has to become the central practice in each family as well as in the churches and any gathering centered on Heaven.

At the same time, we must go forward in building a new order on earth. Please always remember that the order and tradition of organizations also have to form a perfect solidarity centering on the True Family as Abel, who are in turn centered on True Parents.

Second, we must realize the ideal of a blessed family, which Heaven has blessed us to be. The family is the cradle of true love, true life and true lineage and the basis for realizing the purpose God envisaged at the time of the creation. Based on the eight verses of the Family Pledge, you need to uphold through absolute faith the tradition of maintaining the lineage of absolute goodness.

Our vision for peace revolves around pure love, happy families and a peaceful world. Children must be raised and nurtured with love and through the Word within a tradition of conjugal oneness, through parents who attend Heaven with absolute love. Through hoondokhae, you need to foster the firm establishment of the Cheon II Guk order in your families and fulfill the ideal of the Blessing in which the tradition of heart can take root both vertically and horizontally under the standard of high noon settlement.

Third, you have all received the benefit of being tribal messiahs. You need to work to fulfill that mission and responsibility until the time Cheon II Guk is completed on earth. Tribal messiahship is the greatest of all blessings given to you by True Parents. Fallen people could not be blessed and appointed tribal messiahs were it not for True Parents’ foundation of victory in the providence of restoration through indemnity. That is why True Parents have consistently emphasized the tribal messiah mission during their lifelong governance of the providence.

The physical and spiritual completion of Cheon II Guk on earth becomes possible when tribal messiahs fulfill their mission: conveying the Word to each of their clans, officiating in the Blessing of their clans, all the while practicing living for the sake of others. Your clans will thereby establish the sovereignty of goodness and realize a world of peace, one great human family. A victorious foundation established in each clan will automatically bring about the establishment of the Abel UN, and complete the sovereignty of goodness.

Fourth, all of us need to create a community based on the culture of heart and characterized by harmony and unity, centered on True Parents and the True Family. Each of you without exception found the path of God’s Will because you were chosen by Heaven, based on the merits of your ancestors and because of your own character. You faced immeasurable persecution in order to follow True Parents until entering this realm of victory today. That makes us all a part of a single family, a community of heart centered on the one True Parents. Division and conflict continue to afflict the world, yet because we are one with True Parents, the Unification family can be brothers and sisters who can easily transcend race, national borders and any other barrier.

If you can live an exemplary life of giving and living for the sake of others, this dream will surely come true. Especially as we are in this time of great transition in the providence, I ask that you bear this in mind and engrave in your hearts that we must become one with True Parents.

Our resolution for the victory of Foundation Day

Respected peace-loving leaders and beloved members of the Unification family, True Father in the spirit world is always with us. Existing without corporeal form, he is at our side, and will never leave us even for a moment. What do you think he desires from us at this time? It is to march forward without pausing. God’s providence will continue until all people are centered on True Parents and a culture of heart takes root overflowing with love and peace, thereby establishing a new order. Let us advance further based on the victory of Foundation Day. The hope it brings is so great that it will continue far into the future, so let us instill this great hope in the world and offer great glory to Heaven and True Parents.

Beloved members, I shall be faithful to True Father’s life and tradition. He set the example for us and led by example his entire life, doing his absolute best to achieve victory in the providence. The requests I have conveyed to you today are True Father’s last words as he was departing for the spirit world. I sincerely pray that you will engrave them deeply in your heart and that you will all become victorious.

I pray that God’s blessings and love will be forever with you, your families and your nations.

Thank you very much.

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