Pyeong Hwa Gyeong
평화경平和經
BOOK 4
The True Family Movement
1. The True Family and I
511
2. The Ideal Home and
World Peace 525
3. True Family and True Universe
Centered on True Love 532
4. The True Family
Movement to Save Humankind 543
5. Realization of
a Peacefid World through the Ideal of True Families 552
6. Blessed
Marriage and Eternal Life 560
7. True Family and
World Peace 573
8. Blessed
Families and the Ideal World 581
9. True Love and
True Marriage 588
10. The Holy Marriage Blessing Is the Way
to Unite the Virtues of Heaven and Earth and Harmonize and Unite the Cosmos
594
11. God’s Ideal Family and the
Kingdom of the Peacefid Ideal World 605
12. God’s Model Ideal Fandly and Nation and the Peace Kingdom 618
13. God’s Model for
Absoluteness, Peace and the Ideal Is the Fandly and
Global Kingdom Upholding Absolute Sexual Morality
627
14. True Families: Gateway to
Heaven 644 (8 Holy Textbooks)
BOOK 4
The True Family Movement
1
June 7, 1995
Brasilia, Brazil
Speaking tour to seventeen South and Central American nations
Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to express
my sincere gratitude to you this evening. Through this welcoming banquet, you
have made it possible for me to meet such distinguished individuals.
I am Rev. Moon, whom you no doubt already know
through many rumors and stories. I have stirred up a number of problems in the
world as a result of one historic reality: to this day, I have served only God.
In the process, I have created a number of events and accomplishments with
worldwide consequences.
This evening, in this jubilant atmosphere, I
would like to speak to you for a time on the subject, “The True Family and I.”
This is because the world’s problems stem from the family. Let us ask what we
mean by a true family.
Conflict originated in the first family
If we ask whether the world we live in today
is good or evil, the answer would be that it is evil. Why do we judge it to be
evil? It is because whether we consider world history, this nation’s history,
or the history of any other country, we see unremitting conflict. Through
conflict and struggle, the parties involved will not develop, but will
necessarily decline. To say that the world is evil implies that its nations are
evil, that its inhabitants are evil, and that we ourselves are evil. If we
study ourselves we cannot deny that, within each of us, our mind and our body
struggle with each other.
The origin or the cause of struggle remains a
problem that must be resolved. If an individual does not possess within himself
or herself a foundation for peace, then no matter how peaceful his or her
family, nation or the world might be, he or she will
not be happy. The individual is the true battlefield. As you know, World War I,
World War II and the Cold War each came to an end. It will be possible to bring
future such conflicts to an end. However, the struggle between our mind and
body has existed from ancient times. It has continued throughout the course of
history, it continues today, and we do not know how much longer it will
continue into the future.
If we consider the existence of God, it is a
major problem that God would permit the struggle between mind and body to
continue throughout history, and even today. However, if we consider that it
was human beings who caused the struggle, then we can
understand that it is human beings who must indemnify it. God cannot take that
responsibility away from us, nor can He intervene in it.
Where does the struggle between mind and body
originate? We inherit life from our parents and from the parents of our
parents. If we continue going back this way, we eventually arrive at the first
generation, that is, the first human ancestors. The origin of our life is the
love of our parents. If this struggle began before we were even born, we would
have to conclude that the problem related to the circumstances in which our
first parents entered into a love relationship with each other; that is, that
the origin of the struggle between mind and body results from a problem in the
conjugal love between Adam and Eve.
The love of Adam and Eve was not a love
accompanied by true happiness. Quite to the contrary, it was conflict-ridden
love. Because the roots of our life are in this love, we can conclude that this
is where the conflicts plaguing the inner self of human beings originate.
The Bible teaches us that because of having
sinned, Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden of Eden. Once they had been
driven out of the garden, they began to multiply children. God could not follow
and bless them in marriage. Thus we need to ask, under whom did they marry? We
can conclude that, because of having fallen into sin, they married under the
auspices of Satan.
The root of fallen love, life and
lineage
The Fall consisted of
Eve being tempted by Satan and her later temptation of Adam. Therefore, when
our ancestors Adam and Eve established a relationship of conjugal love, that
relationship was unhappy and conflict-ridden. Today humanity still has its
roots in that relationship. We cannot separate from the origin of that struggle
between mind and body. The Fall began with immoral
love. Due to a love relationship that God did not desire, Adam and Eve united
with Satan. They did not become the ancestors of goodness; they became the
ancestors of evil, thus creating the roots of fallen love, fallen life and a
fallen blood lineage.
If this is true, what began as one fallen
family grew into tribes, nations and a world. It is a world whose more than
five billion people, present-day humanity, are descendants of Satan. It is
undeniable that we inherited the lineage of evil parents. No one knew Satan’s
blood was present within our bodies and that this was so displeasing to God.
This is the essential problem.
How will we eliminate those roots within us?
Satan dug his roots into our physical body through the fallen lineage. You have
to understand that if humankind had not fallen into sin, our minds and bodies
would have naturally become one. It is because of the Fall
that there is a conflict between the conscience, which has a positive charge,
and the body, which also has a positive charge, making it inevitable that they
resist each other. This is the starting point of all the struggles in history.
God works to separate good
from evil and thus reverse this situation. God is public-minded and continues
on the path of living for the whole and going toward the goal of love and
peace. On the other hand, Satan is selfish and individualistic. Satan is always
trying to destroy the good side through hatred, evil and war. His intent is to
prevent the earth from ever returning to God’s side.
God cannot severely punish humanity for having
gone with Satan. God’s strategy for returning humanity to His side is to allow
evil to attack. Later, God can claim reparations for the undeserved damage and
abuse. Satan’s strategy is to strike first, yet in the end he loses everything.
Throughout history Satan has tried to ruin God’s plan with hatred, evil and
war, while on the contrary, God has been working to re-create love and peace.
In the Last Days, humankind will return to
God’s side, and evil will lose support and respect. To prevent that from
happening, Satan introduced atheistic materialism, humanism and communism. That
was the essential cause of the Cold War that took place following the Second
World War, when the victory of the Christian world could have led to a
transition toward a world of peace.
The present era is the era of the realm of
individualism, of free sex, of children denying parents and parents denying
children, and the era of denying the couple. Through homosexuality and
lesbianism, an attempt is being made to completely destroy the family ideal.
The Messiah at the Second Coming intends to establish this ideal in order to
change hell on earth into the kingdom of heaven on earth. The Messiah, as the
True Parent, desires the unity of mind and body, the unity of husband and wife,
and the unity of children.
The individual,
family and world that God desires
There are basic questions that need to be
resolved on a worldwide level. These include: what came first, matter or
spirit? Which is correct, the materialist theory or the idealist theory? Which
comes first, reality or concept? Is the theory of evolution accurate or is the
theory of creation correct?
Let us work toward the answers by way of an
example. When we observe the animal kingdom, we discover that in an embryo, the
eyes are one of the earliest parts to develop. If we were talking only of
matter, would those eyes know of the existence of the sun prior to the animal’s
birth? If they were pure matter, the eyes would not be aware. However something
or someone possessed the awareness that the eyes were going to see sunlight.
Someone knew.
Not only that; the face, being purely matter,
would have no awareness that the atmosphere existed, and yet eyelids form in
the womb, to assure that the dust in the air will not damage the eyes. The
eyes, being purely matter, would not know that steam and other forms of heat
would dry the eyes and damage them. Someone knew, however, and arranged for the
eyelids to blink, to lubricate and protect the eyes. The original matter itself
was not aware, yet there was someone who knew everything before it happened,
before we were born.
We can conclude that a simple example such as
that of the eye resolves the great debates over whether thought precedes
existence, spirit precedes matter, and concept precedes reality. We can resolve
the debates of spirit versus matter, of creationism versus evolutionary theory.
Given this, we have no way to deny that God
created everything. We therefore would do well to strive to return to the
original world of creation, by coming to know the kind of individual, the kind
of family, and the kind of world that God desires to see.
The body became the base of operations for
hell and the conscience the base of operation for heaven. We did not know that
within ourselves is contained the division of two worlds. From this
perspective, each of us has to ask if our body leads our mind or our mind leads
our body. In reality, throughout history the body has been completely
unrestricted as it leads the mind. If the conscience were stronger we would
have automatically returned to God; long ago the world would have been with
God.
The fact that the physical body leads the
conscience shows us that the problem stems from the moment of the Fall, when the force of false love, which tied the first
ancestors to Satan, was stronger than the force of the conscience. God, who
knows very well our situation, cannot abandon fallen humanity. So God surely
established a strategy to weaken the body-centered force that dominates our
conscience.
The world cultural spheres were formed
according to the different human circumstances and antecedents. To this day,
religious people have not known that the purpose of religion is to prevent the
body from continuing to lead the mind. Had there been no Fall,
religion would not have been necessary.
Something went very wrong and religion became necessary
to correct it. What does God intend to do through religion? God intends to
discipline the body. You will not be saved just because you believe in
religion, or go to heaven just because you believe in Christianity. However, it
is the children who are centered on God’s love who can go to heaven. Adam’s
family was to have had the love of God at its center. It was to have had a
blood relationship with God. The kingdom of heaven is the place where such
families dwell. We need to dominate the body in order to strengthen the power
of the conscience. A liberated conscience then will lead our body, and we will
return to the bosom of God’s love as original beings free from sin.
Therefore if we ask what religion is supposed
to do, the answer is that it needs to motivate our body to do everything it
hates to do. What does the body hate most? To serve others! To sacrifice for
others! Furthermore, religion asks us to be an offering. The offering is
destined to shed blood and be capable of sacrificing its life. Therefore, the
Bible tells us that a person who is willing to lose his or her life shall find
it, and a person who wishes to find his or her life shall lose it. What this
paradox teaches is that if we live according to the flesh, we are going to go
to hell. If we gain victory over our flesh and liberate our conscience, we will
go to heaven. If we subjugate our body’s wishes and put our conscience in a
totally subjective position, we will liberate the unlimited and infinite hope
of the conscience.
In the course of history, there have been
numerous religions and religious leaders. Yet those who believed in those
religions and in those leaders were not able to attain total control over the
body and could not deny themselves completely. They could not liberate the
conscience and place it in a position to relate with God on the original basis.
We sinful people did not become true olive trees. Instead we remained wild
olive trees with our roots in a false love. Human beings were to have had roots
in God’s true love yet we established roots in Satan’s love. How are we going
to resolve the problem of being wild olive trees instead of true ones? This
remains an inevitable and crucial task.
If you study yourself, you will notice that
your conscience knows everything about you. The conscience is closer to you
than your own parents are. It desires to possess true love, to be embraced
eternally in God’s bosom. When we marry, we separate from our earthly parents,
not from our conscience, with which we are born. The conscience loves us and
its mission is to transform us into eternal sons and daughters of God.
The desire of the
conscience is to occupy the absolute center
The conscience does not need a teacher. Have
you ever heard of a Minister of Education in some country announcing a plan to
educate the conscience? If we had gone the original way of the conscience, we
would have known clearly the course to follow in life. It would have taught us
and guided us to return to God’s bosom. Because your conscience knows
everything about your life, when you go to the spirit world you will discover
that there is a “computer” there that fully recorded everything you did on
earth. This is to fulfill the mission of the conscience to convert us into
unblemished, true sons and daughters of God.
Is there anyone here who is convinced that he
or she will never die? We will all go to the spirit world someday. When you
enter the spirit world, you will immediately be known by your name. Your entire
life will be known, as well as that of your ancestors, because the spirit world
transcends time and space.
We must not bring anything into that world
that stains our conscience. For that reason, you need to understand that the
conscience is above all other teachers.
Today we have gathered distinguished personalities.
Among them are some professors. Honestly, there has never been a professor who
possessed a teaching superior to that of the conscience. It fulfills the same
role that a compass fulfills for a ship’s captain.
To the many distinguished people gathered here
this evening, I would like to ask, “When you married, did you want to have a
spouse inferior to you?” The answer is no. And if I asked you whether you
wanted a spouse ten times better than you or one hundred times better than you,
no doubt you would reply that, if it were possible, you would prefer that he or
she be one thousand, ten thousand, one million times better than you. This is
because the ambition of the conscience is to experience the maximum amount of
love. It wishes to possess the absolute being. The same was true for our
ancestors and the same will be true for our descendants. Even God would respond
in the same way.
Is it possible for all of our desires to be
fulfilled? A senator will want to be president of his or her country, and later
an important person on the world level. He or she will want to be an important
person in world affairs. Ultimately, he or she will want to achieve the highest
position in the world. That is the measure of ambition of the conscience. From
the beginning of history until now, people’s general thinking is that the
ambition of the conscience cannot be completely satisfied. However Rev. Moon,
the person who is standing here, arrived at the conclusion that it is possible
to satisfy it.
How big is the conscience? How can the
conscience be measured? Do you think that the day will come when the conscience
will possess God? Do you think that if something bigger than God exists that
the conscience would desire to possess it? If something exists that is larger
than God, then the conscience wants to occupy that larger thing.
Then what is it that the conscience’s ambition
is seeking? If there existed something that had the maximum value in the
cosmos, the conscience would desire to possess that as well.
The thing that God desires the most is the
true love of humankind Now, if we compare the human
conscience with God’s conscience, which would be larger? If God’s conscience
were larger than a human beings, what would God do
with it? The conclusion is that what God wants to possess is the same as that
desired by the immense ambition of the human being, and that is true love.
We know that God is absolute, yet do you think
God is happy? Might He be lonely? Ladies and gentlemen, even if a person
becomes president of the nation, if he or she lives alone without a spouse,
that person will feel unfortunate. If we do not have an object partner of love,
we are unfortunate.
Does God need someone the same way? How do you
feel about this? Even if God is God, He feels very lonely. The human being
feels empty when he or she lacks money, or knowledge or authority. However, God
does not need money, knowledge or power.
This is because He is the Creator. The
question is: what does God need? We call God the “King of Love” or the “Owner
of Love.” If God is the king of love this means that God needs a queen. This is
an absolute principle. Then who can be the absolute God’s object partner of
love? A true human being!
Ladies and gentlemen, you need money.
You need knowledge and you need power. However if you do not
have a spouse, all of that will be useless. A husband needs a wife and
children. A wife needs a husband and children. The place where those object
partners of love are found is the family.
I serve God, the subject partner of love, as
His object partner of love who completely satisfies the ambition of His
conscience. The family where man and woman unite as object partners of God’s
love, and where children live happily, centered on the true love of God, is the
foundation of the kingdom of heaven on earth.
Thus, just as human beings want their object
partner of love to be infinitely more valuable than them, God also wants the
human being, His object partner of love, to have infinite value. A true human
being is a person of infinite value. Yet we did not know that Adam and Eve were
meant to be that kind of man and woman.
If we were given such a high aspiration in our
conscience, it is because God is the subject partner and God wanted human
beings to be in the position of His object partner. God did not want human
beings simply to be a part of God; He wanted them to have a completely
different personality. God allowed us as human beings to have the action of
conscience at such an elevated level simply because God hoped that human beings
would be one thousand or ten thousand times more valuable than even God
Himself. Please understand this very clearly.
If, at the beginning of creation, a family
could have been realized in which God and human beings could have united in a
relationship of true love, today we would not have to worry about hell or
heaven, because we would automatically enter the kingdom of God.
The problem here is that God’s true love and
true human love did not begin at a common point, united as subject and object
partners of love. God’s love and human being’s love began in two different
directions with two different goals. Therefore, it has been impossible to
realize the ideal world for which God and human beings are both longing. God’s
ideal of beginning on common ground was completely frustrated.
Inheriting true love, true life and true
lineage is our salvation False parents arose centered
on Satan’s love. Being their descendants, we inherited that false love, false
life and false lineage and are thus destined for hell. We have nothing to do
with the kingdom of heaven.
We did not know that we were supposed to
conquer God’s love through our conscience, by being people whose spirit
dominated our body through will. Have you heard the expression “lovesick?” If
someone is lovesick, when we find the cause of the sickness we can resolve his
or her problem. Having Adam and Eve’s original nature causes us to miss God’s love like someone who is lovesick.
What does the conscience do to win the true
love of God? A person may have money, knowledge or power, yet if he or she
loses the love of his or her life, none of those things have any meaning.
If you unburden and liberate your mind
completely, your conscience will automatically connect with the true love of
God. Let us compare the position of the conscience to the position of love. You
will see that the position of love is prior. This is because the conscience
begins from love.
The kingdom of heaven is the place where we go
to live in unity with God’s true love and a free conscience. It is the place we
go after having lived centered on love and after engrafting ourselves into the
lineage of God’s love. Without winning this love, we can never enter the
kingdom of God. We will have to wait thousands of years until that day comes.
Due to the Fall there will not be a connection with
the kingdom of heaven as long as humanity is not illuminated by God’s true
thought and sustained by God’s true love.
The person who lives in unity with a true
conscience and true love will automatically enter the kingdom of heaven. No
matter how much faith a person has in Jesus, if he or she is not linked to the
love of God, and if that person’s mind and body are struggling, that person
cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. The person who inherited Satan’s lineage
cannot enter the kingdom. Religions with the mission of opening the way are
struggling among themselves. This will lead to a sad state of affairs in the
Last Days.
God cannot be found where there is conflict.
Religion is a movement to subjugate the body and liberate the conscience.
Religion itself is not the key that unlocks the door to salvation. We have to
know that the love, life and true lineage of God are the key that opens the
door to salvation. That is what we need to inherit.
Faith in religion alone will not save us. In
reality, religion exists as a foundation to discipline the body. When our
conscience is liberated, its ambition can ascend to God. Does this idea make
you want to try to find out more?
Who will know first what someone is doing, the
conscience or God? The conscience will know first. A human being is a person
distinct from God because he or she has to occupy the object partner position
in a meaningful way. In the same sense, husband and wife are different. The
characteristics of each are clearly different. If we were to conclude that God
knows everything prior to it happening, we would be saying that we are
indistinct from God, as if we were a single body.
An ideal cannot be perfected when it is
self-contained. After Adam and Eve sinned, God asked, “Adam, where are you?”
Humankind comes from God’s love and returns to God. God is waiting for our
return.
Ladies and gentlemen, when parents reach the
age of one hundred years and their children reach the age of eighty, the
relationship of parents and children also becomes a relationship of friends.
Friends!
We cannot compare the physical strength of the
average woman with that of the average man. She can never defeat him, although
through love, wife and husband are attracted to one another and follow each
other. If Adam and Eve had been the object partners of God’s love, would that
not have been pleasing to God? God created the universe before Adam and Eve
were to have matured as His object partners of love. God had the ambitious hope
that in the future they would be His ideal object partners. If, after having
perfected themselves as the object partners of God’s love, they had asked God
to create something greater than what already had been created, do you not
think God could have done so?
As infinite as the ambition of our conscience
is, we have to know that God can create everything that we desire. God created
us with the value of true love object partners. The restoration of this value,
lost at the Fall, is the purpose of human life and
history. God established religions and the founder of each of them promised
that some day he would return.
Christianity teaches us that Jesus will
return. In Buddhism they speak of the return of Buddha. Confucianism alludes to
a new Confucius. Likewise in Islam, we find the return of the Mahdi, the divinely guided one. Let us consider the reason
that God established the different religions. We have to understand that the
Will of God is accomplished centered on God’s beloved children, children who
are like God’s flesh and blood. With those beloved sons and daughters, God
wants to form families, tribes, races and nations.
This tells us what kind of person the Messiah
is. In the Second Coming, the Lord is the person who perfects the ideal for
which all religions have longed. He will come to the earth with the original
and eternal love of God.
Couples become one through God’s true love The
Messiah will become a True Parent, and centered on that lost true love, will
work to establish a completed family on earth on the foundation of true life
and true lineage.
That is the purpose of the providence of
salvation. Due to the Fall, God lost the True Mother
as well as the children of Adam’s family. This means that God could not have
true children. There was no family connected to the blood lineage that was to
come from God’s love.
Due to the Fall of
the parents, we became connected to false life, false love and false lineage,
which have caused our minds and bodies to be in conflict with each other. Adam
and Eve became enemies, which caused their two sons to fight with each other.
The providence of salvation is the providence
of restoration, led by God.
It restores the lost sons and daughters, the
unity of mind and body, the absolute unity of husband and wife, and the
absolute unity of parents and children in the true love of God. This true
family, which is qualified to live eternally with God, ought to be connected to
Christianity, which is in the position of bride to the Lord. By establishing
such a blood relationship with God, we can realize united families, tribes,
races, nations and a unity of nations that would form a united world. This
would culminate the providence of salvation for all religions.
Distinguished leaders, for your nation to
receive God’s blessing, you need to become a people whose minds and bodies are
united in God’s true love. You also need to unite as absolute husbands and
wives. When the number of families in any nation that can unite as absolute
children of God grows, then God will come to live in that nation. If this
happens, automatically that nation will become the central nation in service to
the world.
Human beings possess this innate nature. If a
beloved one lives in the countryside in poverty, his or her partner wants to
live there too. No matter where it is, we want to go and live in the place
where our beloved is. In the same way, if there is a place where God’s beloved
sons and daughters dwell, that place, for richer or poorer, will be the kingdom
of heaven.
Today the founder of the Unification Church is
here speaking to you. If you ask me what is the mission of
the Unification Church, I will say it is to be a place where God’s true
love is present. It is to be the place where we want our mind and body to unite
in true love and where we want to form ideal marriages with absolute unity
between husband and wife. By means of a teaching that can make all people into
inseparable brothers and sisters, we are carrying out the mission that God has
given us.
The meaning of the international marriage
Blessing The love of true God and the love of the True
Parents cleanses everything that was stained by false love, false life and
false lineage. Our marriage has established the True Parents’ position. The
large international marriage ceremonies we conduct are the ceremonies to sow
the seed of true love, true life and true lineage that results from the unity
of God’s love with man and womans love.
The Blessing of marriage is a ceremony to
restore families that were formed by marriages that, due to the Fall, received the seed of false love, false life and false
lineage. Having families from around the world participate in these Blessing
ceremonies will connect them to God’s original love. It is my fervent desire
that all people receive the Blessing and become families and a people who can
establish the kingdom of heaven on earth.
The purpose of the Unification Church is to
succeed in establishing relationships of brotherhood and sisterhood that
transcend nations. Through this method, we want to realize the ideal of one
great universal family centered on God, and thus proclaim the ideal of true
parents, true spouses, and true brothers and sisters. In this way, we will
begin the world culture of heart. From earth to heaven, we will be liberated to
complete the world of the kingdom of heaven on earth.
During the fifty years since the end of the
Second World War, Rev. Moon has been persecuted and criticized by the entire
world. The time has come for you to know it was not because he committed any
crime. Instead it was to save you. Unlike in the past, people now realize I am
a most admirable man.
By the hand of Rev. Moon, communism collapsed.
It was Rev. Moon who awakened Mikhail Gorbachev and Kim II Sung. To save the
United States, which is careening toward a collapse, I established a foundation
for Americans to feel hope. Also I am addressing the difficult political
tensions of North and South Korea and in the Middle East.
You need to know the Republican party triumphed in the United States, thanks to the
influence of Rev. Moon. Perhaps you are unaware of these facts. However you
need to know that if any nation pre-empts the United States in receiving and
absolutely embracing Rev. Moon, that nation will become the leading nation of
the world.
Everything that Rev. Moon has said has been
fulfilled. Though it felt like the entire world did everything it could to put
an end to me, I did not die and I am firmly leading the world back to God. If
today I can speak to you out loud, it is because God loves me. You need to know
that I survived because God absolutely protected me. For that reason, I believe
that you must seriously study the Unification Church.
Heaven is a place of liberation, freedom,
unity and happiness We met together today and so this
is a day of deep significance. I have shared a very important message with you
and I place my trust in you. I kindly ask that you not forget what was
discussed today. I also ask that to follow the proper path, you make a
redetermination. Based on this new awakening, bring God’s Blessing to your
families and your nation. This is the way ideal families will begin to appear
on this earth.
As you probably know, Rev. Moon and his spouse
are known throughout the world as the True Parents. If it is true that we, as
True Parents, are connected to God in true love, true life and true lineage, I
would like you to remember that a realm of freedom, unity and happiness will
begin from a true family and you, This will allow the
hope of peace to blossom upon the earth. Thank you very much.
2
The Ideal Home and World Peace
August 23,1995
Hotel Lotte World, Seoul, Korea
Second
International Convention of the Women’s Federation for World Peace
(True Mother’s speech)
Honored guests, distinguished representatives
and members of the Women’s Federation for World Peace, and women leaders from
diverse fields:
I am confident that our long-cherished wish
for world peace will be brought one step closer to realization by this conference
today. I want to express my heartfelt gratitude for your tireless efforts, in
every corner of the globe, in building a more peaceful society and world.
True world peace has never been accomplished
on this earth, and yet this has been the one constant dream of all humanity
throughout history. In order for this dream to be realized, a peaceful nation
and society must be realized first. A peaceful nation and society can only grow
out of the premise of a peaceful home. In this light, the peaceful and ideal
home is the very starting point and the basic unit for the peaceful world.
The ideal home on a foundation of true love
What is the ideal home? As recorded in the
book of Genesis, God’s plan for the human family was for Adam and Eve to become
a good husband and a good wife, thereby becoming good parents, and creating an
ideal home. God had planned that, on the foundation of the original ideal home,
the descendants of Adam and Eve would continue to duplicate the tradition of
their parents’ love, generation after generation.
According to the teachings of my husband, the
Rev. Sun Myung Moon, God is the origin of true love.
The very act of creation was prompted by God’s original nature, stemming from
true love. God’s true love needs an object partner to love and care for in a
reciprocal relationship. God’s motive of creation was true love.
The creation, therefore, is God’s object
partner of love in physical form. Among all of creation, however, man and woman
are the closest object partners of God’s love. God is the True Parent of
humanity, and all men and women were created as sons and daughters of God. God
and humankind are True Parent and children.
As people grow, receiving their parents’ love,
they experience the heart of children. And through the love between brothers
and sisters, they experience the heart of brothers and sisters. When they
mature as perfected true people with true character, through their married
life, they experience conjugal love and the heart of husband and wife. When
they give birth to children, through them they experience the parental heart.
All creation wants love and needs love. And people are especially filled with
happiness when they feel true love and live a life based on true love. When
they give and receive love, they are vibrant with life. The perfume of life
blossoms in genuine love.
Love is the fountain of an individual’s
happiness, life and joy. This precious, genuine love is not obtainable through
external knowledge or external conditions or techniques. True love can be felt
only through experience and acquired through life.
Human beings were created to develop and
embody God’s true love, step by step, during their growth period, through their
life experiences. In other words, people perfect their character as they
experience, through this process of stages, the heart of a child, the heart of
a brother or sister, the heart of a husband or wife and the heart of a parent.
People’s character and happiness are determined by how rounded, how versatile
and developed their love becomes as a result of experiencing these stages of
life. To achieve the perfected ideal, their love must come to have the same
qualities of maturity, unselfishness and total investment that characterize God’s
own love.
Self-control and the unique responsibility in the love between a
husband and wife
Within the four relationships of heart,
vertical love, such as a parent’s love for children, does not diminish or
change as it goes from one child to the next. That is why one parent can love
many children. Because of this principle, one God can love all humanity as His
children.
As God’s children, human beings, unlike the
animals, were given total freedom to love between a husband and wife. A human
being’s love is fundamentally different from that of an animal, which mates
only to procreate. However, this freedom, if it involved no responsibility,
could not be freedom in the truest sense. Love between a husband and wife
requires responsibility. When a husband and wife are committed to sacred,
everlasting love, and take responsibility for their relationship, there is
peace at home. This home will be a nest of happiness. It is heavenly law that
they have sons and daughters through this indivisible and faithful love between
a husband and wife. Men and women originally were created by God to grow to
become true individuals, then to become true husbands and wives through
indivisible love with a spouse. By having children together, they would become
true parents.
The Fall and the order of love
From the Bible we know that the ancestors of
humankind did not have a marriage blessed by God, nor did they bear God’s
loving sons and daughters. Adam and Eve committed sin against their original
parent and were kicked out of the garden of Eden.
Outside the garden they had children that have multiplied through the
generations. Because Adam and Eve became neither the true husband and wife nor
the true parents that God desired, we as their descendants were not born in the
lineage of true parents, as members of God’s true family. The reason people
strive for everlasting, unchanging love between a husband and wife, yet can’t
seem to achieve it, is because Adam and Eve’s original separation from God, the
Fall, was caused by false love and adultery. The
reason the original sin is inherited throughout the generations, and the reason
we, in what the Bible calls “the last days,” are witnessing wide-scale
immorality and family breakdown, is all due to this. What God dislikes the most
is when a person goes against the law of love and becomes immoral. My question
to you is: Who has a solution to such problems of youth, family breakdown and
teenage pregnancy that are so prevalent in both East and West?
These phenomena are more fearful than
starvation, war or any disease. Why is that? These problems are not just our
problems today; they are the problems that will destroy humanity’s hope in our
future generations. Today’s immorality has direct consequences for our
descendants.
The home provides elements that are necessary
for a child’s internal development. The basic characteristics and attitude
toward life are formed at home. Babies are born with a natural ability to
receive love. Even after a few months, children can differentiate their
mother’s loving embrace from another woman’s. They grow up naturally
experiencing love from parents and from brothers and sisters. A person’s ethics
and character are mostly formed through his or her experience of love and
happiness, acquired in relationship with their family members. Parents’ life as
seen by children, especially the parents’ love relationship, has a critical
role in their child’s ethical development.
According to heavenly law, parents were meant
to be true parents, as well as true teachers. The education that children need
most is not the education of knowledge or techniques. The most important
education for children is ethical and moral education. This education for life
is essential and can be taught only by parents at home. Children learn, feel
and resemble their parents’ most valuable examples of love and the basic order
of life. Children need a model they can learn from and follow. Regardless of
whether parents realize it or not, they are their children’s most important
teachers. Children imitate and learn from their parents’ pattern. There is no
teacher more important than parents who can show a child the correct direction
in life.
As the fruit of love between two parents,
children wish for their parents to be the most loving, ideal husband and wife.
Children feel happiness from this loving relationship. For children, a divorce
between their parents is a living nightmare and impossible to comprehend. This
is because children also partake of the love between their parents. To the children,
the love between their parents was the origin and root of their being. They
cannot imagine the foundation of their existence being ripped apart. If the
parent-child relationship is a naturally indivisible relationship, should not
the husband-wife relationship, which was the root and motive of the
parent-child relationship, also be naturally everlasting?
Immorality, sexual promiscuity and divorce are
grave mistakes that violate heavenly law. These phenomena are the result of the
Fall. Neither God nor an individual’s original mind
desires them.
Children partake of their parents’ love
Woman leaders, how can we create order out of
this chaotic world? Humanity has made tireless efforts to create a moral
society, a society that would allow an individual to live in dignity as a man
or woman, a society that would guarantee a bright future under the true value
system. However, immorality is flooding our society with free sex and other
decadent trends that go against heavenly law.
The AIDS epidemic is not simply a disease, it
is a serious problem directly linked to humanity’s descendants and our survival
as a species. These problems are not being fundamentally resolved at school by
teachers, or by any government policy, or even by parents at home. Everything has
been tried. The experiment is over. Humanity’s attempt at a cure is no longer
the solution.
Even if one is not religious, the situation is
so desperate that we must seek the solution from God in order to save the world
and to save humanity. To accomplish this, God sends the Messiah. The Messiah
comes as the True Parents, because the Messiah must cure the reality of this
immoral society from what caused it go against God’s Will. Because the human
ancestors, Adam and Eve, did not become true parents, the Messiah must come as
the True Parents to take the place of Adam and Eve and become the origin of
true love, true life and true lineage. The True Parents will educate humanity
by being the example of true persons, the true husband and wife and the true
parents who can make Satan surrender. Together, the True Parents must create
the model of an ideal family and the world of peace and love on this earth.
This is the essence of God’s dispensation of salvation.
God sent my husband, the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, as the Messiah. His entire life is dedicated to
fulfilling God’s Will, the ideal of creation. Due to the lack of understanding
about his mission, however, he has been treated as a criminal worldwide without
having committed any crime.
True Parents and the ideal family
Being close to him and seeing him every day,
my heart aches to witness how difficult and unfair is the way of the saint.
Even under all kinds of suffering and persecution, he never broke away from
walking the path. At the same time, spiritually he has been in a bloody and
furious battle with Satan. Satan is launching an all-out offensive on my
husband in order to defend the sovereignty of false love he has held over
humanity since the Fall. Both spiritually and
physically my husband and I are carrying out our mission as the True Parents.
Upon this victorious foundation Satan can no longer accuse us.
Dear woman leaders! The Second World Culture
and Sports Festival is the culmination of all my husband’s activities. He has
dedicated his life to realizing the united world of love. The Women’s
Federation for World Peace, the Family Federation for World Peace, the
Religious Federation for World Peace, the Federation for World Peace, the Youth
Federation for World Peace, the Collegiate Federation for World Peace are all organizations to bring about the world of peace.
The conferences and events that are being held
by these organizations, as well as by the International Cultural Foundation and
the World Media Association, will awaken humanity’s original mind, lead history
toward a good direction and bring hope for humankind’s future. In particular,
the international marriage Blessing is an historic event. Who on earth can
imitate this? Three hundred sixty thousand couples of different races and
cultures from six continents and one hundred sixty countries will receive God’s
Blessing and will embark on creating ideal families. The holy march is
beginning, with the goal of creating the ideal families that will become the
foundation of a peaceful world. This is a holy event, in which the leading
players for the true love culture and true heart culture that God has been
longing for are being born, the event where the good descendants are being
promised.
The ideal family and the role of women
I have expounded since the founding of the
Women’s Federation that God and history are asking us to live a life of love
and service, and build world peace through realizing the ideal home. All the
misuse of love and the fallen reality that has been controlling humanity must
be boldly cleaned up. Immorality, hatred and all self-centered perversions must
be eradicated. It is the proper role of women to demand an end to and put in
order these wrongful practices.
The goal of the Women’s Federation for World
Peace must not be for women to imitate men, trying to raise the position of
women within the existing culture and social custom. By following the heavenly
way, women can attend the True Parents and become leaders in creating the world
of heart-centered culture. Please discard all the attributes of the Fall and establish the original culture, the peaceful
culture of love and goodness that humanity has been longing for and seeking.
Women now need to be engrafted into the True Parents and give birth to the
worldwide true family of all races and cultures. In order to fulfill this, all
women must emulate True Mother and become true mothers themselves. With the
introduction of this new women’s age, all women need to become new pioneers,
who guide with true love. At home, a woman has the responsibility to embrace
her husband as a personification of true love and to nurture her children with
the heart of a true parent.
Who will establish the home where God’s
blessing of love dwells and where the original order of love is in place? This
is the responsibility of women who are connected to the True Parents. We must
be the vanguard for this movement. I would like to ask all of you to become
leaders for the true liberation of women based on genuine love, and to
establish a world of true peace. May God’s blessing be upon you and your family
and upon your work!
Thank you very much.
3
True Family and True Universe
Centered on True Love
May 20,1997
Victoria Plaza
Hotel, Montevideo, Uruguay
Federation to Save the New Nation Leaders Banquet
Respected and honored guests from at home and
abroad; most especially, distinguished ladies and gentlemen whose presence is
brightening this venue!
I am grateful for your coming here in spite of
your very busy schedules. To express my appreciation from the bottom of my
heart on this special day, the most precious thing I can offer is to introduce
you to what I consider the two most significant speeches I gave during my
latest world tour. I am referring to the speeches titled “View of the Principle
of the Providential History of Salvation” and “In Search of the Origin of the
Universe.”
Today, we need a comprehensive solution to the
problems of sexual immorality, family breakdown and alienation among our young
people. These two speeches provide fundamental solutions to these problems.
When you return home, I hope you will take some time to reflect deeply on their
contents. Reading these speeches together with the members of your family may
enhance the love in your family. I believe this can help your family achieve
harmony and true happiness.
I suggest that you read these two speeches as
many times as your age in years. If your age is more than eighty, then read
them more than eighty times. The more you read these speeches, the more
heavenly blessing and fortune will come to you. The more you read them, the
more peace will flow into your family naturally and automatically. I invite you
to read them often.
The title of the first speech is, “View of the
Principle of the Providential History of Salvation.” Allow me to summarize it.
Because Adam and Eve fell, they did not establish an ideal family.
Consequently, Jesus came at the national level, as the second Adam, to restore
the mistake of the first family. The first Adam became fallen Adam, and Jesus,
the Messiah, came as the second Adam. However, because Jesus was unable to
establish a family from the position of True Parents, the Messiah needs to
return as the third Adam and restore the mission of True Parents on the world
level. This is the mission of the Second Advent, when the Messiah is to come as
the third Adam. This speech also introduces the fact that the fundamental issue
of salvation is the restoration of the original lineage.
The second speech is titled, “In Search of the
Origin of the Universe.” Since the Fall originated
from the misuse of love, humankind lost true love. Thus the question arises,
how can we recover true love? True love was lost through adultery. In other
words, true love became degraded through misuse of the reproductive organs.
Therefore, to restore it, we need to use these organs in the right way. Our
first ancestors planted the seed of fallen love in the Garden of Eden during
their youth. Consequently, during these Last Days, we are harvesting the fruit
of the Fall among our young people. That is why today
we observe so much chaos and confusion, particularly on the issue of sex. This
problem can be resolved only through what I call “absolute sex.” Only the
concept and practice of absolute sex can prevent the destruction of our
families and reverse the corruption of our youth.
The three great subject partners
principle
This evening, I would like to share a new
speech titled, “True Family and True Universe Centered on True Love.” Everyone
here has parents and teachers, and you also have leaders in your nations. Am I
right? Everyone undeniably needs people in these positions. However, compared
to the true standard, there are many different types of parents. What do you
think? To what extent have you, yourself, become a true parent? In the same
way, if a person is a professor at an Ivy League university such as Harvard,
Yale or Columbia in the United States, or Oxford or Cambridge in England, does
it mean that he or she can be called a true teacher? Similarly, there are
different types of leaders in a nation, not all of whom measure up to the true
standard of leadership. Does the bare fact of being the president of a
superpower such as the United States mean that someone is a true president?
In fact, in today’s families, many children do
not trust their parents, spouses do not completely trust each other, and
brothers and sisters do not trust each other fully. Furthermore, students do
not trust the teachers in their schools, and people do not trust the leaders of
their nation. So the question is, how can we attain
the true standard of even one of these three most important roles of parents,
teachers and leaders?
When I say that you need to become a true
parent, true teacher or true owner, who do you think has the highest standard
or is the central model for those three positions? God does. God is the True
Parent among parents, True Teacher among teachers, and True King among kings.
God is the eternal True Parent, eternal True Teacher, and eternal True Owner
and King. If we are children of God, we need to become true parents first, just
like God. In addition, we have to follow the way of the true teacher and the
way of the true owner, just like God. This is the concept of the “three great
subject partners.” The ultimate model is God.
Who is the Messiah sent to the people of
Israel, as promised in the Old Testament? The Messiah is the one who comes as a
True Parent, True Teacher and True King. However, because Jesus was prevented
from establishing a true family and uniting his people, the Messiah needs to
come again. In other words, because Jesus did not accomplish the national-level
foundation, the Messiah of the Second Advent will come as the third Adam and
teach the way of the true parents, true teacher and true king at the world
level. This is the messianic concept. Wherever the family, nation, world and
heaven exist, we always need to establish the three great subject partners of
parent, teacher and leader.
In three-dimensional space, each individual
exists in relation to what is above and below, right and left, and front and
back. Therefore, a person’s position and shape are ascertained using the
reference frame defined by what is above and below, right and left, and front
and back. The same formula applies to the family, the nation and the world. Just
as an individual's position is related to what is above and below, right and
left, and front and back, the family consists of parents and children, husband
and wife, and brothers and sisters. Similarly, on the national level, with the
leader in the central position, families ought to embrace all civilizations of
East and West and all civilizations of North and South. Then they can embrace
all people of the world as brothers and sisters. Ultimately, every level will
form a pattern resembling that of a family, with the individual as the central
model. In the same manner, a person’s existence expands to the levels of the
family, nation, world, heaven and earth, and eventually reaches God. Each
person has the desire to live as the center of the cosmos and has the potential
to make that a reality.
The true family is like the core of the
universe Thus, the core concept of the universe is the concept of the family.
Heaven represents parents and earth represents children. In the case of east
and west, east symbolizes man and west symbolizes woman. When a woman gets
married, she usually follows wherever her husband goes; however they have equal
value. When the west reflects the sunlight coming from the east, both have the
same value. The relationship between siblings is similar. When the older
sibling works, the younger ones naturally help him or her. Therefore, people
need to live in relationships like those between parents and children, husband
and wife, and elder and younger siblings. Moreover, these three types of
relationship must meet at a single central point. Above and below, right and
left, and front and back must not have different central points. Otherwise the
balance between these three types of relationship will be broken.
Taken together, there are seven positions:
above, below, right, left, front, back and the central point. Thus the number
seven represents the unity of all components, with God and perfect true love at
the center. Together, these seven components form a complete sphere and
eventually a family structure of harmony and unity. So, as you can see, seven
is truly a lucky number.
When this sphere becomes complete and rotates,
it becomes a new entity based on the number eight. As long as love remains true
and does not change, the central position can rotate without change. However,
because of the Fall, God was expelled from the central
position. Since God’s true love was expelled, the true family ideal collapsed.
There are many differences in the lifestyles
of people in the East and the West. In many ways they are complete opposites of
one another. For example, when we Koreans call someone to come, we motion with
the palm down, like this. If we do that in the West, people go the other way.
We often misunderstand and wonder if people do not like us, because they go
away when we are actually beckoning them to come closer.
Furthermore, Western script is written
horizontally, proceeding from left to right. Oriental script in its original
form is written vertically, proceeding from top to bottom and from right to
left. Consequently, Westerners open their books from left to right, whereas in
the Orient we open our books from right to left. Thus Western civilization is
more horizontal in orientation, while Oriental civilization has more of a
vertical orientation. As another example, shaking hands is a horizontal
greeting, while bowing is vertical. In Oriental tradition, ancestors are at the
core of the family system. In the West, however, there is no strong concept
that regards ancestors as the core. Westerners generally regard the self as the
center.
Because every part of an entity is connected
at the core, if the core does not move, the whole entity does not move.
Therefore, all six positions and the central core have equal value. In a
three-generational family—consisting of grandparents, parents and
children—there are twelve types of relationships. These twelve ideally will fit
wherever they are placed. The grandchild will not object to anything the
grandparent wants. Also, the children of the grandparents will want whatever
their parents desire. Ultimately, all three generations will unite, sharing the
same desire. All members of the family—grandfather and grandmother, father and
mother, husband and wife, son and daughter—will resonate with the center.
Let us consider a family that is based on
love. Since the relationship between parents and children is characterized by
unity, we can say that they form one body. Likewise, husband and wife form one
body through their mutual relationship, as do brothers and sisters. All members
of the family form one body. In such a case, what is the common center shared
by these relationships? In forming one body, they have God’s true love, which
is at the center of all love, as their common center. With true love as the center
of their relationships, parents and children become one, husband and wife
become one, and brothers and sisters become one. Through this process, each
member of the family becomes equal in value.
The true path humankind should follow
Then what does God want for His children? Does
He want them to become billionaires? Does He want them to become presidents of
nations, with all the trappings of power? God wanted His children, Adam and
Eve, to grow to become children of filial piety, loyal citizens, saints, and a
holy son and daughter. Did you ever consider that, in accordance with God’s
desire, we have to become children of filial piety in the family, loyal
citizens of the nation, saints in the world, and holy sons and daughters before
heaven and earth? Just as many saints and sages have taught us throughout
history, we are to become children of filial piety, loyal citizens, saints, and
holy sons and daughters.
This evening I would like to ask, do you think
you have mastered the way to become an ideal person and to perfect your
character? This entails going the way of filial piety, the way of loyalty, the
way of sainthood, and the way of a holy son or daughter. Otherwise you cannot
perform the function of true parents in the family. True parents need to teach
their children to complete the progression from filial child, to loyal citizen,
saint, holy son or daughter, and eventually even to reach God. If there were
someone who truly taught and exemplified these things, God would consider that
person the ultimate True Parent, True Teacher and True Leader.
When you are qualified as a true parent and
true teacher, you will be qualified as a true leader as well. Furthermore, you
will be qualified to become a true king or queen. Fallen people lack these
ideals and do not demonstrate filial piety, loyal citizenship and sainthood,
and thus have been unable to become holy sons and daughters. That is why this
world is perishing. Who wants holy sons and daughters? God does. Who wants
saints? The world does. Who wants loyal citizens? The nation does. Who wants
children of filial piety? The family does. This is the way of truth. The truth,
based on true love, continues eternally in one direction. We did not know this,
and that is why we could not become true parents, true citizens, true saints,
and holy sons and daughters. When Jesus came to this world there were no true
parents in the family, no true leaders in the nation and the world, and
ultimately there was no true king in all of heaven and earth. People did not
know how to follow the true way. Now that the truth has been revealed, however,
we have no more excuses.
True parents do not tell their children, “Once
you become children of true filial piety, do not become loyal citizens.” True
parents teach children of filial piety to sacrifice their family by following
the way of a loyal citizen in service to the nation, and to sacrifice the
nation by following the way of saints in service to the world. True parents
would also teach their children to sacrifice the world in service to heaven and
earth, and to sacrifice heaven and earth to substantiate the true love of God.
To start achieving these goals, individuals
need to sacrifice themselves for the sake of their family. This is the way to
become a child of filial piety. To become a patriot, you need to serve the
nation even at the expense of your family. To be a saint, you need to give of
yourself in service to the world, even at the expense of your nation. To be a
holy son or daughter, you have to work to establish the kingdom of heaven on
earth and in heaven, even at the expense of the world.
Likewise, among all parents, those who make
sacrifices and live for the sake of their children are true parents. Teachers
who make sacrifices for the sake of their students are true teachers, and the
president who makes sacrifices for the nation is a true president. We were
unaware of this concept of investing and sacrificing. Without it, however, we
will never have one eternally peaceful and united world.
Nothing comes into being for its own sake
What is the basis for individualism? No one
can claim anything as “mine alone.” When a child is conceived through the love
of its parents, grows from a fertilized egg in the mother’s womb, and is born,
99.999 percent of its body comes from the mother’s bone, blood and flesh, and
the remaining 0.001 percent comes from the father’s sperm. There is no concept
of “myself alone” in nature. No one has such a concept at the time of birth.
Those who regard themselves as the best in
their field cannot claim to have achieved that status by themselves. This
applies to us from birth. We receive our bones, blood and flesh in our mother’s
womb. We have to recognize that the important parts of our bodies are
extensions of our parents’ bodies. Without exception, all the essential
instructions and mechanisms for the development of our bodies were included in
the egg and sperm. Therefore, there is no basis for self-centered
individualism.
When we say that something is above, it
automatically implies the existence of something below. Can one individual
stand alone, with only the concept of above? There is no way for someone to
live as an isolated individual. Mentioning the right side presupposes the
existence of the left side. Likewise, mentioning a front presupposes that there
is a back. Similarly, when we talk about a man, we presuppose the existence of
a woman. This is a cosmic fact, not just a claim by a random individual.
Why did God create man? Some men may say that
they can live perfectly well alone, and they don’t care why they were created.
However, each man was born for the sake of a woman. Without a woman, there is
absolutely no need for a man. Actually, man can create nothing by himself.
Nothing was created solely by man or solely by woman.
Consider our five senses. Did God create my
eyes to look at my eyes? He created my eyes, nose, ears, mouth and hands for
the sake of my object partners. The force that mobilizes and focuses all five
senses is true love. God created our eyes, nose, ears, mouth and hands for true
love, that is, as instruments for relationships of true love. God created
nothing just for myself. On the contrary, a person who
claims that what belongs to others is “mine” is called a thief. If someone
takes what belongs to others for personal use, isn’t that person a thief?
Therefore any man who uses his body, including his five senses, for himself
alone is a thief, because they exist for the sake of a woman.
What is the difference between a man and a
woman? Their bodies are different, including their reproductive organs. Then
for whom is a man’s reproductive organ absolutely necessary? A man’s
reproductive organ exists for the sake of a woman. The human reproductive
organs are shaped as concave and convex. Why are they shaped that way? Both
could be pointed or both could be flat. Why are they shaped differently? Each
is for the sake of the other. A woman absolutely needs what is part of a man’s
body, and a man absolutely needs what is part of a woman’s body. Until now, we
did not consider the fact that a woman’s reproductive organ absolutely belongs
to a man, and a man’s reproductive organ belongs to a woman. By owning each
other’s reproductive organs, man and woman come to know true love.
Only through the experience of two becoming one
can we know the highest level of love. No one at all can deny this fact.
Everyone has to recognize it. The ideal couple emerges from the place where
husband and wife become completely one. Absolute love exists in that very
place. That place of love, which is absolutely unchanging, is the dwelling
place of God. Absolute sex places God at the center, and free sex places Satan
at the center. Historically, world literature and the media have often
encouraged free sex. However, from now on, you literary figures and journalists
need to lead the way to stop free sex. This so-called “free sex” has to
completely disappear.
Rev. Moon has received the royal seal from God
Now that you have heard Rev. Moon’s speech,
you can change your current direction by 180 degrees, become a new person, and
establish a new nation and a new world. You are definitely changing. It is
absolutely necessary to change this evil world. We have to transform this
world.
Those who are on Satan’s side in this evil
world do not like people on God’s side. Therefore everyone on Satan’s side in
the world has opposed me. They opposed me, even op the national and world
levels. However, because I belong to God, God has protected me. Satan does not
like me, but God does. No matter how many times the world pushed me down or
ignored me, I did not care. I never went down. Rather, I came up to the highest
position. Therefore, nobody can oppose me now.
How could I establish this worldwide
foundation despite all manner of persecution? How could I come to teach eminent
world scholars and leaders? It is possible only because God gave me a special
kind of power. God has protected me and directed me, and even now He
continuously protects and teaches me, so I am always moving toward the way of
success.
Throughout history, there have been numerous
religious leaders who could communicate with the spirit world. You ought to
know that only one person, Rev. Moon, has fully understood and united the
spirit world in order to commence the work of restoration in this world. After
uniting the spirit world, I received the heavenly seal of recognition from God.
Without that a person cannot accomplish unity on earth. You have to know that
God has trained and raised me in the spirit world, and has continued to lead me
here on earth.
Since I came to the United States more than
twenty years ago, I have received enormous persecution. Yet I have known that
God’s plan for Christianity has endured through bloodstained sacrifices for two
thousand years, ultimately settling in the United States. Therefore I could not
give up on that country. Please consider this: If America had accepted Rev.
Moon years ago, how would that country be doing today? The same holds true for
Korea.
Efforts to establish “One World under God”
Then, where does true love begin? This is true
love: After you have sacrificed your own life and are resurrected, you invest
yourself repeatedly, over and over again. Since we have inherited a fallen
lineage, we have to persevere and overcome difficulties even at the cost of our
lives. Therefore, the Bible records Jesus as saying, “Those who try to make
their life secure will lose it, but those who lose their life will keep it.”
(Luke 17:33) Jesus followed this way when he came to this world. He led the
world by example through altruism, not by selfish individualism. In the same
manner, although my wife and I have created wealth during our lifetime, none of
it, not even one penny, is ours. We invested everything for the world, and then
forgot what we had done for others. We sacrificed and invested again and again.
Which do you prefer, “One Nation under God” or
“One World under God?” Among Americans, some people do not like the concept of
one world under God. Some white people, for example, do not like black people.
Since white Anglo-Saxon Protestants occupy dominant positions in the United
States, they ought to lead Americans to adopt the viewpoint that their country
exists for the sake of the entire world. If America lives only for its own
sake, it will ultimately perish.
The times are now changing. We are coming to
the era of one world under God. God is working to establish this kind of world
and will always help those who are working for this providence. One problem,
however, is that many people who want to lead the world do not yet want to
participate in God’s providence. In working toward one world of peace, my wife
and I have poured ourselves into numerous projects. To build the foundation for
the future world, for example, we need to establish an ideal, worldwide
academic institution, such as a United Nations University, transcending the
barriers of race, religion and language. Also, to exchange knowledge on a
global scale, we need a university system for distance learning.
In addition, we need to develop a united
medical science. We not only have to cure the diseases of the body caused by
the Fall, we also need to end the conflict between
East and West by bringing their cultures into harmony. By uniting Eastern and
Western medicine, we can cure currently incurable diseases, such as AIDS. In
the Korean countryside, among people who never had formal medical education,
there are many gifted healers who can cure serious diseases that are incurable
by modern medicine. The spirit world has guided these healers with regard to
special treatments and cures for disease. Without recognizing certain realities
of the spirit world, our problems will continue to grow. Already related
projects are being implemented at the University of Bridgeport and Sun Moon
University.
Moreover, I have founded The Washington Times
and other newspapers whose coverage includes the entire Western hemisphere. I
am expanding this media foundation to one hundred eighty-five countries, to
enable all people of the world to learn from one another and cooperate as one.
Since I came to America, I never owed any debt
to the American people. Rather, Americans ought to feel indebted to me. I have
shared the blessings I received from Heaven with America. I have not received
any blessing from America; instead I have given all my blessings to her. My
wife and I share the blessings we have received from Heaven with the world.
South Americans and Koreans have welcomed me, and the blessings I have brought
to their homelands. Now the people of the United States also want to receive the
same blessing.
Regardless of the opposition a person faces,
the one who gives the most love becomes the owner. Those individuals who love
more, invest more, give more, and forget what they have given, will become
central figures. This is a cosmic law.
In the future, please follow the heavenly way
by offering filial piety to your parents in your family, becoming loyal
citizens of your nation, saints in the world, and holy sons and daughters
before God. Whoever can stand without shame before the family, nation, world,
and heaven and earth will be protected at the center of the cosmos, and can
then build a family that receives God’s highest love. These people shall
transform this world into the kingdom of heaven on earth. They will be
registered in the kingdom of heaven in the spirit world and will enter an era
of kingship both spiritually and physically, with God in the central position.
Such people are those who participate in the international holy Blessing
ceremony, which is to establish a world of victory, freedom, happiness and
unity. I invite each of you to participate in this year’s 3.6 million-couple
Blessing ceremony, thereby becoming couples who are welcomed by heaven and
earth and have found the way of eternal life.
Hoping that we all come to have close ties to
God and True Parents, that we can establish the true family and true global
culture in a leading role centered on God’s true love, and that we can build a
peaceful and united world for the twenty-first century, I will conclude my
speech at this point. I pray that God’s blessing will be with you in your work,
and with your family. Thank you.
4
The True Family Movement to
Save Humankind
November 25,1997
Washington Hilton Hotel, Washington, DC, USA
Inter-Religious Federation for World Peace Conference
Respected religious leaders and distinguished
scholars representing the world’s religions:
Thank you for participating in the World
Culture and Sports Festival and this most important international congress of
the Interreligious Federation for World Peace. I would like to reveal today the
fundamental significance behind the true family movement, which I have
spearheaded for all to see. This Saturday, you will observe the marriage
Blessing ceremony for 39.6 million couples, which will be the amazing fruition
of true love and the true family movement.
I have trod a lonely path, working
single-mindedly toward the accomplishment of God’s Will, paying no heed to the
misunderstanding and criticism I have received from this world. Ever since I
began with the Blessing of three couples in 1960, the numbers have increased
dramatically year by year until the Blessing of thirty thousand couples in 1992
and a worldwide Blessing for 360,000 couples in 1995. All the participants
pledged in front of God to become husband and wife with eternal love and trust
for each other and to raise their children based on a high moral standard of
sexual purity. Despite the short preparation period for the marriage Blessing
ceremony this Saturday, the initial goal of 3.6 million couples was surpassed
by 36 million. A total of 39.6 million couples, transcending race and religion
and dedicated to the creation of true families, will be participating.
Considering the purpose and size of this
event, it cannot be attributed to the motivation of a single human being. It is
a dispensational accomplishment in complete accord with the Will of God. I
would like to express my sincere gratitude to numerous leaders from every major
religion who stand arm-in-arm with us, as well as the concerned leaders from
many nations who have actively cooperated with and supported the true family
movement in various ways, viewing our work to revive the family as a
fundamental solution to the moral degradation of our youth and an absolutely
essential step toward reviving their nations.
Adam is God in substantial form
God, as the subject partner of true love,
created humankind as His object partner of true love. Accordingly, God can
fulfill His ideal of true love only through us. The fulfillment of God’s
purpose of creation is the ideal world where God and humankind are united
through absolute love. Human beings were created as the greatest object partner
of God’s love. We alone in all creation embody the nature of God. We are born
as the visible bodies of the invisible God. When a person grows to reach
perfection, or spiritual maturity, he or she becomes a temple of God, a
visible, substantial body in which God can freely and peacefully dwell. God’s
overall ideal of absolute true love is realized and perfected through this
vertical parent-child relationship.
God created Adam first. He was to be the son
of God and at the same time God’s substantial body. Later God created Eve as
the object partner of Adam, so that Adam and Eve could perfect the ideal of
horizontal, conjugal love. Eve was to be the daughter of God, and also, as a
bride, she was to perfect substantially the ideal of the horizontal love of
God.
The place in which Adam and Eve are perfected,
consummating their first love by marrying under God’s Blessing, is precisely
the place where God meets His substantial bride. This is because God’s ideal of
absolute love descends vertically and connects with Adam and Eve at the point
where they experience the ideal of conjugal love horizontally. The true love of
God and the true love of humankind join and are perfected at the same point,
although they come from different directions, one vertical and the other
horizontal.
God’s purpose of creation called for Adam and
Eve to obey the commandment of God, who is the subject partner of true love,
and perfect themselves as a true man and a true woman. Furthermore, they were
to become a true couple united in the true love of God. Then, by having sons
and daughters through that love, they would have become the True Parents and lived
in happiness. Had Adam and Eve perfected themselves in true love, they would
have fulfilled God’s desire to wear a substantial body.
By Adam and Eve having children of goodness
and becoming True Parents, God would have established Himself substantially as
the eternal Parent and would have achieved His ideal. Furthermore, citizenship
in the kingdom of heaven would have expanded infinitely in the afterlife of the
spirit world, based on myriad generations of descendants in the physical world.
Instead, Adam and Eve, our first ancestors,
fell away from God. They were expelled from Eden before they had children, and
God had no basis to follow behind and bless their marriage. The entire human
race thus descended from our fallen ancestors.
The Fall was an immoral
sin against God’s ideal of true love. The fact that Adam and Eve needed to obey
a commandment shows that they fell in a stage of imperfection, that is to say,
during their growth period.
The first consummated love of the human
ancestors, because it was supposed to have been the perfection of the love of
God, would have marked the beginning of a celebration that would have continued
throughout history, filled with the never-ending intoxication of joy and
blessing for God, Adam and Eve, and the universe. It ought to have been a
joyous occasion in which the love, life and lineage of God would have been
established within the human family.
On the contrary, however, Adam and Eve covered
their lower parts and hid themselves among the trees, trembling in fear. By
disobeying the loving warning of their Heavenly Parent, the children God had
wanted to call His own established an immoral relationship as the basis for
false love, false life and false lineage. As a result, all of us descendants of
Adam and Eve are born with original sin. The Fall gave
rise to the conflict of mind and body within every person, and caused our
societies to be filled with tainted love and with people who do things that
contradict the desire of their original mind.
If Adam and Eve had become a couple centered
on the true love of God, God would have dwelt in Adam as His substantial body
and loved Eve. What is more, Adam and Eve would have become True Parents who
substantially embodied God, thus becoming the origin of true love, true life
and a lineage of goodness.
However, due to the Fall
they became the substantial body of Satan and established themselves as the
original evil couple, evil parents who gave rise to evil descendants. Their
union became the root of evil love, evil life and evil lineage. Humanity
originated from this root descending from the adulterous Satan, the enemy of
God, and inherited the lineage of evil parents.
God is an absolute being, and the ideal of
creation is also absolute. He has carried out the providence of salvation even
amid great sadness. God’s providence of salvation is the providence of
restoration, by which He intends to recover the lost purpose of creation,
centered on true love. The providence of salvation is also the providence of
re-creation.
Based on this point, the root of the
providence of salvation is the re-creation of the seed of the original child
who can fulfill the ideal of creation. That which God abhors, the life and
lineage that began with the false love of the adulterer Satan, must be
cleansed. The essence of the providence is the task of setting up the birth of
the True Parents, who come as the Savior and Messiah who will restore the true
love, life and lineage of God.
Since the first ancestors of humankind did not
fulfill their responsibility, and thus inherited the immoral lineage of Satan
and came under his dominion, God could not directly intervene and restore human
beings to their original position. Furthermore, God can neither unconditionally
accept nor punish humankind, who chose to go to the side of the evil archangel.
So God uses the strategy of placing a central figure on the side of the good
archangel. By being struck first, that figure establishes the indemnity
condition to recover what was lost. Satan strikes first and as a result must
take the losing position.
Restoration of lineage through the submission
of the first son From the overall perspective of the
providence of restoration, the foundation of cooperation between mother and son
is very important. This was so at the time of Jacob, of Moses and of Jesus. God
has been working His providence to separate people from Satan’s life and
lineage by establishing the foundation of cooperation between a mother, who has
to fulfill the responsibility of Eve, who initiated the Fall,
and the second son of the family.
God could not directly relate to the first
son, because the firstborn is in the position of having a direct relationship
with Satan who, through the Fall, came to dominate
humankind. God has been restoring the lineage of goodness by having the second
son, who represents the side of goodness, establish the requisite condition.
God’s strategy is then for the first son, who represents the side of evil, to
voluntarily take a position subordinate to the second son.
The Fall was
committed by three beings: Adam, Eve and the archangel. The archangel seduced
Eve, causing the spiritual Fall, and later fallen Eve
seduced Adam, causing the physical Fall. As a result, Adam and Eve became
alienated from God, and the fallen archangel began to dominate them as Satan.
Since the providence of salvation is the providence of restoration, the
principle by which restoration takes place demands a 180-degree reversal of the
course of events that led to the Fall.
God lost Adam, who had the seed of true love
and true life. So God had to find a son with the new seed, free from satanic
accusation. Just as God created Adam first at the time of the creation, God had
to prepare a son who had no relationship to the Fall.
Thus the providence of restoration is the providence of re-creation, and this
is why humanity has awaited the coming of the Messiah.
For a son to be born on earth with this seed
of God’s love and life, there first must exist a mother. The mother cannot give
birth to this child in a conventional way. Conception must happen through the
formula of restoration. All the cooperation between mothers and sons in the
providence of restoration is a preparation and condition for the son of God to
be born with the seed of new life, free from satanic accusation. By making
conditions to avoid Satan’s attacks and by subordinating the firstborn son, who
represents evil, mother and son restore the love, life and lineage that were
taken over by Satan.
The Bible, which records the providential work
of God, contains many stories that are difficult to understand. For example, Rebekah deceived her husband Isaac and her first son Esau
and helped her second son Jacob to receive the blessing. God took the side of
that mother and son, and although they used methods that at first glance seem
unjust, God still blessed them for their actions.
In Adam’s family, Cain and Abel fought each
other, and their struggle resulted in the death of Abel, the second son. Then
God raised up Jacob. On the merits of many godly
people who made sacrifices and paid indemnity after the time of Abel, Jacob at
last stood in a position to dominate Satan, reversing the situation where the
archangel first dominated humankind. At the ford of Jabbok,
Jacob attained spiritual victory over the angel sent to fight him. Jacob
consequently was blessed as the first victor in history and was given the name
“Israel.” (Genesis 32:28) Then Jacob found a way to win over his twin brother
Esau who was in the position of the archangel’s substantial body.
By the time Jacob attained his victory, he was
more than forty years old. Because Satan had sown the
seed of false love within the womb of Eve, which brought forth evil, God
intended to purify a mother’s womb from which the heavenly Son could be born.
To do this, a period of purification and separation from Satan was required to
begin at the time of conception and extend to the age of forty. On the
foundation of Jacob’s victory, God could prepare the way for a mother to assume
the responsibility of fulfilling this condition. The woman chosen for this was
Tamar.
Tamar had married Er,
the eldest son of Judah. However, Er displeased God
and he died. According to the custom of that time, Judah gave his second son, Onan, to Tamar so that they might bear a child for Er. Then Onan, knowing that
Tamar’s child would not be his, spilled his semen on the ground. This was a sin
in God’s eyes for which Onan died. Tamar was then to
become the wife of Shelah, Judah’s third son. But
Judah did not allow this, thinking that his two sons had died because of Tamar
and fearing that his lineage would come to an end if Shelah
also died.
However, Tamar had the conviction that she was
to carry on the lineage of the chosen people. To do that, she disguised herself
as a prostitute and slept with her father-in-law, Judah, and became pregnant
with twins. While she was giving birth one of the twin sons, Zerah, stretched out his hand from the womb, as if to
become the firstborn. But during her labor the babies’ positions were reversed
and the second son, Perez, was born first. Thus, within the womb of Tamar, the
first and second sons struggled, and their reversal of positions represented
their separation from Satan. That became the condition for restoration in the
womb.
Upon this condition, two thousand years later
the Messiah could be conceived through the lineage of the chosen people, on the
foundation of the nation of Israel that had maintained its tradition of faith
even under the Roman Empire. The foundation of victory within the womb was thus
taken to the national level, and Mary was chosen as the holy mother, free of
satanic accusation, who was to receive the seed of the Son of God. This is how
Mary emerged in the mainstream of God’s providence.
When Mary was engaged to Joseph, she received
from the archangel Gabriel the surprising message that the Messiah would be
born through her. In those days, if an unmarried woman became pregnant, she
would be killed. However Mary accepted the Will of God with absolute faith,
saying, “Here I am, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according
to your word.” (Luke 1:38)
Mary confided in her relative, the highly
respected priest, Zechariah. In this way, God let Mary, Zechariah and his wife
Elizabeth know about the birth of the Messiah before anyone else. All of them
had the absolutely crucial mission of following the Will of God and serving
Jesus. Zechariah and Elizabeth let Mary stay in their home, and Jesus was
conceived there. For the first time in history, free of satanic accusation, the
seed of the Son of God, the seed of the True Father, was planted within a
prepared womb. In this way, the only begotten Son of God, the owner of the
first love of God, was born.
Zechariah, Elizabeth and John the Baptist were
to attend Jesus Once the Son of God was born on earth, he needed a wall of
protection in order to grow up safely within the satanic world and fulfill the
Will of God. God had hoped that these three people in the family of Zechariah
would establish that protective foundation. However, Jesus, lacking the
protection of Zechariah’s family and deprived of the love of Joseph, was viewed
as an illegitimate son. He grew up feeling indescribable loneliness.
Jesus was aware of his path as the Messiah,
and he lamented his lonely circumstances and the serious obstacle they
presented to fulfilling the Will of God. The Messiah is the True Parent. In
order to fulfill that mission he needed a bride. If Zechariah and Elizabeth,
who had received both revelations and spiritual support from God, had
maintained absolute faith, they would have served Jesus as the Son of God and
the Messiah, receiving God’s Will through him and following him absolutely.
Also their son, John the Baptist, who was born to serve Jesus, was to have
brought his followers to believe in Jesus and receive salvation.
Unfortunately, although Zechariah, Elizabeth
and John the Baptist testified at first to Jesus as the Son of God, there is no
evidence that they served him as such. The respected priest Zechariah was
simply a spectator, and John the Baptist stood apart from Jesus. This kept the
people from following Jesus and made his path very difficult. And once his
family lost faith in Jesus, looking at him through human eyes, they were in no
position to help him find his bride.
Faced with opposition from his mother Mary, as
well as from Zechariah, Elizabeth and finally John the Baptist, Jesus gave up
hope for receiving their protection as he sought to fulfill his mission.
Therefore Jesus left his home in search of a new spiritual foundation to
restart the providence of salvation. Without a family or a home, Jesus
lamented, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of
man has nowhere to lay his head.” (Matthew 8:20) With his family-level
foundation lost, Jesus sought to replace it. That was his three-year course.
But in the end, as people disbelieved in him and the disciples lost faith,
Jesus faced Satan’s attack. As his foundation crumbled, Jesus determined to go
the way of the cross.
Originally, Jesus came to the earth as the
Messiah to give the Blessing to his disciples and to all humankind. He was to
build the sinless kingdom of heaven. But because of the lack of faith among the
people around him, he could not find his bride and become, with her, the True
Parents of humankind. He could not complete his mission. This is why he
promised to return.
The Lord of the Second Advent comes to
complete the foundation of God’s providence of restoration left undone by
Jesus. That is to say, he comes as the seed of the original true child, to fulfill
the ideal of creation. He comes to establish the position of True Parents, who
are the origin of the true love, true life and true lineage of God. He comes on
the victorious foundation of the accomplishments of all the providential
central figures on God’s side, up to the time of Jesus. He also stands upon the
victorious foundation of Jesus’ life and finds the bride that Jesus could not
find. He and his bride become the True Parents to save all humankind.
Through the Blessing of new marriages that pass
on God’s original blood lineage, the True Parents will be able to give
salvation to all humanity. People will become true sons and daughters by
engrafting onto the true love, true life and true lineage of God. Furthermore,
the Messiah and his Bride will establish a True Family and lay the foundation
for the kingdom of heaven on earth.
The marriage Blessing, a most precious gift
Esteemed religious leaders: the
marriage Blessing is the most precious gift God has given to humankind. My wife and I invite each of you to participate in this historic
event and hope that all of you will receive God’s Blessing. From now on, the
Family Federation for World Peace and Unification will expand the true family
movement with greater vigor, accomplishing the Blessing of 360 million couples
by the year 2001, through three different events.
Today, traditional values are being uprooted,
young people are falling into decadence and moral degradation, and the family
is being utterly destroyed. As it is written, you reap what you sow. Adam and Eve sowed the seeds of illicit love while in
an immature state. This phenomenon is being replicated worldwide and is bearing
the fruit of our sinful history in the extreme decadence of young people. Is
there anything more important than saving humanity from its free fall to
destruction? My efforts to globalize and universalize the true family movement
and the marriage Blessing, which provide a fundamental way to save humanity,
need the active support of respected figures like yourselves.
I therefore ask you to unite together in your nations and initiate the movement
for saving your nation by organizing a support group for the true family
movement and the marriage Blessing ceremony. I sincerely hope and ask that many
leaders will take the leading role in this meaningful task of restoring
humanity to its original state.
Please guide all people to establish true
families as soon as possible, so that we may enter into the age of God-centered
heavenly kingship on earth and in heaven, and live together in a world of
victory, freedom, peace and unity.
May God bless you, your families and all your endeavors. Thank you.
5
Realization of a Peaceful World
through the Ideal of True Families
November 27,1997
Washington Hilton Hotel, Washington, DC, USA
Fourth World Peace Conference
I welcome you and extend my heartfelt thanks
for your participation in this Fourth World Peace Conference of the Federation
for World Peace to address the theme “A World Vision for the Twenty-first
Century.”
I would like to personally invite you to a
very special event at RFK Stadium on Saturday morning. Along with
representative leaders of the world’s religions, my wife and I will officiate
the Blessing of 39.6 million couples in one hundred eighty-five countries
around the world. The goal for this ceremony was 3.6 million couples, yet we
went far beyond that, by more than thirty-six million couples. Many couples
from your countries will be participating. More than thirty thousand couples
will be at the stadium and ceremonies worldwide will be connected by video via
satellite. These couples are dedicating their marriages to God, promising to
remain eternally faithful to their spouse and to raise their children with
commitment, fidelity and strong moral values. They are of different religious
backgrounds, languages, races and national origins. What draws all of them
together is their love of God and a belief that world peace begins with stable,
healthy, God-centered families.
I would like all of you to observe this
history-making ceremony, and more than that, I strongly encourage all of you
gathered here to participate and renew your own wedding vows before God.
A common vision for humankind
Today I would like to share with you regarding
the course I have traveled over the past fifty years in search of a common
vision for humankind. After the devastating experience of World War II, all
nations were searching for peace. God directed me to build a global movement
and help establish His Kingdom on the foundation of two thousand years of
Christianity. The central message of this revelation was to find the formula
course for “True Parents” and “True Family,” those who live for the sake of
others.
It was a great disappointment to God when the
Korean Christians did not receive this message. As a result, I had to go
through a suffering course of rejection and humiliation, which led to my being
imprisoned unjustly many times. This providential mistake by the established
religions provided the spiritual foundation for evil to run rampant in Korea,
beginning with the division of that nation and for the other calamities that
have plagued the world this past half-century.
To understand why all this happened, we must
understand the mission to bring a message to Christian leaders that God gave me
fifty years ago. That message is essentially the same today, although today the
message is also for Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus and all religions and
denominations. The message is that the ideal of the God-centered, true family
is the basis for true relationships and peace among individuals, societies and
nations.
As a young man, I desperately searched for the
answers to the mysteries of human sin and suffering. I shed many tears and
spent many years in lonely prayer fighting spiritual battles that most will
never comprehend. After many years of searching through the Bible and the vast
spirit world, God revealed the true purpose of human life and the root cause of
human suffering that originated in the garden of Eden
with the first human ancestors.
The ideals of true love and true family
Esteemed leaders! You have to know that God
created all things for the sake of true love and true people. All creation is
structured in pairs. Animals, plants and minerals are arranged in
subject-object partner relationships and the harmonious giving and receiving
between them forms the foundation for all existence, for all energy for
productivity, and for love and goodness. Human beings were also created with
this polarity between the mind and body within the individual and between man
and woman. God’s ideal was for an individual’s mind and body to be united with
His love at the center and then for a mature man and woman to unite in the
family unit.
In this way, Adam and Eve could have become a
true reflection of God’s divine nature and an object partner of His love. Then
they could have bequeathed to their descendants true love, true life and true
lineage emanating from God. Adam’s family was to have been a family of true
love, in accordance with God’s ideal. The first two human beings, Adam and Eve,
were created with the expectation that they would transfer God’s Will and love
to the world and all creation. They and their children were to establish a
pattern that would have been the fundamental principle for all humanity to follow.
Adam and Eve’s descendants were to have become one with God, accomplishing the
unity of mind and body and man and woman, creating a stable foundation for
peace, freedom, happiness and hope to fill the world.
It is God’s ideal that this model be expanded
to the levels of the nation and the world, and to the entire cosmos. Thus, it
is possible for a country to become patterned after the family unit. That unit
would expand God’s family-level ideal to the national-level ideal and the
national-level ideal to the world-level, all with God at the center.
The fundamental character and personality of
an individual is formed in the family. The family is the starting point and
foundation of love, character and life. The Principle of Creation teaches us
that we are born in the cradle of our family through the love of our parents.
We come to perfect ourselves as beings of love beginning as children who
gradually grow to positions of spouse, parent and grandparent. Ultimately, we
pass to the spirit world in the loving embrace of our descendants.
The family, therefore, is the most precious
hearth of human love and life. It is more important than all value systems and
ideologies as well as all policies and social systems. Through the family,
history and nations come into being and the ideal world begins. If there is no
family, then there is no meaning in individual existence and there will be no
passing on of love through the generations. Therefore, the family takes
precedence over all values, philosophies, systems and structures. The family is
the most precious and fundamental base for the love and life of men and women.
The origin of humankind’s sin and restoration
of the ideal of true family
Tragically, God’s ideal of the true family was
never realized. The serpent tempted Eve in the garden
of Eden, and then Eve tempted Adam. Instead of God’s true love, selfish false
love was planted in the human race. Human history became a history of sin and
misery because our ancestors, Adam and Eve, entered into an illicit relationship
with Satan. Because of the Fall, the progenitors of
the human race did not become good ancestors, rather, evil ancestors corrupted
by the root of evil life and evil blood lineage. The first family started with
false love and did not establish the perfected true love character of true
individuals, a true couple and true parents. The fruit of false love, fallen
human selfishness, destroys the true order, beginning with the discord of mind
and body and expanding into division and struggle in the family, nation and
world.
The solution and cure for humankind’s
affliction therefore, is to return to God through the principle of restoration
by indemnity. Through true love for others, you can stop the struggle between
your mind and body and be restored into your original character of true love.
Human beings need to receive the marriage Blessing and create ideal families
from true parents who are the model of true love. We need to restore the
individual and the true family and expand true love and goodness to the world
level.
Fifty years ago, I tried to bring this
revelation to my fellow Christians, believing that this truth would unite the
conflicting denominations and bring about the kingdom of heaven on earth. I
never intended to form a separate church. However, God’s message was met with
denial and persecution by the established churches and I was left with no
choice except to make a new foundation that has taken me forty-three years to
build.
Starting in Korea with the Holy Spirit
Association for the Unification of World Christianity in 1954, I sent
missionaries to Japan, the United States, Europe and
throughout the world. On that foundation, we have built many organizations to
expand the principles of the true family in the media, arts, academia, economy
and industry and to create examples and models through which sin can be
indemnified and the world can be restored.
The strategy of Satan, who originated sin, is
always to destroy the ideal of the true family and to prevent it from taking root
and becoming substantialized. This led to God’s three
headaches of the past fifty years. The first headache was communism, which
denies God’s existence; the second is corruption and immorality; the third is
the division and disunity among denominations and world religions.
Think about it. How many innocent people died
because of communism? More than one hundred million were killed and millions
more were enslaved, starved, abused and wounded, spending their whole life in
suffering. In addition to causing death and physical suffering, there is an
even greater crime of communism. Communism spreads a false doctrine that denies
God and prevents men and women from realizing their ultimate value.
Immorality, the second headache of God, is destroying
families and countries and taking lives just as surely as an invading army.
Moral corruption is one of the main causes of divorce, fatherless children,
crimes and drug addiction. The decline of morality is not limited to any single
nation; it is becoming the world’s common problem. The worldwide AIDS epidemic
is a direct consequence of sexual promiscuity and moral decay. If AIDS
continues to spread, tens of millions of people will die and humankind’s very
existence will be threatened.
How about God’s third headache; the division
and disunity within Christianity and among the world religions? For God,
religious people are the conscience of the world. They need to have traditions
and values, and the practical power to overcome evil. Instead they are divided.
They antagonize and fight with each other. They have become incompetent and
have lost the power to overcome evil and educate the world about the true way
of life. These three fundamental headaches are the direct result of the failure
fifty years ago of those chosen to receive God’s message.
The importance of humankind’s portion of
responsibility
Distinguished world leaders! From God’s point
of view, all of that suffering was totally unnecessary. All the misery, death
and destruction could have been avoided. If in the late 1940s the religious
world centering on Christianity had followed God’s revelation and become one
with the true family ideal, then communism would have naturally declined. Also,
through the influential leadership and example of each religion, the
degeneration of youth, broken families and AIDS would never have grown into a
worldwide plague.
Confronting God’s three headaches,
particularly communism, made me unpopular and controversial. I was labeled a
fascist and a religious charlatan. I was even jailed in the United States on
inflated charges of tax evasion. Nevertheless, for twenty-five years I have
been pouring out my soul, heart and energy to make the United States understand
its global, providential responsibilities.
Through my work in the Western Hemisphere and
around the world, I was able to help the United States overcome communism. Now
communism has almost disappeared. However immorality and social decay are
systematically attacking the family. Modern thinking holds that the traditional
family is only one kind of family and that even homosexuals can form a family
and have children through adoption or artificial insemination. This is being
done without any thought to the dire consequences of undermining and destroying
a fundamental biological, social and spiritual unit that has been vital to
human survival for tens of thousands of years. It is ironic that scientists
warn of the threat to endangered species of plants and animals, yet do not
study the far more serious consequences of family destruction.
Today, God is asking us these questions: Will
it be necessary to lose one- third of the world’s population before humanity is
saved? Will we deplete all the earth’s natural resources and destroy the
environment before we learn to live in harmony with the creation as God
originally intended?
God will never give up! He will save this
world, no matter what, and He will save it through the ideal and structure of
the true family. The question is at what price, not only in terms of human lives,
but financially and environmentally as well. Social problems, brought on by
corruption and immorality, are leaving a toll of economic collapse and
environmental degradation. The leaders of the world need to reflect on these
points. God’s desire is to end human suffering and build a world of true,
peaceful families. God needs for us to fulfill our portion of responsibility.
If humankind receives and acts decisively upon God’s message, the achievement
of God’s kingdom will be relatively swift and joyful. If not, God’s and
humanity’s suffering will be prolonged, and misery and needless deaths will
continue.
Blessing of marriage by true love
Then how can God’s headache be resolved? How
can families become fundamentally healthy? How can divided religions reconcile
and cooperate under God? The answer is in the international marriage Blessing
ceremony. My wife and I began officiating marriage Blessing ceremonies starting
with three couples in 1960. If I had said at that time that many millions of
people will receive God’s Blessing, who would have believed it? Yet today, with
God’s help and going beyond nation, race and religion, the Blessing ceremony of
39.6 million couples, promising purity and fidelity, is being carried out right
in front of you.
Respected leaders! I only want to stress once
again that through the marriage Blessing, the world’s families can stabilize
and finally fulfill their original role. For the true family to be restored, we
have to establish true love character, we have to attend God and we have to
seriously pledge to become true couples and true parents. Those harmonious
families that are restored to the ideal through the marriage Blessing ceremony
can create a peaceful society, nation and world. This marriage Blessing that
encompasses all nations, races and religions and goes beyond all boundaries is
itself the foundation for world peace. Is this not God’s desire? That this
miraculous number of families, almost forty million, can participate in this
Blessing of marriage is because of the active support of the world’s religious
leaders. It was also made possible because many national leaders agreed that
this true family movement can cure the fundamental problems young people face
and the breakdown of families, and have actively supported it. I would like,
once again, to thank all those who have volunteered in this advocacy.
The marriage Blessing ceremony can awaken
people, especially young people, to the value of true love and it can become
the motive and catalyst for them to realize the necessity of absolute purity.
All the world’s good young men and women who are awakened through this movement
need to gather together to stand up for a true love revolution, establishing
themselves as eternal couples under God’s Blessing. All these new families can
receive support from already married couples who have renewed their vows before
God and practice principled ethics, and they can all become moral citizens
setting good examples and build an ideal family, society, nation and world—the
fruit of true love.
The marriage Blessing ceremony eradicates the
connection to false love and brings to life the holy content and value of
marriage centered on absoluteness. This ceremony recovers true couples’ love,
true parents’ love and true children’s love. Therefore, those who participate
in the marriage Blessing ceremony value purity and trust as highly as they do
their lives, and promise unchanging couple’s love. On the foundation of that
true love, they can establish a true family, raise true children and pledge to
sacrifice themselves to build a true nation and peaceful world.
In the world of the future, God, humankind and
creation will be in harmony, living in a new culture of heart, a culture of
love centered on true family. In the world of the future, true love means
living for the sake of others in a world of interdependence, mutual prosperity,
universally shared values and cooperation. In the future, the natural desire of
young people to live in a world of true brothers and sisters, a one-world
family, will be realized by centering on true love, true parents and true
family.
Esteemed world leaders, the marriage Blessing
is the most precious gift that God is giving to humankind. My wife and I
fervently hope that you will participate in this historic ceremony to receive
God’s Blessing of marriage. From now on, the Family Federation for World Peace
and Unification will expand the true family movement. By the year 2001 we will
carry out the 360 million couples Blessing in three different events.
Because of immorality and the loss of values,
our young people are falling into moral decadence and the family is being
utterly destroyed. Is there anything more important than saving humanity from
plunging into ruin? My effort to globalize and universalize the true family movement
and the marriage Blessing ceremony, which are the fundamental solutions to save
humanity, needs the active support of respected leaders like you. Those who
understand the fundamental problem and the solution God is offering need to
band together within their country and form a true family marriage Blessing
support group and create a movement to save your nation. I ask that you put
yourselves at the center of this great work to restore humankind to its
original ideal. We have to quickly educate all men and women so they can
establish true families and enter into the age of God-centered kingship on
earth and in heaven, founded on true love, and live in the victorious world of
freedom, peace and unity.
May God’s love fill you, your family and your country.
Thank you very much.
6
Blessed Marriage and Eternal Life
January 23,1998
Olympic Weightlifting Gymnasium, Seoul, Korea
Welcoming ceremony for the victory of the
Blessing of 40 Million Couples
Humanity is now facing the challenge of the
Last Days. In this era, families the world over are breaking down. Husbands and
wives, parents and children are becoming enemies to one another. What is the
cause of this tragedy?
The cause is a lack of true love. We are
ignorant of the most important issue of eternal life. We are ignorant of the
spirit world.
The reason we need to understand eternal life
If we truly understand that we live eternally, we cannot commit a sin against
another person, even when temptation presents itself. We cannot live selfishly,
even if permitted to do so. On the other hand, if we do not understand the
spirit world, we cannot enter the kingdom of God, no matter what our religion.
We cannot go to God’s ideal world, the place where one invests in a life of
true love.
On the larger scale, without knowing the
meaning of eternal life, we cannot create a true social revolution. If it is
not connected to eternal life, a social revolution may make things worse. No
one desires that. If it impacts the issue of immortality or eternal life, we
can overcome any kind of challenge in our environment. This is what is so great
about religion. It is connected to the question of eternal life. If the concept
of eternal life is well laid out and if we come to believe that it is true, we
can lead our sons and daughters and our families.
To this day, religions have neither embraced
nor encompassed the secular world. As a result, secularism now has a
controlling influence on culture. Secularism has overpowered the influence of
religion. This happened because religions have been unable to establish a clear
concept of eternal life.
This is the challenge faced by Christianity.
Although people have practiced Christianity faithfully for many centuries, many
churches today are confused. In the Last Days, they are following the changes
taking place in the world. Even Christianity does not have a clear and logical
understanding of eternal life.
In short, no one has complete confidence
concerning eternal life. In fact, people do not even know with certainty
whether or not God exists. When faced with the obstacles and temptations of
this world, most people waver. They fall away from their faith, and follow the
secular way.
Having a life of faith means that we
embrace the concept that this life is lived not for the sake of our time here
on earth, but rather as preparation for our eternal life. As we reach our forties and fifties, we come closer to the end of
our life and we naturally become serious about the concept of eternal life. The
older we become, the more serious we are. Ordinarily, the intensity of love
declines as people age. If our perception of eternal life has strong roots,
then our love will grow stronger and deeper as we get older.
How often have you been confused by the
changes taking place in our world today? If our focus on eternal life is clear
and unchanging, we will overcome the insecurities of our changing environment.
We will be able to digest all the circumstances of our lives, the joys and
sorrows that come our way.
Adam and Eve were created as God’s true love
partners. There is no question about this. Accordingly, we ought to live as
God’s true love partners. This is not only a theory. We can allow this dynamic
to work in our lives and put it into practice each day. Once we realize the
power of true love, we will strive against adversity to walk the road of true
love.
In daily life, we will always feel the
security that comes from the belief in eternal life. When this conviction
overflows from within us, our lives will be secure.
This has important implications for the
education of our children. If it is clearly explained to them, young people
readily embrace the concept of eternal life. They are uniquely blessed to feel
eternal life resonate in their minds and bodies.
Until they reach puberty, boys and girls
possess a purity of character having nothing to do with the Fall.
They reflect the original character of Adam and Eve, who were pure until they
reached that age. Because of this, it is vital that young people know God
deeply.
Through knowledge of God, we can understand
our inseparable relationship with Him. In order to know this, young people
first need to understand the concept of eternal life. We always need to be
aware of this.
How long do you think you will live? All of us
think we will live until we are seventy or eighty years old. It is hard to
imagine that we will die before then. In this regard, we can all be considered
greedy.
In truth, even those who seem confident that
they will live a long time have no idea when they are going to die. It could be
as soon as today or tomorrow. We may even die during a meal or while we are
sleeping. You probably have the idea, “I am still young, and so I can live for
another forty or fifty years.” Does God guarantee anyone a long life span?
Imagine that you knew you would die within a
year. You would have to prepare for your passing in a very short period of
time. With this newfound urgency, you might actually be happier. After all, you
would be able to prepare for death in less time. The less time you use to
prepare for death, the less time you will waste in your life. And if you
prepare well, you will build a home for your eternal life.
During your short time on earth, have you
loved God? You want to become one with God and you want to love God, yet you
cannot. God is telling you, “You need to be a person who loves!” While we are
living in this world, we always need to give our best. We need to invest
twenty-four hours a day to bring even one more person to God’s love.
How long do you wish to live? What if God told
you that you had to die tonight? What legacy would you leave behind? Would you
leave behind something of which God would be proud? While we are living in this
world, we must always give our best. We need to invest twenty-four hours a day
to bring even one more person to God’s love. The highest standard of dedication
to God is one that does not want to stop in order to eat or sleep. We should
not be consumed by worry over worldly needs.
The shorter we expect our physical life to be,
the more value we will find in it. We can ask ourselves, “How much do I love
others? How much do I love my family and my clan? What does it mean to love
others, to love my family, to love my clan?” This serves as the foundation to
love all humanity. It is a wise approach to life. You will not lose if you live
this way.
Human destiny is to live an eternal life
The purpose of a life of faith is to seek the
world of eternal life and God’s eternal love. Our life of faith is to seek
God’s eternal love. The way of a life of faith is to discover and rejoice in
God’s joy as our own. By living this way, we become one with God’s eternal love
and eternal life.
Accordingly, it is most important for people
of faith to invest our energy unceasingly for God. Based on the information we
receive through our five senses, our value as human beings is connected to how
we live our lives based on true love. This is why we need to think once again
about whether the relationships we have with others are based on true love. You
must understand that if you cannot take that position, you will be stopping and
retreating, and will be doing something you will come to regret.
Human beings live forever, beyond their
earthly life. The reason the world’s religions have expanded throughout
history, against the backdrop of every culture, is because our human destiny is
to live an eternal life.
We are to live in our own era,
and in harmony with the entire universe. Once we reach the limit of life on
earth, we continue life in an eternal unlimited world. Such a world exists in
reality. Even those who do not believe it exists, or who do not fully
comprehend it, have postulated eternal life. They did this in order to help and
comfort humanity through its suffering and pain.
How can we be satisfied if we know that
religions teach this kind of destiny? I assure you that it exists. I am not the
one who has decided that it exists. This was decided an eternity ago. It is
something that could be proclaimed with certainty at the beginning of the universe.
This means that the issue of your eternal life, the issue of religion, and the
issue of God will all be resolved at the same time. They are all connected.
The reason we have eternal life
For what purpose and in what position did God
create humankind? Man and woman were created to be God’s true love partners. We
were to have God’s absolute and unique value. This is a startling revelation!
How much is the value of each person’s life? In this light, the value of each
person’s life is infinite. Even the entire universe cannot replace the value of
one person in the eyes of God. All people were to be born in true love, to live
and grow in true love, and even to die in true love. They do not simply
disappear. God is eternal, unchanging and unique. We stand as the eternal
object of God’s true love. Therefore, we are created to live eternally. Our
eternal life has its roots in our relationship with God, as His partner of true
love.
What kind of person in the world is the person
who has become the most true? The one who is the most true is the one who has become one with God and can
receive God’s love from the position of His child. The life
that this kind of person lives together with God is a true life.
No matter who they
are, people want to be the best. When I reach the top position, then God is
mine and I am God’s. When this happens, because I become God’s son or daughter
and become one with God, then to whom does the universe belong? It belongs to
me.
If there is something that God loves the most,
is that thing made to be with God for one day, for ten years or a hundred
years, or is it made to be with God for all eternity? It is made to be with God
for all eternity. It is the same with people. After a person is born, when they
die, is it better if they are gone, or better if they
live on eternally? People live eternally because they are the object partners
that are most precious to the absolute God.
Do you want eternal life or not? Of course you
want eternal life. When something is precious to you, would you take it with
you if you had to flee somewhere, or would you leave it behind? You would take
it with you. You want to speak proudly about it and continue to speak proudly
about it for days. You would want to leave it for your descendants when you
die. You would want it to remain forever. It is the same with God. If God is an
absolute eternal being, then the object partner whom God loves also lives
eternally. That’s why people want to live eternally. You need to understand
this clearly. This is why God, who is an absolute being, seeks beloved sons and
daughters who have the value of eternal life.
Because God created us, we resemble God.
Because God is eternal, we also have eternal natures, so our minds never get
old. This is why people have eternal life in order to be beings with the value
of God’s masterpiece of creation. Human beings are to be the lords of creation.
This is where their spirit becomes apparent. They are beings with a spiritual
side. When we say that people are the lords of creation, it means they have a
spirit. As spiritual beings, they have eternal life.
The eternal love partner of the Creator
Let us discover the truth of eternal life. God
is a being of wisdom. If God had not established the concept of love, God would
have been very lonely, not feeling joy or anger, happiness or sadness. As a
consequence, since God’s love is absolute, its loss through the Fall led Him to experience indescribable misery and almost
hopeless sorrow throughout history. No one has ever understood this; no one has
been able to fully comfort God.
God was not satisfied with the loss of His son
and daughter. God, in the depth of His heart, wants to re-create this long
awaited love partner. God wants to embrace human beings as children. God will
travel any distance to meet them. Only by meeting these sons and daughters can
God express joy to the fullest. In actuality, God created the entire universe
for these precious children.
Consider the earth’s atmosphere. When a
low-pressure system forms, a high-pressure system appears automatically. God is
the King of true wisdom, so He designed us to invest and forget what we have
invested. This creates a spontaneous and natural circular motion of giving and
receiving in daily life. This constant cycle of giving and
receiving leads to eternal life.
I want to be clear: as long as one lives for
the sake of others, one will never perish. A life of giving will surely grow
and progress steadily. The person who lives thus will eventually take a central
position as the nucleus of society.
When God seeks an absolute love partner, who
would merit such a position? It is natural to conclude that God’s love partner
would have to be humankind. That is why human beings are held to be the most
precious part of God’s creation.
When we are able to accept that we are the
eternal true love partners of the Creator, we can easily understand that we
live for eternity. The concept of eternity naturally follows from this. It
takes place right here. The religious world must bear in mind that the
foundation of eternal life is the relationship of true love. In its simplest
terms, eternal life stems neither from man nor from woman, it
stems from God’s true love.
Only true love provides salvation
Christians proclaim that any individual can
possess eternal life just by believing in Jesus. This is a beautiful idea. I
ask them how one can secure eternal life, and they answer, “Just believe.”
Please consider that the life of the spirit has to be continuous. Considering
this, you know you follow this path forever. The functioning of the physical
body is continuous. For instance, our circulatory system, nervous system and
brain function continuously and smoothly. In order for this to happen, the body
consumes a great deal of energy. With this in mind, how would you answer the
question of how to secure eternal life? The life of the spirit also has
continuity. Are you truly able to claim, “My eternal life is guaranteed through
faith alone”? Does salvation come from believing, and nothing else? It
absolutely does not. True salvation has to be continuous, from this physical
world to the spirit world, and this comes through the practice of true love.
According to the principles by which God
created this world, only a true person can become God’s true love partner. Only
with true love can one become such a person and obtain eternal life. If you are
in the realm of true love, you are able to see where you will be living in the
spirit world and on the earth.
Have you ever heard about how the rats on a
ship will run down the rope to find safety on land when the ship is sinking?
Even small animals like rats know how to save their lives, however, people, who
are the leaders of everything, cannot do so. This is because of the Fall of humankind.
The fundamental question is how to free our
lives from evil love, evil life and evil lineage. Only in this context does
liberation have any meaning. Liberation means becoming free from something,
doesn’t it? Only complete liberation from evil brings true freedom, and true
freedom is self-sustaining.
The idea necessary for eternal life
We are created to live an eternal life. We are
similarly created to practice true love. Furthermore, we are to practice true
love here on the earth. When we engage ourselves and love many things in this
world, these things become the foundation that ensures our eternal life.
In other words, everything we do in this world
is training for eternal life. We need true life and true love forever.
We are fully capable of living forever! We
desire an eternal life! In our search for eternal life, what does not change?
Only true love does not change! Everything in this universe
changes. Everything in the environment changes, yet true love does not
change. True love does not change because it is the central core of all life.
Why is it that true love does not change?
It is because true love is the center. The
center will remain intact, even if everything that surrounds it disappears.
True love is the center of the universe; it is one with God’s love.
Consequently, as long as God is unchanging, true love is unchanging.
What does true love mean? A husband desires
that his wife be better than he is. A wife also wants her husband to surpass
her, and parents want their children to surpass them. Why do we share this
feeling in common? It is because we are all created in the very image of God.
In other words, even God wants His love partners to be better than Him, in the
same sense that parents want their children to surpass them. Can you deny this?
God is absolute, and at the same time God is
our Parent.
Can parents impose an absolute standard upon
their children that they do not take upon themselves as well? No, even our
Parent God cannot. In light of this, our value is the highest in the universe.
When true love is at the center, we are more valuable even than God.
An eternal life connected to God’s true love
In fact, in the realm of true love, we can
have a value even higher than that of God. This is why our minds entertain the
highest of aspirations, and we truly can feel that nothing is impossible
because all people are equal. Indeed, everything would be possible if we were
not fallen.
God originally intended that God’s children
rule this universe from the position of highest value. We were not to have been
sidetracked or manipulated in any way. To confirm this, simply look into your
mind. The mind desires complete freedom. No one wants his or her mind to be
controlled. This is true of all people. Once we secure the position of true
love, we are totally free. We can travel anywhere. We can travel to God’s
throne and become God’s friend.
Since God created us as partners of true love,
it is natural to conclude that we can enjoy eternal life. Clearly, in order for
a man or woman to live an eternal life, he or she needs to dwell in the realm
of true love. Only through true love is abundant eternal life possible.
Why? The origin, motive and
process of God’s creation centers on true love. No result can come
without a process, and the process to completion is based upon the practice of
true love. The completion of mind and body is possible only when they both
belong to the realm of true love.
The limitless origin, the process of creation
based on this cause and its ideal, all originate from
true love. This is because God exists for eternity upon the foundation of true
love. God’s own eternal life is centered on true love.
Therefore, we also live with true love as our
center. In this way, we create the realm of eternal life. In order to find this
realm, we need to practice true love in daily life.
Even if we are not sure where in the spirit
world God dwells, at least we need to understand clearly that God is the center
of true love. The power of true love is the fastest and the most direct power.
True love travels in a straight line. Why do you think I emphasize true love so
fervently? It is because of my direct experience of this truth. Once you
experience God and the eternal world, you too will never be able to have an indilferent attitude toward life.
Knowing God, eternal life and true love
First, we need to know God. Second, we need to
know our eternal life. Third, we need to know true love. True love means giving
more than 100 percent of oneself. In this way, we can find eternal life.
Without true love, there is no eternal life. Without eternal life, we cannot
meet God.
How can you prepare for the world of the
future? First, be altruistic. Second, practice true love. Third, seek eternal
life. With the sincere practice of these virtues, we can manage the world in
the coming age. The opposite way is the self-centered way of life, which is the
worldview of Satan.
In contrast to Satan’s love, what is true
love? True love is to invest beyond the point of your life and death. Without
investing yourself beyond the point of life and death, there is no true love. I
would like you to know that I have poured my life, my heart, and the resources
of our church into America. Through this kind of practice, true love is
actualized. Without actualizing true love, there is no eternal life.
Why is this? The fundamental root of evil life
is Satan’s lineage. Our lineage belongs to Satan. Our love belongs to Satan.
God’s love transcends Satan’s love. And so the Bible teaches, “You shall love
the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and first commandment.”
(Matt. 22:37-38) What does this really mean? Loving God with all your soul and
mind means to give your life completely to God. The second commandment is,
“Love your neighbor as yourself?’ What does this mean? It tells us to love
others even at the cost of our lives. We have to invest ourselves in this way
of life.
Then why do we need to commit ourselves with
total intensity? Unless we commit ourselves to this degree, first, we cannot
make Satan surrender. Second, we cannot free ourselves from the fallen
environment in which we live. Third, we cannot eradicate our bondage to Satan’s
lineage by ourselves. Even though we may be able to free ourselves from our
fallen environment, we cannot deal with Satan’s lineage. We need the power of
true love, which is greater than our life.
The world after death, related to love
There is no concept of time for God. This
means that the beginning and the end are the same in eternity. Likewise, the present
and the future are the same. Then what, within God, harmonizes everything and
enables God to dwell in peace? This is a serious question. What is it, then? It
is not God's almighty power. It is not God’s omniscience. It is nothing other
than the power of love. Even God Himself responds unconditionally to true love.
This is because God does not need anything other than true love.
Most people agree that we will enter the
spirit world upon our death. What does that mean? The spirit world is not just
the dwelling place of the departed. It is connected to true love. The starting
point of God’s creation is true love. Therefore, once we secure true love in
the physical world, it will be secured in the spirit world as well. Because it
is connected to true love, spirit world is not the world of death. This alone
tells us how powerful true love is.
Through the perfect relationship of vertical
and horizontal, harmonious movement in all directions, up and down, right and
left, forward and back, can take place. When vertical and horizontal are
disconnected, there is no harmony. In that case, there can be no unity.
True love alone can connect vertical and
horizontal. This brings about unity and harmony. The central thought of the
Unification Church, based on the perspective of the Divine Principle, is that
the ideal world is centered on true love.
Ladies and gentlemen, God wants to guide
humankind. God breathes through true love. Since the rhythm of the universe is
in harmony with God, the universe exists for eternity. In God’s true love, we
can find eternal life. You need to come to this point, so that you can belong
to the realm of God’s breathing.
That is why, when husband and wife connect
with true love, they find complete joy. When the rhythm of true love is in balance,
we can love one another. In this atmosphere there is only one direction in our
life. That direction is centered on God.
The Blessing is the gate to the kingdom of God
Both the spirit world and the physical world move in conjunction with true
love. The universe maintains a natural balance, centering on the vertical axis
of true love. What is the common denominator of the universe? What is the
universal norm, by which people of the past and the present can live together
for eternity? What is the origin of human desire? The answer to all these
questions is the same. The answer is true love. The norm is not selfish love;
it is true love. Then, what is true love? Vertically and horizontally, it
connects everywhere at a precise ninety degree angle. It fits into an
Oriental-style house or a Western-style house, into a house facing south or a
house facing north. Only the practice of true love can embrace people of all
races, all nations and all religions.
There are more than six billion people living
in this world at present. Yet there are not many among the world’s population
who understand the meaning of the marriage Blessing. It was the Unification
Church that first used the word “Blessing” with its special meaning in relation
to marriage. We have now conducted many such marriage Blessing ceremonies.
Where will humanity head in the future?
Humanity can enter the kingdom of God by passing through the gate of this
Blessing. There are millions of Christians in our world today, and Christianity
itself can enter the kingdom of God through the gate of this Blessing.
Some may complain that Rev. Moon’s teaching is
self-serving. If they want to believe this, that is their choice. Nonetheless,
I am here to convey the message that the Unification marriage Blessing is the true
road for all fallen people to take.
No matter how much persecution it may bring,
our mission is to connect the spirit world and the physical world through this
Blessing, and enter the kingdom of God.
Other religious people think of salvation in
terms of the individual. They believe that as long as their faith is strong,
they can enter the kingdom of heaven as individuals. From the viewpoint of
God’s original ideal, we were never intended to enter the kingdom of heaven as
single people. We enter only with our loving spouse and family.
The real purpose of life is to walk forward on
the road of true love. We are to grow through harmonious relationships of true
love. We have to carefully maintain the ideal of true love in our hearts. We
are actually the representatives of the spirit world. Let us constantly strive
to spread true love. Let us sow the seeds of true love throughout our lives.
When we bear the fruit of true love and enter the
eternal spirit world as a loving couple, we will be embraced by God’s eternal
love. We then truly become one with God.
Even though the physical body grows old, as
long as we live as husband and wife centering on true love, our spiritual body
will actually become younger! This means that the longer we live, the more
handsome or beautiful our spiritual body becomes.
Our spirit is our internal self. At the proper
time we simply will shed the physical body. Our physical body may feel that it
does not want to retire, yet with the coming of old age, it eventually
surrenders its life. On the other hand, our spiritual body, like a chestnut in
autumn, becomes more solid and more handsome as it becomes our physical body’s
successor.
We need to love the things of the material
world, which includes our physical body and the food that nourishes it. We love
what is close to us before loving God directly.
By loving all things, we absorb the essence of
the creation. By doing so, we love and nourish the physical body. Your first
parents, of course, are your physical parents, and your second parent is the
earth. From the earth we receive essential elements the body needs in order to
grow. In this way the earth is the second parent.
After being nurtured and cared for by our
second parent, we prepare to meet our third parent. There is a process through
which we pass in order to realize this. That process is our physical death. We
do not meet our third parent free of charge. To be able to return to our third
parent, we need to resemble our original Parent, God.
Why then do we get married? Very simply, we
marry in order to resemble God. God exists as a being of dual characteristics.
In God, the dual characteristics are completely harmonized as one. When God’s
dual characteristics manifest in our world, they do so as man and woman.
Accordingly, at the proper time, a man and a woman are like a seed. They unite
to become one. Thus, husband and wife return to God. Together, we are a
reflection of God’s original nature.
We need marriage because it is the way to
develop true love. In marriage, we ripen as a seed of God. Our entire life is
to center upon true love. We are supposed to be born in true love; we are
designed to grow in true love, live centered on true love, and return to true
love when we die.
The way of true love is living for the sake of
others. This is the purpose of a holy marriage. If we take any other path, we
are taking the wrong direction for eternal life.
The marriage Blessing and eternal life stem
from God working through True Parents’ love. Through our union with the True
Parents, we can fulfill God’s original hope for the individual, the family, the
nation, the world and the entire cosmos. Through True Parents we can find our
original homeland, the starting place for the kingdom of God on earth and in
heaven.
With this foundation in place, we can welcome
an era in which God is our sovereign. The society that does so will never
perish. It will continuously prosper and reach its fullest strength.
I sincerely ask that you contemplate deeply
about the meaning of this message. If you practice it, you will find the way to
receive God’s abundant blessing and eternal life.
May God truly bless you.
Thank you very much.
7
June 11,1998
Waldorf Astoria Hotel, New York, USA
Opening Banquet for the Convocation on the Family and World Peace
Honorable scholars, respected faith leaders
and world leaders in various fields, I warmly welcome you to this special
convocation entitled, “True Family and World Peace.”
We now stand in a historic period of great
transition. We have to resolve the grave moral confusion, world conflicts,
environmental problems and crimes that have stained the twentieth century, so
that we may welcome the twenty-first century with hope. Humankind longs for a
world of peace, free of war and suffering. Yet it is difficult to be hopeful
when the future is threatened by a “money solves all” mentality that is useless
in the face of the decline of our youth, family breakdown, drug abuse and the
spread of AIDS. Today any positive influence that national or religious
authorities have on youth has been greatly diminished. Economic development,
political proposals, and advances in science, communications and information technology
are all unable to bring about human happiness or a peaceful world.
Ideal of creation
based on true love
Throughout the long course of history,
humanity has never achieved complete happiness. In fact, individuals and
families have experienced endless sadness. Despite this, human beings never
gave up their inexorable longing for joy. This is because God originally
created humankind to live in happiness in true families. Although human beings
have lived a life of sin and suffering due to the Fall,
they have relentlessly sought the originally intended life of joy.
Then what is the essence of true happiness?
What is God’s plan for human beings to become truly happy? God is the
embodiment of true love. Moved by the ideal of true love, God created all things
investing Himself unconditionally in them.
Nonetheless, no individual can fulfill true love alone. Even God needs a
reciprocal relationship of giving and receiving between a subject partner and
an object partner in order to establish and experience love. Ultimately this
takes place in a true family.
True love lost due to the Fall
A true family starts with the ideal of the
true love of a true person, which is God’s fundamental purpose in creating. How
can a mere human being stand as the partner of the absolute God? This is not a
matter of working hard or attaining a prominent position. It is possible only
through a relationship of true love. When a subject partner and an object
partner establish an ideal relationship of true love, they immediately possess
the rights to equal position, equal participation in each other’s affairs, and
equal inheritance of true love.
God’s true love moved Him to create human
beings as His object partners. This being the case, the most precious thing for
all people is the fulfillment of a true family centered on the original true
love by which God created human beings. Thus true love is the basis for human
happiness. Within true love there is infinite joy, eternal freedom and eternal
harmony.
God is each person’s subject partner of true
love, true life and true ideals. Therefore human beings became the object
partners of true love, true life and true ideals. God is the Parent, the
Creator, and human beings are conceived as His children and are designed to
become one body with Him in true love. God originally created true human beings
to live in joy. Our minds and bodies were meant to be united with God’s love
and intoxicated by it. God created human beings so that He could experience
infinite joy by participating in true families’ lives of happiness. Through the
experience of true love, God wanted to live together with us and achieve
harmonious oneness with us. However, the first ancestors of humanity fell.
All of us constantly live with a sense of
intense conflict within ourselves. It is a conflict between the inclination of
the self-centered mind that strives to fulfill evil desires, and the
inclination of what I call the “original mind” that strives to fulfill good
desires. We say “my body” and “my mind” as though we were a unitary being, yet
we also feel within ourselves the clash between the divided body and mind. The
mind and body struggle and often contradict each other. This is due to the Fall of the first human ancestors.
This division and conflict in each individual
has expanded to all levels of existence, sowing division and grief in families
and societies, and ultimately in nations, the world and the cosmos.
The Fall violated
heavenly law through Satan’s selfish and false love. Consequently it brought
about ignorance of God and true love. Through this human beings lost not only
God, but also any sense of their own original value. Dominated by Satan’s false
love, we lost the ability to establish true families centered on true love.
Without this fundamental lifeline to happiness we have been unable to become
true people, unable to attain the oneness of mind and body necessary to
complete the original ideal.
Basis of unity between mind and body
Everything in creation comes into existence
and operates in accordance with a prescribed set of laws, and the highest of
these is the law of love. A person does not reach perfection through knowledge,
power or money, but rather through true love. In other words, each of us is
meant to perfect our heart through experiences of true love, so that we might
grow up spiritually to epitomize the heart of our Heavenly Parent, who is the
God of true love.
Individual perfection means achieving
harmonious oneness in mind and body. Such unity can be accomplished when we
learn to love one another with the true love of our Heavenly Parent. In other
words, our mind and body can become completely one and we can mature into a
personality of true love only when our relationships, throughout our lives, are
based upon God’s true love. A true family, the completion of God’s true love,
can come about only on the foundation of mind-body unity.
Only true love can build an eternal, ideal
relationship between mind and body. When God’s true love resides within the
united base of a person’s mind and body, the door of true love opens wide,
allowing the person to resonate with the true love of God and the universe.
Such a true person automatically becomes the heir of infinite freedom and
bliss. This person can see, hear and feel true love in everything. At such moments
of seeing, hearing and feeling, the true person will become intoxicated in true
love and will live in the highest state of aesthetic emotion. The person of
true love fulfills the overall purpose of creation while naturally harmonizing
with and taking delight in the environment. Such a person experiences beauty in
everyday life.
Someone who achieves this will become God’s
complete object partner, resembling Him and inheriting His true love. Such a
person will feel what God feels and appreciate what God appreciates.
For human beings, true love is the most holy
and precious ideal. One individual alone cannot create true love. Neither can
it be created when any partner is self-centered. True love desires to give,
give again, and forget what was given, so that yet more can be given and
shared. This pattern produces unity. It enables true love to embrace
everything. True love is never one solitary being’s possession. After true love
is given, it still belongs to its original owner, and also to all people and to
the universe.
God’s dream is to realize true love together
with humanity. He desires to feel the joy of true love eternally in the world
of heart together with all people, who are His children and the highest and the
most precious beings of all creation.
Once true love is perfected in the human
world, what possible political, economic, cultural or environmental problems
could persist? There is no problem that cannot be resolved in a world of true
love. Such a world is one of bliss, peace and freedom, all imbued with the
ideal. It is a world where happiness is magnified infinitely and eternally
within the domain of the rights to equal position, equal participation and
equal inheritance of true love. The problems that humanity faces today can be
fundamentally resolved only through the perfection of true love.
Human beings are supposed to mature in stages
as we experience the various forms of the true love of God during the period of
our growth. Born through true love, we are meant to first experience, as
children, the true love of true parents and the true love of true brothers and
sisters. Then, as we mature, we are meant to experience the true love of true
husband and wife and finally, as parents, the true love of and for our true
children. One achieves perfection according to this order of love. Once an
individual achieves unity of mind and body, true love emanates from that
person.
Next, a man and a woman, both of whom have
perfected their mind- body unity, marry and truly love one another as a true
husband and true wife. The true love of God resides within the minds and bodies
of this true husband and wife. When children are born through the union of such
a couple, they become true parents, connected with the true love of God, and
their relationship with God gives them the ability to truly love their
children. This is how a perfected, ideal family is formed.
Essentially there are four great loves
corresponding to four great realms of heart; these are the true love of
parents, of brothers and sisters, of husband and wife, and of children. The
true family is the basic unit in which the four great loves can be perfected
and the four great realms of heart experienced. It is the foundation of true
human love and true happiness, and is the place from which true life and true
lineage spring forth. It is the training ground and school of true love.
A man and a woman are the substantial object
partners of God, representing God’s masculine and feminine qualities. God’s act
of creation was to divide inner, harmonized qualities of masculinity and
femininity into two bodies in the physical world, and then to reunite them
through marriage into one body that resembles God’s original oneness. A true
husband and a true wife represent God’s binary poles, and both exist to form
one harmonious body as the representatives of heaven and earth. In other words,
men and women are not created to live in self-centeredness. Each is created to
exist for the sake of his or her partner. We have to clearly realize that true
husbands and true wives exist for their respective partners.
I have already stated that true love cannot be
realized alone. It can be achieved only through a reciprocal relationship. True
love between a husband and wife is not only for the sake of the couple. It also
completes God’s ideal of creation and allows God to be the owner of absolute
true love. The absolute true love of God dwells wherever there is a person who
desires to unite with his or her spouse as the embodiment of God’s true love.
A true couple embraces God’s true love and
moves toward the future with one united hope. The conception of children and
prosperity of the family take place on this foundation. God’s ultimate hope is
that a couple’s true love will move beyond the mundane realm of the daily
environment to form a family that is one with the ideal of true love.
The purpose of restoration, which is to return
all of humanity to the state of goodness God originally intended for us, is
accomplished through the revival of Adam’s family, for the Fall took place in
that family. Before God can restore a church, a people, a nation and the world,
He needs to find one central family that can be God’s partner. Throughout
history, God sought a true family that could be His ideal object partner. Such
a true family would be fundamentally different in its essence from typical
human families; it would be an ideal, original, true family united with God.
God’s providence calls for a family, not an individual, because the individual
is not the purpose of salvation; rather, families are the basic unit of
salvation.
How would humankind have been affected if Adam
and Eve had centered their lives on true love, and had not fallen? Adam and Eve
would have become the ideal, true couple of true love and would have become
true parents and true ancestors to their descendants and to all of humanity.
The entire human population, having descended from true parents, Adam and Eve,
would have become one great family and a peaceful world, rooted in Adam and
Eve’s culture of true love, would have emerged. Therefore, the culmination of
the history of restoration lies in establishing a true family centered on true
parents and true love. The central true family is the hope of humanity and the
hope of God. This true family is the origin of true love and true life, and it
is the foundation of peace and happiness for humanity.
There is a saying that you reap what you sow. Due to false love based on
Satan’s self-centered desires, our human ancestors became people of evil
character. They became evil spouses and evil parents, spawning a history of
evil and falsehood. Even the parent-child relationship and
the basic standard of ethics and morality, which have somehow held human
society together, have been gravely weakened. Monstrous acts of
decadence and immorality continuously occur and their severity is worsening. It
signifies that the seed of these evil phenomena initially by one crucial fallen
act in the garden of Eden is bearing evil fruit on the
worldwide level at this historic time of harvest.
Original, true love is perfect. It does not
change over the ages. The origin of such love is true, unchanging, eternal and
absolute. However, the first human ancestors became the origin of false love by
falling during the period of their growth, while they were still in a state of
imperfection, or spiritual immaturity. A civilization built upon this
foundation of selfish, evil and false love is no longer sustainable. If it
persists, humanity will face ruin.
What good are technological developments and
material wealth when the foundation of the family is crumbling and we bequeath
our deep problems to our descendants? The time has come for historical mistakes
and violations to be resolved at their root. What is needed most urgently is a
revolution of true love initiated by True Parents. We cannot expect to achieve
happiness and a peaceful world without fundamental changes. The problems of
today must be resolved by teaching a worldview based on true parents, true
family and God’s true love.
Respected leaders, I hope you will research
and evaluate seriously the peace movement and worldview of true love that I
have planted throughout the world. The true love and pure love movement for the
youth and the true family movement of true love, which transcend nationality,
culture, race and religion, are not to be seen as sectarian.
A nation of peace is needed before there can
be a world of peace. And the precondition for peace in a nation is peace in the
family. Power, wealth and knowledge, which worldly people have ordinarily
desired, are not the necessary and sufficient conditions for peace and
happiness. True happiness is not proportional to how much property one owns and
is not dependent on one’s degree of physical comfort. One can attain true peace
and true happiness only when such mundane things are accompanied by true love.
Genuine peace and infinite happiness can be gained only when we serve others
with true love and when we feel that love returned.
Respected leaders, I know you have produced
tremendous accomplishments, advancing human welfare and social development in
each area of your endeavors through exceptional dedication. And, of course, you
will continue to make even greater contributions to society. However, humanity
now faces unprecedented grave peril. Remedies from any single specialized area
will be insufficient. So I urge you leaders to become the conscience of the age
and lead the world by actively creating true families, which are the
prerequisite and fundamental basis of a peaceful world, and by guiding others
to do the same.
The first stage of the marriage Blessing of
360 million couples, which I will officiate this Saturday, June 13, is one of
the fruits of my having taught the ideal of the true family throughout my life.
Those participating in the Blessing ceremony have already promised God that
they will be people who will form true families by becoming true couples and
true parents, centering on God’s true love. I am boldly carrying out a historic
revolution of true love for the realization of world peace through the true
family movement.
Honored leaders, what can be more urgent than
to save humanity from its path of family destruction? Again I urge all of you
to become active in the true family movement for the sake of world peace.
I sincerely wish for God’s true love to bless
you, your families and your nation.
Thank you very much.
8
Blessed Families and the Ideal World
April 27, 2002
Sheraton National Hotel, Washington, DC, USA
Interreligious and International 144,000 Clergy Couples Blessing
and Re-dedication Ceremony
Distinguished guests from home and abroad!
First of all, I would like to sincerely congratulate everyone participating in
this marriage Blessing ceremony of 144,000 clergy couples from interreligious,
interracial and international backgrounds. On this day, the five races became
one, transcending religious denominations and doctrines, centering on the ideal
of the true family, and it will be recorded in the history of human
civilization, in which conflicts and struggles are ever increasing, as the day
of the new history in which reconciliation and love triumphed.
Through the past eighty years of my life I
have devoted myself heart and soul to constructing the one world of peace under
the one God, going beyond the religious order I founded. Now, on this
meaningful occasion in which my efforts have been brought to fruition, I would
like to speak to you, the leaders of different religious orders, under the
title “Blessed Families and the Ideal World.” A great number of people are
living in this world, and they all belong to their families. However, without
true families, true children cannot be raised and the formation of true societies
is also impossible. As can be seen, it is an obvious fact that true families
are the basis on which true societies, true nations and a true world can be
established. These true families refer to the families that have been formed
centered on the true love of God.
Until now there never has been a clear
definition of a true family. Not only that, the goals that true people need to
pursue and their limitations also have been unclear. Human beings are in a
state of ignorance in which they do not know where people come from, how they
ought to live and where they go after death. Human beings have lived throughout
history without defining their purpose, the standard for moral cultivation and
the uppermost limit of human maturity that they are to achieve.
Since human beings as individuals have not
been able to stand in the position of perfection, there is no way for them to
reach the ultimate standard of the family, although they are seeking it.
When seen from this perspective, the fact that
numerous people are struggling along the path of their lives is certainly a
problem. However, what is more serious, is that we
have to remember that we should set the standard of a true family based on the
foundation of being true individuals. This ideal still remains as a task to be
fulfilled during the course of our life and the developing course of human
history.
Then what is the purpose to be pursued by
religion, which has been eradicating the spiritual ignorance of humankind?
Individual salvation is significant. However, religion has to go one step
further and save the family, that is, it needs to focus on restoring the family
and liberating all humankind from sinfulness.
Religion must recover the family that can
represent, in a true sense, history, the present new age, and the future.
Furthermore, it needs to firmly establish the basis for the family in which all
human beings can rejoice, and the standard that must be followed by all
families. It has to determine where this family system begins and where it is
heading. Unless this comes to pass, the world of peace cannot be built on this
earth. We need to understand that, no matter how well the external system of
the world has been structured, if families are not spiritually healthy, the
world can break down in an instant.
The family is the starting point of true peace
In the family there are parents and at the
same time there is the conjugal relationship between husband and wife. It would
be unfortunate to have no parents or for a husband and wife to separate, yet if
you were to lose your beloved spouse, you could not be more sad and miserable.
Not only that, it would also be unfortunate if a couple were unable to have
children. Even if you were not very successful in a materialistic sense, if you
had achieved love in your family, centering on true parents, true husband and
true wife and true children, and if you led such a peaceful life that everyone,
regardless of who they were, wished to follow in your footsteps, then no one
could deny that such a family was a happy one.
To this day, saints and sages all have talked
about peace, although they did not really know that the family is the starting
point of true peace. This is because they were unaware that God’s ideal of
creation is the construction of a peaceful world on the foundation of ideal
families. In the course of world history until now, there have been many
revolutions. And even if there have been many cases in which revolutions
resulted in changing the world, all such changes eventually fell short. The
ultimate problem is that the center that can give rise to the revolution to
form true families must be manifested on earth.
From there, the beginning of the construction
of a new world, that is, a new historical ideal, needs
to appear. There is no way for us to deny this fact. This is the messianic
ideal passed down from the First Israel, Judaism, to the Second Israel,
Christianity. Can a person who does not originate from a righteous family go in
the right direction? Even if that person could go there, he or she would be
unable to find a stable destination and would have no choice except to turn
back. This is why the destiny of our life course is such that we have no choice
except to find our way back to our families.
The starting point of saving fallen humanity
is the family The driving force behind human beings’
search for the original homeland has to become the motive that can influence
history in its entirety and all environments, and the motive that can also pave
the way for happiness. Where would the family, which is the foundation for that
driving force of human beings, be formed? Today’s religions must prepare the
basis through which they can benefit the family before they can publicly
benefit the society. This is because even if a religion has made contributions
for the public good, if the basis of the families that make up this society
breaks down, the foundation of society also will break down.
In this regard, what would be the starting
point for God to save fallen humanity? Would it be a specific nation that
boasts of having a certain civilization? No, it wouldn’t. If there is a certain
organization in a society that is considered to be ideal, would it serve as the
center? No, it would not. Then would that starting point be centered on a
certain individual with the qualities of a genius? No, it would not. You have
to know that the one starting point that can transcend all these things is the
true family. Therefore, the people of today need to become those who can pass through
the door of such a family and thus win the qualification to hold high the
banner of the victor and head out into the world. Individuals who can present
such a philosophy and teaching have to come forward.
Then why have Buddhism and Catholicism continued
to emphasize leading a celibate life? Can celibacy truly be the basis for human
happiness? No, it cannot. The reason for that is because no religion or
philosophy has been able to clarify where the origin of true happiness lies.
Therefore people needed to lead a celibate life in anticipation of the pure and
righteous family that would eventually appear.
The serious problems being brought up nowadays
within Catholicism signify the need to fundamentally reconsider celibacy,
practiced since the thirteenth century. God’s Will is to be fulfilled through a
true family formed by a true man and a true woman. Therefore, it is a matter of
course for the clergy to take the lead in forming ideal families and thus set
an example before others.
Today in the United States and in the entire
world the deviation and degradation of young people is threatening healthy
societies. The world has reached a state where it is almost at its end, and
human power and human love cannot bring it under control. Therefore, a new
movement needs to arise at all costs. All that is wrong needs to be done away with, and we need to make a new beginning based on the
original standard.
In this respect, history is the history of
re-creation and the providence of restoration in which all that is old is done
away with and new things are recreated in order to head toward the original,
ideal world. This is why the old and the new are clashing. Until now,
individuals formed families in whatever way they liked, but they cannot do so
any longer. Such is the age we are in now.
Among the founders of the different religions,
Jesus in particular often spoke quite seriously about the family. Who did Jesus
say that God was? He called God his Father. He revealed that the relationship
between God the Creator and humankind is the relationship of parent and child.
Furthermore, he said that he was the only begotten Son of God. This means that
Jesus is God’s first son and at the same time His only
son.
If God is the Original Being of love, He is in
a relationship of Parent to humankind. That is why the relationship between
human beings and the Creator is one that goes beyond the simple relationship
between the Creator and the created, for it is a relationship connected through
true love, true life and true lineage.
Jesus’ wish is to form a God-centered family
Jesus also said in effect, “I am the
bridegroom and you, the people, are my bride.” When the bridegroom and the
bride get married, they become husband and wife. What Jesus is saying is that
they need to form a family. Ultimately, he is saying that they have to form a
family and have children. For certain, only when a married couple gives birth
to children can they form a family. Even if you want to get a divorce because
you dislike your wife, you cannot split up recklessly when you have children.
The children are the fruits of the love between husband and wife.
Jesus came to this earth as the only Son of
God and the prince of the heavenly kingdom. He came as the crown prince of God.
He is the son who was given the royal seal of God when he was born, as the
prince who is qualified to inherit the full authority of God. God had intended
that the Jewish people, as the eldest daughter of God, receive this Son of God,
but they did not do so.
Then, is there anyone among you who can say
confidently that you can become the bride of that prince? The bridegroom and
the bride have to form a relationship as the prince and princess of Heaven
while attending God as their Parent. It was the wish of the Lord to form a
family centered on God in this manner. It was not to rule the external heaven
and earth.
Then what is Christianity supposed to do? It
has to prepare the bride for the one who comes to fulfill the common desire of
all humanity, and prepare a suitable environment for him. This is what is
figuratively expressed in the Bible as the marriage feast of the Lamb. You need
to know clearly the fact that the mission of Christianity, as the bride
religion, is to shoulder and fulfill this historic responsibility.
When all is said and done, the purpose for
Jesus’ coming to earth in the flesh was to take a bride and form a family. The
problem is the family. If a true family had been formed, what would Jesus have
become? He would have become the father. When he had become the father, he simultaneously
would have become the head of the family. Furthermore, he would have become the
king of the family. However, Jesus died on the cross before he could fulfill
the ideal of the family. This family that Jesus could have formed is one that
would have lived for thousands of years while attending God. There is a Korean
folk song with the lyrics, “Moon, moon, bright moon; moon where Lee Tae-baek played; there, there, right in the moon, a cinnamon
tree was planted; bring father and mother to the moon, and live for a thousand,
ten thousand years.”
The Blessing is the fulfillment of God’s wish
to form a true family Then what would Jesus have done
after forming a family? He would have had children. In other words, the
grandsons and granddaughters of God would have been born. In the end, God’s
great sorrow is that He did not have grandsons and granddaughters by direct
descent. Throughout history, God has tried to establish the model family for
all human beings.
This being the case, how much would
God have yearned for such a family? And how much have
human beings, who were bound together through the Fall,
yearned for such a family? Have you also yearned for such a family? All
humanity has to become one centering on the ideal family. By doing so, what
does humanity need? They need to receive the true family.
The families in today’s fallen world cannot
stand before God. For this reason, Jesus was right when he said, “Your own
family members are your enemies.” What did Jesus come to this earth to do? He
tried to form a family centered on God. And because he was unable to form such
a family, he said he would come again. What, then, does he have to do when he
comes again? He has to form a family. And, when the sons and daughters in such
a family continue to prosper for generations to come, a tribe is formed, a people is formed and a nation is formed.
To form such a pure family of God, a clan of
the blood relatives of a family centered on God’s love, needs to be formed on
this earth. However, because this family has not been formed yet, God has
continued to carry out the providence of salvation until now in order to form
the restored clan, related by blood, to the original family. This is the
original standard of God’s ideal of creation that must manifest once again on this
earth.
To establish such a family, I am performing
this Blessing ceremony that all of you have come to know well. This family is
called the family of the Blessing. What kind of family is this? It is the ideal
family centered on God.
It is the family that the coming Lord is
required to establish, the family that future generations are required to form,
and the common goal that all human beings ultimately aim to achieve.
What would be the common gateway that we all
can pass through? It is neither the nation nor the world. It is neither the
communist world nor the democratic world. It is the original family. Before
there can be a democratic world, first there must be an original family that
can build the true democratic world. Until this original family appears, the
kingdom of peace, the ideal nation of peace, cannot come about.
That is why the time must come when this ideal
family we yearn for, this original family that we desire to live with, this
family we want to meet, and this family we want to find must absolutely appear
on this planet and share the same destiny along with human history. Only then
can God’s providence for the earth be fulfilled and the blessed land of the Sabbath, the haven of the Sabbath begin.
Religious leaders have to take the lead in this movement to save the family, to
renew the local community, and to strengthen the nation.
Respected guests from home and abroad! I ask
you, the religious leaders, who were Blessed today, to stand at the forefront
in leading this Blessing movement in your houses of worship and your local
communities and to become the pioneers in establishing the nation of peace and
the world of peace.
May God’s blessings be with your families, and
with this I conclude my speech.
Thank you.
9
True Love and True Marriage
August 21,2004
Hotel Lotte World, Seoul, Korea
Blessing for Registration in Cheon II Guk for the Revolution of
True Heart and forTrue Liberation and Complete
Freedom
Respected world leaders, distinguished guests
from Korea and abroad: First, let us offer our sincere gratitude to God, the
True Parent, True Teacher, True King and True Owner of all creation, for making
this day possible.
True love and the conversion of lineage
From the standpoint of God’s providence and
history, how shall we describe yesterday’s event? We participated with complete
unity of heart and accomplished it successfully. That event, the “Blessing for
Registration in Cheon II Guk
for the Revolution of True Heart and for True Liberation and Complete Freedom,”
was a victory for humanity and a joyful event for God. It surpassed any event
in history and will never be equaled in the future.
On what basis can I make such a bold
declaration? I do so in the context of the Fall of the
first human ancestors, by which humankind inherited false love, false life and
false lineage and lost its relationship with God’s Will. Because people were
estranged from God after the Fall, He could do nothing
to resolve our situation without our cooperation and so suffered for thousands
and tens of thousands of years. Yesterday’s ceremony established the day of the
True Parents’ victory, true liberation and complete freedom, and it resolved
God’s grief. It was a holy Blessing that brought heaven and earth together. We
opened the gate through which the billions of people who have languished under
Satan’s yoke can enter the new heaven and new earth. Humankind can now receive
and attend the True Parent in heaven and the True Parents on earth. It is time
for us all to enter the Era after the Coming of Heaven, when we sing praises of
the holy age of settlement and peace.
Now is the time for you, as you enter the Era
after the Coming of Heaven, to practice Heaven’s truth in your family and
nation in preparation for your eternal life. It is time to leave behind the
struggles, conflicts and confrontations of the Era before the Coming of Heaven.
We can stand on the foundation of the True Parents, who are the Parents of
heaven and earth, and establish the substantial kingdom of heaven. This realm
of complementary partnership, harmony and unity is what we call Cheon II Guk.
From this perspective, I would like to take
this opportunity to speak on the topic, “True Love and True Marriage.” I will
share one aspect of the principle of true love that I have been teaching
throughout my life and that you now need to put into practice.
What is true love? It does not refer to the
selfish love that slithers around the secular world. It is not the counterfeit
love that gives one moment and abandons the next. It is not self-indulgent,
profligate love driven by fleshly desires. Such false love assails and violates
the conscience, driving nails into the original mind.
Having nothing to do with that, true love is
the source of peace and spiritual order. Its nature is to honor and preserve
the tranquility of all people. It is humanity’s shared inheritance that serves
the common good. It symbolizes God’s intention and power, for it is rooted in
God.
True love is mysterious. The more it is given,
the more plentiful it becomes and the more abundant joy it brings. True love
possesses power great enough to transform the motivation, process and outcome
of human life. We were created to be born in true love, raised in true love,
and pass to the next world in true love. That is the reason true love has the greatest
and highest value.
Through true love we can be together
eternally, see each other eternally, converse with and feel each other
eternally, and have nothing except affection for each other. It is one love and
yet all people can enjoy it together. If we consider its details, it is
extremely small; if we consider its grandeur, it is extremely large. Immersed
in true love, the mere wink of an eye can be sufficient to bring forth a joy so
great as to shake heaven and earth; a single smile can make one feel superhuman
power. That power is strong enough to change one’s life. If you think you can
see it, you cannot; if you think you cannot see it, you can. It is full of
mystery.
What are the colors of true love? Do you
suppose that it is black at night and white in the daytime? The central colors
of true love are harmony and unity, and surrounding them are peace and
happiness. An atomic weapon has power only to destroy life and property. It is
not a symbol of creation. It is a symbol of rejection and ruin. True love, by
contrast, has the power of resurrection that can bring a dead person back to
life. Thus the power to bind the world together and bring unity does not reside
in the military mindset underlying nuclear weapons. It will require true love.
Each nation has its own cultural traditions and political boundary lines, and
true love is the only power capable of transcending them. The difficult
problems that humanity faces can be resolved only through the perfection of
true love.
True Parents and the change of lineage
Ladies and gentlemen, you must seek after true
love. You have to make true love your own. You have to witness the perfection
of true love within your own life. Where can you go to find true love?
If we examine the manner in which true love
exists, we see that it has a multidirectional character, moving simultaneously
north, south, east and west. Moreover, it exists and functions in a way that
transcends race, culture, religion and national boundaries. True love acts
prior to life, for it is the origin of life. True love is perfect in its
original form and needs no development or revolution. True love is the most
natural thing, possessing the highest authenticity. True love operates at a
speed greater than anything else in the world.
We can receive the seeds of true love only by
receiving the true holy Blessing from the horizontal True Parents. They come as
substantiations of God, the vertical True Parent, and thereby engraft us into
God’s lineage. It is absolutely impossible to find true love in the fallen
world, which is characterized by falsehood. We cannot find the lineage of
goodness in the human-centered world that resulted from the Fall.
Only by being engrafted into the lineage of goodness through the True Parents
can you find a way to overcome the struggle between your mind and body. Only by
establishing God’s lineage of goodness on earth can we resolve the problems of
human conflict, transcend the boundaries between religions, races and nations,
and bridge the differences between democracy and communism. This will also open
the way to peace in the Middle East and unification on the Korean peninsula,
the two most dangerous areas of conflict in today’s world. This is the reason
the change of blood lineage is an essential and serious matter.
The holy marriage Blessing is a once-in-a-lifetime event upon which the life of humanity
depends. This is the precise reason why the Registration in Cheon
II Guk Blessing for the Revolution of True Heart and
for True Liberation and Complete Freedom, which all of us dedicated to Heaven
in the National Assembly of the Republic of Korea on August 20, was the
greatest and most precious grace and blessing in your entire life. You have now
received the holy Blessing from the True Parents, who have been crowned as the
world’s King and Queen of Peace. You have inherited the true lineage, and you
have received the seed of true love. Please never forget that you are to spend
the remainder of your life on earth nurturing this seed so that it will blossom
and bear fruit.
Ladies and gentlemen, why do we marry? In a
word, it is so that we may resemble God. God is a united being who has dual
characteristics that dwell in union. Men and women are projections of God’s
divine characteristics. Therefore the destiny of every couple, as husband and
wife, is to form a union as one body, become as one seed, and return to oneness
with God’s original nature.
Let us offer our highest praise for the
sanctity of marriage. Married life is the way for a man and a woman to love
each other. Whom do we resemble when we become one through married life? Our
goal is to resemble God. It is only when a man and a woman become one through
true love that they truly resemble God, who created them in His image. It is
then, and only then, that God resides in them. A man symbolizes heaven and a
woman symbolizes earth. So a man and woman need to come together in harmony to
achieve peace.
The phrase, “the union of virtue between
heaven and earth,” refers to a state in which a husband and wife have
accomplished perfect unity, with Heaven’s true love at the center. When a
husband and wife embrace each other in true love, it is the equivalent of the
cosmos becoming one body. This is the original image of creation brought into
substantial reality in the context of God’s ideal.
Another reason we marry is so that we can be
trained to love the world and its people. The wedding ceremony vows speak of
the substantiation of love and bestow the authority to procreate as well as the
authority to exercise dominion. So the purpose of marriage is to bring into
oneness the realm of heart of one man, representing the men of the world, and
one woman, representing the women of the world, so that they may perfect the
love between man and woman.
When a couple has accomplished the perfection
of love and the perfection of their heart, we can say that they have
accomplished the family ideal. If you die on this foundation, you will
certainly enter the kingdom of heaven.
Why is marriage important? It is important
because it is the path by which we seek true love, the path for creating life,
and the path on which the lineages of a man and a woman are commingled. Through
marriage, history is made, and on that foundation, nations are born and the
ideal world can begin.
When we marry, it should be with the
conviction that we do so not for ourselves, but for our partners. It is wrong
for a person to try to gain a spouse on the basis of social status, wealth or beauty.
Once we realize that we are born to live for the sake of others, we understand
that marriage, too, is for the sake of our spouse. In our view of marriage, the
ideal partner is not one who looks like a model; it is someone we can love with
our whole heart, far more than if he or she were on the cover of a fashion
magazine.
As human beings, we have to determine to love
our spouse as we would love God, and as we would love humankind. We have to
love our spouse more than anyone else in the world. Otherwise we cannot be
restored to the kingdom of heaven as a husband and wife. If a man cannot truly
love a woman, how can he expect to be able to love God or humankind?
A wedding is a ceremony by which we open the
gates and enter the palace of happiness. This is why marriage is a major
occasion of moral significance. Because love exists and functions transcendent
of time and space, it is the most important dimension of human life, and a
wedding is the ceremony by which this love is brought forth and confirmed.
Respected guests, this evening I have conveyed
to you one portion of Heaven’s teaching regarding true love and true marriage.
Whether you participated in yesterday’s event as newlyweds or as a previously
married couple, you have now been granted Heaven’s command to walk the path of
a true husband and wife with Heaven’s seal. By your bond with the True Parents,
you have received the seed of true love, so I ask that you become true husbands
and wives who produce true fruit through a true married life. Become true
parents, build true families and establish true nations. Heavenly fortune will
assist you.
In closing, I sincerely ask that you lead
lives in which, by practicing true love, you do everything you can to prepare
for your eternal life.
Thank you.
10
The Holy Marriage Blessing Is the
Way to Unite the Virtues of Heaven and
Earth and Harmonize the Cosmos
August 20, 2005
Olympic Park Gymnastics Hall, Seoul, Korea
First anniversary of the Coronation of the King of Peace
Respected guests from home and abroad and
beloved blessed families:
I would like to express my deepest gratitude
for the work you are doing in many places around the world to establish God’s
homeland and bring peace to humanity.
We are gathered here today to commemorate the
historic days in 2004 when ceremonies were held at venues on both Capitol Hill
in the United States and at the National Assembly in Korea honoring me with a
coronation as “King of Peace.” As it happens, this is also the twentieth
anniversary of the day I was freed from Danbury prison in the United States,
after having achieved a victory despite the difficulties of incarceration
there. That was the last of six times in my life that I had been imprisoned,
each time as a result of persecution and unjust accusations.
On this meaningful day, I would like to convey
to you Heaven’s message concerning the significance and value of the holy
marriage Blessing. The title of my remarks is “The Holy Marriage Blessing Is
the Path to Unite the Virtues of Heaven and Earth and Harmonize and Unite the
Cosmos.”
The family of the ideal of creation
Beloved guests, in what form does God exist?
The Creator of all things in the universe exists as the unitary embodiment of
the dual characteristics of a subject partner in the male position and an
object partner in the female position. God created the first human ancestors,
Adam and Eve, when He divided the male and female positions within Himself.
Then the original couple were to have created children
in the same pattern of male and female as a result of their union.
God’s creation takes place according to this
principle of origin, division and union. God is the first generation, Adam and
Eve were the second generation, and the children of Adam and Eve were to have
stood in the position of the third generation. These three generations were to
have formed a single family. God gave His blessing so that sinless descendants
could be multiplied through myriads of generations. This is the ideal upon
which God created human beings.
If Adam and Eve had achieved individual
perfection in accordance with God’s Will—that is, if they had achieved the
perfection of their characters, entered into conjugal relations with His
blessing, and accomplished perfect oneness with Him—a bond would have been
formed enabling God to reside within them. Also, Adam and Eve’s children would
have been linked to a holy order of love enabling them to form a parent-child
relationship directly with God. This was to have been God’s greatest blessing
to humanity.
In general terms, to bless someone means we
pray for their good fortune. What then is the zenith, the apex, of good
fortune? What is the most precious aspect of good fortune? It is not money,
fame, power or knowledge. If Adam and Eve had only been able to marry with
God’s blessing and multiply sinless children, this would have been the most
precious of all blessings. All creation would have responded with joy, and it
would have been the day of God’s greatest joy as well. It would have been the
place where the kingdom of heaven on earth and the kingdom of heaven in heaven
would have met.
What would have happened if God’s creation in
the garden of Eden had stopped with man and had not
included woman? The miracle of all miracles is that men and women exist
together in this world. For only one to exist would be the same as having no
existence at all. Humankind would have died out in less than a hundred years.
It is only when men and women exist together that the heavenly path can be
established and ethics and moral principles can begin.
So the marriage of perfected Adam and Eve
would have been in a very real sense God’s own marriage. While God would have
remained God, Adam and Eve would have become the embodiment of God. The couple
would have become God’s body, and God would have settled within their minds to
become their True Parent, and thus the True Parent of all humanity, both
physically and spiritually.
Ladies and gentlemen, as a result of the Fall committed by the first human ancestors, human history
deteriorated into an endless spectacle of sin and struggle. Human beings, as a
matter of course, were to have attended God as our True Parent; instead we
became the prisoners of hell, dominated by the false parent, the devil Satan.
The bodies of Adam and Eve were to have become temples of God, in which God’s
spirit would dwell, and they were to have become people of divine value.
Instead their bodies became the haunts of Satan, hotbeds of all manner of sin
and falsehood, and the devil used them for empty pleasure.
In practical terms, the Fall
of humankind meant that the marriage of Adam and Eve, which was supposed to
have been performed with God’s blessing, was instead performed centered on the
false love and selfish desires of Satan. According to the Principle of
Creation, true love, true life and true lineage are inherited from parents.
This means that human beings, born with Satan as our parent, have all inherited
false love, false life and false lineage through no choice of our own.
We became a pitiful humanity, perpetually
exhausted by the struggle between our minds and bodies, forced to leave this
world having been unable to resolve this problem even at the moment of death.
We ignore the voice of our conscience, which represents the voice of God within
us, and we conduct our lives driven by the desires of our body, which has
become the slave of Satan. This is a picture of the human condition.
Most people are not even aware they have
fallen to the point of living in such a wretched and oppressed state. They look
around and see that others are like them, so they think it is quite natural to
appear to be able to see, when in fact they are blind. They become foolish and
pitiful people. How much longer will we live oblivious to this tragedy?
In principle, the person who causes a problem
is responsible to resolve it. So, because humanity fell by false love, we have
to eradicate false love, even to its last vestige. On that foundation, we need
to receive the holy marriage Blessing and set out to build true families
centering on God’s true love. In this way, we need to put down true roots that
will enable us to multiply true descendants, generation after generation.
However this is not something that one can
achieve just by wishing for it. Is it not true that, during the tens of
thousands of years since the beginning of human history, no one has been able
to achieve this state and save humanity from evil and sin? The many religions
that have risen and fallen over the course of history have done their best to
achieve this goal, yet even they have been unable to overcome the debilitation
of fallen nature and have either failed or been forced to take detours.
God is a Parent of true love. God gave Jesus
the status of His only begotten Son and made Himself incarnate on this earth,
as He had originally intended to do through Adam and Eve. Jesus came with the
mission of the Savior and Messiah, and dedicated his life of thirty-three years
to bringing about the Will of Heaven. Yet in the end, even he passed away,
midway through his course, as a sacrifice on the cross.
I am not attributing any failure to Jesus
himself. Jesus, who was the perfect human being or second Adam, searched
earnestly for his bride. Although Heaven had prepared Judaism and Israel for
thousands of years, the people of Israel were unable to understand Heaven’s
Will regarding Jesus, and their ignorance forced him to go the way of the
cross. Jesus was the incarnation of Heaven’s seed of true love, sinless and
pure, yet in the end he had to return to heaven without being able to plant
that seed on this earth. Jesus came to find a bride on earth, hold the Marriage
of the Lamb in the presence of both heaven and earth, establish a family of
true love and multiply Heaven’s sinless and true lineage. Yet this mission was
blocked midway through his course.
The incarnation of True Parents and the value
of the Blessing God’s love is absolute, unique, unchanging and eternal, and so
too are the attributes of His Will. Therefore God’s ideal of creation absolutely
will be completed on this earth. The providence by which Heaven has sought the
children of God, who were lost due to the Fall of Adam and Eve, will be
fulfilled.
Please understand that upon the foundation of
Jesus, who passed prematurely into the spirit world due to the disbelief of the
religious leaders two thousand years ago, today Heaven has sent to this earth
the True Parents as the saviors of humanity, the Messiah and the returning
Lord. God is bringing the history of the providence of salvation to a close. He
is carrying out His absolute and eternal providence in accordance with a plan
for the providence of salvation that cannot be delayed or extended any further.
Ladies and gentlemen, you are standing today
at the historic turning point of God’s providence. Let those with ears to hear,
hear. Let those with eyes to see, see with certainty. Let those with mouths to
speak give witness to all nations. The Rev. Sun Myung
Moon, who now stands before you, is the Savior, Messiah, Second Advent, Peace
King and True Parent. He has appeared on earth with Heaven’s anointing as the
one for whom humanity has waited with eager yearning for such a long time.
This is not my own claim. Founders of the
major religions and tens of thousands of other saints and sages in the spirit
world have sent messages testifying to this fact. God, Himself, has sent a
message asking that the world’s six billion people work to establish the
kingdom of peace on earth, centered on the True Parents. These messages have
already been widely published. If you cannot believe these facts, please seek
to confirm them in desperate, all-out prayer. Heaven will absolutely give you
the answers that you seek through such prayer.
Ladies and gentlemen, what then is the
necessary path for all human beings, who became wild olive trees as descendants
of the Fall? It is to receive the holy marriage
Blessing from God through the True Parents. A wild olive tree will always be a
wild olive tree, even after a thousand years. To change its pedigree, it must
be grafted onto a cultivated, or true, olive tree; in the same way fallen
humanity must secure the true blood lineage. The holy marriage Blessing that
the True Parents bestow is the blessing and grace of being grafted onto the
true olive tree.
People sometimes say that Rev. Moon’s holy
marriage Blessing is nothing more than an ordinary marriage performed according
to the custom of the Unification Church. This ceremony, however, is much more
than just a wedding to mark the joining of a man and a woman and the beginning
of their family. Weddings held until now were centered on the two individuals
involved, but the holy marriage Blessing centers on returning joy to God. It is
meant to be a precious condition for indemnifying the history of sin. It is a
holy and grand ceremony of blessing and grace. Please understand that in this
ceremony we resolve the grief of God, stemming from the Fall of Adam and Eve,
and pass through the standard Jesus himself came to accomplish, that of bride
and groom cleansed of the original sin.
The term holy marriage Blessing did not just
begin with me, or the Unification Church. Instead it has existed within the
innermost heart of God since the time of creation. After the Human Fall, it
became one of His most poignantly cherished desires. Please understand that God
has always pursued this as a goal and has longed to see it realized.
Is there anyone who knows the circumstances of
God, who had to walk a path of unspeakable suffering in order to bring about
this historic day? This day marks the resolution of grief and is a providential
day when God’s cherished desire is being fulfilled. Seen from this perspective,
the holy marriage Blessing is an incredible blessing, and it can also be an
incredibly fearful judgment.
The holy marriage Blessing can bring closure
to all the sorrow in history, from the furthest past to the very present. It
marks a new beginning for the fulfillment of the cherished desires of God. It
is a new starting point, an opportunity to create a new future for humanity,
and it is the most certain way to extricate oneself from the dominion Satan has
exercised during the Era before the Coming of Heaven.
Only through the holy marriage Blessing can
you inherit the bond of True Parents’ love. It is the process and end result of
the transfer of Heaven’s full authority. When a family who has received the
Blessing goes to the spirit world, True Parents will be responsible for them.
This means that such a family will live under the protection of True Parents.
Once a heavenly bond is made with the True Parents through the holy marriage
Blessing, this becomes an eternal and unchanging bond, and the key to opening
the gates of heaven.
The fulfillment of the Blessing in the Era
after the Coming of Heaven
Then, ladies and gentlemen, what kind of time
and age is it when the Blessing becomes a reality? The Era before the Coming of
Heaven, when the world was under Satan’s dominion, has ended, and we have
entered the Era after the Coming of Heaven, when the peace kingdom will be
established. This is the best of times, when the grief of God, who has toiled
for six thousand years to see this day, is being resolved and the cherished
desires of humankind for peace are being realized.
It is the time when we will begin to see the
fulfillment of the cherished desires of Jesus, who came to this earth and left
before he could fulfill God’s Will for the holy marriage Blessing. In addition,
it is the time when true love is blooming and bearing fruit for the very first
time since the creation of human beings, and the time when we can feel welcomed
by nature as never before, with full respect and glory.
How strongly God has yearned to see this day!
We come to a new era in which evil will disappear. At this time, a new heaven
and new earth are being established under the bright light of the sun, all
things are beginning to commune together, and the entire universe is starting
to dance in a bright new morning of victory.
I have said that the heavenly ideal cannot be
fulfilled without establishing a family of true love through the holy marriage
Blessing. The heavenly ideal is completed when the Will of God is fulfilled and
the heavenly way is established in the family, centering on true love.
So what kind of love is true love? True love
exists for the benefit of all. It is a love that seeks first to give and live
for the sake of the whole. It is a love that gives and does not keep a tally of
what it gave, and so it gives without end, imparting unending joy. It is the
heart of love of a mother embracing her child and feeding it at her breast. It
is the love of a child who brims with joy by practicing filial piety toward his
or her parents. It is the true love of God when He created human beings. True
love is absolute, unique, unchanging and eternal, without a condition or
expectation of receiving anything in return.
True love is the original wellspring of the
universe and the core of the universe. It is the love that creates the owner of
the universe. True love also represents God’s root, His determination and His power.
So when we are bound together in true love, we can be together forever and
never tire of each other’s company. The universe and even God will follow
whenever we pull them with true love.
The value of true love is reckoned by its
power to bring an eternal end to the barriers that fallen people have built,
including national boundaries, racial tensions and even religions. An absolute
prerequisite for entering the kingdom of heaven is a life lived for the sake of
others, that is, a life of true love.
What is the heavenly way? In short, it is the
tradition of Heaven, the tradition of practicing true love rooted in God. A
life of the heavenly way is an exalted life that transcends the man-made laws
of this world. Violent social or political revolutions are unnecessary when
there is true love and the life of the heavenly way. You need only follow the
path of true love, the heavenly way, practicing a life of sacrifice and service
for the sake of others. This is the path that will bring about an explosion of
God’s love. It is the path to develop and expand God’s lineage and to preserve
it forever.
You now need to advance rapidly in this Age
after the Coming of Heaven with a determination that says, “As long as God does
not change, I will not change. No matter the circumstances, I will continue on
this path. Even if the life, love and ideals that I have preserved until now
amid Satan’s world are all taken from me, I will continue on this path. Even if
God were to change, I will bring God back and continue on this path with Him.
If God is not absolute, I will make Him absolute, if necessary, and continue on
this path.”
Ladies and gentlemen, pursuing this theme of
true love, why do we marry? I have said we marry in order to enter the kingdom
of heaven and to save humankind. We must understand that when a man and a woman
become husband and wife through the holy marriage Blessing, the husband is
called to see his wife in a new light, as a daughter of God and a daughter of
humanity. If the man can love his wife as much as humanity loves her and as
much as God loves her, then he is qualified to be her husband. The same is true
for the woman. Just because a man is your husband, don’t say, “It’s all
settled; that’s my man.” Before you claim him, think of him as God’s son and as
a man who represents all the men in the world.
Between a husband and wife, the husband is the
right foot and the wife is the left foot. Together they need to leave
footprints of a life lived for the sake of God and humankind. These footprints are,
in fact, your family. If either the right or the left foot is not whole, the
person will stumble. Will you be people who leave footprints that reveal
stumbling? When you become a couple in which the wife upholds the husband as
she would heaven and the husband holds the wife in esteem and protects her as
he would the earth, then the place where they embrace will be where the virtues
of heaven and earth are harmonized and where the cosmos is harmonized as one.
Respected leaders, we are now entering a
glorious age. The kingdom of heaven on earth that is God’s ideal of creation,
the peace kingdom, is being established before your eyes. The life that I have
lived for more than eighty years, a lonely path spattered with blood and sweat
and lived only for the sake of Heaven, is now bearing
the fruits of victory for the sake of the six billion people in the world.
In more than one hundred eighty countries,
ambassadors for peace who have inherited Heaven’s will and tradition are
working hard, day and night, proclaiming the values of true love and true
family. They are moving forward with full force to establish a world of peace
on this earth.
In the Middle East, one of the world’s most
explosive tinderboxes, Jews, Christians, and Muslims have found the resources
in my philosophy of peace to engage in a new dimension of peaceful dialogue.
The Unification Thought of Rev. Moon also played a decisive role in ending the
Cold War, and it will help to pave the way toward the unification of my
homeland of Korea.
That alone is not enough to satisfy me. I
began my life’s work at the command of Heaven. I have come as the True Parent
of humankind with God’s anointing, and I am determined to keep my promise to
Him to build His kingdom.
Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to take the
opportunity provided by this extraordinary forum today to declare a truly
historic and revolutionary project for the sake of peace and the welfare of
humankind. This is a combined bridge and tunnel project across the Bering
Strait, where Satan has historically divided East and West, and where the North
American and Russian landmasses are separated.
This World Peace King Bridge and Tunnel will
be connected to a future international highway system, enabling people to
travel by car from Africa’s Cape of Good Hope to Chile’s Santiago and from
London to New York, knitting the world together into a single community in a
new way.
Heaven warns us that separation and division
can no longer be tolerated. This project will help bind all nations together as
a single community, help tear down the walls dividing race, culture, religion,
and nationality, and help establish the world of peace that has been God’s
cherished desire. The United States and Russia need to unite, along with the
European nations and with China, India, Japan, Brazil and all other nations.
All of the world’s religions need to unite as well. They need to combine their
energies to make this historic project a success. It will play a decisive role
in establishing a peace kingdom where there is no benefit to war or division.
Ladies and gentlemen, some may question how
such an enormous project can be completed. Where there is the Will of God,
there is a way. The science and technology of the twenty-first century has
advanced to a level where boring a tunnel under the Bering Strait is no
problem. The construction costs are also no problem. For example, do you know
how much money the United States poured into the war in Iraq during the past
three years? The figure is soon going to reach $200 billion. That is more than
enough to complete the Bering Strait project.
Why do the United States and so many other
countries continue the foolishness and barbarism of war, pouring endless funds
into the exercise of killing one another? Humankind must stop repeating the
perversity of sacrificing our children’s lives and squandering astronomical
amounts of money for the sake of war. The time has come for all the countries
of the world to pool their resources and dash forward toward establishing the
world of peace that is the desire of God, the master of this great universe.
Humanity has entered a dead-end street, and
the only way we can survive is by upholding the peace philosophy of true love,
true life and true lineage as taught by Rev. Moon. When your good ancestors are
mobilized and the heavenly forces of the Age after the Coming of Heaven sweep
down upon the earth, even countries and peoples that appear strong will have no
choice except to surrender to the way of true love.
The choice is now before you. There can be no
perfection in ignorance. This message I convey to you is both a warning and a
blessing from Heaven. Will you join in step with me so we all may rise and gain
victory in accordance with heavenly fortune? Will you become principal actors
in establishing true families, true societies, true nations and a true world?
Or will you be content to remain captive behind the same old walls that Satan
relishes—the wall of your religion, the wall of your culture, the wall of your
nationality and the wall of your race—and spend the remainder of your lives in
agony and regret? Heaven today is summoning brave leaders who will turn this
world of evil upside down and establish a new heaven and new earth.
Today I have delivered Heaven’s message.
Please inscribe it deep in your hearts and remember that the holy marriage
Blessing received through the True Parents has the uniting value of bringing
together the virtues of heaven and earth. Please use this information to set
new coordinates for your lives so you may become wise leaders.
Let me end my remarks by asking you to please
pledge that you will become brave leaders, who will maintain the heavenly way
that has become the tradition of the Era after the Coming of Heaven, and who
will help to usher the world and humankind into the realm of true love.
Thank you.
11
God’s Ideal Family and the Kingdom
of the Peaceful Ideal World
February 2, 2006
Korea International Exhibition Center, Goyang,
Korea First Global Assembly of the Universal Peace Federation
Good evening. I address you as leaders from
around the globe who do not hesitate to make extraordinary efforts for the
realization of world peace. I would like to express my deepest gratitude for
your being present here tonight in spite of your very busy schedules.
Ladies and gentlemen, as we begin the
twenty-first century, we find ourselves at a truly historic turning point. We
are at a point of decision. Can everlasting world peace take root, or are we
doomed to repeat the twentieth century’s dark and oppressive history of war and
conflict?
The twentieth century was a period of
ceaseless struggle, including wars for colonial dominion, the First and Second
World Wars, the Korean War, and the Cold War. Living through this era, I
dedicated my life entirely to the accomplishment of God’s ideal of peace. I
have always prayed sincerely that the United Nations, founded after the Second
World War, would be an institution of peace, and that it would uphold God’s
will for the realization of eternal world peace.
The United Nations has made important
contributions for peace. Nevertheless, at its sixtieth anniversary there is a
broad consensus, both inside and outside the organization that the UN has yet
to discover the way to fulfill its founding purposes. The number of member
states approaches two hundred, and the offices of
these states do little more than represent and even insist on their own
interests. They seem inherently unable to resolve conflicts and achieve peace.
For these reasons, I declare today before all
humanity the founding of a new international organization, the Universal Peace
Federation. Its mission is to renew the existing United Nations and provide a
new level of leadership as an “Abel-type” UN; that is, an organization whose
efforts for peace are offered to Heaven, that can invest itself ceaselessly in
serving for the sake of others. To commemorate this day in its fullness, I am
declaring a message from God to all people living in this age. It is entitled,
“God’s Ideal Family and the Kingdom for the Peaceful Ideal World.”
Respected world leaders, what do you think
God’s ultimate purpose is for creating human beings? Simply put, it is to
experience joy through relating with ideal families filled with true love. What
does an ideal family look like? First, each person in the family is an owner of
true love. When God first created human beings, He made Adam representing all
men, and Eve representing all women, with the intention that they become owners
of true love. The quickest way for them to cultivate a character of true love
was to secure a parent-child relationship with God, whereby they could live in
attendance to God as their Parent. They were to have followed the path of
living as one family with God.
I invite you to enter into a mystical state
and prayerfully ask God, “What is the center of the universe?” I am sure that
the answer you hear will be “the parent-child relationship.” Nothing is more
important or more precious than the relationship between parent and child. This
is because it defines the fundamental relationship between God, the Creator,
and human beings.
Then, what defines the parent-child
relationship? Three things define this relationship: love, life and lineage.
Without our parents’ love as a precondition, none of us would be alive today.
God created human beings out of absolute love, to be partners with Him in love.
This relationship forms an axis of love, linking God the Parent with human
beings as sons and daughters.
Is there anything higher or more precious than
to be a son or daughter of God? If anything were higher, then surely human
desire would aspire to attain it. There is nothing higher. Do you think that
when the omniscient and almighty God created Adam and Eve, He secretly reserved
the highest position for Himself and made Adam and Eve to be only second best?
We cannot imagine that God would do that to His children, partners who were
created to share absolute love with Him. As our eternal True Parent, God
invested one hundred percent into the creation of human beings and endowed us
with the right to have equal status with Him, to participate in His work as
equals, to live with and to inherit from Him. God bestowed upon human beings
all of His own attributes.
Though God is the Absolute Being, He cannot be
happy alone. Adjectives such as “good” and “happy” cannot apply to any being
that lives in isolation. They apply only where there is a robust reciprocal
relationship. Imagine a professional singer who finds herself exiled to an
uninhabited island. She may sing at the top of her voice, yet with no one to
listen, will it bring her happiness? In the same way, even the self-existent
God absolutely needs a reciprocal partner of love in order to experience joy
and be happy.
Then how shall we live to become God’s
reciprocal partner and return joy to Him? In other words, how shall we live to
become children of God, people whom God delights to call “My son,” or “My
daughter,” people who embody a divinity equal to His own? How can we become
God’s partners in completing the work of creation, partners who will inherit
the entire creation? I answer: We must emulate the ideal beginning point of
God’s creative process. In the beginning of creation, God set up the principle
of “living for the sake of others.” He set the practice of true love as the
nucleus, and from that point He began to create.
Therefore, to become God’s children, our first
responsibility is to resemble God. We need to embody true love. The way to
embody true love begins by living as a filial child, then a patriot, a saint,
and finally a divine son or daughter of God. At that stage we can experience
the innermost emotions of God’s heart and resolve the grief that He has
experienced for tens of thousands of years ever since the Fall of Adam and Eve.
God is almighty. It is not due to His shortcoming or lack of ability that He
has been imprisoned in great pain and has endured immense suffering behind the
scenes of history.
This tragedy was the result of provisions in
the Principle of Restoration, which God was not free to disclose, that called
Him to wait with forbearance until Adam and Eve’s positions, lost at the Fall,
could be restored thanks to the appearance of the perfected “second Adam.”
Although God is all-powerful, He will not set aside the eternal laws and
principles that He established.
Do you know what has pained God’s heart,
causing Him the greatest grief over the long history since the Fall of Adam and
Eve? God lost His lineage. And with the loss of His lineage, God lost His right
of ownership. Let me talk about lineage for a moment. Lineage is more important
than life and more important than love. Life and love come together to create
lineage. Lineage cannot be established if either life or love is missing.
Therefore, among the three qualities that define the parent-child relationship,
love, life and lineage, lineage is the fruit.
The seed of true love is embedded in God’s
lineage. God’s lineage provides the context and environment for a true life.
Hence, for us to become the ideal people envisioned by God, people of ideal
character who can create ideal families, we first need to be linked to His
lineage. To take it a step further, only when we are linked to God’s lineage is
it possible to create God’s homeland, the ideal nation. Only when we are linked
to God’s lineage is it possible to establish world peace. Please inscribe the
importance of lineage in your hearts. I cannot emphasize this enough.
Without lineage, neither life nor love can
endure. You strive to set a good tradition, yet it will endure only through
your lineage. Lineage is the bridge allowing the parents’ spirit to carry on
through subsequent generations. In other words, lineage is the first and final
condition necessary for parents to harvest the fruits of their love, the fruits
of their life and the fruits of their joy. We need to know this with certainty.
Yet when Adam and Eve fell, this lineage, more
precious than life, was lost. The fruits of true life and true love never
matured. They became the fruits of Satan, lacking any relationship with Heaven.
From them descended the six billion people now inhabiting the earth. God
intended for the seeds He planted to grow into a bountiful crop to be harvested
in the autumn in the garden of Eden. The ideal of
God’s creation was that He would raise Adam and Eve, His son and daughter, to
the point where they would blossom in true love, give bloom to true life, and
bear fruit in a true lineage. God desired to harvest the owners, families and
nation of eternal life, eternal love and eternal lineage.
False love, false life and false lineage
infested the earth. God’s love, life and lineage fell into the hands of the
adulterer Satan, the enemy of love. Heaven and earth were suffocated and
transformed into hell. The world became a wretched place, far from God’s
presence. Yet humanity to this day lives in ignorance of this. People are
deluded into believing that the lineage of the enemy is the lifeline upon which
the world depends. This is the wretched truth about humanity descended from the
Fall. That is why we refer to this world as hell on
earth. God sees humanity’s tragic situation with a heart full of pain.
After creating Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden, God intended to marry them through His holy
Blessing and bequeath to them Heaven’s right of ownership. God wanted Adam and
Eve to inherit from God the ownership of the entire universe. Because of the Fall, however, all this fell under Satan’s control. God is
like a father who worked and sweated his entire life to accumulate assets for his
children, only to have a thief steal everything in one night.
Who can comprehend the sorrowful, painful
heart of God? God lost His lineage, lost His children, and was forced to hand
over ownership of the nations and world to Satan. There was only one way to
recover this lineage and ownership. This was the path to win the natural
subjugation of Satan, which means to have Satan surrender voluntarily. What is
the secret to accomplishing this? This can happen only by the power of true
love, by loving our enemies more than we love our own children.
Was there ever a time when God, as our True
Father and True Mother, could rejoice with human beings, enjoying the natural
bonds of parent and child? Has God enjoyed even a year of comfort with His
children, knowing that what He created was good? The answer is no. God has not
enjoyed this even for one hour. And has anyone been able to comfort God in this
pain? Again, no, because no one knew the reason for this
unbridgeable gap between God and humankind. No one has known why God and
humanity are in such a tragic circumstance.
The biblical account of Cain and Abel reveals
the beginnings of human conflict right in Adam’s family. It provides the
archetype for humankind’s unending history of struggle, war and conflict. We are
conflicted on many levels, beginning with the war between body and mind within
each individual, extending to wars between nations, and culminating in the
global conflict between materialism and theism. Extreme selfish individualism
threatens our prosperity even today. We deem young people to be the hope of
humanity, holding the promise of the future, yet drugs and free sex enslave
them. Advanced countries seem to believe that material goods are all that
matter. They recognize only their own interests while ignoring the misery of
tens of thousands who die of starvation every day.
Who can untie this ancient knot of Cain and
Abel? It has been tightened for thousands of years and grows ever more tangled.
Do you think the United Nations can do it? The UN at its founding proclaimed a
movement for world peace, and for sixty years it has dedicated itself to this
task; yet world peace still remains far distant. Peace among nations can never
come when those entrusted with the task have not resolved the Cain-Abel relationship
between their own mind and body. Therefore, the time has come to launch an
Abel-type UN that will set its course according to God’s will.
God eagerly anticipated that someone would
come and resolve these tragedies, yet no such person appeared on earth. God
waited and waited, looking for anyone who would take on the role of the True
Parent. If someone had come forward, I am certain that God would have appeared
in his dreams, carried the sun and moon to him, and showered forth lightning of
joy and thunder of ecstasy from the heavens.
In this sense, it is a miracle of miracles
that for the first time in history a man has succeeded in establishing the
position of Adam, securing the position of the owner of true love, and received
God’s anointing as the True Parent of humanity. It is an amazing fact that his
lifetime coincides with yours, and that you and he breathe the same air. I
gained victory in the position of the horizontal True Parent, who comes to
rescue fallen humanity. On that foundation, on January 13,2001,
I dedicated to Heaven the Enthronement Ceremony for Kingship of God. Through
that ceremony I liberated and released God, the vertical True Parent who has
taken responsibility for the Providence of Restoration. In all of history, this
was the highest and greatest blessing humanity has ever received. This victory
was absolute, unique, unchanging and eternal. Through this absolute
providential victory, God’s body and mind are completely liberated!
Respected leaders! Our bondage to the lineage
of Satan has caused much suffering throughout history. Let us now boldly step
forth to sever it and be grafted onto the root of the lineage of the True
Parents. Why would we foolishly continue to live and die as wild olive trees? A
wild olive tree, even if it lives a thousand years, will only continue
producing the seeds of more wild olive trees. Where can we find the path to
escape this vicious cycle? It is through the holy Blessing.
The Blessing ceremony offers the grace of
being grafted onto the true olive tree. It was inaugurated through the True
Parents, who bring God’s true lineage to humankind. Once you change your
lineage to God’s lineage, your offspring will belong to God’s lineage
naturally. The holy Blessing is received in three stages: resurrection, rebirth
and eternal life. Once you receive the True Parents’ Blessing, you can give
birth to pure, sinless offspring and build an ideal family.
The best way to receive the Blessing is with
someone from another race, nationality or religion. I call this an “exchange
marriage.” This contributes to the enormous task of transcending the barriers
of race, culture, ethnicity and religion and creating one family of humankind.
In God’s sight, skin color makes no difference. God does not stand behind the
barriers of religion and culture. They are nothing more than the devil’s
tricks. The devil has used them to rule over humanity as a false parent for
tens of thousands of years.
Imagine two enemy families who have cursed
each other throughout their lives, people who would never dream of living
together. What would happen if these families joined together through an
exchange holy marriage Blessing? Would the parents of two such families curse
their son and daughter who became husband and wife, who loved each other and
built a happy home? If their son were to love this
beautiful daughter of a hated enemy, and she were to become their
daughter-in-law and give birth to Heaven’s grandchildren as pure and clear as
crystal, the grandparents would smile with pleasure. In time the lineages once
soaked with enmity would be transformed.
What method other than exchange marriage will
empower whites and blacks, Jews and Muslims, Asians and westerners, and people
of all races to live as one human family? The ideal family is the model for
living together in peace. The ideal family is the nest where we live and learn
to become one. There we have the foundation of love and respect between parents
and children, shared trust and love between husband and wife, and mutual
support among siblings. For this fundamental reason, you need to receive the
holy marriage Blessing from the True Parents and establish Heaven’s tradition
of ideal families.
Let me reiterate: To resemble God, the
original Being of true love, we need to become the
owners of true love. We must embody true love and practice it in order to
develop our character. This is the way each of us can become true parents.
Then, what is a life of true love? True love
is the spirit of public service. It brings the peace that is at the root of
happiness. Selfish love is a mask for the desire to have
one’s partner exist for one’s own sake; true love is free of that
corruption. Rather, its essence is to give, and to live for the sake of others
and for the sake of the whole. True love gives, forgets that it has given, and
continues to give without ceasing. True love gives joyfully. We find it in the
joyful and loving heart of a mother who cradles her baby in her arms and nurses
it at her breast. True love is sacrificial love, as with a filial son who gains
his greatest satisfaction in helping his parents. God created the universe out
of just such love—absolute, unique, unchanging and eternal—investing everything
without any expectation or condition of receiving anything in return.
True love is the wellspring of the universe.
Once a person possesses it, true love makes him or her the
center and the owner of the universe. True love is the root of God and a symbol
of God’s will and power. When we are bound together in true love, we can be
together forever, continually increasing in the joy of each other’s company.
The attraction of true love brings all things in the universe to our feet; even
God will come to dwell with us. Nothing can compare to the value of true love.
It has the power to dissipate the barriers fallen human beings have created,
including national boundaries and the barriers of race and even religion.
The main attributes of true love are that it
is absolute, unique, unchanging and eternal. Whoever practices God’s true love
will live with God, share His happiness and enjoy the right to participate as
an equal in His work. Therefore, a life lived for the sake of others, a life of
true love, is the absolute prerequisite for entering the kingdom of heaven.
Respected leaders, you are now living in an
age of blessing. God’s promises are coming to fruition. The kingdom of heaven
on earth, the kingdom of peace that is God’s ideal of creation, is being
established before your eyes. My life of more than eighty years, this lonely
path trod solely for Heaven and stained with blood, sweat and tears, is now
bearing victorious fruit for the sake of the world’s six billion people. From
the spirit world, the founders of the world’s religions, along with tens of
thousands of saints and your own good ancestors, are watching your every move.
Whoever strays from the heavenly path will reap the consequences.
In more than one hundred eighty countries,
ambassadors for peace who have inherited Heaven’s will and tradition are making
serious effort, day and night, to proclaim the values of true love and true
family. They are moving forward with full force to establish peace on this
earth. In the Middle East, one of the world’s tinderboxes, Jews, Christians and
Muslims have found the resources in my philosophy of peace to engage in a new
dimension of dialogue. In past decades, Unification Thought played a decisive
role in ending the Cold War. Now I am successfully leading vital efforts to
bring about the reunification of my homeland of Korea.
However, I am not yet satisfied because I
began my life’s work at the command of Heaven. I have come as the True Parent
of humankind with God’s anointing and I am determined to keep my promise to
Him. I am determined to obliterate all national divisions and barriers that
have poisoned this earth and to establish the world of peace, where all people
everywhere can live hand in hand.
Respected ambassadors for peace: I believe you
have learned many things through the message from God that I am conveying to
you today. As humanity continues to drift aimlessly, your help is needed more
than ever before as people who represent Heaven. Please take this opportunity
to make a new determination to be Heaven’s envoys, prepared to uphold Heaven’s
command. With this in mind, I would like to summarize the message I have given
today so that we can all take the mission given to us by Heaven and inscribe it
deep within our hearts.
What did I say was lost by the Fall of Adam
and Eve, who were created as God’s children?
First, the realm of the lineage given to us by
God was lost. Blood lineage is the most special among all special rights that
parents pass on to their children. Through the Fall,
Adam and Eve received the false lineage of Satan and descended to become Satan’s
children. We have to understand with certainty that all human beings today
without exception, regardless of who they may be, are the descendants of the Fall who have inherited the blood lineage of Satan. When God
created Adam and Eve, He invested His entire being 100 percent and created them
on the standard of absolute love, absolute faith and absolute obedience. God
gave them His lineage as the seed for their love and life.
So from this moment, you are in a different
position. The path has been opened wide for you to change your lineage through
the holy wine ceremony handed down by the True Parents and rededicate your
marriage so that you may establish true families.
The second loss at the time of the Fall was the realm of siblings when, in the family of Adam,
the older brother Cain killed his younger brother Abel. God’s original
structure and blessing was that siblings in a family would lead a life of love
and harmony, yet sibling relationships were degraded to become enemy
relationships of envy and resentment. This is the reason humanity needs to
completely restore this divisive lineage through the worldwide exchange
marriages led by Rev. Moon. Only when the younger brother, who is favored by
Heaven, can establish a relationship as a loving subject partner to his elder
brother can the original family structure envisioned by God be restored.
Ladies and gentlemen, because I have spent my
life exposing these evil secrets of Satan, it was inevitable that I would face
intense persecution and suffering which words cannot describe. Now, however, I
have been victorious over all obstacles, and I have declared the Age after the
Coming of Heaven, when the power of Heaven becomes manifest. On this
foundation, I am building a representative Abel realm on the world level that
brings together religions and nations representing seventy percent of the
current world population. To create a representative Cain-realm on the world
level, I am bringing together those with the Mongolian birthmark, which
includes some seventy-four percent of the world’s population.
Now these two, the worldwide Abel realm and
the worldwide Cain realm, must become as one body, with the Universal Peace
Federation in the position of the Abel UN. To establish a world of peace on
this earth, the conflicts and barriers on every level must be dispelled; we are
to reach a level that transcends religion and nations. I would like to remind
you that this is how all humankind will be able to enter the world of the
original ideal of creation. It is humanity’s destiny to fulfill our
responsibility to establish the original right of ownership that was lost by
the Fall of Adam and Eve.
Please remember that now is the time when the
Abel realm, which is on the side of Heaven, must embrace the Cain realm on a
cosmic level. Then we can make a new beginning toward establishing the new
heaven and new earth, the kingdom of God on earth and in heaven, with Heaven’s
complete authority.
Leaders from around the world, let me take the
opportunity provided by today’s distinguished forum to reiterate my proposal
for a truly providential and revolutionary project. For the sake of peace and
human welfare, and to build God’s homeland and original hometown, I propose
that we build a passage for transit across the Bering Strait, which is the last
remnant of Satan’s historical division between East and West, North and South,
and where the North American and Russian landmasses are separated.
This passage, which I call the World Peace
King Bridge and Tunnel, will link an international highway system that will
allow people to travel on land from Africa’s Cape of Good Hope to Santiago,
Chile, and from London to New York, across the Bering Strait, connecting the
world as a single community.
God is warning that separation and division
will no longer be tolerated. Carrying out this project will bind the world
together as one village. It will tear down the man-made walls of race, culture,
religion and country, and will help to establish the world of peace that has
been God’s cherished desire.
The United States and Russia can become as
one. The European continent, China, India, Japan, Brazil and all nations, along
with all the world’s religions, can combine their energies to succeed in this
project. The success of this project will be decisive in establishing a peace
kingdom where people will no longer make war with each other.
Ladies and gentlemen, some may doubt that such
a project can be completed. However, where there is a will, there is always a
way, especially if it is the Will of God. The science and technology of the
twenty-first century render it possible to construct a tunnel under the Bering
Strait. The construction costs are also not a problem. Think of how much money
the world is wasting on war. Humanity needs to realize that we are committing
fearful sins in the presence of history and our descendants. Let us take one
example. How much money has the United States spent on the war in Iraq during
the past three years? It is approaching $200 billion. That budget would be more
than enough to complete the Bering Strait project.
War is a most primitive and destructive means
of resolving conflict; it will never lead to lasting peace. Now is the time, as
the prophet Isaiah taught, to beat our swords into plowshares and our spears
into pruning hooks. Humankind must end the perverse cycle of sacrificing our
children’s lives and squandering astronomical sums of money to fight wars. The
time has come for the countries of the world to pool their resources and
advance toward the world of peace desired by God, who is the master and Parent
of this great universe.
Ladies and gentlemen, humanity is traveling
down a dead-end street. The only way to survive is to practice the peace
philosophy of true love, true life and true lineage that I am teaching. Now
that we have entered the Age after the Coming of Heaven, your good ancestors
are mobilized, and the heavenly hosts are sweeping down upon the earth. Soon
the countries and peoples that appear strong and mighty will change course and
shift in this direction.
I leave you with a choice. There can be no
perfection in ignorance. The message from Heaven that I convey to you today is
both a blessing and a warning to this generation. I, Rev. Moon, will take the
lead in establishing true families, true societies, true nations and a true
world. Will you join with me in this work as I rise and gain strength to bring
this new age in accordance with heavenly fortune? Or will you remain captive
behind the same old barriers, all of them Satan’s handiwork, that make a wall
out of your religion, a wall out of your culture, a wall out of your
nationality and a wall out of your race, and spend the remainder of your time
on earth in agony and regret? Heaven is summoning you to be the wise leaders
who will set aright this world of evil and establish a new heaven and new
earth.
Today we are participating in the inauguration
of the Universal Peace Federation. It represents God’s victory, the fruit of
the True Parents’ blood, sweat and tears, and the world’s cherished hope. It
will carry out the role of an Abel-type UN in relation to the existing United
Nations for building Cheon II Guk.
Think of the peacekeeping role of the United Nations in the past. Sometimes it
withdrew its forces before their mission was completed. The Korean War is a good
example. Under the banner of the Universal Peace Federation, we will serve as
“peace kingdom police force” and a “peace kingdom corps” to safeguard global
peace. For the sake of humanity’s future, I hope that you will put on new “true
love armor” in this new age and be wise and brave activists in this worldwide
peace force.
Please inscribe this warning from Heaven deep
in your hearts. Remember that the only way to inherit Heaven’s lineage and
establish the realm of liberation and complete freedom is through the holy
marriage Blessing established by the True Parents. Moreover, the holy marriage
Blessing provides the means to establish God’s ideal family and everlasting
world peace.
In closing, I ask you to devote your best
efforts for the development and success of the Universal Peace Federation.
Thank you.
12
God’s Model Ideal Family and Nation
and the Peace Kingdom
March 16, 2006
Marriott Hotel, Seoul, Korea
Leaders conference for Korean ambassadors for peace
Distinguished world leaders, ambassadors for
peace and blessed family members who have come from all parts of the world in
hopes of bringing about the realization of world peace, and building the ideal
hometown in heaven and on earth:
I would like to express my deepest gratitude
to all of you for coming together despite your busy schedules to take part in
this rally to expand and elevate the Family Party for Cosmic Peace and
Unification to a global level, so that it may be reborn as the Cheon II Guk House for Peace and
Unification; to make the Universal Peace Federation a model UN-type
organization; and to make Cheon II Guk the kingdom of the peaceful, ideal world through the
concerted efforts of all the nations of the world.
A lifetime of looking only forward
As you may know, this year marks the
eighty-seventh year since my birth. On this remarkable occasion, as the founder
of the Universal Peace Federation, which is to open wide the Era after the
Coming of Heaven, I would like to convey to you the essence of the truth of
Heaven that I have taught throughout my life. This message is entitled, “God’s
Model Ideal Family and Nation, and the Peace Kingdom.”
Ladies and gentiemen:
On looking back, my life has indeed been like a dream. At the young age of
sixteen, with nothing but the buoyant spirit and aspirations of youth, I was
called by Heaven and began to live for the Will of God. This left no room in my
heart for any worldly ambitions I may have cherished. It has never been an easy
path, but I have followed it for more than eighty years, looking nowhere but
straight ahead. This was the life I was fated to lead, with no choice but to
shake off the embrace of my beloved parents, and brothers and sisters, who
clung to me, wanting me to stay with them. They endured great self-sacrifice
and walked a thorny path of dreadful suffering for my sake.
It has been a journey through the wilderness
that no one among the 6.5 billion people living on earth could ever comprehend.
Even when I persevered through the hardships of prison life six times, I never
let go of the key to the providence; such has been Rev. Moon’s life.
This was all because I came to know only too
well how anguished, aggrieved and full of bitter sorrow was the heart of God as
He waited for thousands of years to find us. I realized that if God, who is the
origin of billions of people and the Creator of everything in the universe, was
not relieved from His sorrow, human life would remain completely without value.
When, where and how did God come to carry such
agonizing sorrow in His heart? Who on earth could inflict this grief upon Him,
the absolute and omnipotent Being?
God created Adam and Eve and established them
as the first ancestors of humankind. Since the parent-child relationship is the
highest and most important of all relationships, He committed Himself 100
percent to raising them as His son and daughter, connected to Him through love,
life and lineage. The relationship between parent and child is the only way
through which God’s lineage can be bequeathed and made to last forever.
However, this parent-child relationship, more
precious and important than life itself, was severed due to the Fall of Adam
and Eve. God’s own flesh and blood, His first son and daughter, Adam and Eve,
formed a blood relationship with His enemy Satan and became Satan’s children
instead. In the face of this, God’s heart has been crushed and wounded with
grief and sorrow throughout history. This caused the most mortifying and
harrowing anguish for our Heavenly Parent throughout history, which no one in
the past understood or could resolve.
Tragically, God’s ideal of creation, which was
to establish a true family in that very first generation of humanity, a family
through which He could eternally pass on His lineage, was frustrated. The only
way to relieve God’s sorrow is to restore and establish a true family unrelated
to the lineage of Satan. Herein lies the reason why all of us need to establish
true families, which is God’s ideal of creation. Herein also lies
the fundamental object and purpose of the founding of the Universal Peace
Federation.
In the Old Testament it is written, “So God
created humankind in his image; in the image of God he created them, male and
female He created them.” (Gen. 1:27) From observing God’s creation as expressed
in this passage, we can conclude that God is a being who comprises the essence
of one man and one woman. Having these attributes, God could not enjoy a
solitary life. Therefore, He created the universe as His object partner. That
is, God created all things in the universe in the position of an object partner
in image, and in this environment He created human beings as His object
partners in substance.
In this manner, the first masculine
representative created by God as His object partner in substance was Adam, and
the feminine representative He created was Eve. God had an objective in mind
when He created human beings as separate beings, one man and one woman.
First, God, who exists as an incorporeal
Subject being whose dual characteristics are in harmony, wanted to assume a
physical form through which He could relate with the entire world of substance.
Adam and Eve were to become temples of God, so that through them He could
communicate and work freely in relation to the entire universe, the world of
substance. This is because the incorporeal God, without a physical body, meets
certain limits in dealing with the corporeal world of substance.
Therefore, if Adam and Eve had attended God in
their hearts and become one with Him, then married on the basis of having
perfected themselves, had children and created a family, they would have become
the external and horizontal True Parents in substance, and God would have
become the internal and vertical True Parent in substance. If only this had
come to pass, Adam and Eve would have resembled God 100 percent, both in their
inner nature and outer form. If Adam and Eve, as a couple who perfectly
resembled God, had become the true parents of humankind, human beings would
have experienced the true reality of God in their daily lives.
Second, God created Adam and Eve for the sake
of the fulfillment of love. He intended for Adam and Eve to grow to spiritual
maturity and reach perfection, thus becoming the embodiments of love in
complete union. On that basis, He would have come and dwelt with them as the
Parent of true love for all humanity. Adam and Eve, standing in the position of
the parents of substance in the image of God, would have established an ideal
family, and consequently an ideal world, as this same standard of heart was
multiplied in their own children. If this had come to be, the spirit world and
the earthly world would have been linked through human beings. We can conclude
that God’s intention in creating human beings was to allow us to grow to become
the connecting point between the spiritual and physical worlds.
By coming to dwell in Adam and Eve based on
true love, God would have been recognized by succeeding generations of humanity
as the True Parent, the parent in substance of humankind. Moreover, when the
time came for Adam and Eve to end their lives on earth and pass on into the
spirit world, God could take on their spirit bodies and manifest as the True
Parent through their form. However, due to the Fall of Adam and Eve, God has
not seen that ideal fulfilled.
God does not need money, knowledge or power.
Since He is the absolute, almighty Being, He does not need such things. Though
modern science maybe accomplishing spectacular advances, these are all part of
the process of discovering new facts and truths within the realm of God’s
creation. The vast expanse of this universe operates in an orderly fashion
according to laws that cannot be fathomed by human thought or science. In this
sense, God is also the absolute scientist.
Then what would have been the ideal that God
hoped to achieve through the creation of humankind? It was to fulfill the
four-position foundation. The four-position foundation signifies Adam and Eve
in a state of complete union with God. This makes it impossible for them to
separate from God’s realm of love, no matter how hard they may try. The
four-position foundation refers to the foundation of a family with God as its
center, established when the husband and wife have achieved complete oneness
not only with each other but also with God, and when they have become an ideal
couple and give birth to sinless children. When the family
four-position foundation is thus completed, that family becomes a family of the
ideal of creation desired by God.
Generally speaking, a family is formed through
the coming together of husband and wife and of parents and children. God’s love
must be the center of that family group. At this point, the husband represents
heaven and the wife earth. Although they are two separate beings, when husband
and wife have become one, horizontally speaking, their union symbolizes the
unity of heaven and earth. Simply put, when husband and wife are in unity based
on God’s love, the way to bring unity in the cosmos opens up.
Ladies and gentlemen,
God created the world to receive joy from it.
Since even the Absolute Being, God, could not feel joy while alone, He needed a
partner with whom to share the giving and receiving of love. This is because
joy cannot be felt all by oneself, but can only be experienced through a
partner.
To put it in another way, God created this
world to experience the joy of seeing humankind and all things of creation
becoming one through His love, as we formed a harmonious and peaceful world of
love. On such a basis, human beings were meant to form true conjugal
relationships centered on God’s love, and to establish families, tribes,
peoples, nations and a world of true love. God created this world to
participate directly in this process and to feel joy from it.
We can see that human beings are absolutely
essential to fulfill God’s ideal of love, and thus we can understand the
concept that absolute value is derived from an absolute partner.
Our Parent, God, and all His children,
humankind, were to form a vertical axis. This was the purpose for the creation
of human beings. If this axis had been connected perfectly, that is, if God and
humankind had united as one through true love, they would have been absolutely
inseparable; no force in the universe could have broken them apart. How could
anyone who has been bound to the original love of God, and who has tasted that
love, ever be separated from it?
With the coming of spring, honeybees wake up
from their long slumber and get a taste for the fresh nectar of the blooming
flowers. Try pulling the abdomen of one such honeybee while it is lost to all
else but sucking on that nectar. You will see that it cannot tear itself away
from the nectar, even if its abdomen is pulled off. How about you? Once you
really get to know the taste of God’s true love, you won’t get far from it
before you come back and cling to it once again. This shows that the power of
the vertical true love that connects us to God is greater than the power of
life.
The value of a family of three generations
living in harmony
Ladies and gentlemen, the reason we miss the
family we have left behind is because at home there is love for one another.
Home is where the love of mother and father, the love of brothers and sisters,
the love of one’s spouse, one’s children and one’s close neighbors are all
deeply embedded. It is a place of mutual affection, where all the relationships
and affinities are brought together through mutual love. This makes you want to
cherish each and every member of your family. It is the yearning and desire of
any wanderer who has left his family behind to reappear boldly before his
family, as a liberated being, and embrace the mountains, streams and trees,
love his relatives and countrymen, and sing songs of ecstasy. However, the
situation of humankind descended from the Fall has
been different. Banished from their original heavenly hometown and destined to
wander around in isolation and defeat, human beings have never been able to go
back, no matter how much they missed their families, for they have lost the
root of the heart of their original homeland.
However, with the ushering in of this era of a
new heaven and a new earth, we are being pulled out of the swamp that was
sucking us down. The way is being opened for us to return to our hometown, which
we have never forgotten even for a moment, and to meet with our true family.
Could there ever be a day of greater blessing for humanity? The time of
heavenly power and fortune has now come, making it possible for us to
reestablish the original family that was lost through the Fall of Adam and Eve.
When seeking after the lost original family,
you should set out from the position of the perfected Adam, the position of the
perfected Jesus, and the position representing the perfected Second Coming of
the Lord. God will dwell in such a family. That family would
be one of three generations— grandparents, parents and children—living in
harmony. Parents and children live in service and attendance to the
grandparents as the historical root of the ancestors.
The family sets the pattern for living
together in harmony. The family wherein parents and children love and respect
each other, husband and wife are grounded in mutual trust and love, and
brothers and sisters trust and rely on each other, and all live together as
one, is the model ideal family. This means that you
need to establish a true family wherein the stem of true love emerges from the
root of true love and bears the fruit of true love.
Such a true family is the root of history and
the root of the kingdom of heaven, because it is from such a family that the
kingdom of heaven on earth takes root. It is also where the everlasting root of
kingship is firmly planted. The roots of the past, present and future are
represented in the grandparents, parents and grandchildren, respectively. The
root of the past represents the spirit world; the root of the present is the
palace representing the world today; and the root of the future establishes the
grandsons and granddaughters as princes and princesses. Through such a family
we erect the palace of peace, representing the harmony of the two worlds, the
spirit world and the physical world.
In this manner, the three generations of
grandparents, parents, and grandchildren live together as one family, serving
the eternally existent God. You have to know that to seek after and establish
such a family of Cheon II Guk,
God’s kingdom, is the responsibility of tribal messiahs, the mission of the
ambassadors for peace, and the desire of God.
You must form families that God will miss and
yearn to return to after He has been away. You have to raise families to which
He can come freely as a parent visiting His children. This is what it means to
live in service to God. Within such a family, God becomes the subject partner
of our conscience, acting vertically. Following that vertical subject partner,
our mind stands in the position of subject partner to our body and brings the
two into unity. That is where parental love, conjugal love, children’s love,
and siblings’ love—the four realms of love or the four realms of heart—are
perfected. Only in such a family can the upper and lower, front and back, left
and right be connected as one, in a circular flow of energy. This leads to
God’s everlasting, model ideal families and nations, and to His peace kingdom.
The age of the eternal, ideal kingdom of peace
Ladies and gentlemen! Why do we get married?
It is to restore the position of an owner. A man or woman alone can be only one
half of the whole. That is how God created us. For that reason, He has
interchanged the owners of the reproductive organs, the love organs. The owner
of the wife’s reproductive organ is the husband, and the owner of the husband’s
is the wife. Only when each is rooted in love for the other can they stand in
the position of the owner of their spouse. We marry to secure this position of
the owner.
Then what are we trying to achieve by
restoring the position of the owner? It is to fulfill and embody God’s love
from that position. God is the subject of the three great loves. As the owner
of the universe, He is the teacher, owner and parent of true love. This is the
original three great subject partners system of thought. All such teachings and
truths are created based on the life of true, model families and once they
expand, the society, nation, world, and even heaven and earth can be
transformed into the peace kingdom of the model ideal family.
Distinguished leaders, you are now living in
the most blessed and exalted time in history. I now proclaim the launch of the
era of a new heaven and earth, the Era after the Coming of Heaven, long-awaited
and yearned for by billions of ancestors in the spirit world who have come and
gone in history. This is the era of the kingdom of the peaceful, ideal world.
Not only the four great religious founders, but also billions of good ancestors
have come down to earth at this point to guide you on the heavenly path. The age in which the fallen and corrupted world plays havoc with
humanity, allowing those who are evil to live better than others, is passing
away.
Rev. Moon, who received the seal of Heaven,
has come as the True Parent of humanity and the King of Peace. I will be true
to my promise to God.
I will bring to fruition the era of the
kingdom of the peaceful, ideal world on this earth, without fail. Therefore,
please bear in mind that all of you gathered here today are the central figures
in establishing the kingdom of the peaceful, ideal world on this earth, in
attendance to the King and Queen of Peace, the True Parents.
Under the banner of the Abel-type UN, let us
sweep away the perversions and the evil of this world through true love power.
Let us become the proud “peace kingdom police force” and “peace kingdom corps”
of the Universal Peace Federation, and protect the blessed families of the
world. Let us fulfill our roles as the sentinels watching over this blessed
land that is our planet.
I pray that the blessings and grace of God may
be with all of you leaders representing different areas of responsibility,
whose presence has elevated this historic occasion.
I ask you to devote your best efforts, as True
Parents have, toward the development and success of the Universal Peace
Federation, and toward creating God’s ideal family, ideal nation and the peace
kingdom.
Please become true princes and princesses who
can attend and live together with God, the Eternal Peace King, as the True
Parent of humanity. Let us each live up to the standard of a true filial child,
a patriot, a saint, and a member of the family of divine sons and daughters of
God, in order to create the peace kingdom for all eternity.
May God’s blessings be with you, your family,
and your nation.
Thank you.
13
God’s Model for Absoluteness, Peace
and
the Ideal Is the Family and Global Kingdom
Upholding Absolute Sexual Morality
November 21,2006
Korea International Exhibition Center, Goyang,
Korea
Forty-seventh True Children’s Day Celebration
Beloved blessed families of the world,
respected ambassadors for peace, leaders from all walks of life, and
distinguished guests from home and abroad:
Today is a significant day in the history of
God’s providence. It begins the forty-seventh year since I declared Children’s
Day. I had to reach and establish four great milestones in the providential
course of restoration through indemnity, in order to fulfill God’s purpose of
creation that was lost through the Fall of Adam and Eve, our first ancestors.
They are: God’s Day, Parents’ Day, Children’s Day, and the Day of All Things.
Having victoriously accomplished the Enthronement Ceremony for the Kingship of
God in 2001, I proclaimed the beginning of the providence of Cheon II Guk at the time of the
entrance ceremony of the Cheon Jeong
Gung Peace Palace and the coronation ceremony in June this year. Today marks
the first observance of True Children’s Day since then.
To commemorate this significant day and renew
our resolve, I would like to convey Heaven’s words on the topic, “God’s Model
for Absoluteness, Peace and the Ideal Is the Family and Global Kingdom
Upholding Absolute Sexual Morality.” It is a summary of the message from Heaven
that I delivered to the 6.5 billion people of the world over the past year. It
is to remind you again of your role and mission from the viewpoint of God’s
providence, and of the importance of the age in which you are living.
These are the words of life that one hundred
twenty international religious leaders, who received them directly from True
Parents, are proclaiming in one hundred twenty nations of the world. The world
speaking tour carried out by members of three generations of True Parents’
family has opened the path to the salvation of humanity through Heaven’s
message and the Blessing. On that foundation, these religious leaders who
represent the Cain-type world have taken up the cause and are traveling to
every corner of the world.
Ladies and gentlemen, throughout history,
people have worked continuously for peace, based on human effort alone.
Consider the confrontation between democracy and communism. Outwardly, the
difference between the two was the extent to which they recognized and ensured
individual rights and freedoms. Yet from the viewpoint of God’s providence,
communism and democracy have been like children who lost their parents. The two
divided into the positions of Cain and Abel, respectively, and became trapped
in the fetters of fraternal conflict.
Throughout history, peace movements inevitably
reached their limit and could not achieve their goal because imperfect human
beings carried them out. This is why the United Nations, although launched with
the splendid dream of realizing world peace, today has to admit its innate
limitations and confess that it can no longer give hope to humanity. That is
simply because the UN was launched during the era prior to the time when God
could directly govern the unfolding of His providence in history.
Now, however, it is entirely possible for the
Universal Peace Federation to fulfill its mission to unite heaven and earth and
form the kingdom of the peaceful, ideal world. That is because it represents
God’s victory and the fruit of True Parents’ blood, sweat and tears. Therefore,
the Universal Peace Federation is the world’s cherished hope. It will carry out
the role of an “Abel-type” counterpart to the existing “Cain-type” United Nations,
to renew the UN and provide the leadership for a new sovereignty of universal
peace known in Korean as Cheon II Guk.
Therefore, please bear in mind that you, as leaders from around the world, have
the heavenly mission to build God’s substantial homeland, which is no less than
the ideal that God intended at the time of creation.
Respected leaders from around the world, what
do you think is God’s ultimate purpose for creating human beings? It is to
experience joy through relating with ideal families filled with true love. What
does an ideal family look like? When God first created human beings, He made
Adam representing all men and Eve representing all women, with the intention
that they become owners of true love. Then what was the quickest way for them to
cultivate a character of true love? Simply put, it was to secure a parent-
child relationship with God, whereby they could live in attendance to God as
their Parent and form a model family embodying God’s ideal of peace. They were
to have followed the path of living as one family with God, experiencing joy
eternally.
God created Adam and Eve and established them
as the first ancestors of humankind to form the model family and realize the
ideal of peace. God committed Himself completely to raising them as His son and
daughter, who were to be encapsulations of the entire cosmos, mediators between
the spirit world and physical world, and lords of creation, united with God
through true love, true life and true lineage.
Ladies and gentlemen, Adam and Eve were to
establish a model, peaceful, ideal family. God, the Absolute Being, created
human beings as His children in order to instill in them absolute values on the
basis of an absolute standard. Thus, we have to follow the way of that absolute
standard in keeping with the demands of the heavenly path. This means we must
follow our destined life course in order to attend God, the Absolute Being, as
our Parent. In other words, for people to perfect themselves in resemblance to
God and obtain the stature of people of character who can be called sons and
daughters of the Absolute Being, they need to follow the path based on the
absolute standard determined by God. The essence of this path is the standard
of absolute sexual morality.
The first stage of absolute sexual morality is
to maintain a standard of absolute sexual purity prior to getting married.
After we are born, we go through a process of growth. We pass through infancy
and childhood in a very safe and secure environment formed by our parents’ love
and protection. We then enter the period of adolescence, which signals the
start of a new and dynamic time of forging relationships on a totally new level
with the people and things of creation all around us. This is the time we begin
to travel the path of becoming a truly mature person, internally through the
perfection of our character, and externally by reaching adulthood.
Yet all people, no matter who they are, must
meet one absolute requirement if they hope to grow to spiritual maturity. That
requirement is to maintain their sexual purity. True love among true people is
based on the model of absolute sexual morality. God gave this direction to His
children as a destined responsibility and duty, to be carried out in order to
fulfill the ideal of creation. The only way to perfect the model of
absoluteness in conjugal love is to follow this heavenly path.
What was the one and only commandment God gave
to Adam and Eve, the first human ancestors, after He created them? It was the
commandment and blessing to maintain an absolute standard of sexual abstinence
until God’s approval of their marriage. We find the basis for this in the Bible
passage that indicates that Adam and Eve would surely die on the day they ate
of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. If they had refrained
from eating and observed Heaven’s commandment, they would have perfected their
character and stood as equal co-creators with God, the Creator. Furthermore,
they would have taken dominion over the creation and become lords of the
universe, enjoying eternal and ideal happiness.
It was God’s blessing that He warned Adam and
Eve to preserve their sexual purity, so that they might marry with His Blessing
as true children, become true husband and wife, give birth to true children and
become true parents. This explanation deepens our understanding of this
commandment; it was essentially a loving parental warning to Adam and Eve about
absolute sexual morality, which is a principle of God’s creation. The profound
truth hidden within God’s commandment throughout history was that we are meant
to inherit and live by a model of sexual morality that is intrinsic to God’s
ideal for creation. Only by doing so can we perfect our individuality as God’s
children and establish ourselves as lords of creation.
The second stage of absolute sexual morality
applies to the relationship between husband and wife. More precious than life
itself, this is the heavenly law of absolute fidelity. Husband and wife are
eternal partners given to each other by Heaven. By having children, husband and
wife become co-creators of true love, true life and true lineage, and the
origin of that which is absolute, unique, unchanging and eternal. It is a
heavenly principle that one person alone cannot give birth to a child, even in
a thousand years.
How can people who preserve their purity
before marriage, and whom God binds together in a pure marriage as husband and
wife, deviate from the heavenly way and go astray, following the wrong path?
People are different from animals. If we understand God’s purpose in creating
us as His children, we will realize that the wrong path is one of unimaginable
betrayal and defiance of the Creator. It is a path of self-destruction along
which we dig our own graves. Resulting from the Fall,
this path is outside the realm of the ideal of creation.
Ladies and gentlemen, absolute sexual morality
is the greatest blessing that Heaven has bestowed on humankind. Without
adhering to the standard of absolute sexual morality, the path to perfecting
one’s character and attaining spiritual maturity is closed. Furthermore,
without securing the foundation of absolute sexual morality through perfected
individuals in a true family, it is impossible for God to manifest His stature
as a God who is personal and incarnate in us.
In order for God, the Absolute Being, to have
direct dominion over our lives and to live and share joy with us, we who were
created as His object partners and His children need to form perfected families
based on the standard of absolute sexual morality, as He intended. Only by
living within the boundaries of absolute sexual morality is it possible for a
family to create lifelong relationships based on the ideal model God originally
intended for us. This model life includes the three-generational realm of
grandparents, parents, children and grandchildren. Please understand clearly
that God’s eternal life and our eternal life are possible only on this
foundation.
Therefore, if Adam and Eve had achieved
individual maturity, the perfection of their character, by upholding absolute
sexual morality in accordance with God’s Will, and had then entered into
conjugal relations through His Blessing, they would have attained complete
oneness with Him. God would have dwelt within their union. Also, their children
would have been linked to this holy order of love, enjoying a direct
relationship with God as their Parent. In other words, the marriage of
perfected Adam and Eve, based on their absolute sexual morality, would have
been God’s own marriage. God is forever God, yet at the same time Adam and Eve
were to have become embodiments of God. They would have become God’s body. God
would have settled inside their minds and hearts to become the True Parent of
humankind in both the spirit world and physical world, upon their foundation.
Do you know what has pained God’s heart the
most, causing Him the greatest grief throughout the long history since the Fall
of Adam and Eve? God lost His lineage. He lost His close relationship with people, and even His ownership over the creation. God’s
lineage is more precious than life itself. Without it, the fruits of true life
and true love never matured. They became instead the fruits of Satan, lacking
any relationship with God. From such people descended the 6.5 billion people
now inhabiting the earth.
The importance of lineage and true
love
Ladies and gentlemen, lineage is more
important than life and more precious than love. Life and love come together to
create lineage. Lineage cannot be established if either life or love is
missing. Therefore, among love, life and lineage, lineage is the fruit. God’s
lineage contains the seed of true love. God’s lineage provides the context and
environment for a true life.
Hence, for us to become people of ideal
character who can create ideal families, as originally envisioned by God, we
have to be linked to His lineage. To take it a step further, only when we are
linked to God’s lineage is it possible to create God’s homeland, the ideal
nation. The kingdom of the peaceful, ideal world can only come about by heeding
God’s word to establish relationships based on absolute sexual morality.
Please inscribe the importance of lineage in
your hearts. I cannot emphasize this enough. The parent-child relationship is
the highest and most important of all relationships, and the model, lineal
relationship between parent and child is the only way through which God’s
lineage can be bequeathed and made to last forever. You have to be clear on
this point.
However, false love, false life and false
lineage have infested the earth. God’s love, life and lineage fell into the
hands of the adulterer Satan, the enemy of love. Heaven and earth were
suffocated and transformed into hell. The world became a wretched place, far
from God’s presence. Yet humanity to this day lives in ignorance of this.
People are deluded into believing that the lineage of the enemy is the lifeline
upon which the world depends. This is the miserable truth about humanity
descended from the Fall. That is why we refer to this
world as hell on earth. God’s heart is full of pain as He views humanity’s
tragic situation.
Furthermore, as a result of the Fall, Satan gained control of the realm of lineage and
usurped both the right of the eldest son and the right of ownership. God is
like a father who worked and sweated his entire life to accumulate assets for
his children, only to find that a thief stole everything in one night. Who can
comprehend the sorrowful, painful heart of God? God lost His lineage, lost His
children, and was forced to hand over ownership of the nations and the world to
Satan.
My task, the task of Rev. Moon, is to complete
the mission of the True Parents. My life, therefore, has been one of sorrow,
marked by inexpressible suffering and persecution. The third Adam, the True
Parent, needs to indemnify and completely reverse all the mistakes of the first
and second Adams. He has to complete the mission of the Savior, the Messiah and
the returning Lord, and also the missions of all those major figures on whom
religions are based. With similarities to the process of God’s creation of the
universe, his life constitutes the great work of the re-creation of humanity,
where not even the smallest error is permitted. It is a lonely course that
cannot be fully comprehended by anyone.
My course has taken me down thorny paths
through the wilderness, paths that I had to follow while utterly alone. Not
even God could acknowledge me. Hovering many times between life and death, even
vomiting blood, my life has been like that of a phoenix that had to rise again.
I had to establish a model of absolute sexual morality and remain true to my
promise to God.
Though I was innocent, I, Rev. Moon, have had
to endure unjust imprisonment six times. The first was in my early days, for
working in the underground independence movement while studying in Japan. I was
later imprisoned for propagating the Will of God in Pyongyang, which was under
communist rule immediately following Korea’s independence; during the Syngman Rhee administration after Korea had been reborn as
a free nation; and finally, even in the United States, which proudly presents
itself to the world as a model of democracy. Who on earth can understand the
life of Rev. Moon, a life that has been one of perfecting a model of absolute
love? Mine has been a life of misery. Biting my tongue, I have had to endure
everything in order to comfort God and to bring about the salvation of the
fallen people of the world who are suffering in the realm of death. Even now,
if someone were to look into my heart and speak one word of sympathy, I would
burst into tears and my tears would flow like a waterfall.
There is only one way to recover the realm of
lineage, the right of the eldest son and the right of ownership. This is the
path to win the natural subjugation of Satan by having him surrender
voluntarily. What is the secret to accomplishing this? It can be accomplished
only by the power of true love, when we love our enemies more than we love our
own children.
Then what is true love? Its essence is to
give, to live for the sake of others and for the sake of the whole. True love
gives, forgets that it has given, and continues to give without ceasing. True
love gives joyfully. We find it in the joyful and loving heart of a mother who cradles
her baby in her arms and nurses it at her breast. True love is sacrificial
love, like that of a devoted son who gains his greatest satisfaction through
helping his parents.
When we are bound together in true love, we
can be together forever, continually rejoicing in each other’s company. The
attraction of true love brings all things in the universe to our feet; even God
will come to dwell with us. Nothing can compare to the value of true love. It
has the power to dissolve the barriers fallen people have created, including
national boundaries and the barriers of race and even religion.
The main attributes of God’s true love are
that it is absolute, unique, unchanging and eternal. Whoever practices true
love will live with God, share His happiness, and enjoy the right to
participate as an equal in His work. Therefore, a life lived for the sake of
others, a life of true love, is the absolute prerequisite for entering the
kingdom of heaven.
The spirit world really exists
Ladies and gentlemen, each person has a mind
and body, and a spirit self that is more elevated than the mind. God resides in
the world in which we live with our physical bodies and also in the spirit
world, where our spirits are destined to go. Therefore, we are complete only
when we have become completely one with God in true love. Such a perfected
person might be a relatively insignificant individual; however, as a
representative of all of history and all potential future relationships, this
person could be said to possess infinite value. Once we are aware of our cosmic
value, we realize that we need to lead our lives in service to our minds for
the sake of perfecting a standard of absolute sexual morality.
This is why your conscience knows and
perceives every action you have performed, and also every thought you have
entertained. Your conscience is aware of these things before your own teachers,
parents or even God. Hence, if you were to live in absolute obedience to the
commands of your conscience, which is your teacher for eternity, you would be
absolutely guaranteed to have eternal life. Such is the way of God’s creation.
Consider the structure of a human being from a
different perspective. We can recognize that God created us as beings with dual
characteristics. He created our physical bodies as miniatures of the corporeal,
physical world; likewise, He created our spiritual bodies as representatives of
the incorporeal, spirit world. We are meant to take dominion of love over both
worlds. Accordingly, God intended each person to live for a hundred years or so
in the physical world and, once the physical body ceases to function, pass on
naturally and automatically into the incorporeal, spirit world. In this way,
the spirit world is the automatic and inevitable extension of our lives on earth,
even though our physical eyes cannot perceive it. That world is humankind’s
eternal, original homeland created by God.
The spirit world actually does exist. It is
not a world that has been fantasized or imagined into existence. We do not have
the right to choose; it is not a world we can go to if we please or refuse to
go to if we would rather not. Just as God is eternal and unchanging, the spirit
world He created is also eternal and unchanging. Just as we live in the
physical world in our physical bodies and form all sorts of relationships with
the things of this world, likewise in the spirit world we are destined to
continue living in our spiritual bodies, forming and maintaining close
relationships with all phenomena of the spirit world.
Although everyone has both a spirit and a
body, the spirit is the more important of the two. The physical body lasts for
about a hundred years before it ceases to function, yet the spirit lasts
eternally, transcending time and space. Isn’t even a person who dresses and fares
well in the physical world bound to die? Therefore, before you pass on to the
next world, you have to achieve unity between your spirit and your physical
body by living your earthly life in such a way that you meet the standards of
both the physical and spirit worlds.
In other words, you have the responsibility to
perfect your spirit within your physical body based on the finite life you live
in the tangible, physical world. This does not mean, however, that your spirit
self automatically grows to perfection. Your spirit self can mature fully only
on the foundation of your having achieved complete unity between your mind and
body during your earthly life, by expressing true love through action.
Ladies and gentlemen, in order for fruit to
ripen and be put into storage in autumn, it must first pass through the growing
process during spring and summer and be provided with the nutrients supplied by
nature and the tender loving care of its owner. Fruit grown in an orchard by a
lazy and ignorant owner will be afflicted with all kinds of diseases and be
affected by foul weather. Eventually it will fall from the tree before it is
ripe, or be classified as worm-infested. Though it will still be fruit, it will
be different from other fruit because it will never be good enough to sell in
the market.
Fruit that has fully matured on the tree will
automatically go into the owner’s storehouse. Similarly, only when a person’s
spirit has reached perfection during life in the physical world, which can be
likened to the tree, will it automatically enter the incorporeal spirit world
of the kingdom of heaven. In other words, a person will enter the kingdom of
God in the spirit world automatically only after qualifying for and enjoying
the kingdom of heaven on earth by living as a fully mature person while in his
or her physical body.
During your life on earth, your every action
and movement, without exception, is recorded on your spirit self, with the
public laws of Heaven as the standard. Accordingly, you will enter the spirit
world in the form of your spirit self, which has recorded your life on earth
with 100 percent accuracy. Your spirit will show plainly whether you have led a
ripe life of goodness, or a wormy, rotten life of sinfulness. What this means
is that it is not God who will judge you; you will be your own judge. If you
are aware of this astonishing rule from Heaven, will you spend the remaining
days of your life on earth in selfishness and immorality, succumbing to all the
temptations of Satan, in pursuit of only pleasure? No. Rather you will abstain
from injuring and scarring your spirit bodies, even at the risk of your earthly
life. Please bear this truth in mind: Whether you are bound for heaven or for
hell is determined by your thoughts, speech and behavior in each moment.
Nevertheless, when you look into your
lives, your outer self and inner self are undeniably in a relationship of
ongoing conflict and struggle. How much longer will you allow this
fighting to continue? Ten years? A hundred years? In contrast, there is
undeniably a proper order for all forms of existence in the universe. This
indicates that God did not create us in this state of conflict and disorder.
You have to know that it is your duty and responsibility as a human being to
dispel all temptations directed at your outer self, your physical body, to work
to perfect absolute sexual morality, and to gain victory in life by following
the way of your inner self, your conscience. Heavenly fortune will be with
those who lead their lives in such a way. They will attain perfection of their
spirit selves.
The kingdom of heaven and the family
Ladies and gentlemen, what kind of place is
the kingdom of heaven? In brief, it is a world overflowing with God’s true
love. True love is its axis. True love is everywhere, in the outward expression
as well as in the inward thought. Everyone’s life is filled with true love from
beginning to end. In the kingdom of heaven, people are born through true love,
live in the embrace of true love and follow the way of true love until the day
they pass on into the next world, the spirit world.
The kingdom of heaven is a natural world where
all people live for the sake of one another. Consequently, antagonism and
jealousy cannot be found anywhere in that world. It is not a world governed by
money, position or power. In that world, the success of every person represents
the success of the whole, the likes of every person represent the likes of the
whole, and the joy of every person represents the joy of the whole.
The kingdom of heaven is a world filled with
the air of true love, where everyone breathes true love. Its life throbs with
love, everywhere and all the time. The citizens of that kingdom are all linked
together through their common membership in God’s lineage. There, the whole
world and its people are connected in an inseparable relationship, like the
cells in our bodies. True love, the love that is God’s essence, is the kingdom
of heaven’s only governing power. Accordingly, God also exists for true love.
When seeking after the lost ideal of the
original family, there has to be someone in the position of perfected Adam,
someone in the position of Jesus, and someone in the position of the Lord at
his second coming. From that starting point, we can establish the family in
which God will dwell. The three generations in that
family—grandparents, parents and children—will live in harmony. Parents
and children will serve and attend the grandparents because they represent the
family’s ancestors, its historical root.
Ladies and gentlemen, the family sets the
pattern for living together in harmony and unity. In the model, ideal family,
there is love and respect between parents and children, mutual fidelity and
love between husband and wife, and trust and mutual reliance among siblings. This
means that you are to establish a true family wherein the stem of true love
emerges from the root of true love and bears the fruit of true love.
In this manner, the three generations of
grandparents, parents, and children live together as one family and serve the
eternal God. God desires to see such families, and it is your responsibility as
tribal messiahs and ambassadors for peace to seek after and establish these
families of Cheon II Guk,
the kingdom of God.
Ladies and gentlemen, you need to form families
that God will miss and yearn to return to after He has been away. He wants to
feel comfortable visiting your home, like any parent coming to visit his or her
children. This is what it means to live in service to God.
Within such a family, God is the vertical
subject partner of your conscience, and your conscience is the vertical subject
partner of your body. Thus, unity with God brings your mind and body into
unity. Family members who have established that vertical axis can perfect the
four realms of love and heart: parental love, conjugal love, children’s love
and siblings’ love. That family links all directions: up and down, front and
rear, right and left. They revolve around each other in everlasting spherical
motion. This is God’s eternal, model, ideal family, which is the foundation for
ideal model nations and God’s peace kingdom. If only the entire world were
filled with such true families! It would be an orderly world where people
governed themselves by the heavenly way and heavenly laws, with no need for
lawyers, prosecutors or even judges.
Who would be most fully aware of your good and
bad deeds? It would be your grandparents, parents, spouse and children. Is
there anything that cannot be resolved within the family? When parents and
children, husband and wife, and elder siblings and younger siblings set an
example of living for the sake of one another, how could they do anything
unforgivable? What reason would they have to commit crimes? A world governed by
the heavenly way and heavenly laws is a natural world, an unobstructed world of
truth and pure reason. It is a world at the “high noon” of absolute values,
without any dark shadows.
International and cross-cultural marriage Blessing
Distinguished ladies and gentlemen, our
bondage to the lineage of Satan has caused so much suffering throughout
history. Let us now boldly step forth to sever it and be grafted onto the root
of the lineage of the True Parents. Why would we foolishly continue to live and
die as wild olive trees? A wild olive tree, even if it lives a thousand years,
will only continue producing the seeds of more wild olive trees. Where can we
find the path to escape this vicious cycle?
It is through the holy Blessing. The holy
Blessing ceremony offers the grace of being grafted onto the true olive tree.
It is instituted by the True Parents who bring God’s true lineage to humankind.
Once you change your lineage to God’s lineage, your offspring will belong to
God’s lineage naturally. We receive the holy Blessing in three stages: rebirth,
resurrection and eternal life. These marriages contribute to the enormous task
of transcending the barriers of race, culture, nationality, ethnicity and
religion, thereby creating one family of humankind. In God’s sight, skin color
makes no difference. God does not recognize national borders. God does not
stand behind the barriers of religion and culture. They are nothing more than
the devil’s tricks. Satan has used them to rule over humanity as a false parent
for tens of thousands of years.
You have the mission to teach the members of
your families and clans that perfecting a life of absolute sexual morality
through the international, cross-cultural marriage Blessing is the ultimate
means to establish a peaceful, ideal world here on earth. Your families and
clans could all join the holy ranks of those who have received the marriage
Blessing based on the perfection of absolute sexual purity.
Ladies and gentlemen, the path is now open
wide for you to change your lineage through the holy wine ceremony that the
True Parents have instituted. This Blessing is given to you, either as newlywed
couples or as already married couples, that you may establish true families.
Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to
reiterate the proposal I have made for a truly providential and revolutionary
project for the sake of peace and human welfare, a project that will enable us
to build God’s homeland and original hometown. Satan has historically divided
our world into East and West and North and South. I am therefore proposing that
we build a passage for transit across the Bering Strait that separates the
North American and Russian landmasses. This passage, which I call the World
Peace King Bridge and Tunnel, will cross the Bering Strait and link to an
international highway system that will allow people to travel on land from
Africa’s Cape of Good Hope to Santiago, Chile, and from London to New York,
connecting the world as a single community.
God is warning us that He will no longer
tolerate separation and division. Carrying out this project will bind the world
together as one village. It will tear down the man-made walls of race, culture,
religion and country, and establish the kingdom of the peaceful, ideal world
that has been God’s cherished desire.
The United States and Russia can become one.
The countries of the European Union, China, India, Japan, Brazil and all
nations, as well as all the world’s religions, can combine their energies to
succeed in this project. Its success will be decisive in establishing the
kingdom of the peaceful, ideal world, where people will no longer wage war
against one another.
Beloved blessed families, you are now living
in the most blessed and exalted time in history. The Era after the Coming of
Heaven has arrived. I proclaim the beginning of the new heaven and new earth,
long-awaited and yearned for by billions of your ancestors in the spirit world
who have come and gone in history. This is the era of the kingdom of the
peaceful, ideal world. The four great religious founders and billions of good
ancestors have come down to earth to guide you on the heavenly path. The age
when the fallen and corrupt world wreaks havoc on humanity, allowing evil
people to live better than others, is passing away.
We have to seek out and establish that nation
of righteousness, the ultimate destination in which we all attend God as the
center. What would that nation be? It would be the kingdom of the peaceful,
ideal world. It would be a nation that resembles the form of a model, true
family with three generations living together in harmony, trusting, respecting
and supporting one another and becoming one in love. In short, it would be the
nation that humanity has desired throughout the ages, the utopia where God is
sovereign.
This means we need a movement to realize a
society of interdependence, mutual prosperity and universally shared values. We
have to make humanity one great family, breaking down the walls in our hearts
and eliminating even the boundaries between nations. This movement begins from
each family. Therefore, each of us has to bear in mind that it is our
providential calling to establish a true family. This is the way we can advance
the establishment of the universal peace kingdom on earth.
Indeed, all this is coming to pass. In the
Middle East, one of the world’s tinderboxes, Jews, Christians and Muslims have
found the resources in my philosophy of peace to engage in a new dimension of
dialogue. In past decades, my Unification Thought played a decisive role in
ending the Cold War. Now I am successfully leading behind-the-scenes efforts to
bring about the reunification of my homeland of Korea.
Nonetheless I am not yet satisfied, because I
began my life’s work at the command of Heaven. With God’s anointing, I am
fulfilling the role of True Parent to humankind, and I am determined to keep my
promise to Him. I am determined to obliterate all national divisions and
barriers that have poisoned this earth and to establish the kingdom of the
peaceful, ideal world, where all people everywhere can live hand in hand.
Our mission
The Era after the Coming of Heaven that God
and True Parents have opened is a time of dramatic change. You have the mission
to make this era blossom and bear fruit in blessing and glory. Therefore,
please become Heaven’s emissaries, fulfilling the dual missions of the “peace
kingdom police force” and the “peace kingdom corps.” Serve humanity under the
banner of the Universal Peace Federation, which is working to take up the role
of an Abel-type UN. Worthy citizens of the world, if not you, then who will
nurture and protect the blessed families and this blessed planet Earth that God
has given us?
Ladies and gentlemen, I have said that in the
Era after the Coming of Heaven we must recover the true lineage that was lost
when Adam fell, by receiving the marriage Blessing through the True Parents.
The providence of the Blessing is to be perfected through five stages: the
individual, family, tribe, people and nation. In this way, let us fulfill our
divine mission as blessed families in the Era after the Coming of Heaven by
restoring and establishing the ideal three-generational family on the world
level. This is the same purpose that Jesus sought to accomplish on earth before
passing from this world.
Therefore, I am now leading all tribal and
national messiahs to unite and bring to a final end the improper relationship
between the political sphere, representing the Cain realm, and the religious
sphere, representing the Abel realm.
The Mongolian Peoples’ Federation, representing
seventy-four percent of the world’s population, needs to bear in mind that the
providential age is now upon us in which we must fulfill our duty by restoring
the world through the Blessing on the world level. This will bring to a close
the conflict between Cain and Abel, which began in humankind’s first family.
Ladies and gentlemen, the providential time
has now come when we have the mission to unite the two sons, Cain and Abel. It
is by their mothers love that they can become one. Then, after recovering their
original positions, they are to dedicate the restored, original, ideal family
before the True Parents, the King and Queen of Peace in heaven and on earth.
Please take this to heart and engrave it in your mind: You are living at a time
when God gives you the mission, through restoring the true, ideal family, to
offer before Heaven the realm of siblings’ love and the right of ownership that
our first human ancestors gave over to Satan through the Fall.
You are now advancing into the era of liberation
and complete inner freedom, which is the providential era of the realm of the
heart of the Fourth Adam. In other words, it is the Era after the Coming of
Heaven. This is the time when, metaphorically speaking, the sun is directly
overhead, such that no shadow is cast. This signifies that we have passed
through the Era before the Coming of Heaven, which included the Old, New and
Completed Testament Ages. These past eras required immeasurable restitution and
atonement by people who could only dream about re-creating the ideal. The
present time, however, corresponds to the era prior to the Fall of Adam and
Eve, the era of building the original ideal world. It refers to the era of true
love that is all encompassing, all-powerful and has overall authority. It is
the realm of heart in which the spirit world and the physical world are bound
together as a unified realm centering on the love of the True Parents, the King
and Queen of Peace. In other words, it is the era of the kingdom of peace and
unity in heaven and on earth.
Please become true princes and princesses who
live in attendance to God as your True Parent, for He is the Peace King of the
multitudes. Let us build the everlasting peace kingdom by attending True
Parents, who have been enthroned as the King and Queen of Peace in heaven and
on earth in the realm of eternal liberation and complete inner freedom, where
there is no need for a Savior, a Messiah or a returning Lord. Let us fulfill
the dutiful way of filial children in the family, patriots, saints, and divine
sons and daughters.
By following God’s commandment to uphold
absolute sexual morality, let us establish exemplary families, inherit True
Parents’ victory of restoring through indemnity the realm of three generations,
and perfect the world as it would have been without the Fall.
Let us establish model, ideal families to
bring the complete settlement of the universal, ideal realm of liberation and
complete inner freedom, and the kingdom of goodness. In that kingdom, we will
be able to enjoy a time of absolute, unique, unchanging and eternal peace and
prosperity, and it will become the homeland of peace in heaven and on earth
that everyone can praise for all eternity.
May God’s blessings be upon your family, your
nation and the world forever!
Thank you.
14
True Families: Gateway to Heaven
This compilation of True Father’s words was designated as
one of the eight
great textbooks. True Parents gave it as an encapsulation of the
teachings that all people need to apply in their daily lives.
CHAPTER ONE
The Family is the Central Model for the
Kingdom of Heaven
Section I. The central model for all beings
Each of us exists in a world of space and
position. We need those who are higher and lower, those to the right and left,
and those in front of us and behind us. Our position is determined in this way.
Whether we properly engage in relationships with those higher and lower, to the
right and left, and in front and at back will determine the various roles we fulfill
in life.
The same formula applies whether we are dealing with relationships of higher
and lower, right and left, or front and back, or with issues within our family,
nation and world. According to this same pattern of higher and lower, right and
left, and front and back with the individual at the center, a
family consist of the relationships of parents and children, husband and
wife, and brothers and sisters.
The same also applies within a nation. With the leader of the nation at the
center, all families embrace the civilizations of East and West and of North
and South, and then embrace all the people of the world as their brothers and
sisters. This will substantiate a family model on the world level.
This model applies to everyone. Each of you stands at the center of your model,
your family, which then expands to the nation, world, heaven and earth, and
finally to God. Everyone has the desire to be the center of the universe, and
everyone has the potential to fulfill that desire. In this way the concept of
the family can be compared to the core of the universe. If we think of heaven
as the parents, then earth represents the children. When considering East and
West, East symbolizes the man and West the woman. So when a woman marries, she
goes to wherever her husband is located. This can be compared to the way the
West comes to have the same position as the East when it reflects the light
from the sun.
The same is true with sibling relationships. When the oldest sibling begins a
task, the younger siblings start to help. People need to be in a parent-child
relationship, a conjugal relationship and a sibling relationship. In other
words, these three relationships must meet at one point. There must be just one
central point. There cannot be different central points for higher and lower,
right and left, and front and back.
If the central points are different, the relationships of higher and lower,
right and left, and front and back will be off balance. Higher and lower, right
and left, front and back, and the common central point add up to the number
seven. To form the number seven in this way means to be a family that is one in
perfect true love with God at the center, a family in which all these elements
form a complete spherical shape bringing harmony and unity. From this
perspective, it makes sense that we often use the phrase “lucky seven.”
As long as true love never changes, this central core will rotate forever
without changing and the true family ideal will be realized. Also, because
everything is connected to the core, each of the seven positions, starting with
the core, will possess equal value. If the grandfather wants something, the
grandchild will not be against it, and the son and daughter will want it as
well. Three generations will share a desire for the same thing. The grandfather
and grandmother, husband and wife, and sons and daughters all will align with
the center.
In terms of such love, we say that parents and children are one in their
relationship and are of one body, that husbands and wives are one in their
relationship and are of one body, and that siblings are one in their
relationship and are of one body. They are one body. How can we say that these
relationships make us one body? It is in terms of the true love of God, the
center of love. With true love at the center, parents and children become one,
husband and wife become one, and brothers and sisters all become one. In this
way, all come to have equal value.
Section 2. A place to experience the love of the universe
What is the universe? Everything in the
created world is designed as a study aid to help God’s beloved sons and
daughters discover and understand the ideal of love. This is why everything
exists in reciprocal relationships.
Even minerals interact in relationships of subject and object partners. The
same is true with atoms. Protons and electrons also interact in relationships
of subject and object partners. Without such interaction, they cannot continue
to exist. Without motion, there is no permanence or continued existence. The
universe is a world created in a way in which its central point can be reached
only through human beings.
What did I say about the universe? It is an expansion of the family. If you
look at a family that has realized the ideal of love fully, it has higher,
middle and lower (parents, husband and wife, and children), right and left, and
front and back. This is the basic rule. So when we talk about higher and lower,
we refer to the parents and children; when we talk about right and left, we
refer to the husband and wife; and when we talk about front and back, we refer
to the siblings.
What enables all these to become as one? It cannot be done with power,
knowledge or money. What can do it, then? It is true love. This is an
unmistakable truth. Otherwise the family cannot become spherical in shape.
What is the significance of higher, middle and lower in the family? They are
study aids for love. We are supposed to put these into practice when we go out
of the family and into the wider community.
How are we supposed to love? Jesus said, “Love your neighbor as yourself’ What did he mean? It may seem unclear. He meant, when you go
out into the world and meet an old man, you treat him as you would your own
grandfather. Treat people as you would your own father, your own mother or your
own son. This is what we ought to do when we are out in the world.
The world can be compared to an exhibition hall filled with people, with each
person representing higher, middle and lower, front and back, or right and
left. The world is an exposition of all the different types of human beings. If
you can love everyone with such love, God will dwell with you in the midst of
that love.
What is the kingdom of heaven? It is when you are able to love the people of
the world as you love your own family. People who do this are citizens of the
kingdom of heaven. Your grandfather and grandmother, your father and mother,
your spouse, your siblings, and your children form four generations. What are
these four generations? They are the family that is the study guide for you to
deeply experience love, the true love of the universe, as citizens of the
kingdom of heaven. The family is the foundation that serves as the study guide
to help you learn.
We cannot live without learning the love of the universe. God has prepared
textbooks and scriptures that teach us this way: “Love your grandfather and
grandmother. Your grandfather and grandmother on earth are sent as
representatives of the grandfathers and grandmothers in the spirit world. If
you love them, I will credit you with having loved them all.” This is God’s
pledge.
God also tells us, “When you show exceptional love for your father and mother,
it is because you hold them to be guides and models to be loved as
representatives of the countless number of fathers and mothers in the world, so
I will credit you with having loved all fathers and mothers. Also, when you as
a man love a woman, I will consider that a man representing all men in the
world has loved a woman representing all women in the world.”
God then says: “Since you have loved your sons and daughters, I will credit you
with having loved all sons and daughters.” The family is where we can be
trained to do this.
We are trained to love the world through a process that relies on scripture.
When a person who has received this training is asked, “Are you ready now to go
out into the world and love the grandfathers and grandmothers of the world as
you would your own?” and the person answers, “Yes,” this person is capable of
saving the world.
Section 3. A training ground to enter the kingdom of love
God’s Will is to realize the kingdom of love.
In other words, God’s Will is to develop and globalize the ideal world of love.
Thus the family is the training ground where people earn credits, all the way
from an elementary school certificate, to a bachelor’s degree, and finally a
doctoral degree.
Expand the family, and you have the world. Look closely at the world. This is a
world where grandfathers and grandmothers live, a world where adults like your
uncles and aunts live, a world where people like your elder brothers and elder
sisters live, a world where young people live, and a world where children live.
So this world is a place where people of all ages—old people, middle-aged
people, young adults and children—live together as one family, a family of
great dimensions and a vast number of people.
The family is the smallest unit in the kingdom of heaven. It serves as a
training center and a study guide. It has all levels of people: grandparents,
parents, husband and wife, and siblings. Each of these levels can be expanded
to include people in the world at large who are of similar age. This expansion
encompasses all humanity. Only a family that loves all humanity as much as it
does its own members, in whom the parents live for the sake of the world as
much as they do for their own sons and daughters, can inherit the kingdom of
heaven. This is an amazing fact. The special right to inherit all the power and
authority of heaven and earth created by God is derived from this.
The family is the textbook of love that lets us obtain the right to be
registered in the palace of peace in the kingdom of heaven after we die. So the
family is a training ground of love. The extension of this family is the world.
This is a world that resembles the grandfather of the family, a world that
resembles the grandmother, a world that resembles the father and mother, and a
world that resembles the son and daughter. Expand the family, and you have the
world.
So if you can love the people of the whole world as much as you love your
family, as much as you love God with your family at the center, then this will
become a straight road leading to the kingdom of heaven. This is why the first
commandment is, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with
all your soul, and with all your mind.”
The second is, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” If you love God and
love humanity, everything will be realized. If you cannot do this, any
spiritual training you may have will be of no use. No matter how great a
religious person’s spiritual discipline may be, that
person will be unsuccessful if he or she does not know how to love God,
humankind and the universe.
The family is meant to provide the formula course that trains us to experience
love that encapsulates the whole universe, so we can go out and express that
love to the whole world. The training ground you were meant to inherit, where
you experience this kind of love, is the family where your mother and father
raised you.
If you love your parents and your children more than you do your spouse, if you
love all humanity and even God more than you do your spouse, everything will be
realized. This doesn’t mean that you abandon your spouse. If you love everyone
this way, everyone who has received your love will love your spouse. Is
anything more glorious than this? If you want to love your spouse, this is how
you do it.
Section 4. A textbook for the heavenly kingdom
What kind of good fortune does a person in the
child’s position receive? They inherit the good fortune of the grandparents and
parents. Why do we need grandparents? It is because they represent the past.
Grandparents represent the living history of the past. Parents represent the
present, and children symbolize the future. The family encompasses East and West and also North and South. It is the center of
the whole. It is the center of the grandparents, the center of the parents, the
center of the children and the center of God; in every case true love is the
center. When you love your grandparents and respect them, you do this to
inherit the past completely and to learn about the world gone by.
From your parents you learn about the present, and by loving your children you
learn about the future. What do you inherit through your grandfather and
grandmother, and father and mother? You inherit true love. You are saying: “Our
grandfather and grandmother are old, and they are as one in true love, and our
parents have become as one, too. So let’s be the same way and inherit the future.”
Unless we become an absolute true family, we cannot inherit the future. When we
look at the three generations of a family, it is like looking at the universe.
The love of the universe exists in a true family that represents the present
and future. In the animal world as well, the male loves the female and the
female the male. This is a textbook teaching us about the love of the universe.
If the grandmother is away, there is a feeling of uneasiness. The same is true
when the grandfather is not there. It is the same for each of them. Only when
both are together can they move just as they are into the kingdom of heaven.
Only when the grandparents, father and mother, and children are all there can
the family go into the kingdom of heaven. The person who has loved the true
grandparents, the true parents, the true children, the true family, the true
nation and the true universe can enter the kingdom of heaven. The model and
textbook for the kingdom of heaven is the true family.
The family is a study guide that enables us to establish the kingdom of heaven.
It is a textbook created by Heaven. No matter where you may be in the world, if
you can love every old man you see, as you would love your own grandfather, you
will go to the kingdom of heaven. If you can love everyone you meet of your
parents’ generation just as you would love your own parents, you will be
welcomed everywhere. It will be the same in any country. If you are like this
you will face no boundaries, even when you go to the spirit world.
If you have a heart that thinks of all the young people of the world as your
own sons and daughters, you will be able to travel freely within the kingdom of
heaven, even if there are twelve gates of pearl and four directional quadrants.
The family is a study guide that shows us how to connect ourselves to the
kingdom of heaven. When we apply this to the nation, we become patriots. When
we apply it to the world, we become saints. When we apply it with heaven and
earth at the center, we become God’s sons and daughters; that is, His divine
sons and daughters. This is a desire shared by every person.
You must be able to embrace the sons and daughters, as well as the grandsons
and granddaughters, of all races. You must stand in a position where you, as a
true parent with God’s true love, are the owner of a family who has loved all the world’s people. You can enter the kingdom of heaven
only when you stand in a position to represent the standard of a family of true
love, through a relationship with the original parents who have God’s true love
at their center.
Section 5. Bringing together the love of three generations
The family is able to encompass past history,
the present era and the future. The ultimate point that God has sought for six
thousand years is the family that is connected through true love and united in
true love.
Everything that exists comes under the dominion of true love. We would not want
to cut ourselves off from a relationship of love that is absolutely true. The
original mission given to Adam and Eve at the time of creation was to establish
such a family.
God did not want Adam and Eve to remain merely an individual man and an
individual woman. He looked forward to the family they would form through their
union. This is God’s primary purpose in creating men and women. It is only when
we establish true families, and when we live with a sense of fulfillment within
true families centered on God’s love, that we will be able to enter the kingdom
of heaven without any problem. This is the only way we can transcend this
world.
To form the family realm of love you must be absolute. The grandparents must be
able to represent the past, the husband and wife must be able to represent the
present, and the children must be able to represent the future. When we truly
love people from each age group we allow God, through us, to relate to all of
humankind. With this kind of love, husband and wife and children, having become
as one body, are able to represent the cosmos; they may hold up their love as
an example for others to follow and tell their descendants to follow their
path. The place where they can make such statements, both to themselves and to
others, the place where the heart of heaven is communicated, is the homeland of
the heart that will be remembered by all of heaven and earth.
What has God been seeking all this time? He has not been seeking a subject
partner, but rather an ideal object partner. God has been looking for those who
resemble Him and possess the inner and outer aspects of the world that He
created. What is the starting point that leads to such a result? It is the
family. Nothing represents the cosmos better than the family. To be one with
our parents is to bring the past and present together. We love the past by
loving our parents; we love the present by loving our husband or wife; and we
love the future by loving our children. Thus we experience the love of three
generations. The core unit where these three kinds of love are concentrated is
the family.
Then where does life in the kingdom of heaven begin? It is in the family. It
does not unfold in some other place. The kingdom of heaven is nothing more than
a three-dimensional expansion of the family; it does not exist separately from
the family. So when you embrace your husband or wife, you ought to think of
this as creating the union of all men and all women in the world. Only in this
way can families set the condition for having loved all humanity. This is the
path you need to follow in your lives. To love your parents is to connect past
history with the present era; it is to pave a road that will let God come to
you.
This is the reason why you must love your parents. To love your parents is to
connect everything in the past to yourself as an inhabitant of the present,
thus bringing together the past and the present so that they become one. Also,
loving your own children is to connect the present reality with the future.
Unification Thought is the philosophy that extols such
love and teaches how it can be practiced throughout eternity.
Section 6. A training ground of the heart
We cannot live separately from the heart. Even
if you were the president of a country or possessed all the authority in the
world, you could not live without a place to express the joy in your heart. The
desires of your heart would not be fulfilled through the people under your
command, through your ministers of government, or through your followers. Only
in your family could you experience such fulfillment. When you return to your
family, you and your spouse feel joy through each other and through your children.
You ought to be proud of this. This joy can be experienced only directly, not
secondhand.
The same is true for God. Even if He were to restore the whole world, without a
family He could not feel joy. So we must have families.
In the family, parents are at the center. In educational institutions that
represent society, teachers have to be at the center. Your parents raised you
from the time you were breastfeeding and helped you develop physically and
emotionally. What is school, then? It is a place where you are trained for your
future life in society. If the family is the training ground of the emotions,
then school is the place where you can practice and train for your future life
in society.
However, society is not the ultimate end. It all comes back to the nation, and
the nation has a leader. Why is it that people want to see the president of a
nation and to be near him? Once people have learned all they can in the family
and then in society, they have a desire to go on to the next level.
The president represents the fruit of the third stage, following the stages of
formation and growth. Once a seed is planted, it begins a cyclical process by
dividing. Later it comes together again to produce a flower and bear fruit. In
the same way, schools need to raise people up who will become important pillars
of society, talented people who are needed by the nation.
What is the purpose of our studies in school? It is training. The school is a
place for learning and experimenting. During training you are not in the actual
situation. It is a preparation stage. Be sure to prepare well.
What is the family? It is the place in which to train the heart. You train your
heart with love at the center. In school you learn to relate to others with
affection, as you would your own siblings. In the nation, too, you can then
relate to others with affection. The education you receive from your parents
will be important for you in school and in the nation.
Parents have to pass on everything having to do with the heart to their children.
They need to create a foundation of heart for their children, and teach their
children to live as they have lived, giving specific guidance on how to live in
the family, in society and in the nation.
A family is not necessarily good just because it has a nice house in an
affluent neighborhood. Conversely, even if a family may live in a humble house
in a poor neighborhood, it will be a good family if it provides peace and love
to all its members. In this family, parents and children will have a relationship
of heart that urges them to live for each other. This family will be the
original homeland of our dreams. It will be the source of our motivation in all
that we do in life. This means it will be the basis for determining our
happiness in life.
Section 7. The eternal original hometown
The family is a good place. Why is it good? It
is good because my father and mother are there. It is a good place because my
elder brother and elder sister are there. It is a good place because my younger
brother and younger sister are there, and it is a good place because all my
relatives are there. This is why every human being feels a yearning for his or
her original homeland. People feel more deeply about their hometown than they
do about their nation. A Korean will love the nation of Korea and want to live
in Korea. Then where is the place to which he will yearn to return, even when
he is in Korea? It is his hometown. Our hometown!
Then how can we describe our hometown? It is a place where our hearts are
lifted up in their entirety, in four directions and in three dimensions. What
is that heart? It is that which binds us in love. Above us we are bound to our
father and mother; to our left and right we are bound to our spouse; and below
us we are bound to our sons and daughters. Then we are bound in love to our
relatives in these three dimensions. This is the heart of the original
homeland.
People value the point of origin of their happiness, where true love is at the
center, more than anything else. This is the reason they cannot help but feel a
yearning for their original homeland. Then where is God’s original homeland?
Where do you think God’s original homeland is on the planet Earth? This is a
question we need to consider.
If God is the God of love, He surely must have prepared a starting point on
earth where He could reside. So where is this starting point? To answer this
question, we need to understand how God prepared that starting point.
What kind of place can become the starting point of the original homeland where
God’s family can come to exist? This must be the place where a son of God
dwells who truly understands that God is his Parent. In other words, it is a
place where there is a son, God’s son, who can be a receptacle for all of God’s
love. This is also the place where such a daughter dwells. It is a place where
such a son and a daughter of God marry and form a family.
Then who will be in the original homeland? All the people you miss ought to be
there. Your parents need to be there and your brothers and sisters need to be
there. And the people you have wanted to see need to be there. These are not
people you would want to see just for a moment. They are people you could be
happy to be with for eternity. This is the type of environment that we have to
establish. This is the kingdom of heaven that religions predict will eventually
come about.
We long for our original homeland, because this is where we find the people who
are closest to us: our parents, our brothers and sisters, and our relatives.
These people will always guide us. Whenever we visit, they will welcome us just
as they did in the past. When we face difficulty, they will show sympathy,
console us and receive us with joy. It is important to realize, however, that
although you may return to your original homeland with a heart of longing, if
people do not welcome you on your arrival, then your intense heart of longing
will vanish and you will turn back feeling deep regret. You need to have people
there who will welcome you.
Section 8. Completing the cosmos-centered philosophy
All things start from one, divide into many,
and ultimately come together again as something larger. In other words, one
divides into many and then unites again as one. From there, it divides again
and is integrated into something even larger. This process is repeated
continuously.
Families also come to exist through this process of integration, and the
structure of the family never changes. The family is where the relationship of
husband and wife is established, the place where one man and one woman become
as one. The clan brings families together as one, and the tribe is a place that
brings the clans together as one. Tribes combine to form one nation. The
family, however, is always at the center. The horizontal expansion of humanity comes
about based on the family.
This is why no society can do without the family. If families cannot be
restored, the world cannot be restored. The next step is to fulfill the
cosmos-centered ideal through these families. The cosmos encompasses heaven and
earth. Heaven and earth can be compared to a person’s mind and body. Mind and
body must become one.
Just as a subject partner needs an object partner, one man needs one woman. The
union of a man and a woman leads to a family. God’s foundation of love will not
be attained unless such a family is at the center.
The “cosmos-centered philosophy” is a teaching that promotes the unity of mind
and body, the formation of families as God’s main body of love, and the
connection between the physical world and the spirit world through these
families. The character ju in cheon-ju
(cosmos) refers to a house. That is why we use the term “cosmos-centered
philosophy.” The cosmos is a combination of the incorporeal world and the
corporeal world.
What does this have to do with us? Everyone needs a family. If you cannot be as
one in your family, you will have nothing to do with the cosmos-centered
philosophy. The family serves as the final standard for completing the
cosmos-centered philosophy. Those who cannot sing songs of peace and happily
praise their families will be miserable, whether they are on earth or in the
spirit world.
From where does the task of bringing about the kingdom of heaven begin? It
begins in our families. Then what kind of teaching must we have? It is the
family-centered ideal. In the term cheon-ju ju-eui (cosmos-centered philosophy), cheon
means heaven and ju means house, so this is referring
to the “philosophy of the heavenly home.” Only then does the meaning of cheon-ju (cosmos) become clear.
God’s Word, throughout the sixty-six books of the Bible, is an expression of
His earnest desire for the ideal family. Then what is the earnest desire of
every man? It is to have an ideal wife. Also, every person born as a woman has
an earnest desire to have an ideal husband. A woman may earn the highest
academic degrees and speak words that influence world events, yet her deepest
desire will be to meet an ideal man. She will want to meet an ideal man whom
she can love and with whom she can give birth to sons and daughters filled with
blessing. This is the root of happiness. The ideal of the Unification Church is
nothing other than this. It begins in the family and ends in the family. ,
So what kind of teaching is the cosmos-centered principle? It is Cham- bu-mo ju-eui, or the teaching
centered on True Parents. This is the ultimate principle, and it upholds
parents. This is the philosophy of our home, the philosophy of our nation, and
the philosophy each of us must have as individuals.
Had human beings not fallen, whose thought would have ruled the world? It would
have been Adam’s thought. This is the same as the teaching centered on True
Parents. It is the father-mother principle. No teaching can be higher than
this.
The mission of the Unification Church is to link matters of the heart with
heavenly thought through the philosophy of True Parents within the framework of
the original ideal family. When all families have internalized such a
philosophy, the Unification Church will have accomplished its purpose.
CHAPTER TWO
The Human Course Centered on Love
Section 1. Why are people born?
If we ask the question, “Which came first,
life or love?” the answer can be argued either way. However, which do you
really think came first? Love came first. The fundamental core of the universe
must disseminate love prior to originating existence. Otherwise, there would be
no value to the things of existence.
When we examine the origin of life, we must ask whether life or love came
first. Until now we have not been able to discern this clearly. But now we know
it could not have been life that came first. It was love. What comes second
must fall in line behind what comes first. It is natural that we offer our
lives for the sake of love. This is how we ought to understand it. Therefore,
let us understand how to live our lives in a way that is true.
We conclude that since love gave birth to life, we must walk the way of love
and die for love. The purpose of human life is to establish a love that can be
welcomed by the macrocosm, not just the microcosm. It is to be born, to love
and to die in the midst of the great universal love that is acknowledged by
God, creation, our parents and the angelic world.
Human beings do not choose to be born. Then, are we born by our parents’
desire? No. We are born by God’s desire. We are born through the love of our
parents, which represents God’s love. Each of us was created as a new life by
means of the love of our parents, representing God’s love.
Love has the power to create the whole. Each of us was born as a central being
of the entire universe, with the capacity to receive all the love in the
universe. The highest purpose of life is to be born through love, to be raised
in love, to live by love, and to leave a legacy of love when we die. Nothing
can be of greater value than to live out our natural life within our own family
as a life of love that is the center of the universe.
It is important to understand why people are born. We are not born for the sake
of knowledge or power. We are born because of love and from love. Then what
makes love so great? It is because love is the fountainhead of life.
You were born in the midst of your parents’ love. You were not born from your
parents’ desire for monetary profit or pursuit of knowledge. Because you were
born in love this way, you ought to bear fruit in love. This is why you need to
have children.
A husband and wife become complete when they become as one with each other and
come to have sons and daughters as their partners. Human beings cannot exist
apart from love. So we can say that each of us lives on the foundation of love.
Everything in creation has the origin of its existence in God’s love.
Since all things exist with love as their foundation, it is undeniable that
human beings, as the center of the created universe, also must have begun in
love. Since human beings begin in love and mature through love, we are beings
that cannot live apart from the standard of love.
Section 2.The love-centered original vision
for human life
What is the cause of human existence? The
cause originated in love. Then what do you think the purpose of human existence
is? The purpose of our existence is to fulfill the ideal of love. Human beings
came into being through love, so our purpose is to perfect love by forming a
foundation of love and then expanding and connecting it so that it becomes
complete.
Because our origin is love, our purpose must also be reached through love. For
this, a man and a woman in a partner relationship must become as one in love
and connect front and back, right and left, and higher and lower.
Even if a person becomes an absolute being, or establishes an absolute purpose,
it will be of no use unless this person is joyful. Our daily lives ought to be
joyful.
We live for the sake of a certain purpose. When we achieve this purpose,
something new comes into being that is greater than the original existence
itself. What is this? What is most precious for a man or a woman? It is love.
Only love can connect us to happiness and joy. No matter how lofty our purpose
may be, if we do not establish the authority of love in the subject position
over our purpose, we will have to pursue a different purpose. The limit of
purpose is that it cannot stand above love.
What are you living for? There will be some who say that they live to eat.
Others will say that they live to work, and still others will say that they
live without a purpose.
What do human beings live for? If someone says that he lives for the sake of
love, what a wonderful answer that would be. Human beings are born as the fruit
of love, give love during the course of their lives, and eventually return to
the eternal love of God’s bosom. This is the original vision of human life and
the purpose of our creation.
We are born in love and raised in love. We then connect to a love of a higher
dimension, meaning that we leave the love of our parents and seek out the love
of a partner. We can say that the love we experience as children is
formation-stage love and that conjugal love is growth-stage love. No matter how
much a couple may be in love, they cannot see the completion of their love
until they have children. This is why they want to have children. This is
completion-stage love. So the process of going through children’s love,
conjugal love and parental love is the fundamental basis for how we lead our
lives, and the necessary path leading to the love ideal as God created it.
Love gives birth to life. We are born of love, raised in love by the love of
our parents, meet a loving spouse whom we can love, and then die in that love.
This is the course of human life. In the original vision for human life there
was no concept of sorrow or pain.
Originally, the universe was meant to operate under a standard of love by which
everything would converge simultaneously in a comprehensive union that would
encompass both the vertical and horizontal. Children’s love, conjugal love and
parental love would combine and create such a union. This would become the
focal point of the entire universe, the directional orientation of all cells in
the universe.
All the spirits in the spirit world would be focused on this point. Moreover,
they would protect this position so that no one could invade it. If this place
were to be destroyed, it would be catastrophic. For true love to be protected
and preserved, it would need to take on some kind of structure. In the
teachings of the Unification Church this structure is called the four- position
foundation.
Section 3. Love, the nutrient for eternal life
When you were a fetus in your mother’s womb,
you did not receive only nutrients from your mother. You also received love. In
a similar manner, people living on earth do not receive merely physical
nutrients from the natural universe. We also receive love, an essential element
of life, from God.
Plants absorb sunlight as an element of life, and in a similar way love is an
element of life for people. Our earnest desire is for the kingdom of heaven on
earth and the kingdom of heaven in heaven to be places where we can eternally
relate to one another with true love.
The life path for both men and women exists because of love and for the sake of
love. We each have a path to travel, and it is a path of love. We go this way
to obtain love, to protect love and to form an environment filled with love.
When a woman puts on makeup to make herself beautiful,
it is because of love. When we want something and work to get it, it is also
because of love. We endure hardship and move forward in order to obtain
precious love.
From the moment we are born, we receive parental love. For as long as our
parents are alive, they will love us at each stage of our lives, through
childhood, young adulthood and middle age. If we grow up receiving parental
love, then eventually the horizontal love of husband and wife will take form
within each of us.
What is marriage? It can be compared to a school that men and women enter so
that the men can learn things they did not know about women, and the women can
learn things they did not know about men. When all the grades are A+, then the
husband will be absolutely happy and the wife will be absolutely happy. You
bear sons and daughters as a way to learn how to love the world. Without them,
you cannot be connected to the future. Your sons and daughters are given to you
as educational materials so that you can be connected to the future world.
Acts of filial piety toward your ancestors, or your grandfather and
grandmother, enable you to be educated by the spirit world. All these things
are connected, with love at the center. The grandfather and grandmother,
husband and wife, and sons and daughters are all connected, with love at the
center.
Just as blood cells circulate throughout the human body, our ancestors in the
spirit world, going back even to the ten thousandth generation, are able to
circulate up and down and communicate with their distant descendants. It is
important to know that this is how the spirit world and the entire universe are
structured. True love will take dominion over everything. We can say that
becoming a servant, even a slave, to true love is the greatest happiness.
Section 4. What is God’s love like?
You need to learn about God’s love. How can we
characterize God’s love? It can be compared to an environment of a warm spring
day. White clouds gently float in the sky, waves of warm air shimmer up from
the ground, insects fly around, ants crawl in and out of their nest to see the
world, willow blossoms are in bloom down by the stream, frogs sing new songs of
spring, bees swarm and butterflies flutter. You feel intoxicated by these surroundings.
You feel that you are about to doze off; however, in reality you are awake and
feel so good that you want to remain in this state forever.
This is how God feels when He finds His ideal partner. It is as if He is in a
beautiful flower garden, with butterflies and bees flying around. Does it make
you feel good to think of this, or does it make you feel bad? These dull-witted
men over here may not understand this. It feels good. When you run into someone
whom you are pleased to see, you hold his hand firmly and shake hands. When
someone joyfully says, “Wow, it’s been a long time!” and holds your hand
firmly, does it make you feel good or bad?
When you are glad to see someone, do you hold hands tightly or not? Do you like
it when someone grasps your hand firmly? [Audience: “Yes, we do.”] You mean, you want to like it. How can you say you like it? You have
to know the person in order to like it. If you don’t know the person, how can
you like it when he grabs your hand? If it is someone you like, then once you
grasp each other’s hands, you cannot let go. What about these young ladies
here? Think of how it will be when you are married and your husband loves you.
Will you feel good or bad?
It’s important for people to be straightforward. If your husband loves you, you
will feel as though there is nothing in the world you would rather have. You
want to live your whole life just staying by his side. It is nice to watch as a
man with hands like the front hooves of a cow gently takes the hand of a woman.
Those are the kind of movies that are nice to watch. If the woman were to say
to the man, “Oh, you have such pretty hands,” the man would be offended. This
is how it is.
Love is eternal. Love is not two; it is one. You become as one. When a man and
a woman become a couple and love each other, they are bonded together. Of
course, this does not happen literally; yet in heart they reach a level even
higher than this. That is God’s love. If you live with such love, will you
become one or not? Think about it. You are destined to become one.
When a man and a woman fall in love, all sorts of strange things happen, don’t
they? But if you find a way to really taste God’s love, you will see that it
cannot be compared to anything in this world. Once you have tasted this kind of
love, no amount of difficulty or sorrow can defeat you. Such a realm of
absolute liberation does exist. The question is how to find it.
God’s love can be divided into three major forms. These are children’s love,
conjugal love and parental love. The center where these three forms converge
into one is God’s love.
Section 5. God’s blessing to inherit love and joy
A glorious new morning will dawn when God
assumes a physical body. Even more glorious will be the moment when He has a
couple, husband and wife, whom He can love. Still more glorious will be the
moment when God can love His grandchildren; that moment will be more thrilling
than when He first loves His son and daughter.
How do you think God would have let Adam know how happy He felt at the moment
He created him? God would have had to teach Adam, saying, “Here, this is how
happy I was.” We learn about God’s happiness only when we have our own sons and
daughters. When children are young, they can’t comprehend parental love, yet
they come to understand it later when they marry and have their own babies.
Then they say, “So this is how my parents loved me when they were raising me.”
The day when your child takes a spouse is a day of glory, and the day when your
child becomes a parent is also a glorious day.
We need to know God’s love. We need to have experienced children’s love and to
be able to serve our parents. We need to have experienced conjugal love and to
know how to serve our spouse. We need to have experienced parental love and to
know how to care for our children. We ought not just
order them around; we have to understand and serve them as well. Only then can
we understand God’s love. Without children, we are incomplete. We cannot fully
understand God’s love.
Until now we have had no idea how much God has loved human
beings, His children. Without the experience of being a husband, a man
cannot know what it is like to have a wife, and without the experience of being
a wife, a woman cannot know what it is like to have a husband. Children do not
know what parents’ love is like until they themselves become parents. So
without sons and daughters, none of us can become true parents.
Parents want their children to be married, because they want to teach them and
pass on to them all their parental love. When parents die, they leave behind
their substantial selves with their descendants. This is why we need
descendants.
Love continues forever. Since love is the highest human desire, everyone has
his or her arms outstretched in a desire to inherit it. When parents pass on
their love to their descendants, they can stand proudly before God when they
enter the spirit world.
It is only through the family that such love can be perfected. Going to the
heavenly kingdom through the family means that the realm of oneness of love has
been realized.
People must follow rules and principles. When spring comes, seeds are sown; in
summer plants develop fully, and in autumn they bear fruit. In winter we need
to put things in order and carry the essence of the seed of life deep within
our heart. Only then will we have new seeds to plant when spring returns.
This means that we are meant to become parents, to bear sons and daughters who
resemble us. It means we need to raise our sons and daughters to be like us.
Why do people feel sad when they do not have sons and daughters? It is because
they cannot form a circle. When you see birds feeding their young, you can
recognize the deep love of the mother bird. Western people may not know that in
the East people like children more than adults. People show polite respect to
adults, yet they show the utmost love for children. You can realize how much
your parents loved you when you have your own sons and daughters and raise
them.
Everyone ought to get married, have children and raise them. This is the only
way they can know both children’s love and parental love. It seems that Western
people are not like this. There are many who avoid having and raising sons and
daughters. They hesitate to have children, because children may limit their
freedom to marry and divorce. However, when people do not establish the
four-position foundation, they cannot go to the kingdom of heaven, because they
do not know God’s heart of love for human beings.
Section 6. Living in search of the center of love
We are born in love, are raised in the love of
our parents, and mature as we broaden our love horizontally. The first stage of
horizontal love is completed when we meet a partner of the opposite sex and
grow together to a point where we can represent the love of heaven and earth
and then bear children as the fruits of that love. Children are born from the
heart’s core as a result of love.
A child born from a man and woman who share love based on heart creates a path
for the parents to the central point of love. If you go through this center and
follow the path, you will meet God. By having children as fruits of love, you
come to experience deeply the love by which God created all things, including
you. When parents love their children with the same love they received as they
grew up, they come to have a deep understanding of the parental heart. The love
that parents pour out to their children is an essential love, not a love based
on material things.
Even though everything else in heaven and earth may change with the eras of
history, the love that parents give their children will never change. By
becoming parents and loving our children, we come to understand much more
deeply how God has loved human beings. We can confirm this through our
experiences. By becoming parents and loving our children, we can feel how much
our parents loved us and come to a deep realization about this.
This is why we honor and attend our parents more in their old age and willingly
fulfill the duties of filial piety with love. If you are not able to do this,
you are not qualified to be parents, and your love toward your children can be
considered only hypocritical.
We need to realize and feel how much God has loved us by becoming parents
ourselves and loving our children. This will let us love God with even greater
sincerity. A person ought to love their aged parents more than they love their
children, and love God more than they love their parents, knowing that this is
the order and law of love.
When we are born, we are born in love. After birth, we receive love and grow
through our childhood years. Once we grow to a certain level, our parents’ love
alone is not enough for us, and we begin to expand our love horizontally to
include love among siblings and love within the clan.
In other words, we mature as we receive all the love that exists in heaven and
earth. In particular, as we enter the years of adolescence, we begin to crave
the love of the opposite gender. It is by giving and receiving love with a
person of the opposite gender that we are able to enter a realm of love that is
much more comprehensive; then, for the first time, we are able to set out in
search of the center of love. Because heaven and earth have a spherical shape,
when we begin to rotate through giving and receiving horizontal love, we are
able to form a circular shape.
When we find our partner of the opposite gender and begin to interact in love,
our love bears fruit in our children. Then, as we give and receive love with
our children, we fulfill vertical love in addition to horizontal love. This
creates a spherical shape and enables us, at the same time, to establish the
center of love.
The center of love that emerges through this movement of love is the core of
existence for the entire world of creation. The earth exists because it
continues to engage in motion around a center of love. At the center of love,
an unlimited force sustains this movement. The center of this sphere of love is
the place where God dwells.
All created beings in the world originate and exist by virtue of God’s love,
and seek the center of God’s love. God is a furnace of love.
Section 7. The three eras of the human course
Everyone is born after a time spent in our
mother’s womb. We live on earth for a certain time, and then we die. Prior to
birth, the fetus spends about ten months in the mother s womb. While in the
womb, the fetus has limited freedom. It develops by receiving nutrients from
the mother through the umbilical cord. About all it can do is bend its fingers, open and close its mouth, and wriggle its feet.
Nevertheless, for the fetus, the mothers
womb is a world of freedom representing the entirety of the realm of life.
After about ten months, the fetus is born into the world and begins to grow. A
child is born into this earthly world where we all live. This is human society.
Why are people born? We are born for the sake of love. This is the reason that
a child, firmly rooted in parental love, will develop in the mother’s womb, the
bosom of the parents’ protection and love. After the child is born, he or she
won’t know any better and may wet the bed, but loving parents will not blame
the child for this. Their love is such that they do not recognize ugliness as
being ugly. Their love lets them digest everything in joy. When a child reaches
maturity, at around twenty years of age, he or she would meet an eternal
partner in love and be engrafted onto a love whereby each lives for the sake of
the other, according to the principle of Heaven.
As we follow this life course, we need to experience the greatness of God’s
love, so that the substantial realm of God’s love for all of His object
partners can be fulfilled. Therefore we, as parents, need to have children and
give our love to them.
After being born into the world, our lives can still be compared to the life of
a fetus in our mother’s womb. In other words, we live in the womb of our mother
universe for about a hundred years. Just as the fetus is ignorant of the world
outside the womb, people living in the earthly world today are ignorant of the
reality of the incorporeal world that comes after death.
We have only a vague sense that a world after death may exist, just as we did
not know about the human world while in our mother’s womb. However, the spirit
world exists in reality, regardless of our beliefs or feelings about it.
Because the world after death cannot be perceived by our five physical senses,
we must overcome our disbelief through religious faith.
There are three stages of our life course as human beings: the water stage, the
land stage and the air stage. Everything, even the animals, exists in the realm
of these three stages. In order to stand as the lords of creation and be
qualified to have dominion over all other creatures, we must go through these
three stages—in water, on land and in the air—in a more complete form than any
other being, to prove ourselves superior to all other creatures. So we must go
through an air stage.
However, we have no wings. How can we fly without wings? We ought to be able to
fly higher and farther than any bird or insect. Then what can we do? This
cannot happen in our physical body. No matter how high we may try to jump, it
is no use.
Because human beings are the lords of creation, and because God is a spiritual
being, we must have the same stage of operation as God if we are to stand in a
realm of dominion in a reciprocal relationship with Him.
Today people speak of the speed of electricity or light, and we know that the
speed of light is three hundred thousand kilometers per second. Human beings,
however, are capable of a speed that is even faster. We attain this in the
realm of the human spirit.
We live in this world, but it is not everything. There is the spirit world, the
place where our spirits are meant to live for eternity. It is an eternal world
filled with the air of love. Our physical lives are a time of preparation for
entering the eternal world of spirit.
Section 8. Training to be in rhythm with the spirit world
I have a depth of spiritual experience. The
spirit world is a place enveloped in the elements of love. On the earth we
breathe air, while in the spirit world people live by inhaling love. The love
you give and receive in the spirit world is not secular human love. It is true
love.
When you go to the spirit world, this is what you will find. Those who have
abundant love for their parents, brothers and sisters, spouse and children—that
is, those who have experienced deep love in their family life— will enjoy great
freedom.
They can go anywhere without restriction. On the other hand, those who have not
experienced love are narrow-minded, and even in the spirit world they find
themselves isolated and with no freedom whatsoever.
The love between parent and child is a vertical relationship, the love between
husband and wife is a horizontal relationship, and the love among siblings is a
relationship that circles and surrounds. These three relationships differ from
one another. Therefore, only when you experience deep love through these three
mutually distinct interactions on earth can you circulate freely—vertically,
horizontally and in a circle.
For example, a person who has not tasted parental love, because the parents
died early, is in a rather tragic position, because he is missing an important
experience of love. Likewise, those who have not experienced the conjugal love
relationship of husband and wife, as well as love in the family, become poor
people in the spirit world, because they lack a crucial experience of life.
Those who have no brothers and sisters also will be in a poor position in the
spirit world, because they lack this experience.
Why do you need to get married? We marry so that we can experience parental
love, conjugal love and children’s love. Then why are these necessary? The
spirit world is filled with the air of such love. You need to have a family in
order to train yourself to be in rhythm with the spirit world. Those who go to
the spirit world without these experiences of love cannot follow the rhythm
there. It will be as if they were without a nose to breathe in this air of
love.
You are born from your father and mother. On a more fundamental level, God gave
birth to you by means of your father’s seed and your mother’s womb. You come to
find the True Parent, God, after going through the universe as your parent and
then through your natural parents. Your natural parents are transient ones, so
the moment of your death needs to be a jubilant time when you go to meet the
True Parent. In that place there is the true love of the True Parent. We call
this place the kingdom of heaven in heaven.
The kingdom of heaven is composed of love, and it is filled with the love of
the Heavenly Parent. This is not love for oneself; rather, it is love that can
connect to every direction, enabling us to go anywhere without any problem,
through the principle of service and sacrifice. In order to pass the test for
this, you need to love the universe and love humanity. Life on earth is the
training ground for you to cultivate such love.
Do you know how important your life on earth is? You live it only once.
It is a short moment that comes only once. When compared to eternal life, the
earthly life is only a point. It is too short a moment. However, it is at this
moment that we must go beyond our physical lives and prepare ourselves for the
spirit world.
CHAPTER THREE
The Original Vision for Love Between Men and Women
Section 1. Bringing joy to God and all creation
Though a man and a woman may be in love, the
question is whether or not their love is in accord with God’s Will and the
standard He requires of human beings. Is their love in accord with the model of
love in the mind of God? If the first man and woman had become as one in true
love with God at the center, this love would have become the model for true
love throughout the universe. God must have desired such love from human
beings. Likewise, the man and woman must have wanted this kind of love from each
other. Such true love would have become the core of the universe. It would be
the standard against which all other loves would be compared.
God’s love and human love are essentially the same. Love is a force that
strives to bring two together as one. Why do a man and a woman long for each
other? It is because God’s essence can be experienced by a man only through a
woman, and by a woman only through a man. This is because God dwells in the
place where a man and a woman become as one in love.
Knowing that God is the source of dual characteristics, we need to give even
greater praise to the noble value of God whenever we praise the dignity and
value of men and women.
When a woman loved by God is in a man’s heart, and that man loved by God is in
the heart of that woman, and the two form a couple and praise God together, God
will rejoice to see this and all of creation will rejoice as well. The loving
embrace between these two people will make heaven and earth rejoice. When such
a husband and wife embrace each other in mutual love, the power of their love
pulls the entire universe into oneness. This is the original vision of God’s
creation when manifested according to His ideal.
Originally, a man was to meet a woman with whom he could rejoice, and a woman
was to meet a man with whom she could rejoice. When these two met and pledged
to love one another, their encounter would bring joy to God and to all things
of creation.
When this happened, all of creation would be mobilized for this couple and
would welcome their dominion. Birds would sing for them and butterflies would
flutter and dance with joy. God would rejoice, people would rejoice, all of
creation would rejoice. Had our first ancestors started history by securing
such a position, the world would be the ideal world of God’s original vision.
Section 2. Why men and women are born
What is the original purpose of a man’s birth?
We cannot deny that he is born for the sake of a woman. Likewise, a woman is
not born for her own sake. We need to know that a problem will arise if a woman
cannot come to a clear realization within herself that she is born for the sake
of a man.
God, the great administrator of heaven and earth, established this principle as
a principle of creation, and we cannot enter the world of goodness, truth,
happiness and peace, the ideal world of true love, unless we follow this
principle.
A woman is born to meet a man, and a man is born to meet a woman. Isn’t that
right? This is the highest truth. Therefore, we seek the realm of blessing by
following this principle. Deviating from this highest realm of truth
constitutes the highest evil.
Men and women are physically opposite. Whereas women are one-directional, men
are three-directional or four-directional. Women are more likely to enjoy
staying at home, and men are more likely to enjoy traveling the world.
The characters of men and women are opposite. Then what can be at the center to
bring the subject-partner man and object-partner woman into oneness? They
become one when love is at the center. Love also brings people and God into
oneness.
Why is a man born? He is not born for the sake of academic pursuits, money or
political power. He is born for the sake of a woman. A man is born for the sake
of a woman. A man has a larger physique, not so he can earn a living only for
himself, but so he can earn a living for his wife and children.
Men’s reproductive organs and women’s reproductive organs are different. For
whom do they exist? They did not come into existence for their own sake. A
man’s reproductive organ came into existence for the sake of a woman.
Likewise, a woman’s reproductive organ is for the sake of a man. Have you ever
thought this way? This is not something to laugh about and then forget.
What is the symbol of the love between man and woman? Where is the ultimate
destination of love? It is the reproductive organ, which makes a man and a
woman as one body. The reproductive organs become a channel through which the
mind and body can merge completely, with love at the center. That which man has
is not his, and that which woman has is not hers. A husband has what belongs to
his wife, and a wife has what belongs to her husband. Men and women are not
born for their own sake. They have to know clearly that they are born for the
sake of their partner.
Why are men and women born on earth? They are born in order to love each other.
Since God is the great king of wisdom, He switched the ownership of their love
organs. A man has a reproductive organ, but that does not mean he is its owner.
The same is true for a woman. Those who have acted carelessly, with no regard
for their reproductive organ’s ownership, will be
judged for having violated love. If a man knew that he would be punished under
the most fearful law, would he dare to think of another woman instead of his
wife? Conversely, would a woman dare to think of a man other than her husband?
Section 3. Men and women absolutely need each other
Love is something that you absolutely need,
isn’t it? Human beings, a man and a woman, are an absolutely necessary element
for love. Man needs woman and woman needs man.
How much do they need each other? They need each other more than they need
Korea, more than they need the world, and even more than they need God. If
there were no women, the human race would perish in less than a hundred years.
No matter how much men boast of uniting the world, all would be gone within one
hundred years if there were no women. So women are absolutely necessary.
When we say “human beings,” we refer to man and woman. When we consider a
particular man, we see that he has to be with a woman, and when we consider a
woman, she has to be with a man. Man is not born through his own desire, nor is
woman, who is absolutely needed by the man, born through her own desire. After
we are born, we discover that we are either a man or a woman.
When you were born as a man, were you aware that there are women in the world?
If a man were born and found out that there were only men, would he not feel
bad? And if a woman were born and found out that there were only women, she
would feel bad, wouldn’t she? So when a woman is born, is she bom with or without the knowledge that there are men?
Although I was bom without this knowledge, the one
who gave birth to me knew it. The reason a person is born as a woman is that
there is a man who needs her.
Likewise, the reason I am born as a man like this is that there is a woman who
needs me. We all are born like this, with God’s knowledge.
Man absolutely needs woman. Man absolutely needs God. However, before he needs
God he needs a partner called woman. Human history has been miserable because
men have been unable to understand correctly their absolute need for women.
Conversely, women have not understood that they absolutely need men.
Tasting true love requires a realm of the ideal, and for this a man needs a
woman and a woman needs a man. You must know that an absolute man and an
absolute woman pursuing true love are joined through their efforts of becoming
one in heart. When such a man and woman are joined as one, God dwells in their
midst.
God does not like to see a couple separating who have been joined by true love,
so the love of an absolute man and woman is eternal.
God is omniscient and omnipotent, yet even the Absolute Being has no meaning
when He is alone. Similarly, no matter how handsome and healthy a man may be,
these things have no meaning if he is without a woman. A man living in
fascination with his own good looks and health leads an ugly existence and has
no value. The problem is that there are many men in the world who have sunk
into such narcissism, and this is one reason why history has moved toward
tragedy. It is important to understand that God’s providence has been working
to change and improve this world, which is immersed in such self-centeredness.
Section 4. Love comes from your partner
By himself or herself, a person cannot realize
love. From where does love come? Love does not originate from me; it comes from
my spouse. Since love comes from my spouse, I must bow my head and serve her.
This is where the heavenly principle of living for the sake of others
originates. We must practice the philosophy that teaches that when something
highly noble comes to me, I must honor and serve it in order to receive it.
Human beings have love. However, when we are alone, love cannot manifest
itself. Love does not appear when a man is alone; it appears only when a woman
is there as his object partner in love. Only when an object partner in love
appears does love finally spring forth.
We say that parental love is good and conjugal love is good, because genuine
love is not something self-centered. Love does not start from me; it starts
from my partner. It is important to know this. Love comes from your husband or
wife, from your sons and daughters, and from your brothers and sisters. Love
does not start from you. It starts from your spouse. Therefore, who is the
owner of love? Your spouse is the owner of love.
From where did we say love comes? It comes from your partner. If your partner
is homely or ugly, love recedes; if your partner is pretty and lovely, love
advances more quickly. The way love functions is determined according to your
partner’s attributes: her speech, her beauty, her scent and her taste.
Where is the basis of love? I am not the basis of love. The word “love” must be
used in reciprocal terms. No matter how handsome a man may be, he cannot love
if he has no partner to love.
The basis of love is not one’s own self. “Love comes from me” are the words
that Satan has been exploiting. I am not the basis of love. You may think that
you are the basis of love, yet there will be no future unless you totally
change such a mindset and correct it.
Until now, wives have put themselves at the center and husbands have put
themselves at the center, both wanting to be served. That is why their
relationships often come to ruin.
Again, conjugal love does not originate from you, but from your spouse.
Therefore, if you want to possess your spouse’s love, you need to sacrifice
yourself for the sake of love.
Love always demands sacrifice. Also, love requires that we overcome. In fact,
this is the only place in all heaven and earth where we can find the power to
overcome Satan’s world. God is holding tightly onto love; true love can be
found only in accordance with the principle that places God at the center.
Religious virtues including compassion and benevolence are also rooted in love.
These words do not pertain to individuals alone; they are used only in the
context of a mutual relationship.
Section 5. Men and women harmonize in love
Man symbolizes heaven and woman symbolizes
earth. Therefore, the two must unite in harmony. Men and women are different.
Men’s muscles are rugged and women’s are smooth. Men have beards while women do
not. Their voices are also different. These apparently contrasting features of
men and women actually allow them to fit together well. Harmony is created
between them. When we look at the physical structure of human beings, their
left and right sides are complementary and form a correlative pair. These two
halves are bound tightly together.
Ladies and gentlemen, do you like things that are only high or only low? You
like things that create harmony. Judging from the line formed by the horizon,
fish live below this line, and mammals, birds and other creatures live above
it. Women menstruate once a month, like tidal variations based on the moon.
Breathing involves inhaling and exhaling. A man and a woman need to establish a
line of balance and create harmony.
The reason people like to go to Disneyland, with its rides that go up and down,
is that this is similar to the nature of the universe. Which do you think will
be more pleasing, men socializing only with other men, or men and women
socializing together? Men and women together are better, because this reflects
the harmony of the universe. We need to live in step with the beat of the
universe, which promotes harmony through the balance of yin and yang.
When a husband and wife create a harmony of love, they initiate circular
movement. When they become one body in love and bear the fruits of love, God
comes down, and they go up and they meet in the middle.
God becomes the center of this sphere, and spherical movement begins. From this
central point, connections can be established in any direction. The center of
the sphere is the place where the harmony of love is realized. It is the place
where life emerges and moves, and it is the starting point of human equality
and shared philosophy. This is so because the power of love is there. Thus the
force that embraces all interactions of the universe is love.
For human beings love is eternal. It is always one, never two. Once a man and a
woman are joined in love, they are to live together for a lifetime and then for
eternity, even after death. They are two bodies, but by revolving in oneness
with each other, they become as one body.
When husband and wife become one, they revolve with God to form a four-position
foundation of love. This is the ideal world of love. Only true love dwells
there; false love cannot invade. When a man and a woman are blessed in marriage
by God and achieve perfect oneness, God is able to come to them at any time.
When they form a four-position foundation of love, they will come to love each
other’s heart through each other’s body, and when they come to love the heart
their body will follow.
Section 6. Enraptured by true love
What is the most sacred thing in the world? It
is true love. True love begins with God. If God exists, there can be no other
path. God truly desires the path of true love, so without traversing the path
of true love we cannot go before God. It is important to understand this point.
God wants to see, hear, eat and touch through love. As for human beings, if we
were to receive God’s kiss of love, our joy would be so great that we would
feel as though we might explode from the inside. This is where God’s desire
lies. Having diamonds or jewelry would not give Him joy.
The human body has five senses, and every human being feels and confirms true
love through the sensations of the five senses. If the eyes are directed toward
true love, they will be colored by true love and intoxicated in it.
How beautifully those colorful, intoxicated eyes will shine! Think about how
enchanting would be the smiling lips of a person immersed in true love. Try to
imagine the intense beauty of the five senses, intoxicated with true love,
moving in harmony toward God.
Alone, God cannot experience the joy of such beauty. He can only experience
such beauty when He has a partner; this is the reason He created human beings.
How would God feel as He observed a beautiful man and woman absorbed in one
another through eyes intoxicated with true love, or kissing with lips
intoxicated with true love, and playing the melody of a heart of true love? If
there were an Eve of true love, God would want to traverse her world of heart
completely.
God would feel an impulse to find out for Himself just how far and how deep the
world of heart of this beautiful Eve extended. God would want to traverse both
Adam’s and Eve’s world of heart, a world more beautiful than the heaven and
earth that He Himself created. It is certain that God would want to travel the
world of the heart of a person of true love even more than he would want to
travel the universe. God would feel that He would never want to leave Adam and
Eve’s world of heart and true love.
If God, after creating human beings, fell into their true love and became lost
in that love, what kind of world would we have? God would dwell in the midst of
human beings, and the world formed by God and human beings in oneness certainly
would be a world filled with joy and beauty.
If true love had been perfected, in responding God would be totally absorbed by
true love and have no regrets. God’s nature is such that He would be completely
happy with anything that happened within the realm of true love. If human
beings were to live in this world of true love, they would live their entire
lives happy and free from regret. Moreover, this would be a world without a
history of warfare and free of complaint and misfortune.
Section 7. Love happens in completely natural settings
This is a story from my childhood. One day I
caught a pair of birds and tried to make them kiss each other’s beaks. To see
them kiss, I put them in a cage, fed them and watched them. I did it out of a
child’s desire to see them love each other and sing happily together. This was
an experiment, out of curiosity, to understand the principles of nature. I
continued this experiment, which I now understand to have been quite naughty.
It was only much later that I began to realize that love happens in natural
settings. Sincere love is realized naturally, in a most natural setting. It was
only as a result of a long series of experiments that I came to a correct
understanding about love.
When someone has lost the value of love, what good would it do for this person
to receive a university education? Such a person will only accumulate
knowledge, become individualistic, and come to worship materialism. Just as
Korean bean paste soup tastes right only when it is served in an earthenware
bowl, so character training can reach its purpose only when it is based on
love.
The flower of world civilization blossoms on the basis of artistic harmony. In
this sense, roasted ribs need to be served on a platter and Korean bean paste
soup ought to be served in an earthenware bowl to bring out the proper taste of
each dish. Once you grow accustomed to the rough, deep and refreshing taste of
Korean bean paste soup, you never will forget it, no matter where you may go.
Likewise, once people have become used to the earthy, deep, relaxing taste of
love, they will not change. Just as we easily tire of instant foods that
usually are heavily sweetened, if we could obtain love easily and anywhere,
like we can instant food, we could not call it true love.
There are people everywhere today whose love is like instant food. This is a
problem. Love does not deepen because you bathe in a fragrant bath. I would say
that the love of a husband and wife living in the remotest countryside, who wash themselves in cold water before going to bed, is
purer, longer lasting and ever deepening.
A couple who have to clean their teeth before kissing
are not experiencing natural love. The toothpaste smell will prevent them from
tasting the unique smell of the other. When I look at people who clean their
teeth before kissing, I don’t know whether they are trying to taste love or taste
toothpaste.
When you meet someone you like and love, you want to embrace and kiss that
person. This is natural between the sexes. We have a relationship with our
environment so that we can feel affection toward the universe. It is natural
for us to do this, as a part of our search for a partner.
When all people relate to each other within this ideal of
partnership— with each man relating to one woman and each woman relating to one
man—there will be no acts or incidents that violate the order of love. The
order of true love emerges only when man and woman meet on the basis of the
ideal of partnership.
CHAPTER FOUR
Our Course of Life
Section 1. The purpose of God
God does not have a body. So God wanted to
reveal Himself through all of creation as His body, with Adam as His face. This
is the ideal of creation.
Originally, God was to be the spiritual focal point and Adam was to be the
physical focal point. These two focal points were to form a ninety-degree
angle. This is God’s purpose of creation, and it is the purpose that people
desire. Had Adam and Eve not fallen, they would have occupied the positions of
father and mother eternally in the spirit world. But because they fell, they
could not do this. Had there been no Fall, everyone
could have gone to Heaven simply by attending their parents as though they were
attending God.
This created world is round: the sun, the earth and the stars are all round.
Even our mouths are round. Everything is created that way. Thus the universe
creates relationships by going around and around in circular movements. Even if
one individual thing has a round shape, it does not exist by itself; it exists
in a relationship and is connected to the whole.
Then why are we born? We are born to beat in rhythm with this vast universe. Ocean
waves lapping against the shore lap against our hearts as well. Gentle breezes
sighing serenely lull our hearts into serenity. Flowers in bloom release rich
fragrances and stir the fragrances in our hearts.
If we are born, raised, live and die in love, then we can be grateful for our
birth, life and death. You all were born because you participated in the place
where your father and mother expressed the utmost love for each other. You were
participants in that love.
Since you were born through your parents’ love, you consider yourselves bom as flags planted by your parents’ love. These flags
flutter to express love. We are meant to live for the sake of love throughout
our lives. So you must wave the flag of love for your mother, wave the flag of
love when you see your father, and wave the flag of love for your siblings.
Section 2. The importance of the moment
Your living body cannot be perfected unless
your entire existence becomes a foothold for absorbing nutrients. This
phenomenon occurs in the natural world. The crossroads of life do not appear
over a long period of time; they arise at a single moment.
People who ignore the moment cannot obtain anything of value. They cannot
become great people or inherit God’s throne and crown. So, to make each moment
shine, you need to exercise care with each word you utter, each action you take
and even each thought you have. Deal with life and resolve problems, believing
that the contents of your daily life will remain as phenomena through which you
maintain a relationship to the world. That is the only way the realm of victory
is determined.
It is in the moment that the victory is determined. It is the same with the
historical realm of victory and the cosmic realm of victory. Those who live
with unlimited value capable of making each moment shine brightly can become
great people, even saints, and even God’s sons and daughters. In this way the
junction of life and death is crossed in a single moment.
Today our attitude is the problem. Of course it is necessary to desire first
the coming of the kingdom and wish for the Will to be done. Yet, what is more
important is how we ourselves personally can become one with God’s Will.
If we refer to a particular, hour, it is more important to ask how we can spend
that hour to come into a greater oneness with the Will than it is to simply
desire that the kingdom of God be accomplished. So we first must create the
environment—as individuals, families, tribes and peoples—that will enable us to
inherit God’s Will. Only then can we establish a relationship with God’s
kingdom. Then, with God at the center, how can you make a relationship with the
Will in this one hour, if you are given an hour, within the sphere of your
daily life? This is a very important question.
Looking at the history of the providence of restoration, there were four
thousand years from Adam’s family through Noah’s, Abraham's and Moses’ families
up to Jesus’ family. The mistakes that occurred during this course did not
happen in the span of, say, a year. In Adam’s family the Fall of Adam and Eve
was not something planned out and put into action in the span of a year or a
decade or even several decades. Their mistakes happened in a flash. When we
think of how the breakdown of that one moment has been perpetuated for eons of
time, we can understand the fearfulness and dreadfulness of that instant.
Due to the misstep of that one moment, so many people who walked the path of
righteousness in the course of history had to undergo untold suffering and many
nations that could not follow the Will fell into the abyss of destruction. All
these became a source of a tremendous indemnity offering. When we understand
this, we can see how fearful even a single hour that we let just tick by can
be. Even the eternal kingdom of heaven does not exist apart from the single
moment.
Eternity does not start when we die. It continues on from the moment we come to
know God’s Will. Here, if there is a leap in the relationship of time or a gap
created for even an instant, eternity will be interrupted.
So while walking the path of faith in the course of your lives, do not
procrastinate by deferring your providential responsibilities from this year to
the next, and then to the year after that; or from your twenties to your
thirties, your thirties to your forties; or from your forties and to your
fifties.
You must not live this way. People with such a lifestyle will die without
having lived even one day in oneness with the Will. They cannot go to the
kingdom of heaven.
However wonderful a country you may live in, you cannot go to the kingdom of
heaven if you are unable to live even one day according to a victorious
standard; you cannot enter heaven if you do not live even one year
victoriously. So, while it is important for believers to dream of eternity in
their lives, it is even more important for them to eradicate evil and become
the standard-bearers of goodness in the real world. This is what is most
important.
From this perspective, Adam’s mistake of one moment resulted in eons of
anguish. In Adam’s family, Cain and Abel were supposed to have dissolved the
anguish of their parents, demolished the wall between the brothers and created
the starting point for a family of oneness. However, the death of Abel, who had
been set up to fulfill the providence of restoration, also occurred in a
moment’s time.
Consider the course of Noah, who toiled one hundred and twenty biblical years
to build the ark. It was in just one brief moment that God issued the command,
“Go into the ark, for the day has come to fulfill My
desire.” Those who followed this order received the blessing of the eternal
God; those who did not were submerged in a realm of eternal judgment.
It was the same with Abraham. God’s promise that his descendants would be as
numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sands on the seashore was bestowed
in just a single moment. Abraham’s sacrificial offering did not require
decades, rather a mere day’s work. The time it took him to cut the offering and
place it on the altar was not more than an hour; yet that single hour
historically bore the seeds of all life and death, curse and blessing.
People of faith today need not fear the coming of a day of judgment in the Last
Days. Instead, worry about how to connect the time that is given you in your
daily life to the Will of God, and how to form an intersection between your
life and the Will.
Section 3. Infancy and three orderly stages
If God created Adam and Eve, how did He do it?
If He created them from the soil, what kind of soil was it? Where did He begin?
Which part of the body did He create first? We cannot think that God created
them as adults.
He created them as babies. Without the notion that God went through the same
process as a mother, who conceives a child in her womb, gives birth to it and
then nourishes it, we cannot logically explain the formation of all existence
through the three orderly stages of growth. So Adam and Eve must have had a
period when they were infants. Later they went through a growth stage. This is
the heavenly principle. Then there must have been a completion stage.
What was Adam and Eve’s infancy like? We must proceed from the concept that the
invisible God nurtured and raised a baby who was able to go through a process
extending from the world without form to the world with form.
Section 4. Our life course
Since the society, nation and world in which
we live are far from ideal, all manner of suffering occurs and good and evil
are at cross-purposes. If we were to look at a hundred people, we would find
them all struggling against their surroundings and pushing against their
environment in an effort to carry on their daily lives.
Our experience in our daily lives tells us that no one can be confident that
daily tasks planned in the morning will be accomplished during that day. The
wider the environment in which we work, the greater the drive and determination
needed to bring a victorious conclusion in each day of our life. If these are
lacking, the day cannot be a day of victory. Such days turn into months and
months into years.
We lack the environment to live even one month according to our plan. To bring
about victory for a month, we need the drive and determination necessary to
break through all the complicated situations and circumstances we meet during
that month. Otherwise, we cannot carry out our plan for the month victoriously.
Getting through a year successfully requires us to be equipped with a fighting
spirit or driving force that can thrust aside all the challenges of each and
every one of its three hundred sixty-five days. Otherwise, we cannot celebrate
that year victoriously. If we live a year like that and continue in this vein,
eventually it will add up to ten, and then twenty, and then thirty years, and
that eventually becomes our life course.
People living on earth today cannot escape from the constraints of time.
That has been true throughout history. Individuals, families, tribes, people,
nations and the world all move within the realm of time.
Wherever there are people, there are always purposes to accomplish. We need to
live our lives with those purposes at the center for ten, twenty, thirty,
seventy years and, indeed, our entire lives. The greater our goal, the stronger
our internal commitment needs to be. Otherwise, we will not accomplish those
purposes. Unless we maintain an internal determination that surpasses the goal
through the process called time, the goal will be unattainable.
Section 5. The original homeland
You may not know the reality of the spirit
world; however, I enjoy the special benefit from God of having a clear insight
into that unknown world. When I went down to the fundamental level of that
world, I found it is based on simple principles. It is a world that can be
entered only by those who live for the sake of others, which is God’s principle
for heaven and earth. The world structured along these lines is the ideal
heavenly kingdom.
That place is the original homeland that humankind must seek. Today, although
we are exiles from our original homeland and live in a fallen environment, we
are destined to return there. Throughout the course of history, God has worked
to create a path enabling us to return, because we could not do so by our own
efforts.
This is why God raised up many different religions. They are training grounds
through which He has been directing all people along that path, whatever their
race, cultural background, customs and traditions. Religions are the training
grounds for preparing people to become eligible to return to the original
homeland. Taking into account the diverse cultural backgrounds of people all
across the globe, God is leading humanity toward a united world of religion
that can progress upward onto higher ground.
If religions were to guide people to such a homeland, what would they teach?
They must teach people to live for the sake of others. The more highly
developed a religion is, the more it emphasizes this principle. These religions
teach their adherents to be gentle and meek, to stand in a position to elevate
others, live for their sake, and serve them sacrificially. All this serves to
instill in us the discipline we need to abide by the laws of the kingdom of
heaven.
What is our life path? It is the path of possessing God’s love. Possessing
God’s love is life’s highest and final destination. Men must go this path, and
women must go as well. Everyone must go this way.
Our life path is to seek the God of infinite love. The loftiest path for our
lives is the path that seeks God’s love by crossing over the peaks of death
tens and even hundreds of times and continues in that search even after death.
What is the endpoint of our desires? It is to possess God’s love. Even if we
say we know God, unless this brings us a more precious love than we have known
before, we cannot say that God is our God. We need to come to experience God’s
love. If we only had God’s love, it would be all right even if He were not
present. Once we have God’s love, what is His becomes ours and ours becomes
His, and the internal and the external become as one for the first time. A
nation based on such love would be an ideal homeland, with no such thing as
higher and lower classes.
When we are surrounded by that place of love, we feel there is nothing under
the sun that does not appear good and that does not exist for our sake. Because
God’s love is like that, the heavenly world, which is humankind’s
destination—the kingdom of heaven—is a place filled with love.
Section 6. The wrong standard of birth
People in todays world may boast that they are high and
important or tell you about their academic degrees, but what they do not
realize is that they were misbegotten at birth. They do not know that they were
born with the love, life and lineage of Satan, God’s enemy. This is a serious
problem.
Due to the Fall, people have been born from Satan’s
love, which was passed down to them through their parents. Satan’s blood was
flowing in the life of our mothers and in the life of our fathers, and that
blood now flows in each person. Each person is a fruit of this lineage.
For this reason, each of you belongs to the lineage of Satan. In other words,
you could say that Satan’s blood is running through your veins. So while Satan
is bearing his corrupt fruit automatically, God is striving to redeem those
very men and women by transforming them into the pure and perfected people of
His original vision. Your beginning was in Satan’s love. You were born from his
lineage.
The beginning was wrong. Since the beginning was wrong, you must return to the
original point. So we are going to go back. To where exactly do we go back? We
need to go back to the origin. Since we originated from false parents, we need
to return and start anew from true parents. How serious is this? It is
imperative to inherit God’s love, life and lineage afresh.
This is why, when you receive the Blessing, you undergo a ceremony to change
your lineage. You must believe in this more than your own life. Just because it
is a Unification Church ceremony, you must not think of it as some ordinary
ritual. Think of it as a wonder drug, an antidote, to restore the dead back to
life.
Our ancestors made a mistake. Because of this, countless people throughout the
course of human history have suffered. Knowing this, we cannot go that same
path again. Never again! We paid a ghastly price throughout history for having
perpetuated illicit love in the fallen spirit and earthly worlds, with
far-reaching consequences for individuals, families, societies, nations and the
world.
Section 7. The standard of our life course
When I say “life,” I mean eternal life. I am
referring to the spirit world, and to the life we live for eternity. Each
individual was created to be an object partner of God’s love. You are an object
partner of the absolute God, who is the subject partner. You are His partner in
love. God cherishes the notion of true love more than He values Himself. God is
the absolute and eternal center of life. His ideal is eternal, and the center
of that ideal is true love. The object partner of that love is you.
An attribute of love is that it brings subject and object partners into
oneness. Such love can unite a nation. In this partnership one partner can
accompany the other in any situation and follow unconditionally. God’s partner
can inherit His entire fortune and even His entire heart. I went through a
miserable course to discover this, and I now stand on that sublime and lofty
foundation, which cannot be exchanged for anything. This is an amazing grace.
For that reason, I can stand in the same place as God and share the eternal
position of true love. The spirit world is in a different dimension from this
limited earthly world. We cannot move freely within our mundane confines here
on earth, but the spirit world is on a higher dimension. There we can do
anything; we can leap across time. If we desire anything with a heart of love,
we can have it anywhere, at any time.
We were created originally as eternal beings. If we become eternal beings of
true love, when we go to the spirit world we will be free. The first standard
of life is to overcome evil with goodness; the second is to reach the original
starting point; and the third is to attain eternal life.
CHAPTER FIVE
The Corporeal World and the Incorporeal World
Section 1. Prayer related to our life course
Beloved Heavenly Father, I thank You for the
grace by which You have protected me since childhood,
as I fought to prevent the possibility that Heaven might suffer the shame of
humiliation.
Among all the good things on this earth, nothing can be more precious than to
connect to Your original heart. We must yearn
infinitely for that relationship. We must realize that those who experience Your love will find themselves in a place where they could
forfeit everything else in this world without feeling any regret. We must
prepare today on earth for the day of our birth as liberated children who are
endowed with the right to be free in our third life.
Loving Father, in order to greet the new spring, we know that we must be
completely absorbed in our destined relationship with You,
and we must attain perfect harmony with You in our lives. Only thus can we
greet the spring season and bloom as beautiful blossoms. We must not become
pitiful souls who, when asked whether we ever greeted a spring season in our
lives, are unable to reply in the affirmative.
Father, help us to understand that those who lack the heart to attend You and bow down humbly to You will be unable to have a
connection to You in that eternal world. Let us open the doors of our hearts to
feel Your heart; let us today hear Your voice welling
up from the depths of our hearts so that we may regain our lost selves. Help us
to appreciate Your historical course of toil and
trouble to find each one of us, that we may humbly bow our heads before You.
Section 2. Understanding death
On the earth we have parents, teachers and
relatives. We have ways to establish such relationships on the earth, but not
in the spirit world. In the spirit world everyone lives for the whole, with God
at the center. All positions are differentiated. Thus, those in a higher
position cannot descend to a lower position, and it is difficult for those in
lower positions to go to higher positions. Originally we were to have gone to
the spirit world only after becoming perfected while on earth. Once we enter
that world, there is no returning to the physical world. Everyone is destined
to die.
Our life course is too short. Life is too short. Even a life span of eighty
years is too short. It is not even eight hours in spirit world time. In terms
of the concept of time in the eternal world, it’s not even eight hours. That is
why the power of true love is great. True love transcends time and space and
moves at a speed that is beyond our comprehension.
There is no doubt that the spirit world exists. It surely exists, and since we
were born from the spirit world, we must return there. There is an interesting
phrase in Korean, toraganda (meaning “to go back” and
also meaning “to die”). To where do we go back? Going to a cemetery cannot be
considered going back. We go back to our place of origin. We didn’t start out
in a cemetery. The phrase implies that we go back beyond the most distant
origins of history. It means to return across the vast expanses of history,
even beyond its origin.
For a person to “go back” does not mean that if he is born as a Korean, he then
goes back as a Korean. Although you may be a Korean when you die, the place you
go back to is the original world of our human ancestors. What does this mean?
It means that, if there is a Creator, we will go back to the place where this
Creator resides. That is where we came from, so that is where we return.
The universe is engaged in circular motion. When the snow on the mountains
melts, it flows down through narrow valleys and through many streams and rivers
into the ocean. Once it is in the ocean, it evaporates and returns to the air
to complete its cycle. Everything circulates. In a similar way, when we go
back, where do we return? We go back to a place where we can be higher, a place
where we can be happier. No one wants to become smaller. All the laws of motion
of the natural world, however, dictate that things diminish through work.
Wherever there is work, things diminish. When we roll something, it will not
keep rolling forever. It starts out fast and then slows down and finally stops.
We live in this world, yet it is not the only world that exists. There is also
the spirit world. This earthly world and the spirit world are not two completely
separate worlds. They are connected together as one world. Then where is the
place where we are to go, the place where we are to live? Of course, we are on
earth now, living in our physical bodies; however, we are moving toward the
eternal world. We are born into this world; we pass through our teens,
twenties, thirties, middle age, and then old age. When we pass the time of our
youth and enter middle age, we pass over one hill, and then eventually we go
into old age. Finally we end our lives just like the setting sun.
People who know the existence of the spirit world, however, realize that a
lifetime is only a fleeting moment, and that an eternal world awaits us after
death. For this reason, they live their lives on earth in such a way as to
prepare themselves for that world of eternity.
The word “death” invites understanding of the meaning of life. Who knows the
value of life well? Those who seek to live do not. The true value of life can
be known only by someone who has risked his life to stand at the crossroads of
life and death and, while clinging to Heaven, has desperately implored to be
shown the value of life.
That being the case, would people welcome death or not?
They would welcome it. If you are about to die, and someone asks you what you
are dying for, you would be able to answer: “I am dying for the sake of God’s
true love.” We discard our physical bodies to participate in the realm of
activity of God’s infinite love and for the sake of God’s world of love.
To die physically is to be born in God’s love. That is why we hear people in
this physical world sometimes saying in exaggeration, “Oh, I think I’m going to
die.” Death is meant to be a moment of joy; it is the moment when we go from a
realm of limited love to a realm of infinite love. Therefore, the moment of
death is the moment of our second birth.
Would God be more joyful on the day of your birth into your physical body, or
on the day you are born as a child who is to act for the sake of love in the
second, infinite world? You might wonder why I talk about such things. It is
because we cannot establish a relationship with God without liberating
ourselves from the fear of death.
Section 3. The three stages of our lives
People go through the stages of formation,
growth and completion during the course of their lives. We go through the realm
of water in our mother’s womb, then the realm of the earthly world on planet
Earth, and finally the aerial realm in heaven. In other words, people go
through three periods: the period of water in the womb, the period of being
born and living a hundred years on this earth, and then the period of flying in
the aerial world.
People are born in the depths of water. The period in the womb is the period of
existing in water. When the fetus is inside the mother’s womb, it is floating
in fluid. It has to breathe in and exhale the fluid, and it lives by way of a
hose connected to its mother’s womb. How is a fetus supplied with nutrients? It
is supplied through the navel. The navel functions as its mouth. So we must not
of be disdainful our navel. Pat your navel and say, “Belly button, thanks for
your hard work a long time ago.” Pat your navel often; it will be good for your
health. Do it as an exercise. If you exercise this way often, it will make you
healthier. Even when you sleep in a cold room, if you cover your navel, you
won’t get diarrhea.
In the womb, your navel is your mouth. At the time of birth, your
breathing organ moves upward from the navel. What’s the next mouth? It is the
mouth that you use for eating. It has moved upward. Eventually, what do we do
with the umbilical cord attached to the navel? We cut it off.
In a similar way, during our life on earth, the spirit is attached to the
physical body, like the embryo in the womb, and feeds off the physical body.
When the physical body grows old, the spirit discards the physical body and
goes out on its own. In accordance with fundamental principles and laws, the
spirit must be reborn as a person who can relate to the eternal God, its
spiritual Parent.
After being born into the earthly world, a baby becomes friends with its father
and mother. We are born into the earthly world, where we can share love with
our fathers and mothers. In a similar way, we eventually must be born again
into the spirit world, where we can share love with God, our Parent, who
connects us to the world of spirit that has no bounds.
What do we need after coming out of the womb? It is not just air, food and
water; it is love. We need to receive elements of love. We cannot be fed only
food. If food is the only thing you take in, you will start to die. You need to
prepare for the next stage of your life. So what do you need to fill yourself
with during your life on earth? You must form a new character by filling
yourself with love during this period.
What you need on earth is love. Why do you call a child who lives without the
love of a father and mother an “orphan?” It is because the child does not
receive the parental love during their lifetime that can connect him or her
eternally to the spirit world. This is also the reason we feel pity for people
who live alone without marrying.
After our physical death, which is the destruction of the body that has been
breathing air on earth—the second kind of breathing—we begin breathing elements
of love. Love is invisible. While we are on earth, our internal self, our
spirit, grows through the love we receive from our parents and our spouse. That
is why, just as an embryo develops in the womb in accordance with God’s law so
that it grows to become a healthy baby, our spirit must develop within our
physical body in this earthly world in accordance with the heavenly principle.
Dragonflies begin their lives by swimming in water during their larval stage,
then come up to the earth and crawl about for a while. Finally they are able to
fly around and prey on bugs they never would have imagined eating when they
were crawling on the ground. They flutter about freely, thinking the whole
universe is their stage.
There are many insects that go through these three stages of life. In general,
insects have wings. They go through their lives living in the water, on land
and in the air. Yet do human beings, who are called the lords of creation, have
wings? We have a set of wings that are of a higher dimension. Death is the
blessed gateway to our second birth. What is the meaning of death? Earthly
life, the time of living in air, parallels the time of swimming in the womb. We
are living in a wrapping cloth of air. Death is nothing special; it is only our
rebirth into the third life. That moment of transition is what we call death.
Section 4. The central point between the two worlds
I imagine you must be very curious about the
spirit world. There are many religions in the world; their purpose is to guide
us to the world of eternal life, where we can live together with God. That
eternal spirit world is the destination of religion. However, what has become
of religion today? It is on the decline. We have entered an era in which people
are concluding that religion is a man-made moral idea, appealing only to the
weak and unnecessary for everyone else.
Even Christianity, the central religion, has declined. America represents all
the Christian nations of the world, yet many people who grew up in American
Christian homes have lost their faith and are living according to their own
ways. Why are even Christians abandoning their religion, which idealizes
Heaven, the dwelling place of God, who is the center of the world and all
ideals?
There are three reasons. First, we do not have a clear understanding of the
existence of the spirit world. We have the innate capacity of comparison, and
we naturally seek to abandon a bad situation in favor of a better one. If we
understood the higher-dimensional realms of greater value in the spirit world,
we would seek them out. This is original human nature.
Second, we do not really know God. Our connection with God was severed as a
result of the Fall, and we have been living as
orphans.
Third, we do not grasp the central importance of love, which binds us to both
God and the spirit world. We do not clearly know these three points. Even those
who know of God and the spirit world do not fully understand that it is a world
centered on love.
In a place of love, you are happy to go up or down and even to stay in the
middle. Does a wife dislike her husband if he has a higher position in society
than she has? Does a husband dislike his wife if her social standing is lower
than his? When you are one with each other, you can go anywhere, from below to
above, from above to below; you can even stay in the middle. There are no
restraints. This is the reason that many people in the world are saying, “This
world needs to become one. It ought to be united. It must become a world of
peace.”
It is the same for both the spirit world and the earthly world, and for
spiritual and physical beings. God and His love are central to both worlds. But
fallen people do not recognize this.
We have a mind and a body, and there are differences between these two. They
exist in different dimensions. The mind differs from the spirit world. We speak
of the spirit and earthly worlds in terms of God’s love. Accordingly, for these
two to create oneness, God must be involved. Without God’s love, the spirit
world cannot exist. It is linked to God.
People may be confused and think that the mind is the spirit. The mind is not a
part of the spirit world. Due to the Fall, the mind
does not have a relationship with the spirit world. It may be easier for you to
understand if you think of the mind of fallen human beings as a person who has
no bones in his body. The mind of a fallen person has a form like a human body
that has no bones.
The spirit has a body-like element and a mind-like element. The part that is
like the mind of the spirit is immersed in the spirit world. It always
maintains a relationship with God. The mind-like element of the spirit does not
come into being without a relationship with God. It is important to understand
that spirit and mind are two different things. The fallen mind has no relationship
with God. He has departed from it. God can neither relate to the fallen mind
nor exercise His direct dominion over it. Your mind changes, going one way and
then another, but spirit beings are not like this, nor is the spirit world.
They have one eternal goal, toward goodness, and move steadily in that
direction. Why is this so? It is because spiritually mature beings stand on
God’s side. The mind that resides within us as fallen human beings vacillates.
What is the spirit mind? I am sure you know this from the Divine Principle. It
is the union of mind and spirit, and it is moving toward a new goal. It is a
motivational mind, which makes it possible for us to become our ideal selves by
uniting with our conscience, centered on God. Without a spirit mind we would be
unable to connect to the spirit world or to true love.
When the spirit mind sprouts up in us, our body is happy to unite with it.
Everything automatically begins to unite. The biggest problem for people until
now has been the separation of our mind and body. However, when spiritual
energy dwells within us and engenders the awakening of our spirit mind, our
mind and body naturally unite. Unless this type of revolution occurs, unless we
discover the origin that can rectify everything from the root, we have no way
to find the ideal. There is no result without a motivating cause. The purpose
of religion is to implant a spirit mind within us. There are many religions
centered on the spirit mind. These appear in all sorts of different forms.
God is a majestic being, central to both the spirit and earthly worlds, which
are meant to become as one. Because true love was never manifested, the spirit
world and physical world could not become as one body. This caused the
separation between the human mind and body. Also, because true love was never
established, there is a separation between religion and politics.
Everything comes together as one when true love is at the center.
Everything—the individual, family, society, nation, world and cosmos—is linked.
We have to make it so with our own hands. Otherwise we cannot inherit God’s
original kingdom in heaven and on earth. How do we bring about harmony between
the spirit and earthly worlds? We have to unite them with true love.
Eighty percent of the world’s population does not know about the spirit world.
Even some religious believers are not really sure whether there is a spirit
world or if God really exists. However, the spirit world does exist. If there
were a wealthy man who was willing to invest his entire fortune in creating a
place of happiness for himself, we can imagine what a wonderful garden he would
build. Then what kind of place would God, the Creator of heaven and earth,
create as His dwelling place?
The spirit world is a world of beauty beyond our imagination. You could stare
at just one part of it for a thousand years and never grow tired of it. The
world’s most prized possessions are nothing in comparison to the spirit world.
Therefore, I do not want to own things on this earth. If you were to force me
to say which I would prefer, I would say this earthly world does not conform to
my purpose and I would rather go to the spirit world.
Most people do not think about the spirit world. They were born, so they live
with their parents and take care of their families. They think they will just
go on living the life they were born to. What is at the center of such lives?
It is all about eating and supporting themselves. People consider food, shelter
and clothing to be the most important things in life.
How to support themselves, how to feed themselves, how to clothe
themselves—these are the central issues for most people. Of course, human
relationships include aspects of morality that enable people to improve,
develop and find satisfaction together. The standard of that morality varies,
however, among different races and nations. Moral standards and social systems
all vary in accordance with the world’s diverse cultural backgrounds.
From this perspective, we see that there is a huge difference between the original
vision and standard that God wants us to attain, and the standard of ethics and
morality that people today set for themselves. This
must be corrected. Where are we supposed to go after being born and living our
lives here, based on the original standard? People are not clear about this;
they do not know whether there is a spirit world and whether God exists.
However, people who have studied the Principle clearly know that the spirit
world exists. They do not just believe it; they know it. Why is this? They know
it through countless spiritual experiences. The global foundation of the
Unification Church was built through a process that included many spiritual
experiences. People who know the Principle are in a position where they cannot
say that the spirit world does not exist.
Once we know the Principle, what path do we follow? We must follow the path
that God desires for us, the path of His Will. But what is God’s Will? There is
a path for an individual, and a path for a family. There are also paths for the
society, nation, world and spirit world. I am the expert on this. The spirit
world definitely exists.
Why is it important that we know of the existence of God and of the spirit
world? Some people may think that, even if God exists, they have nothing to do
with Him, but they are wrong. To say, “Even if there is a spirit world, it has
nothing to do with me,” would be like a person claiming he is a member of a
family, but has no need of his country or of the world.
If there were a greater God and a bigger spirit world, we would surely want to
have a relationship with those greater entities. But just having a relationship
is not enough. What would we do once we had a relationship? We would have to
unite and move together toward the same goal.
The Apostle Paul’s experience of seeing the third heaven of the spirit world
became the driving force empowering him in his missionary activities for
fourteen years. Do you understand this? You need to have such experiences. The
same is true for me.
I do not fear death. What made me this way? Love did. No matter how many times
I am put in jail, I can digest all that, just as I have digested and overcome
all the opposition that has surrounded me. I am overcoming all this with my own
hands.
Section 5. How the spirit world was created
The spirit world is equivalent to the angelic
world. With regard to the spirit world, our world today is in the same position
as at the time of Adam and Eve. God created the spirit world before creating
Adam and Eve. Since Satan’s world came to exist because the spirit world went
against God’s Will, that world will be restored only after it welcomes God’s
Will. Also, the Lord cannot come to the earthly world until the spirit world is
subjugated. That is why members of the Unification Church have worked
tirelessly until today to end the discord with the spirit world and,
consequently, the spirit world has been helping the Unification Church.
Where is the spirit world? It is in your bodies. You go around carrying the
spirit world on your shoulders, attending it. There is no escaping it.
The spirit world certainly exists. It exists for this physical world, and this
world exists for the sake of the eternal world. People may ask, “Where in the
world is God? Can there be a God in this world? Where is the spirit world?”
God’s dwelling place is the spirit world.
If, after seventy or eighty years on earth, that were the end of our life, we
really would have nothing to worry about. But since we will be living
eternally, it is a different story. So if we agree that the spirit world exists
and that we will go there after death, what will we take along when we go
there? Those who have not practiced true love in their lifetimes will not
adjust well in the spirit world. The spirit world is vast. You may not know this,
but it is a vast world without boundaries.
The contemporary interest in electricity and space exploration will open
people’s minds to the idea of an ideal world of love. The vast spirit world is
filled with the electricity of love. With the electricity of love there is
nothing we cannot do. Hence, we can say that the spirit world is a realm we are
meant to govern through our thoughts and feelings.
Then what is the spirit world? It is a place made up of that which is eternal.
It is the world of harmony, where everything is filled with love. Thus, this
universe goes into operation just by the push of a love button.
What is God’s kingdom on earth? It is the place where all the valves of love
can be opened. Then what about the kingdom of God in heaven? It is the place
where all the valves of true love can be opened.
All you have to do is maintain a loving heart and tug on the rope of love, and
everything will come to you. When you push it back, it goes backward; when you
pull it sideways, it moves sideways. You can steer it any way you like. It does
not resist; it moves automatically.
So we arrive at the concept that the spirit world is the place filled with the
air of love. If the God of love wants to feed all humanity at once and to make
us happy, says, “Let there be food,” then food will appear.
You eat the food of love in the spirit world. People look at each other with
eyes of love. There are no words to express the mystery of the spirit world.
The more you hear, the more you want to hear. There is no concept there of
being sleepy or tired. The spirit world is the place filled with the
electricity of love. People today try to link everything to love. Why is that?
This is to be in rhythm with the spirit world. Since the spirit world operates
in this way, existing beings naturally respond to it. They cannot abandon that
position.
When you see me in your dreams, I appear to you through the waves of God’s
love. For that to happen, there can be no self. You
need to create a vacuum, and then a realm of resonance. You become like pure
gold, which has low resistance. Why do we consider gold to be treasure? Gold is
pure, it does not contain any other elements, and it has a low level of
resistance. You need to become like pure gold.
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