Kook Jin Nim Sermon Notes, Dec 19, 2010

1)      Kook Jin Nim began by telling us what a fantastic job his sister has been doing here. He expressed surprise at our generous and warm welcome. After all the stuff on the Internet about him, he was expecting tomatoes and eggs.

2)      He asked us, “Why am I not being sued for paternity? Where are these illegitimate children people are writing about? I would like to know. Sue me. I'm rich. You can get a lot of money.”

3)      He shared that it is comedic and funny - because what has been written about him is so atrocious. In the USA we have freedom of speech so it is very difficult to prosecute people for libel. In Korea it's not like that, there are defamation laws and you can be put in jail.

4)      With all this unfortunate, despicable propaganda that has been distributed in the US, Korea, Japan, and throughout the world, we could not let that situation stand and so they filed a criminal lawsuit against the postings on the Internet. Of course these postings were posted anonymously. But one of the benefits of filing a criminal lawsuit is that the government prosecutor can act and investigate to find the true names of the people who are posting these things on the Internet. So that's what we did and they did come back and tell us who's doing this, and we have the names. (He mentioned 3 names – all Korean. I don’t know how to spell them properly so I will not try to put them here)

5)      Who are these people? They work for the chairman of UCI and for Rev. Kwak. “Do you want to know where all these rumors are coming from? That's where they're coming from.” And so these individuals are wanted for questioning in Korea. Kook Jin Nim suggested they go to Korea and answer the questions, but from what he understands they are not willing to go to Korea. If they didn't do anything wrong, why don't they go and talk to the police?

6)      Kook Jin Nim’s knows we are educated people, we have a system of law and there is a good reason why the courts do not allow hearsay, because that's exactly what hearsay is, it's hearsay. Why are we as individuals and members of this community so eager to believe hearsay? Kook Jin Nim understands that the writer of this fiction may be a good novelist and writes a good story, but that's all it is, it's fiction.

7)      Brothers and sisters we are still a young community. Our TP started this church 50 or 60 years ago, not too long. We have not had a great deal of time to develop our traditions such as the Catholic Church has, and so we have some growing pains to deal with. And organizationally throughout the world we have had difficulties in our church.

8)      Did you know that the Korean Foundation and the Korean church in 1997 went bankrupt. He asked if we knew about that. At that time it had billions of dollars in liabilities. “Do you know who the chairman was when it went bankrupt. Do you know who led the foundation into bankruptcy? It was Rev. Kwak. From 1992 until it went bankrupt the foundation was under the leadership of Rev. Kwak. You didn't know about this? I guess he hasn't been telling you much about the real stuff he's been doing.”

9)      Kook Jin Nim got the job in 2005. When he was put in charge of the Korean foundation, among the organizations he was made responsible for there were quite a bit of losses, both reported and unreported. This is because there were many problems with their accounting system.

10)  If you look at some of the losses, the reported losses were nearly 50 million dollars, but if you look at Sae Gae Ilbo in 2004 they reported that there were no losses, but that is because they recorded $30 million of donations from our brothers and sisters in Japan as income. If you look at this kind of accounting irregularities the actual total losses were in excess of $100 million. Again, Rev. Kwak had led our church into bankruptcy once and we were headed in that direction again because he was the chairman when Kook Jin Nim first started there in 2005.

11)  Personally, before Kook Jin Nim began his public mission in 2005, he had no problems with Rev. Kwak. He got along well with him. And Kook Jin Nim was close to his brother who is the current chairman of UCI, longer than anybody. He loves his brother. Now, the problem Kook Jin Nim has with him, is that he hates what he is doing. For years he told him, “What you're doing is not right. Don't do it.”

12)  Because his brother didn't like that advice he doesn't talk to Kook Jin Nim. He has offered his hand to him, asking his brother to come and talk with him, but he refuses. Even today he is extending this invitation to him, if he wants to come talk, he's ready to talk to him any time. Kook Jin Nim will not agree to something he feels is not right. He will call a spade a spade.

13)  Kook Jin Nim understands that in this world, being straightforward and calling things as you see them, is not the popular thing to do. But Kook Jin Nim has his five rules of management and the second rule is to choose accountability over popularity. So, pursuing popularity has never been one of Kook Jin Nim's agendas.

14)  We did a lot of difficult reforms in Korea. We restructured all the businesses in Korea, in 2005. There were nearly 34 businesses when Kook Jin Nim started and about 70% of them were losing money. Today we are down to about 12 businesses and basically they have all become profitable or have improved substantially and that is the fact.

15)  One case in point, if you look at the newspaper Sae Gae Ilbo. We have a newspaper here in America, the Washington Times – well, we got it back from UCI. We bought it back (you heard about that, right?). And, the Washington Times has lost about $30 million a year for the last 20 years. In Korea, with Sae Gae Ilbo, it has been about the same thing, losing almost $30 million a year. How much is it losing today? We are down to about $3 million losses a year from $30 million. Our subscriptions are about the same, our revenues did not decline, the newspaper has a brand-new building (Dr Tom Walsh saw it. It’s beautiful, right?) We are printing newspapers everyday.

16)  There are other companies, some were losing $10-$20 million a year, when we purchased it, it was losing money as well, but now it is profitable. But it is not just one or two businesses, every business has improved substantially. And there was a lot of hard work to get those organizations to work properly. And they had to do corporate restructuring, not a popular thing to do, but the result is that our businesses are now successful and they have a good foundation to build more success in the future. That's a fact.

17)  And since that's a verifiable fact that can be accounted for, the media has come and taken a look at what we've done with the Tongil Group, and they have verified it. “It was pretty bad before but now it runs okay. Now it has hope - that is why we are now getting so much positive press coverage. Because the results are there.” You can visit the website tongilgroup.org., dozen of articles are there – in English

18)  In 2005 the Unification Church in Korea was not popular. We were maligned by the press consistently. Now the press is quite positive towards us. Why? If we are making this stuff up why is the press so positive towards us? Is Kook Jin Nim fooling all the newspapers in Korea? They weren't fooled before. Kook Jin Nim must be some kind of a magic man!

19)  “Come on, let's be real.” These businesses weren't running well and now they are running well, the press coverage was very bad and now the press coverage is good. But that is not the only thing Kook Jin Nim (and his team) worked on.

20)  When Kook Jin Nim was in Korea his job was to manage the businesses and manage the church assets, but it was also his job to hand out the money to everyone. There was a long line of people waiting outside his office every day wanting money - from people in the businesses, the church related institutions, the NGO organizations, and even our church in Korea was not profitable for the last 20 years.

21)  This was the other job of the chairman of the foundation, to distribute the money. On one hand they were working really hard to make the money and on the other hand they had to give it away to organizations, and Kook Jin Nim was thinking to himself – “I don't know exactly what they are doing with this money.” He had a hard time to understand why our church needed to be subsidized. Why can't the church make money considering that every other church in the world makes money.

22)  That was a problem he had worked on. And so he spent one year visiting 120 churches in Korea. He visited them personally, nearly 1/4 of all our churches. And he talked to the members, saw the facilities, talked to the ministers, heard their stories, and saw the situation with his own eyes. Based on that research, together with his professional team, they set up a restructuring strategy to make the Korean church prosperous again - in terms of donation growth, tithing growth, church growth, and maintenance of facilities. They made a restructuring strategy, and with the cooperation of our world chairman, his younger brother, they implemented the plan. It was not easy to do, but it was successful.

23)  The number of church buildings was reduced by almost half, but overall Sunday service attendance grew 70%. Registered membership went up by nearly that much. Tithing went up 120% since the reforms started. And now the church continues to grow. Every year tithing and membership is growing. It's been successful.

24)  By restructuring and reducing the number of buildings we were able to take that money and renovate the ones that we kept. The whole environment of the Korean church is being renovated, from a ghetto church to a modern newly renovated church. What's wrong with that? How is that wrong?

25)  Did Kook Jin Nim do something bad here? Figure it out. The businesses are all profitable, the media that once hated us likes us now, the church which wasn't growing and was always asking for money is now profitable – “sounds like Kook Jin Nim is really destroying the Korean church.” It's kind of funny - you have to laugh about this kind of stuff, because it is funny. The propaganda which is being produced by certain actors is despicable. There's no other word for it, despicable.

26)  The truth is our church is on a good path. If we continue on this path we will fulfill the promise that God has given to our church. Why would we not want to realize the promise that God has given us? Because there is a faction in our church which is so rabid in the promotion of themselves and their view of the universe and their lies - yes they are a bunch of liars. Do you want to give up our victory for God and TP for lies, does that make sense? Is it rational? Let's be reasonable. Let's open our eyes and see the truth.

27)  About two years ago Kook Jin Nim did a lot of work to renovate and restore organizations in Korea and based upon that he has quite a bit of success under his belt. Why would he need any more qualifications? He has a lot of result. No one in our church has as much result. Name one person, except of course for TP. What else does Kook Jin Nim have to prove.

28)  Two years ago T Father sent Kook Jin Nim to Japan. He told him to fix the problem there. Basically the police were raiding our church every week. Nearly 130 members had been arrested, but T Father tells him to go there and fix the problem. Could we say, suicide mission? Seriously, who in their right mind would put themselves in such risk.

29)  What is there he needs to prove? Kook Jin Nim has been successful his entire life. He graduated cum laude from the best school in this country, he has seven patents, built a successful business, and has millions of dollars - what does he have to prove? He led the successful restructuring and renovation of our church in Korea. T Father gave him a suicide mission to go to Japan and stand in front while the police were arresting everyone - he guessed that he would be arrested too. He went.

30)  He was there when the police were knocking on the door. He was fighting for our Japanese church. He was fighting for the church members in Japan. When everyone else thought that we were finished, everyone else was turning their backs on them, when leaders thought that father was finished and they were turning their backs on Father - Kook Jin Nim was there defending the church in Japan, defending TP.

31)  Kook Jin Nim didn't see Rev. Kwak in Japan, he didn't see his brother, the chairman of UCI, in Japan. Where was the Washington Times? Why didn't they help? Kook Jin Nim asked them for help. He told them – “We have a serious problem in Japan, with persecution, our brothers and sisters are being kidnapped and tortured, help us, write stories about this, get the attention of the American public.” Did the Washington Times write even one story about this issue during this time? No. No help at all. How the hell can you call yourself a leader of this church if you can't even stand up and fight for the members?

32)  Kook Jin Nim was there on the front line fighting for our brothers and sisters, putting his life at risk, putting his freedom at risk. Where the hell were they? He didn't see them. Where the hell were they? From what he understands they were very busy writing novels defaming him while he was out there trying to defend us - spending millions of church dollars to defame him, his father, and his brothers and sisters - while he is out there in front, putting his life at risk to defend us. Is that fare? Does that sit well with anyone?

33)  Kook Jin Nim has grown up in America. He came here when he is three years old. He knows that Americans are just, they're rational, they are righteous people, and he knows that we have been deceived. And he knows if we see the facts in front of us, that we will make a proper judgment. “Just look at the facts. Look at who is fighting for you and who is not. Who is just talking the talk and producing lies. And who is actually making results? If you see the truth, if you see the reality, there is no confusion.”

34)  Every day at Kook Jin Nim has done his job here for the church he has spent every day to make a result. There isn't a day that he has worked for the public service when he did not think of what result he could make. And one thing that he can say is that he has never worked as hard as in these last six years to make a result for all of us every day and he thinks his results show it. We've done it.

35)  But there is still a lot of work to do. Because we have come together as a community worldwide and fought the Japanese government, because we have fought for the freedom of our brothers and sisters, fought against human rights violations, against the kidnappings - we are winning in Japan now. But the fight is not yet over. There is still a lot of work to do and we need your help and cooperation to continue that fight.

36)  At this critical time when our TP are setting the stage for the future of our movement, it is a time for our community, all of us, to come together centered on TP, our Parents, because they are the reason we are here in the first place. They are the root of our church and it is through them that we received God's revelation and God's blessing. “You have come this far brothers and sisters with our true parents, it seems obvious to me you should go to the end with them.”

37)  It is time for our movement to start to mature. We need to see things as they are, not as some teenagers imagine them to be, because we as a church and as a congregation have something uniquely valuable to offer all the world. We have insights about the nature of God which no religion on earth offers.

38)  Did you know that one of the fundamental teachings of Christianity is that God's divinity is a mystery - the mystery of God. God Almighty, infinite, omniscient, omnipotent, so vast that He is unknowable to us little human beings. You understand that this is one of the fundamental teachings of Christianity? But have you thought about what that means? What does it mean that God is a mystery? What does it mean that God is on unknowable? If this is true what does God teach us, what does Christ teach us?

39)  You have heard of the Trinity - God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit –  three is one and one is three. Christians are taught that we should be like Christ. But how can you be like Christ if you can't know Christ. How can you love Christ if you can't know him? How can you emulate Christ if he is unknowable to you? How do you solve this theological conundrum of Christianity? You realize that this is a very difficult theological problem for Christians. As a result when many Christians study theology at school, they become atheists - primarily because of these kinds of theological inconsistencies that just don't make sense.

40)  It seems to Kook Jin Nim that the returning Christ should clarify and solve these mysteries. This is the power of the DP, the power of the message that TP have given us, to solve these fundamental problems.

41)  TP have taught us clearly the essence of God's divinity. They have defined the divine essence of God. What is it? They have defined God's essence as true love. And they have defined true love - true love is a love that can bring your worst enemy, even Satan, to voluntary surrender and to submit.

42)  What does God will of man, of us? It's the same. God wants us to inherit his true love. Each and every single one of us.

43)  All the questions of God and the universe are answered. It's that simple. This is the power of the principle. It is the key to all the theological inconsistencies that exist in Christianity. It is the key through which Christians can find God and Jesus. It is a key through which you can enter the kingdom of heaven. And who brought us this key, who is the gatekeeper? It is TP, T Father and T Mother.

44)  The truth is before us. God is with us. If we have faith in God and TP there is no obstacle that we cannot overcome. This is Kook Jin Nim’s suggestion to all of us. Let's do the right thing. Let us stand up for truth and for principle and show our loyalty to God and TP.

Thank you very much.

December 20, 2010 Washington D.C.