Desiring the Promise

Hyung Jin Moon
June 20th 2009
Headquarters Church, Seoul Korea
Transcribed by: Valerie Randolph, Jacinta Moreau, Regina Shin
Proofread/Polish by: Karen Katayama and Bruno Klotz

Opening Prayer by Rev. Michael Brazil:

Our Heavenly Father, our Heavenly Mother! We really want to sing our praises and Hallelujahs to you, thanking You for the love and the grace that You have showered upon us. Today it is raining but we want to feel in our hearts that it is raining hearts and love, grace and truth and beauty and goodness. You are showering upon us, internally and externally, Your love, grace and joy. We want to soak it up, we want to inherit it and feel it, in the depths of our being so that we really shout out with Your love. We want so much to open our hearts to welcome You here today, to be with us, to join together, so that we can all rejoice in the big dance of heart, love and truth.

Our Heavenly Father, we pray that You will be here with us and that You will speak through our speaker today, that through his words we can come ever closer to You, that we can feel Your heart and truth and that we can have greater strength to be even better for You in the week ahead.

Again, we invite You and thank You and we most humbly offer all this to You as blessed central families gathered together from around the world. Aju!

Welcoming Remarks:
Yeon Ah Nim

Good afternoon, brothers and sisters! It’s great to see you all. This early morning we went to the growth level Cheon Buk Goong and we prayed there. As it was raining on us, we felt that it was a blessing that was sent from Heaven.

We are always honored to have you here with us, and for those that are joining us via the internet, we are always welcoming you as well. Welcome brothers and welcome sisters!

Hyung Jin Nim

Welcome brothers and sisters! If you are in the Catholic tradition, you know that before one prays, before one offers grace, they draw the cross on their body. I’m sure you’ve all seen that. So one day we were wondering together with the Hoon Sa Nims, "Hey, as Unificationists we want to draw the mark too!" But it is a little more complex than the cross, so how do you do it in a way that is spiritual, short and nice? Through prayer one day we got inspired. So we are going to do that together.

Let’s start with our hands like this; we are going to start with the outside. We are going to make the circle on the outside -- that’s Give and Receive action. Then we are going to make the inside box -- that’s the Four Position Foundation. Come on, together! And all together we inherit on the true love of God. You just drew the Unification Symbol! Let’s give it up. (Applause) It all came together in one.

Let’s start with the Cheon Seong Gyeong today. This is Cheon Seong Gyeong Page 640. Father says:

“What is the one thing to be done in the world of humanity? The light of love must be bright. For that to happen you must catch fire internally and externally. From what? From the motive force to love.”

When we meet people and we want to share our faith, I usually show them the Unification Symbol, because this is actually the Principle, all embedded in a very simple symbol. You can see in this principle the Give and Receive action. All relationships must have Give and Receive to truly be able to move and to be healthy. Here we see the Four Position Foundation -- that’s very simple. It symbolizes all our profound relationships. It symbolizes the relationship between spouses, between parents and children. It also symbolizes the relationship between man and the creation. In the third blessing in the Principle we can see that. It symbolizes all those relationships. Then when we come together in the center; it all comes together in the heart of true love that is a selfless love, a love that exists for the sake of others. That, in a nutshell, is the Principle. That is in our mark.

That’s what True Father is telling us today. "The light of love must be bright," he says. In our life let us always have this mark moving. It’s supposed to be moving, not supposed to be staying still like this. It’s supposed to be turning like this. It’s supposed to be rotating, to be alive.

In our lives, in our relationships, in our relationships with the environment, the creation, let’s always be centered on what True Father calls “the light of love,” on true love, that exists for the sake of the other. If we do that we will find ourselves more blessed, more victorious, more in the favor of God. We are going to have incredible victories. If you believe that, let’s give it up for God today! (Applause)

Welcome once again, brothers and sisters!

Hyung Jin Nim’s remarks about prayer:

Let us take this time to pray for our Abel good spirits. Those are brothers and sisters that have already gone but they are still with us. They are still protecting and looking over us. We want to take time to acknowledge them this week. They have done great things for us in the past; they are really helping us like our guardian angels that are protecting us. Let’s listen to this song of worship and praise and let’s offer this praise and thanks to them and to God for sending them into our lives. Let’s take this time for a brief prayer.

Unison prayer

Thank you brothers and sisters for taking time to offer your hearts for those who are passed before us but are still with us. It is always so important to not forget them, to recognize them. They are in our lives and are helping us.

Interesting Story:

I heard a story about Arthur and Mary. They were going to get married so they went to meet Arthur’s parents. After dinner, they were having a wonderful time. There were some interesting situations that occurred during dinner. On the drive back, Mary says to Arthur, “Arthur, I never told you this but I am an atheist and I never believed in hell. But you know what, honey, after meeting your mum I think I believe in it now. We’re not getting married.” That’s what she said! Oh my God, that’s a little scary! We love our mothers-in-law, come on!

True Parents Declaration:

These are my True Parents, the eternal king and queen of peace and liberator of God’s heart. They have saved me from my past and blessed my future. They give me true love, forgiveness, and happiness today. And I choose to receive it.

My mind is awake. My heart is open wide. From this moment I will change forever.

In my name I pray. Aju.

Main Sermon:

I would like to talk to you today about “Desiring the Promise.” In order to live the Blessed Life, we have to believe in God’s promise for us. God wishes for us to actualize all our potential; that is to be successful and influential, to be powerful, to have great wealth both spiritually and materially, not just for ourselves, but so that we can have great impact and give benefit to others. This wish is also for our movement in the age of liberation and complete release. You see, He really wishes for us to see true success, to build a stronger church and to see the Unification Movement go out and move the nations and be able to allow and help others inherit His true love. Learning how to desire His promises is one of the keys to living the blessed life.

Let’s take a look at some of these scriptures today. We are going to take a look at Christianity today. This is from the Psalms, Psalm 37:4:

“Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart.”

Notice: when we delight ourselves in the Lord, when we obey His commands etc., He will give us the desires of our heart. That is to say, that all the real dreams and great potentials that we feel and that are latent within, He has already given them to us. When we delight ourselves in the Lord, when we follow His path of righteousness, then He allows them to come up. In the Psalms we can see and feel that.

Let’s take a look at Buddhism now. This is a very classic Bodhisattva vow. This is seen in every single Mahayana tradition or Vajrayana tradition that attests and believes in the Bodhisattva. Let’s read that together:

“May I attain Buddhahood for the benefit of all sentient beings.”

This is a very key vow. As you can see, it is filled with desire; it is absolutely filled with a huge desire, to free all from suffering.

Let us look at the Koran today. This is the 40th Sutra. Let’s read it together:

“Be patient for surely God’s promise is true.”

In our life, it is important that, as we are walking the path, we allow ourselves to have perseverance and patience; to know that the promises that God has given to us are true, to believe that they are true, and to move forth so that we can move into those blessings.

Let’s take a look at True Father’s words. This is from the Way of Unification, p.794:

“No one could break off Jacob’s strong conviction, because he believed in God’s promise that he would establish the ideal people and nation with God’s blessing.”

We see here Father again telling Jacob’s story, having a strong conviction in the faith of God’s promise for him to lead the people of Israel and to have the descendants of Israel flourish and succeed, etc.

When we look at the Principle, we see the Fall of Man. We see that the Fall occurred by desire. But is it really just desire per se? The Principle is actually very clear on this. It is not necessarily desire per se but it is Lucifer’s selfish, self-centered desire, the selfish desire to steal another’s love for one’s own pleasure and power; to exploit the innocence of Eve; to feel in control and to feel powerful; to disobey God and to be traitorous for selfish ego aggrandizement: “I can challenge God. I am just as powerful as you. I can do it. I have the power, too. I can destroy your plan.”

See, Lucifer exploited Adam and Eve for his own enjoyment and selfish sense of power. This desire, as we know, became the cause of the Fall. This selfish type of desire, as we see in the Principle, became inherited by humanity. So the inheritance of false love, selfish love and unprincipled love began to spread. The Principle is very clear between what is false love and what is true love. False love is self-centered; it is selfish, self-serving, using others for one’s own personal enjoyment. But true love is selfless; it is ‘egoless’, and serves others, and it benefits the whole.

When we have a desire that goes beyond ourselves and our ego, and serves a larger more principled goal, we know that God can support that. For example, Martin Luther King Jr. had an enormous desire; he had a huge desire for the end of racial segregation. But we do not see him as full of evil greed and selfish desire. We see his desire as an honorable desire, a worthy desire, a principally based desire, supported by God. God does not want us to hate each other because of our skin color.

All the great religious leaders, Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed, Confucius, all the great leaders have a great desire to see change and to help people find God and find truth. This is a huge desire that each one of them holds and that they passed on to their disciples.

I heard a story about a hermit who was meditating by a river one day, and a young man interrupted. He said. “Master, I wish to become your disciple.” And so the master replied, “Why do you want to become my disciple?” The man replied, “I want to find God”. The master then at that moment jumped up, did a couple of back flips, landed on the ground, grabbed the man by the neck and threw him into the water. He held his head underwater and the man was kicking and trying to get free but he could not. After about a minute, the master pulled him out of the water and the man was coughing and gasping for air. He was trying to catch his breath. Eventually the man slowed down, quieted down and the master spoke, “Tell me, what did you want most of all when you were underwater?” The man of course replied, “I wanted air, that’s what I wanted the most.” The master said, “Go home and come back to me when you want God just as much as you wanted some air.”

Brothers and sisters, in the same way, when we are walking the path, it is so important to desire God, to desire to follow the path of righteousness, to desire to live a selfless life, to desire these things. I’ve heard many people who have looked at the theistic religions and said that theistic religions cause a lot of problems in this world. They do a lot of warring and things like that. They have so much desire. They are so desirous.

And so the religions of the East are about getting rid of desire as the primary means for liberation of suffering. But actually, people who say this do not understand Eastern religions so well. In Buddhism, for example, the eradication of all desire is totally undesirable because, without desire, one would not be able to motivate oneself to work and strive towards enlightenment. Nor would one be able to move, to strive to free other beings and liberate them from suffering.

In Buddhism, for example, there is a principle called Bodhijita in Sanskrit which means "heart of enlightenment". This is basically the wish to attain full enlightenment for the sake of all beings, and this is an absolute key to the Path. The Path in Eastern religions is not about throwing away all desire. It’s about channeling, changing the patterns of desire so that they are not ego-based and selfish, but rather selfless. And this is the same in all religions. We must understand that the desire in our spiritual life to eradicate all desire is not desirable. It is important for us to have the right type of desire that is within the Principle way.

In some way, many people in our tradition feel kind of guilty for wanting the Unification Church to succeed. “I’m an Unificationist but I feel guilty for wanting Unificationism to succeed.” Actually, we should not feel guilty for wanting to see Unificationism succeed. This is not a selfish desire. We want Unificationism to succeed and to grow because we believe that it holds truths, because it has the truth of the Divine Principle, the truth of the divinity of God as true love; the truth of True Parents as the inheritor of true love; the truth that all of us are able to inherit God’s true love and that we ourselves can become true parents as well. We believe that these teachings will help the world become closer to God and help liberate people from the divide of God and man and divine and human.

Saying that we are selfish as a religion because we wish to share this truth, that we are selfish as a faith community, is like saying that Christians or Buddhists are selfish when they share their tradition, when they share their faith, when they spread the teachings of Jesus or the Buddha, to guide others to enlightenment or freedom from suffering. It is not a selfish thing. This is a very important thing because we hold truths that we have in our tradition.

So we have to want. We want God and True Parents to be recognized. We have the desire for us to be recognized in society and we need not feel guilty about that. It is not a selfish desire. We are not doing it for our own ego aggrandizement. We are doing it so that all the blood, sweat and tears that have been shed by our parents and by our True Parents and by God are not done in vain. We do it because we believe that the patterns that True Parents have taught us, give and receive, four position foundation centered on God, selfless true love, are the pattern for peace and harmony in the family, in the nation and in the world. We believe that that is the truth, and that is a very powerful model for our lives. We should want to be recognized as a world religion with an immense desire to inherit the true love of God and to spread that true love into the world. It is very important for us actually to want and desire that.

I heard a story about a young man; I guess in his 40’s or 50’s, a performer, actually an opera singer. A lot of you may know him. His name is Paul Potts. He performed here in Korea just the other week. This man was born in Kingswood, England, raised by his father who was a bus driver and by his mum. He ended up in junior high school singing with some of the churches in his area but because he was always a little shy, he was bullied by the bullies at school. This made him lack self confidence as a person. He was never brave enough, he said, to be able to stand forth and to share what he had. But in his voice, in his singing, he said he found solace, even while he was being persecuted and bullied.

As an adult, he became a manager at a mobile phone company. He worked as a Carphone Warehouse salesman but he felt that this is not enough to his life: "This is not the great purpose for which God has sent me to this world. There has got to be more. There is something in me. There is a desire in me that is yearning for more than just a Carphone Warehouse job."

And he stepped out of that fear. He had to take a step. He had to take a huge risk actually. And he risked being made fun of, he risked being bullied again, he risked being mocked etc. He went in front of probably the most difficult stage in all of Britain, and that is the stage with Simon Cowell and these kinds of judges. He went on the show called “Britain’s Got Talent”. He absolutely did something that we are going to see right now. Let’s take a look at this video.

Video

After that performance, he went on to win that contest, then perform at the Royal Variety before the Queen of England and then became an international opera singer and now traveling the world. When I look at this story, it kind of reminded me of our own tradition. We are kind of like Paul Potts. We began out in the countryside in the North, in Chungju, North Korea, with absolutely no foundation, absolutely nothing. True Parents went under tremendous bullying, a lot of severe persecution, just like Paul. And to this day, some of our unification families are still being persecuted.

But we are slowly, slowly being discovered by society. We can see that for example in Korea, with the changes that are happening in society, with the media turnaround. Over the last year there were a hundred different media articles about the Unification Movement, all positive. But there are still, of course, some places in the world and some people that continue to demonize the Unification Movement as a dangerous cult. But we are making inroads into society. People are starting to see that we cannot be compared to dangerous religious organizations that end in violence etc.

But just like Paul, he had to take a leap of faith. He had to say, “You know what, this level in my life is not enough. I am not going to be satisfied just here at the Carphone Warehouse. I know it is a great job. I know maybe that it is a steady salary. But there is something in me that is desiring something more. There is something in me that God has placed within me that can shine and inspire the world.” And this is like the Unification Movement. We have been in the indemnity period. We have been beaten down. We have been persecuted. We have been threatened a lot. A lot of our members have been threatened, even with violence.

But now is the time, in the age of liberation, to start getting more confident. Now is the time to start taking a leap of faith and say, “Wait a minute. We are not destined for just this. We are not destined to see ourselves being persecuted for the rest of our history. We are destined for something greater. We are destined for something that can inspire the world.” This is what Paul Potts did. He went onto that stage, the most difficult stage where, if you are not good, the judges literally tear you apart. He went up there with courage; he went up there with confidence. He was still a little insecure about himself. But as the contest progressed, he became more confident, understanding, "Yes, maybe I can be great. Yes, maybe I can influence and truly inspire the world." And he IS great.

In the same way, it is our own responsibility to want to be recognized as a tradition, to not just want to stay at the Carphone Warehouse level but to be able to step out as Unificationists and say, “You know what? We can be proud of our tradition. We don’t have to be persecuted anymore. We don’t have to be misunderstood. We can explain. We can share our faith with confidence. We have something, a truth that we bring to this world that is totally unique. We understand the give and receive action, four-position foundation, all centered on selfless, altruistic true love; we understand that this is God’s essence and His plan for creation, the initial plan when He created everything.” This is a beautiful truth; it’s a powerful truth. We have to be proud of that truth that we offer to the world. Let’s give it up for Unification Church! Come on! Let’s give it up for our Unification Family!

Here in Korea, we have a church down in the south called the Changwon Church, down near Pusan, in the southern region. In the past the Changwon Church was actually quite successful. It had about 500 to 1000 members there because we had related businesses that were in that area. They were very successful. Because of that situation some of the classes in the elementary schools were filled with over 50% Unificationist Blessed Children; over 50% of the school class was Unificationist! The teachers there, even if they wanted to say something negative about Unificationism, they couldn’t because 50% of the community that they were trying to serve is Unificationist. When we saw this and compared it to other regions which have a very small Unificationist percentage, we saw that the children in those other regions were persecuted more heavily; they were made fun of more heavily; they were being bullied more. Even the teachers of other religious traditions were persecuting them, saying negative comments that would really discourage those young Blessed Children.

More than anything it is for this reason that we as Unification tradition must truly come together and desire to want to grow and to make an impact. When we see our children that are suffering, when we see our children that are being persecuted and made fun of, because of being Unificationists, because of believing what they believe, then enough is enough in our eyes. Enough is enough! When we have good church growth, contribute much to the community -- we see the Changwon Church doing very good things in the community with service, partnerships with the schools etc. -- when we benefit the community, have a strong presence and are confident as Unificationists, then we have a lot of support and a lot of people change their minds about Unificationists.

Brothers and sisters, what can we learn today? It is important to understand that God has given us a promise. He promised us that when True Parents arrive, we really will be able to make a global impact; we will be able to spread the message of the Divine Principle; to spread the message of “Inherit the True Love of God”. We will be able to impact families and help spouses become better spouses, centering on God’s true love. And yes, we may have not been perfect in the past; we may have not been always able to be successful; we may have had organizations or businesses or other related organizations that were not so successful. But now, in this age, those things are turning around and we are becoming successful. We are becoming much more successful.

As you know, I mention almost every Sunday, that we had a huge turnaround with the Chaedang. All our companies are now successful. The church organization as well is developing and growing into a church that now is caring for members. We had church growth from 14,000 to 18,000 core members in the last couple of months. Let’s give it up for our Korean church all around the nation! That is because we are becoming more confident about our faith. We are becoming more confident about our desire to want to share our faith. We have nothing to hide! We have a great faith; a great tradition! We have a great truth that we offer to the world!

It says in Galatians 6:9,

“Let us not grow weary in well-doing, for in due season we shall reap, if we do not lose heart.”

If we do not lose heart, we shall reap, God promises. That is the same thing, the same desire that we must have in our hearts, I believe, in this age of liberation to truly be able to allow the community to shine. To not only let our Korean church but the worldwide Unification Church to get stronger and brighter and, as True Father said, to let the light of love shine, to let the truth and the true love that emanates from our community shine into the world. That is truly an important thing for us as Unificationists, to take that leap of faith and to share the faith, to be able to say: "I am confident in who I am and I am excellent in what I do. I am the best teacher. I am the best businessman. Whatever work I may do, I will be the best at it and I will share my faith." This kind of confidence is something that is attractive and, in this time of liberation and complete release, it is something that we absolutely need as we move into the Growth Stage Temple.

Every morning now we are doing sincere devotions around the Growth Stage Temple and we feel just incredibly inspired. When you go to that area, you will see that this is just a totally different level that the Unification Movement will be in Korean society. We will be at the level of major churches here in Korea, the churches that are the largest amongst the world’s churches. As we progress and succeed at the Growth Stage Temple -- 21,000 new members -- where we witness and share our faith, and as we succeed and move forward towards the 210,000 member temple, that will be literally the biggest temple in the world.

It is very important for us to have confidence in what we are doing; to believe that really it is our time when True Parents are here, to share the incredible truth that they revealed from heaven, to not be shy about that, to believe what we believe, to share our belief, not be arrogant about it, but to share it, to believe it and to actualize it in our lives.

I do believe that in this age of liberation and complete release, if we do that and we want to desire that promise that God has given us, that He has not only given us individually but given to our entire community, from young to old, then I do believe that in this age, if we move forward with that kind of selfless motivation, desiring that promise, we will absolutely find ourselves living the Blessed life, inheriting the true love of God, moving the nations and moving closer every day to world peace. If you believe it, let’s give it up for God and True Parents!

Closing Prayer by Hyung Jin Nim:

Let’s join our hearts in a final prayer.

Heavenly Father, thank You so much for the blessing You have given us today. We thank You because we know You are our parent. Your only wish for us is that we can truly be all that we can be. Dear God, You have given us so much incredible potential. And You also have given us the desire in our hearts to share that potential with others. As we continue to learn, let us today understand the difference between false desire and good desire. Father, let us not cast away ALL desire, but let us understand that desire which brings You joy, our True Parents joy, and our community joy. For that type of desire is honorable, righteous and beautiful. Father, we pray that we will be confident to have that righteous desire and become saviors to this world, like our True Parents have taught us. And to be little messiahs ourselves, that go forth and wish and yearn to help and free others from suffering. Father, we pray that in our lives we can find this purpose, and as we center ourselves on this purpose, we will achieve great success and victory, all to be returned to You for Your glory.

Father, thank you that You have given us this time to reflect and to remember that it is alright to want to have You shine in this world. We can desire the truth that You have given us. We can allow the truth of our True Parents and the Divine Principle to shine into this world, to restore marriages, families, and nations. Father, we believe that this will become a reality.

To do this, we want to step out of our past, meeting those new horizons, with hope, expectancy, and a bright heart of love that will conquer all darkness. Thank you so much. We pray this together as one central blessed family. Aju. 

A Time Prepared by God

Hyung Jin Moon
June 15, 2009

The following is from a speech Hyung-jin nim gave in English to "Original Divine Principle Workshop" participants (mainly from Japan) on June 15, 2009, at the Chung Pyung Heaven and Earth Training Center

God has been so alone. He has many fans praising Him but not one true object partner with whom he can share His entire heart. Many people will praise God and say, "You are so powerful. Thank You. Please give me Your blessing," but not one person had tried to understand God completely. Our True Parents have done that. They have revealed the essence of God. They teach us that God's essence is knowable. That essence is true love; it is a selfless love that can even subjugate Satan, our worst enemy. If we can inherit that kind of true love, we can become God's object partner. God created the universe; even though we are small, if we inherit true love, we can become that incredible God's object partner. That's amazing!

Kook-jin nim works hard, but he doesn't only work hard. He is always generating results for our Unification Movement. It's not just a matter of working hard. Everyone works hard. It's a matter of making the Kingdom of Heaven here while True Parents are here. We have a mission. He has been witnessing continuously, endlessly, to the staff members in the business foundation [which he runs]. He brings new people, and then witnesses to them. He sends them to Divine Principle lectures, and then they come to the church.

He shows confidence. We have a lot of professionals come into the foundation. They are used to business in Korea, where people often go to bars, play around, and even cheat on their wives. This is the business culture in Asia and all over the world. You know about this in Japan. It's the same in Korea. People new to our business foundation find a corporate culture that prohibits drinking and cheating on spouses. If they don't like that, they can go elsewhere.

Kook-jin nim teaches by his professionalism and by his example. We have some very accomplished people working there. Our human resources director at the foundation (who came from the LG conglomerate) is highly educated and experienced; he is helping us reorganize the Headquarters Church. He is on our team.

One accountant, a highly educated and smart lady, is working on the foundation's team. We were holding a Divine Principle lecture contest. The judging panel consisted almost entirely of new members who had just been witnessed to. We wanted new members to judge the Divine Principle lectures, so that we could see who the best lecturer for new people is. During the discussion of who was good, this lady, who recently became a member, proclaimed her faith very strongly: "I chose this faith because I found truth here. If someone like our foundation chairman [Kook-jin nim] believe: in this church, I believe in it too."

She has been in top companies in society; she has worked as a professional in the business world, but then she came to the Tongil Group, whose leader is so handsome [Applause Hyung-jin nim laughs]...but he never goes to bars, never takes the employees out drinking. He works all day from early morning until night, and then goes straight home to his beautiful wife! [Applause]

The employees are so inspired.

"Unificationism is very different!" They hear the Principle, and understand the reality of the Fall. They understand why God wanted to have his children inherit His true love. They understand why the four-position foundation, a couple and family, is so important. They understand why loyalty and honesty between husband and wife are so important. It sets a new tradition for that family, and the society, nation and world. True Father is teaching men to not be animals, but instead to be true fathers, true husbands and true brothers. He is training men to learn to love their wives as a spiritual practice, teaching the value of a husband and wife. And this inspires the employees.

And then, if they visit the video center, they might look into their ancestry and discover the pain caused when an ancestor didn't have just one wife, but a second wife.

They can see how that caused pain inside the family, and why they have to indemnify that, liberate their lineage from that. Then they realize, "I have to start becoming better, for the sake of my family too." They realize this teaching is showing the way to the kingdom of heaven.

We have an incredible teaching but have not had the ability to convey that to society to bring people in -- here in Korea -- and to make the organization strong. But because the business foundation has been strengthened, it is helping the church become stronger, more rational, more organized, helping membership grow. And now for the first time in our church history in Korea, we had the core members vote and elect their regional director. In the past, the church president or international president might have appointed the person, but now the members' voices are being heard. The criterion for being able to vote in this was at least one year tithing to the church community. Members could see all information about the candidates -- education, career and personal assets. They could make sure the person they were voting for is honest. Because the members can see this information, when they decide, the best people are elected…

Within the foundation, the chairman has a lot of power, but he has given that away by delegating a say in all major decisions to others. Decisions are checked by many professionals. That system is also being used by the World Missions Headquarters, and by the Korean Church Headquarters. Every decision involving the use of members' donations, for example, has to be approved by many designated people, not just by one leader. Everyone in the line has to approve the decision. This system protects our congregation and membership. These changes are very important to our church as we grow and develop. Because of these changes, and the strengthening of our organization, we are much better now at witnessing; our members are becoming prouder of being Unificationists and thus more confident to witness.

We were attacked during the indemnity period, so we often wanted to hide and not explain who we were. In Korea that has changed a lot now. We always encourage our members: Do not be shy. Now is a time prepared by God. It is not a time to be scared, but a time to be proud of ourselves as Unificationists. True Parents shed blood, sweat and tears for this. Brothers and sisters around the world shed blood, sweat and tears for this. Members have even died for this. We must not hide this. This is our pride and our Principle, the truth that True Parents revealed from Heaven.

[Hyung-jin nim indicates a large church-symbol pendant he wears on a necklace]

I wear this wherever I go. Some of us worry about even showing our blessing rings. This is so much bigger! Too big to hide! We have to be proud.

We explain to everyone that this is our Unificationism symbol. This means give-and-take action, and this means the four-position foundation -- centered on God's true love.

Our Unification Church symbol represents the Principle. Wherever we go, we have to be proud of our Principle. It is the truth that True Father revealed. It is the truth that liberated God. It is the truth that brings true love into the couple, the family, the society, nation and world. This simple symbol. Wherever we go, we say it carries the power of heavenly fortune.

Catholics make the sign of a cross over their body when they pray. We wanted to make the sign of the Unification symbol. We received inspiration from heaven.

[Hyung-jin nim leads everyone in hand movements that outline the shape of the Unification Church symbol]

Aju. We made the Unification symbol. I love this; we do this wherever we go.

I had lunch with the Hoonsas they are dressed in their Hoonsa uniform. We all did the sign of the Unificationism symbol in a restaurant! Other people were wondering what it was. It is time to be proud of ourselves as Unificationists.

Truly, God has prepared this time. When I studied world religions at university, the Unification Church was included in our textbook on new religions. The Unification Church has the biggest foundation of any religion during the life of its founder, even compared to major religions. We will continue to become more successful while True Parents are here!

Matthew 28:16 [actually Matthew 28:19] is one of the most important passages in the Bible, and for Christianity. It's called the Great Commission. Jesus says that now they must go out into the nations to bless and baptize people, make them into disciples. This is the moment when Christianity was truly born. At that time they were being persecuted. So Christians could have just become ingrown, looking just inside their own community: They could have thought, we just have to be happy and live a Christian life.

But Jesus told them, No, you must not just look inside your church community; you must go out and make disciples, and testify to my works and my deeds, and baptize in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. He said, Do not just become an ingrown church. Look outward and witness.

From that moment we see Christianity become Christianity. In that moment we see Jesus' direction to make Christianity spread all over the world. Now, two thousand years later, there are one and a half or two billion Christians who believe in Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. Everyone on the planet knows the story of Jesus, whether or not they accept it.

But when Jesus was alive he was persecuted, mocked, imprisoned as a criminal, tortured, and sentenced to die. He suffered capital punishment. Yet, two thousand years later, Christianity is the world's largest religion.

Compare all this with us now True Parents are still here on earth. We are already teaching the Principle, serving, and teaching about true love, establishing true families in nations all over the world. While True Parents are still here we are rebuilding the church so we can witness more. Imagine two thousand years from now -- the whole world will know True Parents story -- in less than two thousand years!

The Principle is what True Father suffered for. It is the Principle that liberated God. We must not let it die. We must build, so that while True Parents are still here they can see millions of faithful children of filial piety committed to the Great Commission of building the kingdom of God and spreading the message of True Parents -- inherit God's true love. We will be victorious in this.

Let us pray.

Notes:

Matthew, chapter 28

1: Now after the sabbath, toward the dawn of the first day of the week, Mary Mag'dalene and the other Mary went to see the sepulchre.

2: And behold, there was a great earthquake; for an angel of the Lord descended from heaven and came and rolled back the stone, and sat upon it.

3: His appearance was like lightning, and his raiment white as snow.

4: And for fear of him the guards trembled and became like dead men.

5: But the angel said to the women, "Do not be afraid; for I know that you seek Jesus who was crucified.

6: He is not here; for he has risen, as he said. Come, see the place where he lay.

7: Then go quickly and tell his disciples that he has risen from the dead, and behold, he is going before you to Galilee; there you will see him. Lo, I have told you."

8: So they departed quickly from the tomb with fear and great joy, and ran to tell his disciples.

9: And behold, Jesus met them and said, "Hail!" And they came up and took hold of his feet and worshiped him.

10: Then Jesus said to them, "Do not be afraid; go and tell my brethren to go to Galilee, and there they will see me."

11: While they were going, behold, some of the guard went into the city and told the chief priests all that had taken place.

12: And when they had assembled with the elders and taken counsel, they gave a sum of money to the soldiers

13: and said, "Tell people, `His disciples came by night and stole him away while we were asleep.'

14: And if this comes to the governor's ears, we will satisfy him and keep you out of trouble."

15: So they took the money and did as they were directed; and this story has been spread among the Jews to this day.

16: Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them.

17: And when they saw him they worshiped him; but some doubted.

18: And Jesus came and said to them, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.

19: Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,

20: teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age." 

Supernatural Preparation

Hyung Jin Moon
June 13, 2009
Headquarters Church, Seoul Korea
Transcribers: Beatrice Clyburn / Regina Shin
Proofreader: Robin Debacker

Welcoming Remarks:
Yeon Ah Nim

Good afternoon brothers and sisters! Today I truly believe that God is our strength. I really hope that you have a blessed week. It is always a great honor for us to have you here in this sanctuary. For those who are joining us via internet -- we are also welcoming you as well. Welcome brothers and welcome sisters!

Hyung Jin Nim

Welcome brothers and sisters! Today we are going to start with Cheon Seong Gyeong page 600. Father says:

“All of you must embrace the hope with which you can overcome any obstacle, even death when you are confronted by it. After you have traveled that path you must be able to rise joyfully to that original homeland for which you have longed for with the hopeful thought of standing tall in front of heaven.

Brothers and sisters! When we come out to service and we offer our hearts and devotion and we come together to celebrate True Parents and God, then it’s so important that we have that kind of hopeful and joyful spirit. There are things in our lives that we can really get weighed down by, things that can be obstacles in our path but we need to remember what we have as a Unification movement -- the real commitment and mission to be able to spread True Parents’ message, “Inherit the true love of God,” to the rest of the world. Then this time spiritually becomes a very important time.

It is time for us to focus on what’s right in our lives, not what is wrong. When we focus on the goodness of God and on strength, then we start seeing our obstacles in a different way. We start facing our future with more hope and joy, just like our Father said. When we do that then God is going to be able to bring more blessings through us and into our life.

Brothers and sisters, welcome to service! Let’s participate in service with that attitude. Let’s not just observe, let’s sing with the Two Rivers Choir, let’s pray together, meditate together, let’s have all kinds of wonderful practices together and offer it to God and True Parents for all their glory. Welcome to service!

Opening Prayer by Rev. Michael Brazil:

Our Heavenly Father! Our Heavenly Mother! We thank You for this beautiful day that You have given to us and that You helped us to be here today. We are so grateful to You. We want to open our hearts and minds, giving You our thanks and gratitude in deep humility as we stand before You. We recognize Your incredible purity, love and benevolence. We want to inherit that, to go before You with hearts of deep gratitude and without regrets, without remorse, so that we can stand before You as Your true sons and daughters.

We are so grateful to Your supernatural love, guidance and grace. We know that You are raising us up to become better and greater each and every day. Help us to open our hearts and minds today, so that we might receive Your word, love and truth better.

Speak through our speaker today that he may share Your love and truth with us, so that we can be truly empowered to go out and give that true love that we are inheriting from You and from our True Parents. We ask that You bless each person here and each person watching via the internet, that Your grace will shower upon them that they may feel Your abundant love and feel You raising them up, so that they can be the very best for You and for every person they come in contact with. We thank You and we most humbly offer all this to You as blessed central families from around the world. Aju!

Hyung Jin Nim’s Interesting Story:

Brothers and sisters, let’s give it up for God and True Parents! (Applause) Thank you so much. Please be seated. Let’s encourage the Two Rivers Choir everybody! Let’s give them a huge round of applause! (Applause)

You know before we start we always like to start with something a little interesting.

I heard a story about a man who went to confessional, and he said, “Father, forgive me for I have sinned!” The priest asked, “Well, what is your sin my son?” The man started, “You know this week, I used some terrible, awful, terrible language, and I feel absolutely terrible.” “When did you use this awful language, my son? “ The priest asked. “Well you know I was golfing,” the man said, “and I hit an incredible drive, and it looked like it was going to go 250 yards but it struck a power line that was hanging over the green and fell straight down on the ground only after about 100 yards.” “Is that when you swore, when you used bad language?” The man said, “No, Father, after that a squirrel ran out of the bushes, grabbed my ball in his mouth and began to run away.” “Is that when you used bad language my son?”

“No, Father, you see the squirrel was running away and the eagle came down out of the sky, grabbed the squirrel in its talons and flew away.” “Is that when you used bad language my son?” “No, Father, not yet. As the eagle carried the squirrel away in its claws, it flew towards the green, and as it passed over a bit of forest near the green, the squirrel dropped my ball.” “Is that when you swore then? That’s when you swore, isn’t it?” “No, because you see the ball fell, it struck a tree, bounced through some bushes, careened off a big rock and rolled through a sand trap onto the green and stopped within 6 inches of the hole!” The priest said,” So I see you missed the putt!” (Applause) Oh! You got it today! Oh! You golf lovers, you got it!

Hyung Jin Nim’s Sermon:

Brothers and sisters, I want to talk to you about supernatural preparation today.

You know we have to know that we live in a supernatural time. As a Unification movement we’ve endured the incredible pains and struggles of the indemnity period, and now we’ve entered into the age of liberation through True Parents’ victory. Our church is modernizing; it’s developing to meet the changes of a modern era, and we are changing society’s perspective on Unificationism. Knowing that God has supernaturally prepared this time and to be ready to reap this age’s blessing for the Unification Church, this is one of the keys for us living the blessed life.

Let’s take a look at some of these world Scriptures today.

Today we’ll start with Christianity, Matthew 7:7. We’ll read that together,

“Ask and it will be given to you, seek and you will find, knock and it will be opened to you.”

Here again we see in Christianity’s Scriptures that in the preparation of a new age, it’s important that we have to do some portion, we have to ask. If we don’t ask, if we don’t seek, we will not find. It doesn’t happen, the blessings of the age do not pour upon us by just staying still. We have to be able to reap the blessings, do our 5% so to speak.

Let’s take a look at Islam today, the Koran. This is the 13th Sutra. We’ll read that together,

“God changes not what is in a people until they change what is in themselves.”

Again we see that God just does not pour upon blessings and bring about change in our life until we make the initiative of making that change in ourselves from the beginning.

Let’s take a look at Daoism today. This is the Daodejing, this is the 23rd verse. We’ll read that together,

“He who conforms to the Way is gladly accepted by the Way; he who conforms to virtue is gladly accepted by virtue.”

Again we see that the Way does not just conform us to itself, that we must also conform our self, do our 5% so to speak in being able to reap the blessings of the virtue and the Way.

Let’s take a look at True Parents’ words, centering on True Parents’ words on December 11, 1983. We’ll read that together:

“God creates to the level of 95% and then human beings should add their efforts in accordance with God’s basic rules for creation in order to establish a value standard of 100%. In this way God wants to give human beings the value of having participated in the completion of His will.”

I love that! The value of having participated in the completion of God’s work, allowing us that opportunity!

We know when we look at the Scriptures we see the story of Jesus, and in Matthew 28:16, after Jesus resurrected he told the disciples to go to a certain mountain in Galilee. When Jesus told them to go, Jesus appeared to them, and when they saw him, the Scriptures say they worshiped him but some doubted.

Then in Matthew 28:18 Jesus came down to them and said, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always to the very end of the age," Jesus says. This, in Christianity, is known as the ‘great commission.’ To spread the word of Jesus Christ, to spread his message, is one of the most important responsibilities as a Christian.

Jesus said to them that he would be with them, and thus began the incredible story and journey of Christianity. It has grown to become the world’s largest religion with over 1.5 to 2 billion followers worldwide. But when you think about it, when Christ was alive, he was probably one of the most controversial figures.

We think that Christ is very kind and very gentle all the time, floating around on a beautiful cloud, whispering to his disciples and uttering beautiful melodious verses, saying, “Love thy neighbor, and do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” etc. But the Bible paints an extremely radical vision of Jesus Christ.

When we look in the Bible we see Jesus as an incredibly super-super-controversial messianic figure. In Matthew 23, there is the chapter called the “Seven Woes”, and here Jesus is chastising the Pharisees; he’s chastising the Sadducees. These are different sects within Judaism. I just want to give you a sense of the severity in which he speaks. In Matthew 23:15, Jesus says, “Woe to you teachers of the Law, and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You travel over land and seek to win a single convert, and when he becomes one you make him twice as much a son of hell as you are.” This is in the Bible. This is straight out of the Bible!

Matthew 23:27, “Woe to you teachers of the Law, and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like white-washed tombs which look beautiful on the outside, but on the inside you are full of dead men’s bones and everything unclean. In the same way on the outside, you appear to be people of righteousness, but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness.”

Again in Matthew 23:33, Jesus speaks, “You snakes! You brood of vipers!” These are very, very controversial statements. “How will you escape being condemned to hell?” He’s attacking the religious orders here. He’s scathingly condemning them in these scriptures. And sometimes when we reflect back on ourselves, when we look at our own tradition, sometimes we feel Father uses very controversial language.

But when you compare it actually to what’s in the Scriptures, to what Jesus said, it’s actually not as severe as when we see Jesus speaking. In this particular Scripture, Jesus is really calling and challenging the other traditions. He’s calling them snakes, and vipers, and tombs of dead men’s bodies. He uses very controversial language.

But also Jesus’ actions, he is eating with prostitutes and tax collectors. As a Jew that would be totally out of the Law to speak with the people that are really looked down upon in society. Jesus is spending time with them, and saying that he is the way, the truth, and the light! A tremendously controversial figure!

And so when we see Jesus at the end when he is crucified, he dies really with only 2 people that do not betray him, that do not deny him at his death. We see Mary and Mary Magdalene, his mother and the prostitute Mary Magdalene, who don’t betray him to the end.

Many scholars call Jesus an extremely “outlandish and controversial messiah.” One scholar when I was at Harvard said, “Jesus was a social extremist, a very extreme social extremist.” But despite that incredibly outlandish figure, Christianity grows to dominate the entire world and the story of Jesus is known in every single corner of the globe.

But when you compare Christianity’s situation to us, we have to look at our situation with a little grain of salt. When we compare Christianity’s situation to us, True Parents are still here. They haven’t been crucified. They are here and we are already in some way or another in 180 plus nations of this world. We already have thousands and tens of thousands of disciples, believers in True Parents, and society is seeing our movement in a growth stage. It is seeing us change, and it is seeing us mature as an organization, as a movement.

And we are moving to the growth stage temple in Yongsan here. That temple is about 5 times bigger than this and it’s not on one of the side streets, it’s on a major highway. We are in a totally visible social area.

And so in this time in our faith, we can see that so many things have been prepared. Society’s view of us has changed. The media’s view of us has changed. There’s tremendous preparation that has been done, that God has done for this period. And so it is our time to truly be confident in our faith, confident and share our faith, like the great commission that all Christians do.

You know we had some wonderful Mormon visitors from our friend Peter. He is a wonderful brother who always is sharing his faith, bringing people to church, always really explaining and sharing his faith, witnessing to so many wonderful people. And we had some wonderful Mormon visitors here, wonderful young people from the States, and we ended up talking after service. They ended up asking what the throne was, what was the meaning of that set-up. We explained about the meaning of True Parents, how we see they fulfill the mission of Jesus Christ, etc...

And at one point, Peter invited them down, “Oh! Let’s go and have some coffee. We’ll have some coffee downstairs.” And I love how they just simply said, “You know in our Mormon tradition, we don’t drink coffee for this and this and that reason.” As you know, in the Mormon tradition, no addictive substances are allowed, not even coffee or tea. So it was wonderful to see them just explain that, instead of trying to hide behind, “because that may seem strange that we don’t drink coffee or tea, so we don’t know how to explain that.” They were very confident how they explained it. They just very openly, very casually, very naturally explained, "You know in our tradition, we don’t consume anything that has the potential to be addictive.”

And when I saw this, it really struck a chord in me, because I really thought, “Yes! This is exactly the way it is important for us to deal with our own faith.”

See, when people ask us what we believe, it is important for us to tell them what we believe, to just be natural about it and be confident about what we believe. When we do it in a round about way, “Oh! You know, we’re really not a religion. We are just a family federation. We are just peace-loving families gathering together.” This really does not do justice to our mission and to our religion.

See we all know that we’re not only here for world peace. We know that’s one part of our mission, but we are a religion with the Divine Principle. We have a Scripture, we have a theology, we have a truth, and we believe that True Parents came to fulfill the mission of Jesus Christ as the True Parents of heaven and earth. This is a very important part of the Unificationist faith. And so we believe that God has been waiting in pain; He is a God of pain, and He has a providential timeline and a history, to see the day when His children can inherit His true love and then establish families and nations and then a world etc...

When I saw those young people from the Mormon tradition, just being very confident about their faith, there was something very attractive to that, there was something very appealing to that, very... in Korean, “meoshiso” (cool!) about that!

You know we’re here in Korea; I was talking to Hoon Sook Nim the other day. Of course hers is the top ballet here in Korea, and she was having lunch with the Sejong Cultural Center president. That is the biggest cultural center here in Seoul. She was having lunch with him and a couple of other dignitaries at a luncheon, and they were talking about religion.

One of the people ended up talking about Christianity, ended up saying, “You know I used to live near Chong Pa Dong, which is this area. I heard in the early days of the Unification Movement about a Ewha University professor who heard about this very terrible cult called the Unification Movement, and who came to actually convert people of that cult to Christianity.

She came to the church and she ended up being converted herself, became a disciple of True Parents, and all of you know who this person is. That’s Dr Seuk’s mother, Dr Seuk who is the president of the Korean church. And so he was talking about this situation where he lived in Chong Pa Dong, he heard about this incredible university professor who ended up being converted to this small cult.

He also head about Colonel Bo Hi Pak selling his own home at that time, to support the church at a very early age. They had a wonderful luncheon while Hoon Sook Nim was explaining. They ended up talking, and at the close of it saying a prayer. One of the gentlemen there was a Song Bo Ku Chung Chang, who is basically a Christian elder of a certain region of Seoul. He is part of one of the largest churches in the world, and one of the largest churches here in Korea. And so he asked everybody, “Let’s just pray together!” They all grabbed hands and held hands and they all ended up saying a beautiful prayer together. And after the prayer he asked Hoon Sook Nim, “Do you actually have a faith life? Do you practice a faith?” And she said, “Oh, yes I do. I am an Unificationist. My dad is Bo Hi Pak, and my father-in-law is Rev Moon!” Let’s give it up for Hoon Sook Nim! (Applause)

She just said it straight up. She said it straight up! No hiding it, just straight, “I am proud of who I am. This is my faith, this is my community, my dad, this is my parents, and this is my father, boom, and boom, boom... very, very confident! And when she confidently expressed it like that, he could not react in a negative way. He only could say, “Oh! That’s very interesting! I was in that area at the time, etc...” But she was so confident. This was one of the wonderful things that she was explaining to me, and it really inspired me. This is really awesome! And because of this confidence, she ends up attracting tremendous people to the church. Just about a month ago, we had the vice-president of Samsung Card come and join us and worship with us at the service. She’s attracting these wonderful people because she’s so open about her faith, about herself as Unificationist.

And in this time the spirit world is moving with us. It’s a prepared time, a supernatural time for us. You know just a couple of months ago, in April, when it was the Buddha’s birthday here in Korea (as you know Buddhism is a very large tradition here in Korea) we were invited to represent Unificationism to go visit the temple to be with the monks and the other dignitaries there, and we had a wonderful celebration at the Buddha’s birthday, very wonderful! They treated us so well! There were hundreds and thousands of people that came out to offer gratitude to the Buddha, etc...

And we ended up having lunch with all these VIPs. There were ministers of all the different representative religions, and the cardinal was there. There were Christian ministers, and of course Buddhist monks were out there, etc... The current minister of culture, many current political figures were also out there, and many societal leaders. I met a couple of businessmen and a couple of lawyers that were present.

After I was called up to offer the flowers to the Buddha on behalf of Unificationism, we started exchanging cards very naturally with the VIPs. You know they started given cards, receiving cards, doing “insa,” doing greetings, and I ended up being seated right next to an evangelical Christian minister. I had no idea that the brother right next to me was an evangelical Christian minister, but as they called us up, “Unificationism, please go up to offer the flowers,” and as I came back he grabbed my hand. He started shaking my hand with this huge smile on his face saying, “Hey! I heard so much about you guys! I heard you guys are going through a lot of good changes and I heard you are ministering at Chong Padong church.”

He started talking to me, I was so surprised. I said, “This is an evangelical Christian minister, Korean Christian minister, so excited about Unificationism!” (Applause) 50 years ago it was absolutely unheard of to have that kind of reaction from an evangelical Korean Christian minister!

A few weeks later (very interesting, we really feel the spiritual world is moving), a few weeks later, I received a call from the minister. This minister that we were sitting next to at the Buddha’s birthday, he gives me a call. We end up finding out that the minister is the chairman of the Big Seven Religious Forum. That is the biggest religious forum in Korea, including Catholicism, Christianity, Buddhism, etc...the big seven.

Unificationism is not part of that forum. But he said, “Hey! I’d like to introduce you to these guys. And so I’d like to have lunch with you and have lunch with us at the Big Seven.” I said, “My God! I’ve been sitting next to this man on the Buddha’s birthday, a Christian minister, and here he is the chairman of the Big Seven Religious Forum!

A year ago we saw the placard advertising the seven great religions in Korea. The seven great religions of Korea participated in some kind of service activity. But we were very discouraged a year ago when we saw that placard. We saw all the different religions, we even saw Won Buddhism, which is a new form of Buddhism here in Korea that has grown tremendously. But we were very discouraged, because we did not see Unificationism up on that placard.

But here we are one year later, and the chairman is inviting Unificationism to have lunch with the Big Seven! This is a great, great start, we really felt! It’s not going to guarantee that we are in this big religious forum, but at least it’s a tremendous start and we want to offer all the thanks to spiritual world and True Parents and God. Let’s give them a big round of applause! (Applause) It really felt spiritual world was moving!

You know Father’s book is number 2 on the best-seller list and absolutely wherever we go -- in the mountain training, every morning we meet these elderly men that are exercising up there, we ended up giving them autobiography books. You know one of them just this morning wrote us a letter, “Thank you Tong Il Kyo ministers” because they know who we are up there.

And we were there at the autobiography party just a couple of weeks ago, and Father got up on the stage. He stressed the importance of the Four Great Saints, and that the Four Great Saints are moving in the spiritual world. When he was doing that, it really struck me, because just a couple of days before, this minister of the Big Seven Religions, the evangelical Christian minister was inviting us to come to have lunch and participate in that meeting with the other big religions. I really felt, “My goodness what Father was talking about really is happening in our own lives.”

A wonderful new progression in our church as well is happening with Kook Jin Hyung here now managing the Jaedan. As you all know he moved that from a hundred million dollars debt to now, within 3 years, a 50 million dollar profit. Incredible turn around! But in order to do that he had to hire a lot of new professionals, people who worked in the top five companies. Of course, In Sup Nim works with a lot of them as well. In Sup Nim also recruited a lot of those wonderful people.

At the time we had about 5% of the Jaedan that were actually Unificationists. Most of the Jaedan representatives and professionals here were not of our tradition. But I am now happy to announce that that percentage has escalated. Now up to 40% of the Jaedan consider themselves Unificationists. Let’s give it up for the Jaedan! (Applause)

And it’s not because they were switched or anything. These professionals that worked at the top 5 firms here in Korea, they have taken on the faith of the Unification tradition. They have understood the founder’s philosophy. They went and listened to the Divine Principle lectures. They listened to the different courses at the 21 Heaven’s Fortune Center, etc... and they decided to become Unificationist.

Kook Jin hyung just told me this the other day when he was talking about the incredible history that is happening here in Korea. You know, for the temple that we are now moving into and we are now renovating (the renovating starts very soon) but Korea for the first time actually raised 22 million dollars for the temple that we will be moving into, for the world temple. That’s an incredible accomplishment! Let’s give it up for Korea! (Applause) Korea did that!

But this is the very amazing thing! Not all just members. The new professionals at the staff of the Jaedan took ownership. They newly became Unificationists, but the Jaedan in and of itself raised over six million dollars for the growth stage temple. They did that on their own with new members. This is an absolutely incredible thing that we’ve never seen in the Korean church! (Applause) It’s an absolutely incredible accomplishment!

One of the women CPAs whom we meet a lot and we work with -- she works very close to the Jaedan, she is one of the top CPAs there -- is extremely proud of her faith as a Unificationist. I am sometimes surprised, sitting in my seat, when she’s talking about her faith as a Unificationist and how proudly she talks about it. She of course contributed to the temple building. She is also so inspired.

We had a Divine Principle lecture where we were choosing and selecting new teachers for the Divine Principle lectures that we do for the Jaedan, and she was one of the judges on the panel, and she was so excited talking about her faith. You know she was saying," You know the reason why I chose this faith is because of this and this and that reason. The reason why I am an Unificationist is for this and this and that reason.” It’s so inspiring to see her so confidently talking about herself as an Unificationist!

And I have seen her in meetings. She is of course one of the most brilliant people at the Jaedan. In the analysis where they analyze and rank the top CPAs, top lawyers etc. in the Jaedan, she was ranked absolutely at the top, number 1. She was off the charts! She’s incredibly brilliant, she is smart, she has an incredible education, and she has an incredible experience base. Just so inspiring to see these kinds of people being excited about their faith as Unificationists!

We work with another person at the Jaedan. He is a human resources director. He’s now helping us reorganize the Headquarters church, helping us strengthen the organization, and helping us strengthen the infrastructure here. He was actually the former HR director for LG. He ended up giving up that job and coming to our team, and now he considers himself to be a very proud Unificationist. Let’s give it up for him! (Applause) Mr. Cho, he’s helping us restructure the church and that will help give strength into our organizations around the world.

And see these new professionals, these people are new members. They did not grow up in our tradition, they are newly witnessed members. And they have world class talent, they have world class education, they have world class experience. They are in the professional field, some of these individuals 20-30 years.

And there is a new wave of Unificationists that are helping us. They are helping us to spread the message, “Inherit the true love of God!” They are helping us build our church, build Unificationism so it can really do like the great commission, and show the incredible work of True Parents, show the providential significance of True Parents.

And one thing that was very inspiring is that whenever these individuals come, they are inspired as Unificationists, but we looked at their membership registration card and underneath where you put your spiritual dad or spiritual mom they put Kook Jin hyung as their spiritual dad. He’s got a lot of kids spiritually (Applause). But it’s so wonderful to see that these young new professionals are joining the movement. They are excited to work with the new leadership, etc...

Brothers and sisters what can we learn today? God has done some incredible supernatural preparation for Unification Church. Remember in the early days when we were in the indemnity period how much incredible persecution we had to endure. The first generation here in Korea, in Japan, even in the States endured incredible persecution. But let’s remember just like the story of Jesus. When Jesus was alive, only two disciples ended up being faithful to him as he passed on the crucifix. But then the tradition and the story of Jesus ended up being supernaturally spread throughout the entire world.

But you compare that to our tradition. We are here, True Parents are here. We are already in 180 plus nations of the world. We’re teaching our faith to those communities, we’re doing works of service, we’re feeding the poor, we’re providing medicine to the sick, and True Parents are still here. See, with confidence and faith in this new era, with witnessing and testifying to our own faith, being confident in what we believe, doing our 5% so to speak, I believe that Unificationism will absolutely move to the world stage, not 2,000 years from now, but we believe in our lifetime we will see it move to the next stage!! Let’s give it up for Unification Church! (Applause)

And it begins with the momentum being created here in the fatherland. It begins with the momentum here where we have an incredible societal readiness for Unification Movement and our teaching and our beliefs. And when we move now to the Growth Stage and Perfection Stage Temples, where we are much more visible in society’s view, I absolutely declare and I believe that we will see Unificationism move through that supernatural preparation and become and be endowed with supernatural favor, be able to really share this incredible story the journey of True Parents’ life, the providential history and all of our own blessed central families throughout this world to truly inherit the true love of God.

Brothers and sisters if you accept the message, let’s give it up for God and True Parents this day. (Loud applause) It’s now our time! It really is!!

Prayer by Hyung Jin Nim:

Heavenly Father, True Parents, thank You so much for this incredible day that You have given to us. Father, we thank You for preparing this incredible, supernatural age. It is an age where miracles for our movement begin to happen.

We have sweated and shared our tears and our blood for our Unification movement. We have seen True Parents walking the way of the cross in the indemnity period. We have seen the elders in our movement offering their way on that thorny path. But with the incredible opening of the age of liberation and complete release, True Parents were able to become Your object partner and liberate You from Your loneliness.

We know that because of that, this age is opening and we see our movement transforming and changing. We see it becoming so much more transparent and fair. We see the movement being accepted in society’s eyes and more and more impressing society. We see that this age has truly been prepared. We want to acknowledge all Your efforts, all Your supernatural efforts that You have done for us. We also want to acknowledge the incredible efforts of the great saints that are with us and are moving with the other religious people to be able to really understand True Parents’ life and providential course.

Thank You so much for this time. We pray that in this time we can have confidence and that we can share our faith with pride. And that we truly know that we will make a difference in this world as Unificationists. We thank You so much for You have truly blessed us. We want to offer all this to You in joy and gratitude in our own names as central blessed families. Aju! 

Now Is Our Time

Hyung Jin Moon
June 6, 2009
Headquarters Church, Seoul Korea
Transcribed by: Mary Hapeman / Kevin Brugman
Proofread / Polished by: Jennifer Yashiro / Bruno Klotz

Welcoming Remarks:
Yeon Ah Nim:

Good afternoon, brothers and sisters! It is really great to see you all today. We are really blessed by God to have such beautiful weather and beautiful company around us. We are always honored to have you in this sanctuary; and for those who are joining us through the Internet, we are welcoming you as well. Welcome brothers, and welcome sisters.

Hyung Jin Nim:

Welcome, brothers and sisters. Today we are going to start with Cheon Seong Gyeong 854 and 855. Father speaks about the spirit world. He says:

“The spirit world is a world where it is possible for things to exist or occur beyond anyone’s imagination. For those who know of that world, there is nothing on this earth that they can feel attached to. That is why even when I am locked up in prison, I have no problem. Our short life on earth is like holding one’s breath for an instant, when compared to life in the eternal world.”

Here Father is reminding us on one side how short life is, but on the other side how precious this life is. Brothers and sisters, it is so important to know that we only live once; and so it is so important for us to be able to actualize all the incredible potential that God has placed within us.

If you had a little stress this week, if somebody was talking behind your back this week, then now is the time during service, let it all out! It is time to praise it out. Get it out. We want to get that out to start the new week with a new powerful attitude, a victorious mind and an overcoming power, knowing that this week we will be able to return more glory and victory to God. If you want to do that, let’s give it up for Him this day. (Lots of applause)

Welcome, brothers and sisters. Whenever we start service, we always want to remember to not only observe, but let’s participate. The Two Rivers’ Choir they are giving it their all to really inspire us and to give us new energy for the week; and it is our time as well. Sing with them. Lift those praises up. That’s when the blessings start coming down. When you start coming and participating like that, then the Heavens can open up, and your new week will be more powerful, and more harmonious, more amazing. If you believe it, let’s return the praise up to God today. (Applause) Welcome, guys. Welcome to service.

Family Pledge:

At this time I would like to ask you to all rise and up and recite the Family Pledge together.

Family Pledge - Number 5

Our family, the owner of Cheon Il Guk, pledges to strive every day to advance the unification of the spirit world and the physical world as subject and object partners, by centering on true love.

We will recite the meaning of the Family Pledge as well.

The mind is in the subject position and the body is in the object position. Likewise, the spirit world is in the subject position and the physical world is in the object position. Therefore, we should live a life on earth in accordance with the spirit world. We should lead lives of deep experiences through which we can feel the spiritual world and God’s sorrow and joy. Only God and true love can link the spirit world and the physical world. We should strive every day to advance God’s will. Without stopping, we must advance toward God’s will every day, even if it is only one step. Aju.

Meditation Practice:

Brothers and sisters, let’s take this time to unite our mind, body and breath. Let’s start with our body. We are going to stretch towards the earth today, and really plant our feet down, almost as if the roots of trees are growing from our feet into the ground, holding us down. Stretch towards the earth, as you breathe in the earth’s energy, breathing in towards our heart. As we pass our living heart, let’s stretch up towards the heavens today. Really stretch. Let’s receive what God wants to give us today… new life, new hope.

Breathing in, as we pass our living heart, breathing out towards the earth, stretch towards the earth. All the stresses wash away. Let’s breathe the earth’s stabilizing energy. Breathing in towards our heart, as we pass our beating heart, breathing out towards the heavens. Really stretch towards the heavens. Let’s stretch our bodies, stretch our faith. Breathing in God’s new compassion, God’s new hope for us, breathing in. As we pass our living hearts, breathing out.

Okay, let’s be seated now. Let’s prepare our minds. We’re going to sit at the front of our chairs, so we can keep our backs straight, and keep our spine long, and our breath deep and natural. Let us now gently close our eyes and let’s move into our first meditation and visualization practice.

Let us visualize ourselves now walking in a beautiful spring meadow. We can notice that we are walking in this beautiful flower meadow. I invite you to smell the fragrances of the new flowers that are blooming. We can notice the birds flying from tree to tree. We can notice the beautiful sun above us. We can see the beautiful shade beneath each of the trees. We can feel the soft grass under our feet.

As we walk up ahead, we will notice a beautiful stream that is meandering down. We can see the sparkles of the sun dancing atop that stream. We can hear the water run over the smooth stones in the river bed. We can hear the beautiful stream, the sound, the healing energy of the stream, the water energy.

Let us stand near that ever flowing, ever alive stream. Let us gently close our eyes in this incredible place; and let that sound of that healing water completely wash over us, melting away any stress. As we breathe in, in our hearts let us say, “I am alive.” And as you breathe out all the stress or knots, breathing out, in our hearts let us say, “Thank You.” One more time, as we breathe in this beautiful new Spring, “I am alive”; as we breathe out old life, breathing out, in our hearts let us say, “Thank You.” One more time, breathing in new life, deeply, “I am alive.” Breathing out old life, in our hearts, “Thank You.”

Heavenly Father and True Parents have blessed us with the blessed life to inherit the true love of God, to be able to be embodiments of that selfless love that can even bring the worst enemy to natural surrender. If we inherit that love, then we will be greater blessings to our families, to our community, to our city, to our nation, and our world.

Rev. Michael Brazil’s Opening Prayer:

Let us pray.

Our Heavenly Father, our Heavenly Mother, We thank You so much that we can be here today. We thank You for this past week and the blessings You showered upon us, for protecting us and allowing us to be here. We want to come together and join our hearts, to offer them to You. We want to welcome You, and invite You to be here with us. We know that You do not go where You are not welcomed; and we truly want to welcome You here. We want to open our hearts to You and allow You to flow in, and to be excited and inspired by what You see and what You feel.

We want to make this time our time, that now is the time that we can be here together for You, together for each other, to draw on Your power, Your love, Your spirit, Your truth, Your Beauty, to be made alive, anew, reinvigorated, re-inspired so that we might more brightly shine and reflect Your love, so that when You see us, You see Yourself, so that when we see each other, we see You. Our Heavenly Father, our Heavenly Mother, we truly want to be true mirror-like reflections of Your heart and Your truth. So be with us today. Help us to open our hearts and minds to receive Your word. Speak through our speaker today. Shower Your love and truth through him that we may be even more empowered to do more for You and for each other Again, we thank You and we most humbly offer and report all this to you as blessed central families from around the world. Aju.

Interesting Story:

I would like to start with something a little interesting story. Actually one of my Buddhist monk friends sent this. And there is the question, “Why did the Buddha have such a difficult time vacuuming his sofa? Why is that? Because he had no attachments!”

Main Sermon:

Brothers and sisters, I'd like to talk to you about 'Now Is Our Time'. You know, we learn from the Principle, that when certain conditions are met, then a victory can be achieved. And now that we have successfully, as a movement, overcome the indemnity period, and True Parents opened the age of liberation, we are ready for victory in our lives. It is now our time. Of course, because of our five percent responsibility it is our effort that really will substantialize this. When we're open to changes that happen in our lives, even though at the time they may seem undecipherable, and we cannot fully understand them, God can use those moments to bring more victory in our lives.

While we're patient with Him and let Him mold and adapt us to the new door He's opening or preparing for us, then we're getting ready for His blessings to come in. And learning to keep strong during the condition period and prepare with faith for the victory, this is one of the keys to living the blessed life. We'll take a look at some of these world scriptures today.

Let's take a look at Christianity today, from I. Corinthians 10:31. Let's look at that together:

“Whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.”

Even when we're in times that are tough, even when we're in the valley of the shadow of death -- so say the Psalmists -- it is in those times, where it is even more important for us to offer our praise, to let the praise out and to, whatever we do, do all for the glory of God.

Let's take a look at Islam today. This is the Koran 40th Suda. We're going to read that together:

“He is the living one. There is no God but He. Call upon Him, giving Him sincere devotion. Praise be to God, Lord of the world.”

Once again, God is helping us through the difficult times, even the seemingly irrational times when we can't understand why God is putting us through this. But when we praise the Lord and allow God to be praised, even in times of difficulty, He can come and bless us.

Let's take a look at Confucianism today. This is the Book of Changes, the I Ching, verse 50. We're going to read that together:

“The superior man, taking his stance as righteousness requires, adheres firmly to Heaven's decree. He allows Heaven to work through him."

And let's take a look at True Parents' words. This is Cheon Seong Gyeong, page 2164. Let's read that together:

“From this viewpoint, what kind of stance do you all need to take? In meeting this new age, your conviction for the dawning of the homeland must be burning in your chest, more passionately than any other thing. In other words, you have to feel pride in becoming a flag bearer, who builds the homeland that God has longed for, for six thousand years.”

In the Biblical tradition there's the story of Jacob. We know, of course, that Jacob received the inheritance that Esau, his elder brother, was to receive. And so he had to flee, he had to flee to Padam Aram where he worked under his uncle Laban. And as the story goes, he toils there for 21 years, to earn the daughters as brides; and also to earn a large inheritance from Laban.

But Laban did not treat him kindly. From day one he was giving him trouble and grief, discouraging him, telling him negative comments, saying, “You’re worthless. I don't know why my brother has a son like you.” Laban actually changed his wages ten times, trying to limit the blessings and fortunes of Jacob.

In Genesis 31:6 Jacob is talking about how God protected him through those challenges. When Laban said, "I think I'm going to change your wages. The sheep that have spots on them, I think those will be your wages from now on," whenever he changed the wages like that, then miraculously, supernaturally, the sheep started having those kinds of offspring, with the spots. And then, when Laban says, "I think I'm going to change my mind, you're going to have now the ones with the stripes," then, supernaturally, the sheep bore striped sheep.

And so, even though Laban was trying to trick and to steal what was rightfully Jacob's, God used that to turn it around to bless Jacob even more. And what happened here? The situation was really relentless. Jacob was constantly being abused by Laban, his uncle. He was always being cheated out of his own wages that he had been slaving and toiling for. And so God turned this situation around. What was meant to destroy Jacob, God turned that around to bless Jacob.

And Jacob didn't know what to do at the time. It seemed so irrational. Many nights he wondered, I'm sure he wondered, “What am I doing under this crazy uncle? I don't know what I am doing here, in Padam Aram, all the way in Mesopotamia. I don't know why I took the inheritance from my brother Isaac. I don't know why this all happened. This is a total nightmare.” On top of that, God all of a sudden tells Jacob to go back to Canaan. He said, "Now I want you to go home, after you betrayed so many of your family." And he obeys God. He takes Rachel and Leah, takes the children, and takes his livestock that he earned, that God supernaturally gave him, and he leaves.

But this story doesn't end here. Because Laban comes after him, he chases after him, wanting to kill him. He captures him and hunts him down, and then they have a confrontation. And Jacob challenges Laban, because Laban is saying, “You stole all of my flock, you stole all my riches. How can you have stolen them?” And Jacob said, “If the God of my father, the God of Abraham and Isaac, had not been with me, you would sure have sent me away empty handed. I know you were going to steal everything from me, to use my labor for free and give me no blessing, but God turned that around. And every time you tried to steal my blessing, God gave it back to me.” So this is what happened in the story of Jacob.

And life is like this. Many times we face unfair circumstances in our life, unfair bosses that we may work under, or co-workers that speak against us. We slave away in some aspect of our life, but really have no recognition there. No matter how hard we try, how hard we try to improve, it seems that somehow the whole world is trying to sabotage our promotion and the blessings that God wants to bring to us. But during those times it's so important to remember who is in control. No boss or unfair circumstance in our life is a writer of our destiny or of our success, of our fortune, of heavenly fortune.

In the end, when we remain faithful to God, God and all the spirit world mobilize to turn our situation around for blessing, just like Jacob, just how they turned it around for Jacob. And Laban changed his wages, Jacob's wages, to enslave Jacob, to keep him as a slave, to keep him impoverished, etc. But God made it so that that very impoverishment, that very enslavement, became his liberation; and became his blessing. And he walked out, as the richest man in all of Canaan. Let's give it up for God. (Applause)

I heard about a team leader working in one company. He was working under the director of the department, and he worked very hard. He created a lot of results. But the director would never realize this young talented man. He would take for himself the credit for all the work that the team leader was doing. And so this team leader was very discouraged, very down. Every day it was a battle going to work. Every day he wanted to quit, "I want to give up, I just can't go, I can't go to work. I can't work under that person every day”, and he doubted himself, "Maybe I'm not as talented, maybe it is true that he's doing all the work, and I'm not really contributing.”

But he adapted to this stress, positively. He began to exercise, and he began to go volunteering and mentoring. He started doing things that helped him contribute, to feel value in his own life. And what happened? When he started doing these positive activities, he found that his stresses, the fear and the anxiety, the doubts of himself, began to melt away. He saw things from a different perspective; and he found joy in serving, and took care of his health, making sure that he stood strong in his mind, making sure that he kept positive, and he kept praising God through the rough times. And God showed him that He, God, was in control. That director, who harassed him, who took all the credit for his work -- guess what? He was supernaturally moved to another company, and now that team leader was promoted to be the director. Let’s give it up for that team leader. He is director now!!

Let's remember that God is always taking count. He's watching our lives. He knows what happens. We may think at times, when unfair things come towards us, “God, You left me. You really don't know my situation.” Well, see, God is taking count. He knows exactly what is happening in our lives. During those times, let's always remember, that God never abandons His children. Rather He bands with His children. He allows us to experience other things that we may have never, ever had the chance to experience, even though at the time, they may be tough. When we get through them we become better, we become stronger, more persevering. We have more overcoming power. We become stronger in every aspect.

And so, if we stay faithful, God can turn around that situation. He can bring us more blessing, move the director, He can make the sheep have spotted sheep, speckled sheep, striped sheep. This is the way that we want to keep our faith in our life.

As you know, this week we had the autobiography party for Father's autobiography book. Father's book is now number two national best seller, number two (Applause) in the nation! And so we are all so very proud of Father, very happy about him, so pleased. That's my daddy, yeah! We're so happy.

And the CEO of the publishing company was there, at the very front. She was so proud, so proud of True Parents. And so Father came out to speak; and initially he was scheduled to give a twelve minute speech. It lasted a very "short" three hours (Laughing). And it showed his incredible desperation. He was so desperate to truly share with the nations, to get them awakened to the fact that God is alive, that God wants to establish true families that are centered on God's true love. He really was sharing his whole heart, pouring, overflowing with emotion.

At one point he was tearing up and crying, saying, "I feel like that I'm still far from accomplishing my mission." He was tearing up at that moment during the speech. So much emotion and so much heart was pouring out. But the situation was not the most ideal. We heard that the English translation was not done at the best level, and so the heart of True Parents was not communicated; rather, a more sarcastic view of True Parents was communicated. So, we were all very worried. We didn't know how the dignitaries would deal with this. We didn't know how it would all be taken. And we were preparing the next day for the media to say something negative about the event, probably some kind of media onslaught upon the event.

So the next morning a lot of us were stressed out. The next morning I called the PR manager. And I asked him about the articles, how did it go? And he told me how shocked the reporters were. For many of them it was the very first time that they saw Father speak. They had read his book, and they were really expecting a very peaceful message, a very calm message, but Father came out with so much enthusiasm and passion. You can see his desperation. But many of them couldn't understand why Father is so enthusiastic, why is he so powerful up there. Our PR manager explained, that Father is 90 years old. He has this incredible mission to save the world. And he has such a pressure on his shoulder. And he's sharing his heart. He's letting it out, so that we would become awakened. It was really amazing.

When I called the PR manager, he said, "I believe there's not going to be anything negative about the event.” When I heard this, honestly, I really didn't believe it. I thought somebody was going to write something negative about us. But we checked the reports all day. We checked them all day. And what happened? God really allowed those people to emotionally understand True Parents' and understand True Father's heart, understand that at 90 years of age he's still standing on the forefront, trying to fight for peace in this world. And that day every single article that came out was praising the event! Let's give it up for God! Let's give it up!

That was a tremendous, tremendous change! There's a tremendous change. Kook Jin hyung was just recently in Forbes magazine. He was in Forbes magazine! Our Kook Jin hyung was in Forbes magazine! Let's give it up, come on! (Applause) He was in Forbes, because of his outstanding business management here at the Che-dan. Fantastic, Forbes magazine! I am so proud, so proud of him. Also there were some really wonderful articles, like in the Newsweek of Korea. We had an interview there. So, it's very positive.

Sun Jin nuna's travel agency is now one of the top ten travel agencies in Korea! Let's give it up for her and In Sup hyung! They're doing a great job! And so society is looking at us differently, they're really looking at us differently. They're starting to be very interested in us as a tradition. The media has been extremely kind to us, for the last year. A lot of them have actually become our friends. They've become very close associates. We're very thankful for the media. -- so positively about the changes in our organizations, about the changes in our leadership, etc. And I really saw that spirit world is moving, that spirit world is helping us.

Just a few weeks ago I had a dream. Hyo Jin hyung and Heung Jin hyung came in this dream, and they said, “Thank you.” They said, “Thanks, hey, Hyung, thanks.” Because every Wednesday we do for their kids their day, one by one. We take them to get pizza or whatever they want to eat that day; and we have a wonderful time, teach them good principles, etc. We have a nice snack and go to 7-Eleven and buy nice candy or whatever and share with all the nephews and nieces. So, we have this wonderful time that we spend with our cousins.

And so Heung Jin hyung and Hyo Jin hyung as their parents came to me in the dream and they said, “Hey, thank you for that. Thank you for really taking care of the kids, but, but…” I always get the ‘but’, “But why aren't you taking care of your sisters-in-law, boy?” (Laughing) I said, “Oh my God, I'm busy, you know, Heung Jin hyung, Hyo Jin hyung, I’m sorry. I've been thinking about the kids, I got the kids on the list, but I didn't get the sisters-in-law. I'm so sorry.” Okay, so what we did, two weeks ago, on Monday, we had a sister-in-law day. (Laughing and applause) Let's give it up for the sisters-in-law! We bought them food; we went out shopping in In Sa Dong.

And it was really amazing. Here we are at In Sa Dong on the sister-in-law day. We're out shopping in this women's clothes store. I'm the only male in there. (Laughing) I'm there, my wife is there. And all the sisters-in-law they're putting on their clothes. I'm choosing stuff for them, and they're walking down like models, down the runway, down the store. (Laughing) They're having a great time. And then, two ladies about fifty and sixty in their age, come into the shop. They see all of us having this incredible time. And they start getting affected by this. And they ended up starting to put on things, and my wife was choosing stuff for them, “Hey, try this on, lady.” She doesn't even know the lady. And then at some point they were saying, “Hey, you're such a wonderful husband.”

I was ten hours shopping, ten hours shopping day, ten hours! (Applause) But God gave me praise that day, God gave me praise. God gave me praise, because the ladies, they encouraged me. They said, “You're such a nice husband. You're so patient.” I said, “It's training!”

So we were having such a wonderful time. And I introduced, “Here's Hoon Seuk onni. Hoon Seuk onni, she is with the Universal Ballet. She's a top ballerina in Korea. I'm sure you know her.” The ladies said, “Yes, we know her, oh yes!” We come to find out that the lady sitting right in front of us is the wife of the CEO of Mae-a Kyung-je. I had no idea what Mae-a Kyung-je was. She said it was a newspaper. So I thought, okay, it's a small newspaper here. She said, "It's kind of like the Wall Street Journal!!"

And so I'm sitting there thinking, “Oh my gosh, the lady right in front of us that we were choosing clothes for, is the wife of the CEO of the ‘Wall Street Journal’ here in Korea!” And she was there with another lady, who was a politician’s wife, as we found out. The politician’s wife told us how just a few years ago they were at North Garden in Kodiak, Alaska, fishing with True Parents, with the President, CEO, of Peh-wu Corporation over there in Alaska. They said they stayed in one of their rooms, and I said, “That was my room. You stayed in my room.” I don't have a room there. I was just joking. And the wife of the CEO of Mae-a Kyung-je, the other lady, said that her father-in-law -- he’s a four star general -- wanted to go into Cheon Jeong Gyeong museum one time. So he drove all the way up to Chung Pyung to see Cheon Jeong Gyeong museum, but you know, not everyone can just get into Cheon Jeong Gyeong museum.

So, he ended up not being admitted to Cheon Jeong Gyeong museum. At that time he just showed up at whim. And so she told us how sad he was, very sad, very angry, and he has resentment. So she said, “Can you get us to visit Cheon Jeong Gyeong museum?” I said, “Yes, we can. We can do it.” And so, right in front of us, she calls the four star general. She says, “Abonim, we're going to take you to the museum. We just got access. Unificationism is right in front of us; and we're going to take you in.” To make a long story short: They'll be coming with us on June 18th to visit the Cheon Jeong Gyeong museum. Let's give it up for God and True Parents! (Applause)

Think about it: There are millions of shops in Seoul; and all the incredible peak-a jongs, nam-dae boos, that -- I'm sure -- all of you have explored. Then, how is it that they just showed up right at that place that we were at, at the right time, the right day, the right exact situation, on sisters-in-law day? When my brothers told me in the dream to go out and have a sister-in-law day, I realized, "Oh my goodness, the spirit world is moving. They're moving us." And here we are, we end up bumping into some of the most powerful women in Korea, ladies that we definitely want to share our Unification faith with. Let's give it up for Unificationism!

It really is a different time. You know, right now from Father we have the blessing to now do the second phase of restructuring of the church. We're going to strengthen the churches by uniting smaller churches into bigger churches, so that the bigger churches have a better environment. We can invest into bigger churches and make cafes in there. We can vamp up the churches, so that they're not dilapidated. You create more positive witnessing environments here; and education programs and new teachers will come in for the kids. And we can stand united to witness to the nation.

You know, after phase one of restructuring here in Korea, for the first time in thirty years, we had Unificationist membership up from 14,000 to 16,000. Last week, we checked the results, we checked the statistics. We're now up to 18,000 Unificationist worshipers nationwide. So, it is continuing to increase.

We know that when we stand united and face the nation to witness, to share our faith, we will continue to grow and grow and really be able to share this amazing tradition with the rest of the nation and the rest of the world. If you believe it, let's give it up for Unificationism! (Applause)

Brothers and sisters, God is really preparing a turnaround for our movement. Not only internally, like in our own community, but externally, how society is viewing us, how we are relating with society. We may have been unfairly treated, persecuted, attacked, like Jacob during the indemnity period. But True Parents are standing in the front. They are leading our community; and they have paid the indemnity for all the past failures of providential history. And many times we may have felt that all the success is being stolen right before our eyes. But God is always watching, and He is always in control, especially in this age. See, He sees the entirety of the providence, not just what we see in our own life; and He sees all the failures, all the mistakes.

But He also sees True Parents, who have been victorious. He sees the community that's standing up in faith. He sees us becoming more proud to share our faith. And when He sees this, when we're standing up to really move the Cain-type world, not by force, but by inheriting His true love and naturally subjugating the nations, God is here to bless us. He is really here to work behind the scenes to make it happen. Now is our time.

See, of course, in this age we have to work harder, of course, more efficiently, more honestly, transparently, professionally, selflessly, organizationally, etc. But, in the end, I believe that whatever challenge we have to face, God is going to supernaturally allow us to come through that, to come into more victory, and to be able to show this incredible tradition and all the investment and sacrifice and blood, sweat and tears, that have come to build this incredible tradition to what it is. I really believe, that now is the time for the Unification Church to stand up strong in the age of liberation; and to share our faith with the rest of the world. If you believe it, if you receive it, let's give it up for God and True Parents today! Now is our time. Let's put our hands together and let's enter into our meditation practice.

Final Meditation:

Let us enter into our homeland meditation practice. Let us gently close our eyes and visualize ourselves, not in this sanctuary, but walking in a beautiful meadow. It is noontime and the sun is up; very bright, very beautiful, it’s not too hot; beautiful spring breeze. We can feel the soft grass under our feet; the earth supporting us, lifting us. With each step we can see beautiful flowers blooming around our feet; almost if like magic, like supernaturally blooming around our feet. While we look to our left, we’ll see a beautiful stream meandering down, with the little sparrows bathing in the stream, and flying away.

As we look up to the sky, we’ll see a beautiful blue sky; totally vast horizons; vast sky; limitless. When we look up ahead we’ll see True Parents waiting for us. Let us walk before them, and be seated before them. True Father with his right hand, True Mother with her left hand, place their hands atop our heads, anointing us, blessing us. They bless us saying, “May you inherit the true love of God.”

As they anoint us with that blessing, feel the power of that blessing move through our entire body from head to toe, like a wave of energy that is moving through, purifying and cleaning our body. If there are any sick cells, stressed cells in our brain; let them be completely healed. Let that stress be completely washed away. Any stress in the neck, shoulders, body, internal organs, all the way down to our feet; let those impurities be washed away.

You’ll notice our spirit body, if there are any dark spots, that now our spirit body is completely revived, illuminating in the 12 directions. In our hearts let us say to True Parents, “I shall inherit the true love of God.” As you breathe in, in our hearts let us say, “I am alive.” As you breathe out, in our hearts let us say, “Thank You.” As you breathe in new life, “I am alive.” As you breathe out old life, “Thank You.” Final inhalation, as you breathe in, “I am alive.” As you breathe out old life, in our hearts let us say, “Thank You.”

God and True Parents have blessed us to live the blessed life, to inherit the true love of God, to be a greater blessing to our family, and to our community; to be a greater blessing to our city, and our nation and our world; to truly be the great blessing that He has blessed us to become.

Hyung Jin Nim’s Final Prayer:

Heavenly Father, thank You so much for this day. Father, we want to know that today is a new day. We want to know that now is our time. Father, we endured the bitter winters. We endured the indemnity period. Unificationists all around the world were persecuted, and, Father, they were demonstrated against. They were put in prison, and even tortured for their faith. But Father, we want to know that day You have allowed us to walk into the Age of Liberation; and oh, what a day! What an incredible era!

Father, we know that now You are liberated. True Parents have enlightened us to Your loneliness, and have been able to comfort You, freeing You from that. And Father, we know that You want to bless us in this age. We know that all the wrongs that were put against us as Unificationists, You want to redeem. You want to make new; and, Father, we believe that today.

Father, we thank You so much that we may be present here in this incredible homeland. We pray that we can truly share our faith as proud Unificationists, as those who are truly upholding our faith, airing it proudly to the world; seeing the world being transformed before our very eyes. We thank You so much. We want to thank You for everything that is right in our lives; for our children and our breath; for the fact that we can be alive in this time. And I thank You for our families. We want to thank You for the beautiful summer weather. Father, we want to thank You for everything. We thank You so much that You have guided us into this path; for even though we have a long way to go, Father, You have taken us, You have brought us a very long way. Father, thank You so much. We want to offer all the victory and all the praise to You this day. We want to do that here, this day, as Blessed Central families, in our own names, united as one, we pray. Aju. 

Japanese Brothers And Sisters Truly Have Been The Owners Of Our Church

Hyung Jin Moon
June 3, 2009
Original Divine Principle Workshop
Edited: Department of Education and Planning
Chung Pyung Heaven and Earth Training Center

On June 3, 2009, Mr. and Mrs. Kook Jin Nim and Mr. and Mrs. Hyung Jin Nim came to Chung Pyung to talk to the Japanese members participating the ‘Education Proclaiming the Completion of the Liberated Realm of the Portion of Responsibility in God’s Providential History’ (Original Divine Principle Workshop) held in Chung Pyung. Nearly for an hour, Hyung Jin Nim spoke and shared his heart with the members.

Annyeonghasimnikka

Good to see you brothers and sisters, it’s really tremendous joy. You know we are always so moved and so grateful when we see our Japanese brothers and sisters. Wherever we go we always tell everybody that our Japanese brothers and sisters truly have been the owners of our church. We know the brothers and sisters have worked through the indemnity periods of serving True Parents, serving our entire unification family, around the world. Sacrificing, giving their whole hearted devotions, never stopping to be loyal to True Parents, walking the way of the path of tears, the path of suffering.

This has really been our brothers and sisters’ course in Japan, for the last 30 years. We are truly humble, and we truly believe, because of that sacrifice, Japanese members stand in the position of true filial children to True Parents, and this cannot be denied.

Positive Changes

I understand that you also had, based on True Parents’ direction and brother Kook Jin leadership, the first elections to elect the regional directors in Japan, that’s the first time in history. That’s a very big change for our Japanese movement and I am sure that you all felt that.

In Korea that change happened, about a year before and initially it was elections by ministers to select a new regional director. That had never been done in Unification Church history. That was very moving into the Realm of Liberation and Complete Release and moving away from the Indemnity Period type system.

Recently in Gangnam region we had one regional director who had had retired. There had to be a decision made for a new regional director for Gangnam region. There were recommendations from other regional directors where then the ministers will decide and elect the next Gangnam regional director. But we said no that’s not a good idea.

So for the fist time ever in Unification Church history, just a couple of weeks ago actually, the owners of the Gangnam region, the owners are people who have been contributing to the community of the faithful by practicing a life of tithing for one year without any missing. The owners of the church voted to elect the new Gangnam regional director, first time ever in the unification church history.

That is a very big change, because in this new Realm of Liberation and Complete Release, our leaders cannot just treat their superiors well and not treat the members well. Now in this new Realm of Liberation and Complete Release the leaders have to be accountable also to the membership, the owners of the church.

The information of the candidates who were running for the Gangnam region was disclosed transparently. From educational background to career and personal assets, all were fully disclosed so that the membership could completely see everything and decide who would become the leader. (Applause)

So this is also another amazing change that True Parents allowed it to happen in the church. Due to brother Kook Jin's professional team and their help, we have been able to run the ministry with full transparency of members contributions. Data that we would not release in the past is now open to the public and members can see where the donations that were offered at the Headquarters Church are going and what they are being used for. And this is also a very big change in our church management and a very big change on how we manage our members’ blood sweat and tears.

Unification Symbol

We have this symbol, our official Unification Symbol. So many people believed that our Unification Movement was going to die. Many people believed that this symbol would no longer mean anything. And that this would become just something in the past never to come up again.

For this symbol, all the 1st generation who sacrificed their life and sacrificed their hearts, and walked a path of suffering, persecution, pain and torture, all that, we will not let be thrown away. Tongil-gyo (Unification Church) will not disappear. (Applause) This is why we wear our Tongil Symbol with pride. (Applause)

This mark is what we fought for. This secret Principle that True Father revealed the give and receive action, the Four Position Foundation, all centered on the True Love of God. The secret of heaven, the secret to peace, the secret to unity, this we must not let die, this we must not let disappear. This is our pride as church members, this is our heart, is our principle.

I had lunch with President Eun-ju Park, who works at the top publishing company, Gimm-Young Publishers, in Korea that published True Parents’ Autobiography. At that time I was wearing the Unification Symbol around my neck and I said that I wanted to give this to her. I explained, this is True Parents’ teaching. We have give and take action, in the middle we have the Four Position Foundation, God, spouse and children they’re all centered on God’s true love. God’s true love is selfless love. It’s a love that can bring Satan to natural surrender. When we can inherit that true love, then we can become god’s equal partner, and this is a very important teaching. Because this is the teaching that our True Parents have given, and by giving us that teaching they have liberated almighty God.

Liberation of God

If you study the great thinkers of the past or the religions talking about God, we see that God has been very distant and very powerful, almighty, omnipotent and omniscient. According to them, human beings cannot comprehend the almighty God because He is mysterious, that His essence cannot be known because we have limited human understandings.

But from God’s perspective, He’s so lonely. Nobody can come near Him. Nobody can understand Him fully, He is completely alone. Even though God has millions and millions of fans, not even one can fully understand His heart.

True Parents discovered the essence of God, true love, a selfless love. A love that can bring even Satan, the worst evil force, to natural surrender. They realized that if human beings could inherit that love then they could become God’s equal partner. And when True Parents did inherit that love, they became God’s equal partners. They erased the thousands and thousands years of loneliness. And that is why they have liberated God. (Applause)

So that is why we want you to have hope. Because there is a saying, ‘Without hope you cannot have faith.’ Faith; believes in things you cannot see and if you cannot hope for and believe in for a better future and hope that the Unification Movement will one day truly be able to be impact the world. So I truly pray that you have hope even in your difficult moments. We are always praying for you and our Japanese movement.

Brothers and sisters we pray always for you in Japan. Don't let the situation in Japan deter your faith that we have come this far by believing in heaven and still heaven has a path and heaven has a way. So I thank you so much brothers and sisters for all you have done. We will always pray for you, thank you so much.

Gomapseumnida 

Kook Jin Nim and Hyung Jin Nim’s Encouragement: Education Proclaiming the Completion of the Liberated Realm of the Portion of Responsibility in God’s Providential History

Dae Mo Nim
June 3, 2009

On June 3, from 3:30 pm, International President Hyung Jin Moon, FFWPU, and his wife, and Kook Jin Moon, Chairman of Unification Foundation, and his wife came to visit Chung Pyung Heaven and Earth Training Center and gave words of encouragement for the 359 Japanese members attending the ‘16th Education Proclaiming the Completion of the Liberated Realm of the Portion of Responsibility in God’s Providential History’.

After giving a bow to True Parents’ photograph, flower presentation was done to welcome Hyung Jin Nim and his wife and Kook Jin Nim and his wife.

Kook Jin Nim’s Words:

First Kook Jin Nim gave words. Kook Jin Nim, using examples of Cain and Abel, said that for the Japanese church to be victorious in the current crisis the members must work together emphasizing, ‘If Cain and Abel had united centering on God the Providence of Restoration would have been completed. We shouldn’t have any troubles with the Cain side people but embrace them and understand them. Also, members must overcome the crisis by maintaining a good relationship with a diligent attitude and must fulfill the responsibility of the Mother Nation for the world once again.’

He continued emphasizing, “Think of the current crisis as a turning point, from now on the Japanese church should testify and be proud of True Parents and the Unification Church and witness, and when a witnessing system like the Japanese’s Video Center system expands in worldwide church, definitely hope will overflow for the future.”

After Kook Jin Nim’s words Hyung Jin Nim gave words.

Hyung Jin Nim’s Words:

First, Hyung Jin Nim gave words of gratitude for Kook Jin Nim. Then, gave words of gratitude for the Japanese members who walked a thorny path, sacrificial path, suffering path, and path of the cross for the glory of True Parents and spoke words related to the development of Japanese Church.

Hyung Jin Nim spoke about the huge change that the church is facing and said, “For the first time in Unification Church history we elected regional directors through election. Since the regional directors’ position is to take responsibility for the members I gave the right of election to the members who are the owners of the region. Entering the age of liberation and complete release from now on the leaders must also take consideration for the members as well.”

Then he gave a detailed explanation of the Unification Symbol and emphasized that members should have pride in it. “The elders protected this Unification Symbol with their lives. It also represents the sacrifice and defiance, blood, sweat and tears of our elders. This is a symbol of victory and it’s our pride.”

In his prayer, Hyung Jin Nim prayed, “We pray we can make a new determination to truly be able to make True Parents proud. To truly to be able to bring glory to True Parents and victory to our Unification family. And let us liberate True Parents from their worries so they truly see into the future and see that all that they have created will not go to waste. And will become truly like the morning and the noon time sun. Father, as True Parents have liberated you in this age of liberation and release let us now liberate True Parents, from their pain and suffering. And let us liberate True Parents from their worries so they truly see into the future and see that all that they have created will not go to waste.”

In the end, Kook Jin Nim and Hyung Jin Nim took a commemorative photograph with the members of the workshop. 

United We Stand, Divided We Fall

Hyung Jin Moon
May 23, 2009
Headquarters Church, Seoul Korea
Transcribed by: Jacinta Moreau / Regina Shin
Proofread / Polished by: Karen Katayama / Bruno Klotz

Yeon Ah Nim’s Welcoming Remarks:

Good afternoon, brothers and sisters! It is really great to see you all again!

Many people came up to me and said, “Last week Hyung Jin Nim looked so lonely without you!” So, I am here with you and with my dear husband again. I am sorry that I was not able to be here last week. I hope that you have a wonderful week, for your family and for yourself as well. Brothers and sisters, always remember that God and True Parents are always with you, wherever you are. Aju.

Hyung Jin Nim’s Welcoming Remarks

Brothers and sisters:

We have some amazing news! There are thousands and thousands of books that are being sold here in Korea. When True Father’s autobiography was released, just a couple of weeks ago, it was 38th on the national list of books. It was number thirty-eight. But then very quickly it skyrocketed to number twelve, and we checked it today, and it is now number three nationwide! Out of all the books, every single book, it is Number Three in the nation! Amazing! That is why we wear our sign with pride.

On Friday True Parents called us out to feed us mandoo because my wife was still recovering etc. I wore this (necklace with Unification sign) to the Mandoo House, the dumpling store. I thought Father was going to say something because usually he doesn’t like men wearing necklaces. And here I was, a man and wearing a necklace! So I went to Father, I had this necklace on, and I said “Father, look at our sign,” and he said “That is beautiful, boy!” He was so happy to see it!

We ended up walking around with it and showing everybody: “This is our Unification sign.” We were showing off the pride of our Unification Church. Let’s give it up for Unification Church, brothers and sisters! We explained to people, “This has ‘Chun-oo-eh-gi’. That means it has the power, the energy of the entire universe right inside, and so when you wear that, it has tremendous power.”

Brothers and sisters, we are in the age when society is now looking at us differently. It is now interested in True Parents’ life and story, so it is even more important for us to be proud of who we are, Unificationists, and to be proud of our tradition.

This is one of the things we are starting here. A lot of our ministers will be wearing this (necklace) in the coming days. The Two Rivers Choir is already wearing this, as you saw. Don’t they look fantastic with this! Let’s give a huge applause! OK, we are going to go to the Cheon Seong Gyeong now.

Today’s reading is from page 1027. Father speaks about his experience at Hungnam prison. This was when he was incarcerated for speaking and preaching the word of God. He says this,

“One time I had to dig a tunnel. We became so hungry while we were working that I could not lift the tool that my hand was grasping. We were on the verge of collapse. When we heard ‘Lunch time!’ you cannot imagine how wonderful that sounded to our ears, and you cannot imagine the feeling of that moment.”

This got me thinking about how God has walked the providential course for 6000 years, so many thousands of years waiting for children who can inherit His true love, who can give and receive with Him as partners. How thirsty He must have been for that! When I saw how Father was so elated to hear the bowl of rice coming after toiling and suffering and working, being imprisoned for something he didn’t even do, it really reminded me of God’s course, how God has been suffering and toiling for the day that True Parents can come, for the day that somebody can inherit their true love and give and receive with them as equal partners. And then how happy He must feel when finally that thirst is quenched.

Then brothers and sisters, that also got me thinking about the service. When we come to service, that is really what we are doing here. We may be a minority in Korea, but there is a saying, “With God, we are a majority”. Let’s give it up for God! Let us come to service with that kind of mind, with praise, thanksgiving and gratitude, not focusing on what is wrong in our life. There are many obstacles and challenges we face. We can’t focus on those and dread the future. During the service, when we come together to worship, brothers and sisters, let’s throw that out. Throw that out of the window! It is time to focus on the goodness of God. It is time to focus on the hope in your lives. It is time to focus on the fact that He has a plan for each and every one of us and that He has instilled within us His divine plan, His providence. It is time for us to remember that this week.

If we do that during this service, if we return that in gratitude, in praise and thanksgiving, then I believe this week is going to be better. It is going to be brighter. We are going to get more things done, and we are going to be even more blessed. If you want to be blessed, let’s give it up for God.

Brothers and sisters, once again, welcome to our service, and let’s start with that kind of attitude. Thank you so much.

Hyung Jin Nim’s Prayer

Thank you so much, Father, for allowing us to pray for this nation of Korea and for former President Roh Moo Hyun. We pray that he may be in a safe place in the spirit world. We pray that he can truly grow in the spirit world and become one of Your Abel good spirits there. Father, we pray that You may also awaken the nation of Korea so that they may understand their providential significance. It is so easy to fall into cycles of depression and negativity with all the situations around us as a nation.

But, Father, let Korea understand that they are not simply just one nation amongst many, but that they are the Fatherland of faith, the place where You have prepared our True Parents to come. Father, let them understand that identity in this time when their identity is being shaken to its roots. Let them understand that this is a holy land, a sacred land, a land of tremendous providential significance, and let us understand and become true Cheon Il Guk owners so that we can help this nation and other nations to understand True Parents and open that land of glory that you so desire. We thank You for all these things, and we pray with our hearts united as one, as central Blessed families. Aju.

Interesting Story:

I heard an interesting story about a mother and her daughter Isabel. They were sitting at church one day, and the pastor was very inspired. He was talking about a certain topic, and the sermon went on for 30 minutes, for an hour, an hour and half, and he kept on being very inspired and kept on preaching. Isabel became very visibly disturbed, she was getting a little impatient and frustrated. Mom kept on saying: “Shh, he is speaking!” Finally, Isabel pulled on her mom’s arm with an angry face and said: “Mom, give him the money now, so that we can go!”

Main Sermon:

Brothers and sisters, today I want to talk about “United we stand, divided we fall.”

Of course, we know that phrase. In order to live the blessed life we must protect our community and also learn to work together as a community. You know that the phrase “United we stand, divided we fall” is a tremendous phrase. This has so much meaning for us in this stage of our development as the Unification movement. If we are to unite and really move the nation in this last phase of the time when True Parents are here, then it is so critical that we are able to persevere through our unity. If we stay scattered we will not be able to do the great things that God and True Parents desire for us to do while they are here on earth. This is the really important thing. Today it is crucial whether we unite as Unification Family or stay scattered. This will determine our fate in this era of liberation and complete release.

Let’s look at some of the World Scriptures today. Let’s read from Matthew 18:19 -20:

“Again I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by the Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them”.

God’s presence is there in our community when we gather, when we move with a common purpose, when we throw away our individual desires in order to live like that, adopt and understand that God’s desire is to work through us and our potential, that what He wants to give us is real life. The community is really the place of protection. It’s the place where God’s presence is, it’s the place where God moves the world. Here in Matthew we see this today.

Let’s take a look at Islam today. Let’s read the Koran 49.10 together:

“The believers indeed are brothers; so set things right between your two brothers, and fear God; so you will find mercy.”

Once again the believers and the united community are brothers, and the divisions in the community need to be overcome, so that we can understand and find mercy from God. We can see and hear this in a refreshing way from our Islamic brothers and sisters.

Let’s look at Buddhism today. This is from the Dhammapaha 194. Let’s read this together:

“Happy is the unity of the Sangha. Happy is the discipline of the united ones.”

The Sangha in the Buddhist community is one of the triple jewels. The Sangha is the community of practitioners and the people that support those practitioners, the monks and nuns, in those communities. The importance of the community is that it is the place where the discipline and teachings are actualized.

Let’s take a look at True Father’s words. This is from True Father’s words 153rd volume, page 183. Let’s read it together:

“You must realize that you are one family member centering on God. You have to think about how precious the phrase 'family member' is. Please let us not forget this extraordinary heavenly meaning which is hidden in the name 'family member.' Heavenly Father, we earnestly pray that You will make us one and let us become soldiers of heaven who can go out and fight adoring Your day humbly on our bended knees in front of Your Will.”

Father is reminding us today of how precious the name “family member” is.

I heard a story about a father who was passing away. He was in the last stage of his life. He was on his deathbed, and he had two sons. He called those two sons forward and told them: “I want you to bring six sticks.” So they went out into the forest and gathered six different sticks. He told them: “I want you to bundle these up together and I want you both to try to break them.” They each tried to break the bundle but couldn’t. So they tried it together but still couldn’t break it. Then he told them: “Separate the sticks so they are single and then try to snap them in half.” They could easily break each one of the sticks in half. It was so easy.

Of course, we understand the parable of this story. Together you cannot be broken but if you separate then you will be vulnerable and you will be easy to break. It’s the same with us as the Unification Movement. The Unification Church is really not that big, especially when we look at the demographics here in Korea. We are only about 14,000 members strong. We have to stick together, but not just that, but we also have to bring new sticks into our bundle, so to speak, so that the Unification Movement will be stronger and harder to break.

As Unification Members we have a mission here in Korea. This is what we are trying to do. This is what all the members are becoming owners of. We are here to testify. We are here to change the nation of Korea, not by means of politics or business only, but in faith, in belief.

This is a real mission for us: On behalf of True Parents, to proclaim the word "True Parents", the coming of True Parents, the importance of the providential role of this nation of Korea, to have the Korean citizens understand the importance of this nation as a holy land, to re-identify and re-set and so re-define their own identity as Korean people and to be able to move this land so that it can bring a new light of inspiration to our Unification family and to the world. It is only in moving together that we can do this.

This last year President Lee Myung Bak, the current president here in Korea, was under fire for a misunderstanding between him and the major sect of Buddhism, the Chogje order. There were many circumstances that led up to a peaceful demonstration in front of City Hall. Actually it was on the news all over the world. About 50.000 Buddhists including thousands of monks, gathered in front of the City Hall to demonstrate against religious discrimination.

In this administration there were some issues that came up towards non-Christian organizations, one of them the Buddhist organization. So the Buddhist tradition came together and wanted to make a statement. There is a psychology behind peaceful demonstrating. At this particular event, where 50,000 lay and monastic Buddhists came out in front of City Hall to demonstrate against religious discrimination, they wanted a statement of apology from the President that stated that he is not discriminating against Buddhism as a religion in Korea. There were issues like not including any of the major Buddhist temples on the GPS system for cars, even though they included fishing areas. They didn’t include any historic Buddhist temples that are thousands of years old! So they were under fire for practicing religious discrimination.

The head monk of the Chogye order was searched; his car was stopped by the police and searched in a very humiliating situation. This created a huge uproar in the Buddhist tradition. They really demonstrated against the current administration.

So, this situation was going on. They gathered 50,000 of their leaders and lay people to demonstrate for religious freedom. They were using the psychology of demonstration. They wanted to make the statement that Buddhism is a real force, that you cannot ignore this major religion here in Korea. The result was that it evoked a statement of apology from the President and a more sensitive treatment of non-Christians in the land of Korea.

Now, understand that the demonstration psychology was effective because they did what they did. If they would have placed one monk on one street in every city around Korea, it wouldn’t really have had a big effect. If they had split and scattered then the result would not be the same, because the people walking down the street would see only that one demonstrator, demonstrating on a street. But when doing demonstrations in these situations, there is that psychology that the group organize in a common, concentrated location. If they have a thousand people they don’t scatter them in a thousand different cities or villages. They localize them. They bring them together, so that there is a more visible demonstration.

This is one of the important issues of our tradition as well. This is really the effect that the next stage temple, the growth stage temple, is going to have for our Unification Church Tradition. Here we are going to have a much stronger, visible, peaceful demonstration of our faith, of our education, of what we believe in, of our message. This is why it is going to have so much more impact. We are here on a side street in Korea but when we move to the Chung Bok Goong that is in the middle on Yongsan-gu, the Tongil sign will be that big on that building, and it will say “Unification Church” right on the building, proud and strong. It is going to be a real demonstration of the Unification Tradition growing and improving in society, gaining respect and becoming mainstream in society.

I was talking with a sister here this past week and met her family. They donated about 12,000 US dollars for the growth stage temple, so their name will be on the wall. They were expressing to me that they had a very hard financial situation. The husband is Japanese, an incredible individual, such an inspiring person. The sister is Korean. They were explaining to me that this is actually an extremely difficult offering that they felt compelled to do. They told me that they were in the process of moving to a smaller area but they really felt that they wanted to be victorious in offering this, so that they can really participate as owners in the building of the temple.

The sister said that she was really struggling a lot in her own situation, also having children, etc. So, they didn’t know what to do. But after they made the offering, she said that she had a dream. She said: “In that dream I saw us, as Unificationists, walking into this incredible building, where people from all over the world were there. We were actually proud of being Unificationists and could bring people to church. We didn’t only bring them to small buildings, we brought them to this really proud place, where we can show our faith and educate them so that they understand what an Unificationist is and can become an Unificationist themselves.” She realized then that in that dream the spirit world was telling her to be proud of participating in creating that reality.

That really gave me a lot of strength. That really inspired me tremendously. Here in this land of Korea we had about 16.000 members in the 1970s, and it has decreased to about 14.000 members in 2005. We have decreased as a church organization! As a religious movement we have not been able to witness and show society that we will be substantial, that we will be permanent here in this land of Korea and in the world.

Here in Korea we have about 300 plus churches now with an average of about 20-50 members per church. Those are extremely small areas; 20-50 members including Middle and High School students. Sometimes we have two churches on the same block. They are very tiny, almost as if we were scattering them. Think of the Buddhist demonstration. If they were scattering all their monks they really had no visible strength to show.

But now we are starting to unify and gather our strength, so that we can show the world that we are becoming more substantial. We can become more confident that we are not as small as we thought. There is this sister that we brought to Headquarters Church. She was attending a church that had about 20 members; her daughter really didn’t want to go to church at all. When they came to Headquarters Church the daughter was elected as the High School students’ leader, as a women leader!

When we talked to her mother she said how inspired she was to see her daughter being inspired to come to church. They were at a church where they were used to seeing just a couple of people gathering, and this is our Unification Movement! But then the daughter was so surprised, coming to the Headquarters Church and seeing thousands of Unification Members every week. She became more confident in herself as Unificationist, saying: “Wait a minute, we are not just 20 strong, we are a couple of thousand members strong, we actually live this tradition!”

This is what is happening. In the same way, we must remember this phrase at this time: “United we stand, divided we fall.” When we come together and truly try to make a stand for True Parents and our blessed families that have sacrificed until now trying to make a stand for our message to be heard, that is something that requires tremendous confidence and willpower.

In the USA there are always a lot of hurricanes and flooding in the southern regions. Whenever this flooding comes the people in those cities have to come together and try to block the flood water. The way they do that is to get sandbags that act as a levy or a wall against the rising waters. They don’t necessarily block the water but they redirect it to different, safer areas. Think about this principle. If the sandbags are scattered out and there are big holes in between it has absolutely no chance of holding back a river, let alone turning it to a different direction. It’s only when the sandbags are placed together, when their strength comes together, even though they are individually small, only then can they change the course of a flood.

This is the same principle. If we are truly to change the tide of our status and our presence as the Unification Movement in society and in the world then it is so important that we come together and don’t scatter our strength in different areas and waste energy while trying to fight this enormous onslaught but unify our strength so that we can direct this tide and torrent into a more positive area. I believe that these changes are happening in our Unification Movement. The individual sandbags might be small but when they are placed together the wall becomes more powerful every time. By supporting each other, by holding this way, this can be greater than the force of the opposing power. That is the current situation here, not only in Korea but in other nations of the world as well.

Many times we have talked about how Korea is in the most blessed situation. We have True Father’s autobiography being number one, we have election systems that are being implemented in our church, and we have financial transparency. These are great steps in a society. They look at us as a growing and developing Unification Movement. When we stand together like this then we have the power and the chance to change this tide and our destiny.

I was talking to a minister at a small counseling session this week. He is a great minister, a young, blessed child minister that has been a minister for over a decade. He told me something like this: “Now I feel that this is the last chance we have. This is my path. I followed my father who was also a minister. I chose this path because of my father. In my life I wanted to do something so that the Unification Church can be proud of itself. That it can be fully recognized in society while my father is here. I believe that this is my last opportunity to do that.” And I told him: “Moksanim (Korean for minister), I also believe that this is MY last opportunity. It is the last opportunity for our movement to make a positive change for the course of our history while True Parents are still here.”

We made big changes in our church and in our image and how people look at us. This chance won’t come again if we loose it now.

I heard a story given by Aesop. Of course many historians debate this but it is said that Aesop was a Greek slave about 500 BC who wrote many fables and stories. One of his fables is called “The Four Oxen and the Lion.” This is a story where the lion is trying to hunt these oxen down. He wants to hunt and eat them. But he is very frustrated because every time he tries to attack these oxen they put their tails together and point their horns out in all directions. They do not allow the lion to penetrate the wall of horns. But one day the oxen have a quarrel. “The grass is fresher over there,” said the first ox. “Let’s go over there.” The second one said: “Oh, I don’t like that place, I don’t want to climb that hill. The valley over there is better. Let’s go over there.” The third one said: “I don’t want to go either way. If you go that way it’s dangerous, the lion is going to be there. We should stay here.” The fourth one said: “You guys are wrong. Why are you scared of lions? I will lead you to better pastures, come follow me and we will go to a better place.”

The first one said: “I don’t want to go anywhere. I will go to the valley. You do what you want.” So he goes off to the valley. The second one says: “I don’t want to go there, I will go the hill, and you do what you want.” And he goes to the hill. The third one says: “Fine, you can go to your deaths, I will stay right here and eat the grass here.” The fourth one says to him: “Okay, come listen to me. I will show you the better pasture.” But the third one says: “Just because you are older than me doesn’t mean I have to listen to you. You are not my boss. You go over there if you want.” The fourth one says: “I’m not scared of the lion. I will go.” So, they ended up separating, going on their own way. One went to the valley, one went to the river, one went to the hill, and one stayed in that place. As you can quickly guess the conclusion of the story, the lion was able to pick each one off and devour all of them.

If you look at this story, it is really division and the self-centered thinking that leads to the oxen’s death. They forgot that they were strongest when they put their heads together, when they worked together. When they divided and scattered they thought that they could do it alone. The lion ended up picking them off one by one, and they all perished. This is the same for our Unification Tradition as well. We must not be foolish and think that we can do it alone. We have to understand that it is only through our unity that we are going to be able to inspire the world. It’s only by our unity and by working together that we will be able to witness to the nation and share the message of True Parents: To inherit the true love of God.

We are in a central time in our history as Unification Tradition. It’s an amazing time actually. We have succeeded tremendously until now. But it is a time now that we have to see our reality. We have succeeded, but now is the time to go to the next stage while True Parents are here.

What can we learn today, brothers and sisters? We can understand that united we stand, divided we fall. We are here together in the land of Korea, and we are showing that the church is changing, it is growing.

I want to relay to you one of the most incredible developments in Unification Church history. It just happened on the 17th which was just a couple of days ago. In Kang-nam region, which is a region here in Seoul, the regional director retired because he is 65 years of age. So, we had one empty regional director’s seat. There was no regional director in that Kang-nam region. The request came in to elect a leader. As you know, the ministers have elected the regional directors in our Unification Church. This happened last year for the first time in our history.

But then the request came in to let all the regional directors submit a recommendation of who should be the leader in that area. So Kook Jin and I said: “Why not just let the members decide? Why not let the members who are true owners of those communities decide who is going to be their regional director?” We reported this to True Parents and we got the approval.

So, to the first time in Unification Church history, on the 17th of this month, in the Kang-nam region, the owners of the community, that is the community members who tithed for at least one year without skipping one month, came together and voted to elect the regional director. This is the first time in Unification Church history! (Applause).

This is the liberation of the members, not to be under the leaders anymore. Now the leaders have to pay attention, not only to the leaders above them and do well with them, but the leaders now have to stand in a position where they have to really serve the members. They need to learn to truly inspire the members and give them hope.

So, what did we do? Three candidates who were under the top ten ministers here in Korea were put on the candidate list. They were asked if they wanted to participate and decided that they wanted to. In the list we showed transparently the different data that is connected to each one of them: What kind of educational background they received, what kind of positions they had held and what kind of financial assets they held. This is transparency, showing to the membership that the leadership has to be accountable before the congregation. This is a huge step in our Unification Tradition. It is an incredible thing. I think this is one of the most incredible ones that I see.

We will continue to push in this direction so that the members truly become the owners and really are deciding and are able to shape the future of the Unification Movement. That is an amazing day. That is what the age of complete liberation and complete release is all about. I think this is really different from the indemnity period. If you believe that, then let’s give it up for God and True Parents. (Applause)

There is no greater pride than this. This is a very big change. We have now many other changes, as you all heard. There are the financial management changes and the transparent accounting; we show all the financial assets and how they are being used. That report is given every two months at the Headquarters Church to the congregation, in public. Even though VIP guests are there, they can see that report transparently. Also the media has changed and all those things give us great pride. It’s an absolutely incredible opportunity that we have in this nation of Korea; to be able to move the fatherland while True Parents are here. It’s an incredible time. It really is prepared by heaven.

In order to do this we have to be able to stick together, brothers and sisters. The construction of the growth stage temple begins in the middle of June, which is only three weeks away. The grand opening will be this December or next January. It’s just in a matter of months that we are moving to the place where we are going to be on a national stage. There the nation’s people will be able to openly come to the church and learn about our message of inheriting God’s true love, learn about God’s true vision, about True Parent’s course and the course of our brothers and sisters, learn about all the international couples that have married across the world etc. All these things the world will be able to become more substantially aware of, and they will be able to become Unificationists themselves.

In order to do this we need to stick together. It is in our unity that we become strong. It is in our unity that we can stand, not in scattering about. If we are truly able to do this, we can move to the next stage and have the incredible opportunity to witness to 21,000 new members. Here at the Headquarters Church we have 7,000 registered members, and we are setting a goal of 21,000 new members who make the commitment and become filial sons and daughters to True Parents.

This is a tremendous task, an incredible, seemingly almost impossible task that is in front of us. But so many things were impossible when we first started. The election system was absolutely impossible. True Parent’s autobiography was absolutely impossible when we started this ministry. With the church situation at that time, transparent financial management was absolutely impossible. Turning around one hundred million dollars in debts to fifty million dollars in profit was absolutely impossible. Turning around the nation’s media from negatively attacking our church to being completely positive in over a hundred articles was absolutely impossible two years ago. Everybody was telling us: "This was absolutely impossible." We have heard this comment quite a few times in our past two years.

So when we move forward to the growth stage temple we have this incredible mission that True Parents gave us of gaining 21,000 members in our church. This is almost more than our total current membership. You have to understand how incredible that goal is! But we have done things that have been impossible, that people have told us to be impossible. Those changes have been made by the blessing of True Parents and the direction of heaven. We know that we cannot do it on our own, and we are truly grateful. It is only in our unity -- “United we stand, divided we fall” -- that we can truly move the nation. This is a tremendous opportunity that we don’t want to waste.

Brothers and sisters, if we can move forward with this heart and this incredible mission and with a victorious mind, with our hopes and heads held up high, I do believe that we will live the blessed life and will inherit the true love of God, being a greater blessing to our families and to this great world. If you received this today let’s give it up for God and True Parents. (Applause)

Hyung Jin Nim’s Prayer

Heavenly Father,

Thank You so much for this day that You have blessed us with. Father, we entered into Your presence with praise and thanksgiving, with gratitude. Father, we know that You have done so many amazing things in our lives. After we met True Parents, our lives changed completely. Father, we may have become blessed with somebody that we have never, ever met. Father, we pray that we may understand this incredible life that we have lived. Father, we understand that we may have had tribulation and obstacles and hills that we had to cross but, Father, we know that each one of those things was planned. Each one of those things caused us to become stronger, to become more victorious, Father, to become filled with the overcoming power that You wish for us to have.

Father, we know that now in this incredible time, in this incredible nation, True Father’s life story and his word are now creating tremendous interest among the nation’s people; not just in our own desires but in reality. Father, we see that the autobiography is third bestseller nationwide amongst all genres of every single book that is published here and every single international book that is here as well. True Father’s word, his life is number three. It is creating a tremendous interest in this nation. Father, let us understand that in this hard time, in this nation of Korea, where people are losing their sense of identity, where they are losing hope in their futures, Father let us truly allow the Unification Movement to be that incredible beacon of hope, to be that amazing source of inspiration Father, the inspiration that has guided our own lives on our incredible path of faith. Father, we have seen incredible, astonishing changes that have happened in our church. The age of liberation is here and it is unfolding before our eyes and Father we pray that we may be able to lead the nation; we may be able to inspire the nation Father, to understand that this land is a holy land and truly to understand and pick up the mantle of this incredible providential work.

Father, we thank you for giving us the opportunity to be here in this nation. We know we may not be here forever or long in this nation but Father, while we are here, let us truly participate. Let us truly be Cheon Il Guk owners so that we can truly inherit your true love and be able to make an incredible difference in the lives of those around us. Father, we thank you so much for we know that united we stand and divided we fall. We pray that we may come together in unity into a common purpose to truly testify about the life of our True Parents, about the incredible preparation and providence that you have prepared and the incredible community that has lived and served and sacrificed for the world -- the Unification Tradition -- an incredible community! Father, we pray that this can be shown to the world, that we also may continue to grow and mature. Father, we wish that we can become greater in every single aspect so that truly we may be that incredible beacon of hope for this new era that You are preparing. Thank you so much. We pray all these things together in our own names, united here as one and around the world, as central Blessed families. Aju. 

Important Request from Hyung Jin Nim

Hyung Jin Moon
May 22, 2009

Just in from the Chung Pa Dong HQ...

1st 40-Day Condition for True Father’s Biography (Earlier this month, TPs directed that each family use 430 copies of the biography actively for witnessing)

1) Purpose:

a) To inherit the tradition of 40-day jeongseong and activity, and build a foundation of heartistic revival and witnessing

b) To build the foundation of Cheon Il Guk through witnessing and blessing activities.

2) Theme: "Let's Inherit the True Love of God!"

3) Period: May 20 (Wed) - June 28 (Sun), 2009

4) Who: All members aged 16 and above

5) How (Contents of Jeongseong):

1. Hoon Dok Hae - Cheon Seong Gyeong, Peace Messages and ‘True Family the Gateway to Heaven’

2. Bows - 40 full bows

3. Prayer – Content

1) For the success of the distribution of TF’s biography

2) For TP's health and long life, and the well-being and safety of the True Children

3) For the true harmony and unity of the Cain and Abel realms

4) For the Korean Church to revive and expand, inheriting the true love of God.