Miracles of Faith

Hyung Jin Moon
August 15, 2009
Headquarters Church
Transcribers: Colette Takigawa, John Theriot, Regina Shin
Proofread: Karen Katayama

Opening Prayer by Reverend Michael Brazil:

Our Heavenly Father and our Heavenly Mother, we want to thank you so much for your love, your guidance, your love that not only makes us sing but also dance with joy, dance with gratitude for all that you have showered upon us. We really want to welcome you here today. We want to invite you to be here with us. We want to feel your spirit and we want you, Heavenly Father, to feel our spirit. We want to lift up our hearts so that we can lift you up, we can inspire you. Heavenly Father, we really welcome you here, we really invite you. We ask that you help us to open our hearts to receive your message today. Please speak through our speakers today that they may truly inspire us, that we can be fired up for the week ahead, and that we can give even more joy and more fulfillment to you and to our brothers and sisters throughout the world. We offer all of this humbly as your precious sons and daughters, as blessed brothers and sisters from around the world. Aju

Opening Remarks by Yeon Ah Nim:

Good afternoon brothers and sisters. It’s really great to see you all, especially I guess, Hyung Jin Nim is really happy to see you all. It feels like a month since we saw you all last time. That is why we are especially happy to see you all and we are especially grateful to our Heavenly Father and our True Parents for letting us have such a blessed day. Brothers and sisters, we earnestly hope and desire that you have a blessed day and a blessed week and here in this sanctuary, today. Let us pray and worship our Heavenly Father and our True Parents. Aju

Opening Remarks by Hyung Jin Nim:

Good afternoon brothers and sisters! Good afternoon. Oh, oh! Whenever I see the joy on Pastor Kyle’s face, something inside of me just gets on and up! Thank you so much!

Brothers and sisters let us manifest the Principle, Give and Receive Action, Four Position Foundation. May I inherit the true love of God! Aju! Thank you so much!

Let’s start with Cheon Seong Gyeong, page 331 today. It is beautiful!

“How shall we describe God’s love?”

Father says. I want you to close your eyes, close your eyes! Father says,

“Imagine a warm spring day with white clouds floating gently in the sky, the air shimmers above the ground, insects and ants scurry about, exploring the world. Beside a flowing stream, catkins blossom and frogs sing new songs of spring welcoming swarms of bees and butterflies, and there you are, enraptured in that atmosphere, in that twilight state that we experience when drifting peacefully off to sleep, and yet we are awake in a happy mood, rejoicing forever. God’s love has such a flavor.”

Brothers and sisters let’s give it up for almighty God and his incredible love! I hope at this service we can return that kind of amazing grace, that kind of amazing love we receive. I hope that during this service we can return that beautiful spring breeze back to heaven. I know that the summer breeze is kind of sweltering outside but inside we have people filled with the joy of God. Tell your neighbor, “I am filled with the joy of God!” Oh I feel it, I feel it today! Oh, you are doing quite well today!

Meditation Practice:

Let us visualize not this place but let us visualize a beautiful forest path. We are walking on this cool day in spring, very cool, refreshing. We can feel the beautiful soft grass under our feet, the beautiful bird moss that grows along the roots of the trees. We can feel the warmth of the sun on our skin, we can feel the touch of the sun and we can see up into the heavens. We will notice a beautiful canopy of leaves, we will notice beautiful flowers that bloom around and let us walk forward rejoicing in that incredible creation. In our hearts let us feel the pulse of nature, of creation, the creative spirit that is imbued in all of creation. As we look forward we are going to see a beautiful stream. Let’s walk up to that beautiful stream. Let’s hear the glorious sound, the singing of the stream. Let’s see the translucent waters as light sparks shimmer. Let’s feel the coolness of the water and as we stand before that beautiful scene, as we imbibe on all the glorious surroundings, let us gently close our eyes. In that image, let us close our eyes and let us lift our hands up towards the heavens. In that image we are stretching towards the heavens in that beautiful place and as we breathe in, in our hearts let us rejoice saying, “I am alive” and as we breathe out let us rejoice and say, “Thank you.” I invite you to feel this incredible warmth of the sun upon us, the incredible love and compassion that covers us and as we breathe in again, in our hearts, “I am alive,” as we breathe out again, “Thank you.” One more time, with great rejoicing in our hearts, “I am alive” and as we breathe out in our hearts let us say, “Thank you.”

Let us all gather our hands together. Let’s manifest the Principle, Give and Receive Action, Four Position Foundation. Lift it up! May I inherit that amazing love of God, that true love! AJU!

Thank you, brothers and sisters. Let’s take this time to pray. I want to ask you to pray particularly for those who are in the spiritual world, anybody you know in your family that is close to you in the spiritual world. Let’s take some time for them, for somebody in your heart who needs prayer, for somebody, may be a loved one, who is sick, for somebody who needs a little blessing or who is studying for a test. Let’s pray for these people.

Hyung Jin Nim’s prayer

... Father, we know that you can move mountains. Father, we know that you can touch our lives. Just one touch from You, and our lives will change. Father we pray for these incredible Abel spirits who are protecting us. We want to give thanks to them. We pray that our Unification movement can come together, Father that we can show unity, that we can show that we are one, that we can come together with one heart, that we can return immense and magnificent joy to you. We thank You very much for this day. We want You to bless every single one of our brothers and sisters here and those who are joining us through internet as well. Father, please be with their families. Father, begin to create that miracle in their lives so that we can see a new re-birth, a new resurrection power that’s coming up and welling up on the inside of us, Father. We want to be able to live in your light. We thank You so much and we offer all these things in our own names, as blessed central families we pray, Father, as one family we pray. Aju.

Brothers and sisters it is so important to recharge in prayer, and now it is time to stand up and reach out to the person next to you and give them some encouragement. If you came with your daughter, your spouse, give them a big hug. Tell them you love them at least 3 times.

Interesting Story:

We always start in a something a little interesting. One day St. Peter saw a street gang, a group of gangsters coming towards the Pearly Gates. And St Peter said, “Oh my God. I have to go and report to God.” He ran and said, “God, we have a big problem! There’s a whole bunch of gangsters coming towards the Pearly Gates. What should I do?” And God replied, “Just do what you normally do with that type. Just re-direct them to the other world.” And St. Peter went back to carry out the problem, so he want back to the Pearly Gates.

But he suddenly came back running and yelling, “God they’re gone! They’re gone! And God said, “And so that’s good news. So they’re gone, so that’s good!”

St Peter said, “No, no. The Pearly Gates are gone!”

Main Sermon:

Brothers and Sisters, after the Seven Deaths and Resurrections Revelation, a lot of things really changed in my life. I need to ask all of you to help me today. You have to help me. Can you help me? (Yes!). OK, this is what I want to ask you: I have a problem looking at my notes up here while I am speaking and I have been given the feed back: "Hey, will you move away from the podium sometimes?" So today I would like to try something new. It is a very big step for me. I do not want to use the podium a lot today. I want to carry these notes and walk around like a crazy man, OK? (Laughter) But I want you all to help me; you have to help me, because if I come back to the podium you have to say, "Get away from the podium!" You have to tell me to get away from this podium. This is the devil today. (Laughter)

Let us start with the world scripture, Christianity today. Let us read this together from Isaiah 7:9

"Unless you have believed, you will not understand."

Here we understand the value of faith.

Let us take a look at Buddhism today. This is the Sutta Nipata. Let us read together verse number 1146.

"By faith you shall be free and go beyond the world of death."

That is the world of suffering. You will be set free by faith.

Let us take a look at Islam today. This is the Qur'an 8th Sura, 8th chapter, second verse, let us read it together:

"The true believers are those whose hearts are filled with awe at the mention of God."

Oh, I love that. Tell your neighbor, "I am filled with awe!" Tell the person next to you -- tell them! (I am filled with awe!) Yes, there you go. You are filled with awe that I am not at the podium today! Thank you, thank you, so much.

Let us take a look at Unificationism together.

"Where there is hope, there is development. Where there is no hope, at least there is retreat, if not utter cessation. Therefore, whether there is happiness or unhappiness is determined by hope. If there is no hope in a man of faith who should march toward tomorrow's hope, he is an extremely unhappy man, his faith is only superficial."

This is talking about the incredible power of hope in our life.

Brothers and Sisters, before I received the revelation of the Seven Deaths and Resurrections, there was something I was really struggling about. I have been studying world religions, living with those traditions. I have seen the incredible love for Jesus in the Christian communities, the awesome power of the Agape love -- the sacrificial love of Jesus. Of course in the Buddhist communities you find the incredible compassion of the Buddha, they call that Mahakaruna. It is one of the saintly virtues. It is compassion for all beings. When we pray in the Mosques with our Islamic brothers and sisters, we feel their incredible faithfulness towards God. You feel the tremendous powerful love that is portrayed in their prayer life.

So this struggle was a major thing for me. This was really a big thing for me. What is it that we as members of the Unification Movement have that is really incredible in terms of our teaching? Is it true that our teaching is the highest, or do we just say this? Can we really articulate it? This was a real big challenge for me to answer. Why is it that we are Unificationists? Why did we choose this path? There are so many great teachings of love and compassion in the other religions. Are they all the same? If we are the same as them, then there is no point in you all coming to church, no point in praising our identity and our tradition. This struggle was with me even while I was doing ministry. I had a big sense of frustration even in my own heart.

We know that Jesus' teaching of love has really elevated humankind for the last 2000 years. Jesus taught that God is not a God of judgment, that he is not a God that will condemn. He is a God of love and forgiveness. Jesus taught this to the world. He taught this to his disciples.

Jesus said in John 15:13, “No greater love is there than this -- that a man lay down his life for his friends.” He said in essence, that there is no greater love than this incredible sacrificial love that is embodied in the life of Christ. This is the amazing love that Jesus taught. It is incredible, an amazing type of love. If you can feel that type of love, it really has an impact on you. Christians really have a lot of impact through the powerful love of Christ, living and walking in his footsteps. That love is powerful.

We know that Jesus came as the second Adam to fulfill the ideal of creation. He came to inherit God's true love. He came to be the parent of all humankind and inherit that parental heart. But when you look at that statement -- Jesus says there is no greater love than this, that one lay down his life for his friends -- you realize that he was still operating in relation to friends and had inherited "friend's love", this incredible agape love, this sacrificial love that you would lay down your life for your friends is much like a comrade in a war that would lay down their life for their brother. It is an incredible type of love.

What I realized that day is that Jesus needed to establish his family and only then would he be able to inherit true love. We know this through the Principle; we have heard it a million times. But on that day it really came to me.

We as Unificationists have all the explanations of what is True Love. True Love is an unending love. True Love is living for the sake of others. True Love is a selfless love. True Love can subjugate Satan. We had all these explanations, but I could not FEEL what this love was. I could not imagine it. I heard that it is selfless, that it lives for the sake of others, but I could not imagine what that kind of love would be. Is it just doing charity like doing clean up on the streets? Am I actualizing that type of love when I bring someone a glass of water? Is that the level of love we are talking about? Or is there something greater in what the Unification Movement considers when we talk about True Love? Is there something more powerful than the love that Christianity has taught and that has moved the world the last 2000 years?

I realized this after two years of doing ministry, while I was in prayer and received this kind of dream in a vision, so to speak. We talk about the suffering of True Parents. We talk about how they were imprisoned. We talk about their torture. We know that it is a fact in the physical. We know they endured physical torment and suffering. Look at the Apostles' Creed. Christ was crucified and descended into hell to save those in the bottom of hell so that they may see light in heaven. Unless we open up our spiritual eyes, just like the Christians did, the way Christians see Jesus, then we will not understand. Unless Christians open their spiritual eyes, they will not understand what Agape love is. Unless WE open our spiritual eyes, we will not understand what True Love is.

That day, I saw this in the vision. There True Father was: he was being beaten and tortured physically, but in the spiritual, he was descending into hell. He was down there seeing his children being tortured and tormented. He was seeing his children being torn apart. Father proclaimed, "These are my children, I take responsibility for them. Take my body, take my soul instead." He offered body and flung it to that creature and it began to make him suffer.

When I saw that, I realized: My God, we need to open up our spiritual eyes to understand what our True Parents have endured through those Seven Tortures, we need to see what kind of love is manifested, what kind of love it takes to go into the bowels of hell and say, “These are my children. Do not torture them anymore. I am their parent and will stand in their place. You take my body."

Then I realized that he did this not just once, but seven times. They did this seven times for me. They did it seven times so that one day I could see a land of glory, a land of peace, so that one day, even though I have sinned, I could be free and be forgiven of that sin, so that I and my family and my tribe and my spiritual world could enter into a greater land -- a land that maybe I do not deserve to be in -- but a land that is given to me nonetheless.

Then I realized: that is what a parental heart is. That is what we are talking about when we talk about True Parents' heart and True Love: a love that will die for the sake of the children. True Parents will sacrifice for us with an amazing love that says, “I will die again and again for you.” Not once, like Jesus, but again and again and again so my family and their children and their spiritual world can be free. And what I realized is, My God, this is what True Parents actualized in their life. This is what we were talking about when we were talking about the parental heart.

I realized that what the Unification movement is teaching about True Love, what we understand True Love to be is even greater than the love that Jesus Christ spoke about. The love that we are talking about says that the True Parents will die and die again for their children, for their families, their tribes, their society, nation, world, and cosmos, for their spiritual world, so we can see that better day. They will take on that burden of death over and over again for their children. Then I realized that there is no greater love than this.

Even in the Buddhist tradition there is compassion for all sentient beings. They train hard to become a Buddha and then to save all beings by giving enlightenment. True Parents not only trained themselves to become great persons, but sacrificed their life for their children, even for the Creation which they see, from a parental heart, as their own child. Then I realized there is no greater love and that I did not know that there was this type of love.

In Matt 9:20-22 there is a story about Jesus. He is returning to his hometown. When he crosses the river, there is an official, a nobleman. The nobleman comes to Jesus and says, "Jesus, my daughter is sick. I know if you pray for her, she is going to be made whole. So please come to my house and pray for her. You are the only one who can save her life. So please, I beg you to come pray."

So Jesus followed but someone else enters the scene. We do not know her name. All we know is that she was sick and had a disease that she had been bleeding for the last 12 years. Her body was weak and feeble and she couldn’t move so well. The woman made an incredible commitment that day because she heard of a promise that a person by the name of Jesus was coming into her land. She determined to see this man, "I know if I just I just touch the hem of his cloak, I will be healed." You can imagine this woman, bleeding everyday, having to change her clothes and bandages everyday -- change and wash them in that feeble state. But she has something that gets her out of the bed. She has a faith that if she meets the Lord, she will be healed. So on that day she gets up, she is limping, shaking as she walks, trying to go at her fastest speed because she knows that he will not be there for long.

She gets there and there is a huge crowd. Jesus is there but he is totally unreachable. There are hundreds of people standing between her and the Lord or the promise. This woman, who for 12 years was losing her blood, her life, her dream, losing her purpose, her family, everything, was crumbling. She is just totally collapsing. But she makes the commitment out of faith, out of a belief that says, “If I meet Jesus, then I can be healed.”

What we have to understand about faith is that faith is a power. Faith is not an accessory, it is a power. Faith attracts things. Faith attracts blessings. It attracts gifts to the believer, the person with faith. It attracts hope into the heart. It gives one a sense of purpose and the sense of prophesy. Looking into the future is to prophesy. It gives one the sense of destination and direction. Faith is power. Faith is attractive.

What is happening here? This woman is hobbling, she is terribly sick. There are hundreds of people around Jesus. In the “natural” there is no way she is going to be able to move through them. But she is not operating in the natural. You see, when we have faith, we are operating in the supernatural: a land where there is blessing and abundance, where there is provision and fruitfulness. We do not operate with only what we see, and this is the difference.

So what happened is that Jesus started walking towards her! What did we say about faith? Faith is attractive. Faith attracts the promise. It attracts the Holy Land. It attracts the Temple, the High Priest. Faith attracts the Blessing. So there she is thinking, "My God, there is no way I could have done this on my own. I tried to push these people -- no way -- I am bleeding. But now Jesus is walking right towards me." He passes her; he does not even see her. She just reached out and touched the edge of his cloak.

She tried to shake his hand. I am sure she tried to do a pound. You know how we do a pound, right? (Fists together) She tried to pound him! In a good way! That is a happy, blessing pound (Laughter). So she wanted to do that, but reached out and could only reach the edge of his garment, the tip of his cloak. Not even his fingernail, just the tip of his cloak. Then Jesus turned to her. He did not feel that but he turned to her and said (in Matt 9:22), "Your faith, my daughter, has healed you." And from that moment, she is made whole. She receives new life. The person from whom life was draining is now restored. The person from whom hope was draining, purpose was draining, is now restored. Now she has a new promise in her heart -- that God's blessing and abundance will be in her life in a real way, in a manifested and prophetic way. So she is never the same.

When I heard this story, I could not help but thinking about the Unification Movement. We have been like the sick woman. We have not grown so much in the last 30 years. Our life has been draining from us. We have been losing a sense of purpose. We lost thinking, "Yes, we are important, we are meaningful, we are relevant, we are excellent for this world." We have been losing this sense of urgency and expectancy that we will actualize our dreams and the promises and desires that God has placed in us. All of that has been draining away, unstoppable, continually losing life. But one day, just like that woman, there was news that a promise was in town. One day the Unification Movement felt, "Hey, wait a minute...I am not going to go down like this!" One day the Unification Movement said "We were meant for more than this; more than to be made fun of, mocked and chastised continuously for generations. That is not our destiny. We were made for more than this. And I want to touch this.” We started getting faith in our hearts.

You know what? God has made us to be extraordinary. He has given us something not in the “natural.” He has given us something in the supernatural. And we have that incredible something. We started believing again. We got up out the sick bed and said, "I am not going to stay in this sick bed anymore. I am sick of lying here. Lying down like a sick man is making me sicker! I am getting up today!" And we got up. With faith we got up, and I believe we are moving towards our promise. I believe we are moving towards our destiny that is before us.

We cannot see it just like that woman could not see Christ. She just knew he was in the vicinity. There are so many people, so many obstacles, so many things to get the way between me and that destiny. But she had something that all those others did not have. She had something called faith, faith in her promise that she would be healed and be made whole and find new life and be a new creation -- to find something great inside herself and to be able to manifest it and actualize it in this world. That came to life. And what did that do? That faith attracted the promise. Jesus came by her way. And I believe this is what is happening to us.

When we start believing in our potential as the Unification Movement, when we start renewing our faith and saying, "You know what, we are more than this. We have truth about True Love, about Parental Heart that the world has never known of -- a type of love that is so great that it goes beyond the grave, victorious over death and evil. We have this." When we start having that kind of confidence and start moving forward, then we feel the anointing, we feel that we have eternal life. No longer am I bound by the chains of fear of the future, fear of death, fear of failure, fear of myself. I can move in freedom. I can move in the joy of knowing that I am in the kingdom, knowing that I have eternity inside of me, knowing that I have power beyond the imagination of others. This is the resurrection power that happens when we understand what True Love is, when we understand what a Parental Heart is, when we receive True Parents in our life, accept that love in our heart and try to inherit that. And then we get a resurrection power inside us that no obstacle can confront. Even death cannot make us lose that resurrection power. That is something incredibly amazing and powerful.

It is said that when we believe, when we have faith, one of the natural products is another element that comes with faith. I really felt this during the 21,000 bows. It took ten days. It was really good training. I think I lost a little weight. I think I lost 5 pounds! (Laughter) No, I did not. I am just joking. But I lost a lot of hair. I am trying to grow it back.

During the 21,000 bows, the first day was absolutely torture. I was so faithful and energetic. I said, "I am going to do 7000 bows in this day, 7000.” I had done a couple thousand bows before and I was going to do 7000 today, in one day. So I said, "No problem! I am going to do 4,000 in the morning and 3,000 in the evening. No problem, I had done 2,000 before. No problem, I can do it!" So I start going, I am moving, I am excited -- got the Holy Spirit in me. I’ve got Holy Fire coming from Heaven. I am moving, going fast, fast, fast. I finished 1,000 in one hour and ten minutes. You can imagine how fast we were going. The next 1,000 I did in an hour and 55 minutes, a little slower. So in about three hours, I did 2,000 -- no rest. Just keep going...no problem...I can do it.

But when I got around 2,000 with no water or rest, something happened, very wonderfully (smile) in my left leg. All the muscles began to cramp up, began to knot and tie and twist and began to come alive (Laughter), so much so that I had to fall down. So I am on the floor holding my leg. It hurts and I am not straightening out. I am telling it to straighten out and it is not listening! So I am laying there and people are watching, so I am trying to keep cool and calm and trying to look somewhat honorable while I am lying on the floor grabbing my leg (Laughter). And there I am. The doctor came and gave me a little acupuncture and tried to knead it out. So that day it was a miracle...I was able to do 4,000! Usually, even for Buddhist monks, 3,000 is the number. But for Unificationists -- we did 4,000 (Laughter and clapping). I LOVE my monk friends, but I did 4,000 in a day! (Laughter)

The next day I was so tired. After you do even 3,000, your legs are totally dead the next day. After you do such a huge workout, you have the feeling that you cannot use them again. But we had to keep going because there was a time limit. Everyone was giving devotions for about a week. We can't let everybody down. So we have to keep going. So my legs were completely dead but I did 2,000. Keep going…

The next day was the problem. Everything began to cramp. Everything! That day we were doing one bow per minute. Really slowly... we broke it down into many stages. We would go down on the knees first, then one hand down, then another hand down. Then slowly, slowly descend. And it went on like this.

But I realized something incredible during that time. While I was doing those bows, the Hoon Sa Nims, the Unificationist monastic practitioners -- you sometimes see them in the white and blue robes -- were there with me singing this song: the song of the Seven Deaths and Resurrections and the Eight Stage Completion. You are going to hear it today during the final meditation. We are going to play that piece. We are going to have a very special altar call prayer today where we are going to try to pray like that. So they were singing this wonderful song about the Seven Deaths and Resurrections, Eight Stage Completion Victory of True Parents, and Victory of True Love. They kept on singing this and the next verse.

They kept on singing this, and the next verse says, "I am alive, thank you." I love that; it gives me so much strength. I felt so tired, I felt so beaten. I am moving so slowly and everything is hurting. But I remembered, "My God, I am alive. Yes, let me sing that song, I am alive. I am alive. I am alive. Thank you. Thank you.” And I got power. But then they put a new part in that song, another line. And that line said, "Be Victorious! Be Victorious!" As soon as they sang that, all my strength just went away. I suddenly became so weak! I said, "Can you please stop singing that part, you are giving me pressure! (Laughter) I have 17,000 more to do, so can you please stop singing that par?” (More laughter)

I realized something that day. I realized that I believed I can do it. But something was incredible. We were singing "I am alive... thank you." While you are bowing, you are tired and beaten up. But once I started saying, "I am alive! At least I am alive!" And "Thank you, I am alive! My leg is cramping, but thank you, I am alive!" then I kept moving and I felt strength. I realized why that was happening. When they were singing "Be Victorious, Be Victorious" all I had in my mind was, "Yeah, I have to be victorious. I have to show everybody I can do it. I got to show my monk friends I can do it." Do you know? It was all about ME. Be victorious! That is why I felt all this pressure. When I released that, when I let the ego go, “It is not about me, God." When I was bowing I realized I was dying going down. "It is not about me, it is about You. It is not about MY victory, it is about YOUR victory. It is not about ME wanting to be glorified, it is about YOUR glory." When I realized that I realized that that was the power that was lifting me up even though my body was breaking down. That was the power that was helping me back up. That was the resurrection power, when I let myself go, when I let go of all being about me and when I started saying, "No, it is about You."

I realized on that day that when we have faith, something happens when we can sustain it. If we have faith, we need to have praise and thanksgiving IN THAT FAITH; we need to offer songs of praise. We used to frequently turn on the Two Rivers music and all sang together, “We will overcome, we will overcome.” "I am victorious in God," all that kind of beautiful thing, just like the songs we were singing today, that overcoming song, "We are the winning side." We were there doing kyungbaes singing, “We are the winning side!" And then we really felt the incredible praise power, taking our minds off from how painful this is for my body, and starting to focus on the goodness of God, "Thank you God for allowing me to live!" Then, all of a sudden, I received this resurrection power in me through faith and through the gratitude that sustained that faith.

When we have faith but we do not have thanksgiving in our hearts, then that faith becomes like a duty: Work that we have to do, not joy. Then that faith becomes not wings but weights in our life. Then faith is something to DO, as opposed to something to live and rejoice in. When we have faith and we have praise and thanksgiving, it is different. When we are vacuuming and we do not want to vacuum, then put on that Two Rivers CD and put that praise music on the inside of you. Glorify God in His goodness and His kingdom! Then you will see that this little room is not going to defeat me today. At least not today! You get that resurrection power inside of you. And that is what happens with faith.

When faith is alive and it is filled with thanksgiving, it is not weight, but wings. It allows one to fly, says Isaiah -- allows one to soar like the eagles, says Isaiah. It allows one to run and not tire. It allows one to walk and not faint. Faith has a power and it is attractive. It attracts the promise. It attracts purpose. It attracts power. It attracts potency. This is what faith is all about. Once we believe in the power of this kind of incredible faith and love that the Unification Movement has and that we are teaching, then the world will come to know that most incredible love.

I declare that just as the world for the last 2000 years was changed through Christianity and through Jesus and the amazing love that he taught to the world; the Unification Movement and our teaching of True Love will bring the world to the next level -- to the completion stage! If you believe it, let's give it up for the Unification Church! (Cheers and clapping)

When we believe in this miraculous power, when we have faith, then we get that power. We receive that kind of love that True Parents have manifested in the Seven Deaths and Resurrections. We not only receive that love, we bring that resurrection power into our life. Then those obstacles in our way, the children that will not listen, those problems that are in our path, those mighty mountains in our path that look huge... none compare to the mightiness of the love that we are teaching, the love that we are inheriting. This, I realized, was really the key.

One may say, “How do we know that happened? We don’t know that happened. How do you know that that kind of love exists? How do you know that it is possible?” And we can ask that same question to Christians. “How do you know that Jesus died for you and he atoned for your sins? How do you know that?” How do you scientifically prove that the Buddha, after enlightenment, the davas from heaven came down and begged him, “Buddha, please teach your enlightenment, the Buddha dharma to the world.” How do you scientifically prove that a big black cobra came over him when it was raining and shrouded him like an umbrella? How can you prove that Mohammed received the word of God in the text of the Qur’an? How can you prove that at the dome of the rock, Mohammed ascended with the angel Gabriel up to heaven? How can you prove that?

That is what faith is all about. When you look into the eyes of those believers who have felt the love of Christ and who have felt change through the power of the resurrection spirit, when you see the transformation and rebirth in their lives; for us it may seem impossible. But for somebody who received that kind of love, somebody who received that incredibly valuable gift, that is like a treasure buried in the ground that only one person saw and everybody thinks he is crazy because he wants to buy that land now. Faith believes in something greater than ourselves. Faith believes in a power, a purpose and a hope that is larger than our human potential. Faith believes in something that not only is natural but is supernatural, that is divine and has divine connection and purpose and connects us to an incredible cosmic plan. That is why faith has power. That is why faith gives us attraction.

You see brothers and sisters, that day I realized that when we do actualize this in our own hearts, when we do receive the incredible power of the Seven Deaths and Resurrections, when we know that they did not only happen in the natural but in the spiritual and that they give us the receiving power, that they give us the prophetic power to bring the power of God into our lives, then we as Unificationists do not look at ourselves the same way but we see ourselves in the resurrected light. We see ourselves in a prophetic fashion. We see ourselves playing a providential role with a purpose. We see ourselves as valuable.

This is the real power of faith because when there is faith with gratitude and thanksgiving, when it fills our hearts, then there is nothing in the world to stop you. You know the scripture: “Greater is he who is within me than he who is in the world.” Nothing can stop you! That is the power of that incredible faith. Brothers and sisters, I believe now is the time for us as Unificationists.

You know I had a huge transformation in my life because this is something I had really been struggling about. And I see that my life is turning around. I feel myself more confident as a Unificationist because I know the Parental Heart that is manifested in the Seven Deaths and Resurrections. I finally know what True Love is all about. I am not perfect at it but at least I know what it is about, what kind of texture it has. When I study other religions I am inspired but I am also confident because I know that the Unification movement has an extraordinary teaching, a teaching that will bring the world to the next level and will bring that amazing, oh so amazing, wonderful land of Cheon Il Guk, that land of peace and harmony where we can dwell as brothers and sisters. Not because we deserve to be there, but because out of that amazing parental grace we and our families and our spirit worlds and our nations have been given the opportunity to be there.

Brothers and Sisters let us all bow our heads and enter into our final meditation practice…

Call to the Altar by Hyung Jin Nim:

We usually pray and we end up our service but many brothers and sisters came up to me and said, “We want to pray together.” Today we have some guests from Hong Kong. Let us welcome our brothers and sisters. Let us stand up! Anybody who needs some kind of prayer, anybody who needs the power of resurrection, I am going to come down. Our brothers and sisters from Hong Kong, from New York, please come to the front. Anybody else who wants to come, come down to receive prayer. We are going to pray together. Come on, yes, come on. Let’s give a big round of applause for these courageous brothers and sisters. We want to pray for the glory, to receive the power of resurrection that comes into our lives. It is an offering. We want to offer it as a gift. I am going to ask you to close your eyes. I am going to ask you to raise your hands up, to touch the face of God. Let’s lift our hands up and touch God!

Hyung Jin Nim's prayer:

Heavenly Father, thank you so much for these brothers and sisters. This is our family. Today we have brothers and sisters from Hong Kong. I pray that they may live with your anointment, that they can live with your spirit. Father we have brothers and sisters from New York, from Africa, from Taiwan, from Singapore, from the Philippines. Father, this is our amazing Unification Family. Your true love has brought together this diverse group so that we may come together in your amazing love.

Father, we know that You have portrayed and given us the most amazing kind of love that we could have known, Father, a love that can transcend death, go over the grave, a love that can be victorious over sorrow, over tears, Father, that can change our tears into tears of joy. Father, You gave us a new life, a new birth, resurrection. Father You have shown us that the power of Your true love is greater than any other force in the world. No torture, no prison, no hell can stop the power of Your love, of Your amazing grace, of Your unending true love.

Father we want to touch the center of the universe, the center of the cosmos which we know is Your heart, pulsing with true love. We know that True Parents have come before us. They have been physically tortured. They have gone to the prisons, to the death camp for us and Father they have gone in the spirit to take our place so that we would not have to suffer in the lower realm, so that we would be freed, so we would come directly come to the eighth stage, Father, that we may walk hand in hand with them into these incredible gates Father, the gates that You open for your children.

Father, we pray that You can be with our brothers and sisters today, Father we pray that you may come down and descend upon them, that we may have a rebirth experience that we may resurrect in this sanctuary, Father. We pray that we can have new life in this sanctuary today, Father. All the hope and the life that we have been dreaming away in our lives, we pray that they may be resurrected, Father, in Your incredible glory. Father, we pray that we may understand that it is not about US, let us understand that it is about YOUR glory, Your victory Father. Let us offer ourselves so that You move us in an almighty way, an almighty way Father that You will bring us into the next level in our lives, the next level in our family. Father, we pray that we may see that because of a certain problem in our lives that is always stealing our hopes, we are getting stronger, we are getting more victorious and be healed inside and made whole in the bosom of the Lord. Thank you so much!

We want to pray to You today as an offering. We want to sacrifice our hearts just like True Parents did in the Seven Deaths and Resurrections. We want to offer this as an altar call offering to you, Father, as your children coming together in love and in unity, in devotion, in gratitude and in hope Father. We want to leave this up to you and we want to give you strength, we want to give you more joy today.

Thank you so much for blessing the Unification Church, Father. Thank you so much for anointing the Unification movement, anointing the footsteps of all the members in the world. We pray that wherever they may be, their feet and their footsteps can be anointed, that their lives may shine, that they may show the light of God into this land of darkness. Please Father, we pray that we may be able to offer this today, we pray that you may receive this heart today, Father. We thank You so much, we feel your presence today as we lift our hands and close our eyes. As we touch your face, we know You are reaching down to our hearts and resurrecting the dreams that have been stolen by the enemy. We know that You are reaching to our hearts and resurrecting the potential that we gave up, the projects that we gave up. We pray that we may now resurrect those dreams and those desires and that they may be used for your glory Father. Thank you so much.

We pray that our brothers and sisters may return to Hong Kong, to Singapore, to Malaysia, to the U.S., all over the world and that your light, the new dawning of true love, can touch this world in a magnificent and mighty way. We pray that we may be able to move and shake this world with the power of the Principle and the power of the true love that is behind the Seven Deaths and Resurrections, Father! Thank you so much. Please, Father be with these brothers and sisters today and we want to offer all these things because united we stand and divided we fall. We thank you so much and offer all this to you in your glory and for your victory. In the name of True Parents we pray and in the name of central blessed families we pray. Aju.

Offering Prayer by Mrs. Tokiko Richardson:

Dearest Heavenly Father! Abonim, Omonim, Thank you so much for Your love. Through our 6000 years of history that was full of struggle, war, hatred and misuse of love, True Parents came to this earth, finally. They are guiding us to a true way of life. Now True Parents are showing us what a true family is through our beloved Hyung Jin Nim and Yeon Ah Nim. Father, we have no words to say other than Thank you.

Heavenly Father, we will go forward, carrying these beautiful words of Hyung Jin Nim with us today. We want to have a strong determination to support, participate and unite with Hyung Jin Nim’s heart and love. Please guide us and connect with Hyung Jin Nim and Yeon Ah Nim.

Heavenly Father, we offer this and please give us Your blessing. Thank you! We pray all these things in the name of the central blessed families from all over the world. Aju! 

Religious Conflicts Will be Resolved When People Learn to Respect Differences - "Media Buddha" Interviews Hyung Jin Moon

August 14, 2009

We should acknowledge the fact that we are all connected, and practice peace, love, and understanding.

A man wearing conventional hanbok (traditional Korean clothes) offered three thousand bows a day for a whole week. If you are wondering what might drive a Buddhist to do such a thing, you are only half-right. He is, in fact, interested in Buddhism but not a Buddhist himself.

The man in question is none other than the world president of the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification (Unification Church) Rev. Hyung Jin Moon. Rev. Hyung Jin Moon is the youngest son of Rev. Sun Myung Moon, who is the founder of the church.

The Buddhist community, which has recently been at odds with Christians and the government due to religious prejudice, now seeks to resolve conflicts through academic seminars, debates and forums. Given the current religious climate in Korea, the fact that the president of the Unification Church, who believes in the Christian God, offered a set of bows came as a surprise. As the feeling of pleasant surprise evolved into an epiphany that he could aid in seeking a solution to religious conflict, we visited Rev. Hyung Jin Moon in the church he pastors, the Unification Church World Headquarters Church in Chung-Pa Dong on Aug. 12th.

Despite the fact that he had finished the 21,000-bow devotion only a few days ago, Rev. Hyung Jin Moon looked to be in good health.

First, I asked him about his motivation for offering bows. His answer was simpler than I expected.

He said, “In the Unification Church, we bow to God as a sign of respect. There is nothing wrong about bowing to your own parents out of respect. It is customary for our church members to offer a predetermined number of bows.” He added, “The reason I offered a set of 21,000 bows was so that the holy temple of our church could be established smoothly. In the Unification Church, the number 21 symbolizes the period which is needed for human beings to achieve perfection.”

Then he added, “I’ve always felt beauty in the Buddhist bowing tradition. Though you offer bows to Buddha, it seems to me that your bows are also beneficial to you.”

Rev. Hyung Jin Moon majored in philosophy while studying in Harvard as an undergraduate, and in philosophy and comparative religion while in Harvard Divinity School. Since then, he has shown great interest in Buddhism, along with other religions and oriental philosophies. Last year, he even visited the patriarch leader of Buddhism in Korea, Beob Jun.

Reverend Moon noted,

“In the Western world, oriental traditions such as bowing tend to be looked at negatively. The tradition of respecting elders, which can be found in the Oriental world, is not a tradition of obedience; it is a tradition of respect that helps us liberate ourselves.”

The subject of the Western world’s tendency to misunderstand Eastern traditions came up and the conversation naturally moved to the religious problems erupting in Korea, where Western and Eastern religions co-exist.

Reverend Moon explained,

“As a wife presupposes a husband, and children parents, all beings are intertwined. Most religions uphold values such as love, understanding and worship. There are many similarities and people find themselves in conflict when they forget the fact that we are all interconnected and interdependent.”

He continued,

“Many people have the tendency to focus on differences rather than similarities. Because of this, it is difficult for them to acknowledge that everyone is connected to each other. Though it may be difficult to practice, Jesus taught us to love our enemies and the Unification Church goes beyond this and teaches us to get married with our enemies.”

Reverend Moon commented,

“After learning to accept differences and realizing that all beings are interconnected, I became active in the inter-religious context. Through attending inter-religious forums, I am engaging in theological discussions and building friendships with religious leaders of many faiths. I have made friends with and been inspired by both Buddhist monks and Catholic priests.”

Although the Unification Church seeks harmony with other religions, it has been persecuted as heretical because its interpretation of scripture differs from mainstream Protestantism..

Reverend Moon explained,

“When I was young, bodyguards followed me when I traveled outside. I realized as I grew that it was because of threats my family had received from Protestants.”

When asked if he had any remaining resentment caused by Protestants’ threats, Reverend Moon answered,

“There is a percentage of believers who lean toward fundamentalism in every religion. I don’t hold any resentment against Protestants in general.”

When asked if we should merely endure prosecution and turn a blind eye to other religions’ wrongful actions, Reverend Moon answered,

“I understand that Buddhists organized a rally last year urging the government to cease its discrimination between different religions. I felt that their rally was peaceful and loving -- it gave the impression that they were embracing those who had wronged them. He continued, “The way to be good is neither through silently letting the other person step on you, nor is it through confronting the other person and fighting him. Although it may be difficult, it is through showing the other person his mistakes without expressing any animosity, as the Buddhists did last year.”

Rev. Hyung Jin Moon added,

“We talk about religious conflicts but actually conflicts that manifest themselves in the name of religion are activated by various non-religious factors, such as political, economical and geographical circumstances. Each religious tradition brings with it a unique culture. Therefore, a variety of factors need to be considered when seeking to find solutions to “religious” conflicts.

If we treat each other with the heart of True Parents, who would sacrifice even their own lives in order to save their children in need, if we acknowledge our differences and the fact that we are all connected, I believe we will be able to reduce many of the conflicts that arise in the name of religion. Also, religious leaders should take on the mission of serving others from the lowest positions.”

Reverend Moon has incorporated within the Unification Church Holy Temple elements of Catholic, Protestant and Buddhist places of worship, so that members of other religions could come and practice their own religious rituals, while learning to love other religions. He proclaimed,

“I think every individual has to find the religion that is most suitable for him. Fundamentally, all faiths seek to help people change for the better. Therefore, I will respect other faith traditions and people of those faiths. If we do our best within our own faith and work toward religious harmony, I firmly believe that the world will become one.”

Media Buddha will interview more leaders of other religions in order to alleviate religious conflict and promote harmony.

The preceding interview of Rev. Hyung Jin Moon, World President of the Unification Church, appeared in Korean in Media Buddha, an online Buddhist news publication, on August 14, 2009. Translation by Daniel Elder. Edited by Tossa Cromwell. Original article www.mediabuddha.net/detail.php?number=4033andthread=29r01 

Hyung Jin Moon - 21,000 Bows, A Passion To Save People

Jeong In Jo
August 9, 2009
Headquarters Church, Seoul, Korea

As you have probably heard, Hyung-jin nim made a ' special sincerity condition of 21,000 bows from July 29 to August 7, for victory in our witnessing to 21,000 members for the Growth Stage Unification Peace Temple. Hyung-jin nim asked me to report to you about this condition on behalf of the six Hoonsas who supported him during those ten days. I do not think I can come close to expressing the depth of Hyung-jin nim's heart and devotion, but I will do my best.

Many of you were probably taken by surprise when the decision to offer such condition was announced. Please note, however, that Hyung-jin nim had made up his mind to do it several months ago, while he was doing morning prayer vigils at the top of Mt. Maebong. It was then that he told us it was necessary to offer 21,000 bows before entering the Growth Stage Temple. He then kept praying to decide when to begin the condition.

Those who knew about this were waiting in anticipation and, finally, Hyung-jin nim announced his resolution to start on July 29. He decided to actually make the offering after his realization and proclamation about the true love theology of the seven deaths and resurrections and the completion of the eight stages.

On the evening of July 28, Hyung-jin nim and Yeon-ah nim arrived at the church and informed us that they were going to stay in the room specially prepared for the condition until the offering was completed. They also asked the three Hoonsa couples to support them during this time and stay with them at the church. Following this request, we quickly packed our bags and came to the Headquarters Church.

At dawn on July 29, Hyung-jin nim looked at us and asked to agree to "be imprisoned in this place until the end of the condition."

The offering began at 3 o'clock in the morning. Hyung-jin nim felt very urgent and did the bows very quickly, planning to finish the condition in just three days. He did not allow himself to take sufficient breaks to rest. He felt exhausted after finishing four thousand bows on the first day. Hyung-jin nim felt it was important to establish the condition of forty for separation from Satan, and he decided to stop after four thousand bows, feeling too weak to continue bowing that day.

Before the condition resumed on the morning of the second day, we prayed very hard for Hyung-jin nim to be able to continue since we knew that he had exhausted himself the previous day.

We were relieved to see Hyung-jin nim begin bowing right on time in the early hours of the second day. However, each bow caused him severe pain. He told us he had muscle aches and cramps in his legs.

He did five hundred bows and took a rest, then another five hundred bows. Yeon-ah nim was very worried about Hyung-jin nim. During his breaks, she would give him massage or put a warming plaster on his legs to ease the pain. However, the pain would not go away easily. On the second day, Hyung-jin nim was able to do two thousand bows.

It was painful for us Hoonsas to see Hyung-jin nim suffering so much and we felt we had not offered sincere enough conditions to support him. We could not help but cry. To support Hyung-jin nim, day by day we would read to him from True Father's memoirs, sing holy songs, and think constantly about how to give him some strength. We dedicated ourselves sincerely, even wondering whether it would somehow be possible for us to make the offering on his behalf.

Hyung-jin nim suggested that the Hoonsas experience offering more than one thousand bows themselves. And so we responded by doing 1,000, 2,000, even 3,000 bows.

Hyung-jin aim's experience was excruciating, his body wracked with pain and his spirit body engaged in fierce spiritual battle. Since this condition was offered to save 21,000 lives, I felt the burden was several times heavier than that of a regular condition. Nonetheless, Hyung-jin nim always expressed gratitude, saying that happiness comes with suffering.

On the third day, Hyung-jin nim caught a cold. He wrapped a scarf around his neck and asked us to turn off all the fans and air-conditioning. At the peak of the summer heat, Hyung-jin nim had all the windows closed and continued his bows, pouring rivers of sweat. He also lost his appetite and did not eat much during this time.

When we reflected on how God and True Parents felt as they looked at Hyung-jin nim's sincere dedication amidst these difficulties, we could not help crying.

The first three days were thus full of challenges and hardships. It seemed that, one bow at a time, Hyung-jin nim was experiencing the seven deaths and resurrections. I cannot express what Hyung-jin nim went through during this time. He ended the third day having completed one thousand bows.

Despite the challenges of the first days, Hyung-jin nim did receive abundant support and grace from the spirit world. First, Hyung-jin nim dreamed of True Father walking around the Growth Stage Temple saying "It's so nice and beautiful," with a big smile on his face.

Second, Young-jin nim appeared at night and invited Hyung-jin nim to have pizza together with him. On the second day, Hyung-jin nim was able to eat some pizza and gain some strength. All of us enjoyed a pizza party together!

Third, at one point, Hyung-jin nim saw Heung-jin nim appear and stand next to the curtain at the window. The very next day, Hoon-sook nim came to visit. She offered bows together with Hyung-jin nim and encouraged him a lot. When she saw how Hyung-jin nim was suffering from muscle aches, she suggested putting on the special tape that ballerinas use for pain relief. It suddenly struck us, "Of course! Why didn't we think of this ourselves?" We went out right away and got the tape for Hyung-jin nim.

In the afternoon, Hyung-jin nim wound the tape around his legs. When he came out he said, "Wow! This feels good!" He felt so grateful to his older brother for sending his sister-in-law. From then on, the pain gradually disappeared and Hyung-jin nim regained his power and continued his bows. So we received a lot of support from the spirit world during this period.

Day by day, more and more members joined the sincerity condition in the Main Chapel on the second floor. Moreover, on Sunday, the Old Headquarters Church building was filled with members who did their bows with sweat pouring off their bodies since that old traditional house does not have air-conditioning. Amid the summer heat, members would keep coming to the church to support Hyung-jin nim in his offering. I had the feeling that the church was overflowing with offerings of devotion and sincerity.

Hyung-jin nim said that he realized the power of sincerity conditions once again. He felt a surge of new strength each time he received a report about members joining this sincerity condition.

Hyung-jin nim said he felt, as he made the offering, as if each bow was saving one person's life. His knees were bruised but he persevered through the pain to be victorious. It is time for us to do our part. What is our part? We need to find these 21,000 people that have received life through Hyung-jin nim's offering, and bring them to the church! Can we do this? [Aju!]

Members who heard about Hyung-jin nim's situation brought nutritious food and fresh fruit to ease his burden. After hearing about the heart and sincerity of these members,

Hyung-jin nim said that if they devote such sincerity to witnessing they will certainly bring results! Hearing this, we felt that Hyung-jin nim is like True Father, who always puts the public good above his own well-being.

At the end, Hyung-jin nim and Yeon-ah nim held hands and completed this long and arduous journey by offering prayers of gratitude to God and True Parents.

Editor's Note

If Hyung-jin nim had fulfilled the condition in three days as he initially wished, members might have marveled at his athletic prowess yet might have forgotten that we were meant to be moved to action. But our International President's course took him down into hell and he had to fight to fulfill his commitment, and come back. And members did come out to support, with their families, their children -- in their homes and at the churches, in their hundreds and thousands. Some offered hundreds of bows a day, some even a thousand. Day by day, more and more members joined this spontaneous revival. These hundreds of thousands of bows charged up the engine of our church to set her in motion.

That our international president inspired so many members to make sincere offerings in solidarity with his purpose to witness to 21,000 new members was surely a most significant aspect of Hyung-jin nim's victory. 

Victory of 21,000 Bows

Hyung Jin Moon
August 8, 2009
Headquarters Church, Seoul, Korea
Transcriber: Thea Lepercq / Nadya Hinson / Regina Shin
Proofreader: Robin Debacker

Opening Prayer: by Rev. Kyle Toffey:

Heavenly Father, joyful, joyful we do adore you and we are so grateful to be gathered together here as brothers and sisters from around the world. Not just those who are here today in this one chapel, but there are brothers and sisters who are listening and participating from around the world. We join our hearts as one. And we are so thankful that we stand here at the dawn of a new day, a new age. We are especially grateful to come before you upon the victory of Hyung Jin Nim’s 21,000 bow condition. Such a sincere devotion that Hyung Jin Nim has made, and brothers and sisters around the world have participated in making this special offering. It reminds us of the sincere offering that our True Parents have made, the saints and sages have made in the past before us, and that we are standing on such a wonderful foundation.

We pray, Heavenly Father, that as we come before you today, we can come before you with a sincere heart, that when we pray today we can pray making it a sincere devotion, that when we sing and when we listen to the service today, we can participate with a sincere heart because, Heavenly Father, we know that you want to be here. Heavenly Father, thank you so much that we can gather together here, and we pray, Father, that we can inspire you and inspire our leaders and inspire people around the world to really come to know you the way we have come to know you. Thank you so much that we can be here today. And we pray these things together with one heart in our names as blessed brothers and sisters from around the world. Aju.

Welcoming Remarks by Rev. Michael Brazil:

So, welcome everyone to our service for August 8th, 2009. We have a great service plan for you today. So, if you are a little disappointed by not seeing the man here you want to see, don’t worry, you will see him a little later. So let’s begin by manifesting the Unification Principle symbol. Please join with me: Give-and-receive-action, the four-position-foundation, coming together: May I inherit the true love of God. As Hyung Jin Nim likes to emphasize, that symbol encompasses the Divine Principle.

Today I’d like to share with you two readings from the Cheon Seong Gyeong, Page 994:

What does it mean for you to serve with all your heart, with your entire mind, and with all your devotion? It means to offer your life. Is there anything greater than that? To devote yourself with all your heart means giving up your life. To serve with all your mind and devotion means giving up your life. Isn’t there a saying, “Sincerity moves heaven?” Is there a limit to sincerity, an end to one’s devotion? Put your life on the line and offer devotion. God will recognize the person who is ready to sacrifice his life and offer a life of devotion.

That was spoken by Father Moon back in 1971.

And let’s read one more. Cheon Seong Gyeong, Page 994:

I am not saying that you should force yourself to lay down your life if you do not want to. I am saying that you should joyfully be willing to do that. Would God want you to lay down your life if you are totally miserable doing so, or would He prefer it if, intoxicated with love, not knowing if you are to live or to die, you danced with joy while laying down your life? Which would He prefer?

This was spoken by Father Moon back in 1971.

Today is August 8th, and in Unificationism “eight” represents a new beginning and what is so amazing and so great with God is that you can have a new beginning at any time. You don’t have to wait until January 1st for a new beginning or to make new determinations or new resolutions. You don’t have to wait to the first of the month to make new determinations. If you want, you can start at 2:15 on August 8th, 2009 and make a new determination, a new beginning, a new whatever.

With God you can start anew at any time, so if you in the past week were somehow unhappy with what happened or perhaps you were unhappy with yourself -- you got angry when you shouldn’t have gotten angry -- you have a chance to make a new start, a new beginning. "Next time, God, I’ll do better." That’s what is really amazing. If you come before God with real sincerity God will always accept your new beginning.

Yesterday, on August 7th, we celebrated the completion of our Senior Pastor Hyung Jin Moon’s 21,000 bow condition. Interesting, that ended on August 7th. Today is August 8th, a new beginning. And if you think about the amount of sincerity and devotion required to do that condition, where physically he suffered a lot -- and I am sure he suffered spiritually as well -- someone did not want him to fulfill that condition, did not make it easy for him. Last night, at our wonderful ceremony you could see his heart, his devotion, and later you will see it. We also, and our church have the opportunity to make a new start, a new beginning on August 8th, at the completion of the condition Hyung Jin Nim offered. So today I’d like you to think about it during our service, and to think about it in the week ahead, about an opportunity for us to start new -- to accomplish the goals that our Senior Pastor has laid out for us, so that together, as we make a new beginning, a new start, we can accomplish incredible plans. Aju! Aju!

Meditation Practice:

All right! I’d like to start by uniting our mind, body and breath. So, if you need a little space maybe move out a little bit into the aisle, and let’s begin by taking our hands and reaching to the earth. And close your eyes and think about the support that the creation, the earth gives to us. Feel the energy and the power that comes from it. And let us breathe in and as we pass our beating heart breathe out and reach your arms to heaven. Really stretch and look upward and see God giving you His blessings, pouring out His love and His truth and beauty upon you. In breathing in we pass our beating heart and breathe out. Once again stretch your hands towards the earth. Feel the energy, the Universal Prime Energy flowing from God through the creation into each and every one of us. And as we breath in we pass our living hearts, breathe out, once again stretch, stretch upward and look upward and see God sharing His grace, showering His grace upon you, showering His hope and His believe in you. And breathing in, pass your living hearts, breathe out.

I’d like to ask you to sit down and sit at the front of your chair and let us begin the mind aspect of our exercise. We are going to begin with the visualization. So please sit straight, with your back straight and please close your eyes. I’d like for you to visualize a huge oak tree, huge roots even above the ground and growing down and this oak tree is located near a cliff. And as you look out over the cliff you see a beautiful valley, beautiful dark green trees, and beautiful light green bushes creating a tremendous harmony of the color green. And you can feel the tranquility and the peace of the environment.

You can feel a wonderful breeze blowing and you sense an incredible harmony in this environment. And as you look over to the right you see a huge hot air balloon, and this hot air balloon is coming closer and closer to you. And actually it comes right up to the cliff where you are standing. And the door opens, and it’s actually God who is piloting this hot air balloon and He welcomes you into the hot air balloon. At first you may be hesitant, but you feel the warmth, the love, the peace, and you gladly step onto and into the balloon. The door closes and you rise higher and higher. And as you look out over the valley you see again an incredible vision.

God puts the hot air balloon on auto-pilot and turns to you and takes you in His arms and tells you how much He loves you. He tells you how precious you are to Him. That you are more precious than anything else, and that He thinks of you all the time. And He asks that you let Him into your life, include Him into your daily activities. And you feel His love pouring over you, His grace showering upon you. And you, too, cannot help to share so many tears and you feel even Heavenly Father's tears dropping on your head, tears of joy that you are there with Him, you are there to share the beauty of His creation, you are there to share the beauty of His heart.

And as you open your eyes you find yourself back on that cliff, and you see that hot air balloon flying away in the distance and God waving to you, but you feel so peaceful in your heart, so filled with love. And as you close your eyes and breathe deeply, and as you breathe in you say to yourself: “I am alive,” and as you breathe out you say: “Thank you.” As you breathe in again this time you say, “I am loved, truly, truly loved.” As you breathe out, “Thank you.” The final inhalation: As you breathe in, in your heart you say, “I am loved, truly loved,” and as you breathe out, “Thank you.”

God and our True Parents have truly blessed each person here to live a wonderful blessed life, a life by which we can inherit the true love of God and our True Parents, to become great ambassadors of love for our Heavenly Parents, to become great blessings to our husbands, wives, our children, brothers and sisters, friends, our communities, cities, nations and to the entire world. This is what God hopes for you and for me. And brothers and sisters let us once again join our hands together and manifest the unification principle once more: give-and receive-action, four-position-foundation, hands coming together. Now inherit the true love of God. Aju!

Interesting Story:

Brothers and sisters, we want to follow in the pattern of our head pastor, and he always likes to start with something interesting, as he says, a little interesting, a little funny. So last week we did not have a joke. So I thought, this week we have to have one. So to help you to understand I want to just show you quickly a slide. This is a nun’s habit. That’s what she wears on the top of her head, it’s called a habit. Now listen carefully. Six nuns were in their third floor sleeping quarters in the convent when a fire broke out one night. The nuns quickly took off their habits, tied them together to make a rope and climbed out of the window. After they were safely on the ground and standing outside of the building, a news reporter came over to one of the nuns and asked her: “Weren’t you afraid that the habits might have ripped or might have broken since they are so old?” The nuns smiled and replied: “Oh, no dear, we weren’t worried at all. Don’t you know? Old habits are hard to break!”

Special Video Presentation:

Please be seated. And we have a wonderful video to show you, but before we start the video, I would like for us to check your earphones. So everyone, please get out your earphones and let’s check to make sure they are working. Everyone ready? So let’s begin the video:

Hyung Jin Nim (in the video):

What is true love? We think of it as a great thing, but it is actually more than that, more than we think. Well, how about in comparison to Christianity? Is the true love that we think about bigger than true love that Christians profess? Is it greater? Or is it the same thing or similar? What is true love? I had a realization about this. I really understood what true love is.

Then the Holy Bowing Ceremony begins in the video

Hyung Jin Nim’s Prayer:

Heavenly Father, we offer to you the Sincerity Condition of 21,000 bows. We offer to witness to 21,000 people and for the victory of the growth stage of the Unification Peace Temple. Please accept our small offering. I understood that the True Parents went to the bottom of hell for our sake. Even though we deserve punishment, they went instead of us, they gave up their holy bodies for our sake. Once, twice … seven times, they died for us seven times.

Rev Brazil:

This is how give-and-receiving-action, and four-position-foundation, let’s inherit the true love of God sounds in Korean. The song was composed by Hyung Jin Nim for his children during his 10 days offering condition.

Victory of True Parents, victory of True Love. I am alive -- thank you.

Brothers and sisters, if you can realize the value of true love, the value of giving your life for the sake of your children, the heart that wants to die again and again for the sake of children, if you realize that we are people who received this kind of love, once we realize this, we understand that our life is not ours. Hyung Jin Nim is offering his last 21 bows together with his members. 21,000 bows -- Mansei!

Hyung Jin Nim (in the video):

Victorious True Parents of Heaven and Earth, we are sorry. You have died seven times for our sake; You have died instead of us. Instead of us. You went to the scary spiritual world, so that the flower of unification can bloom someday. So that we can go to the kingdom of heaven. So that we can receive salvation by the heart and true love of True Parents. But we did not realize the true value of this true love. Father, we want to inherit this true love from you and we want to return it to you. Thank you from the bottom of our hearts. Please receive our small offering, receive it completely. True Parents, please receive our small offering. Thank you. Thank you, True Parents.

Rev. Brazil:

Hyung Jin Nim is making the commemorative calligraphy that is probably going to be displayed at the growth stage Temple. This is a special seal called Naguam, for artists to mark their artwork. Thank you.

Hyung Jin Nim praying (in video):

We have received your precious true love and we received the experience of seven deaths and resurrections for the sake of the country, for the sake of the world. Allow us to become people who have inherited the victory of true love. You gave us true love through True Parents and we are grateful to you for this. Today, our Unification Church members have opened their spiritual eyes and understood the value of true love and we are going to bring this message to the world. And we are going to witness about this to the people of the world. And we are going to inherit this amazing true love. And allow us to become people who will establish the Kingdom of God, the Cheon Il Guk.

Introduction of Guest Speaker by Rev. Brazil:

Brothers and sisters, we are very blessed today to have someone who shared that condition with our Senior Pastor Hyung Jin Moon come and share with us today about her experience. I would just like to briefly introduce her. Her name is Hoonsa Cho Choung In. She and her husband are part of the 777 couple blessing. They have two boys and two girls. Many of you have seen one of their daughters here many times. She is actually the lead female singer here in this choir. She is not here today.

Hoonsa Cho Choung In and her husband have been in the ministry field since 1972. And August of last year their couple was assigned here at the Headquarters Church, and in May of this year they were appointed by Hyung Jin Nim. That is a very special classification and a very rigorous training to reach that kind of level. Since that time she and her husband have attended the 3:00 am Jeong Seong with Hyung Jin Nim Moon every morning. So let’s give her a very warm welcome applause and please join me in welcoming her to the stage.

Testimony by Mrs. Hoonsa Cho Choung In:

Dear Brothers and Sisters, it is good to see you! You have probably gone through a lot emotionally when you watched the video. First I would like to express my gratitude to God, True Parents, and our world President, Hyung Jin Nim, who asked me to testify on the stage today. I was asked to testify about the 21,000 bow condition that took place over ten days. Although I feel limitations to express all my emotions of everything that happened during this time, I will do my best.

The decision to offer this sincerity did not come out of the blue. Hyung Jin Nim had a plan to offer 21,000 bows before entering the growth stage of the Unification Peace Temple. We thought, "Well, when is he going to start the condition?" Hyung Jin Nim apparently made the decision to offer the sincerity after realization about the seven conditions of True Parent’s deaths. Originally he was planning to do the condition in 2 to 3 days beginning on July 29th. He came to church on the 28th and invited us, the Hoonsa families, to come to the church and stay overnight. I received the message unexpectedly and came to church. In the morning, he looked at us and asked if we were willing to accept volunteer imprisonment at the Headquarters Church until the end of the condition. This is how our condition started -- at 3 am in the morning.

Hyung Jin Nim felt extreme urgency in his mind and so he wanted to complete the condition in 3 days so he increased the speed of his bowing. He started bowing without rest for 4,000 bows. After completing these, he collapsed. He just couldn’t continue that day. It was decided that he should rest after completing separation from Satan based on the 4,000 bows. On the second day, we were very concerned that he would be able to continue.

He could hardly get up but started bowing. All of his body’s muscles were sore and he had cramps in his legs. He seemed really distressed. He would do 500 bows and take a rest, then another 500 and take a rest. Yeon Ah Nim put bandages on his legs and arms and massaged his body, but the pain would not go away easily. On that day he could complete only 2000 bows.

Those Hoonsas who observed this felt that we did not establish enough indemnity conditions and didn’t support Hyung Jin Nim completely. We felt really distressed because of this, just looking at what was happening to Hyung Jin Nim. We tried to help uplifting his spirit by reading from True Father’s autobiography and singing Holy Songs. We tried to give him strength through this day by day. We really wanted to take the suffering instead of Hyung Jin Nim.

Hyung Jin Nim suggested that each of the Hoonsas do 1,000 bows for their experience. We did 1,000, 2,000, even 3,000 bows to support Hyung Jin Nim. Since he was full of determination to be victorious in following the path of True Parents of seven deaths and resurrections, he took the suffering of each bow with a grateful heart. It was an excruciating experience for him. Since this was a condition to establish the victorious foundation for the 21,000 members for the Unification Peace Temple, we felt that doing each bow was more difficult than doing a regular bow.

On the third day Hyung Jin Nim felt unwell. He felt he was getting sick. He asked to not turn on the air conditioning, to close all windows and to not even use the fans, so when he was doing the bows, sweat was pouring and he lost his appetite. I could hardly hold my tears but I thought that True Parents see the suffering of their son from the spirit world. One can only imagine the degree of suffering that Yeon Ah Nim went through looking at what Hyung Jin Nim was going through. The first three days were the most difficult. Each bow was like death and resurrection. I really cannot express this experience with words. He finished the third day by doing 1,000 bows.

On the other hand, there was a lot of support from the spirit world. First, True Father came in a vision from the Cheon Bok Goong. Father’s face was beaming with a smile. The second spiritual visitation was from Young Jin Nim. He invited Hyung Jin Nim out for a pizza. So we ordered pizza and had a pizza party. Young Jin Nim apparently felt very sorry for his brother and he advised that he get some nutrients for physical support.

The third guest from the spiritual world was Heung Jin Nim. Hyung Jin Nim saw his older brother outside of the building and on that day Hoon Suk Nim, the wife of Heung Jin Nim, came to visit the World President. She bowed together with Hyung Jin Nim. Looking at his suffering and the pain in his legs he was going through, she said: “Ballerinas use a special tape when their muscles are strained to relieve the pain.” She suggested that Hyung Jin Nim use this tape. We thought: “What a great idea. Why couldn’t we have come up with this idea ourselves?” So we quickly got the tape and gave it to Hyung Jin Nim. In the afternoon his legs were plastered with this tape all over and he seemed very happy. Looking at this, we felt that Heung Jin Nim sent Hoon Sook Nim to help his brother in the physical world and that he sent the idea of using this tape. From that moment the pain began to disappear and Hyung Jin Nim began to feel relief of the physical pain. He felt a lot of support from the spiritual world.

On the second floor of the chapel a lot of members did sincerity conditions together with Hyung Jin Nim. It was really the first time in the history of the Unification Church that so many members joined in the sincerity conditions, and when Hyung Jin Nim received a report about this he was very inspired and got a lot of support. We reported about the conditions of sincerity made by the members to Hyung Jin Nim everyday and everyday he received a lot of support from that.

Hyung Jin Nim went through extraordinary suffering. Each bow was to save the life of one person. What we have to do is to find those 21,000 people and bring them to the temple. Will you do this? Thank you!

Hyung Jin Nim never left his small room in the Headquarters Church for the whole period of ten days. A lot of members were concerned about Hyung Jin Nim’s health and brought a lot of different kinds of food to support him. We reported about these offerings from members. He felt grateful but he would always say that we have to witness. I really felt that in that sense he is very similar to True Father. Asleep or awake he always thinks of witnessing. We can only live if we witness. We can only survive if we witness.

Hyung Jin Nim wrote three calligraphies during this ten-day period. The first one was written on August 6, after finishing 17,506 bows. The calligraphy reads: “Seven deaths and resurrection eight stages victory.” The second one was made in the temple together with all the members present after finishing the 21,000 bows. It says: “Seven deaths and resurrection eight stages victory -- we will follow.” The third calligraphy was made after completion of all the ceremonies. He did it in his house. It reads: “Seven deaths and resurrection eight stages victory -- thank you to True Parents.” He wrote it with his own blood. This is how he completed his offering. He showed his determination by signing with his own blood. And the sign reads: “Thank you to True Parents!” Hyung Jin Nim’s family was together with him and they finished the condition by offering a prayer.

All these things allowed us to become the citizens of Cheon Il Guk and demonstrated the meaning of true love behind the seven deaths and resurrection experience. This in turn will allow us to enter the Unification Peace Temple. Let’s give a big hand to the World President of the Unification Church. He is a living example of true love behind the experience of seven deaths and resurrection.

Closing Prayer by Rev. Brazil:

Our Heavenly Father, we thank you for this incredible service today where we received the video, the sermon and the message. Please help us to inherit it deeply into our hearts, help us to understand how much you want to give to us. You really want us to inherit the same heart that our True Parents have demonstrated, as we heard, so well. Help us to inherit your true heart of love that we might be willing to follow in the footsteps of our True Parents, in the footsteps of our Senior Pastor Hyung Jin Moon. Help us to make that same determination and resolve so that this sacrifice, this offering, done by Hyung Jin Nim, will not be in vain, but will be a springboard that will empower us to move forward, to reach out to your precious sons and daughters who do not yet know you, do not yet know our True Parents, do not yet know your original will and desire, that each child of yours would live well on earth and go to the Kingdom of Heaven.

But we know that that is not the reality today. So many of your sons and daughters do not know you and are not living proper lives. And then when they pass into the spirit world they go, based on their own lives, to a very horrible place which brings great suffering to your heart, which brings great anguish to you, as our True Parents once said to a person when he looked out from the hilltops of Pusan. What did he see? He saw the people who did not yet know you, Heavenly Father, who were living lives that cause you great anguish, lives that were hurting them and bringing them into hell. But they did not yet know it. And when their lives ended they had to go to great suffering themselves. How desperate he was to save them, sleeping on average two hours at night, desperate to save humanity.

We are so grateful that our Senior Pastor here, Hyung Jin Nim, has inherited that same heart, that same passion, and helps us also to inherit it, not out of duty, not out of obligation, not out of guilt but out of a heart of true filial piety. Out of a heart, Heavenly Father, that we want to liberate. We want to liberate your heart, so that you no longer have to suffer, you no longer will shed tears of sadness when you look at your children, hurting each other and killing each other, doing horrible things to each other, not knowing how much you want them to simply love each other, to live lives that will bring joy to each other and to you, which is your original ideal.

Help us, Heavenly Father, to turn your tears of sadness into tears of joy. Again we thank you so deeply. Please empower us to go forward out of this heart of service and out of love and gratitude that you have given so much to us. You have blessed us in so many ways. We are so apologetic and repentful that we have not really seen and understood. Help us to open our spiritual eyes so that we may see, so that we may be empowered to do more out of love, out of gratitude, out of joy. We thank you. We know that you want us to be joyful; you don’t want us to be sad. You want us to only know your heart of joy. And yet, Heavenly Father, we truly must know your heart of sadness, so that we can liberate it. Again we thank you and we very humbly offer and report all this to you with brothers and sisters from around the world. Aju!

Offering Prayer - Anne Inoue:

Heavenly Father…we are so grateful for what our True Parents have done and what Hyung Jin Nim is trying to do, that is to move this world one step closer to you. When Adam and Eve fell away from you, not only the connection between you and the children was lost, but also the relationship among all of your children was broken. And this world is so full of pain and suffering. Now it’s so exciting to see that Hyung Jin Nim is making such a determination and substantial plan to try to reconnect your children to each other and to you. We are so happy that we can be here together in sharing in that.

We want to take with us into our week what we have shared here together and into our days, about the growth stage Temple, and we want to determine and find in our hearts our strength to move ourselves closer to you and to each other and to reach out to the people around us that we see each day, who can all benefit from the true love that our True Parents have taught us. And we want to offer this day to you, the service and the time of the coming week to you. And I report this in my name, Anne Inoue, from a central blessed family. Aju! 

Special Sermon by Il-Hwa CEO Lee Sung Kyun

Hyung Jin Moon
July 25, 2009
Headquarters Church Seoul, Korea
Transcribers: Barbara Malloch / Cathy Quebral
Proofreader/Polished by: Sylvia Santelli / Bruno Klotz

Opening Prayer by Rev. Michael Brazil

Our Heavenly Father, our Heavenly Mother,

We want to thank you so much for this beautiful day, the rain that has cleared the skies and the air we can breathe in, the crisp, pure and refreshing air. Father, we also want to breathe in the fresh pure spiritual air, your love, and your heart and your truth. We want to welcome you here, we want to throw open the doors to the church and to the chapel and invite you in, welcome you to our service.

We pray that you can delight as you take a look at your children who are here from so many different countries, different nationalities and different backgrounds. Father, we know that you teach that we should be one family. We pray that you will delight as you see one family here today. Help us to open our hearts and our minds to receive your word today, to receive your truth, your love, your goodness and your beauty.

We ask that you speak through our speakers today, that they can convey that truth, goodness, beauty and love. Again we thank you so deeply, and we want to humbly and excitedly offer this prayer to you as blessed brothers and sisters from around the world. Aju.

Welcoming Remarks:
Yeon Ah Nim:

Good afternoon brothers and sisters. It's really great to see you all. Today I heard a lot of Philippine sisters came. Can you just wave your hands so we can welcome you? Welcome sisters, we love you so much! We are truly grateful today that we have each other in this sanctuary under Heavenly Father and our True Parents. On this great day let us celebrate our worship service and let us praise our Heavenly Father and our True Parents. Welcome brothers and sisters.

Hyung Jin Nim:

Welcome brothers and sisters. Let's begin by manifesting the Principle -- are you ready for that? Let's go. Give and receive action, four position foundation, May I inherit the True Love of God. Aju! You did it.

You know, this week has been incredible. After receiving spiritually the seven deaths and resurrections of True Parents, I realized what kind of love the True Love of True Parents was. Before I did not realize what kind of love that was. And this week has been amazing. We had the privilege to go to Japan, to encourage the members there and talk to them about what True Love is. We saw so many brothers and sisters there shedding tears. So many came up to us and said, "I never could get my finger on exactly what True Love was.” After understanding that, I can kind of sense now, what kind of parental love this True Love is. It really is remarkable, that kind of True Love, the parental heart, that will take their children's place in punishment or even death. Not just once, but over and over again. That is the kind of immense love we're talking about. And when we realize what kind of amazing grace we have we realize that it is great, because we are going to go into Cheon Il Guk... Let's give it up for Cheon Il Guk, everybody! Yes, we are entering into the Kingdom!

I was reading through the Bible and I was inspired by this one chapter in Isaiah, it is really beautiful. I want to share it with you all today. Its Isaiah 35 -- it's called "Joy of the Redeemed". Understanding the True Love theology, understanding the seven deaths and resurrections and then hearing this- is so inspiring. I want to read it with you.

Isaiah 35:

"The desert and the parched land will be glad; the wilderness will rejoice and blossom. Like the crocus, it will burst into bloom; it will rejoice greatly and shout for joy. They will see the glory of the Lord, the splendor of our God. Strengthen the feeble hands, steady the knees that give way; say to those with fearful hearts, "Be strong, do not fear, your God will come, he will come with a vengeance, with divine retribution he will come to save you." Then will the eyes of the blind be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped. Then will the lame leap like a deer and the mute tongue shout for joy. Water will gush forth in the wilderness and streams in the desert. The burning sand will become a pool, the thirsty ground bubbling springs. In the haunts where jackals once lay, grass and reeds and papyrus will grow. And a highway will be there and it will be called the Way of Holiness. The unclean will not journey on it; it will be for those who walk in that Way. Wicked fools will not go about on it. No lion will be there, nor will any ferocious beast get up on it; they will not be found there. But only the redeemed will walk there, and the ransomed of the Lord will return. They will enter Zion with singing; everlasting joy will crown their heads. Gladness and joy will overtake them, and sorrow and sighing will flee away."

Let's give and Aju for that, brothers and sisters! I'm ready to get into the Cheon Il Guk. Oh my goodness!

Brothers and sisters, it is in that spirit of offering, gratefulness, thanksgiving, that we want to enter into God's presence. When we do that, then He's going to shower His blessings, and the springs in the desert shall come forth. That's when we're going to see this week bloom and blossom, new beautiful lakes and pools, bubbling springs. That's when we are going to see us getting more things done, getting more blessing. When we come into His presence like that, with that kind of receptivity, open heart--then we're getting ready to be blessed. And when we offer service together, worship together, sing together, pray together and listen to our speaker together -- we have a wonderful speaker today -- then we are getting ready -- readying ourselves for and incredible victory, incredible freedom, that we all receive through the love of True Parents.

Brothers and sisters I want to give you this opportunity, not just as observers, participants. We want to really offer our hearts. When we do that this week then we know this week going to become better, more blessed, more victorious, more illuminated, more filled with peace in our hearts, minds, our souls.

Brothers and sisters once again welcome. Let's start with that kind of amazing heart. If we do that we are going to truly return gladness and joy to God and True Parents. Let's all rise and now move into our Family Pledge.

Family Pledge

Let us always remember that God and True Parents have blessed us with the blessed life to inherit the True Love of God, a love that is incredible, that allows us to become greater blessings to our spouse, to our family, the greatest blessings to our communities, our nation, our world, the spirit world and to God.

Let us now manifest the Principle: Give and Take Action. Four Position Foundation. All coming together as one. May I inherit the True love of God. Aju.

Let us take time to pray. We also want to pray for our Abel good spirits. Let us offer them thanks. Let us pray together.

Unison prayer

Hyung Jin Nim’s Prayer after unison prayer:

Heavenly Father, we thank You so much for Your amazing, unending grace. We are so grateful that we get to know True Parents who have manifested and perfected Your true love and inherited that parental heart; a heart that sacrifices and takes the place of their children, even at the cost of their own lives, so that their children may live and that their children may be free in the land of glory.

True Parents have not done that for us once but seven times. They have sacrificed their physical and spiritual soul, so that we could have everlasting life in the incredible nation of eternal peace. Glory be unto them and glory be unto You who have allowed us to be in this place. We want to inherit that kind of true love, and we want to love You with that kind of heart.

We offer these things to You today, altogether here as one family, as one brotherhood, one sisterhood, in our own name as blessed central families. Aju!

Thank you, brothers and sisters, for offering your prayers. We want to always remember to pray for our Abel good spirits, to pray for each other. That is getting the resurrection spirit inside of us. Seven deaths and resurrections... Even death could not be victorious over true love. That is the kind of resurrection power we want to inherit. Nothing can stand in our way when we are moving towards the kingdom.

Introduction of Speaker by Hyung Jin Nim:

Brothers and sisters, we have a wonderful brother here that will be speaking for us today. His name is Lee Sung Kyun Sajangnim. He is now the President of Il Hwa Corporation which, as you know, is one of our major companies. He’ll be explaining a little more to you today. I want to briefly introduce him.

He was born in 1954 and in 1970 he joined the movement. He joined actually when he was a high school student, in his first year, so he joined quite early. He received the blessing in 6000 couples and has two wonderful children.

We have the privilege of visiting him at his home and meeting his family; just a wonderful family. He entered into Il Hwa, the Corporation, in 1978, so he’s been there for a good 30 years. In 1998 he was asked by Father to become the President of Il Hwa, and of course, he’s been continuing his education. He attended one of the major universities here in Seoul, Tong Guk University. He got his degree in economics. He has a masters in economics and is now working towards his PhD in economics.

He’s been here ever since Kook Jin Hyung has come in 2005. He has really worked tirelessly to be able to resuscitate Il Hwa for the last 30 plus years. Il Hwa has never been profitable in its history. And even though it has some very famous things like McCol and Ginseng Up -- do you remember? We grew up on this stuff all the time when we were young -- but Il Hwa, as a corporation, was actually in weak condition.

Ever since President Lee took leadership, they went through many, many different types of difficulties, but he was able to guide the company through those difficulties. Finally, in 2005, when Kook Jin Hyung came, he took responsibility for the Tong Il group. He worked very closely with Kook Jin Hyung, becoming totally united, completely one, and really making the steps to make Il Hwa a successful company. He’s going to give you a little more detail on what exactly happened but I would like to report that for the first time in Il Hwa history it is now profitable. (Applause)

Let’s give it up to Il Hwa! (Applause)

Without his leadership and his total unity with the entire group, the Chedan group with Kook Jin Hyung and all the other company Presidents, it would not have been possible. President Lee is quite an example in our community. He brings his staff out here on Sundays, they offer their time, he is out there in the parking lot, guiding cars into the parking lot, in the parking ministry or even doing the greetings. He is in the greeting ministry, too. He will go down and do this with the members and with his staff.

So he is not the President that is floating up on high. He is really going down and showing the example of what a leader should be in this new age. He is very talented and now he is making results for our Unification Movement and for our Tong Il Group. But he is taking that step of faith, and he is an incredible contributor towards the remodeling of this church here. He personally, and also corporately, has contributed greatly to the temple building. So they have just been outstanding members of our community, just outstanding members of faith. It is such a privilege for us to be able to highlight them today and their story and all the exciting happenings in Il Hwa.

When he comes up, let us all give him a very warm round of applause. Let’s invite President Lee up. (Applause)

President Lee speaks in Korean -- no translation

Hyung Jin Nim Words of Thanks:

Brothers and sisters, once again, President Lee from Il Hwa! (Applause)

You know, it is such a proud day when we finally heard that Il Hwa became profitable and successful. We’re so delighted. The same company that brought excitement when we were kids, drinking McCol and Ginseng Up, finally, as a corporation, is doing great. We’re so delighted, so happy, so proud. We’re so grateful for President Lee. He and the other Presidents of the Tong Il Group along with Kook Jin hyung’s leadership really have turned around the whole situation in our Korean movement.

If Kook Jin hyung had not come here to really make it a success, then in this age, in this year 2009, we would really be in a very different situation here in the Korean Church. However, because of their success and their very hard work and the results that they made for us as a movement, as a church, we’ll be able to continue to grow and progress as we are doing today.

Let’s give President Lee one more round of applause. (Applause)

Thank you so much. Very proud! Proud Unificationist! Wherever they go, they are carrying people, we are Unificationist and we’re not shy. We’re proud of it, we’re proud of it, brothers and sisters. That’s the kind of power we want to have. We are professional; we’re successful in our companies, successful in our Church. Our Church is growing. We’ll be proud of who we are, proud of what we have as Unificationists. We have pure love, we could finally understand what that means, what kind of amazing love that is, love that the world has not seen yet. And when we understand that, when we have confidence in ourselves as Unificationists, then we’re going to exude that confidence, and we’re going to allow that to spread to the rest of the world.

If you believe it, let’s give it up for Unification Church, True Parents and God! (Applause)

Hyung Jin Nim Prayer:

Let’s gather our hearts in final prayer.

Heavenly Father, thank You so much for this day that You have blessed upon us. Father, we know that Your foundation is not only internal but, Father, but You have an external form as well. Father, in this day and age, when we’re truly supposed to substantialize Cheon Il Guk, to allow that prayer, “Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done as on earth as it is in heaven.” Father, we pray that we may be able to substantialize that.

Father, we are praying with gratitude for the tremendous success that You have blessed upon our Tong Il Group with the leadership of Kook Jin hyung here. We’re thanking You for our President Lee Sung Kyun today, for his sharing his words and also his experience, his story and also the great success and victory that You have blessed upon Il Hwa.

Father, we pray for their continued success, that the internal nature which is so incredible in our movement, so advanced -- we understand really what true love is -- we pray that our external form can also match that level of success and loftiness.

We pray that today You may have spoken to people who are listening via the internet. Father, give them hope,"Yes, we are the Unificationists! We can succeed and we will succeed.” And Father, all the nay sayers and those who curse the Unification Movement, saying that it will perish, that it will fail, let us truly bring success. Let us lift our symbol up higher and let us try, not with arrogance but with victory and glory, always returning that in gratitude to You.

Father, we want to be those kind of incredible people of faith and we want to offer all these things to You in gratefulness, in thanksgiving and in glory.

We pray these things in our own names as Central Blessed Families, Aju!

Offering Prayer by Rev. Michael Brazil

Please bow down your heads, close your eyes.

Good afternoon, our most beloved Heavenly Father and True Parents.

Father, we would like, again, to invoke Your Divine presence as we are gathered here as brothers and sisters after receiving the inspiring message through our beloved elder brother President Lee and our elder brother Hyung Jin Nim.

Father, with all the effort and sacrifices of our brothers and sisters who are here today, we would like to offer this humble offering which came from their hearts and hard work. This simple donation is offered to You for the purpose of fulfilling the advancement of the providence here on earth and also in the spirit world.

Father, we would like to take this opportunity again, to convey our deepest gratitude for all the bountiful blessings You have bestowed upon us.

Thank you and we love You so much.

This we ask and pray as central blessed family, in our names, Aju! 

Regarding the Commemorative Events for the 13th 7.8 Jeol

Hyung Jin Moon
July 23, 2009

Ref. No. FFWPUI 2009-38

To: Regional presidents, National messiahs, National leaders
From: FFWPU International Headquarters
Date: July 23, 2009
Re.: Regarding the Commemorative Events for the 13th 7.8 Jeol

May God and True Parents’ blessings and love be with brothers and sisters in all regions, mission nations and providential organizations.

Each region and mission nation should hold the commemorative events for the thirteenth 7.8 Jeol on August 1, 2009 in each region and nation at local time.

1. Name of Event: 13th 7.8 Jeol (Declaration of the Realm of the Cosmic Sabbath for the Parents of Heaven and Earth)

2. The commemorative event should be held at 7:00 am (local time for each mission nation) on August 1, 2009

3. The event should be held in the chapel of the church building

4. Please follow the basic program used during the commemorative events for the eight major Holy Days

5. Significance of Chil Pal Jeol

1) This Holy Day is a declaration of God’s realm of Sabbath which was established on the foundation of the victory of the 3.6 million blessing, which is a global blessing ceremony of the perfection stage, and of the fact that God ushered in an era in which he can exercise his full authority. From 2007, the commemorative event for Chil Pal Jeol has been held on August 1 (solar calendar).

2) In the Bible it is recorded in chapter 2 of the book of Genesis that God created the heavens and the earth over a period of six days and rested on the seventh day. True Father emerged on the foundation of six-thousand years of the history of restoration through indemnity. He declared Chil Pal Jeol and entered into the realm of Sabbath at that moment when the number 7 (the number of rest) overlapped eight times, signifying the restoration of the number 7 at the 7th second of the 7th minute of the 7th hour in the morning of the 7th day of the 7th lunar month of the year 1997, in which True Father turned 77.

3) The realm of the Sabbath signifies a realm that transcends Satan’s accusations. Consequently, an era ushering in heavenly fortune began where God was able to exercise His full authority as He should have.

4) There are three providential factors that enabled the declaration of Chil Pal Jeol.

First, is the establishment of a foundation of victory of having restored the three rights (restoration of the right of the eldest son, right of the parents and kingship) centering on True Parents’ family, on the foundation of having restoring these three rights on the vertical standard that was victoriously established.

Second, during his prayer for this declaration, True Father prayed “I thank You for the grace of allowing this day to be established through the emergence of a time of victory for a transnational blessing ceremony of 3.6 million couples, which can go beyond the satanic world.” Through this prayer, it can be seen that as of July 15 that day, more than 3.6 million couples worldwide were secured for the blessing ceremony.

Third, on April 10, 1992 True Mother founded the Women’s Federation for World Peace, ushering in an era of the liberation of women worldwide. Based on the success of her speeches delivered at the US Congress and UN Headquarters, True Parents successfully held the “Korean Leaders Convention for Practicing True Families for World Peace and Unification” held from July 22 to August 8 in 1997.

Hyung Jin Moon
International President 

True Parents Died For Us Seven Times

Hyung Jin Moon
July 18, 2009

At the Saturday service on July 18 (and at the Sunday services the following day), Hyung-jin nim testified about the spiritual experience that permitted him profound insight into True Parents' redemptive love.

You know brothers and sisters; we had a very important meeting this Wednesday. We elected regional woman leaders for our Korean church. All the Korean central members were here. We had that election, and I asked some questions that I want to ask you. I asked them, "Why are you an Unificationist? Why did you choose Unificationism?

Think about it. There are so many incredible religions in this world. Christianity talks about the incredible sacrificial love of God. Buddhism talks about maha karuna brahma vihara, the ocean-like compassion, incredible virtues. And they are so established. Christianity has over a billion followers. Scholars say Islam will probably be the largest religion by 2050. So why do you choose Unificationism? It's still small. It's a cult in many people's eyes. Why do you choose to be an Unificationist?

This question has been racking my brain ever since I really started taking life seriously. Ten years ago, after Young-jin passed, I started studying religion, frying to find the answer to this. I studied the world's religions, travelled to very remote areas, stayed in monasteries and with different religious communities -- in Italy in Tibet, in China, wherever -- and studied different religious traditions, becoming one with them. For ten years, I've been training; every morning we've been doing devotional training, ascetic training, monastic training.

For about two years now, I've been doing ministry. In that time I've experienced incredible Christian communities that talk about the incredible love of Christ, the incredible sacrifice, the agape love of Christ, the passion of Christ. Passion is suffering, but in that suffering is the great love of Christ, the great sacrifice that Jesus paid for our sins.

From Buddhists I have heard about Buddha's great compassion. So great is the compassion that they let go of the fact that they can get into Nirvana, or heaven, so that they come down and save and liberate the sentient beings on this planet, and on the other planets. It's such a great compassion that we do not want to do harm even to a little insect.

I heard about the great devotional love of Mohammed, when following and being obedient to God's will and God's word, that incredible devotional love towards God.

Striving to understand what makes Unificationism great

But how then is our Unificationist teaching greater? You know, Sarah Coakley, my Christian theology professor at Harvard, said, "I'm an Episcopalian priest because I believe that this is the best religion." We're Unificationists. We must believe somehow that we have a higher truth, that we have a greater insight into reality into the truth of the universe, into the truth of the divine.

We've heard about our true love... I've heard all the standard explanations of true love -- love that can make Satan naturally surrender, love that gives and gives, or love that lives, exists, for the sake of others. I've heard it millions of times.

I was a theologian as well. I was wrestling with this. Here it was, in my head, but I couldn't feel it in my spirit, in my emotion, in my heart. Somehow, I started feeling, Wait a minute! We are teaching an incredible true love, but is that not the same or is it at least similar to the great love of Christ who offered his life, laid down his life for the sake of the sinners of the world, his friends? Is not the true love that we talk about somehow similar to the great maim karuna of the Buddha, the great compassion that doesn't even harm one little insect? Where is the great true love, the devotional love, that Mohammed had for God as his master? That great love! Isn't the love that we are talking about at least something similar to that?

We, as Unificationists, have come to believe that we are teaching something similar to that. Somehow, yes, they have great teachings in the other world religions, and we are one of them. And we are all going to the same mountain top.

But this is very unsatisfying as an Unificationist, if you have faith. You chose this religion because you believed that it had the greatest truth. You gave your life; you were inter-religiously married, because you felt that was the truth, the highest way. Somehow it is unsatisfying to say that we're all the same.

I know for a fact that Christians don't say that. I know for a fact that Buddhists, when they talk about the supreme highest enlightenment, which is anuttara-sambodlii, they don't say that. They say that the Buddha attained that. But we as Unificationists have come to believe that maybe we're just kind of the same thing.

I had been racking my brain: How is it that the true love we talk about is greater than the incredible agape love of Christ, the incredible compassion of the Buddha, the incredible devotional love and service of Mohammed? How is it greater? It was so elusive! I could not put my finger on it, could not get it. How is it that love as Unificationists understand it is an incredible elevation? I heard it was, but I couldn't sense it in my heart, couldn't feel it... until this Tuesday! I really had an incredible Tuesday. I had a life-changing Tuesday this week.

Hyung-jin nim's vision

Jesus said, in John 15:13, "Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends." And Jesus did this. He sacrificed his life. He walked the way of the cross. He laid down his life for his friends. But after he died, what happened? Christians saw Jesus with their spiritual eyes.

What happened after he was crucified? They saw him descending into hell to liberate believers and bring them to the path, bring them to paradise. They saw Jesus with their spiritual eyes. Not just with their physical eyes. His body was on the earth, his body was physically on the earth. But the Christians saw him with their spiritual eyes. They saw him descend, for the sake of those souls, into purgatory.

It came to me in a kind of a vision-dream, that the reason we don't understand true love, the reason we really can't see why it is greater, is because we understand it only with our physical senses and physical eyes. In the dream, I saw True Parents descend into the bowels of hell. I saw them going down there, crying, weeping. They were running down there to save the fallen children of God. Father ran up to this huge demon that was torturing and punishing these souls and he said, "Take my flesh, take this Holy Spirit, this messianic spirit, in that child's stead! Let that child go! Take my body and do as you will..." And he flung his holy body, his messianic body, into the hands of the demon, and that demon ripped him open, shredded him, and tore him into pieces. It was an absolute horror to see.

With our physical eyes, we see that True Parents have been imprisoned six times. They've been imprisoned, incarcerated. They've been demeaned, dehumanized, imprisoned and tortured. They suffered a seventh imprisonment -- in the helicopter crash. That was a prison when it hit the ground and burst into an inferno.

Christians saw Jesus with their spiritual eyes and continue to see him with their spiritual eyes to this day which is why when you enter a Christian church, you're going to feel some kind of incredible Holy Spirit.

True Parents willingly sacrificed themselves

Every time True Parents were unjustly incarcerated, tortured, lacerated and beaten physically, their spirit bodies were descending into the most dangerous and evil hell. They were sacrificing their spirit and flesh for the sins of all mankind. There, they were pierced and cut and ripped and torn. They died so that we might live. They gave their lives and took our place. They took my place in hell, so that I would be free, so that I could have a place in heaven.

They did this not once, but they did it seven times. They died for us on the individual level, and for the collective sin of our family, tribe, [ethnic] people, nation, world, and cosmos (which includes the spirit world) -- the seventh stage, which was the substantial resurrection. They ascended to the eighth stage, completion, which is God's stage, because of the power of that true love, that parental love, at which they will die and die, forget and die again, so that no harm will come upon their children. That is what we are talking about when we're talking about true love. And because of the power of that true love they overcame physical death.

We know the story about Father being thrown out into the snow. Physically he was dead; spiritually he went into hell. True Parents have been resurrected seven times, this most recent time in the helicopter, from the cosmic-level death, entering God's realm and opening the kingdom for us.

When I received this, I realized I had never understood what parental heart was. I never grasped what true love really was! I could never put my finger on it. I had all the standard explanations -- they exist for the sake of others, they give and give and give -- yet I could not feel it. What is it that we are trying to inherit?

I realized that True Parents have died for us seven times. They have sacrificed their flesh to be unjustly beaten and incarcerated. Whether it was in Korea when it was under Japan, or in North Korea, or being imprisoned in South Korea or America, they offered their bodies to be beaten and their spirits to be torn. They went into the lowest realms, so that we would be free. They rose from the grave, not once, but seven times -- and this is not because of any human power, but because of the inheritance of the true love they received, and of which they are the manifestation. Because of that incredible victory from the individual to the cosmic level, because of their deaths and their resurrections, we have been given permission to enter into the nation of Cheon Il Guk, even though we do not deserve it -- I don't deserve it -- and even though we are filled with sin, and even though we are filled with flaws and imperfections.

Let's give it up for God and True Parents, brothers and sisters! [Applause]

Jesus died too early

We have to understand why we call them the Savior, why we call them the Messiah. You see, in John 15:13 Jesus talks about the greatest love. "Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends." Listen to those last words: "for his friends."

You see, we know from the perspective of the Principle that Jesus was the second Adam. The second Adam to come to fulfill the purpose of creation, which was to establish and inherit the parental heart of God, to establish a true family and inherit the parental heart of God. That was what he needed to inherit. But Jesus went too early. He did not have time to become a parent, and he was crucified. He inherited an incredible love, an incredible love that sacrifices for his friends, that meant he could lay down his life for his friends. That was what Jesus said was the greatest love.

But you see, True Parents came as the third and final Adam, who came to inherit the parental heart by establishing the True Family. I am not saying that the True Family is perfect. By establishing the True Family, True Parents inherited the true love, the parental heart, and that's the victory. They showed us the greatest love of all. Much greater than the love that Jesus spoke about in 1 John 15:13, of laying your life down for your friends. They showed us that the parental heart is so unbelievable. It is the heart that is willing to die for their children, and die again for their children, and forget and die again for their children, without any complaint, without any reward.

Once we realize this spiritual dimension of the seven tortures, deaths and resurrections, we will realize why we say that Jesus and the saints bow down to True Parents. Why are they overwhelmed by the power of True Parents' true love? True Parents took on the burden of our own individual flaws, our families' flaws, and flaws of tribes of the past, present and future, and they died seven times.

When we understand that they went into the lowest realms, took our places in those realms, in the lowest hells, so that we could enter and be free in the eternal kingdom, we can finally understand why we call them the Cosmic True Parents, the King and Queen of Peace, and King of Kings.

As I mentioned, for ten years I have really been searching for this. My problem was that I'd studied a lot of religious texts and scriptures and communities, and that was wonderful. I had incredible experiences there. But I didn't understand that this spiritual dimension was here. You can't understand this with just your physical eyes. It's the same as if you were a Christian. You can't understand with your physical eyes that Jesus died for your sins. It doesn't make any sense. That's why Christians have spiritual eyes that are open.

I've even done ministry for two years. I've been teaching the Principle, I've been teaching about true love, and I didn't even know what it was! I could not put my finger on it; what is true love? How is this different or greater? How is it a greater love than the great love of Christianity, the agape love of Christ, the great compassion of the Buddha. I could not understand what it was, could not feel it, but finally now I realize. I did not realize it on my own. It was given through that vision-dream.

A letter to Father

No finally, after I realized about the seven deaths and resurrections of True Parents, once I understood and experienced this, something incredible happened that had never happened to me before. I literally just started weeping and weeping and weeping, like a baby! I was so repentant.

So what did I do then? I wrote a report to Father. I said, "You know what, I am a minister and I didn't even know what true love was. That's a pretty big sin. I'm here talking about true love, and teaching the Principle, and I don't even know what it is. Really, I don't really understand what it is."....

In Matthew 17, Jesus ascends a mountain. He goes up the mountain, and the disciples are following him. All of a sudden, they see him floating; this is known as the transfiguration of Christ. In Matthew 17:2 it says, "His face shone like the sun and his clothes became as white as the light." Jesus showed his divine status, that he was not just a normal man. Jesus was up there, and Moses and Elijah were there, and Jesus was talking to them. That event is known as the transfiguration.

And after I had this insight into True Parents' seven deaths and resurrections -- into the incredible heart of a true parent, who will die for his or her children over and over willingly and then forget about it -- that night while I was writing this, I fell asleep. I had a dream in which I saw True Parents come spiritually. True Father came spiritually, and I saw his face. He was smiling, but when I walked up to him, from his eyes shone this incredible light as bright as 10,000 suns, just like the transfiguration of Christ that we hear about in Matthew 17... Spiritually I felt calm, and at ease, and at peace in my heart.

So I wrote the letter. I was too ashamed, actually, to go to see True Parents. I had not really understood what they had done; I had not really understood their love.

And that morning after Hoon Dok Hae, Mr. Peter Kim read the letter to True Parents. He said that while he was reading it he had a spiritual experience. While he was reading it, he started weeping and weeping. He said, "I never understood True Parents' true love. I didn't get it. I've been serving them, right next to them every day, and I didn't understand what kind of true love they gave to me." As he looked up and saw True Parents, he saw True Mother weeping. He saw Father trying to hold back his tears, but, as he told me, Father couldn't hold them back. "Finally the children understand," Father said.

Open our spiritual eyes

You see, brothers and sisters, what I realized that day was that Father couldn't tell us, he couldn't tell us what has happened. Just like the Christians who had to understand Jesus with their spiritual eyes and realize the spirit of Christ, Father could not tell this to us, for we see him with physical eyes. It's in the Principle that true love gives and gives, and forgets and forgets. Father couldn't say "I did this for you all." He forgot about it, even though he died for us. He forgot every single time he died for us. The individual, family, tribe, people, nation, world, and cosmic levels -- he forgot.

But he did hope that one day we would understand, that one day we would see him with our spiritual eyes, just as believers in Jesus Christ see Jesus with their spiritual eyes -- and understand this incredible, immense true love that we have received.

And when we do that, we realize something incredible, we realize that our life is not ours, it's not ours. When we realize that we are the recipients of this kind of incredible, immense love that is willing to die for their children over and over again, we realize that this parental heart is what we are trying to inherit as their children.

So it was in front of that incredible, incomparable grace and love that I realized that this is why we say we have to live with True Parents. That's why we say we have to glorify them. That's why we are singing songs of praise and thanksgiving. Now I understand why we have been singing those songs of praise, gratitude and the victory of true love.

Brothers and sisters, what can we learn today, on this first anniversary of the substantial resurrection? It's now our time to open our spiritual eyes to this incredible, sacrificial, parental heart of true love and inherit this true love. 

Follow True Love (Seven Deaths and Seven Resurrections)

Hyung Jin Moon
July 18, 2009
Headquarters Church, Seoul Korea
Transcriber: Diane Chaillie / Misael Sagala
Proofreader/Polish: Karen Katayama / Bruno Klotz

Kyle Toffey's Prayer:

Heavenly Father, Heavenly Mother,

How thrilled we are to be here today, in this warm and cozy sanctuary, where we can meet with You, and tell you we're brothers and sisters! Outside there may be a monsoon, blowing rain, getting us wet, trying to depress us, trying to keep us from coming here today. But Heavenly Father, we're so happy to be here. We're so excited to hear what is it that You want to tell us today. How thankful we are, that out of this dark world of misery and suffering You have not only given us great truth, You have not only given us great hope, You have given us True Love. That example of True Love reigns in our heart. Heavenly Father, we want to be inspired, we want to inspire You by truly becoming true sons and daughters in whom You can dwell, whom You can trust, in whom You can find joy. Heavenly Father, come and be with us on this great and special day. Thank You so much for this opportunity to be here again. We pray that we can have open minds, open hearts, to feel You not only with our mind, but to feel You within our hearts, and within our heart of hearts. Thank You so much, we pray these things together with our brothers and sisters around the world. Aju!

Yeon Ah Nim's Welcoming Remarks:

Good afternoon, brothers and sisters, welcome to the headquarters of the Unification Church. As you know, it's already the first anniversary of True Parents' helicopter crash and substantial resurrection. Today we're really grateful to Heavenly Father that He allows True Parents to be here on earth. We're truly praying for our True Parents' health and their continuous good God's work. We're really welcoming you again to this sanctuary. Welcome brothers and welcome sisters.

Hyung Jin Nim's Welcoming Remarks:

Welcome brothers and sisters! Let's start by manifesting the principle, let's do it together. Are you ready? Give and receive action, four position foundation, coming together, may I inherit the True Love of God! Thank you! Aju!

Let's read from Cheon Seong Gyeong today, Cheon Seong Gyeong 1638:

"What would be the center of love? It must be God. He's the unique, eternal and unchanging being who existed before the foundations of the universe. Love is the flow of the heart, it is the manifestation of the internal heart flowing substantially. Hence God's essence is this heart of love."

I love that today; if it made you feel something today, let's give it a big round of applause! Brothers and sisters, when we look at the purpose of the creation, we see that God wanted to allow His incredible parental heart to be passed down into His children. He wanted to manifest what we do when we manifest the Principle, give and receive action, four position foundation, centered on the True Love of God. That love is something profound; it's something that we're going into today.

Brothers and sisters, on this day, the day of the incredible and substantial resurrection of True Parents, let us hold that in our hearts when we are offering praise this day. And let's remember, don't be an observer or a spectator. Be a participator. Participate in the singing, participate in the prayers, in the clearing of your mind. Prepare that mind for victory and next week, get ready for something incredible to happen, get ready for God to make a miracle in your life! If you believe in this, let's give it up for God! We have to be expecting things, brothers and sisters. We don't want to sit passively. We want to be on the offensive, we're going to be expecting the greatness of God. Brothers and sisters, once again welcome! Let's all rise. We're going to read the family pledge together.

Family Pledge # 3

Hyung Jin Nim:

God and True Parents have blessed us with the blessed life, to inherit the True Love of God, and to become a greater blessings in our relationship with our spouse, our family, community, nation, world, cosmos, and a greater Blessing to God almighty. Let's gather our hearts, let's manifest the principle and gather our hands in give and receive action, four position foundation, lift it up, coming together, may I inherit the True Love of God! Aju!

Brothers and sisters, listen to the sound of the songs, to the words. We take this time to pray for those who have passed on before us.

Let us remind them that we still love them. In unison prayer let us pray together.

Unison prayer

Hyung Jin Nim's conclusion of the unison prayer:

Father, thank You so much, and we pray that You may continue to bless those Abel good spirits and give them strength, and we pray that all the good Abel spirits come into our heart today. Our ancestors are here with us. Father, we open our hearts to You today so that You can come down and awaken us. Father, allow us to feel Your true love with our emotions, our heart, our spirit. Father, be with us in this place. We offer all the glory to You. In our own names as blessed central families we pray. Aju!

Interesting Story:

Brothers and sisters, we always have something a little interesting before we start. You know, I heard a little story about a situation where there was a temple, a Jewish temple, a church and a Catholic church right on the same block. The priest and the rabbi and the minister would carpool to get to their respective places of worship. And one day, they came out to see the Christian pastor putting his two hands on the car, the hood of the car, praying for the car.

And the priest said, “What are you doing?” He said, “I’m dedicating this car to God. I’m praying for the car.” The priest said, "That’s a great idea. You know what I’m going to do?” He went to his house and he brought out his water, consecrating sprinkler, and he walked around the car and sprinkled the car. The minister said, “What are you doing?” He said, “I’m consecrating the car with holy water.” And then the rabbi went on to say, “This is a great idea, I’m in the spirit now. It’s a fantastic idea.” He went into the house. He brought out a hacksaw. And he went out, he went out to the back of the car, grabbed the tailpipe and cut off 1 inch. He said, “It’s a promise to God.”

You guys didn’t get it? He said, “I circumcised the car.” Now, you get it, okay? Now, you got it.

Main Sermon by Hyung Jin Nim:

Brothers and sisters, today is actually a very special day, we are celebrating the one year anniversary of the substantial resurrection, the helicopter incident, that happened one year ago but it feels literally like yesterday. So we’re celebrating this here at this service. Also tomorrow the service will be dedicated to that.

Now brothers and sisters, I want to talk to you about following true love, and I think this is very important. I want to jump right into the world scriptures. I’m just going to jump right into the world scriptures and I want to read them together. We’ll start with Christianity today. This is John 15:13. We’ll read that together.

“Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.”
(John 15:13)

We’ve all heard this one, right? A very, very powerful statement of love that Jesus made.

Listen to Buddhism today. This is the Garland Sutra 23. We’ll read that together, let’s read it together.

“I vow to protect all sentient beings and never abandon them. I have set my mind on enlightenment in order to liberate all sentient beings”
(Garland Sutra 23)

The words from Buddhism talk about what is known as “Maha Karuna”, Great Compassion.

Let’s take a look at Islamic tradition here, Hadith of Ibn Majah. Let’s read it together.

“The believer who participates in human life, exposing himself to its torments and suffering, is worth more than the one who distances himself from his suffering.”
(Hadith of Ibn Majah)

This is talking about the greater love of sacrifice and enduring the suffering to be of greater meaning to all the people around.

And let’s center on True Father’s speech; this is from True Father’s speech compilation. Let’s read this together:

“The position of love can be established when one sacrifices oneself and gives oneself for others. Sacrifice always accompanies love.”

Brothers and sisters, today we are celebrating the one year anniversary of the “Substantial Resurrection”, the “Helicopter Incident” which made news all around the world. In looking at these incredible scriptures about love, that we just went through with the Gospel of John, Buddhism, Islam etc, I was watching a program this week. It was a program about Christians who converted into Islam -- they became Muslims -- and Muslims who converted and became Christians. So they had two sides, and they were interviewing the respective individuals. And when you looked at the Christians who converted to Islam, there was a constant theme of why they converted to Islam. This included such things as, “You know, in the Christian tradition we have God’s Word, but we have so many versions of it. We have the ‘New International’ version Bible, we have the ‘New Standard Revised Edition’ Bible, we have the ‘Catholic’ version Bible, and we have the 'King James’ version Bible.”

Some of them actually say, for example, “The King James version has grave errors. So we see that there are many versions of the Word of God. I don’t see the consistency here if it’s God’s Word. Why so many copies? But then I went to Islam and I found the Koran. In the Koran there is ONE word of God for 1,400 years in Arabic, still to this day, recited in Arabic to this day, by Western believers, new believers, whatever, they still recite the Koran in Arabic. That appealed to me, that showed the consistency of God’s word -- one book, one God.”

Another theme that they represented was, “I don’t understand the Trinity. I can’t understand how the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are one. It’s a very mysterious thing. It’s called one of the mysteries of Christ. You know, that’s very mysterious, I don’t get it. But when you go to Islam, the first pillar of Islam we hear this, ‘La ilaha ila Allah; Muhammadur-rasul Allah’ (There is no God but God; and Muhammad is His Messenger). We hear this in Islam. So when I went to Islam, then I saw there was one God, not three Gods. Did you know that in the Koran there’s a mention of Trinity, but in the Bible there’s no mention of the Trinity, no mention whatsoever of that vocabulary. So in going to Islam, I really was moved by the fact that there was only one God. It is very clear, one God.”

Also the Christians who converted to Islam said, “You know, when I go to Islam, then what I also found is that in Islam Jesus, of course, is not the son of God, but he is the prophet and he is the Messiah and that he is to return on the clouds. We see that in the Qur’an in Surah 3:45. The Muslims believe that Jesus was the Messiah, the Anointed One. So as a Christian now who converted to Islam, it’s very appealing. I like that fact that there has been one word of God consistently for 1,400 years. I like the fact that it is very clear about one God and I like the fact that Jesus is really recognized in that tradition. Also, the people that I know, Noah, Moses and Abraham, they’re also recognized in the Islamic tradition. So I like that.” So those are the people who converted to Islam.

On the other side, there were Muslims who converted to Christianity. And there were again some consistent themes. Out of the 99 names of Allah -- ‘Allah’ is just simply God; even Christians call God ‘Allah’ in the Middle East. Okay, so it’s just God -- Out of the 99 names of God, there are many incredible names -- God the Beneficent, God the Magnificent, God the Great, God the All-knower, all these incredible names of God. But when you interview the Muslims who converted to Christianity, they say, "Out of the 99 names of God, there’s not one that says ‘God is Love’.”

With the Muslims who converted to Christianity there was this one lady who came out and she was talking, and she was under attack, too, from her people in the community because she changed her faith. And she was struggling of course, but she said, “When I realized Jesus’ incredible love, that Jesus died so that I may be free, that Jesus died for me, and that his love was so great, that God’s love was so great that He sacrificed His only son so that we may have eternal life...." She said, that she stood before her bed, kneeled down and prayed, not in the traditional form that Muslims pray but in the more spontaneous way that Christians pray. She said she knelt by her bed and she prayed and she ended up praying for six hours straight. She said she wept and wept, wept and wept, thinking about God’s love and that if we believe and accept Him, we can enter His eternal kingdom of glory.

These were the consistent themes that occurred with people who converted into Christianity from the Muslim tradition.

You know, brothers and sisters, we had a very important meeting this Wednesday. We elected regional women leaders for our Korean church. All the Korean central members were here, and we had that election. And I asked some questions that I want to ask you. I asked them the question, “Why are you an Unificationist? Why did you choose Unificationism? You think about it. There are so many incredible religions in this world. Christianity talks about the agape love of God, the incredible sacrificial love of God. Buddhism talks about Maha Karuna Brahma Vihara, all these incredible virtues; the ocean-like compassion. And they are so established. Christianity has over a billion followers. Scholars say Islam would be, probably, the largest religion by 2050. So why do you choose Unificationism? It’s still small. It’s a cult in many people’s eyes. It’s a wacky religion in many people’s eyes. Why do you choose to be a Unificationist? Why are you a Unificationist?"

You know, this question has always been racking my brain, ever since I really started taking life seriously. Ten years ago, after Young Jin passed, I started studying religion, trying to find this answer. I studied the world’s religions, traveled different areas, you know, very remote areas, stayed in monasteries and with different religious communities -- in Italy, in Tibet, in China, wherever -- and studied the different religious traditions, becoming one with them. For ten years I’ve been training; every morning we’ve been doing devotional training, ascetic training, monastic training. And for about two years now I’ve been doing ministry. And in that time I’ve experienced these incredible Christian communities which talk about the incredible love of Christ, which talk about the incredible type of sacrifice, the agape love of Christ, the passion of Christ, you know, the great suffering of Christ. Passion is suffering, but in that suffering is the great love of Christ, the great sacrifice that Jesus paid for our sins.

From Buddhists I have heard about the great compassion of Buddha. So great is the compassion that they let go of the fact that they can get into Nirvana, or heaven, so that they come down and save and liberate the sentient beings on this planet, and on the other planets. Even so much that even the little insect, we do not want to harm. Such a great compassion!

I heard about the great devotional love of Mohammed, when following and being obedient to God’s will and God’s word, the incredible devotional love towards God. But how then is our Unificationist teaching greater? You know, Sarah Coakley, my Christian theology professor who is an Episcopalian priest at Harvard, a teacher at Harvard, she said, “I’m an Episcopalian priest because I believe that this is the best religion.”

So we’re Unificationists. We believe that somehow we have a higher truth, that we have a greater insight into reality, into the truth of the universe, into the truth of the divine, etc. And we heard about our True Love. We heard about our Give and Receive and relationships, and our Four Position Foundation, we heard about the Principles of Creation, we heard about the Fall and the restoration, we heard about all that. And I heard all the standard explanations of love, of true love. Love that can make Satan naturally surrender, love that gives and gives, or love that lives for others, lives for the sake of others, exists for the sake of others. We’ve heard this, and I’ve heard it millions of times, millions of times. I’ve wrestled with this because I was a theologian as well. I was wrestling with this.

Here it was, in my head. But I couldn’t FEEL it in my spirit, in my emotion, or in my heart. Somehow, I started feeling, “Wait a minute, we are teaching an incredible true love, but is that not the same or is it at least similar to the great love of Christ who offered his life, laid down his life for the sake of the sinners of the world, his friends? Is not the true love that we talk about somehow similar to the great Maha Karuna of the Buddha, the great compassion that doesn’t even harm one little insect?

Where is the great true love, the devotional love, that Mohammed had for God as his master? That great love! Isn’t the love that we are talking about at least something similar to that? Are we actually teaching something greater or is it something similar to that? And we, as Unificationists, have come to believe that we are teaching something kind of similar to that! "Somehow, yes, they have great teachings in the other world religions, and we are one of them. And we are all going to the same mountain top."

But this is very unsatisfying if you have faith as a Unificationist. You chose this religion because you believed that it had the greatest truth. You gave your life to be inter-religiously married because you felt that that was the highest truth, the highest way. So somehow it is unsatisfying to say that we’re all the same. I know for a fact that Christians don’t say that. I know for a fact that Buddhists, when they talk about the supreme highest enlightenment, which is “anuttara-sambodhi”, they don’t say that, they say that the Buddha attained that.

But we as Unificationists have come to believe, "Maybe we’re just kind of the same thing." And so this has been racking my brain. When I was studying religion, when I was studying theology I thought, "How is it that the true love we talk about is greater than the incredible love of Christ, the incredible compassion of the Buddha, the incredible devotional love and service of Mohammed? How is it greater?" And it was so elusive! I could not put my finger on it, could not get it. "Why? How is it that it is an incredible elevation?"

I heard that it was, but I could not sense it in my heart, couldn’t feel it… until this Tuesday! I really had an incredible Tuesday! I had a really life-changing Tuesday this week! I realized why we as Unification Movement have really relativized our own faith and come to believe that we are kind of just the same and similar. This is really an insult to the Unificationists who sacrificed their life. Even some have been killed and tortured and imprisoned for their faith. It’s a real insult to say that to those people. I came to realize that the reason why we come to believe this as a movement is because we’ve seen the manifestation of true love, which is True Parents, with our physical eyes… with our PHYSICAL eyes, and not with our spirit self!

See, Jesus said in John 15:13, ”Greater love has no one than this that he lay down his life for his friends." And Jesus did this. He sacrificed his life. He walked the way of the cross. After three days he was resurrected. He laid down his life for his friends. But after he died, what happened? Read the Apostles' Creed. Christians saw something with their spiritual eyes; they saw Jesus with their spiritual eyes. And what happened after he was crucified? They saw him descending into hell, to liberate believers and bring them into the path, bring them to paradise. They saw Jesus with their spiritual eyes. Not just with their physical eyes. His body was on the earth, his body was physically on the earth. But the Christians saw him with their spiritual eyes. They saw him descend, for the sake of those souls, into the Purgatory.

And it came to me in a dream, in a kind of a vision-dream, that the reason why we don’t understand True Love, the reason we really can’t see why it is greater, is because we understand it with our physical senses and physical eyes. In a dream I saw True Parents, True Father, descend into the bowels of hell, and I saw True Parents going down there, crying, weeping. They were running down there to save the fallen children of God. And in this one scene, Father ran up to this huge Satan that was torturing and punishing these souls and he said, “Take MY flesh, take this holy spirit, this messianic spirit, in that child’s stead! Let that child go! Take my body and do as you will…” And he flung his holy body, his messianic body, into the hands of the demon, and that demon ripped him open, shredded him, and tore him into pieces. It was an absolute horror to see.

With our physical eyes we see that True Parents have been imprisoned six times. They’ve been imprisoned, incarcerated. They’ve been demeaned, dehumanized, imprisoned and tortured. They suffered the seventh imprisonment in the helicopter crash. That thing was literally a prison when it hit the ground and burst into an inferno. It was a prison.

But then I realized that when we see True Parents with our spiritual eyes, just like the Christians saw Jesus with their spiritual eyes and continue to see with their spiritual eyes to this day, which is the reason why when you enter into a Christian church, you’ll going to feel some kind of incredible Holy Spirit. Every time True Parents were unjustly incarcerated, tortured, lacerated and beaten physically, their spirit bodies were descending into the most dangerous and evil hells. They were sacrificing their spirit and flesh for the sins of all mankind. They were pierced and cut and ripped and torn; they died so that we may live. They gave their life and took our place. They took my place in hell so that I would be free, so that I could have a place in heaven.

And they did this not once, not once, but they did it seven times! They died for us, on the individual level, on the level of our family’s collective sin, tribal, societal, national level, world level, and cosmic level, the cosmic level, on the seventh stage, which was the substantial resurrection. It ascended up to the eighth stage, perfection, which is God’s stage, because of the power of that true love, that parental love, which will die and die, forget and die again, so that no harm will come upon their children. That is what we are talking about when we’re talking about true love. And because of the power of that true love they overcame physical death. We know the story, when Father was thrown into the snow. Physically he was dead; spiritually he went into the hells and was resurrected seven times, this time in the helicopter, in the cosmic level death, entering God’s realm and opening the kingdom for us.

So when I received this, I realized, “My God! I never understood what parental heart was! I never grasped what true love really was! I could never put my finger on it. I had all the standard explanations -- they exist for the sake of others, it gives and gives and gives - I could not feel it. What was it? What are we trying to inherit?”

When I realized that True Parents died for us seven times, they sacrificed their flesh to be beaten, unjustly beaten, and incarcerated. Whether it was Colonial Japan or North Korea or being imprisoned in South Korea or America, they offered their body to be beaten and their spirit to be torn. They went into the lowest realms, so that we would be free. They rose from the grave, not once, but seven times, and this is not because of any human power, but because of the inheritance of the true love that they received, and of which they are a manifestation. And because of that incredible victory from the individual to the cosmic level, because of their deaths and their resurrections, we have been given permission to enter into the nation of Cheon Il Guk even though we do not deserve it, and I don’t deserve it, and even though we are filled with sins and even though we are filled with flaws and imperfections.

Let’s give it up for God and True Parents one time, brothers and sisters. (Clapping) We have to understand why we call them the savior, why we call them the messiah. You see, in John 15:13 Jesus talks about the greatest love. “Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.” Listen to that closely. Listen to those last words: “for his friends.”

You see, we know from the perspective of the Principle that Jesus was the second Adam. He was the second Adam. He came to fulfill the purpose of creation, which was to establish and inherit the PARENTAL heart of God, establish a true family, to inherit the parental heart of God. That was what was needed to be inherited. But Jesus went too early. He did not have time to become a parent, and so he was crucified, and he inherited an incredible love, an incredible love, that sacrifices for his friends, that can lay down his life for his friends. That was what Jesus said was the greatest love.

But you see, True Parents came as the third and final Adam, who came to inherit the parental heart by establishing the True Family. I am not saying that True Family is perfect. By establishing the True Family, True Parents inherited the true love, the parental heart, and that’s the victory. They showed us the greatest love of all. Much, much, much greater than the love that Jesus spoke about in John 15:13, of laying your life down for your friends. They showed us that the parental heart is so unbelievable. It is the heart that is willing to die for their children, and die again for their children and forget and die again for their children, without any complaint, without any reward.

Once we realize this spiritual dimension of the seven tortures and deaths and resurrections, then we will realize why we say that Jesus and the saints bow down to True Parents. Why are they overwhelmed by the power of True Parents’ true love? True Parents took on the burden of our own individual flaws, our families’ flaws, and flaws of tribes of the past, present and future, and they died seven times. When we understand that they went into the lowest realms, took our places in those realms, in the lowest hells, so that we can enter and be free in the eternal kingdom, then we can finally understand why we call them Cosmic True Parents, Peace King, and King of Kings.. It was seven times that they died for us.

You know, for ten years I have really been searching for this. Ten years I have been struggling; I couldn’t explain about this answer. My problem was that I’ve studied a lot of religious texts and scriptures and communities, and that’s wonderful. I had incredible experiences there. But I didn’t understand that there was this spiritual dimension. I didn’t understand that. You can’t understand this with just your physical eyes. It’s the same as if you were a Christian. Then you couldn’t understand with your physical eyes that Jesus died for your sins. You can’t understand that. It doesn’t make any sense. That’s why Christians have spiritual eyes that are open.

And I even did ministry for 2 years. I’ve been teaching Principle, I’ve been teaching true love, and I didn’t even know what it was! I could not put my finger on it; what is true love? How is that different or greater? How is that a greater love than the great loves of Christianity, the Agape love of Christ, the great compassion of the Buddha, etc. I could not understand what it was, could not feel it. But now finally I realized, not on my own. This was given.

But now finally, after I realized the seven deaths and resurrections of True Parents, once I understood and I experienced this, something incredible happened that never happened to me before. I literally just started weeping and weeping and weeping, like a baby! I was so repentful. I could not understand what the heck we were talking about; we were talking about true love, about inheriting true love! "What are we talking about? I cannot put my finger on it! I do not know what I’m supposed to inherit." Then I realized in that vision that True Parents descended into our place, took our place, so that we would be in heaven… seven times, not once, but seven times! Over and over, with a parental heart.

So what did I do then? I wrote a report to Father. I said, “You know what, I am a minister and I didn’t even know what true love was! That’s a pretty big sin. I’m here talking about true love, and teaching the Principle, and I don’t even know what it is. Really, I don’t really understand what it is." And so I wrote a report to Father.

You know, in Matthew 17 Jesus ascends up a mountain. He goes up the mountain, and the disciples are following him. All of a sudden they see him floating, and this is known as the transfiguration of Christ, where Jesus gets up there on the mountain, and he’s floating and transfigured. In Matthew 17:2 it says, “His face shone like the sun and his clothes became as white as the light.” Jesus showed his divine status, he was not just a normal man. So here Jesus was up there, Moses and Elijah were there, and Jesus was talking to them. That is known as the transfiguration.

And after I had this insight into True Parents’ seven deaths and resurrections, into the incredible heart of a true parent, which will die for their children over and over willingly and do it again and forget it. That night while I was writing this thing I was falling asleep, too, and I had this dream where I saw True Parents come spiritually. True Father came spiritually, and I saw his face. And it was a normal face, he was smiling, but when I walked up to him, when I walked up to him, from his eyes shone this incredible light as bright as 10,000 suns, just like the transfiguration of Christ that we hear about in Matthew 17. So spiritually I felt calm and at ease and at peace in my heart

So I wrote the letter. I was too ashamed actually to go to see True Parents. I had not really understood what they had done. And that morning after Hoon Dok Hae Mr. Peter Kim read the letter to True Parents. He was saying that while he was reading it he was having some spiritual experience. While he was reading it, he started weeping and weeping. And he said, “I never understood true love of True Parents. I didn’t get it, I’ve been serving them, right next to them everyday, and I didn’t understand what kind of true love they gave to ME.” And as he looked up and saw True Parents, he saw True Mother weeping. He saw Father trying to hold back his tears, but, as he told me, he couldn’t hold them back. “Finally the children understand,” Father said.

You see, brothers and sisters, what I realized that day was that Father couldn’t tell us, he couldn’t tell us what has happened. Just like the Christians who had to understand Jesus with their spiritual eyes and realize the SPIRIT of Christ, Father could not tell this to us, for we see him with PHYSICAL eyes. It’s in the principle that true love gives and gives and forgets, forgets. Father couldn’t say, “I did this for you all.” He forgot about it, even though he died for us. He forgot every single time he died for us. Individual, family, tribe, nation, world, cosmic level.... he forgot.

But he did hope that one day we would understand, that one day we would see him with our spiritual eyes, just like believers in Christ see Christ with their spiritual eyes, and understand this incredible, immense true love that we received. And when we do that, we realize something incredible, we realize that our life is not ours, it’s not ours. When we realize that we are the recipients of this kind of incredible immense love that is willing to die for their children over and over again, then we realize that this parental heart is the thing hat we are trying to inherit as their children.

So it was in front of that incredible, incomparable grace and love that I realized that this is why we say we have to live with True Parents. That’s why we say we have to glorify them. That’s why we are singing songs of praise and thanksgiving. Now I understand why we were singing those songs of praise. I didn’t know why I was singing them before. Maybe it was just as a concert, I thought. Now I understand why we’re singing those songs of gratitude and songs about the victory of true love.

Brothers and sisters, what can we learn today, on this one year anniversary of the substantial resurrection? It’s now our time to open our spirit eyes to this incredible sacrificial parental heart of true love and inherit this true love. Now I finally can feel what I’m trying to inherit. Now I can finally understand what kind of heart I’m supposed to try to inherit. I couldn’t feel that before with the explanation we used to give in the workshops or whatever, you know… living for the sake of others. I couldn’t feel what that was, "What is it? What am I suppose to inherit?" I couldn’t feel it with my heart and spirit.

Christians have the passion theology, the love theology of Christ. Once we understand this true love theology, once we understand the true love theology, we cannot only sense where true love is with our intellect, like we can understand the Principle, but we can start FEELING what kind of true love, what kind of sacrificial love, what kind of parental love this kind of true love is. We then can start sensing it with our emotion and our spirit and our heart. I believe that it is our task to believe in True Parents in this age, in this amazing grace of true love. I believe that this is the power and the kind of true love that we people have been talking about, but we couldn’t really put the finger on it. This is the kind of true love that will allow the Unification Movement to truly unite the religions as the parent, to truly be able to do what we’ve been talking about.

The only way to do that is by opening our spiritual eyes, not just seeing through our physical eyes. When we start understanding the gravity and the incredibleness of this true love then we will realize, "Oh my God, this IS an incredible elevation in what the world understands love to be. It IS an incredible elevation! This kind of true love we have never seen in the history of mankind. And I believe that it has come because of this. And once we understand this with our heart and our spirit, we can really understand the true love that we are trying to inherit, I believe, just like it says in the prayer, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

I believe that once we do inherit that kind of incredible true love, that will die for their children over and over and never complain and do it again -- even though the children have sinned, and even though the children deserve to be punished -- the parental heart that will sacrifice their soul and their flesh for their children over and over and over, seven times, that kind of incredible true love, when we open our eyes to that kind of true love, then we can understand what kind of value True Parents have. Then we understand what kind of value our Principle has. Then we understand why we call them the savior of the world, and why we call them the Peace King, and why we call them the King of Kings, and the inheritor of True Love, etc. And why we cannot see why that amazing understanding of true love can bring the world into unity.

Brothers and sisters, on this one year anniversary, I pray that we can inherit this kind of true love, that we can understand this kind of true love. I want to show you that picture here. I wrote in Chinese characters, very short version, which means the seven deaths and resurrections, the perfecting of the eight stages, True Parents' victory and the theology of true love. I believe that when we do understand this with our spirit, in faith, through our spiritual eyes, we will see the Unification Movement grow, not only grow, but we will become able to teach the world the highest level of love that has ever been experienced.

Brothers and sisters, let’s give it up for God and True Parents in this incredible year. (Clapping) That’s the victory!

Meditation:

Let’s gather our hearts for our final homeland meditation. Let’s now close our eyes and visualize ourselves not in this sanctuary, but walking in a beautiful meadow.

We are going to return to our homeland now. Let’s visualize beautiful soft grass; we’re walking upon it. And notice, right around your feet, as we walk, the beautiful flowers that are blooming. When we look to our left we are going to see a beautiful, beautiful meandering stream. We are going to feel the beautiful life of that stream. Let’s hear the sound of that living stream. As we look up to the heavens, let’s notice the blue sky; that vast, incredible, limitless, blue sky, totally pure. Not a cloud in the sky.

As we look up, we see True Parents, they are waiting for us. Let us walk toward them. Let us kneel down before them and see True Father with his right hand, Mother with her left hand, place their hands on top of our head. As they bless and anoint us, they say, “May you inherit the true love of God.” Let us feel the power of that blessing. Let us feel that power move through us, from the top of our head all the way to the tips of our toes, like a wave of energy that’s purifying and rejuvenating, which makes all things brand new.

Notice any cells that are sick or stressed or not healthy recuperate and become healthy, completely perfect. See it and feel the health. Feel the healing. We will notice in our spirit body, if there are any black stains or dark stains, let us notice those things being washed away. In the victory of the seven deaths and resurrections, let us see the spirit body shining in the twelve directions, completely illuminated. In our hearts let us say, “I will inherit the true love of God.” Let us breathe in deeply with our hearts. Let us say, “I am alive.” As we breathe out, in our hearts let us say, “Thank you.” As we breathe in, in our hearts, “I am alive.” As we breathe out, let us say, “Thank you.” Final inhalation, all things brand new, “I am alive.” Final exhalation, “We thank you.”

God and True Parents have blessed us with the blessed life. That is to inherit the true love of God -- a love that will die for their children over and over without any reward, for great is Thy love. Let us inherit their love and be a greater blessing to our families, to our spouse, our nation, our world, to this cosmic spirit world, and to God. Let us join our hearts and pray.

Prayer by Hyung Jin Nim:

Heavenly Father, thank You so much for his day. Father, we want to celebrate on this day, this one year anniversary of the incredible substantial resurrection day. Father, we didn't know what You have done for us. We followed True Parents, but we doubted them and we lost faith many times. Father, we couldn't understand why their love was so great. Father, we talked and lectured about it, explained it, but we couldn't feel what kind of love that True Love was. Father, You have given us that incredible True Love.

Father, True Parents in their life course have been imprisoned for the sake of their nation, they have been tortured in the prisons. They have bled for us, they have been beaten, their bones have been shattered, but Father, their spirit has descended to the most fearful realms of the spirit world so that we all may be free. Father, we stand on the incredible victory of that True Love. Not once, but seven times, for the sake of the individual all the way up to the cosmos and spirit world.

We want to give You an incredible “Thank you” today for You have given us that True Love, showed it in the life of True Parents. Father, that's a great victory, that they have inherited Your parental heart which is True Love. Father, let's understand what this True Love is, what kind of sacrifice this parental heart will do. Father, let us inherit that True Love. Let us become this kind of children so that Your victory may not be in vain.

Father, we want to give You all the glory today, we know now why we call You the King of Kings, we know now why we call True Parents our lord and our savior. We now know why they've paid the price for our own misdoings and sins, so that we could come to You, that our families could come to You and our tribes, our nations, and our spirits could come to You. Father, those seven deaths and resurrections are the greatest victory that You have shown to mankind.

Let us understand that incredible True Love, and let us be the inheritors of that and manifest that in this world, in whatever we do. Father, we want to give You one more thanks because You brought us where we are, You brought us up to this point when we could have given up and been defeated so many times. But You led us here, You guided us and You are faithful. Father, let us renew ourselves to You, and let us offer ourselves to You just as You have done with the lives of True Parents, for the sake of this world and for our own spirits.

We thank You so much and Father, please bless each and everyone of our Unificationists worldwide. We pray that they may all live in that incredible victory that You have prepared for them. Father, we pray that we may walk with confidence, and we may teach with confidence and live with confidence, knowing that the True Love that You have shown to our True Parents, the parental love that will repeat these sacrifices for its children, is the highest type of love that the world has ever known.

Let us inherit that, let our Unificationists around the world inherit that and become the great victors of True Love, to make this world into what You have always wished for it to become, the great nation of Cheon Il Guk. Your Kingdom come, Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven! Father, we pray with our hearts, with our minds, with our spirits this day. We want to give the greatest praise and the greatest thanksgiving in gratitude and in humility. We pray in our own names, as blessed central families. Aju!