Kook Jin Moon
July 1, 2012
In the spirit of Independence Day, Chairman of the Tongil Foundation Kook Jin Moon delivered a message of freedom to European church leaders during Hoon Dok Hae at the Unification Church's Headquarters in London and again to approximately 500 Unificationists at the Royal National Hotel in London during Sunday Service on July 1, 2012.
During the Hoon Dok Hae, Chairman Moon alerted all those present to the fact that the world's future will be determined by whether humanity succeeds or fails in establishing conditions to accept and unite with Rev. and Mrs. Sun Myung Moon, the "True Parents of Heaven Earth and Humankind."
"Judgment will take place according to whether or not we fulfill our responsibility," Chairman Moon said. "We had hoped that the Third World War was averted by the collapse of the Soviet Union, but True Father expressed clearly that communism has not ended. We are facing the reality of China's military build-up and expansionist ambitions."
According to Chairman Moon, if good people do not take responsibility to be strong, then weapons will be exclusively held by "Cain" on behalf of Satan and be used for evil. Free democracies have become weak and selfish – only caring for their own social welfare and neglecting their responsibility to defend the freedom of all – and therefore, the "Abel" nations of the world must make decisions consistent with their responsibility to stand for goodness and freedom.
Later that morning, Kook Jin Moon joined hundreds of members from London and well as other communities in Europe in the conference center at the Royal National Hotel for the Sunday Service. Although the Service formally began at 11:00 a.m. members, were already assembled at 10:30 a.m. to view the recently broadcasted documentary on the Unification Movement by Al Jazeera TV. To view the documentary, click here (include link).
Chairman Moon presented an award on behalf of True Parents to the long-serving missionary and elder Unificationist member, Mrs. Barbara Burrows van Praag. Timothy Elder, assistant to Chairman Moon, presented an introduction to the Tongil Foundation and the results of the restructuring of Tongil Group over the past few years. For many, this was their first time hearing directly about the positive developments that have taken place in the church in Korea and Japan. Master of Ceremonies David Hanna then invited European Continental Director, Rev. Yong Cheon Song to introduce Chairman Moon.
Chairman Moon expressed his gratitude to brothers and sisters before beginning his power-point presentation, "The Freedom Society: Our Vision for Building God's Ideal" (see transcript below). Based on regular outbursts of applause, the final standing ovation and comments about the presentation from the audience, his presentation seemed to have resonated deeply with brothers and sisters.
"The Freedom Society: Our Vision for Building God's Ideal"
"Thank you for coming today. I'm very happy to see all of you; we've been quite busy in Asia and in Korea. We've made a lot of progress in developing our church. I'm just curious, how many of you here have been able to hear the Strong Korea presentation? Are you aware of the military build-up of China that's going on in Asia right now? Well, they are building up their military quite significantly out there and they're getting quite aggressive. It's unfortunate that your media is not reporting these things to you, because the last time a nation was building up their military and you guys didn't pay attention to it, you found yourselves in World War II. It kind of destroyed all of Europe. But you know, Hitler's military might and his ability to wage war didn't happen overnight – there was nearly a decade of military build-up before the war started. Did you know that? So please pay attention to this issue. We are going to be presenting the Strong Korea lecture to many VIPs tomorrow, but today for all of you, for our brothers and sisters, today we are going to be talking about something else.
"The title as you can see is: 'The Freedom Society; Our Vision for Building God's Ideal.' You know, we've talked a lot about Cheon Il Guk and the Kingdom of Heaven, and we've talked about True Parents fulfilling their mission and creating the foundation for the ideal world to be established. But up until this time we haven't really been able to explain eloquently exactly what is Cheon Il Guk. What is the Kingdom of Heaven? What will be politics of the Kingdom of Heaven be? What will the economics be? How exactly will it be structured?
"These questions we have not yet answered, but if we are going to create the Kingdom of Heaven we at least should know what the blueprints are. Yes? Then let's talk about it.
God, Adam, Eve and Archangel
"As we study the Principle of Creation, we learn that God created human beings as his children and that He desired to bequeath to them the Three Blessings: to achieve individual perfection, to multiply and to have dominion over creation. This you all learned in the Divine Principle. But in order to inherit the Three Blessings, God gave His children free will and freedom, and with freedom He gave them responsibility. Now, Adam and Eve were to grow up, live their lives and inherit the Three Blessings. They were supposed to inherit freedom and responsibility so they could be co-participants in the creation process with God and thereby establish a conditional requirement to inherit the creation which God desired to give them, and this was God's desire. But as we heard, God's desire was not fulfilled at the time of the Garden of Eden. God had initially wanted Adam and Eve to be His children and the Archangel was in the Garden of Eden to serve Adam and Eve as the servant of God and His children. But what happened in the Garden of Eden? The Fall. And in that process the Archangel went from being the servant of Adam and Eve of being the master of Adam and Eve. He left his position. He came to dominate Adam and Eve and by doing so he separated them from God.
"Through Archangel's seduction of Eve, who then seduced Adam, we have the Fall of Man, and as a result of the Fall of Man we lost the Three Blessings. We lost freedom and responsibility. As a result of the Fall, human beings have lived throughout largely under dictators, tyrants, throughout most of our history. We have seen human beings repressed into slavery, into servitude, forced to fight for dictators and for kings and to kill, and to conduct genocide. This has been the terrible history of suffering of mankind. However, we know that God has worked through the Providence to restore humanity and bring them back to the Garden of Eden, so that they could once again have another opportunity to fulfill their purpose of creation. As a result, even though we as fallen human beings have fallen and have been chased out and have lost God's Blessing, we as human beings still have the memory of freedom. And throughout history, although the predominant nature of history was that of tyranny and despotism, there have been a few instances when glimpses of freedom have appeared in human history, reflecting the memory of the time when Adam and Eve lived in the Garden of Eden before the Fall.
Hoon Dok Hae, Lancaster Gate London Headquarters of the Unification Church
The History of Democracy
"We saw glimpses of freedom during history in the times of ancient Greece when we had the brief renaissance, the revival of democracy, the birth of democracy, and in the Republic of Rome. But the problem was throughout history that freedom and democracy and these fundamental ideas were not sustainable. They invariably died. Aristotle said: 'Republics decline into democracies, and democracies degenerate into despotism.' That's what we've seen; we've seen freedom come and then freedom go. Hope coming and being vanquished. This has been the sad history of human history and of mankind. You can see in Athenian democracy, it started with people voting, voting for their leaders, but then as that democracy progressed, they started pursuing policies for the state just on the basis of popularity and who gave the best speech: 'Hey, let's go and fight Sparta! We should be better than the Sparta, we're democratic!' …and then pursued all these popularistic policies which did nothing but led the state to ruin. Ultimately, because of these policies that were pursued it was, in the end, conquered by Phillip the Second and the free state of Athens became subjects of a king. They lost freedom and democracy's gone.
"Likewise, in the first five hundred years of Rome, you had the Republic of Rome where the people voted for their representatives and representatives ran for the state for the benefit of the people. But towards the end of the Roman Republic, you had a lot of popularistic policies emerging: distribution of land to the poor; subsidized corn rationing, etc. 'We want free stuff! Give me free stuff!' Cancellations of debt; the catering to the masses and to the mob, offering free stuff from the state, ultimately led the state to ruin and bankruptcy of the state. As a result of these popularistic policies, popular but unsustainable policies, the Republic of Rome collapsed and was replaced by the dictators of Rome. Democracy appeared briefly, but then popularism led to the end of democracy and the replacement of democracy with tyranny and dictatorship. You can see modern examples of popularism throughout the world today. Peron, Argentina: 'Let's help the poor!' By having the call to help the poor and make the society equal, he became a dictator and ruined the state!
"Argentina at the time of his election was one of the ten wealthiest nations of the earth, but after his rule it became one of the poorest. Hitler and the rise of Nazi Germany – you all know that story and you all know how that story ended. Hugo Chaves in Venezuela is another story; he used popularism to make himself dictator! Today you can see this whole scenario unfolding right here in Europe. Look at Greece. Greece, because of its popularistic policies, now is in bankruptcy, and now it has to follow the dictators of Europe. So, the Greek democracy is being replaced by the European dictatorship! Out-of-control social-welfare spending in southern Europe is causing those same problems, in Italy, you're living it, and you're seeing it every day. Look at the historical example; what starts as democracy degenerates into popularism, and popularism invariably leads to dictatorship and tyranny.
Returning to the Garden of Eden
"As we know, the Messiah's mission is to come to the earth to fulfill the Purpose of Creation and to inherit God's Three Blessings; to establish God's family and God's sovereignty. He has come to inherit freedom and responsibility and to open the way for all humanity to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. As we learn from the Principle, the Messiah comes at a time when the world has returned to a stage comparable to the time of the Fall of Adam and Eve, which is at the top of the growth stage. So, today, we see democracy is spread throughout the world wider than it has ever been spread throughout all of human history. In this respect, we have come to a very similar stage as that which occurred just prior to the Fall in the Garden of Eden where Adam and Eve could have chosen to go towards fulfilling God's Will and inheriting God's Three Blessings and creating the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth or, in failing to acknowledge God's Will and receiving God's judgment, being chased out of the Garden of Eden. Although freedom is wide-spread today, it is not secure and this is the problem we have to understand; freedom is in danger. The world has returned to the stage just prior to the Fall and requires the Messiah and his teachings to secure freedom and liberation for all, for all time. In order to understand the situation of modern society and modern democracy and to understand the situation of society today, we need to understand the present society and the present reality in the context of the Garden of Eden because the Garden of Eden is the original ideal of the ideal world. This is what God intended to fulfill; His purpose of Creation.
"Our goal as human beings is to return to that Garden of Eden. But how then can we understand today's society filled with seven billion people in the context of the Garden of Eden? In the Garden of Eden there were only four actors: there was God, Adam and Eve, and the Archangel. But how can we understand society, billions of people, within the context of these four actors? This is the question we must solve if we are to understand the direction of providential history. Now we understand that our True Parents have come unto this Earth as the Lord of the Second Advent, and because they have successfully completed their mission, they are the substantial representatives of God on Earth. Our True Parents represent God. Who are Adam and Eve? Who represents Adam? Well, actually, all the men in society are Adam. Who is Eve? All the women are Eve. Adam and Eve are all the people and citizens of the world and all the citizens of this democracy here in the United Kingdom. Then who is the Archangel? This is the key point to answer. Who is the Archangel? Would anybody like to guess?
"In a democracy, the role of the government is what? Servant of the people. So, the Archangel clearly is the government. We have seen the same relationship as existed before the Fall of Man in the structure of society today where you have God, Adam and Eve, and the Archangel as the servant of the people. But then what happened in the Fall of Man? What was the process of the Fall of Man? It was a process by which the Archangel went from being the servant of Adam and Eve to being the Master of Adam and Eve and the rejecting or excluding God. This process, lo and behold, we can see today. The Fall of Adam and Eve and the process by which the government goes from being the servant to being the master of the people is called popularism. Popularism is the Fall of Man at the society level. They promise you free stuff but then the day of reckoning comes when you have to pay, and the price of all that free stuff you got is to become the slave of government. Popularism is how free people become the subjects of the tyranny of government. That is where we stand today; we are at that point in history today when we can either move forward to fulfill God's Purpose of Creation or fail to understand His direction and receive His judgment.
Sunday Service with Kook Jin Nim Royal National Hotel. London
"A Society of Conscience"
"When Father describes the Kingdom of Heaven, there are a number of very significant concepts which he always mentions. He always talks about the Peace Military and the Peace Police, and he talks about the world where people live in accordance to their conscience without laws, without lawyers, prosecutors and judges. If we read the Peace Messages, we will see the same concepts repeated over and over and over and over again. But what do these concepts mean? How can there be a society without laws and judges? What are the Peace Police and the Peace Military? And what does that have to do with the Kingdom of Heaven? These are questions we have to answer if we want to understand what the Kingdom of Heaven is because True Parents, as the Messiah, have emphasized them so strongly. They are obviously of great significance and importance.
"What exactly is a society of conscience? Is it possible to construct a society of conscience? How can we have a society without laws and policemen? Well, there actually is a close approximation to that kind of society. It's not completely without lawyers and laws but you can get pretty close to it, and that society is called a self-regulating society. There just a few ingredients that you need to make a self-regulating society. The first ingredient required to make a self-regulating society is private property, so you need a minimum amount of laws to register who owns what. The second ingredient you need for a self-regulating society is free markets. The third ingredient is competition. Competition creates the environment in free markets where entities or organizations, whether they're businesses or non-profit, compete with each other to deliver goods and services. They do so without any government telling them how to do it. They do so efficiently because only those organizations which are able to deliver goods and services more cost effectively and with better quality at lower cost will continue to survive in that competitive environment. When we understand this point of view, then we can see that yes, a society without laws, without policemen, and without a government telling me what to do is possible. Not only is it possible historically, but it is the reason why wealth creation exists.
"All of the wealth that you see in the modern world was created by entrepreneurship and free people building businesses. It hasn't been created by government. When government ruled the world there was zero wealth creation, zero technological development; it was freedom and free markets that created all the wealth. What we see here from the Principle point of view and from Father's words, Father is describing Cheon Il Guk as a self-regulating society where all things and all services are put into the model and the pattern in which they can self-regulate themselves to fulfill the needs of human beings.
Peace Military and Peace Police
"But then what exactly is this concept of the Peace Military? We need to think why is this so emphasized? What do they mean? What is the significance? But have you actually asked yourself what is dominion over creation? What does that mean? How is it that man has dominion over the lions, the tigers, the elephant, and rhinoceros? Do we have dominion over them because we are nice to them? Seriously! This is a serious question. By what means does man have dominion over creation? By what means?
"Weapons. Because we have weapons we can hunt and eat animals. That's why we have dominion over them. That's what it means to have dominion, to have absolute control; it means to have the power of life and death. That's the only justification for man to have the right to kill and eat animals – God gave us that right. How else would you justify killing and eating animals? I'm sure many of you have your own cats and dogs and animals, and you know they have feelings. This is a very important point because ultimately the citizens of Cheon Il Guk, sons and daughters of God, are supposed to grow in their maturity so they can inherit this authority over life and death and use that authority only for the benefit of the whole in a mature manner. So actually, the Third Blessing is that process of maturity from having a family to participating in society as Peace Military and Peace Police.
"The citizens of Cheon Il Guk are to grow and mature to become soldiers and policemen, and this is a very key concept. What best describes or approximates this understanding is what we see in Switzerland with the Swiss Militia system. Everybody in Switzerland has their full time job; they do their work, they live their lives. They are the cobbler, the baker, the movie-ticket attendant, they are the banker, the fisher, the weaver, but as their part time job they are also the soldier. Everybody in Switzerland is a soldier and it is their duty to bear arms, to protect the nation. The people own the course of power of that country. It is the same concept as the Swiss Militia system for the army, being applied to the police. In the Kingdom of Heaven, all of us will have our full time jobs and our full time careers, but it will not be the state providing the services of policing and of military as an exclusive monopoly of the state; it would be the people who would all participate to police and to secure national boundaries and integrities of the state. In the Kingdom of Heaven, all people would mature to bear arms, and to be responsible for those arms in the protection of common welfare.
"What organization or entity has committed the greatest elimination or murder of human beings throughout history? Is it the criminals or the murderers which have killed the most people? It's government. In the last hundred years, if you add up every person who was killed by murderers and crime it may be at most about five million people. But in the same period, if you add up all the people killed by governments in genocide and in the policies of government, it's over two-hundred and forty million. This is what governments do; they kill people, especially when they have monopoly over the course of power. I know the governments teach you that you have to trust government, because government does everything so well, but I hate to tell you the reality is that governments don't do everything so well! And why? Because government is the Archangel."
"And so in the ideal world, it is very important for the citizens of Cheon Il Guk to understand that they are the owners of society. The reason this is so important is because the means by which governments use to enslave the people is what? The monopolistic ownership of the use of force: standing armies, full-time police forces. This is what governments use to make you slaves and, therefore, if you want to create the Kingdom of Heaven, the citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven must always understand that God's intention was for the people to own everything and that includes the course of power and weapons.
"The problem is that if we reject our ownership of all things, those things will not disappear. If we say we don't want guns and we don't want the use of force, it doesn't mean they disappear, that just means someone else owns them. If the good people don't own them, the evil people will own them, and they will use that to oppress you. This has been the history of humanity. When we look at the role of government in the Kingdom of Heaven, we see the role of the government is as servant of the people where it owns as little as possible – a small government; a government that only coordinates the activities of the people and doesn't try to tell the people what to do; a government that only supports the ambitions of the people but doesn't do it for them and lets the people make their own mistakes and solve their own problems. This is the ideal nature for the role of government. And intuitively you can understand it, it makes sense.
"The Society That God Wants"
"When we talk about the Freedom Society in the Kingdom of Heaven, we know that in the Garden of Eden there are always four actors: there is God, Adam and Eve, and there is the Archangel. The Archangel is an important part of the Garden of Eden; we cannot live in it without the Archangel. The Archangel will always be there; the government will always be there. But the role and the size of the government is what's very important because in order to prevent anarchy you need the minimum amount of government. You cannot have private property of free markets without some government. So the Freedom Society is a society that has just enough government to prevent anarchy; that's going to be ninety to ninety five percent of private ownership, and we actually saw freedom societies like that I the past. America before the big welfare states came up, from the eighteen hundreds to the early nineteen hundreds had GDP, and the Federal Government share of GDP was less than two percent. They had no income tax for most of American history. You see the freedom society in places like Hong Kong. You guys, you know, you have a lot of troubles here in the United Kingdom and a lot of difficulty in managing the economy and a lot of social-welfare spending, but you managed Hong Kong better than you managed your own economy.
"You see it in places like Singapore. This freedom society works and it works by empowering 'you,' the people, and it works by saying: 'Yes, you can do it!' It's not that the government can do it, it's 'You can do it!' This is the society that God wants. He wants Adam and Eve, the people, to inherit and own all things in society. That's God's ideal. That was the Purpose of Creation; to bequeath to Adam and Eve. "So, then what is the Archangel ideology? What is the Archangel's position or viewpoint? It is very clear. The Archangel or the government owns everything. This is communism! That's why, clearly, communism is the work of Satan, because the position of communism is that the government owns everything and then communism tells you that when the government owns everything, you are all equal. Well, in a sense it's true because you are all equally a slave to government. That's the equality that Satan promises you with communism. Maybe socialism is 80 percent of that. Maybe the British social welfare democracy is 60 percent, 50 percent of that. France is probably around 75 percent, 80 percent socialist. So, you can see the scale of all the different countries and where they lie on the spread sheet of whether they are in relation to God's ideal or Satan's ideal. The fight in human history has been between God and Satan. It has been between God's Will to bequeath to His children and Satan who has tried to inherit to himself. It has been between free people who have aspired to assert their creativity and to have ownership in their lives and of government which have sought to dominate and to control all aspects of every individual's living conditions. This tension and this conflict have been running throughout history as a result of the Fall of Man. But now, through our understanding of the Divine Principle and through the teaching of our True Parents, we can have a clear vision of what the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth is. The Kingdom of Heaven on Earth is a society where free people own everything and where free people possess the Third Blessing, and where free people are the guardians of both internal security and of external security, and where free people are confident in their ownership and do not run from their responsibilities. It is a society of freedom and a society of responsibility."
"As we understand what the Kingdom of Heaven is and what God's Will for all of humanity is, one of the most important things is to understand what the role of religion is. We saw free society in America briefly before it was destroyed by big government, and we know why this stage of big government came – it was actually religion that was driving it. Religion was pushing people to get on welfare, to make social-welfare systems, and spend in those social welfare states: 'Social welfare is compassion.' There is a reason why religion has always been trying to destroy freedom. It's because of the crucifixion of Christ. Because Christ was crucified, the religion which formed centering on Christ can only offer spiritual salvation; it cannot provide salvation or the Kingdom of Heaven on the Earth, and that is the limitation of that religion. That's why Christianity is not complete. Christianity can only deliver humanity and society to the top of the growth stage, and that is exactly what we are seeing. God gave America freedom! He gave it the reality of the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth but because the religion of that age was not able to understand the blessings that God was giving to that great nation, the religions actually worked to destroy that freedom and to impair and to cripple it.
That is why this Freedom Society cannot exist without a new religion. Without the religion and without the teaching of the Lord of the Second Advent, this Freedom Society cannot be maintained. It is only through the understanding of the Principles of Creation and of the Fall of Man, there is no other religion on Earth that can preserve the Freedom Society, and if all the people of this world aspire for freedom and plan to live in the Kingdom of Heaven, they must all accept True Parents as the Lord of the Second Advent."