The following talk was given by Rev. Pak at Belvedere, January 10, 1999
Some of us went to Uruguay to welcome in the New Year with True Parents. For me, it was the 35th year of joining in the midnight pray with True Parents. This one was especially inspiring and very serious. This year 1999 is a most historical year to welcome in. Because of this, my topic today is: The Best Year--1999.
We went through the 90s on up to 1997 and 1998 so why is 1999 suddenly so important? Symbolically, the year 1999 marks 5,999 years since Adam and Eve were created. And two thousand years since Jesus came. So after the year 2000 we will be entering the seventh millennium.
Also, in less than a year we will be entering the 21st century. True Parents reached the 40th year of their wilderness course in 1993. Seven years have passed and this year puts us in the Completed Testament Era. Now we begin the eighth year..
We all have a past, a present and a future. Each of us has a past with many so memories; we live in the present time, and we prepare for the future ahead. The moment we are living in, right now, so very quickly becomes the past. We have no guarantee that tomorrow will even come. Everyone is interested in the new century coming. But if we don't prepare today, 1999, what will tomorrow be? The Bible says "I saw a new Heaven and a new Earth. for the first heaven and the first earth passed away" (Rev. 21:1). God expects us to be Kingdom-builders on the Earth. It is up to us to follow the Messiah and prepare by doing our portion of responsibility for ushering this in. It will not be done without our efforts. People that are waiting for God to take care of everything will be sadly disappointed. We must prepare everything with faith, obedience, true love and hard work.
This year 1999 is like reaching Mount Everest! That final climb to the top. Everything we have worked for, laid a foundation for, will be culminated this year. If you have ever watched a documentary of that final climb to the top of Mt. Everest you will remember that it was very difficult for those achieving it. It is visible, you are so close you can finally see the top, but breathing itself becomes difficult because of lack of oxygen and because the climb is so steep. Those final steps are very steep and very treacherous. Slowly, slowly, one painfully moves up to reach that ultimate peak. So think now of all the previous years we have faithfully endured, trying our best to fulfill our missions; sometimes slipping down but picking up and moving on forward and upward again and working hard with God and True Parents. Now we are on the final climb, this year of 1999.
This is the year we reach the peak!
Many people have prophesied about the year 1999. Many religious groups, even cults, received revelations: "This is the year of the judgment." "This is the year of the second coming of the Messiah." "Wars and battles are coming." "This Planet Earth will be burned with fire." All such revelations have come. The media has reported that some cults are "ready to die" this year. Some groups are reporting that the only means to survive it all is to "stay within our particular group and you will be saved."
A religious leader in Taiwan received that God himself will come down! In Texas, a group received directions and followed those directions only to find that the dates, places, and times revealed did not come to pass. These groups always say "maybe this time next year..." It was the same way with the minister in Taiwan. He was known to say "well, it will happen later."
As we know, Nostradamus predicted that "in July 1999, from the heavens, the power of darkness will come down and this world will burn up." One may say, "well, I don't need to work so hard to fulfill my part since everything is going to happen in such and such a way anyhow..." Many of Nostradamus's predictions have come to pass so we are left to wonder about this July 1999 event.
I was just an elementary school student in Korea when the Korean War ended. About that time the Seventh Day Adventist assembly came to my village and built a church and began teaching. They witnessed to me and I became a part of their group. At that time they predicted that in just four years the end of the world was coming. Fires and earthquakes and diseases would take over the Earth, they said. Satan would consume the Earth and all would die. They told us if we joined the '144,000' Seventh Day Adventists that we would survive. They told me "come quickly--only a few chosen numbers remain! " This is exactly what they told me. At that time, they touched this young boy's righteous heart. It sounded good to me! This church is really concerned with my life, I thought.
Of course I was glad I would be saved, but when I realized how low the number was and that many other people would not be saved, I became depressed and wondered what kind of God was this that would choose such a small number to go to Heaven. I went to my grandfather and reported my doubts. Immediately he said to me, "That's not true what they are saying." So I decided not to believe it.
But this turned out to be good preparation for me to soon meet people who had the real answers.
Not too long after that I met the Unification movement and heard the Divine Principle. This group, however, did not say that many dreadful things were going to come to pass, but rather they said these predictions were symbolic and that if we carried out our share of responsibility and worked hard that we could bring in the Kingdom of Heaven. We could build a world of peace, a happy world. I knew this group had truth and I became a member.
The Buddhist's have a book Wol Gan Twang that tells of the second coming of Buddha, but before he comes, there will be great confusion and judgment.
I have a Korean book that tells of many important people who four or five hundred years ago predicted about the future of Korea and the world. One of the prophesiers, Nam Sa Go, predicted that before the second messiah comes, this world would see judgment and difficult times.
In John's Revelation, many dreadful predictions are given: ...and behold, a great red dragon having seven heads and ten horns and on his heads were seven diadems... (Rev. 12:3) and in Rev. 16:13-14 we read about the battle of Armageddon when the Lord of the Second Advent comes: ...and I saw coming out of the mouth of the dragon and out of the mouth of the beast and out of the mouth of the false prophet, three unclean spirits like frogs; for they are spirits of demons, performing signs, which go out to the kings of the whole world to gather them together for the war of the great day of God, the Almighty. Here on Earth with True Parents we have fought with communism, we have fought with immoral Satan. We gave holy nectar and taught Divine Principle and True Family Values and issued invitations to Blessings. We still have this ongoing battle to fight. We are soldiers to the end.
So in this world two predictions are given: one is of hopeless; dark predictions of things to come; one is like pink in color, representing Hope. If we overcome Satan and Satan's lifestyle, then we bring about a great world of peace. Today might be dark but tomorrow there is hope.
There is a European philosopher about the same age as Nostradamus, and he said "if the last day is tomorrow then I will plant an apple tree." So we should think, no matter what will come to pass, I will do my best to the end to plant righteousness and overcome Satan's power. We believe in God and True Parents. With the messianic mission will come victory. We stand positive. We can move forward with certainty. This is the year for victory--1999.
Mrs. Pak and I spent 10 hours on the airplane going to South America. As we looked around we noticed there were basically two kinds of people on that plane: One kind that lived casually for the moment and another kind that seemed to be in control of their lives. The first category were into eating and drinking and sleeping, with seemingly no cares. The others seemed to be those who would likely prepare ahead of time everything they would need to do. They probably had carefully made their plans, chose thoughtfully the clothing they would wear, had their passports, vouchers of all kinds, in order.
Sitting beside us was a man and his wife--eating heartily and drinking and drinking, Free wine was offered so we watched as they drank bottle #1; then #2, 3, 4 and finally 5! Five bottles of wine, each of them. They were very casual, very relaxed, and, it seemed, not prepared for anything. How can people like this possibly be prepared for anything that might come up unexpectedly? Or how can they be in control of any situation with such attitudes?
Some Unificationists take that same casual attitude toward many things. Oh well, they say, nothing has changed; everything is the same as last year, the year before; relax, they say. Some will complain because Rev. Pak is so serious all the time. But actually, my attitude is: very suddenly things could take a turn and directions could change. If we are not on the alert and well prepared, what will happen? Especially in these very last days, during judgment time, what will happen if we are not prepared to act? How can we be successful with a casual attitude..
We are lucky to have Chungpyung and Jardim. We especially must prepare now to take our families to Jardim. Heaven may have a certain timetable so we should always be prepared to act as quickly as possible. Not follow our own casual timetable. We may be fortunate to have Dae Mo Nim visit America in the Springtime so let's be prepared to take advantage of this great opportunity when it comes.
We listen to True Father talking about numbers many times--certain numbers are satanic numbers, other numbers are heavenly numbers.
Even with the year 1999 there are satanic elements in it. One could even say it is an "unfortunate" year! And according to Nostradamus it is a very fearful year. But on the other hand, looking at it in a different way, adding the numbers in a certain way, it is a most fortunate year. So if we sit back and do nothing, it could be a most fearful year for us. If we work hard and prepare well, it will be the greatest year ever.
If one just looked at the world today through ordinary eyes it would seem hopeless: polluted environment; racial warfare; battle between religions; generation gaps; AIDS and other diseases; broken marriages; broken homes; homosexual activities; civil wars; drugs and alcohol; economic crises everywhere. So the gloomy forecast by many is rightfully given.
But we have the True Parents. We have their good, wise and righteous leadership and we know if we fight with them against satanic forces, that the prediction is bright for the future. So we follow the heavenly reading of 1999. One plus nine = 10, the perfected number, etc.. That's how we view 1999.
The motto True Father gave to us for this year is Cham Chuk Bok Chun Ju Hwa Wa, Sa Tan Hyol Tong Gun Jhol or "Cosmic Expansion of the True Blessing and Rooting Out of Satan's Blood Lineage." If we follow this motto, we can successfully handle 1999 and enter the New Heaven and New Earth, New World, New Cosmos We are spreading the Blessing, not only to the physical world but to the spiritual world. Heaven and Earth, the entire Cosmos. Everywhere blessed families are growing. We cut out Satan's blood lineage throughout the Earth. We get rid of it entirely. No more will Satan's blood flow out in the world.
There are so many diseases in the world. Some have left scars on the body. Some people have been made ugly by disease. This is what having Satan's blood within us does to us--it leaves us ugly, spiritually or physically, with many scars. Cutting out Satan's blood lineage is like doing away with a bad disease. We don't just cut off the roots, but we have to actually go down and dig out, "root" out all traces of his blood from ourselves and everyone. We replace it with God's pure blood lineage. Everyone must receive holy wine and the Blessing. Satan himself will have to come to a Blessing ceremony and be made pure.
History has known the Old Testament era, the New Testament era, and now the Completed Testament era. After we reach a certain point in history it will be the Era of Total Liberation. As it says in Family Pledge, verse #8: Our family pledges, as we enter the Completed Testament Age, to achieve the ideal oneness of God and humankind in love through absolute faith, absolute love and absolute obedience, thereby liberating the Kingdom of God on Earth and in Heaven, by centering on True Love. We have to liberate every single person on Earth and in Heaven. We can fulfill all this in 1999. Adam and Eve must be liberated. The Archangel must be liberated. All things must be liberated. God Himself will be finally liberated.
Each of us yet carries a guilty conscience, our fallen nature. We must be liberated from this. We have to become completely free. We must purify our lives to where we have no remembrance of an ugly past, creating only beings of absolute goodness and righteousness in the present day and for the future.. Through God and True Parents we can accomplish this.
This is the year to bring in this era of liberation. This year of 1999 will be the turning point when we see the prophesied New Heaven and New Earth begin. True Father, in Uruguay, gave us three important goals:
1) To create the ideal we must make the unification of the world. For a unified world we need first to make a transcendent religious United Nations. The UN as we know it is basically a political, economic and military UN. That pretty much describes the present United Nations, with headquarters in New York. It is, for the most part, horizontal. What it needs is an injection of God's divine inspiration and direction. The present form is not working. It needs to be a religious UN.
This nation has recently spent millions, even billions of dollars in the Iraqi warfare. How can the world survive with only political dominance? It needs religious guidance. Without a godly system, without vertical, spiritual UN guidance, how can the world be organized to maintain peace?
True Father knows we need a world banking system. The present IMF (International Monetary Fund) is controlled by big money markets but God desires a world of equalization whereby small countries will have equal status and benefits in the overall system. Small countries should not be controlled by big countries.
Even Pope John Paul II said in a public speech that big countries should not insist that small countries pay back loans. Some small countries are even going bankrupt. Nations should be ethically and morally looking after one another to survive.
True Father desires to see a World Media organization. There are too many newspapers in existence. Too many different values, too many different sets of ethics are utilized.. Everything is in confusion. And practically speaking, even the paper required for so many unnecessary news vehicles is costing the environment its trees and soil. Just on the North American continent there is so much wastage. Mountains are becoming "bald" mountains from tree abuse.
We need to learn to live in more practical ways in the future. Even a university student will not need to sit in a classroom to learn. A student can take videos anywhere and learn on-site. Through internet one can learn. Exams can then be administered by the university. So much time and energy will be saved. Distance learning is being developed and perfected for this purpose.
Universities can form a coalition and function as one. So many practical services can be given that way. Millions of more students can be served and moral teachings can be standardized.
Will peace come if God can organize the world into such systematized functioning? Of course it will. God and True Parents have vision. They are practical, reasonable, realistic and idealistic.
In Seoul, Korea, on February 7 of this year, at the Blessing ceremony of 240 million, world scholars will come and will organize into the "Federation (or Coalition) for Transcendent Religions and Transcendent Nations for World Peace." Without religious peace, world peace will not come. Many "talk" peace but they cannot bring peace. Humanistic, individualism centered on self will not bring peace. It always ends up being temporary.
2) This year the entire world will have to drink holy wine, holy nectar. World leaders, national leaders must take holy wine. If all over the world people accept God in their hearts, in their families, tribes, nations, world and cosmos, this automatically becomes the Kingdom Of Heaven.
We need to achieve mind and body unity. This is the most important indemnity condition--to achieve mind/body unity. Having the body obey the mind. This is cutting Satan entirely out of our lives. No longer will Satan dwell there and work with us. Make your body follow your mind. Even this morning as we sit here together, there were many members who knew they should come but didn't. Their bodies were in control of their lives. They needed to be here to hear Father's message being introduced..
So in 1999 we need mind and body unity. True Father constantly reminds us to achieve mind and body unity. Our Conscience works so hard to help us bring about this unity, guiding us in the right direction, but too often we ignore the guidance of our best friend, our Conscience. Even as I give this talk, there are many who must have thought: Oh, I should go to Belvedere today, but their bodies won the victory. But our mind/body unity is where the Kingdom begins. Then we must achieve husband and wife unity, parents and children unity, family unity, tribal unity, racial unity, and physical and spiritual world unity. Then we have the Kingdom of Heaven.
If we can successfully bless people throughout the world and cosmos, and establish a religious UN then we will have complete success.
3) During Hoon Dok Hae last year, True Father's favorite textbook was Dr. Sang Hun Lee's book on the spiritual world. Father reads it again and again in order to teach blessed families to believe that the spiritual world exists; that Eternal Life exists in the spiritual world. We must make it a reality. Our physical life today on Earth is first prepared in our mother's womb. In the same way, while living on the Earth, we must prepare for our life in the spiritual world. We must first believe it as a reality, then we must actively prepare for it. Through all our senses, we must develop the sensitivity to make it reality. We need our spiritual eyes to open, our spiritual ears to hear. Our internal personality is dumb. It is not working. We can't feel the things we should be feeling, such as deep love that God wants to feel from us. We must quickly prepare right now! Not later, now. We have to keep practicing True Love. And we should keep reading about the spiritual world until it becomes reality in our personal life.
You second generation members sitting before me now, you are sinless and pure before God, so if you sincerely follow the will of God and True Parents and practice True Love, you can quickly open your spiritual senses and easily receive the spiritual world. You will see God. You will see fantastic things before your eyes. It should be easier for you.
In Korea, they are organizing 10 to 12 neighbors' houses--Tong Bang Ya Pa--and regularly witnessing and learning to do Hoon Dok Hae and reading spiritual material. We can do the same. This year we can form small groups and do likewise. This should be our important mission this year.
God is alive. God exists. And vertically the spiritual world exists. It is there. Vertically we have to practice True Love. We give holy wine, blessing, give Hoon Dok Hae materials to people and in no time we will build the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth. We can create a religious as well as a political United Nations of Peace.
We need to quickly pass through three stages. We need to come through the Old Testament stage, the New Testament stage, the Completed Testament stage and then quickly we will move on to the Liberation stage.
We connect to God by giving our material offering to represent the Old Testament. This is not only for me but for my family, my tribe, my entire ancestry. This is our liberation. Representing the New Testament we offer ourselves, "you and I," Mrs. Pak and I, your spouse and you. We become ideal husband and wife and ideal parents beginning through the Ideal Family workshop in Jardim. And we enter the Completed Testament era with our tribe of at least l60. Don't feel burdened; don't feel pressured. We can trust Father's guidance. It is leading us to complete liberation. We are being ushered into the era of Liberation. Just make a start. Heaven does not give us more than we can bear. God and True Parents have a higher purpose which we can totally trust. Do your best. God accepts your best, whatever your best might be.
Just go to Jardim; complete the workshop and create your ideal couple, family and tribe. Visit that Garden of Eden territory and understand how we can learn to live simply in the future, needing a minimum of clothing, food, expenses. And get a glimpse of how we can clean up the environment consequently.
True Mother this year will go to 80 nations on her speaking tour. So difficult for True Mother. Even the most important woman to Heaven and Earth and to True Father must go such a difficult course. How can we dare to complain about anything. Among the 80 nations, 24 of them will be states in America. That means one-third is being done in America. Let us be grateful and prepare well. From March 20, True Mother will tour in America.
On December 19, 1998, in Washington, DC in front of the Washington Times staff, True Father said, "I will give to you a prediction for the twenty-first century." Everyone quickly poised for taking notes, thinking that Rev. Moon was going to make some drastic political prediction or whatever! But Father went on to say, "The twenty-first century is the Century of the True Family." Some of those with pencils poised did not even know what the meaning of True Family was!
Jesus Christ and the Pilgrim Fathers established America. The Pilgrim Fathers were very faithful people, honest, pure. But now America is completely confused about what is moral or immoral. The majority used to be moral, now it is the opposite. The moral people are in the minority. Frightening. At the rate we are going, we will be misfits in society. This is the kind of atmosphere our second and third generations must grow up in. It is dangerous. We must work for the True Family movement. True family life is what this year's motto is about.
When True Mother tours 80 nations she will be bring the message of the True Family Values. We can bring holy wine; we bring True Family Values; we bring the Blessing. And we bring demonstrations of Pure Life in front of the White House and other places. We need to start planning this now.
In conclusion: What is the meaning of 1999? It is the turning point to enter a new world era It is the last year of the sixth millennium. It is the last year of the twentieth century. It is the last year (7 years) of the Completed Testament era--Son Yak. It is indeed a turning point. This is the Jubilee year for the Catholics--Shin Yun.. The Catholics are told if they do they will receive grace for next year.
True Father's guidance to us for 1999 is very simple, very practical, very principled, very original, very wise. If we follow this guidance, we and all our ancestors will enter the Kingdom of Heaven.
The two worlds, physical and spiritual, are definitely one now. The two will be dwelling together from this point on. Husbands and wives no longer need to be separated when one physically departs. That's the kind of world we are living in now. It is a fact.. People are becoming more and more aware of it.
We are living in amazing, dramatic times. In our lifetime we will see the New 7th Millennium, new 3rd Millennium, new century! We are new Adams and Eves to bring success for God. The Bible says a day is as a thousand years with God. One year can be even longer than 6,000 years. As blessed families we will stay united together, centered on God and True Parents and under Divine direction, we will open the New Heaven and New Earth. This will be the best year ever--1999! God bless everyone.
