Sun Myung Moon
August 18, 2000
Universal Peace Award Congratulatory Banquet
United Nations Headquarters, New York, USA
Photo date and location unknown
Honorable and distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen:
I would like to express my heartfelt appreciation for the Universal Peace Award I have received here at the United Nations, the historic landmark of world peace. Let me use this opportunity to speak briefly on the theme, “Breaking Down Barriers to Establish World Peace.”
The devil lurks in national borders
Ladies and gentlemen, if we could break down all the barriers in this world, world peace would come. However, we have to remember that God is not the owner of barriers. Satan, the devil, was the first to make them.
You have to know that Satan and his followers dwell wherever there are barriers. Satan and the dynamics of Satan lurk around barriers. Satan sits on the barrier between eastern and western civilizations, for example.
God did not create the barriers that mark the antagonism between various cultures, traditions and races. God desires one united world, a world without barriers. God does not even have the concept of barriers. He does not tell us to take revenge on our enemies; if He did, it would imply that He had such a concept.
By loving our enemies and bringing oneness among us, barriers will naturally come down. Thus, God’s strategy and tactic is to have us love our enemies. That is a great strategy. It is unfortunate that throughout history to the present, human beings have not understood the value of the words, “Love your enemies.”
Unification Church members, as representatives of human history, have come to understand this strategy and put it into practice. By exemplifying these words, they have become leading lights that can bring peace to the world.
Reason for carrying out a movement to end barriers
What do you think? When our hearts are not happy, when our bodies are not comfortable, when we are dissatisfied with our actions, when we speak angry words, don’t we create barriers? Therefore, unless we unite our mind and body and express that unity through our five senses, we will throw up barriers of many kinds. For this reason, we need to reflect upon how many barriers we are living with in our daily lives. When we say, “Go beyond having enemies. Stop building barriers,” some might think of what Jesus said, that if your eye offends you, pluck it out.
Actually, there are two kinds of eyes. If our eyes do not differentiate evil from goodness, and welcome anything we see simply as good, then enormous barriers will be built. The same is the case with our ears. If we rejoice when hearing the words of goodness or truth, and at the same time listen to the evil words of this world and support them, then our ears will build barriers.
Some Christian denominations have rules against singing popular secular songs, but members of the Unification Church are not prohibited from doing so. The question is not whether the songs we sing are popular or classical, it’s how we digest the lyrics of those songs. Does singing the song create a barrier, or does it break down a barrier? If by singing a certain song or by speaking rough language a person breaks down a barrier and thereby creates a wider and less constricted world, certainly that will please God.
In sum, wherever we maintain barriers, whether through our senses or in our environment, we belong to Satan’s side. On the other hand, if we say, “There are no barriers anywhere!” we can stand on God’s side. If Satan is the champion at building barriers, God is the master of breaking them down. God, the King of kings, does not like barriers at all. He hates barriers the most.
Ladies and gentlemen, look at the Korean Peninsula. Do you think God appreciates a Korean who says that the demilitarized zone (DMZ) at the thirty-eighth parallel that divides the peninsula is a good thing? Of course not! Hence, if someone works hard to remove it, that person will become God’s favorite. If all the seventy million Koreans determine to live for the cause of removing the DMZ at the Thirty-eighth Parallel, the reunification of North and South Korea will arrive without doubt.
That task, however, will not be easy. We must understand that those who want the DMZ at the Thirtyeighth Parallel to continue on the Korean Peninsula are on the side of Satan, the devil. Satan is the master of keeping it, and God is the master of the efforts to remove it. That is why Unification Church members have been leading a reform that will render the DMZ unnecessary.
Ladies and gentlemen, when the day comes that people everywhere want their children to marry their enemies, desiring to have sons-and daughters-in-law from among their enemies, the entire world will be automatically united. This is the gift that I would like to offer to you tonight. Where barriers exist, certainly Satan and his followers reside. God and His people, born of His lineage, dwell where love and harmony abound, without barriers.
The reason Jesus must return
Today, Unification Church members are very interested in developing the leisure industry, which encourages people to travel around the world and live anywhere they desire. This is to envision a future international federation based on the United Nations, established someday in whatever location and by whatever name. When it is established, we would all come together under the banner of this international federation. For this purpose, Rev. Moon suggested to Unification Church members that they generate a special fund, called the Total Living Offering. In the future, we will use this fund to facilitate the development of this international federation of the United Nations.
In the Old Testament, animals representing the creation were sacrificed on behalf of human beings. They were divided into two, which represented two parties struggling against each other, the right side in the position of God and the left side in the position of Satan. Then, as a result of the mistakes of some of the central figures in the Old Testament Age, God and Satan came to struggle over Jesus who, as the Son of God, had a value far above that of the creation. As a result, when Jesus, the Son of God, came to earth, he shed his blood. His spirit belonged to God but Satan killed his physical body.
Because Jesus wanted to recover his physical body, he proclaimed that he would return.
Jesus, the Son of God, was divided between the two realms, and problems have continued to plague the spirit world and the physical world. Further, men and women were divided, and the mind and the body were divided. Continual conflict and struggle have persisted. Therefore, Jesus, who went to the spirit world to restore God’s dominion over that world, has to return to earth in order to restore Gods ownership of the physical world and bring oneness between the two worlds. What then would he do upon returning to earth? He would marry and establish his family.
Satan took Jesus’ body and the physical world with it, while God was able to claim Jesus’ spirit and the spirit world as His. In the spirit world, Jesus has been toiling for two thousand years to lead God’s dispensation centered on Christianity, to guide the hearts of people on earth to move in one direction. However, Christianity also was divided into two: East and West, and then Catholic and Protestant.
Christians became enemies to each other and fought each other just as Cain, the elder son, fought his younger brother Abel.
This struggle between brothers has become a fight between Satan’s side and God’s side. The eldest son stood on Satan’s side and the younger son stood on God’s side. Thus human history has developed, constantly creating more barriers, multiplying conflict. We, therefore, have to liberate ourselves from this tradition of engaging in struggle and building barriers.
When the Lord returns, he will unite the heavenly world. Then, to bring oneness between heaven and earth, he will conduct marriage ceremonies, bringing together men and women from tribes and nations that have been divided for thousands of years. He will conduct this providence centered on the realm of Christian unity. This is the vision of the marriage of the Lamb prophesied in the Bible.
Christianity is in the same position as the chosen people of Israel in Jesus’ day. There was a wonderful opportunity immediately after World War II, when heaven and earth could have been united centered on Christianity. At that time, the Christian cultural sphere was united and leading the world. With Jesus playing the leading role in the spirit world, a united Christian cultural sphere prevailed throughout the earth. This was a perfect time for Jesus to return in substance to the earth and marry his bride, the substantial Holy Spirit, and for them to live as true husband and wife. They could have laid the foundation to resolve the world’s problems resulting from the division between mind and body and between man and woman, and could have built the veritable kingdom of peace on earth. I am not talking about something vague and unclear.
The way to break down barriers between nations
Who would have been married first from the perspective of God’s ideal of creation? It was supposed to have been Adam and Eve. However, due to their Fall, they created the first human barrier, which was the source of all subsequent barriers. Now, in order to break down those barriers, all men and women have to be restored to the state prior to the Fall and then marry. Then our ancestors and God also will rejoice with dancing. When such a world arrives, it will be the kingdom of heaven on earth.
It goes without saying that such a day has never existed in human history. Instead, human beings have been grieving and struggling in pain, blocked by countless barriers. Accordingly, the starting point of peace in the world requires that human beings find the way to break down that primary barrier. Because the people of the world have not understood this, Rev. Moon has come to this world in the position of the True Parent, giving God’s Blessing to the men and women of the world and showing the world, for the first time in human history, the way to resolve the most fundamental human problems. Even if there are a million barriers, I am certain I can break them down. How can I do it? True love is what makes it possible. To get rid of these barriers, we have to know true love as God knows true love, otherwise we cannot do it. This means that we have to know God one hundred percent.
Ladies and gentlemen, the spirit world includes heaven and hell. If heaven is likened to a world of daylight, then hell can be likened to darkness. If someone is unable to tell the difference between day and night, how can he or she possibly deal with the barrier between the realms of heaven and hell? It is impossible. Only a person who knows the real difference can have dominion over the two worlds. The person who clearly knows the substance of hell can eliminate the darkness. God, who is omnipotent and omniscient, can eliminate the darkness. Someone who knows what God knows can also eliminate the darkness. However, can you say that you know God? How well do you know Him? Is it your understanding that God is pleased with wealth, power or knowledge? Such a God can never bring liberation to human beings.
You must know God fully in order to expel Satan completely and resolve the fundamental problems of this world. Moreover, even if you know God completely, do you also know what it is about God that can bring down all the barriers erected over thousands of years? This is the important thing. God is the master of the universe. Then is there an environment where God can dwell, a neighborhood and a nation where God can dwell? In order for us to know God, we have to restore His nation, a realm that is receptive to His governance.
Still, the earthly environment is strewn with numerous barriers. If those barriers were removed, a world with which God would be happy would result. Wouldn’t all creation like to be governed by God? Indeed, all creation is anxious to be liberated from its groaning, from the pain and exploitation caused by Satan’s control, and from the many barriers that divide it.
The traditions and ideology of the heavenly kingdom
Ladies and gentlemen, most important of all, we need to understand God clearly, and we need to understand the way to build the kingdom of God. Then wherever we go and whatever situation we are in, we will receive answers about how to deal with difficulties among the world’s diverse cultures and traditions.
Surely, God exists in heaven. However, countless barriers block today’s world. How did this happen? It happened because few people know God, His kingdom and the tradition in His kingdom. Once all people clearly know these things, liberation will take place in both the spirit world and physical world. We will even be able to call out, “Depart, Satan!” and he will obey. Then we will come to know the ways through which we can live in unity with God’s heart and with His kingdom, in a culture with heavenly traditions and values. We will be the ones who live with true love for the sake of others.
Therefore, instead of seeking love for our own sake, we need to love others for their sake, making them masters of love and letting them dance with love. Thus, we can become God’s heirs, people who know God and beautify and protect His kingdom. Satan will have no way to interfere with the heirs of God.
If you love your enemies, transcending your anger and hatred even in situations where they killed the ones you love, you will gain dominion over the world of enemies, and Satan will retreat. Eventually, the world of your enemies will respect you. If you live for the sake of others to the extent that you love your neighbors more than your own parents, then Satan will disappear. Whatever you have given, you will receive it back a thousand times over as a reward from God.
Again, what is the secret of knowing God, His kingdom and His thought that will enable us to remove Satan from everywhere? It is to live for the sake of others, die for the sake of others and practice love for the sake of others. When we do that, Satan will certainly flee. And he will not just flee without doing anything. Before he leaves, he will break down all the barriers that he had erected around us. What will happen next? Once Satan is gone, the people who had been headed for hell will be able to rise up and enter heaven by practicing these principles of eternal life. Eternal life will finally become a reality.
People who call on God, the source of love, as their Father will earnestly desire to practice God’s tradition of living for others and will continue to do so for tens of thousands of years. This is how individuals can become the people of eternal life, practicing the tradition of eternal life, endowed with God’s eternal lineage.
The attributes of eternal life and love
Eternal life is essentially an attribute of love. Even God, when He created the universe, adhered to the standards of absolute faith, absolute love and absolute obedience. God lives this way, always desiring to invest greater love for the world, even though everything in the world is transient. For this reason, there is no being that cannot help but attend Him as the absolute, unique, unchanging and eternal Lord.
We, who are created as God’s children, likewise need to be able to completely invest our own love absolutely and eternally. If we do so, then the kingdom of God will become our kingdom, and God will belong to us. In short, our lifestyle will be the same as that of God, the master of the heavenly tradition. Then we shall surely become God’s sons and daughters, and eternal life and immortality consequently will be ours. That is why the Bible verse, “For whoever wants to find his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it,” (Matt. 16:25) is so true, although it may sound paradoxical.
Ladies and gentlemen, even though God is an omnipotent Being, has He ever been made the owner of love? True love is not something you can have by yourself. What it implies is that you cannot receive love when you are alone. For love, man absolutely requires woman. This is because it is only through the existence of woman that, by earning woman’s love, man can have the right to be the owner of love. These are amazing words.
If a man is without a woman, he cannot avoid living as a bachelor, no matter how great he is. What does the word bachelor mean? It means a man living alone. That is why he is pitiable. No matter how remarkable he is in other respects, a man living alone cannot achieve true love.
God has true love, true life, true lineage and true conscience. The conscience He has is not roughhewn; instead, it is level and smooth. Yes, He has all these things, but what is the one thing through which the value of having them is realized? That value can never be realized when one is isolated and alone.
Why is this so? Even if a man is so remarkable that he is made a prime minister or a president, and he talks grandly, when all is said and done, he is only half a human being when by himself. This is the case for both men and women. Without a doubt, a man is only a half of the whole. Why is a man only half? A man only has the convex and not the concave. In order to attain complete love, you need both the concave and the convex. In order for a man to make up for the concave that he is missing, he needs his other half, which is the woman. Together with the woman, he can finally complete true love.
Yet, when we look into the Fall of our first human ancestors, we see that they were unable to unite their body and mind as one with the lineage of God. Instead, they became connected to the bloodline of Satan. They could have formed three generations, bringing forth the grandchildren of God, but such grandchildren did not come to be.
Descendants of God are multiplied after restoring the three generations through the providence of salvation. They are connected to the lineage of God and are, without a doubt, the seeds of the sons and daughters desired by God and by Adam. Once they are planted, regardless of where it may be, they can feed on the milk of their parents as original sons and daughters, grow up, and live in the kingdom of heaven automatically. Instead, due to the Fall, the lineage of Satan came to writhe in our bodies. That is why we need to do something that will sever our bloodline and drain that blood from our bodies ten times, twelve times. We need to die and come back to life.
Nonetheless, it is difficult to change a polluted bloodline. This is a big problem. Have you ever thought about the state your body is in? It is horrifying to face the fact that that we are wretched people, with the blood of our enemy for countless of generations enveloping our bones and our flesh and writhing within us, and that our bodies have conquered our minds and are ravaging them.
What would have been a north-south connection became an east-west connection, and this was the Fall. Then the question is, how can this ill-begotten east-west connection be righted to become a north-south connection? The treatment to sever the wrong connection and make the right connection is the Blessing of the Unification Church. The marriage Blessing ceremony connects people to the original lineage.
The meaning of the Blessing in the Unification Church
Originally, if Adam and Eve had not fallen, they would have become the external parents connected by lineage centering on the true love of God. They would have become one with the internal Father, God, and become the spiritual and physical human ancestors living in the absolute true love of God. The point in time when Adam and Eve were to stand at the central focal point was the moment when they were to make love for the first time on the night of their wedding, and thus become one in body in love centering on God. However, through the Fall of Adam and Eve, that was lost. God had planned to plant conjugal love in human beings, yet He was not able to secure a place to plant it. And so He became miserable.
Can God experience love by Himself? Even if a woman is wonderful and beautiful, she still needs someone in the form of a man, even a man of minimal ability and shabby appearance. A woman may have love, life, lineage and conscience in her heart, but they will not be stirred up until a man appears. Until then, love will not be activated and, centering on love, life will not be activated, the lineage will not be set aflame, and the conscience will not stand as the object partner. Similarly, through the appearance of the object partner, that is, through the appearance of a woman, the love, life and bloodline of a man will finally be set aflame.
If Adam and Eve had waited until the age of eighteen, they would have received the Blessing of God and become husband and wife in the proper way. They would have become the true ancestors of humanity. However, they fell because they thoughtlessly played with fire at the age of sixteen.
Ladies and gentlemen, do you know why God is a pitiable Being? Though He is the great King of true love, He lost the place where He had desired to become one body with the human ancestors and engage in true love. No matter how much He adored the true love within Him, this love within Him became nothing but the love of a widower or widow. In other words, He became a God with the heart of true love who lost His object partner, and so He is a sad God.
Adam and Eve had the responsibility to become the ideal object partner in the family of God. They were, in effect, to acquire the position of the owners of true love and liberate it. Nonetheless, they were not able to fulfill their responsibility. Their lifelong hope was in God occupying the position of the owner of true love, but they failed.
In the Blessing of the Unification Church, the first condition is for the blessed couple to engage in true love in the position of the bridegroom and the bride of God, and inherit that lost tradition. As long as we do not deny the true love that engages God for tens of thousands of years and forevermore, we will without a doubt be His sons and daughters and His blood relations.
Who makes the position of the owner of true love?
Who can make the place where God can truly love a man and woman? Who can form the position of the owner of true love, wherein He can form the relationship of lineage? The answer is that only His sons and daughters can establish true love and lineage, and no one else.
The place where sons and daughters are born is the place where the dual characteristics of God are divided. You need to know that sons and daughters have equal value. God cannot love the baby in the womb, except through your couple. He can love them from the position of the owner of the son and the owner of the daughter. You can restore this through the baby born in your family.
In this way, God can become the owner of the time of infancy, then the owner of the time of childhood, the owner of the time of brothers and sisters, the owner of the time of husband and wife, and the owner of the time of parents. God’s final ownership is through the birth of grandchildren. God is the first generation and Adam and Eve were the second generation, but their children, who were to have been the third generation, were snatched away by the devil. Now, through His sons and daughters in place of Adam and Eve, God can restore through indemnity the position of the owner of true love.
When this comes to pass, God will recognize His sons and daughters as second parents. He will have the position of Parent, the same position as that from which He truly loved Adam and Eve. Only by setting up three generations in this manner can the grandfather and the father truly love the grandchild of God as the perfected seed for generations to come. Thus, the grandchild can receive true love from the two generations. The grandparent is the representative of the spirit world, and Adam, the second generation, represents of the kingship of the physical world.
The grandchildren are born with the inheritance of the lineage of true love representing those two kingdoms. Therefore, they are the fruit; they represent the future kingship of the earth and the heavenly spirit world. This is how the kingdom of heaven on earth will be governed in the age of the sons and daughters. From the third generation to all generations, descendants will multiply as the fruit. Consequently, religion will be unnecessary, for everyone will be destined to go to the kingdom of heaven as long as they listen to the words of their parents and become one in the practice of true love. This is the original creation, the ideal form of the eight stages of true love.
When that is restored, we can transcend the twelve pearly gates of the heavenly kingdom and the barriers of the earthly world and become members of a united clan. We can open the gates of the liberated world on earth and the liberated world in heaven, that is, the kingdom of heaven on earth and in heaven, which are the palaces of unity. The eight stages are the age in the womb, the age of infancy and childhood, the age of adolescence, the age of marrying, the age of bearing children, the age of parenting, the age of grandparenting and the age of kingship. Sorrow is deeply embedded in God’s heart because we did not establish the tradition based on this unchanging model of the eight stages of love on earth.
How can we console the One who holds in His heart this deep sorrow over the failure to realize this eightstage love? In this world, the eight stages are riddled with holes. Since True Parents have learned these secrets of Satan’s crimes and of the heavenly world and are teaching them to others, providing what has been missing, they can perfect the eight stages.
You can go to the kingdom of heaven by passing through the gate of lineage. Let’s say you are the object partner of the true love of God during your time in the womb, infancy and childhood. You then become the object partner of God at the time of betrothal, and you complete yourself with true authority as the object partner of God’s true love at the stage of husband and wife, parents, grandparents and king. Then your family, part of which is in the visible substantial realm and part of which is in the invisible substantial realm of God, will be one. You will inherit the lineage of the tradition of true love, where the body and mind are united as one. Thus, you will automatically belong to the united realm in heaven and on earth. You will be the citizens and families of the kingdom of heaven. In short, you will be the liberated sons and daughters and the liberated owners of the kingdom of heaven.
Let us become the owners of the eight stages of true love
Therefore, men and women need to live with pride as the substantial external form of God. They need to know the importance of lineage, for it connects the way of husband and wife and the way of children to the tradition of ownership, and that tradition is what connects the clan, the nation and the cosmos. This comes through marriage, which is how a man, who is half, meets a woman, who is the other half, and becomes with her a couple that can practice complete true love.
God cannot accept something that is only half of what it is designed to be. Only when a man and a woman come together and become completely one can God establish the tradition of vertical true love. He does so by coming into them in a relationship of true love.
Therefore, you need to respect your ancestors and love your fellow citizens. A king and queen need to be one with their subjects centering on kingship. A king or queen who forgets his or her subjects is a fraud. He or she is an heir of the devil. Such a ruler creates barriers.
Now humanity needs to carry out another revolution. We need to receive the fortune of true love from Heaven, implant it in our families and establish God as the absolute owner of that true love.
In all respects, we are resultant beings, and so we need to carry out the great revolution of attending and following God, the causal Being, with absolute faith, absolute love and absolute obedience. Only in this way can we achieve perfection.
If two subject beings come into existence, they will start promoting self-centered opinions. This leads inevitably to barriers that block true love. We need to realize this.
Therefore, from now on do not do anything that creates barriers in the path of love. Those who say, “My husband must love only me and not our children; my sons and daughters must love only me and not their father,” will die unhappy. A woman needs to embrace her sons and daughters and receive the love of the original Father.
Raise your sons and daughters as the true love fruit of the sperm, which is the seed of life from your husband, and return them to God. Then you can belong to God. The gates of God’s eight stages of love were destroyed because of the woman, and so women have to do their utmost to re-create their husbands and their sons and daughters. By doing so in blessed families, the ownership of God’s eight stages of love can be perfected in the presence of God.
As we do this, we need to prepare the kingship of true love and its throne. It has to be something of which our family can more than boast, no matter where we may go. We can go to the twelve pearly gates of the kingdom of heaven in this world or the next and boast of it. We can visit anyone, from individuals to families, tribes, peoples, nations, the world and cosmos, in the kingdom of heaven on earth or in heaven, and boast of it. You need to clearly understand that, by gaining the right to do so as the sons and daughters who have perfected the lineage of God, you become the citizens of the heavenly world and the kingdom of heaven.
I want to emphasize this to you again: what we have to bear in mind is breaking down barriers. The task includes the dismantling of national barriers through the work of the United Nations, getting rid of religious barriers, tearing down ethnic and racial barriers, and ultimately destroying the barriers in spirit world by ending hell. Since all these barriers stem from Adam and Eve, the false parents, no one other than True Parents can break them down. God alone cannot do it, and certainly Satan will not do it -- he is the one who has been creating them. Who can stop Satan’s conflict with God? Only True Parents can resolve that war, since the false parents allowed it to take root.
Ladies and gentlemen, I hope you will leave this place this evening with a determination to go out and break down barriers. Bring this message of liberation through true love to all human beings, and you will become the owners of God’s kingdom.
Thank you very much.