by Reverend Sun Myung Moon
This is an excerpt from the Sunday Morning Sermon given at Belvedere, June 7, 1992. The translator was Sang Kil Han.
As Unification Church members, we know what is the will of God. It is very simple: God's will is to complete His purpose of creation. We agree on that, don't we? Then we must ask the question, "What is the purpose of creation?" We know that it is simply the completion of the four-position foundation of Adam and Eve. That means Adam will be completed in love, and Eve will be completed in love perfected, that is and both will become united in love and give birth to good children. Those children will grow in love and form a perfect family centered on love. This is the purpose of creation. Do you agree with that?
The will of God, simply speaking, is to complete the four-position foundation. Then comes the question, what is the fall? The fall was something which negated that purpose, something which made the four-position foundation impossible. Therefore, God's will became that of re-establishing His original purpose of creation. It has taken six thousand years of history to do it again, to indemnify and liquidate the problems. To clear it up. To indemnify tangam means to liquidate or clear up. Indemnity is the only way for God to restart.
One of the most difficult concepts for people in the Western world to understand is this concept of indemnity. They ask, "Why, since God is supposed to be only good in every way, does He make people pay the price of indemnity?" They say, "We are all right. We don't need indemnity. We are strong, we have an advanced culture and we have always been that way. I don't agree with indemnity." But whether or not you agree, success in this world means success within the satanic realm. If people continue to disregard indemnity and its value, then the only way they can go is down and to perish.
Make amends
The remedy is to go backwards. If you have done something wrong, you have to correct it. If you have been using drugs, you have to stop using drugs; if you have been engaging in free sex, you have to stop free sex. Indemnity is the reverse way, and it is something which America and the Western world needs very badly. This world cannot go on the way it is going now. How to deny, to negate the way it is to day is a very important task for us. Otherwise, we cannot accomplish the will of God.
First we must know what happened during the six thousand years of God's dispensational history. Then we must desire to indemnify it and return back to God. Without that, we cannot return to God's schedule, God's track. Therefore, we have to deny. The result of the fall was that Satan came to be in the top position, and God came to be in the bottom position. How can God go back to His rightful position? It is only by going through that zero point. Without going through the zero point, one cannot be restored to the right position.
Here is the reason for that paradoxical statement of Jesus that if you want to die, you will live. But if you want to live, you will die. He said that your own enemies are the members of your own family. The ones you love the most are your enemies. Why? Because of them, many times, we cannot go the way of Principle. This is precisely what has happened to many of us: the ones who stop our advancement toward God are our own family members. Our own relatives kidnap us to take us away from this church because in this church, we come to belong to God's family. Because they do not understand, they do these things. The purpose of this church is to liberate the sons and daughters of God, as well as all beings.
Within one person, our mind and body also struggle; they always disagree. The mind is drawn to the satanic side, also, but the mind has more of a desire to go closer to God. Whereas the body is further away from God. Both the mind and the body of every individual belong to the satanic side, but they should have been on God's side, as we know.
So for the mind to go to God's side, you have to go through here (drawing on blackboard) that original center point. The body also wants to go to God's side. In order to do that, the individual man must first deny himself. By the same token, if a woman with conflicted mind and body gets together with a man like that, they will conflict with each other, just as the mind and body conflict. That is because they are in the satanic realm. They disagree and lack harmony. In order for such a family to pay indemnity and be restored, each individual must deny himself and stop fighting with the other. No matter what happens, he or she must not fight. Each sacrifices himself in that way.
Without conflict
When an individual is able to harmonize his own mind and body, he will be able to form a family without conflict. That is a family in which husband and wife do not fight. In order for an individual to be able to return to God's side, he must realize this unity not only individually but also in his family. Centering on that family, the clan must achieve the same kind of harmony and unity. Therefore, unless the family attains this unity, the clan can never attain it.
So there are three steps: individual, family, and clan. Through those three steps, we can come completely into God's side. After the clan, we know that the next higher unit is the nation. And the nation can be turned into God's side. We understand the general concept, what steps we have to follow.
We have to fight against evil within ourselves on the individual level, family level, clan level, and nation level. We advance to each higher level as we fight and win over the evil within. At each step, we have to fight and win. These are not just my own words. This is history. History can be described as the succession of this action. Finally, after the national level is won, the world level must also be won.
The world is the same. We already know why the right and left wings came into existence in the world from the very beginning. In order for them to be restored, they have to go the original point, the zero point. They too must deny themselves first in order to pass through this zero point. Whether it is democracy, right wing, or left wing it doesn't matter. Without exception, they must follow this formula and go through this zero point.
Liberate hell
To liberate hell, we must go the same way. To solve the individual problem of good and evil is difficult enough, but to move hell itself and liberate it is so much more difficult. It is easy to say the words, but how difficult it is to do it!
People talk about the Last Days, they draw pictures of what they think it will be like. What will it be like in the Last Days? One way to discern that the Last Days are here is that everyone will be enemies with everyone else. Even within the family, the husband and wife will be enemies, children turn against parents. Then you can say, "This is the End Time." Since this is the case between individuals everywhere, then no two families will unite. Families will be enemies. Nations, also, will be enemies everywhere, pursuing their own interests. So in that kind of situation, imagine how difficult it would be to turn from that hellish world into heaven. It could never be a simple task. Just imagine.
In that kind of hopeless world, someone bigger is reigning over each person. That is Satan, striding right above each person, telling him what to do, "Do this, do that. No matter how hard you try, you cannot win over me. I am stronger." You all think about yourselves first, don't you? That is Satan. You should think, "My way of thinking about me first is from Satan." Then we have to ruthlessly contain ourselves, "No, no, don't think about myself." We have to deny ourselves, turning ourselves upside down. It is like standing on our head, with our feet in the air. Nobody is comfortable with such a drastic change. Nobody wants that, especially when they don't understand it.
How difficult, how agonizingly painful it must have been for God to pursue these different levels of unity, turning them into heaven. We are in that kind of situation today; God too is in that situation today. Over and over again, we tried and struggled against Satan, with God hoping for us to succeed, but we never did. And God is right beside us to witness that, so when we understand that, is God a God of glory and comfort, or is God a sad and miserable God, even more miserable than we are? He is more miserable than we are.
Think about it this way: each person lives only one generation and then he dies. After that time, we are relieved of the pain of this life. But God has existed and lived through one generation after another, over and over again, endlessly engaged in this terrible war. Therefore, God has been in terrible pain. How miserable has been God's situation! Nobody has known that throughout history. If someone could have understood what God was doing, God may have felt better. But nobody could figure out why God was doing the things He did, or understood God's will. How much more miserable was God.
Purpose of religion
And God's task was the desperate attempt to educate people. During the historical time of the individual level of the dispensation, God introduced religion to educate the individual and family. After that, the time of the clan and the national level came. Accordingly, God introduces new religious concepts, and through religion God attempted to educate human beings, paying all the price of educating man.
So America is a nation within the Christian cultural realm, correct? And American people have been proud that they were part of that Christian culture, not knowing what position they are on. Did you know that today Christendom is controlled by the left, by those who used to be the communists? That element is controlling Christendom, but the Christians do not even know it. Now, unfortunately as we see, this Christian culture has been reduced to individualism, free sex, drug abuse and so forth. Is that God's original ideal free sex and individualism? Is that Jesus' idea? No, clearly not. Those are enemies to Jesus. That is Satan's idea.
What good will it do if the individual is saved while the family, clan and nation are being lost? Nothing is gained because the individual has no place to go. The individual is not a unit in Heaven. As a matter of fact, the United States has even lost the individual, as evidenced by the miserable condition of hippies and yippies. Why can the individual not be better than that? America lost everything, even the individual. There is nothing to be proud of in front of God. You are intelligent people gathered here today, but can any one of you say to me, "You are wrong about this country. We are still good." Can any intelligent person say that? It is so simple and clear.
What is the way to solve this problem? It is by denying everything at one time. At the same time. After that, all we remember, all we care about is this: God and the completed four-position foundation of Adam and Eve. That is all we advance toward.