Sun Myung Moon
Hanmadang Sports Festival 2000
February 14, 2000
The Fourth World Hanmadang Sports Festival Opening Ceremony
Olympic Park Gymnastics Arena, Seoul, Korea
Photo date and location unknown
Guests from home and abroad, and members of the Youth Federation for World Peace from all parts of the world, thank you for coming to Korea, the homeland of heart and the fatherland of faith, and for traveling long distances to attend this festival.
This competition, where youth from around the world come together to compete with one another with all their strength, energy and beauty, is a festival of peace to restore humanity to its original state and to promote a worldwide culture of heart. It aims for the realization of a united world of peace, to firmly establish God's absolute desire on earth.
The World Culture and Sports Festival in the year 2000, the fourth time this event is being held, is a venue where prominent scholars as well as religious leaders, politicians, media professionals, youth leaders, women leaders and students, representing all fields of world culture, come together as members of the global village, as one family centered on God.
The original ideal world is a world that would have been realized if Adam and Eve, who had been given God's true love, true life and true lineage, had perfected the four realms of heart -- as true children, true siblings, true couples and true parents. Suppose this kind of festival of the culture of heart had been held in that world, where sons and daughters of God came together at one place to compete with one another in strength, energy and beauty, and during that festival pure and good men and women had received the Blessing to form true, happy families. How delighted God would have been!
Unfortunately, the first ancestors of humankind, Adam and Eve, forsook the Will of God in their adolescence. They formed an illicit relationship with the archangel and inherited the archangel's fallen lineage. As a result, human history became a wretched history.
The Fall, which brought such wretched consequences, occurred at the time of adolescence. It brought human beings under Satan's domination, whence they have been compelled to carry out his purposes. This incident has remained as a bitter sorrow in the heart of God that can hardly be appeased.
Therefore, the period of adolescence is the most important in a person's life. During adolescence, young people need to establish true and correct values, values that will enable them to form true families, and through them to build healthy societies, hopeful nations and a peaceful world.
However, the fact of the matter is that due to Satan's influence, adolescent youths today are becoming increasingly egoistic and individualistic. As a consequence, sexual ethics and sexual morality have broken down, giving rise to free sex, sexual crimes, single mothers, abortion, homosexuality, and AIDS. Families that should be sound and healthy are being destroyed, and the crime rate among young people is rising rapidly. Pornography is rampant, and the sex trade along with paid dating is flourishing.
Owing to such circumstances, people around the world today are living in hell on earth, enduring suffering and misery. Therefore, to save humanity, God is reaffirming His standard of absolute true love in order to reverse all that I mentioned above. He is working to pulverize the culture of evil and liberate hell on earth. In other words, God is on the counterattack against Satan, the destroyer of human beings and their families. To save humankind, He has persevered along the reverse route to establish a model of a true family centered on the True Parents. That is why the True Parents, who are in the position of the Second Coming of the Messiah, have the important responsibility to eradicate fallen sex.
I sought to discover the root of sin, which had its origin in the human Fall and the process of the Fall. In time I came to understand that this root is none other than the illicit love relationship with the fallen archangel, Satan. We need to clearly recognize that this is the root from which stemmed all the social conflicts in human history. That is why members of the second generation today must take the lead in bringing an end to the culture of obscenity and immorality, and eliminate free sex and violence. This is vital if we are to construct the new culture of heart centered on God and to establish firmly the tradition of true love, in order to build the kingdom of heaven on earth.
Humanity has been torn apart by differences in religion, culture, philosophy, doctrine, race, language, and beliefs. To bring fractured humanity together as one and make a united ideal world, I have shed blood, sweat and tears throughout my life. Marching forward toward the one world desired by God, I brought together the leaders of the world, formed organizations in every field of life centering on God's love and absolute values, and spread their influence worldwide. Continually working towards this end by investing the true love of God over and over again, I have established a worldwide foundation. Its center is the True Parents, who are the substantial embodiment of true love and true family.
Starting with the Blessing of three couples in 1960, I have officiated at innumerable Blessing ceremonies. In 1999, on the foundation of the Blessing of 360 million couples, I proclaimed the "Day of the Liberation of Cosmic Unification for the Parents of Heaven and Earth." Yesterday we performed the Blessing ceremony of 400 million couples with pomp and splendor. Along with the pure love movement of adolescents, these events mark the eradication of Satan's lineage. They are ushering in the advent of the era of the realm of the fourth Adam, both in name and in reality.
In addition, by forming such organizations as the International Conference on the Unity of the Sciences, the Professors World Peace Academy, the World Media Association, the Inter-religious Federation for World Peace, the Federation for World Peace, the Women's Federation for World Peace, the Youth Federation for World Peace, the Students Federation for World Peace, the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification, and the Inter-religious and International Federation for World Peace, I have continued to expand the worldwide foundation to create an environment of goodness centered on God.
The World Culture and Sports Festival 2000 being held at this time is a festival that brings together all these overall foundations of God in one place. It is preparing the foundation for a significant leap toward the greater harmony of humanity and the construction of the world of the new culture of heart. The Fourth World Hanmadang Sports Festival, held as a part of this meaningful event, is a festival of peace that reaffirms the conviction that the traditions and values of the diverse cultures across the world's oceans and continents can be united as one, transcending race, religion, philosophy, and doctrine. It is an event whose great harmony opens the horizons to a united culture of heart.
The basis of this movement for a united culture of heart is none other than the Divine Principle movement, which is a new movement dedicated to the practice of true love. This Divine Principle movement is already widely known among the youth of all nations. It presents a "head-wing" teaching of interdependence, mutual prosperity and universally shared values, which will save the ruined nations of the former communist bloc and the free democratic world that itself is wandering amid the confusion of values. It has become a driving force of hope for young people who are trying to establish the ideal world as it was originally created.
Please understand that this Fourth World Hanmadang Sports Festival, which is being held at the very beginning of the new millennium, is a blessed event. It can catalyze heartfelt expectations and hopes for God and humanity as never before.
Young adults and students, you who will be future leaders in the twenty-first century, what is the most important thing in your lives? It is to realize true love. However, true love is something you cannot achieve by yourself, because it comes from your object partner. You can achieve true love only when you live for your object partner. If there were any human value that can be considered the most precious, it would be the value of living for the sake of others. You must become young people and students who can prepare for the future by establishing your values based on living for the sake of others.
You have to achieve the standard where your sound spirit and strong body are united as one; only then will you be able to carry out creative and independent activities where you dedicate your whole self. No matter how healthy your spirit is, if your physical body is old and weak, you cannot substantiate your ideal. Conversely, even if you have a healthy body, if you don't have a sound spirit, then you cannot act like a righteous person. I hope that all of you will clearly understand this fact and continue to work hard, over and over again, to achieve a healthy unity of mind and body through this sports festival.
Let us all march forward to build the one united world of peace by perfecting the true families that God has long sought for and that humanity has long yearned for. Let us work for this with burning passion, pure life, and wise reasoning, and by arming ourselves with the three great subject partners principle, which teaches that we should become true parents, true teachers, and true owners.
We need to realize the long-cherished dream of God and humanity by building a world of united cultures that transcends the barriers of nationality, race, religion and culture. There are many tasks that still remain for us to carry out in order to establish this united world. Among these are the unification of South and North Korea, reducing and eventually eliminating the disparity in wealth between the South and the North, and closing the gap between the cultures of East and West.
I ask that you fully invest your bodies, minds and hearts to become the victors who achieve the longcherished desire of all generations. I ask you, with your pure passion and indefatigable spirit, to experience the heart of God. This is the direction that you, the youth and students living in the same era as True Parents, must follow at the beginning of the new millennium.
I ask you all to be strong and bold to realize the ideal world through your strength and resolve. I want to express my gratitude to you, and may the boundless blessings of God and heavenly fortune will be with you in the days to come.
Thank you.