Sun Myung Moon
April 30, 2004
Banquet on the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Founding of the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification (Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity)
Marriott Hotel, Seoul, Korea
Photo date and location unknown
Respected guests, distinguished leaders from 191 nations, ladies and gentlemen, and beloved members:
Fifty years ago on this memorable day, May 1, 1954, as I walked the path of upholding God’s Will, I founded the official organization of the Unification movement. The path I pioneered for half a century is a path no one has really understood. God alone has been my driving force as I walked a lonely path of persecution and suffering, stained with my blood, sweat and tears.
The Unification movement that I have been promoting is entwined with God’s desire. Therefore, for the past fifty years, rain or shine, I have not once forgotten my mission nor my responsibility in this time and going into the future. The motivating force behind the Unification movement is God. On this significant occasion today, I would like to reveal the fundamental purpose that God had in its inception, its destination and its goal.
The Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity (HSA-UWC) was not created as another denomination or sect. I am fully aware that God never desired it to be so. Fifty years ago, the Unification movement began as the Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity; in other words, it began as an association with the purpose of creating unity. Selecting this name, which signifies the unity of global Christianity, the unity of religions, and unity of the spirit world, was fraught with risk. The development of the Christian tradition and the formation of its cultural sphere were achieved through the faith, sacrifice, passion, and searching of exemplary Christian saints, leaders and scholars. Despite this, Christianity has splintered into numerous denominations, some of which are in conflict with one another even today. Under these circumstances, unifying Christianity is no easy task. Unifying religions and, further, unifying the spirit world, are even greater tasks.
The concept of unity that I set forth does not just denote superficial unity or unity merely in form. It denotes fundamental and complete harmony and unity according to God’s ideal.
First, this is achieved through the work of the Spirit. The unity among religions and unity in the spirit world cannot be achieved by force or authority, or by any other external condition. The power of mobilizing the Spirit lies in God and the spirit world, but it can only be utilized when we lay the foundation that allows God to work on earth and when we meet the conditions sought by the saints in heaven. However, the actual power to spur good spirits into action lies with God and the spirit world.
The spirit self, the inner person of a man or woman, is originally an entity that would respond to good spiritual influences. However, fallen people have dysfunctional spirit selves and have lived in ignorance of the spirit world’s existence. Once their spirit selves are repaired and purified, all people will naturally be able to experience these good spiritual influences. Thus, we must all be conscious of the spirit world, and the time is coming when we will be.
Throughout my life, I have been promoting the Unification movement, which supports God and the spirit world. It is supporting God’s spiritual work on earth to achieve unity between mind and body, unity among people, unity between the spiritual and physical worlds, and unity between God and human beings.
Second, unity is achieved through truth and love. I have revealed that the relationship between God and humanity is that of a Parent and child bound by true love. I have also revealed the fundamental principles of life and of the universe, the true nature of original sin, the principles of restoration, the truth of the spirit world, and the history of God’s providence.
In my life, I taught about true love and put it into practice. True love is investing oneself for the sake of others. In true love, I cease worrying about whether others recognize my own good qualities, and instead I focus on drawing out the best qualities of those whom I love. By investing and investing again in my object partner, he or she will become greater than I am. True love means investing, forgetting that I have invested, and continuing to invest still more. It means sacrificing all of my interests and even my status. Genuine unity can only be achieved when I give them up. Therefore, the greatest obstacle to achieving unity is a self-centered mind.
For the past fifty years, I totally gave of myself as an individual. I sacrificed my family, my clan, and my nation. To better devote myself for the sake of the world and all humanity, I have offered the Unification Church. Even now I am investing tirelessly. All of this has been to achieve the ideal that God intended at the time of the Creation, which is to achieve complete harmony and unity based on true love.
God’s desire for us is that we live in ideal oneness with Him through love. The lofty vision that humanity longs for, of freedom, peace and happiness, is possible only when we achieve harmony and unity within true love. The Unification movement is the movement to spread true love to the whole world.
God, the invisible True Parent, created us, as well as everything else in existence, in order to establish His object partners of true love. In particular, we, who were created to be God’s children, are the beings most precious to the heavenly True Parent, who is the Subject Partner of absolute love. Our first ancestors were to be the invisible God’s body and holy temple, and the substantial object partners of God’s true love.
Originally, Adam and Eve were to mature into people whose character manifested true love based on God’s true love. They were to become a true couple and multiply true children in order to become true parents. If they had done so, they would have completed themselves as the substantial entities of God’s true love, true life and true lineage. If Adam, Eve and their children had completed a four-position foundation of true love with God at the center, God would have been able to have descendants related by blood through true love, and the ideal family of humankind would have settled throughout the earth.
An attribute of true love is that it compels those who experience it to invest more in their object partner of love than in themselves. People were created as the object partners of God’s love; therefore, the very idea that they might sin and suffer in hell was unthinkable to God. It was entirely the result of our first ancestors acting against the nature of true love and falling.
Our first ancestors were expelled from the original world and could not bear children of true life and true lineage under the blessing of God’s true love. People are born without a relationship with God’s true love, true life, and true lineage. They are thus destined from the moment of birth to need a savior and need salvation.
Salvation means recovering one’s original state, that is, restoration. It means returning to the original state before the Fall and restoring the relationship with God that was lost. Fallen human beings must inevitably go the path of restoration through indemnity. Therefore, in each era and in each region of the world, God has raised religions and has led humanity along the progressive path of restoration.
Religion is a training center and an educational institute to remake dysfunctional human beings and return them to their original state. Religious teachings are not for the sake of religion itself. Religion is the means to realize God’s will, which is to educate and recreate us as God’s children. It is impossible for God to be contained within the limited doctrines and rituals established by religion. The mission of religion is to cultivate our character through a life of faith that embraces both enlightenment and personal growth, so that we can attend God in our everyday lives.
We can graduate from school only after completing a prescribed course of study. In the same way, all faiths need to attach greater importance to educating and training individuals to perfect their character than they do to merely bringing people to their faith through witnessing and sermons. Humanity was not originally created to relate to God through religion and a life of faith. In the original garden, religion did not exist. There was no need for the formalities of ritual in the original relationship between God and human beings. It was to have been a relationship of true parent and true child living as an ideal family, intoxicated in the bliss of true love.
I have tried to teach and offer guidance on this heavenly law and principle through the established faiths, in particular, through the Christian foundation that God had prepared for me. Unfortunately, due to ignorance, self-righteousness and denominationalism, God’s central providence could not advance. Instead it met with persecution. Under these circumstances, I was compelled to establish the Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity. As I had no desire to establish a separate religion, I have, from the early years of this movement, promoted ecumenical and interdenominational activities.
The world has come to call us the Unification Church in place of our full name. Many years ago, I said that I was looking forward to the day when we could bring an end to the Unification Church. That is because the mission of the Unification Church has been to restore and recreate the ideal of God on earth. The ideal kingdom of God is the original world that He envisaged at the time of the creation. This can only be realized when the mistakes of our ancestors, who betrayed God, are completely eradicated, and when the supra-religious, supra-national realm of liberation and complete freedom is perfected. This is to realize the original realm of love, the four-position foundation ideal. To accomplish this transcends the mission of any one church or denomination; it means perfecting the family ideal of true love. Yet the focus of churches and religions has been on individual salvation. No religion until now has ever put emphasis on the salvation of the family.
Crucial to the salvation of the family is receiving and maintaining the Blessing Ceremony of marriage, through which people receive the blessing of God’s true love. Because our fallen ancestors failed to achieve the ideal of true parenthood, we their fallen descendants on our own cannot attain it. It is only possible through the Savior sent by God, because the Savior is the True Parents, the true ancestors who can replace the fallen ancestors. Fallen men and women can be likened to wild olive trees that multiplied the false lineage that they received from the first ancestors, which has no relationship to God. Engrafting into the True Parents, who come as the true olive tree, restores fallen men and women. The ceremony for this is the Blessing Ceremony of marriage.
On the foundation of pure love education and the true family movement worldwide, I inaugurated the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification on July 31, 1996, in Washington DC, the capital of the United States of America. Four thousand people attended, including many heads of state and highranking world religious leaders. On that day I officially announced the end of the Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity. With the inauguration of the Family Federation, the providential age has begun in which families may receive salvation that transcends the boundaries of religion, nationality and race.
The Old Testament Age and New Testament Age were not ages for realizing the ideal family. Those ages belonged to the providential age for the salvation of the individual. Then the main focus was on individual salvation alone. The age of the salvation of the family is the Completed Testament Age. When families combine as a federation, they move into the age of the providence for the salvation of clans, and beyond that, to the salvation of nations. The Blessing ceremony eradicates the fallen lineage, which had been the inheritance of fallen humanity, transfers ownership of the lineage back to God, and brings about a transformation of heart. Indeed, there is no greater grace than this!
Heaven does not come under the banner of a particular religion. God transcends religion. Heaven is the place where people who have regained the parent-child relationship of true love with God, attend God and are intoxicated in God’s true love. People who receive the Blessing, create families of true love, and live in attendance to God can enter heaven along with their clans and nations.
Throughout history, people have sought and cried out for their own liberation and salvation. What about God? Is God not in need of liberation? Does God exist intoxicated in joy? Was it possible for God’s heart to be filled with the joy of liberation when, as the Parent, God had to watch His children groaning in sin and suffering throughout history? That was never possible. God’s heart can be liberated and enjoy complete freedom in accordance with the degree of the completion of the ideal family and ideal kingdom on this earth and in heaven. Only then can people be liberated and completely released through a family life of true love. In turn, the creation, and further, the spirit world, can be liberated and completely released through us.
Heaven can be likened to a palace of true love. There, we as God’s children, who live centered on the living God the origin of true love, can share joy with God and respond to God’s heart. The Family Federation for World Peace and Unification has promoted the true family Blessing movement worldwide with the purpose of substantially realizing the kingdom of heaven, which is beyond religion, race and nation.
Respected leaders and beloved members, throughout history, humankind has dreamed of heaven, an ideal world, yet what is the reality that we see today? Society today has become the kingdom of free sex and individualism amid family breakdown and the loss of values. In such an environment based on fallen human beings, it is impossible to have the correct view of life and values, let alone a correct view of the world and the universe. We therefore cannot hope to create or perfect harmony, either within the individual or as a whole.
In the past century, many people placed their hopes on utopian movements under the banners of communism and equality. The communist movement created a stir and shook the world. However in reality, the only thing people in the communist sphere experienced was inequality and exploitation, misfortune and fear. That movement ended in failure.
At the same time, others built a system that placed democracy and freedom as the highest values and ideals. It was based on a dream, but what was the result? This system spurred individualistic, selfcentered desire for pleasure and brought about decadence and corruption, imbalance and disorder. The future of democracy is also unclear.
Some have called for the construction of the ideal world through secular humanism. Others have promoted the North Korean Juche ideology, which dehumanizes people and drives them to become like animals. There are also those calling for globalization, however those who promote it often have a selfcentered perspective. All these have failed to establish the absolute, vertical values that God desires. Hence, people now struggle horizontally, beset by confusion and conflict among relative values.
Overall, humanity has been following the path of self-destruction, far removed from the path of one global family in which genuine happiness is possible. All these are a direct result of people having estranged themselves from God, the True Parent, throughout their long history. The most urgent task for people in the present age, who wander about unable to escape unhappiness and suffering, is to seek out and come to know God, to understand original sin and to know the spirit world. An individual alone cannot achieve the ideal of happiness. It is possible only when he or she establishes the proper relationship within the family, tribe, people, nation, world, and cosmos, and with God. It is the ideal of God’s true love that can bring about the perfection of all these things.
The future world in the new age will not be a world based on humanistic thought. It will be a world based on “Godism,” the teaching of our Heavenly Parent, in which we attend God as King. Thus, the age of “True Parentism” is dawning—the age of true love. The age of nationalism has passed. Even a superpower nation cannot exist on its own. The age of unilateralism has also passed. A new age is dawning, when conflict will disappear and we will live together harmoniously, beyond nation, religion and race.
The core of this coming world will be true love; in other words, investing for the sake of others. Those nations that go against this heavenly law and persist in self-centered policies with the aim of enriching their own selves will gradually lose influence and perish in the end. In the future, religions will be the first to take down their banners, ahead of the political realm and secular worlds, and take the lead in practicing true love and compassion. All religions need to reconcile and cooperate on an interreligious level to promote the reconciliation and unity of nations and races. They need to have the heart of God and be examples in practicing true love.
I created the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification and promoted the true family movement worldwide while unsparingly investing all my resources and human power to prevent war and to realize a world of peace.
The Interreligious and International Federation for World Peace was inaugurated in February 1999 as an integrated organization, and through this organization I expanded my endeavors for reconciliation between the faiths. These endeavors have spanned many years. Leaders in different fields, such as politics, economics, education, the arts and nongovernmental organizations, have participated in this effort. More than fifty thousand ambassadors for peace have been appointed in 191 nations of the world. I am promoting a movement for the revival of the United Nations, so that the UN can become an organization that is truly dedicated to world peace.
In October 2003, I founded the Interreligious and International Peace Council, the Peace UN, and expanded its activities as the central organization for the realization of world peace. Not only that, in accordance with heavenly fortune and on the victorious foundation of devotions offered in the heavenly and earthly worlds, I offered God His kingship in January 2001. It was a historic event, liberating God as the eternal King, and the King of all kings. Based on this, God’s sovereignty of goodness substantially expanded its territory to all corners of the world.
Fifty years have passed since the launch of the Unification movement as an official organization. The first stage of the Unification movement was a period when it was active mainly in the religious sphere, dealing with individual salvation. The next stage was the movement to find and establish true families, the basic unit of heaven. The movement will continue on to work for the restoration of clans, and to have an impact in local communities, until all people on earth and in heaven receive the Blessing.
The third stage of the movement, to build the ideal world of peace, has already begun in earnest. During the past year alone, I devoted my efforts to lead sixteen initiatives, large and small, for peace in the Middle East. The entire world is scrutinizing my activities, including the movement for peace and unity between North and South Korea, the UN revival movement or new Peace UN movement, and the peace movement of the fifty thousand ambassadors for peace worldwide.
Distinguished leaders from all walks of life, the current era is a period of great transition in history. We will experience remarkable changes during this century. In particular, there will be a great awakening in the following three fields: First, although the modern trend is exceedingly materialistic, humanistic and atheistic, there will be a surge of interest in and awareness of spiritual phenomena. This will enable us to experience remarkable works from the spirit world that will change the course of history.
Second, along with these spiritual experiences, humanity will gradually come to realize the divine value and social significance of the family as the basic school of true love. This realization will arise out of the painful experiences of family breakdown and the abnormal transformation of the family throughout the world during recent decades.
Third, on the foundation of the development of our spirituality, the hope and corresponding efforts for peace will increase markedly. Human relationships will not be limited by national, racial or religious boundaries. A remarkable change will come, whereby all people will live for the sake of each other and feel that they are all brothers, sisters and neighbors living together.
These are all the providential works of the living God. God is developing people’s spirituality and on this foundation is establishing families of true love. On the basis of these families, God is working to create an ideal world of genuine and everlasting peace.
The time has truly come for us to build the ideal world that people long for in their original minds. The time has come for us to build God’s homeland and the peace kingdom, where we can attend God, who is the basis of true love and the king of absolute values. In this time of tremendous heavenly fortune, I sincerely ask that you become builders of the peace kingdom in accordance with the ways of Heaven.
I pray that God’s blessing will be upon you, your families and your nations.
Thank you.