Sun Myung Moon
February 23, 2007
True Parents' Birthday and Commemorative Celebration for True Father's 88th Birthday (Mi-soo)
Peace Message 12
Distinguished former and current heads of state, guests from home and abroad who love peace and who have come from every corner of the earth to celebrate and commemorate this day:
First of all, my wife Dr. Hak Ja Jan Moon, our entire family and I would like to welcome you all to this occasion. We would like to express our sincere gratitude for your efforts on the front line in fulfilling your mission of advancing the Universal Peace Federation (UPF) and realizing peace for all humanity.
As you may know, following the coronation ceremonies at which I was acknowledged as the King of Peace -- held both in a United States Senate Office Building and at the Korean National Assembly, in 2004 -- I founded the Universal Peace Federation in New York City on September 12, 2005. On the foundation of those victories, on June 13, 2006, we held the Entrance Ceremony for the Cheon Jeong Peace Palace and the Coronation Ceremony of the True Parents as the King and Queen of Peace in Heaven and on Earth. These were each steps toward the establishment of the kingdom of heaven on earth, which in Korean I call Cheon Il Guk.
Heaven's providence is progressing rapidly each day. In its course for the establishment of Cheon Il Guk, a day can feel like a thousand years and a thousand years can feel like a single day.
Distinguished world leaders, this year, 2007, the seventh year of Cheon Il Guk, is a jubilee year in the providence. In this holy year, today is also a meaningful day, because by the Korean way of reckoning, it is the sixty-fifth birthday of my wife Dr. Hak Ja Han Moon as well as my own eighty-eighth birthday. To commemorate this day and to renew our resolve, I would like to convey to you a message that summarizes Heaven's message that my wife, the three generations of the True Family and I have been conveying to the 6.5 billion people of the world during the past two years. My purpose is to remind you once again of your position and mission from the viewpoint of God's providence and to reemphasize the significance of the era in which we live. The title of this message is "God's Ideal Family and the Responsibility the Citizens of Cheon Il Guk Are Called to Fulfill."
God's Purpose of Creation
Respected leaders from around the world, what do you think is God's ultimate purpose for creating human beings? It is to experience joy through the perfection of ideal families filled with true love. What does an ideal family look like? Simply put, an ideal family is the model for absoluteness and peace, wherein its members have secured a parent-child relationship with God and can live in attendance to God as their parent.
God created Adam and Eve and established them as the first ancestors of humankind with the intent that they form an ideal family that is the model for absoluteness and peace. He committed Himself fully to raising them as His son and daughter, to be encapsulations of the entire cosmos, mediators between the spiritual and physical worlds, and lords of creation who would be joined with Him through true love, true life and true lineage.
Absoluteness in the Conjugal Relationship
Ladies and gentlemen, Adam and Eve had to establish a model, peaceful, ideal family. God, the absolute being, created human beings as His children in order to instill in them absolute values, which spring from an absolute standard. Thus, human beings must follow the way of that unchanging standard in keeping with the demands of the heavenly path. This means we must follow our destined life course in order to attend God, our eternal parent. In other words, for us to perfect ourselves in resemblance of God and obtain the stature of people of character who can be called sons and daughters of the eternal God, we must follow the path based on the unwavering standard God has determined. The essence of this path is the standard of absolute sexual purity.
The first stage is maintaining absolute sexual purity prior to getting married. After we are born, we go through a process of growth. We pass through infancy and childhood in a very safe and secure environment under our parents' love and protection. We then enter the period of adolescence, which signals the start of a new and dynamic life. This is the moment when we begin to travel the path to becoming a mature human being -- internally, through the perfection of our character, and externally, by reaching adulthood. During this time there is a strict requirement that everyone must meet, no matter who they are; that is, maintaining their purity.
Second is establishing the model of absoluteness in the relationship of husband and wife. This heavenly law of total marital fidelity is more precious than life itself. Husband and wife are eternal partners given to each other by God. Through having children, they become the co-creators of true love, true life and true lineage, and the origin of that which is absolute, unique, unchanging and eternal.
How could people who preserve their purity before marriage, and whom God bonds together in purity as husband and wife, ever deviate from the heavenly way and go astray, following a wrong path?
Ladies and gentlemen, absolute and sacred conjugal love is the greatest blessing that Heaven has bestowed on humankind. Yet, without adhering to the principle of absolute sexual morality, the path to the perfection of one's character -- to spiritual maturity -- is closed. Furthermore, without securing the foundation of absolute sexual purity within a true family of perfected individuals, it is impossible for God to manifest His presence in dignity as the incarnate God of character.
Therefore, if Adam and Even had achieved individual perfection -- the perfection of their character -- by upholding the strict principle of sexual purity in accordance with God's will, and then entered into conjugal relations through His Holy Blessing, they would have attained complete oneness with Him. God would have dwelt with in their union. Their children would have also been linked to this holy order of true love, and enjoyed a direct relationship with God as their parent.
The Attributes of True Love
What is true love? Its essence does not lie in receiving but in being the first to give, in living for the sake of others and for the sake of the larger whole. True love gives, forgets that it has given, and continues to give without ceasing. True love gives joyfully. We find it in the joyful and loving heart of a mother who cradles her baby in her arms and nurses it at her breast. True love is sacrificial love, as with a filial son who gains his greatest satisfaction through helping his parents.
When we are bound together in true love, we can be together forever, continually rejoicing in each other's company. The attraction of true love brings all things in the universe to our feet; even God will come to dwell with us. Nothing can compare to the value of true love. It has the power to dissolve the barriers fallen human beings have created, including national boundaries, the barriers between races and even those between religions.
The main attributes of God's true love are that it is absolute, unique, unchanging and eternal, so whoever practices true love will live with God, share His happiness, enjoy the right to participate as an equal in His work, and the right of inheritance. Therefore, a life lived for the sake of others, a life of true love, is the absolute prerequisite for entering the kingdom of heaven.
The Kingdom of Heaven and True Love
Ladies and gentlemen, what kind of place is the kingdom of heaven? In brief, the heavenly kingdom is a world overflowing with God's true love. True love is its axis. True love is everywhere, in the outward expression as well as in the inward thought. Everyone's life is filled with true love from beginning to end. In the kingdom of heaven, people are born through true love, live in the embrace of true love and follow the track of true love until the day they pass on into the next world, the spirit world.
The kingdom of heaven is a natural world where all people live for the sake of one another. Consequently, antagonism and jealousy cannot be found anywhere in that world. It is a world that is not governed by money, position or power. There, the success of every person represents the success of the whole, the likes of every person represent the likes of the whole, and the joy of every person represents the joy of the whole.
The kingdom of heaven is a world filled with the air of true love, where everyone breathes true love. Its life throbs with love, everywhere and all the time. The citizens of that kingdom are all linked together through their common membership in God's lineage. There, the whole world and all its people are connected in an inseparable relationship, like the cells in our bodies. True love, the love that is God's essence, is Heaven's only governing power. Accordingly, God also exists for true love.
The Importance of Lineage
Do you know what has pained God's heart most, causing Him the greatest grief over the long history since the Fall of Adam and Eve? God lost His lineage. With it, God lost the basis of human brotherhood and even His ownership over the creation. God's lineage is more precious than life itself. Yet, this was lost. Without it, the fruits of true life and true love never matured.
Ladies and gentlemen, lineage is more important than life and more precious than love. Life and love come together to create lineage. Lineage cannot be established if either life or love is missing. Therefore, among the three -- love, life and lineage -- lineage is the fruit. God's lineage contains the seed of true love. God's lineage provides the context and environment for a true life.
Hence, for us to become the ideal people envisioned by God, that is, people of ideal character, and to create ideal families, we first need to be linked to His lineage. To take it a step further, only when we are linked to God's lineage is it possible to create God's homeland, the ideal nation.
Please inscribe the importance of lineage in your hearts. I cannot emphasize this enough. This is because the parent-child relationship is the highest and most important of all relationships, and the model, lineal relationship between parent and child is the only way through which God's lineage can be bequeathed and made to last forever. You must be clear on this point.
The International and Cross-cultural Marriage Blessing
Distinguished ladies and gentlemen, our bondage to the lineage of Satan has caused so much suffering throughout history. Let us now boldly step forth to sever it and be grafted onto the root of the lineage of the True Parents. Why should we foolishly continue to live and die as wild olive trees? Where can we find the path to escape this vicious cycle?
It is through the Holy Blessing. The Holy Blessing Ceremony offers the grace of being grafted onto the true olive tree. It was instituted by the True Parents, who bring God's true lineage to humankind. Without changing your lineage, you cannot change your seed. The best way to restore people to the position of children of God through changing their lineage is through the cross-cultural Marriage Blessing. These marriages contribute to the great task of transcending the barriers of race, culture, nationality, ethnicity and religion, and to creating one family of humankind. It is a revolutionary occasion, creating the heavenly lineage on a completely new level, transcending the obstacles of race, culture, nationality and religion. It is an act that severs all links of enmity. It is the sacred rite of the change of lineage, through which everyone can be re-created through the True Parents. They are the King and Queen of Peace, the manifestation of God in substance, who enable Him to exercise His providence in the present world.
The path is open wide for all people to change their lineage through the Holy Wine Ceremony that True Parents have instituted. The Holy Blessing is yours that you may establish true families. The responsibility you are called to fulfill is to teach others, without fail, that the perfection of a life of absolute sexual morality through the cross-cultural Marriage Blessing is the ultimate means and method to establish a peaceful, ideal world here on earth.
A Family of Three Generations Living in Harmony
Ladies and gentlemen, the family sets the pattern for living together. The warm environment of oneness based on love and respect between parents and children, mutual fidelity and love between husband and wife, and trust and mutual reliance among siblings is the manifestation of the model, ideal family of peace. This means that you need to establish a true family, wherein the stem of true love emerges from the root of true love and bears the fruit of true love.
In this manner, the three generations of grandparents, parents, and children should live together as one family and serve the eternal God. God desires to see such families, and it is your responsibility as tribal messiahs and ambassadors for peace to strive for and establish them -- families of Cheon Il Guk, the kingdom of God.
Ladies and gentlemen, you should form families that God will miss and yearn to return to after He has been away. He should feel comfortable to visit your home like any parent coming to visit his or her children. This is what it means to live in service to God. Within such a family, God is the vertical subject over your conscience, and your conscience is the vertical subject over your body. Thus, unity with God brings your mind and body into harmony.
Family members who have established that vertical axis can perfect the four realms of love and heart -- parental love, conjugal love, children's love, and siblings' love. That family links all directions -- up and down, front and rear, and right and left. They revolve around each other in everlasting spherical motion. This is the eternal God's model, ideal family, which expands to ideal model nations and a peaceful, ideal kingdom.
This means we need a movement to realize a society of interdependence, mutual prosperity and universally shared values. We need to make humanity one great family, by breaking down the walls in our hearts and eliminating even the boundaries between nations. This movement begins from each family. If only the entire world were filled with such true families! It would be an orderly world where people governed themselves by the heavenly way and heavenly laws, with no need for lawyers, prosecutors or even judges.
Who would be most fully aware of your good and bad deeds? It would be your grandparents, your parents, your spouse and your children. Is there anything that cannot be resolved within the family? When parents and children, husband and wife, and elder siblings and younger siblings set an example of living for the sake of one another, why is it impossible to forgive any mistakes? What reason would they have to commit crime? A world governed by the heavenly way and the heavenly laws is a natural world, an unobstructed world of truth and pure reason. It is a world at the "high noon" of absolute values, without any dark shadows.
Therefore, each of us should bear in mind that it is our providential calling to form and establish a true family. It is the way we can expedite the establishment of the universal peace kingdom on earth.
The Dual Structure of Human Beings and the Spirit World
Viewing the structure of a human being from another angle, we can perceive that God created us as entities with dual characteristics. He created our physical bodies as miniatures of the corporeal, tangible world and our spiritual bodies as representatives of -- and lords of -- the incorporeal world. Accordingly, it is intended that we live for a hundred years or so in the physical world and then pass on naturally and automatically into the incorporeal spirit world once the physical body creases to function.
In this way, though it cannot be perceived by the eyes in our physical bodies, the spirit world is the automatic and inevitable extension of our lives on earth, humankind's eternal, original homeland, created by God.
The spirit world does actually exist. It is not a world that has been fantasized or imagined into existence. We do not have the right of choice concerning it. It is not a world we can go to if we please or refuse to go to if we would rather not. Just as God is eternal and unchanging, the spirit world He created is also eternal and unchanging. In like manner to our living in the physical world in our physical bodies and forming all sorts of relationships with the existing world, even in the spiritual world we are destined to go on living in our spiritual bodies, and to form and maintain close relationships with all phenomena of the spirit world.
Life on Earth for the Perfection of the Spirit Self
In the relationship between a person's spirit and physical body, the spirit is the more important of the two. The physical body lasts for about a hundred years before it stops functioning, but the spirit lives forever, transcending time and space.
No matter how well a person fares in the physical world, he is bound to die. Therefore, before you pass on to the next world, you should achieve unity between your physical and spiritual bodies by living your earthly life in such a way that you meet the standards of both the physical and spiritual worlds. In other words, you are called to take up the responsibility of perfecting your spiritual selves within your physical bodies based on the finite life you live in the tangible, physical world.
This does not mean, however, that the perfection of a spiritual self happens automatically. Only on the basis of your having fully united your mind and body during your earthly life, by expressing true love through your actions, can your spiritual self fully mature.
While living on earth, your every action and movement -- without exception -- is recorded on your spirit self, with the public laws of heaven as the standard. Accordingly, you will enter the spirit world in the form of your spirit self, on which your earthly life is recorded with 100 percent precision. Your spirit will show plainly whether you have led a ripe life of goodness, or a wormy, rotten life of sinfulness. What this means is that God will not judge you; you will be your own judge.
The Life Course of the True Parent
Ladies and gentlemen, my life for the past eighty-eight years has been one of sorrow, marked by inexpressible suffering and persecution. As the third Adam, the True Parents, I need to indemnify and completely reverse all the failures of the first and second Adams. I am responsible to complete not only the mission of the Savior, the Messiah, and the Lord at his second coming, but also the missions of all those major figures from whom religions have sprung.
Bearing similarities to God's creation of the universe, my life has constituted the great work of the re-creation of humanity, where not even the smallest error is permitted. It has been a lonely course that cannot be discussed with anyone, one that took me down thorny paths through the wilderness -- paths that I had to follow while utterly alone. Not even God could acknowledge me. Frequently hovering in a state between life and death, even vomiting blood, I still had to rise again like a phoenix to remain true to my promise to God and establish the model of the ideal family and of absolute sexual purity.
I had to endure imprisonment six times, though I was innocent: for working in the underground independence movement in my early days while studying in Japan; for propagating the will of God in Pyongyang, which was under communist control immediately after Korea's independence from colonial rule; during the Syngman Rhee administration after Korea had been reborn as a free nation; and even in the United States, which proudly presents itself to the world as a model of democracy. Who on earth can understand my eventful life, which has been for the sake of perfecting the model of absoluteness in conjugal love?
Mine has been a life of misery; by biting my tongue, I have endured for the sake of our God, who deserves pity, and for the sake of the salvation of the world's fallen people who are suffering in the realm of death. Even now, if one person were to look into my heart and speak just one word of sympathy, I would burst into tears and my tears would flow like a waterfall.
Ladies and gentlemen, once someone becomes an old man of eighty-eight, he would normally look back on his life and quietly prepare to enter the next world. Yet, my life begins from now.
It is not because I have many lingering attachments to this life. It is because I still have yet to fulfill the mission for which I received my call as the True Parents -- to save people, who are suffering in the fallen realm, unable to escape from it.
Now the revolutionary Era after the Coming of Heaven, the time of harvest, has arrived. This year, I will continue to guide you in carrying out this universal revolution for the restoration of humanity. Please do not hesitate! Let us hold hands and together uphold the heavenly decree in fulfilling our calling and responsibility! How can we avert our eyes from the situation in which tens of thousands of our brothers and sisters are dying helplessly while waiting for salvation?
The Arrival of the Era of the Peaceful, Ideal Kingdom
Leaders who love peace! You are now living in the most blessed and exalted time in history. We are in the Era after the Coming of Heaven! I proclaim the beginning of the long awaited new heaven and new earth, which billions of your ancestors in the spirit world, who have come and gone in history, have yearned for. This is the era of kingdom of the peaceful, ideal world. The four great religious founders and billions of good ancestors have come to earth to guide you on the blessed path of heaven. The age when the fallen and corrupt world wreaks havoc on humanity, allowing evil people to live better than others, is passing away.
The Universal Peace Federation, which stands as the "Abel-type United Nations" on the universal level, will work toward a peaceful, ideal world, the eternal ideal God has cherished for the creation, while renewing the existing "Cain-type" United Nations. UPF will provide the leadership for this new dimension, the kingdom of the peaceful, ideal world.
The Universal Peace Federation, born through our concerted efforts, represents God's victory and the fruit of the True Parents' blood, sweat and tears. It is the world's cherished hope. It will carry out the role of an Abel-type peace kingdom representing a new sovereignty of universal peace known in Korean as Cheon Il Guk, a counterpart to the existing "Cain-type" UN.
Our Mission in the Era after the Coming of Heaven
The Era after the Coming of Heaven that God and True Parents have been begun is a time of dramatic change. You have the mission to make this era blossom and bear fruit in blessing and glory.
I have said that in this age we must recover the true lineage that was lost when Adam fell, by receiving the Marriage Blessing through the True Parents. The providence of the Marriage Blessing should be perfected in five stages -- the individual, the family, the tribe, the race and the nation.
This is the time when, metaphorically speaking, the sun is directly overhead, such that no shadow is cast. This signifies that we have passed beyond the Era before the Coming of Heaven, which included the Old, New and Completed Testament ages. These eras have required immeasurable restitution and atonement in re-creating the ideal. The present time, however, corresponds to the era, prior to Adam's Fall, of building the original, ideal world. It refers to the era of true love that is all-encompassing, all-powerful and has overall authority. It is the realm of heart in which the spiritual and physical worlds are bound together as a unified realm with True Parents, the King and Queen of Peace, at the center. In other words, it is the time of the kingdom of peace and unity in heaven and on earth.
Ladies and gentlemen, your mission and position have been made clear. I have explained that within the realm of God's grace through the True Parents the way is laid out for all people to change their lineage through the Holy Wine Ceremony, to receive the Holy Blessing and establish true families. The ultimate way to establish a peaceful, ideal world here on earth is to perfect a life that embraces absoluteness in the marriage relationship through the cross-cultural Marriage Blessing. The cross-cultural Blessing is the grace by which you inherit Heaven's lineage. You have come to know clearly that the mission for which God has called you is to unfailingly teach these things. Furthermore, as an heir and actual representative of the True Parents, you must now move beyond your concepts and level of awareness to fulfill the responsibility for which you have been called.
There is no time to lose. A fearful day of judgment will come if we fail to fulfill our calling, the responsibility and mission that Heaven has given us in this Era after the Coming of Heaven.
During the Entrance Ceremony for the Cheon Jeong Peace Palace and the Coronation Ceremony of the True Parents as the King and Queen of Peace in Heaven and Earth, held on June 13, last year, I proclaimed the seven basic obligations and mission, based on the heavenly standard, for becoming a citizen of Cheon Il Guk. Please be victorious in fulfilling those basic obligations and mission.
Leaders from around the world, please become true princes and princesses who live in attendance to God as your True Parent, for He is the Peace King of the multitudes. Let us build the kingdom of the peaceful, ideal world of the sacred reign of peace by attending True Parents, who have been enthroned as the King and Queen of Peace in Heaven and on Earth in the realm of eternal liberation and freedom -- where there is no need for the Savior, Messiah nor Lord at his second advent -- and fulfill the dutiful family way of filial sons and daughters, patriots, saints and divine sons and daughters!
Let us establish a model ideal family through which to bring the complete settlement of the ideal realm of liberation and complete freedom in heaven and on earth, and the peaceful kingdom of goodness in which we can enjoy a time of absolute, unique, unchanging and eternal peace and prosperity, and which can become the homeland of peace in heaven and on earth that can be eternally praised!
May God's blessing be upon your family, your nation and the world for all eternity! Thank you.