Sun Myung Moon
December 18, 1975
The second invitational lecture for United States Senators and Congressmen
Senate Caucus Room, United States Capitol, Washington, DC, USA
Photo date and location unknown
Most esteemed Congressman Ichord, members of Congress, ladies and gentlemen:
First of all, I would like to sincerely thank Mr. Ichord for his kind words of introduction, and I would also like to express my gratitude to all of you for coming to attend this meeting despite your busy schedules.
It is a great honor for me to speak to you today in this beautiful hall at the United States Capitol. This is the second opportunity I have been given to speak to the eminent members of the United States Congress. The first was on October 8, 1974. And today, about fourteen months later, I stand here in this hall once again.
A subject of controversy
During the past fourteen months, the media in the United States have gradually made me a subject of controversy. Various newspapers across the country have carried feature articles about me, and a few magazines have written cover stories about me with big cover photos. I think some of those pictures have made me look more handsome than I really am. I don’t know how to thank all the media outlets in the United States for making me so famous without my having paid a penny for the advertising.
The focus of the controversy caused by the American media is that they believe I am brainwashing the young people of America. So I would like to ask you wise Americans one thing: are Americans foolish enough to be brainwashed by Rev. Moon? No, you would answer, of course not. And my answer is the same. I respect Americans. And I find it hard to understand why the Americans I respect are criticizing me like this, even to the point of using violence against the Unification Church.
Nonetheless, I did not come here today to make excuses. I have come to pass on the words that God has commanded me to convey. The rest will be judged by history. The tide of my speech today is, “God’s Plan Centered on the United States.”
God’s providence to restore the world to the ideal
For us to know about God’s plan, we first need to know His Will. God is an eternal, unchanging, unique and absolute Being. Therefore His Will must also be eternal, unchanging, unique and absolute. God had a purpose and an ideal when He created human beings, and if that purpose had been achieved, the world would have become united through love; it would be a world where all humanity would live in harmony as brothers and sisters attending God as their Father, with all humankind as one great family.
In a word, our world would be united, with all people united centered on the Will of God. It would be a world where each individual’s body and mind were united, where families were united, where peoples and nations were united, where East and West were united, and where God and humankind were united. To put it another way, the world where God’s purpose of creation is completed would be a world of unity. The task of building this unity remains extremely difficult, yet it is the most important task we face today.
Today’s reality is far removed from this ideal world, and this tells us clearly that something is wrong at a fundamental level. What would that be? Due to the Fall of the human ancestors, Adam and Eve, the Will of God could not be fulfilled. Accordingly, the mind and body of every individual is divided, as are family and family, tribe and tribe, nation and nation, East and West, and God and humankind; we are all living in division and disharmony.
Human beings who are thus divided are in a disordered state, having even lost some of their faculties originally intended by God. This being the case, God’s purpose for the salvation of humanity is to send a doctor who can examine this dysfunctional humankind and prescribe a course of treatment, thus curing all people and restoring them to the state of health they enjoyed before they became sick. Therefore, this providence of salvation can be said to be the providence of restoration. The person who comes as the doctor is the Messiah.
Then the question is, how does God prepare before sending the Messiah, and what does the Messiah come to do? We can clearly recognize through history that God sets up a central religion to achieve His Will, based on which He establishes a central nation of His chosen people, and then He continues to carry out His providence to save and restore the entire world through that central religion and central nation.
That central religion was none other than Judaism, and that central nation was the chosen nation of Israel. The mission of that religion and that nation was to receive the Messiah and complete the Will of salvation for the entire world. It was the mission of that central religion and that central nation to take the lead in fulfilling God’s Will to save the entire world, even if it meant having to face difficulties and bear the cross of sacrifice.
Because He had such a clear and well-planned Will for four thousand years before sending Jesus as the Messiah, God established Judaism and prepared the people of Israel to receive him. The providence of salvation for humankind, which is the Will of God and the will of the people, was supposed to have been completed through the Messiah, Jesus, leading to the creation of a united, ideal world.
Christianity and America are the central religion and central nation
Yet what happened when the Messiah actually came two thousand years ago? Judaism and the people of Israel, sadly, dreamed that as the chosen people they would stand in a place of glory, above the Roman Empire and even the world. God expected that they would think first about their responsibility, which was to save the entire world, but they thought first of their own nation and its traditions. From then on, a gap opened between them and the Messiah and God, who were thinking first about the world and carrying out the providence.
Jesus, who came as the Messiah under such circumstances, strove to reform Judaism and the people of Israel, in order to empower their foundation to save the world. Nonetheless, the religious and political establishments opposed him. They stood on their existing traditions and eventually sent Jesus to death on the cross. With the Will left unfulfilled, the chosen people walked a tragic path, and Christianity, centered on Jesus, lost the foundation of the nation. Christians suffered martyrdom amid persecution as they began working for the fulfillment of the Will in the Roman Empire.
What you need to know here is that, when a group of people chosen by God does not fulfill its mission, God finds and establishes another appropriate religious group to fulfill the Will of the central nation. Christianity came to stand in the position of the central religion, working for God’s Will at the next stage of the providence. It eventually went on to claim sovereignty over the Roman Empire, which was at that time a global kingdom.
Thus, the religion of Judaism and the nation of Israel lost the foundation that had taken four thousand years to establish. To atone for this mistake, Christians had to suffer for four hundred years under persecution in the Roman Empire.
God had meant for the Roman Empire to unite completely with the Christian leaders of the time and march forward with them to save the entire world. If the Christian leadership had understood this Will clearly and had marched forward, united with the Empire and undaunted by any sacrificial cross they had to bear, they would have saved the world at that time. However, the Christian hierarchy that arose eventually forsook the Will of God and manipulated nations centered on its own power, seeking to make other nations its subordinates.
Because they walked a path opposite to the Will of God in the Dark Ages of the medieval period, God departed from the Christian hierarchy. The prestige of the papacy and the church hierarchy plummeted because of the institution’s secular behavior. Hence God had no choice but to bring about the Protestant movement to pave once again the path of world salvation. Henry VIII of England took advantage of this trend to justify his divorce. He rebelled against the Catholic Church and moved Parliament to change the country’s laws, and he succeeded in establishing the Anglican Church. Henry VIII was in a position to repent on his own, and to lead the church and his nation to a higher level.
At this time, England had a good opportunity to be recognized as the leader of Protestantism. God’s Will had left the Roman Empire and moved to England. As God laid down the foundation for world salvation there, the small island nation of England expanded its territory. Within two hundred years it became a great global empire on which the sun never set, spanning the five oceans and six continents.
God allowed England to enjoy the height of civilization and bestowed glorious blessings on it, not for England alone but in order to fulfill His Will of saving the world.
If the Puritans, who had come forth dreaming of an ideal nation to fulfill the Will of God, had joined forces with the Anglicans, England could have united under the Will of God with the power to move the world. They would have formed a global nation, a United Kingdom not just in name but also in reality.
However, the Church of England was unable to recognize this important mission and, while enjoying the blessings of God solely for itself, it persecuted the Puritans rather than catching their vision to bring light to the world. So finally, God’s Will had to move away.
The Puritans, unable to endure the opposition and persecution, left: their churches and their nation behind and set out to escape from the path of suffering and find the freedom to practice their faith. Their land of Canaan was the American continent. The people who crossed the Atlantic Ocean at the risk of their lives, cherishing the Will of God in their hearts, were your ancestors, the Puritans.
Together with the Puritans, the blessings of Heaven moved to the North American continent, and thus an international population of Protestants and other faiths gathered here, united under the Will of God. Eventually they raised an army to fight against England for independence and for religious freedom, and won the American Revolution under the divine protection of God. In this manner, an international and interracial nation was formed centering on Protestantism. This is the history of the founding of the United States.
Here, the United States became the standard-bearer of world salvation centered on God’s Will. It came to shoulder the important mission of harmonizing church and state into one culture. Its mission was to save the entire world by uniting it with His Will, which is the historical desire of God. The founding principles of the United States eventually were articulated as “One Nation under God,” which is not a coincidence, for the country came into existence under the Will of God.
For this purpose, God brought the six-thousand-year history of His providence to a victorious stage, and at the same time, after Israel’s mistake, the United States and Christianity inherited and carried forward the two-thousand-year Christian providence.
Through its two-hundred-year history, the United States brought an end to the internal and external mistakes that occurred during the two thousand years after the time of Jesus. By preparing both a spiritual and material civilization, it became the nation equipped with the conditions to receive the Messiah, who comes again to save the world under the Will of God. You need to know that in this way the United States and Christianity together have become the global nation in the position of a Second Israel, “with the soul of a church,” which will complete the Will of God worldwide.
Americans need to awaken to the Will of God
The American people must not think that the blessings of God that have created the United States of today are only for America. They need to come to the profound realization that these blessings are for the world. They have to realize that the United States must not be a nation that exists for its own sake, but that it exists for all the world’s people. Americans must not refuse any sacrifices or crosses they are asked to bear for the salvation of the world.
Since you have learned that Israel, the Roman Empire and England received the Will of God and did not fulfill their missions, you must make the United States a nation that can fulfill the Will of God. Because it is a nation made up of people of all races, the United States is in the most advantageous position to save the world. Never before in history has there been a nation where the five races have lived together. If not for the divine protection of God, it would already have become divided through racial war and eventually would have perished. Therefore, the fact that it has, on the contrary, been blessed and continued to thrive can be attributed to the amazing Will of God. The American people must now awaken and know the meaning of God’s blessings.
Since the United States has reached the height of its spiritual and material civilization, it can become a nation that can await the returning Lord, just as the First Israel yearned for the Messiah, as the representative nation made ready according to God’s Will. Upon receiving the Lord, it can realize the united world where the ideal of creation is achieved.
It was God who brought about the victories of the First and Second World Wars, and it was the Will of God that guided the United States to organize the United Nations. Originally, the UN was to have become the headquarters where nations of the world, centered on Christianity, could come together in solidarity. The admission of communist nations to the UN was absolutely not God’s Will.
The United States did not manage things well after winning the war. It had the responsibility to protect and supervise both the Allies that won the Second World War and the nations connected with those Allies. So if the United States had understood the Will of God, it would have boldly taken over the Soviet Union, a nation on Satan’s side. It would have brought together the free nations of the world to join the democratic realm, thus restoring the entire world centering on God’s Will. That moment in time was a good opportunity for this to have happened. However, at the time, the United States essentially handed over the dependent nations in Asia and Eastern Europe to the communist realm and brought about the partition of Korea and Germany.
The victory of the Second World War was a result of the blessings of God, who intended to thus expand His territory and expand freedom to the world. However, in the end, America’s inaction caused the bloody sacrifice of the youth who gave their lives in the war to have been in vain, bringing benefit to the communist world, a sworn enemy that denies God. The United States must know that the sorrows and the complaints of the youths who were sacrificed at that time have not yet come to an end.
Moreover, the United States retreated from the holy calling to protect the free world, and this caused the nation of Vietnam, which was under its protection, to suddenly become an unfortunate sacrifice. As a result, the trustworthiness of the United States plummeted internationally, and the cries of resentment continue to rise day by day. The UN has lost its footing and has now become the unrivaled stage of communist nations, a place where Israel, the United States and Korea are outmaneuvered and disparaged. That is not all. Within the United States, alarming problems are growing more and more severe each day. Those problems include not only the matter of racial discrimination but also the problems caused by drugs, the corruption of adolescents, the destruction of the family, and the issue of crime. Every one of these problems is serious; however, the problem of communism is the most crucial.
The churches, which claim to attend God, need to play a leading role in solving these problems, but they are losing more and more young people, so that many churches have begun to look like senior centers. The American people, having forsaken the Will of God -- which would have us work for the family, the nation and the world, that is, for the sake of the whole -- are now living instead with an extremely egoistic view of life and values. They need to fear the inescapable judgment of Heaven. At this rate, God will leave America, and then this country will be bereft of its blessings and will become wretched. I believe that you must face the fact that this is already starting to happen, and the country’s leaders, including the members of Congress, more than anyone else need to be awakened to work yet harder.
Is God in your heart? Is God in your family, in your neighborhood, in your society and in your nation? And is God in the White House? The most important question of all is whether God is in the churches. At this point, I doubt even that.
Since God is the power that brings things together, only when He is with you can your mind and body become one, and can couples and families become one. When the people become one, the nation becomes one, East and West become one, the world becomes one, and heaven and earth become one; then the united world where God and humankind become one can come about. When such a world is realized, not even the shadow of communism will remain. When God is with you, everything can be resolved. But the day you lose God, you lose everything.
Knowing this, you must clearly understand that you need to find God and all humanity, even if it means having to sacrifice everything and even the entire United States. The United States has to be awakened, and its citizens need to come together and once again embrace the goal of unity, centered on God. A spiritual reform movement must arise, leading the United States toward the world of the providence at a higher level by uniting Christianity and bringing together all religions.
The United States needs to lead the world
Look at how things stand now. The Christianity of the present day is not providing the leadership the world needs. We absolutely need a guiding philosophy that can provide education on a supranational level, empowering the minds of people thoroughly and completely. It will take more than today’s democratic philosophy. A movement needs to arise that can overturn communism and establish a new social order with love and truth centered on God. To achieve this end, America’s young people are being brought together in solidarity in order to awaken the United States. To be equal to this global task, your country needs to be trained and prepared. No one other than the Unification Church is doing this.
The Unification Church has the content, teaching and organization to accomplish this. We are working to reveal God’s Will and teach people about it logically. We are working to connect the material civilization of the West to the spiritual civilization of the eastern nations, centered on the United States, thereby creating a cultural realm connecting the entire world. This will establish on this planet the ideal world, thus completing the purpose of creation, which is the Will of God. Korea is the guard post of Asia, the pivotal point where the Western and Eastern civilizations are connected.
In this regard, you need to understand how important it is for the United States to protect Korea in accordance with God’s Will. Because the United States has not realized its crucial historical mission of connecting the East and the West as it was prepared to do, and is trying to focus only on itself, God commanded me to come and work in the United States to reawaken this country to fulfill its mission.
The task that the United States needs to fulfill under God’s Will on earth will enable it to avoid the fate of Israel, the Roman Empire and England. America needs to return to its founding principles. She needs to bring the church and the state into full harmony in accordance with the formula of God’s Will, and become the nation that attends Him thoroughly and completely. The United States must work together with God to save the entire world, even at the risk of sacrificing itself, to fulfill its mission as the standard-bearer that runs at the forefront until the kingdom of heaven on earth is realized. When it can accomplish this, the United States will have completed the eternal Will of God and will become an eternally blessed nation.
I hope that this occasion and this moment in time will serve to lay down the cornerstone of the united, ideal world that is coming in the future, that is, the kingdom of heaven on earth. I would like to conclude by praying that all blessings be with you, your families, your workplaces and your nation.
Thank you.