Sun Myung Moon
February 6, 2003
Jamsil Gymnasium
Seoul Korea
Respected current and former heads of state, leaders from the religious, political and academic worlds, representatives from 189 different countries, representatives from each family, ladies and gentlemen!
I would like to truly thank all of you who have gathered here to congratulate me on my 83rd birthday and my wife, President Han Hak-ja, on her 60th birthday.
But above all else, I would like to return all this glory to God, who has protected and looked after me until this day.
My life is such that you cannot explain it without God, and in this truly meaningful place, I would like to speak to all of you today with thanks in my heart. The title of my talk today is, "God's True Love and the Liberation of the Relationship of Heaven and Earth and Humankind."
Throughout human history, all people have talked a lot about God, or the Absolute Being. They have praised and worshipped Him in many different ways, and in other ways they have felt free to evaluate Him. There have even been some people declaring that there is no God, or that God is dead. However, there has not been one instance in which God Himself appeared directly saying, "This is how I have lived." There have been many people who have prophesied that, with the development of science, the people who believe in God would disappear. However, the number of people who believe in God in modern society is not diminishing. God is the living origin of all things, the Creator, the True Parent of humankind.
The God that I have been teaching about is not just some vague or obscure God. From the time I first experienced God at the age of 16, when I was worrying about the meaning of life and the universe, I have lived my whole life in communication with God. The driving force which has preserved my life of suffering, during which I have touched the boundary between life and death, is the living God's promise and my absolute faith.
I searched every corner of the spiritual world. I met the five great holy men and many other saints and sages, and I received their official recognition of my mission. Ladies and Gentlemen! God is the most decent and modest being, and He is the True Parent of humankind. He is the origin of all our lives, and He is the being with whom all people must establish a relationship. Also, the one thing that you all must know clearly is that the spiritual world, the world that we must all someday go to, does exist. You must not doubt the existence of the spiritual world or have some vague belief in God.
I have set a record in sponsoring many "God Conferences," something which has no parallel in history. The first three conferences I held in the 1980's, attended by representatives from each religion and each denomination, as well as by outstanding theologians and religious scholars, caused a great sensation.
There were three main points that I wanted to teach through these conferences: Firstly, that although each religion has its own special and unique character, there are actually many more points in common between religions. Secondly, the conflict and disharmony that exist between religions is due to the narrow-mindedness of the believers themselves, and it is absolutely not the will of the absolute being. Thirdly, God desires the realization of true love rather than any emphasis on belief or ceremony.
The papers and discussions that were presented at these conferences are still being used today as a textbook in the top theological seminaries of each denomination. From that time forward, the spirit of sincere dialogue and cooperation between each denomination was begun. Such dialogue and cooperation had hitherto been blocked by the high walls that had been erected between them. Since then I have invested a great amount of money each year to expand the Religious Federation and the Supra-religious Peace Association in each country and throughout the world.
For three days, beginning on December 26 last year in Washington D.C., I held a different level of "God Conference." During that time, under the theme "God and a World of Peace", 312 participants, including not only religious leaders from all corners of the world, but also representatives from politics, academia, the media, business, culture and the arts, and from various NGOs, gathered together.
God is not just the God of believers. He is the God of all people. Especially at this time, we are living in an age in which God stands before the world, not just as some vague and abstract God, but as a God with a definite purpose and will. It is an age of great change in which all people must awaken to this God. It is a time in which all people must awaken to the fact that modern people are buried within the whirlpool of individual, family, national and world-level problems, which will never be solved if God is ignored.
At this conference, the 312 participants adopted a resolution that declared the following:
Firstly, that they would recognize and establish the God who is the True Parent, True Teacher and True Owner, and the substantial True Parents, as the vertical axis of absolute value for the individual, the family, the nation and the world.
Secondly, that they would cooperate with and follow the resolution of the five Saints and all the sages in the spiritual world to join together and help people on Earth to bring about the completion of God's will.
Thirdly, that they would actively support and join together with the movement to realize true love, with the movement for the reform of the United Nations, as well as with the other plans of True Parents in order to realize the ideal of a peaceful world.
The ultimate purpose of religion is to recover the original father and the original country. The word "religion" does not have humankind as its prime object. Rather, religion is the teaching in which God, the parent, is established as the head. There is a certain course through which we establish a relationship with God and mature in a life of following God. Therefore, holy men and women have to support the will of Heaven and they have to declare what has been preordained by Heaven.
A true religion must teach people about God. A true religion should not have some vague ideas about God; a true religion must be able to give a clear picture of God so that people can understand Him. A religion which makes compromises concerning the relationship between God and man cannot be called a religion of a higher order. That kind of religion will finally decline.
A true religion must teach people how to know God clearly, how to become one with God, and how to return to the original world of creation. The purpose of religion is to make a world without sin, the ideal world where we establish the original relationship with God.
God is not seeking a religious world, but His ideal world of creation. The purpose of religion is not for the religion itself, but to realize the world of God's ideal. So we have to think about the purpose and ideal of creation. God created the world, so it is necessary to explain this ideal of creation.
What do you think God's will is? It is to complete His ideal of creation. What do you think that God wanted to achieve through creating our human ancestors, Adam and Eve, in the Garden of Eden? God, who is the essence of love, created humankind because He needed a partner of love.
Humans were created as the true sons and daughters of God so that God's ideal of true love could be realized. They were to grow as a true man and a true woman, then become husband and wife, create an ideal family, and then make an ideal country and world. To repeat once again, centering on the true love of God, they should have perfected the ideal family, expanding this to make the ideal world. But because of the Fall of our human ancestors, God's ideal of creation was destroyed at that time.
Accordingly, the purpose of religion is to find a true person, a true family, a true nation, and a true world, where all people can live together in peace. This is the purpose of God's Providence for this world.
Religion is seeking a "good" world. However, a good world cannot be realized before a good country is first established. And for a good country to appear, there must be first a good race, and before there is a good race, there must first be a good tribe, and before there is a good tribe, there must first be a good family. And before there is a good family, there must first be a good man and a good woman.
What was the purpose of the 4,000 years of the history of Israel after the fall of Adam? Externally, it was a time in which the world developed, but internally, the sole purpose of this time period was to find one true child, to find the true Adam. The fact that, due to the Fall, there was not one son or daughter who could inherit the life and blood lineage centering on God's love, was God's deepest grief and resentment. Thus, the person who God made again as the owner of true love, life and the blood lineage and sent him to this world is the Savior.
According to different points of view, this person has been called the Savior, the Messiah, and the Lord of the Second Advent. He comes as the Savior to rescue all people in this world from poverty, from suffering, from war and from evil, and, centering on the Absolute Being, God's will for salvation. He is the mediator who will connect all religious people to the way of life. He has been called the Messiah in the first and second Israel, and has been called the Lord of the Second Advent in God's Providence of Restoration. The names Savior, Messiah, or Lord of the Second Advent have all been used centering on the course of salvation and restoration.
Restoring fallen men and women, who have been born and have lived in conflict and in sin through their connection to false parents and false ancestors, to the position they were in before the Fall, does not mean that everything has been accomplished. The will of God and the original hope of humankind is to become the ideal person of the original world of creation and to complete the ideal world of creation. This means that after becoming an individual who has achieved God's ideal of love, he or she should then become a husband and wife of true love and then become true parents.
In order for this to happen, God absolutely needs the True Parents as the source of God's true love, true life and true lineage. So, in order to complete God's Providence of Salvation, it is not one man, the Savior, the Messiah, or the Lord of the Second Advent, who must appear, but it is the True Parents, husband and wife, who resemble God completely and who have completely realized His true love, who must appear.
In the same way that God first created Adam and made Adam's eternal partner by taking a rib from him, God's son, the restored Adam, must first appear, and then restore Eve, and then, by recreating her, realize the ideal of true love, completing the role of True Parents. The source of humankind's true love and true life begins from the True Parents and in them is the true model of the ideal of true husband and wife and true parents.
Humankind's sin and suffering originated in the false love of the fallen ancestors, who were born as the fruit of false parents and false ancestors. Accordingly, the only way to complete the ideal and be liberated from the connection to the Fall is through the coming of True Parents. The original ideal of humankind, which has been sought through religion, and that the world has been waiting so eagerly for, are the True Parents, who will fulfill God's ideal of love.
We can say that religion is the place where humans are remodeled. If there had been no Fall, then religion would have been unnecessary. Religion is the way to remodel humans, whose mind and body are in conflict due to the Fall, into becoming peaceful people who will not fight for eternity, but who will become God's substantial objects. It is where people are changed into original people of true character, resembling God.
When we look at our mind and body, the body is the base of the evil spirit Satan and the conscience is the base of God. Generally speaking, the body directs the mind. Religion is the way to attack the body which is controlling our mind, trying to weaken it. Religion teaches that the body is the thing that is to be most disliked. Religion commands us to fast, to serve, to sacrifice ourselves, to go the way of suffering and even to offer our lives for the sake of righteousness. The logic behind the seemingly paradoxical teaching of the Bible, "Those who seek to die will live, and those who seek to live will die", is that if you live according to the desires of your body, you will go the way of death into hell, but if you kill your body and enter the realm where your conscience is liberated, you will have eternal life and go to the Kingdom of Heaven.
The person who is unable to unify his or her mind and body and allows this struggle to continue, will not be able to become accustomed to God's unified ideal world of love. Usually, people say that if you believe in a particular religion, you will go to Heaven or Paradise. However, Heaven is the place only for God's children, whose mind and body have become one, centered on God's love.
The love of the fallen world is usually a love centered on oneself, and this is centered not on the mind, but on the body. The body is the devil's dancing hall. The original mind should take the subject position in place of God, but the body becomes another subject and plays with the original mind as with a puppet. This is what we have to change. Religion is the repair shop which God made to fix this. It is the repair shop which remodels humans into perfect people of true character, whose mind and body are one for eternity.
Religion teaches us not to rest, but to pray unceasingly. The devil doesn't rest and uses the body as its horizontal stage all 24 hours. As God is in the vertical position, He can only perform His works through the vertical mind. In order for the body not to be controlled by the horizontal body, the mind itself has to stand in the vertical position through prayer and devotion and by doing this it can receive three or four times a greater power from God.
If you live a life of sincere prayer and devotion for between three to five years, the mind can be liberated from the body's horizontal and habitual influence.
Respected leaders, ladies and gentlemen!
Leading a religious life is not something that you can choose to do or not to do. Because fallen men and women were born with a connection to the fallen love and fallen parents centered on Satan, then without exception all people must absolutely pass through the repair shop of religion, meet the True Parents, and establish a connection of True Love and True Life with them.
There is one important point you have to know. You should not go to the repair shop and stay there forever, you must emerge reborn. The religious life is the required course for all humankind; however, the religious life itself is not the basic purpose or the whole purpose of life. The ultimate purpose of human life is to complete the religious life, graduating from living a model life to then living a life as a man and woman of the original world of creation.
Religion came about only because of the Fall, so is it reasonable to say that the sole purpose of life is to live buried within that religion? If there had been no Fall, then how would men and women originally have lived? Humans are originally the children of God. And we should live with true love, realize a true family, and one world of freedom, peace, unity, and happiness. We are supposed to live a life in the Kingdom of Heaven.
God did not create men and women to repair them into becoming His reborn children through religion. Where is there a parent who would want to see his children suffer in conflict while repenting of their sins? Do you think that it was the original will of God the Father, who is the Lord of Creation, omniscient and omnipotent, that He would want to let His children live while suffering in sin?
The fallen world was not the world that God originally planned. The human ancestors' disobedience to God caused God to be unable to realize the world that He had originally planned. God is absolute and His will is also absolute. And God will realize His will again. The will is for complete recovery to the original state. This is why God's Providence of Salvation is the Providence of Restoration, the Providence of Re-creation. Religion is the tool of the Providence of Restoration. People are not just supposed to meet True Parents and go through the course of a religious life; they are supposed to become God's children and establish the connection of parent and child in their life, and attend God and build a world of a faith, which is shown through their daily life.
There has been no one in history who has revealed this precious truth, namely, that humans must graduate from living religious lives. I, who knew God's truth from an early age, did not want to create another sect or denomination. Christianity, which was the central religion of God's Providence, did not accept my teaching of Heaven's way and that is why I had to make the organization, "The Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity."
It was an association, not another sect or denomination. But even though the Christian world continued to deny, to persecute, to label it as heretical, to turn its face away from us, when our movement started to become bigger, the world began to call us the Unification Church, instead of the long official title. That is how we became the Unification Church. However, from many, many years ago, I have lived in hope of seeing the day when we could take down the church sign, and I even prophesied about that day. Finally, in 1996, we took down the signs and started as "The Family Federation for World Peace."
This was a very important event in the history of humankind. This event was the beginning of a new world which changed the old world, where people lived with the burden of sin inherited from false parents, in suffering and conflict, living a life of faith, in which the only way to find God was through a life of prayer and repentance. It became a world where people could be reborn by receiving the Blessing from the True Parents and by living their lives by just reporting their actions to God.
There is no one who can know the course I have had to take in order to follow the command of Heaven and fulfill my mission as the True Parent, breaking down the walls, not just in this world, but also in the spiritual world, giving the grace of the Blessing freely on earth and in Heaven. Do you think it was an easy task to bring Satan, who throughout history has been acting as the false master, controlling people and disobeying God, to surrender?
You cannot set up the position of True Parents without first gaining official recognition from Satan. According to the direction of the True Parents, the privilege of the Blessing could reach all the people who were in Satan's realm of death, and all the people in the spiritual world, and the people on earth could cross over into true love's realm of life. This kind of miraculous age has begun.
Ladies and gentlemen,
Together with Heaven's blessing that has come upon us, humankind must complete the religious life, receive the Blessing of true love, establish a true family, and live life keeping the standard of being true children. Only those who receive the Blessing on this earth and live a life of true love can enter the eternal homeland of the ideal world, namely, God's country, the Kingdom of Heaven.
What do you take with you when you go to the spiritual world? Is it money? Or power? Do you take knowledge or honor with you? These things belong to this world, and you must leave all these things when you enter the higher realm. These things have absolutely no value in the eternal, original world and you cannot take them with you.
The spiritual world is the world of love, and the true love that you experience on the earth, especially your life of true love, having received permission through the Blessing from the Parents of Heaven and Earth is the most precious thing and is the only thing that counts in the spiritual world. Please study more deeply about the spiritual world, and, through your life as a blessed couple, become children of God who perfect true love.
What I teach is not based on any teachings of man. And I do not educate people by giving them a moral lesson or in any conventional way. I am instructing you by speaking frankly, with words of life, based on God and the Heavenly Way. If God has given the mission of True Parents to me, you should understand that the relationship you have established with me today is most precious and meaningful. Please keep my words today deep within your hearts.
I would like to end by asking that God's blessing be with you and your families, that He remain with you in your public lives.
Thank you very much.