Sun Myung Moon
October 15, 2003
Inaugural Assembly of the Korean Headquarters of the Interreligious and International Peace Council
Little Angels Performing Arts Center, Seoul, Korea
Respected and distinguished guests:
Wherever we look today, ahead or behind, left or right, to the east or west, south or north, we see hopelessness coming from war and disease, racial conflict, religious struggle and immorality and corruption. The more than two hundred countries, large and small, scattered throughout five oceans and six continents are struggling against each other. Which among them can possibly solve the problems humanity faces today? What has become of the United Nations, which set out some fifty years ago to be a model for peaceful world governance? It has become a den of selfishness enslaved in political power relationships and the frantic pursuit of self-interest. It has become so crippled that it can no longer take even one step forward. It can bring about neither world peace nor solutions nor hope in response to the totally unpredictable situations confronting the world today.
Ladies and gentlemen, as I stand here today, my heart is filled with excitement and inspiration. Let us all first give thanks to God. A new day of hope is dawning for humanity. The dawning of God’s kingdom of Cheon Il Guk, through which His grace and love will shine on the entire world, is being announced with a great shout that is shaking the earth to its core. Today, I would like to convey to you God’s Word for all people living in this age. The title is, “Let Us Perfect the Peace Kingdom through the Peace UN.”
Humanity at the crossroads of good and evil
More than six billion people are living in the world today, yet no one has clear knowledge about humanity’s origin. To this day, the process by which our history had proceeded is unclear. Whether it was good or bad, we do not know. Because the origin and process are unclear, the future is unclear as well. This is a reason we see continuous disorder and confusion in the world today. If human beings had found the correct path in the beginning, we would have traveled on a direct path to the kingdom of God on earth and in heaven without any confusion or disorder. After losing sight of this path as a result of the Fall, our fate has been one of drifting down the river of history. At times we have been good, and at other times evil. At times we have risen, and at other times we have declined.
Why would people who had been following the way of goodness suddenly turn onto a downward path? We did not want to go downward, but we went down nonetheless. This is the problem. We wanted to continue on the path of goodness, yet we left that path. Why did we decline? The answer is simple. When our lives violate the absolute, fundamental principles of goodness, we will deteriorate.
What does this mean? It indicates that there is an intersection of good and evil. All kings and presidents in this world live without any awareness of when the fortune of their sovereignty will rise or fall. They want things to be good forever, but any sovereignty that is not in harmony with or aligned with the standard of true goodness will certainly be defeated or perish.
Who, then, is in charge of good and evil? We know that even the most powerful royal dynasty cannot control the influence of good and evil by its own authority. No sovereign, on his or her own, can dictate the practice of good or evil according to his or her wishes. We cannot deny that good and evil are determined by an unseen power somewhere in the background.
Each nation has its laws. Laws exist to establish a standard of goodness, and nations establish a constitution for the purpose of safeguarding goodness. They do not establish laws for the purpose of destroying goodness. That is why people who break laws are sent to prison. The problem, though, is that in any given country the temperament of the sovereign can lead to an incorrect application of the standard of goodness. This is the reason humanity to this day continues to languish at the crossroads of two paths, with one path leading to prosperity and the other to ruin.
The universe protects united subject and object partners
People were created with a dual structure. The mind is created to be a plus or subject partner, and the body a minus or object partner. Mind and body were originally intended to form a unified being, but because of the Fall of our first ancestors, this did not happen. Instead, the body attempted to take the position of another plus, and this brought each person into a state of internal contradiction, with the mind standing on the side of Heaven and the body standing on the side of Satan. In effect, Satan conquered the human body. Through the Fall, Satan took over the bond of love and connected humanity to his lineage as people multiplied themselves. This is the problem. This struggle between mind and body has become a chronic ailment more terrible than cancer or AIDS. That is why we must, no matter what the cost, push the body back into the obedient, object-partner position. By the law of the universe, poles with like charges repel each other. But when a subject partner and object partner harmonize as a pair and form complete oneness, they receive heavenly fortune and the universe automatically protects them.
An absolute subject partner gives rise to an absolute object partner
Where there is an absolute subject partner, an absolute object partner will come into being. This can be seen in the course of my life. America and the entire world opposed me, but since I received Heaven’s command I have lived my life as the absolute subject partner. The side that struck me, the absolute plus, became a minus and was absorbed. This is because the universe protects anyone who receives opposition while on the side of goodness. It is because I knew this principle with certainty that I was able to fight and win in struggles involving individuals, nations and the world.
We see in history that God always proceeded in the direction consistent with fundamental principles, that is, toward the purpose of true love, and that the devil has used force to oppose this. Thus he established himself as an unprincipled enemy force. Satan struck the first blow by causing our original ancestors to fall, and with this as his starting point he came to control families, tribes, nations and the world. Prevented from entering the kingdom of heaven, Adam and Eve, humanity’s first ancestors, became the first people to enter hell. Please understand that after the Fall, the created world immediately was occupied as Satan’s realm.
What, then, is the devil? He is a being who takes God’s people, makes them his own and controls them. He is a shameless criminal who kidnapped a child, convinced the child that he was its father, and then claimed to have legitimate ownership of the child. Today he is worried that his sins will be exposed and that he will lose everything, so he is blocking the way that God, the original Creator, has to go, blocking the liberation of God and humanity. He has occupied the body of each of us, and has completely spoiled love, which is of central importance to God as His primary ideal. The free sex that you see in the world today evidences the problem: the devil first creates confusion on the path of love and then tempts people to act against their conscience. These are two of Satan’s tactics.
Ladies and gentlemen, free sex is Satan’s trap. People in the world work to gain wealth and then those very riches lead them to fall into the trap Satan dug for them. They briefly enjoy sensual pleasures as they are dying. To establish his line of defense, Satan gives material blessings to evil people so that they can never escape from the quagmire of moral decadence. You need to understand that alcohol, tobacco, drugs and free sex are Satan’s four main weapons. Satan uses these to put people into a stupor of carnal satisfaction, and then he has them board the train to hell. I teach people how to leave this tragic parade toward hell, become true people who are not accused by their own conscience, and return to a life of true love. I teach the only way they can bring their mind and body together and board the train for heaven.
Despite indescribable opposition and persecution, I have lived my life of more than eighty years to realize peace through the recovery of true love. I have walked the path of sacrifice, at times at the risk of death. I have never faltered, not even for a moment. Even when Satan threatened to kill me, I maintained an absolute plus position and overcame everything. This allowed the absolute minus to come into orbit naturally. Simply put, it has been a life of following the original and fundamental principles of creation.
The absolute necessity of True Parents
I have lived according to the fundamental laws of the universe. I am a single-minded man who has walked Heaven’s path, absolutely refusing to compromise even in the midst of the worst hardship and adversity. I could do this because I knew with certainty from the outset that if I followed this path to the victorious position, God and all creation would greet me with joyful cheers.
Satan has always mocked Heaven and me, and boasted of his domain of power, saying, “My weapons will never fail. Even God, the omniscient and omnipotent Creator, cannot defeat me. See how the side that is focused on the body completely tramples the conscience. Love has been degraded completely, just as I planned. Has this not become a world of frolic, where grandfathers pair with granddaughters and sons with mothers? How can a world of such evil ever be reestablished as God’s ideal world? Who can accomplish such a task?” This is how Satan mocks and boasts.
God has shouted back in this way: “Just a moment, Satan! Isn’t it true that through the active work of Rev. Moon, the True Parent, true love’s realm of influence in the earthly world is increasing? The True Parents are the owners of true love. They are the king and queen of true love. Satan, is it not true that you are helpless in the presence of true love?”
Ladies and gentlemen, how are we to restore true love? This is the responsibility of the True Parents. The True Parents must establish the original world where the conscience is always victorious, that is, the world of absolute goodness that all people will treasure. The secret for accomplishing this is simple. When face to face with the True Parents, and when confronted with true love, true life and true lineage, the false parent, Satan, is completely helpless, no matter how much he may kick and struggle. To align ourselves completely with God’s Will, God and we must form an eternal relationship of subject and object partners, based on true love. Satan has no way to wedge himself into this eternal relationship. When you begin to live by altruistic, true love, you can receive the holy marriage Blessing and be connected to the true lineage. Then your eternal life will be assured. True love, true life and true lineage will expand eternally through your descendants. True Parents are absolutely necessary in this process.
All people without exception descended from the Fall. As a result, we have become people who seem to see but are actually blind. Can the blind lead the blind? Someone sent directly by God must come. This person must be in a position unrelated to the Fall. He has to closely examine the world and gain the ability to save humanity from the path of death. I have come in that precise position. God sent me with His seal as the Savior of humanity, the Messiah, the returning Lord and the True Parent. Humanity needs to restore the absolute realm of the conscience by following the teachings of the True Parent only. Then absolute ownership will also be recovered. The realms of absolute love, absolute life and absolute lineage will also be recovered.
You have to first find the path leading to oneness with God. How is this possible? Where does the foundation of love for the sake of others originate? It originates with your love organ. Your reproductive organ is your palace of love, palace of life and palace of lineage. Until now, people have lived without owning the truth that it is through the reproductive organ that bonds of life are created, love is realized, and the connection of lineage is established. Now we see that no truth is more precious than this. Satan has controlled humanity for tens of thousands of years by means of the reproductive organ. Through it he brought about the Fall, which reversed things 180 degrees.
Inherit the True Parents’ realm of victory and become tribal messiahs
If the Fall had not occurred, there would be no words such as Savior, Messiah and Lord of the Second Advent. Because the True Parents of humankind have come to this earth, we can now be liberated from Satan’s yoke. It is now possible to recover all that was lost through the Fall. Through our original mind we can recover our original value and accomplish a worldwide realm of absolute goodness that will never incline toward Satan.
What does the True Parents’ realm of victory mean? It means that complete victory at the levels of the individual and the family has been achieved in the fight against Satan. Also, there has been complete victory at the levels of tribe, people, nation and the world. It was a steep path that was never easy. However, I succeeded in overcoming every difficulty, and on January 13, 2001, I dedicated to Heaven “The Enthronement Ceremony for the Kingship of God,” which accomplished the miracle of liberating even God. On the world level, I am also the one who is rooting out communism and pouring life into Christianity in America. This is a part of the True Parents’ responsibility. The True Parents forgive with true love and embrace even the collapsed communist countries. I am liberating and pouring life into the communist realm.
Ladies and gentlemen, beginning some ten years ago, I have been guiding all blessed families to become tribal messiahs. This means they have to become the new ancestors of their tribes. All your ancestors throughout history have nurtured the hope and earnest desire to see such families.
The True Parents, who have won all the victories as the Messiah of all humankind, bequeath to you their foundation, and on this foundation you need to become messiahs on the tribal level. Families that have received the holy marriage Blessing from us and have joined the ranks of blessed families now need to become leaders who guide the world and saviors who save humanity as tribal messiahs. You need to become devoted children and patriots who erase God’s grief. God has been waiting for this time for tens of thousands of years. You will work in all countries of the world as the vanguard. You will expand the realm of victory gained by True Parents, who have been victorious over Satan’s vicious opposition and persecution. The True Parents have now bequeathed everything to you. You will liberate the world and establish it anew before Heaven. In relation to the Messiah of all humanity, a tribal messiah is like a branch growing from the main trunk. After leaves sprout and blossoms come out, fruit will ripen on these branch messiahs. That fruit will possess one hundred percent of the value of the original Messiah. You will advance into the realm of protection, where good spirits can guard you.
Refugees who lost their homeland
Ladies and gentlemen, humanity is in the position to recover its homeland. Those who take a short trip can return to their homeland, but those who have lost their homeland cannot return so easily. At the moment history began, we lost our homeland. We were expelled and have lived as nomads. We have not been in a position to return, and we have not even known the way back. We have lived as wanderers without a homeland, roaming aimlessly for thousands of years. Those who come alone from North Korea as refugees and now live as displaced people understand this mortifying and weary life. All your friends, siblings, and even your parents are taken from you. You know your homeland exists, yet it is not a homeland that you can go to anytime you choose. You have lost the way there. You live in extraordinary circumstances of profound sadness, from which you have to start from nothing and build a new life for yourself from scratch. But even if you have the good fortune to become rich and socially prominent during your refugee life, nothing can take away the sad longing, deep in your heart, to return to your homeland.
In the same way, all people became lonely orphans as a result of the Fall committed by the first ancestors. We live in the pitiful position of people who have lost their homeland. God, the owner of our homeland, solemnly waits for our return, even though until now we have lived without even the desire to return. We have become such a shameful sight that we dare not even lift: our heads before heaven or earth. During the course of the world’s population rising to more than six billion, people have experienced so much misery in life that they are unable to discern night from day. When God sees the distress of His children, His heart must be in so much pain that He can barely speak. When a child meets with tragedy, no one feels more sorrow and pain than its parents. God created us as His children.
What, then, is God’s heartfelt desire? It is to liberate His children by any means possible, so that we can find our way back to our homeland. Religion is God’s strategy to open this way. Through religious movements, He laid a foundation for people to get together and return to the homeland, to the place where we transcend our environments, languages, cultures, ethnic backgrounds, ideologies, systems and philosophies. He always sees the situations in which each of you lives. He waits anxiously for the day you can return to your homeland.
You must understand that God is the vertical True Parent who has conducted His providence in ways that accommodated the culture of each historical period. He never did this because He preferred any particular religious body or country. It was a manifestation of God’s true love for the sake of your liberation. Building a bridge that would allow you to return to your homeland in freedom has taken effort. So please remember that you each represent your family and also your country and all of humanity. You also represent all your ancestors in the spirit world and all the descendants who will be born in the future. We have to achieve this precious, liberated state and fulfill our responsibilities before Heaven and our human family.
We have deep longing for our homeland because that is the place where love is shared with others. The love of our mother and father, of our older brother and sister and our younger siblings, the love of our wife and children and of our relatives can be found in every corner of our homeland. Here, all these relationships and bonds are connected in altruistic love; we want to embrace them all at once. The traveler who yearns for his homeland longs to return home as a proud, liberated person, so that he can embrace the mountains, rivers, grass and trees, give love to his family and relatives, and sing joyous songs. Since being vanquished and expelled from our homeland, and having lost the connection of heart rooted there, we have been unable to return and have instead been doomed to wander a lonely path through eternity until finally arriving in hell. Now, however, we can be liberated. The path to the homeland, situated deep within our memory and appearing in our dreams, has been cleared. This is surely the day of greatest blessing for humanity. You are going to recover the homeland lost by Adam and Eve.
Families of four generations living in harmony
When you go to your homeland, you do so in the position of the perfected Adam, the perfected Jesus, and the representative of the returning Lord. God will reside in your family. The four generations of grandparents, parents, children and their children will live together in harmony. The grandparents must be attended as the ancestral root. They are the living root of history and the root of the heavenly kingdom that extends into the family. This is a family where the kingdom of God on earth has taken root.
The root of the kingship that will continue forever also will be firmly established in such a family. The grandparents, parents and children represent the roots of the past, present and future, respectively. The root of the past represents the spirit world. The root of the present is a palace representing the present world, and the root of the future is the children living as princes and princesses in a palace of peace representing the two worlds, the spirit world and physical world.
The mission of the tribal messiah is to establish the families of Cheon Il Guk, where four generations -- grandparents, parents, children and the children’s children -- live as one family attending the eternal God. This is also God’s heartfelt desire. The mission is to establish families that God, were He to go to another land, would long to return to. It is to raise families that God can feel comfortable visiting anytime, just as a parent would visit the home of a child. That is a life of service to God. In such a family, God becomes, vertically, the subject partner of the conscience. Your own mind will follow this vertical subject partner and bring your body to unite, as you yourself become a vertical subject partner. In this situation, parental love, conjugal love, children’s love and sibling love, that is, the four great realms of love, or four great realms of heart, will be completed. This is how a family must be in order to exist eternally through continuous spherical movement that connects up and down, front and back, and left and right as one.
Ladies and gentlemen, why is it necessary to marry? We marry to attain the position of an owner. A man or woman alone is only half a person. That is how it works in God’s creation. That is why God divided the ownership and placement of the reproductive organs, which are the love organs. The husband is the owner of the wife’s reproductive organ, and the wife is the owner of the husband’s reproductive organ. If they are to take the position of their partner’s owner, they have to practice love that is for the sake of their partner. It is to obtain this position of ownership that people marry.
For what purpose, then, do we want to obtain the position of owner? It is because from that position we can occupy God. God is our subject in three great partnerships. As the owner of the cosmos, He is the true love Teacher, true love Owner and true love Parent. These are the three great subject-object partnerships. All these teachings and truths will be realized in the life of true families. When these are expanded, societies, nations and even the world and cosmos can change into the peace kingdom.
The tribal messiah who returns to his or her homeland must have a determined and unwavering demeanor. There can be no complaining. It is our destiny to go this way, even if it brings us to weep bitterly. Those who understand the circumstances of the Heavenly Father, who has waited for His lost children throughout the millennia with a grief-filled heart, cannot travel this path without shedding tears. Fill your steps with hope, as you go out to plant the seeds of love. Once these seeds of true love are planted, no one will be able to steal them. They are the seeds of the heart of true love. The families and countries where these seeds sprout will remain forever in God’s possession. Those families will become distinguished families of Heaven producing God’s representatives, generation after generation. Those countries will become great nations under Heaven.
A time of fruition
Ladies and gentlemen, we have come to a time of great urgency in God’s providence, when we must bring His work for human salvation to a successful conclusion. God’s heart and love for humanity has been the parents’ heart of love for their child. Unable to bear the immorality and wickedness of this world, He finally sent me to correct these things once and for all and to tear down the barriers that have led to war and conflict. In so doing, He gave me the qualification as Savior, Messiah, returning Lord and True Parent who appears in the world as the substantial body of God Himself. Recently, God sent me a message in which He comforted me on my difficult life and offered me encouragement. In addition, many people in the spirit world, including five great saints -- Buddha, Confucius, Socrates, Jesus and Muhammad -- many prophets and kings who appeared in the course of history, and even notorious murderers such as Hitler and reprehensible communists such as Lenin and Stalin, have received my teachings, repented and sent me messages expressing gratitude.
Looking back on my life, I can say that people who could have attended and served the True Parent, Rev. Moon, properly with absolute faith, absolute love and absolute obedience, instead put him through a wilderness course of persecution and suffering lasting some eighty years. I am not the type of person, however, who lets such things discourage me or make me give up. If I were, God would never have sent me to earth as His representative. As I hewed my path through indescribable suffering and adversity, I never once reproached God or turned away from my mission. I always worked to fulfill God’s Will. You who do not know Heaven’s providence have possibly lived only for the purpose of fulfilling your own desires. By contrast, I have lived my life in accordance with Heaven’s Will and as a public person before heaven and earth. Without the slightest deviation I have lived by practicing the true love of a True Parent so as to gain victory in the course of indemnity necessary to save humanity.
Respected and distinguished guests, we have now entered the historic realm in which we need only focus on the future, marching forward resolutely with hearts filled with hope and desire. We have seen the birth of the Abel-type United Nations that will resolve the confusion and helplessness of the existing UN and provide fundamental solutions to the various problems facing humanity today. On October 3 of this year, more than one thousand five hundred leaders from around the world who follow my vision gathered in New York City and founded this historic and providential Abel UN.
An Abel UN is a Peace UN
Thirty-eight years have already passed since I met former United States President Dwight D. Eisenhower and explained to him the necessity for an Abel UN. Because of the ignorance of those in charge, who could not understand the significance of that hour, the fulfillment of that aspect of God’s providence was delayed until today. Now, Heaven can wait no longer. This year, by the demands of the providence, many righteous people who follow me took a stand and rid themselves of their mutual enmity. Religious leaders who had previously refused even to sit down together -- Jewish clergy representing the First Israel, Muslim clergy representing Islam and American clergy representing Christianity -- gathered in Jerusalem. These traditional enemies joined hands and announced the Jerusalem Declaration.
Next, a large number of religious leaders from all traditions gathered in Washington, DC, the capital of the United States, which represents Christianity, the realm of the Second Israel. These religious leaders in the earthly world proclaimed a resolution that reflects the resolution adopted by leaders in the spirit world, including the five great saints. On the basis of these declarations in Jerusalem and Washington, a third declaration, the Seoul Peace Declaration, was adopted in Seoul, Korea on August 15 of this year. Its Jewish, Muslim and Christian clergy signatories announced it to the world. Please bear in mind that these steps were providential preparations for the founding of the Abel UN.
Abel UN means Peace UN. The existing United Nations is a Cain-type UN, a United Nations of strife. In contrast, the Abel UN will be a structure that guarantees world peace. This is nothing less than the most revolutionary and wondrous event to happen since God created humankind. Now the world will begin to change rapidly. More than 120 billion blessed couples on the side of goodness in the spirit world have mobilized. On earth, tens of thousands of ambassadors for peace and millions of other leaders around the world are carrying the torch of the Peace UN.
Humanity now has the responsibility to work through the Peace UN to build, on the earth, the peace kingdom for which God and all people have longed. Attending God as our King and aligning internally with Cheon Il Guk and externally with the nation of the Fourth Israel, it is our responsibility to build a world of peace that represents both the spiritual and earthly realms and that transcends religions and nations.
Realizing world peace through the Peace UN
I want to make it clear to the entire world that I will gladly transfer the entire foundation that I have built with blood, sweat and tears for more than eighty years to the control of the Peace UN. To begin with, the Family Federation, which now has missions in 191 countries, and dozens of other groups and organizations I have founded, will directly serve the Peace UN. All media organizations -- including The Washington Times and United Press International (UPI) in the United States, The Middle East Times in the Middle East, Tiempos del Mundo in Central and South America, The Segye Times in Korea and Sekai Nippo in Japan -- share the commitments of the Peace UN. Moreover, the missions of Sun Moon University in Korea, the University of Bridgeport in the United States, Sunhwa Middle and High School (The Little Angels School), Sunjung Girls Middle and High School and other educational institutions will reflect the purpose of educating leaders capable of carrying out the noble work of the Peace UN. In the area of sports as well, the Ilhwa Cheonma Soccer Team, a premier team in the Republic of Korea, and Sorocaba and CENE, which are prominent professional football teams in Brazil, will dedicate their energies for world peace.
Ladies and gentlemen, I have no lingering attachments to this world. I received Heaven’s command as a young man of fifteen, and I have pursued this throughout my life to this day, when I am more than eighty years old. I will spare no effort in dedicating the remaining years of my life to God and to fulfilling the heavenly mandate. Working through the Peace UN, I will without fail resolve God’s anguish and build God’s kingdom of freedom, peace, unity and happiness based on true love, on earth and in heaven.
Distinguished guests, please, even now, open the gates to your hearts and accept your call from Heaven with undivided devotion of your heart, body and mindset. Follow the tradition of the True Parents in practicing the life of a true teacher, true owner and true parent. This path will lead you to represent and be heirs to Heaven and True Parents. The path and mission of true love leads to the building of the peace kingdom.
Distinguished guests, I pray that Heaven’s great blessings will be upon your journey as you place deep within your heart the precious bond created today by our sharing these wonderful words from Heaven. I pray that from this time forward you will pioneer a life that is on a new and higher level. With this thought, I will now have my representative read a special prayer and offer this gathering to Heaven.
Thank you very much.