Sun Myung Moon
July 26, 2004
Little Angels Performing Arts Center, Seoul, Korea
Tenth World Culture and Sports Festival Closing Ceremony Address
Congratulatory Banquet
Distinguished present and former heads of states, ladies and gentlemen: Please join me in returning the glory of the accomplishments and success of the Tenth World Culture and Sports Festival to God with a heart of gratitude.
When we look about the world today, we see that it is lost in chaos and despair. The sight of people lost and without direction truly pains our hearts. There is no one among all the people of the world who is presenting a means that all can agree upon for resolving this present state of affairs. The world, with its population of six billion, is on the verge of being shipwrecked.
In the Bible it is written, "For whoever wishes to save his life shall lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake shall find it." As I mentioned at the WCSF opening ceremony a few days ago, it is impossible to establish a world of peace for all mankind on the basis of human effort alone. This can only be done with heavenly fortune.
Tomorrow you will all depart for home. The gift that I wish to give to you all tonight is the gift of heavenly fortune in the form of the word of God. This is a great blessing, yet also a warning from Heaven to humankind as we usher in the new millennium in this era of the kingdom of heaven. Whoever loses his life by holding onto these words will be given new life by Heaven. Those who ignore these words will be weeded out through natural selection. I ask you to please give your full attention to what I am about to say. Please do not forget that God called you all at this extraordinary time.
Dear guests, when we look at the present time not only from the viewpoint of history but also from the viewpoint of God’s providence over the ages, we can see that we live in an era of tremendous significance. God has brought to a close the era before the coming of heaven [Jeon Cheon Shidae] and has ushered in the time after the coming of heaven [Hu Cheon Shidae]. He is busily guiding the dispensation with the heart of making each day worth a thousand years. To awaken you to the heart of God, and to help you clearly understand what kind of position you are in today from the providential point of view, I would like to speak on "The Advent of a Revolution of True Heart and the Era of True Liberation and Complete Freedom."
True Parents Are the Hope of God and Mankind
To fallen mankind, God stands in the position of the teacher of all teachers, the parent of all parents, and the king of all kings. It is because God is an omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent being. He is the origin and root of true love and He is absolute, unique, unchanging and eternal.
Today the hope of fallen man is to meet the true Son of God. This means the Son on the individual level, the Son on the family level, the Son on the tribal level, the Son on the level of the people, and the Son on the national level. For this to be possible, humankind must pass through a course of many hardships and difficulties. Consequently, God sent the Messiah representing the realm of the Son on the foundation of a nation.
The day of the Messiah’s advent is the very day that the Messiah is found, because the Messiah is in the position of having restored the Son on all levels from the individual, family, tribe, race and nation. As descendants of the Fall, we must free ourselves from the realm of Satan’s accusations and meet the son of God. We must then find the family that has formed around the parent whom God can love. On that foundation, we can find God’s love for the first time and ultimately meet God directly.
Accordingly only the perfected Adam, the True Father, can create a relationship of love centering on God’s love. But a father alone cannot become a parent. He needs to find his true partner. That partner must be a true woman, a woman with an absolute standard. Christianity was in the capacity of the bride, representing woman on the world level. The central ideology of Christianity was the concept of the bride that receives the Lord of the Second Advent and Messiah, but the True Parents consist of just one man and one woman. There can be only one man and only one woman. This is absolute. There cannot be two. Accordingly, one man and one woman meet to become the True Parents. The True Parents are a genuine ideal couple centered on God’s ideal of creation.
Consequently, the True Parents become the unified center from the individual to the world and cosmos; and they can be engrafted onto all dimensions -- from the individual, family, tribe, race, nation and world. I have been preparing for this task throughout my life. The essential condition for mankind to go in the direction of heaven, after determining the goal of restoration, is to pass through the gates of parenthood. Unless we pass through the gates of true parenthood, we cannot connect to God’s heart.
The world today has become one in which tribes are unable to connect in heart with one another, religions are unable to connect in heart with one another, and families are unable to connect in heart with one another. To break down the walls that block us in this way in all four directions, we first need to establish a relationship with God’s heart. Who indeed will take on this task? We can conclude that only the True Parents, who come as the true mediators of Heaven, can do so. It has been God’s desire and mankind’s dream to find the True Parents that have been lost.
Ladies and gentlemen, Adam and Eve, the first human ancestors, should have become the true ancestors of humankind, in other words, the True Parents of humankind whom God had sincerely longed to see. The human race was meant to descend from the lineage of those True Parents. The True Parents of mankind should have appeared with the beginning of history as the glorious incarnation of God, eternally victorious in front of mankind. It is precisely here that we find Adam and Eve’s failure.
We know very well that this has been the basis for the bitter pain that has led to our sad history until now. Due to the Fall, human beings fell away from the laws of Heaven, lost their original selves, and were degraded to an evil race that trampled on the heart of God. Consequently, all people must rediscover their original selves through the word of God, and they are struggling through the course of restoration in search of the true world of the heart.
Due to the Fall, mankind fell into a position lower than that of the creation. People fell into a sad position with which God could not freely deal. Since they cannot restore themselves from this position on their own, God has awakened humankind and has been working to re-create us. From the position of the servant of servant, to servant, through that of the adopted child, the illegitimate child, to the legitimate child to the position of the true couple, and finally to the position of the true parent who has victorious dominion, God has been restoring humankind. You must understand that this tremendous secret has been hidden behind the six thousand biblical years of the history of God’s providence.
From God’s point of view, this is a fallen world. Hence, there are no sons exhibiting filial piety, no patriots, saints or divine sons and daughters. God desires to save humankind. However, He is helpless as mankind has fallen below the realm of the Fall; God could not have anything to do with the Fall. Thus, God has waited for the day when the Messiah, as the perfected Adam who stands in a position above fallen Adam and Eve, could establish God’s family and become the True Parent. Only on the foundation of such a family can the true son appear. A true patriot can emerge from a nation based on that kind of family. When this foundation expands to the world level, true saints will come forth one after another. When expanded to the cosmic level, divine sons and daughters will appear. The representative of Heaven, Heaven’s heir, will appear only on the basis of such a true family.
Originally the term "father and son" denoted the original father and his sons and daughters. They create a family and a nation. All people long for a world of peace. Yet a world of peace cannot be realized through the secular customs and level of culture pursued by the developed countries of today. The only way is through the culture of true love that is conveyed by the True Parents. Even if the True Parents appear with a straw mat, carrying a bag of tattered rags, wearing discolored clothing and in total exhaustion after emerging from a bottomless pit, fallen mankind has no other choice -- they must engraft to the heart of God through those True Parents.
If that is the case, to what degree must fallen mankind be engrafted to God’s heart? They must be born again through the womb of the mother after establishing the condition to have received the engrafting of the father’s body and to have lived with him. From birth, we must live with an absolute standard in attendance to that parent. However, it does not end there: Fallen people must set the condition of establishing relationships with their blood relatives and with members of their clans and tribes. Further they must set the condition of establishing a basis for a relationship of heart with their people and nation, the world, the cosmos and ultimately God. Only then will God say, "You are my son!" or "You are my daughter!" Those who establish relationships with primary consideration for themselves and their own self-interest have nothing to do with God.
God Is the Vertical True Parent; True Parents Are the Horizontal True Parents
Ladies and gentlemen, the term "true parents" was conceived in God’s mind even before the beginning of creation. All the ideals connected to God’s creation began under the concept of the true love ideal based on true parents. Thus, we must know that this term "true parents" was one full of hope that God longed for even before the creation. You all must know that countless people throughout the course of God’s providence lost their lives before God could send the True Parents. God worked through various religions that He established at appropriate times in the course of His providence. Thus among religions there are those on the level of angels, Cain-type religions, Abel-type religions, religions on the level of an adopted son, religions on the level of an illegitimate son, religions on the level of foster parents, religions on the level of the True Mother and religions on the level of the True Father.
When we look at the history of Christianity, we see that Abel-type Protestantism and Cain-type Catholicism should have brought together all religious spheres that were independently working for the sake of the salvation of humanity, based on various cultural spheres and areas of the world and in accordance with God’s overall will. Christianity should have then established one nation, and one world, that is, a world of peace. That is because among all religions Christianity was the mainstream.
If God is the invisible tip of a needle, then our first ancestors are the visible other end of that needle. That is why God is the vertical True Parent. How wonderful would it be if God, the vertical Parent, could produce children in the world of the spirit! However, having children in the spiritual realm is impossible. That is why God created Adam and Eve horizontally in the position of the True Parents of humankind and through them created a "production line" to generate the citizens of the heavenly kingdom. A vertical line has only one focal point. Consequently, it cannot engage in reproduction, which requires volume [three dimensions]. The volume needed for reproduction is created only when vertical lines meet horizontal lines, thus creating the dimension of space.
Babies are not given birth by God. They are given birth by true parents. Accordingly, God is the vertical True Parent of humankind and Rev. Moon, who carries the horizontal love at a ninety-degree angle to the vertical True Parent centering on true love, stands in the position of the horizontal True Parent of mankind. The position of the True Parent is that which overall represents the long-awaited Savior, Messiah and Lord of the Second Advent. This position is based on the foundation of teachings that express the purpose of religion. When we find and attend the vertical True Parent and horizontal True Parents and produce children of true love, there is nothing more to say. The words "True Parents" thus signify the Savior, Messiah and Lord of the Second Advent. That is why the representatives of the five great religions, saints and sages, and even those people who are considered the most evil in history, such as Stalin and Hitler, now in the spiritual world, have proclaimed that Rev. Moon is the Savior of mankind, the Messiah, the Lord of the Second Advent and the True Parent. They have been sending a series of resolutions from the spirit world declaring their resolve to devote their lives to the practice of my teachings.
For the creation of new life, the love of these two parents is absolutely necessary: One parent is our Heavenly Father, the Lord of Creation, and the vertical and invisible True Parent. The second parent is the horizontal True Parent who has appeared on earth in a substantial body to establish the ideal of creation of the invisible True Parent [God]. Thus, God stands as the True Parent in the position of the mind, and the horizontal True Parent stands in the position of the body.
Although humankind is descended from the Fall, we were all originally created with a dual structure, so that we can resemble these parents and freely convey and enjoy vertical and horizontal love. Our vertical self is our mind. To this day people have lived in distress since they did not have a correct understanding of the mind. Buddhism and Confucianism have struggled to clarify the identity of the mind and heart. But it is impossible to understand the heart without correctly understanding the identity of God who is its root.
My teachings clearly explain the identity of the mind and heart. Man’s heart can position itself centering on horizontal true love, with vertical true love as the axis through the realized ideal of God’s creation. God’s true love, which connects the front and back, increases in volume to establish the spherical and three-dimensional ideal. On that foundation, there is no exhaustion of strength in any of the four directions, and that force will always be ready to be activated. There is no room for things we dislike, or which are evil, to enter. There is no contradiction whatsoever. The vertical self and horizontal self become one centering on God’s true love. The reason your heart even now is in a state of conflict and contradiction is because, due to the Fall, at the point at which the vertical and horizontal lines intersect -- where true love can reside -- the lines are not at a ninety-degree angle to each other. Put simply, without God’s true love, the complete unity of the mind and body can never come about.
Even regarding the issue of ownership, all things originally belonged to humankind. The basis to decide original ownership -- in other words, the realm of mind and body unity based on God’s love, which is removed from the sphere of Satan’s accusation from the Fall -- must be secured. Heaven will allow you to take ownership again only after God advances to the position where He can declare his ownership with an absolute standard. In other words, only after you completely offer all that you own to God and receive His affirmation can you receive the ownership of Heaven through the True Parents on earth. Because of this heavenly law, I have refrained from selling anything that I have bought even if it has meant becoming a beggar. Without the proper procedures for disposal, through the True Parents, this should not be done.
Ladies and gentlemen, you are not just isolated individuals. If you live with the conviction that you are the central point representing the entire world, you can become that. In reality, everyone lives with that kind of conviction. The children represent the parents and the parents represent the family. Likewise, logically you must all inherit my heart as my representatives, because you stand on the solid foundation of my victory on the world level.
Your efforts and endeavors are acts of creation. A lifetime of love is one in which you can work all your life in joy and feel no fatigue, a life in which you seek out a path where you can feel the world of God’s true love and give comfort to God. I am asking you to try living your life with the idea and mindset to make heavenly "souvenirs" from the things created by God, as a hobby. Then all directions -- north, south, east and west, front and back, left and right -- will be opened up to you. That is why I have loved nature, spent time in nature throughout my life and made nature my friend. I have been to virtually all the seas, five oceans and six continents on earth. We should go to every river and mountain and live there. You should all be like me and seek out nature with God’s love, make it your friend and live with the heart that you will liberate nature, which still dwells in the realm of lamentation without an owner. In that regard, the Sansuwon [mountain and water garden] mountain hiking program in our Unificationist movement is necessary. The wise way is to quickly escape from patterns of life that render us captive to a corrupt urban culture, and keep us as slaves to an individualistic, self-centered life -- a life style that pollutes the environment in various ways and obstructs the emotional development of our children.
True Parents Liberate God
Unfortunately, due to the Fall, the first human ancestors, Adam and Eve, failed to establish a true family that has been God’s aim since the time of the Creation. In the Garden of Eden, Eve was tempted by the archangel, who was in the guise of a snake, and Adam failed to overcome Eve’s temptation. Thus, self-centered, false love was implanted in this world. In this way, the sin and misfortune of humanity was a result of the first human ancestors’ illicit love, which originated from Satan.
God’s providence of restoration therefore began to remove the walls of conflict that have divided the mind and body of man, to restore the true family and enlarge the global domain of true love and goodness. Early in my life, I delved into this truth and the secrets of heaven, and since then for more than half a century, I have consistently revealed this truth to Christians, to other religious people and to all of humankind. Without this truth there is no other way to unite the hundreds of different religious groups and Christian denominations, and, moreover, the entire human race.
What has been God’s anguish? His anguish has lain in the fact that despite weeping for the people and this world, He had not been able to shed tears of joy and of deep emotion for the victorious son that He has longed for. That is to say, God’s anguish had persisted throughout history because there had never been a person whom God could affirm as His own victorious son. There had been no one who could weep uncontrollably for God, who had wandered through the back streets of history in search of His lost sons and daughters.
Humankind has now entered a new era, that of the kingdom of heaven. We must allow God to perfect Himself centering on true love. This does not mean there is an imperfect part of God Himself. It means that human beings, who were created as objects to God (who is the perfect subject) must become His perfect objects or partners, who embody absolute values. Our responsibility is to resemble the True Parents, who already stand in such a position, and to become the owners of true, ideal-family love. Then God, in the absolute position, can secure an absolute partner and be liberated. Centering on God as the subject being, I made myself into a minus and attained complete unity with God. In the same way, when the relationship between True Parents and you is that of a substantial plus and minus, you can freely reach the point of unity with God.
Thus, you are not just the sons and daughters of your natural parents. You must first proclaim that you are the sons and daughters of God. Even though you may be unworthy now to call yourself God’s son or daughter, you should have confidence on the conditional standard of having become the sons and daughters of True Parents after receiving the marriage blessing from them. Although you were born from the wrong root, you should sever your connection to that root, cut away the branches, engraft the true lineage of True Parents and sprout new buds. That is the short cut for you to liberate God.
Even if you say you have become a family of loyal patriots, without a nation it is of no use. Without a nation, a patriot has no basis upon which to establish himself in history. Thus, through the family, the nation must be regained; through the nation, the world must be regained; and through the world, the cosmos must be regained. When you secure such a position, you and your family can have the same value as owners of the cosmos.
The Perfection of the Era of Heaven
Ladies and gentlemen! As we open the era of heaven, we are establishing a new, true culture and tradition of heaven. For example, I designated and declared Ahn Shi Il on April 18, in accordance with heavenly decree. We have already observed this day eleven times, and July 16 was the eightieth day since the first observance of Ahn Shi Il on April 27. The number eighty comes from the numbers eight, the number of a new beginning, and the number ten, which is the returning number and the number of perfection. This day has profound providential significance. Originally, God’s victory and the beginning of the era of heaven should have been declared and borne fruit when I was eighty years of age. Yet, it was completed and declared after a prolongation of five years.
You who have become the owners of Cheon Il Guk have participated in this providential event and have inherited God’s heart. You have come here to receive the new wine that will be kept in a new wineskin. You have come from far away to this place, to directly observe the unfolding of the providence of the True Parent, who has walked this lonely path day and night for some eighty years, and to become the soldiers who advance the establishment of the peace kingdom.
You have come to receive this heavenly decree, to find and establish Cheon Il Guk from within your families by offering your mind and body, your entire being, to heaven without dwelling on the past practices of the era before the coming of heaven [Jeon Cheon Shidae]. This destiny is a heavenly decree that must be obeyed. It is an absolute decree that must be carried out through the offering of yourself as a living offering to God before you die.
Dear guests, the time has come to free yourselves from the fallen Garden of Eden, and to stand with firm resolution before Heaven’s call. As at the Exodus, humankind has now entered an age of true liberation and complete freedom [from the past], unprecedented in history, the time after the coming of heaven [Hu Cheon Shidae]. I am sure you all know about human history, stained with the false and evil love that came from the original mistake of Adam and Eve. A twenty-first century exodus is now unfolding centering on all of you. The time has come to free yourselves, as did the Israelites, from all ties to the corrupt and foul world of today.
I have accepted my destiny to be the True Parent of humankind, and in this year, the fourth year of Cheon Il Guk, I have been working with firm resolution to fulfill the providence of Heaven with victory and glory. On March 23 of this year, at a U.S. Senate building on Capitol Hill, I was honored as the "king of world peace" in a ceremony attended by U.S. legislators and distinguished world religious leaders. Upholding the solemn heavenly decree that a world of peace for all six billion people on earth is possible only when all religions and ideologies are united in harmony within the realm of true love, with True Parents as the axis, I have invested all of my energy to realize this.
With the designation and declaration of Ahn Shi Il, God no longer rests only on Sunday, which comes just once every seven days. The seven-day period being put aside, He has designated the eighth day as Ahn Shi Il, and has become the True Parent of Heaven who can receive the joy, attendance and glory from not only the spiritual world that He created but also from all humankind and the creation in the physical world. Now the path has been opened up for the entire spiritual world to be mobilized to cooperate with the physical world.
On the second Ahn Shi Il, May 5, I designated and declared the historic day, Ssang Hab Shib Seung Il. The providence of God ushered in the number ten -- the returning number and number of perfection -- and opened the gates to a world of the realm of shib seung [victory of the number ten] that brings the providence to a conclusion. Just because I declared and celebrated the perfection of the realm of the ssang hab shib seung, which brings in the era of heaven, does not mean that it was automatically established. The realm of the ssang hab shib seung signifies the perfection of the true realm of heart. It means that you have to enter into the realm of unity with God’s heart and advance to the position where you can receive the authorization of heaven, so that God can declare, "You are my son!" or "You are my daughter!"
This led to my declaration that "the harmony and unity of true love is the absolute value for a true, ideal family" on the third Ahn Shi Il, May 21. When the practice of true love becomes a lifestyle, harmony and unity in the individual, family, nation and world can be achieved, and the absolute values for a true ideal family can also be created from there.
When we observe God’s creation of man, we can see that in creating man, God, who is the absolute subject, was asking him to become His absolute partner. However, due to the human Fall, this heavenly decree was not carried out. People ended up living like those who are blind, holding on to relative values while unable to conceive of absolute values.
Now the eighty-five-year life of the True Parent has vividly manifested before you and serves to guide you. I am clearly showing what a life of true love is actually like. Who can say otherwise before the model lives of the True Parents, who have given and given, forgiven and forgiven, and have loved their enemies? You must realize that your life is destined to go only on this path of absolute faith, absolute love and absolute obedience. If you are resolved to practice and complete the three great revolutions -- the revolution through indemnity, the revolution of conscience and the revolution of heart -- in your daily life, and to become the heavenly soldiers that can open the gates to the era of true liberation and freedom from past sins, raise both hands and express your resolve before Heaven.
When you leave today, I hope that you can make good use of the gift of the heavenly fortune that I have given you. This will become the eternal tradition and family heirloom for all your families for generations to come. May God’s blessings be with you all. I pray that you will return home safely.
Thank you