Sun Myung Moon
January 26, 1973
Adapted from a speech to the first International Leadership Training
Belvedere Estate in Tarrytown, New York
Photo date and location unknown
An evangelist is a mediator between God and man in order to connect those two. In the political, economic, and cultural worlds, the one who is playing the role of the mediator must know clearly and precisely what is taking place on both sides. Especially as a mediator you must be between the two. In that case you must not strongly proclaim what you are going to say in the beginning. You must be calm, showing God that you are strongly on His side, and before the people you must be entirely like those who are on the people's side. Both parties would not like the idea of having to lose something in the relationship. So, you must go back and forth between God and the people; i.e., during the night be with God and during the day be with the people. Both will feel that you are on their side. How you carry out your mission will rest solely on this point. You must be keen to judge what's happening on both sides and you must find out things common to the two. The mediator must not vacillate between the two powers when the two contradict each other. That is, you must not belong to either of the two. When you are on the side of God, they must be thinking that you are doing things for them. You must be strictly in between, seeming never to belong to either side.
If they see that you are doing those things for your own sake, then they cannot believe you or trust you. If you, as the mediator, just pretend to help the other party and the first one senses it, he is liable to tell the other person who you are and what you are going to do. Then his trust in you will be broken, too.
Be a public servant
From this viewpoint we can safely say that an evangelist is a mediator, and a mediator is in the position of a public servant. That's your most important function as a mediator. I want you to know that. You must be interested in knowing the advantages and interests of both parties. You must be prepared to have a person feel like confessing whatever he has in his inner heart. In that case alone can you say you know a person perfectly. If you grasp his secrets, he will come to you on his knees. With all those secrets kept to yourselves, if you are forgiving and helping, and use them to help him, then he will be pleased. But if you expose his secrets, you will be his enemy. Then he will think of you as the conqueror, as the enemy who ruined his life. After he has confessed to you all his secrets, he will keep watching you, and will doubt you if you reveal those secrets to other people. But if you go on keeping the secrets to yourselves, then he will trust you in the long run and will feel like having his friends, family and relatives confide in you. He would like his whole neighborhood to do the same.
So, the first thing is not to speak aloud what you have heard from another person as his secrets. You want to publicize or propagate good things that you have heard from people, but not bad things. In that case, you can even dig out information from other people on your friend. You may find out how he is and what he's doing. When you talk to your friend, pretend that you didn't hear anything bad from the other person, but praise him, telling him that Mr. Smith said a lot of good things about him. He will be pleased.
Suppose those two are good friends, but your friend has a weak point because he once confessed something to that third person and now he hates having done that. But if you tell your friend that Mr. Smith spoke very well of him, he will be really confident that the third person loves him and is interested in him. He will become really one with that person. That way you've gained both of them. By the way you utilize your strategy, you can make two persons enemies or friends.
Don't bring a rupture in the triangular Relationship
The second important point in playing the role of the mediator is not to bring about a rupture among three persons in a triangular situation. Two friends centered on you is a triangular formation; e.g., a couple and yourself, or your son, your father and yourself. If both really think that you are entirely on their side, they will trust you and you can easily become one with them. Don't you think so? The same thing applies to God. God exists and there must be one in the objective position to Him. For example, I am in the position of a complete object to God. With you as the mediator, another triangular situation is formed.
If you are going to criticize someone and call him names behind his back, then the harmony will be ruptured. There is God above, but, being invisible, He cannot associate with you every day. I am in the position of your leader, but I cannot always go about from place to place with you. Then, on the front line, what are you going to do? How to know the profundity of the ideology of my will will be the question. You must put yourself in the position where I will always be with you, confiding in you. If you are told to do a certain thing in secret, and if you reveal that in public and publicize it, you are not qualified. You must keep silent when you are told about some secret among three persons in a triangle formation.
Then, how to be connected with God and me will be the question while you are on the front line without us around. There are only two ways for you to be able to consult with us. You can consult God through prayers and you can reach me by consulting the commander of your mobile team. If you distrust your commander, you will get nowhere. You will have already failed in playing the role of the mediator between your commander and the people.
The mediator on the front line must be more zealous in witnessing to people than his commander. And you must give back to him what you have won in order to please him and ease his heart. Then, if the person you are witnessing to can realize that what he is going to have is greater than what he now has, he will be drawn to you. Let him think that he is going to gain something from you, become a man of high position. He is going to be wealthy in the spiritual sense, since he will belong to God, and become a child of God. That's far better than any worldly thing. Then, he cannot help but follow you. You must have something greater than those people. Otherwise they will say to themselves, "The truth is good, but I think I must wait for the Master to come to me -- I don't feel like following this person."
Keep the dignity of God
Third, you must be well armed with the truth and you must keep the dignity of God. If you are going to do that at all, you must place yourself in the position of a public servant. That's the first thing. Then you must not violate the triangular formation by rupturing the base. That is to say, you must play the role of a peacemaker. That's why in the Bible we read, "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God." (Matt. 5:9) If you are a peacemaker between two persons, you must be far better than they; unless they see some dignity and capability in you, they will not look up to you. You must be authoritative with words. You must be able to say things with authority. Words will connect those people.
Action is something like actual fighting. The same thing applies to both God and the world as a whole. Even in the secular world, when we educate people, we first teach them how to speak; then, we teach them how to act; then we teach them the results of their action when put into practice based on their idea. Your authority will lie in those three points; you must know this. You must thoroughly understand all three things. You must contemplate them, say things along that line, put those things into practice, and make the result a success. I want you to be far better than ordinary people in those three points.
If you have divine authority, everyone will bow down before you. Everyone will be interested in what you are saying and doing. They will be ready to follow you, as the center. If you have that dignity and authority, you are in the position of a mediator, and you will be able to connect God and whatever is below.
You are going to study more on the mobile team. Study how to assume authority. While working on the mobile team, you must study the Divine Principle in depth. You must learn how to act. You, must study and learn how to bring about wholesome results. You may think, "Those are most difficult things! How can I do that on the mobile team?" But it's very simple. If you are ready to go through trials and difficulties, all other problems will be solved. Trial is the key to the solution. Suppose there are many other mobile team members wanting to relax and rest, but you go on studying hard. You will be the victor over the others; when they want to sleep, you want to stay up for longer hours. Then you can gain more than the others; you are already the victor over the others. While others want to influence a certain level of people, if you are so outgoing that you want to influence a wider range of people, then you are already the winner over them.
Let us put ourselves into trial
After all, the most important and precious word is "let us put ourselves into trial." In Chinese characters, the formation of the word "trial" is most interesting: three crosses and a square. When you walk how do you do it? With three positions you are singly headed for the goal. In other words, when you walk, do you set your eyes on one point, or are your eyes distracted to three or more directions?
You fix your eyes on one point. When you are standing, both of your sides and your rear are unprotected. So you must have one person on either side of you, and one in the rear protecting you, either by action or by words. Then you are in the middle of the cross -- one cross on either side and one more in the rear. You can say that you have three crosses protecting you. Expressed in another way, there are three elements of Satanic forces -- on either side and in the rear.
The marathon winner in Germany, who set up the world record in 1972, may think he can still win a future race with that speed. He is mistaken. Nothing is more erroneous than that. He must work harder in running practice. The more experience you have in speaking to other people, the more skillful you will become. I told you that you are going to be a mediator among the people, but I don't want you to end up being a mediator. If you play the role of a perfect mediator, you will inherit things from both sides.
Isn't that true? If anyone of you is a good peacemaker or mediator between the commander of your team and the team members, in the near future you yourself will take the position of the commander, because you are qualified for that. You can inherit that. There is no doubt of that.
When Jesus said he was the mediator, it was his great utterance. If someone plays the role of the mediator on God's behalf, and if he does things for the sake of the people, then he is going to be a really good mediator. I le can be the central figure between the two. In that case, he must work for the sake of the people at the sacrifice of himself. Then he will win the trust of the people. You must know these three in order to qualify you to be that.
Being a public servant is something like being a person without anything to claim as your own. Everything of yours and your whole being exists for the sake of this man and that man. People on both sides may have to think that what you have is theirs and they can get something out of you. Unless that takes place you cannot call yourself a good public servant. If you call yourself a public servant, that means that you have no share to claim as your own, and yours will come last. Don't ever think in advance, "I am going to be on the mobile team to work for a great cause, and after that I can win your trust and be blessed." You must not be calculating all those things beforehand. In that case, you are not a good public servant. You would be a thief. Before anything can be yours, it belongs to God and to the people of the world. Your portion must come last.
In man-to-man relationships in the triangular formation, you are on the verge of danger. Whether or not you will be trusted by the people will lie solely on that point. In a way, man is more fearful or dreadful than Satan. In a sense he is more dreadful than God. God is doing only good things while Satan is doing only evil things. But man, between them both, will vacillate -- sometimes belonging to God's side and sometimes belonging to the other side. But you, as the leader or mediator, must go straight forward, never vacillating.
Before going out, you must be resolved to do certain things. You must at least be resolved not to make your first experience a failure. On the other hand, you must expect something very difficult and miserable in your witnessing. Then you must fix your attitude to face that situation. If you have wholesome crops, you will return them to God to please Him.
Study the people
The first thing you must do on the mobile team is to study people. If you have been analyzing the personalities of your friends, your family and your neighbors until now, with that experience you can make further research on people around you. For the first few days, your guesswork will prove true at first maybe 20 percent, then 30 percent, then 40 percent, 50 percent, and finally reaching l 00 percent.
The people you meet will be the material to work on and prepare to face more people. In the past you have not done that quite so seriously as you are now. But in this case you are going to analyze the personality of every person; then you are going to apply that to meeting more people.
You can read the faces of people. If you are talking to someone and all of a sudden he thinks of something else, his eyes will tell you. When someone is talking to you, you can stare at his eyes and detect what kind of person he is and what he is thinking right then. If you are at that moment spiritually well armed and pierce your gaze through that person, he will be disunited and fall back. So, you must know how to catch all those things.
There is some theory working through me and I can catch things at a glance. In one couple I find things contrary to each other, but they still will complement each other; a little later, they will be in harmony with each other. From the way the people walk I can tell all the qualities in them. People have different ways of walking, different ways of expression. After a glance, I can point out a certain person's disposition, and he will be surprised to know that I was correct in that. I stand here talking to you, but in my mind many things come back and forth. I guess that some person will not like this in a minute, and that happens. I see a person dozing off in a corner and I say to myself I will wake him up in five minutes and I do that. I don't have to hit him on the head, but if I mention him, then you will all laugh and he will suddenly wake up. Maybe I shout at the top of my voice or I walk near him, and he will sense that and wake up.
There is profound mystery in your eyes. When I tell you some interesting, good, and happy stories, your eyes assume light, and your eyeballs roll in a very heart lifting way. They may even be tearful, but with tears of joy. When I tell you sad things, your eyes lose their light and become tearful, but the tearfulness will be different. When you are not interested in the things taking place, you begin to doze off. When you are serious, your eyes will twinkle. Your eyes, symbolizing God, can be receptive to both good and bad, happiness and unhappiness. If you stand here talking to the congregation, you will immediately catch who is the most attentive and responsive, and who is disinterested. If you are serious, every part of your head will be focused on that, narrowing down its scope.
So, as a mediator and an evangelist, you must know how to look into people's eyes. Your eyes must look in such a way that will please other people and catch their attention. In their head there are only two things moving: eyes and mouth. If your eyes look happy, your mouth will immediately be frozen in a smile, in the subject-object position. Your expression is very important when you witness to people, because your expression comes before your words. \\'hen you handle people, you feel that you can read people. But it's not easy as it may seem. Your facial expression is important, then your attitude.
Your motions, your words, and finally your action will influence people. First your expression, then your attitude, then your words, and finally your action. Why don't you look at yourself in the mirror? If you find you look too serious, you must practice making your expression a little sweeter.
Be a better listener and better speaker
Then, are you going to play the role of a wholesome mediator or peacemaker between the people? In what way are you going to accomplish your mission? Are you going to relax, sometimes sheltering yourself in the bosom of God? Are you going to hide among the people? Can you do that if you want to accomplish your mission? Those who are ready to go through more toil than other people will be the victors. Another qualification of a mediator is the authority to speak. When you speak you must seem confident in what you are saying -- never vacillating, never vague. If you vacillate, others will detect that and will think, "Well, I can say better things than that." In the beginning, you must be better at listening to other people, but after a while, when you are read' to speak, you must be dynamic and surprise them. They will think you can be a real leader for them. Speaking is something like fencing with swords. You must have keen observation as to where to wield your sword. When the other person is absentminded, you must pierce through that point. So, you must apply your technique and capability in wielding the sword.
Before anything else you must closely study the other person. You can point out the fact that he is from a certain family background and has been thinking, saying, and doing things in a certain way. Then you can point to yourself, saying all the things you have done. You can give your history, and they will know that you are far beyond them. This person will be captivated by the sword of your words. You can even propagate what you are; e.g., a university graduate, qualified for this and that. If that's not the case, you can say, "But I have had to quit my schooling in order to work for this great cause, and you, as a qualified college graduate, must do greater things than I." You can stimulate a person like that.
When you bring in a person, you have engrafted him to yourself. So what you give him will make him what he is. If you have given him poor nourishment, he will not grow wholesomely. However many spiritual children you have raised, if you have not been good to them, their fruit will not be wholesome. So, you must not meet even a single person without concentrating and focusing your attention on him.
Suppose you have met some twenty people in a day. Roughly divided, they are always two kinds of people. The result will reveal how qualified you are. You may have met more than twenty people a day, but if you don't have much experience, those twenty will oppose what you have said. After three days' or three weeks' experience things will be different. After three years, some conspicuous change will be brought about.
Who will be the first
In a few days you will be out on the front line. You must be very enthusiastic to know what kind of person the first person you me; t will be. A girl? A boy? An old woman? A laborer? A scholar? Have you imagined and decided on whom to speak to? You must plan to do things. For instance, "At 7:00 I will leave my bus for somewhere and I will reach the front of the house after ten minutes. There I will wait with great anticipation for the first person to come by. I will do that." Suppose a man appears on the corner, would you just stand there blank?
You must get ready. As soon as you glance at the person, you must be able to catch his age, his position and know how to approach him. Very possibly the first one you meet could be a jolly young man whistling, singing as he walks; then what will you do? Will you look at him with a serious face and ask him why is he is singing like that? You can even dance to the music, his song. He will look at you, and he cannot but stop there. Then you can become his friend right away. You don't have to witness to him, he'll just come to the center. That's nothing to laugh about. That could happen.
The first person you meet could be an aged woman leaning on a cane or a crippled man. You could meet any kind of person. Have you ever stopped to think like that? If an aged woman comes, as you have imagined, then you can tell her that you like old women like her and she looks like your own grandma and you would like to visit her home. Would she let you do that? If it is a man, you can ask him questions and ask him if you can visit him at his home. If you train yourself in that line, after a while you can read his face and fortune: his family background, his educational background, and his thoughts right at that moment. You may play the role of a person in an objective position to him in the subjective position, and you can get hold of him. If he is very receptive, meek, and mild in disposition, you will be attractive, and he will be drawn to you. If you find a man who speaks in a feeble tone like a woman, then you immediately see that he longs to feel masculine, so you look as masculine as possible; he will immediately think that you are the person he needs. If you apply those tactics to what you are doing, you will make your work a success in the immediate future.
Now you have learned how important your expressions and attitudes are. The way you laugh can determine your fate. If in smiling you hold up your head, that symbolizes that you are going to have good fortune and will be happy, but if you smile and laugh with your head down, that's not good. In Oriental philosophy, many such things are taught, and there is some profundity in it. I must again tell you to be a good public servant, peacemaker, a good triangular relationship maker, and to keep and radiate the dignity of God through you. Added to that are more points: One, how to express yourself in a wholesome way, how to keep your attitude sane and sound and how to act and say things. I want you to be persons with weight and depth, so that other people will not have found you out in a few days. You should be a person in whom people will find more and more things over a long span of time.
As a leader, you must have that quality. Don't reveal all you have in an instant. In the Communist world, their strategy is kept to themselves, but in the democratic world, they are ready to reveal their tactics. The evil force of Communism will win over the democratic world for that, because they keep their secrets to themselves. When there is peace it may be all right, but in today's world, if the democratic world keeps its tactics secret, it can win over this world; but as long as its tactics are open to everyone, it cannot help but be defeated.
You repay your debt to God by witnessing
When you witness to a person, don't ever dream of gaining anything from him. You must be ready to give out things -- you are going to lose everything. You are going to give at the sacrifice of yourself. You must be prepared to repay God because you are indebted to Him-don't ever think of drawing something out of God, because you are indebted to Him. So, in what way are you going to repay Him? You are also indebted to me. You are a debtor, and debtors cannot lift up their faces without having paid the debt. In what way are you going to repay your debt? If you are told to repay God, repay heaven-that's not within your power. Very fortunately, God would not have you repay Him: by working for the sake of other people you will have repaid Him.
If you really realize you are so greatly indebted to God and to me, then you'll want to pay all those things to the people of the world. When the person you give to realizes that he is not the creditor, and that you are not in a position to have to repay him, he will fall on his knees before you. He knows too well that he is not qualified to receive something as the payment for what should be returned to God.
You are going to do that through whatever person you are witnessing to. In reverse, you can think of that person as your liberator, because without him you would have no way to repay your debt to God and to me. "I am indebted to God on the individual level, family level, national level and universal level. But I am going to repay that debt to God by serving this person." The person is so dear to you -- the family and all are so dear to you because without the family, clan, nation and whole universe you have no way to repay God. When you think of things in this way, your witnessing to other people is the way you repay your debt to God.
When you repay the debt, will you do it unwillingly? You must give at least your heart to that person -- to repay that person. If you want to repay that debt through that person and he is not receptive to you, then you must find that you have not been warm enough or zealous enough to do that. If you are all zealous and all willing to repay that debt through that person and he is not receptive but attacks you, God will take vengeance on that person. He will not leave that person alone. God's direct judgment will fall on that person. This is what evangelism is. This is the way to liberate the population of the whole world from the bondage of sin and Satan. How wonderful it is to have that kind of job.
If you are loyal in repaying the debt through the person to whom you are witnessing, there is nothing more important. Do you realize that you have to have that person gain something out of you in witnessing to him? Only in that way can you repay the debt you have toward God. Do you realize that? Then, you will not be put to shame before God and before people. Do you understand? You must remember at all costs the conclusion. You are indebted in so many ways that you sometimes have to repay the debt with your eyes, your nose, your mouth and your every sense.
You have now joined in the great cause of this movement -- to witness to people in such a way that you will be giving out yourself, your whole being, your everything. You must feel the blessedness of belonging to this group, especially when you are single men and women. You have a vast and promising future before you. People will be attracted to you and will think highly of you.
I hope that you fight through the battle and make it a victory. In a word, you are going to witness to people for your own sake. At long last you will have worked for your own self, not for God, not for the people, but for your own self. In your doing that the whole spirit world will be mobilized to help you, in aid and cooperation with you. You must be grateful for that.