Sun Myung Moon
February 2, 2000
Second American Century Awards Ceremony
Cannon House Office Building Caucus Room, Washington, DC, USA
Photo date and location unknown
Respected members of the United States Senate and House of Representatives, members of the diplomatic corps, recipients of the American Century Award, whose contributions help make this country the most blessed by God, ladies and gentlemen:
I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude that so many leaders from a wide variety of fields in American society have gathered here today to celebrate faith, freedom and family. As founder of The Washington Times Foundation, I commend all of the award winners. All of you are champions who through your service have made significant contributions to improving the quality of life for all Americans.
I also want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for recognizing my life achievements and congratulating me on my eightieth birthday. I am particularly grateful to God, who has been my constant companion and protector, and to Him I offer all glory and honor.
I have lived my entire life with the earnest desire to solve the many problems related to actualizing God’s ideal of creation. When I came to America in 1972, I saw this country was facing a severe crisis that affected the world. On my first evangelical tour of all fifty states, I declared that God has three major headaches: the threat of communism, the lack of cooperation among religious people against evil, and the moral crisis afflicting youth.
Our responsibility as human beings requires that we meet God halfway and fulfill what God has asked us to do in the areas of freedom, faith, and family. Because God loves America, I initiated many organizations, including The Washington Times, to respond to these challenges.
I devoted myself because I know His heart
I am grateful that God gave me the opportunity to serve America, because American-led United Nations forces, in the process of saving my country during the Korean War, liberated me from a communist concentration camp where I had been imprisoned for preaching the word of God.
Since receiving God’s calling as a boy of 15, I have delved into the meaning of God’s Will and fought against tremendous odds to fulfill the providence of restoration for the sake of human salvation.
I came to realize that God does not sit on a throne of glory and grandeur. Instead, God is a God of deep sorrow and profound suffering, who endeavors to save His children, who fell into hell. As a result of the Fall, human beings fell into spiritual ignorance. This meant that humanity was fundamentally ignorant regarding God’s existence, the meaning of human life, and the entire universe. People did not understand how they needed to live their lives during their time in this world while they have physical bodies. They did not understand that there is a spirit world and that life in the physical world must be lived so that it would properly prepare them for the spirit world.
Knowing God’s Will and heart, I worked with single-minded determination as I devoted my entire heart and energy for the accomplishment of God’s Will, without regard to the time of day, changes in the seasons, or the environment around me. As I look back on the eighty years of my life and all the difficulties and persecution I received, I realize I would not be here with you today were it not for the help that God has given me throughout the years.
I have spoken publicly on some ten thousand occasions in many places around the world. These speeches have been published in a series of more than three hundred volumes. On this very significant occasion today when I am meeting some of the most distinguished leaders in the United States, I would like to share the essence of the guiding principles in my life and work under the theme, “The Cosmos Is Our Hometown and Our Homeland.”
The cosmos was created as an enormous house where human beings would live as the masters. Human beings, who are at the center of the universe, live in the context of relationships, fundamentally those of parent and child, husband and wife, and between siblings. The parent-child relationship can be described in terms of a vertical axis between above and below. Since a husband and wife are on an equal level, their relationship can be described in terms of a horizontal axis between left and right. We can say that sibling relationships are on a third axis between front and back. Every individual exists within the sphere created by these three axes. If the ultimate points on these axes are numbered 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6, then God exists in the seventh position, at the center of the sphere. This is how God can guide us in our daily lives, even while existing at the central position that cannot be seen.
The ideal model of existence and true love
Since the Fall, human beings have existed in Satan’s realm of bondage and suffering. With God’s help, people can be set free. They can mature as true sons and daughters, meet their mates, and become true husbands and wives. They can go on to have children and become true parents. This should be the normal course of human life. Thus, we cannot reject the concept of true children, of true husbands and true wives, or of true parents. To do so would be to violate a fundamental principle of the universe, thus destroying our own existence. Each of us has to participate in building a true family consisting of true parents, a true husband and wife, and true children, which is the model for the ideal existence.
In the context of the family, people need to fully receive the love of true parents and of a true spouse. Then, they need to fully receive the love of true children. Money, knowledge, power, or physical force cannot bring such human relationships to their completed form. Only the true love of God, which brings balance to the world, can do this.
True love is a force that invests and gives completely. It is a giving force, not a force that only receives. True love is total giving, to the degree that we ultimately reach a point where there is nothing left to give. Reaching that “zero point,” enlarges our capacity to receive, much more than we gave. This process of giving and receiving will achieve a balance that continues forever. Relationships of giving and receiving produce a world where people live for the sake of others, centering on true love.
All beings in heaven and earth exist in a mutual relationship with other beings so as to form a world of true love through giving and receiving relationships. In mutual relationships every giving force causes a returning force, and this is what gives eternal stability to the central point. God exists in the central position of true love giving balance to the entire universe. It is the position of the “lucky” number seven. Heavenly fortune advances by the process of receiving God’s true love and returning it. Within such relationships the flow takes the form of circular motion, as love, air, water, and light go round and round and return to their original place.
The homeland of faith, peace and unity is the hometown and homeland
Ladies and gentlemen: What makes someone a good person? We can answer this in many ways. We could say that a bad person is someone who takes whatever he is given and keeps it for him or herself. A good person is someone who adds to whatever he or she is given and passes it on to others. No parent wants his or her child to grow up to be something less than that parent. We all want our children to be better than ourselves. Also, a husband would like his wife to be better than himself, and a wife wants her husband to be better than herself. Further, an elder brother and younger brother would each want the other to become better than himself.
We all want to give back something more than what we receive. This is our fervent wish as parents, as husbands and wives, and as children. It is also the fervent wish of all things in nature. Ultimately, it is the fervent wish of the entire universe.
Moreover, those whose hearts are so wide that they can say, “the cosmos is my hometown and my homeland,” will be welcomed by the cosmos. We can conclude, then, that in order to become God’s true sons and daughters we have to be welcomed by individuals, by families, by nations, by the world, and finally by the cosmos.
That being the case, where would you most like to go and live? I think you would like to live in the original homeland where you were born. Broadly speaking, our original homeland refers to the planet Earth within the cosmos, and wherever God can be found.
God is the founding Parent of our homeland. Our homeland is the earth as God originally intended it to be — a place where parents, siblings, and children who did not commit the Fall would live together. This was to be a place where black people, yellow people, and white people would live together in harmony.
Who is the parent of all these different races? There is only one parent. The God who is with us wherever we go in the universe is the Father of humankind. Thus, it would be a mistake for anyone to think that white people, black people, or yellow people are the masters of America. God is the master of America.
Differences in skin color are nothing more than the result of our ancestors having had to adapt to different climates and environments in different parts of the globe. In areas with large amounts of snowfall, we find mainly white people living. In places such as Africa where the rays of the sun are particularly bright, we find mainly black people. Fundamentally, though, people are the same. The color of our blood is the same. Our flesh and bones look the same and we all have the capacity to love. Thus, there must be no discrimination based on race.
This is why the Unification Church has been working through the international holy marriage Blessing ceremonies to create unity and harmony among the races. In accordance with the natural principles of universal love and equality for all people, we have performed many interracial marriages. When a black person and a white person marry, it is like the North Pole and the South Pole coming together in unity. When a yellow person and a black person marry and have children, both parents contribute their good attributes and their descendants are better as a result.
Where there is love, there can be no strife. We come from many different hometowns and homelands. Yet we can all agree that our homeland of faith, peace, and unity is the world of God’s true love.
True love, true life and true lineage are crucial
Nothing is more important in the human world than true love, true life, and true lineage. True love leads to true life and true lineage. True love cannot be fulfilled unless it results in a true lineage. Love without true life is false love. True life is conceived within the context of true love and true lineage. Thus, true love, true life, and true lineage open the way to eternal life. God’s ideal for creation is for each of us to become true individuals and pass on true love, true life, and true lineage to our descendants.
God is the ideal being and the Owner of eternal true love, eternal true lineage, and eternal true life. Those who resemble God become His true sons and daughters living in the kingdom of heaven.
Why do men and women get married? They do so to link together the past, present, and future in the tradition of true lineage.
Before the Fall, Adam and Eve could relate to God freely and directly, however this was no longer possible after the Fall. Likewise, because of the Fall, Cain and Abel, the children of Adam and Eve, could not inherit God’s blood lineage. They inherited Satan’s lineage instead. This is why Jesus said in John 3:3, “unless one is born anew, he cannot see the kingdom of God.”
People need to know that they have inherited a false life through a false lineage, which originated from a false love relationship. God feels pain and sorrow when Fie sees the promiscuous sex and homosexuality that are so prevalent in our world today. When people realize that they have inherited the position of the enemy of love, life, and lineage, they will be filled with shame.
God’s nature, though, is to love the sons and daughters of His enemy even more than His own children. God has invested himself completely without expecting any return, and will continue this process until all the children who were taken from Him have been restored. This is God’s providence of salvation.
For God to bring a fallen person back to life, He must provide a life force more powerful than false life. How grief-stricken God must be, tormented by the misery of each baby brought into this world through the false seed resulting from the Fall! Such children have multiplied to the point that there are now six billion fallen human beings in the world.
Human beings are created to pass through three stages of life: in the mother’s womb, on earth, and in the spirit world after death. The planet Earth, where the physical body lives, is similar to the mother’s womb. In the same way that a fetus grows by receiving nutrition through its mother’s womb, we grow on earth by eating food taken from the creation. That is why we have to love the earth as our mother.
In the spirit world, light as bright as the sun shines continuously. If a person were in space somewhere in the solar system, the sun would shine on him or her continuously. That is the way it is in the spirit world. The light of love in the spirit world is constant and unchanging. Love does not change, whether it is day or night, at the North Pole or the South Pole. The spirit world is the world of love filled with the true love of God. The spirit world is also like a storehouse in which the fruits of our hard work on earth are stored. Our life in the spirit world will reflect our accomplishments on earth.
The returning Lord comes as the True Parent
During the course of God’s providence of restoration, Jesus was the only one born with true life directly connected to God’s true lineage. Accordingly, no one among fallen humanity has ever entered God’s realm of direct dominion, either on earth or in the spirit world. That is why God has been alone, leading a lonely and sorrowful existence. Hence, the world became a place where people and all of nature are sad.
God has been searching for one person whom He could trust, one man who could purify the fallen lineage of humanity and transform it into true life. That man is the Messiah. He inherits God’s true love and brings liberation to all humankind. The Old Testament Age after Adam’s fall is the history of the people chosen to receive the Messiah. God’s Will was for Jesus to come as the Messiah to the chosen people of Israel, for all people to be grafted on to Jesus’ family, and for this family to expand to encompass the world. However, due to the disbelief of his contemporaries, Jesus died on the cross, leaving this process as an ideal to be accomplished at the time of the Second Advent.
The returning Lord stands in the position of the True Parent of humankind and recovers the position of one who embodies God’s true love. When he fulfills the position of the Parents of Heaven and Earth, this will bring God’s providence of salvation for all humankind to completion. The Messiah begins by forming a family that attends God more gloriously and with greater filial piety than the family that Adam and Eve would have formed had they not fallen. The Messiah is the head of the family that represents the core of the ideal for a new humanity that begins by linking to the lineage of true love through the life of true love. The Messiah connects blessed families to the kingdom of heaven on earth and in heaven so as to expand and complete the kingdom on earth and in heaven.
Therefore as the True Parents of all humankind, the coming Messiah must renounce the love of the fallen satanic world and fallen human ways. The Messiah must establish the path and tradition of a perfected man and woman, perfected family, clan, people, nation, world, and cosmos linked to God’s true love. All humankind must receive the new Blessing through the love of the True Parents and inherit a family with a new lineage. There is no way to do this except by true love. This is how the hellish world of Satan’s dominion can be supplanted and overcome.
All humankind has to go through the following eight-stage process of restoration and recover their positions as God’s sons and daughters. Everyone will restore eight stages: the periods of gestation, infancy, siblings, fiancé and fiancée, husband and wife, parents, grandparents, and finally king and queen. We need to understand that we were born with the ultimate purpose to become princes and princesses who inherit everything in the kingdom of heaven.
Becoming completely reborn
Ladies and gentlemen, it was originally intended that each man would meet a woman as his wife and become a king, and that each woman would meet a man as her husband and become a queen. As a prince and princess of heaven, they would inherit everything in heaven. To restore the kingdom of heaven, every person must start at the bottom of hell, and work his or her way up through an eight-stage indemnity process until unity is established at every stage. This is possible only through the Blessing of the True Parents, who come as the Messiah. Therefore, blessed couples have to become “plus couples” who contribute for the sake of others in the world.
To become completely reborn, we need to practice absolute faith, absolute love, and absolute obedience centering on God. I have personally practiced this throughout my life. When God created the universe, He acted with absolute faith. God created us to be His absolute partners of love. Absolute obedience means that we invest ourselves completely to the extent that we give up all self-centeredness.
Furthermore, we totally forget about the investment we make and invest all over again. We continue this process until we reach the zero point, having no concept of self. Since God poured out all of His faith, what is left is zero; since God poured out all of His love, what is left is zero; since God poured out all of His obedience, what is left is zero. Nevertheless, Heaven’s true love is such that the more it is invested the more it grows. We must come to resemble God in this way.
Even if our love is rejected, we must continue to love more; even if we invest everything that we have, we have to continue to invest until we can make our enemy voluntarily surrender. Our Heavenly Father walked such a path, and the Parents of Heaven and Earth walked such a path.
The person who invests love continuously without expecting a direct return becomes a central person, who can inherit everything. He or she becomes the person of greatest filial piety. In a family of ten people, including a grandmother and grandfather, the one who lives for the sake of others the most will become the central person. The same principle applies with respect to patriots in the nation and to saints in the world. The more one invests without expecting a direct return, the higher one can rise as a patriot, a saint, and a divine son or daughter of God.
Since the beginning of human history, God has lived more for the sake of others and invested Himself more than any being. God has continuously invested without expecting a direct return, and God will continue to do so for eternity. God is the King and Ancestor of all those who live for the sake of others.
The reason the Unification Church could become a worldwide religious group in such a short time is that its members have worked hard according to this principle. When I reflect upon my life totally committed for the sake of humankind, I can testify that it truly has been the focus of opposition from billions of evil satanic forces in both the invisible and visible worlds, as well as from numerous religious leaders and many governments. Yet because I lived for their sake, I eventually came to stand at the center.
I lived for those who opposed me due to their inability to understand the truth, and I invested myself for their children. I lived for the sake of governments that persecuted me. In time, they came to respect me. From this, we can learn God’s strategy, in contrast to that of Satan. God’s strategy is to take the blow and initial loss, then regain everything in the end. Satan often is the first to strike, however he loses in the end.
The significance of the large international weddings
Under this principle, I blessed many millions of young couples from all continents in the international Holy Blessing ceremonies, as a means to save all humankind and establish one world under the one God. When the West and the East come together in marriage, the greatest cultural conflicts in the world will be overcome. When an American and a German marry each other and become husband and wife, perfect harmony will be created between those two nations, even though they were once enemies.
I gave the Blessing even to those now living in the spirit world. In order for the kingdom of heaven to be realized on earth, the cosmic realms of the spirit world must also be liberated, and only True Parents on the earth can do that. The first human ancestors, Adam and Eve, sowed sinful seeds as false parents. The Messiah must liberate humankind both on earth and in the spirit world, by coming as the True Parents.
Even God alone, although omniscient and omnipotent, cannot untangle the problems brought about by the wrongful blood lineage of humankind. If God could accomplish this alone, He would have saved His children a long time ago. In fact, God would not have allowed the Fall to occur in the first place. However, God is a God of Principle. This means He cannot interfere in the responsibility given to human beings. Accordingly, the returning Messiah, who comes as True Parents, must give rebirth through true love to humankind, whose blood lineage was defiled by the original sin.
When viewed from this perspective, the international Blessing ceremonies are not being conducted simply to bring young men and women together as husbands and wives. They are holy ceremonies through which people are reborn as God’s true children through the original seed of life from God. The principle is that restoration requires indemnity, and we have passed through the stages of individual indemnity, family indemnity, tribal indemnity, people’s indemnity, national indemnity, worldwide indemnity, and universal indemnity. Now, finally, we have arrived at the time of liberation for both the spirit world and the physical world.
The world is divided into tens of thousands of ethnic groups. Relationships are broken between parents and children, husbands and wives, and brothers and sisters. Even the religious world was divided into the four great cultural spheres of Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, and Confucianism. However, we have now entered the age of cosmic unification. This is because, having passed through the Old Testament Age, the New Testament Age, and the Completed Testament Age, which is the era of completion, we have now entered the age in which to establish the realm of the fourth Adam.
In other words, we no longer live in an age dominated by nationalism, or even in an age of globalism. These have already passed. National purpose and global concerns still exist, of course, but we now live in an age when the universe is to be united with the one God. By becoming the hometown of blessed families, the planet Earth will become one with the spirit world, and the kingdom of heaven will come about on earth and in the realm of eternal life.
The cosmic expansion of true love is the completion of the new millennial kingdom
Ladies and gentlemen, with the arrival of the new millennium, at midnight on New Year’s Eve, I proclaimed a message for the New Year entitled, “The Cosmic Expansion of True Love is the Completion of the New Millennial Kingdom.” “Cosmic expansion of true love” means that heaven and earth must become a “house” of true love. The new millennium is a time when we complete the building of God’s kingdom throughout the world.
Since the cosmos originated from God, families, tribes, peoples, nations, and the world have to work to complete this “house” of love, which stands as a partner to God. They can do this by each establishing their own houses of love according to the Principle formula and by becoming one with each other. Nations need to be houses of love where all families can enter, and the cosmos needs to be a house of love that embraces the world.
The family of true love is particularly important, because it is the core of the cosmos, which is our enormous house in the kingdom of heaven. Within the family, the husband is the house of love for his wife, and the wife is the house of love for her husband. The parents are the house of love for their children, and the children are the house of love for their parents.
God’s kingdom is the place where the ideal of true freedom blossoms, and where humanity’s hopes are fulfilled. It is a place inhabited by true families that are the fruit of true love, true life, and true lineage. Its establishment marks the beginning of the millennial kingdom, overflowing with eternal true love and true happiness.
I have promoted true family values, because the family formed by a union of a true man and true woman where God can dwell is the center of the cosmic realm where heaven and earth can rest. This is the Garden of Eden mentioned in the Bible, and it must be realized on earth.
The new millennium is the time to complete the six thousand year history of the providence for the salvation of humanity and build the original heavenly kingdom centered on the ideal of creation. It is the Completed Testament Age, when the promises of the Old and the New Testaments will be fulfilled. This means a new heaven and new earth, where “he will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, and neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain anymore.” (Rev. 21:4) It means a time of unconditional true love, when all people will be able to drink the water of life that is as clear as crystal.
When God’s kingdom is established, it will be a time when the spirit world and the physical world will be open to each other. The direct dominion of the living God is to begin through restoring the right of the eldest son, the right of parents, and the right of kingship. This will open a new era of God’s transcendence, imminence, abundance, and sovereignty.
The earth is the hometown of all humankind, and the spirit world is the eternal homeland where all people will eventually arrive. Finally, the time has come for the global family ideal to be realized on the planet Earth centered on the Heavenly Parent. This will move us beyond “One Nation under God” to “One Cosmos under God.”
Please understand that the fundamental relationship between God and human beings is that of parent and child. On that foundation, please take an active role to transform the cosmos, that is, the spirit world and the physical world, into “our hometown and homeland.”
Once again, I thank all of you distinguished American leaders for your presence here. I would like to conclude by expressing God’s desire that people of the world of all colors and races will come to live as true brothers and sisters and build the new millennial kingdom of love, peace, freedom, and righteousness. I believe that God prepared America for this very time to help lead the world into this new era.
May God’s blessing be with you and your nation. Thank you.