Sun Myung Moon
May 9, 2010
Aria Hotel, Las Vegas, USA
Respected leaders from around the world, distinguished guests from home and abroad, ladies and gentlemen:
Representing our family, and on behalf of the people of Korea, my wife and I would like to express our deep appreciation to the many esteemed guests who have come, amid your busy schedules, to celebrate this event that is so meaningful for my wife and me -- our Golden Anniversary, Coronation, and Memorial Festival -- making it a wonderful occasion, like the recent event held at the new UN building.
Ladies and gentlemen, two months ago I celebrated my ninetieth birthday and took my first steps toward the hundredth year of my life. This is a very busy time in God's providence. I have been blessed with a long life, beyond the average human lifespan. On the occasion of our fiftieth wedding anniversary, we are holding this banquet with people from all over the world.
We have fourteen children; five have graduated from Harvard University. Among our forty plus grandchildren, several of them are already studying there. Moreover, a great number of good men and women from 194 nations have come to recognize and follow us as the king of kings and the True Parents.
Throughout our lives, we have established many international organizations and institutions to promote world peace. We have invested unreservedly in many fields including inter-religious cooperation, projects to benefit society, intercultural activities, sports, education and the media, and we have successfully led these initiatives with the aim of promoting peace and bringing salvation to humanity.
After working to succeed in all these things, people would probably commend us, saying that we deserve to look back at our lives and pleasantly celebrate our birthdays with the good wishes of all people. They would probably encourage me to forget about everything and sit back and enjoy the successes achieved during the past ninety years!
However, my wife and I cannot look at the lives we have led in such a worldly way. We have had to complete the mission of the actual True Parents, given to us by God, who is Himself the vertical true parent of all humankind. Now, with three years remaining in this mission to make God's kingdom, Cheon Il Guk, a reality, we are leading each day of our lives with more seriousness than ever before.
Throughout my life, I have offered myself for the liberation of God, the one and only True Parent of Heaven and Earth, to restore to Him His rightful position as parent, to save all of human beings who suffer in the realm of death, and to return them to God's bosom. For this purpose I have persevered and triumphed, alone, over countless tribulations while leading the people of the world, who are like lost and unaware orphans searching for their parents, toward the goal of global salvation.
Due to the Fall, brought about by our first ancestors, people are born into the false lineage. Everyone without exception wanders in darkness even now, unable to break free of Satan's bondage. Under such circumstances, how could my wife and I be anything less than completely serious in our lives as we show the 6.5 billion people of the world the way along the path toward the building of God's kingdom on earth?
Three Stages of Re-creation
Ladies and gentlemen, God created human beings as his children. As the original absolute, unique, unchanging and eternal being, God created people by breathing His love into them to endow them with a soul. If not for the Fall, we would have been able to perfect ourselves as God is perfect, and attain eternal life.
But unfortunately, human beings are living as descendants of the Fall. In order to live a perfect life, all people without exception must receive life through the Blessing from True Parents in the three stages of rebirth, resurrection and eternal life. Rebirth, in this context, refers to an individual attaining new life. Resurrection is when a family attains new life, and eternal life refers to all of humankind attaining perfection and living forever in God's homeland after establishing the kingdom of heaven on earth and in the spirit world by attending True Parents, who have attained the position of the king of kings.
We can easily see that each person's life goes through three stages. Everyone is conceived through the grace of God and the love of his or her parents. The first stage of life is the long (yet short) nine months spent in the mother's womb. No one is exempt from this! Whether we are conscious of it or not at the time, all of us without exception spend nine months in our mother's womb. Even though a woman's womb is smaller than some rice cookers, from the perspective of a fetus, it is larger than the entire universe.
What about our birth into the second stage of our lives, which occurs on earth? How could we find words adequate to describe the struggle of a newborn baby as it is faced with a completely unfamiliar, new world? The first cry of a newborn as it experiences the large and wide world that it finds upon coming out of the womb is a blessing and celebration of a new time and space that promises a one-hundred-year future.
Today we are all blessed to be living in the second stage of our lives. Although a hundred years is much longer than the nine months we spend in the womb, please do not forget that there is still a course we must follow to a higher end. Although we have all forgotten the standard of consciousness that we possessed in our mother's womb, and we are now enjoying our lives fully in this big, wide world, this is merely preparation for the final stage of our lives, which is eternal life.
That third stage occurs in the world of eternal life, which we can enter by reaching perfection -- this is the spirit world. It is a world that cannot be imagined by people descended from the Fall. It is a world in which we transcend time and space. Just as the baby in a mother's womb cannot imagine life on earth, we, as people living and breathing air in this earthly world, cannot easily understand the spirit world, where we will be reborn in our spiritual bodies, living and breathing true love.
As people face death, they may shake in fear, and feel terrified if they do not understand the true meaning of death. Although human history has continued for more than six thousand years, no one has clearly taught the truth regarding death. Now, in the last days of history, I have been able to reveal this truth, this heavenly secret, as the True Parent of humankind.
Ladies and gentlemen, the word "death" is sacred. It is not a synonym for "sadness and suffering." Therefore, I have created the term Seunghwa [ascension] to explain the true significance of "death." The moment we enter the spirit world is the time that we enter a world of joy and victory with the fruits born of our lives on earth. It is a time for those of us remaining on earth to send off the departed with joy. It should be a time for great celebration. We should be shedding tears of joy instead of tears of sadness. That is the significance of the sacred and noble Seunghwa Ceremony. It is the first step toward enjoying eternal life in God's embrace. The moment of death should be a time of greater excitement than that of a newlywed bride going to her groom's home for the first time.
In order to open the door for all people to experience this kind of precious eternal life, I held a Seunghwa Ceremony at the United Nations headquarters in New York on March 18 in honor of world leaders who had recently passed into the next world.
The following are the names of those commemorated on that occasion:
General Alexander Haig, a former United States secretary of state, who saved my life by leading the bombing of the North Korean Hungnam Special Labor Camp where I was imprisoned during the Korean War1;
Mr. Kim Dae-jung, a former South Korean president, who won the Nobel Peace Prize;
Mr. Hédi Annabi, a Tunisian diplomat and head of the UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti, who died in the 2010 Haitian earthquake; the one hundred UN workers who died alongside Mr. Annabi;
Mr. Rodrigo Carazo Odio, a former president of Costa Rica, who is known worldwide as "the Peace President";
Mr. Abdurrahman Wahid, a former president of Indonesia, who gave his entire life for the sake of his great nation, which has a population of more than two hundred million;
Mr. Steingrimur Hermannsson, a former prime minister of Iceland, who helped bring about the meeting of then Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev and United States President Ronald Reagan, which accelerated the end of the cold war;
Shaykh Hassan Cissé of Senegal, who is respected as an exemplary person and a great scholar of Islam; and
Mr. Laxmi Mall Singhvi of India, who is praised as the "Ambassador of Reconciliation and Peace" by India's 1.1 billion people.
There are also other people whom we would especially like to remember through this ceremony and send to the spirit world with the Seunghwa blessing. I'm sure you have already heard about the recent sinking of the ship Cheonan in Korea where 46 sailors suddenly lost their lives in the course of duty. During my four-city speaking tour in Korea in April, my wife and I bestowed the grace of the Seunghwa blessing on these unfortunate seamen who died. Today we are displaying the photos of those 46 sailors and of the UN workers who died in Haiti. Let us all pray for them to rest in peace.
There is also one more leader, a woman of goodness, upon whom I would like to bestow the Seunghwa blessing. She is Dr. Reiko Kawasaki, a 17th-generation descendant of Tokugawa Ieyasu, the last shogun in Japanese history, who united the Japanese archipelago in the 17th century. Let us all send Dr. Kawasaki to the spirit world with our blessing on her transition. She was a medical doctor from Las Vegas who recently passed away after living a life of continuous service to others. Through her benign influence from the spiritual world, she will play a major role in Korea, Japan and the US, and also in resolving various problems in spheres such as politics and economics for the realization of world peace. Thus, we have included her in the list of those who will receive this sacred Seunghwa blessing.
Distinguished leaders, although the lives of the people whose names I mentioned were altruistic and philanthropic, none of them can be guaranteed entry into the world of eternal life without receiving the marriage blessing and the Seunghwa blessing of the True Parent [Rev. Moon] in this world today, in which the parent-child relationship between God and humankind was severed due to the Fall of the first ancestors. Please take this point seriously.
This era, when God has introduced the heavenly calendar, is a serious one. It is now the time in which all 6.5 billion of the world's people must understand my teachings, which I bequeath as the True Parent who is responsible to give eternal life to all of humankind. Now is a time that you can share the good news of the coming of the True Parents throughout the entire world. The time has come to honor and inherit the tradition and spirit of the Korean people, from which the True Parents emerged, establish the heavenly tradition, and bring about world peace by uniting all 6.5 billion people of the world with the United Nations. With the start of the heavenly calendar, please do not forget that the Seunghwa Ceremony is a sacred rite in which anyone can inherit the worldview of a holy citizen of the kingdom of heaven and celebrate God's liberation and all humankind's liberation.
In this way, the ideal of a family based on true love can be completed, and God and all people, the heavenly spirit world and the earthly physical world, can be completely united to usher in a reign of peace over the world. Please take this time to express your gratitude to God and True Parents for giving the keys of the Blessing Ceremony and Seunghwa Ceremony to all the worlds' nations, allowing for the establishment of the traditions of God's kingdom, Cheon Il Guk, through True Parents.
Please join me in giving a round of applause to our Heavenly Father for His benevolence, through which we can receive the grace of precious life without Him asking for anything in return.
One Family under God
Ladies and gentlemen, what is the path that humankind should take today? Even now tens of millions of innocent lives are being lost each year to war, disease, starvation and natural disasters that arise in all parts of the world. In every field you observe, from the individual to the collective level -- whether religion, politics, education, culture or ideology -- people are deeply mired in the swamp of self-centered egoism, raising walls around themselves. We now live in a world brought to ruin, where genuine communication has broken down.
Ultimately, the problems afflicting humanity can only be resolved through the worldview of One Family under God, in other words, the ideology based on true love, which my wife and I have learned from Heaven and have championed and taught throughout our lives. This is the only way for humankind to find the path toward peace and happiness.
Ladies and gentlemen, we are living in a historic time of great transition. It is a time for a great revolution to change history, to unite the spiritual and physical worlds and to create the ideal kingdom of heaven that God has longed for since the beginning of time.
We can no longer postpone or prolong the fulfillment of His wish. I have already proclaimed that January 13, 2013 will be "Foundation Day." That day will be the actual beginning of Cheon Il Guk. That day will be the origin. Yet, less than three years remain until then.
Therefore, it is time for all people to be humbly obedient to Heaven's decree. An unavoidable time is upon us today when we must invest ourselves completely with a life or death commitment for the remaining three years under the guidance of the True Parents who carry out the providence on earth as the substantial representatives of God, the king of kings. All the good spirits in the spirit world are mobilized and are already moving forward, a step ahead of you.
Ladies and gentlemen, do you have any idea how much pain God suffered the moment our first ancestors, into whom God had invested His complete and unreserved devotion since time immemorial, fell and disappeared into darkness, becoming part of Satan's lineage? Are you even remotely aware that our Heavenly Father -- who endured tens of thousands of years of excruciating heartache so great that His bones shed tears and His flesh quivered -- had to go through the long, dark tunnel of indemnifying the human Fall in order to save His lost children? How many have spent days and nights in tears, yearning to comfort our Father in Heaven?
The Mission of the Korean People
Ladies and gentlemen, God raised and prepared the Korean people over a period of thousands of years. All people of the Christian faith recognize that God sent His true son Jesus Christ to earth two thousand years ago to save humankind. However, Jesus suffered a miserable fate.
The leaders of Judaism and the people of Israel were supposed to receive Jesus as the Messiah and follow him with absolute faith and absolute obedience. They should never have allowed Jesus' crucifixion to take place.
He suddenly left this world, leaving behind the words, "It is finished." Yet these words apply to salvation in the spiritual reality only. After two thousand years of preparation, his Second Coming, on the Korean Peninsula, has finally borne the fruits of his labor.
From the past, the Korean people have worshiped God as the highest and primal ancestor of their forefathers. They called that single being and progenitor of all people the "One" -- in other words, God. They served Him as the lord who created night and day. As all numbers begin from one, all things begin from the one God. With the sense that He is their original ancestor, the Korean people have served God and thus the spirit of interdependence, mutual prosperity and universally shared values is alive in the soul and tradition of the race. They have maintained themselves over five thousand years of history, yet not once have they invaded or plundered another nation or people. The spirit of benefiting all mankind still flows in the veins of the Korean people.
The spirit of filial piety, fidelity, and loyalty, which are the fundamental virtues of human life, are still alive and breathing in Korean history. These values can be found in the men and women of Korea and reflect the pride and spirit of the Korean people.
I have inherited such traditional values as the true filial piety exemplified in the folk tale Shimcheong, about a devoted daughter who offered her life so that her blind father could see; the profound love and fidelity displayed by Choonhyang, who overcame the fear of death in order to keep the promise she had made to her husband; and the unbreakable loyalty exhibited by Admiral Yi Soon-shin, who gave his life to save his nation and people despite being abandoned by his king and other leaders. These lofty Korean values and traditions are not just matters of historical chance. Based on these values, Heaven has prepared this people; this was all part of the providence of creating a foundation to send the Messiah. On the foundation of such preparation, and riding on the energy of this peninsula, I finally came, having received Heaven's seal as the True Parent of humankind and the king of kings.
The Path Humankind Should Take
Distinguished Guests, your Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen:
The path that humanity must now take is clear. What would give you cause to hesitate in the face of the D-day that Heaven has revealed through us, the True Parents? Heaven's blessings will be with you on your ambitious course.
If you view the flow of history through eyes that focus on God's providence, you can see that the changes of the times can be broadly classified into three stages. First is the "era of worldly matters," in other words, a time when materialism took precedence. Next came the "era of human affairs," a humanistic era when peoples' knowledge and emotions took precedence in and dominated the world.
However, these eras were transitional. They were courses of preparation necessary in order to enter the era in which people could rid themselves of their fallen nature, return to their original selves and live as one united family where they attend God as their father.
The "era of heavenly affairs" is the final stage, in which human beings should follow the path of living for the sake of others. They should do this through establishing an absolute standard on the foundation of purifying themselves, both inside and out, through the holy Blessing Ceremony. This is the time of opening up the era of God's kingdom, Cheon Il Guk, a time in which we can return to the heart of the one true God. Please continually engrave this point on your hearts.
Once the actual era of Cheon Il Guk begins, the spiritual and earthly worlds will be connected and brought into oneness, and all things will be governed under the Union of the Spiritual and Physical Worlds, which will be established on earth for the first time. Moreover, the providence will be carried out according to the heavenly law and the heavenly way. Elections conducted in a purely secular fashion will disappear from the face of the earth. All people will become one family through cross-cultural marriage and the World Peace Marriage Blessing, and we will enjoy tranquility and happiness in the sacred reign of peace. Let me say that only three years remain until that day.
As part of preparing for that time, a few days ago, on February 14, I proclaimed to all of heaven and earth the start of the new heavenly calendar. The Gregorian calendar and lunar calendar shall now stand in the positions of Cain and Abel and serve the role of supporting the heavenly calendar, by which we will record and indicate the progress of God's providence.
You must all now engrave my teachings onto your bones and lead a life of practicing them. We have no choice. If we do not prepare now, we will surely be left behind. We should learn from the courage and fortitude of the white-necked cranes that fly across the Himalayas -- which are more than seven thousand meters high -- in preparation for winter.
My Final Words for Humankind
I already have prepared the last words I will give to humankind. These have been prepared based on my triumphs over six or seven life-or-death situations, including six periods of unjust imprisonment. I am leaving behind eight sets of textbooks and teaching materials for humankind to use for all eternity. (These are published in almost a thousand volumes.)
They are The Sermons of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, Exposition of the Divine Principle, Cheon Seong Gyeong, The Family Pledge, Pyeonghwa Shingyeong [Messages of Peace], True Families -- Gateway to Heaven, Owner of Peace and Owner of Lineage and World Scripture. These are textbooks you will have to read and study even after you go to the spirit world. They are not just teachings that come from the mind of one person; they are textbooks and teaching materials that teach the heavenly way that God has granted to His suffering children for their salvation.
You should now set up the tradition of Hoon Dok Hae in your families using the books I have mentioned -- that is, the tradition where three generations of a family start each day by reading Heaven's word, and lead a life of practicing what they read, with a new heart. Let's create a world where people in the spirit world and the earthly world can both attend True Parents at the same time, and read the word on the heavenly path together.
Once this happens, no matter how hard Satan may try to worm his way in to infest your lineage, once he encounters the Hoon Dok Hae tradition he will find no room to move. If a family is aligned with God as at high noon, where no shadow is cast, and still does not receive God's blessings, who then could be deserving of them? When such heavenly families fill the earth, the world will automatically become the heavenly kingdom on earth and in the eternal spirit world, fulfilling the vision of one family under God.
Ladies and gentlemen, last year, my memoirs, As a Peace-Loving Global Citizen, an honest, candid account of my life, were published. Through this book I have clearly shown where you can find God's will for humankind and the path that we, as God's children, should follow. My life has been a typical model of the saying, "If at first you don't succeed, try, try, try again." I have as much faith in this book as in the Hoon Dok textbooks and teaching materials I have mentioned. For this reason, I recommend it to you, believing that it will show you how to lead your lives according to true principles. It does not subtract or add anything to the ninety years of my life, which I have led under Heaven's decree. I pray you will carefully read this articulation of true love and find great inspiration.
I have already mentioned that a life of vertical "noon-time" alignment casts no shadow. If we can all shine as we live such glowing lives, there will be no chance for the shadow of sin to be cast. Those who receive the light will be indebted to the light. I pray that we can now wipe away the tears of people in misery and poverty, and lead an illuminated life of eternal true love that dissipates all darkness.
Once again, I offer you my heartfelt thanks for gracing this occasion with your presence and celebrating this providential event. I pray that you will live in good health and in the abundance of God's love. It is my hope that we can offer greater glory and honor to God the next time we meet.
I pray that the blessings of God, the king of kings, will be upon you, your family and your nation.
Thank you very much.
Notes:
1. Rev. Moon was sent there for his religious activities.