Sun Myung Moon
October 26, 2004
USA Special four-city speaking tour in the United States
Rye Brook Hilton Hotel, Rye Brook, New York
Photo date and location unknown
Respected leaders representing the religious, political, journalistic and academic spheres of America and the world, ladies and gentlemen:
A thousand emotions crowd my mind as I stand here today. Thirty-four years have passed since I first set foot on this land chosen by God. I came here to uphold God’s will, which is to make America a foothold for world salvation by reviving Christianity and bringing reconciliation among religions.
A call from Heaven to go to America
Some of you who are sitting here may remember the warning I proclaimed when I first arrived in America. I boldly declared to the American people, “If there is an illness in your home, do you not need a doctor from outside? If your home catches on fire, do you not need fire fighters? God sent me to America as a doctor to heal this wounded land. He sent me to America as a fire fighter because this house is on fire.”
In the early 1970s, I called the two hundred and seventy million people of America to a great awakening. In my second Day of Hope speaking tour I visited twenty-one major cities throughout the United States. I warned the people that God was leaving America. I clearly stated that America had no hope if it did not end the racial strife between blacks and whites, reverse the moral degradation of its youth, stem the tide of self-centered individualism, solve the problem of communism, and bring reconciliation among religions. I said do not look to the federal government or academia for the answer. I called upon enlightened religious leaders to come together, surmount differences of religion and ethnicity, and combine their strength to address these issues. Now, thirty years later, what do we see in America?
Only God knows the sweat and tears I shed in America as I labored to establish world peace. You who are here today are the chosen fruit of that sweat and those tears. Yet, a thorny path still awaits this nation. I, Rev. Moon, am not an American. In accordance with God’s command, I have returned to Korea to lead His providence to restore my homeland to God.
The future of this nation is now in the hands of conscientious leaders such as you. Who else will save your nation? Where else except among the people gathered here can we find a politician who would willingly sacrifice him or herself for the future of this nation, or a professor who would spend sleepless nights anguishing over its problems? You are the only ones who can do it. You must stand up now and become the locomotive that leads America’s two hundred and ninety million people.
In this regard, I would like to convey a portion of a new understanding given by Heaven for this age, titled “The Harmonization of Values, and the Liberation and Complete Settlement of the Realm Transcending Religions and Nations from the Providential Perspective.” Please engrave this message in your hearts. Let its teachings give you direction and purpose in living for the sake of this nation and all human beings. This message is not only for you and for the people of America; it is the new decree of Heaven, the absolute, undeniable truth, to be declared to all 6.5 billion people of the world, and even throughout the spirit world.
A world created for mutual relationships
Dear guests, what was God’s purpose in creating human beings? The omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent God did not want to live in solitude. He wished for object partners whom He could love; these are human beings. God created the cosmos in stages to make an environment for human beings, and on that foundation He created human beings to receive His absolute love.
God created us to be His children. God’s desire for us is unlimited. Out of love, He desires that human beings be even better and greater than He is. Don’t all parents wish that their children would surpass them? This is the tradition of parental love with which God has blessed us.
God’s purpose of creation is to experience complete joy in seeing His children grow to maturity in a true family, marry under His Blessing, and multiply true children who will build a true, ideal heaven on earth and in heaven, in which to live eternally. They would be the fruits of God’s true love, true life and true lineage.
Does America today resemble God’s ideal of heaven on earth? Can you Americans say that you possess God’s true love? I am here to teach you the path to ownership of God’s true love.
We become owners of true love through practice. How do you practice true love? You do this by giving first, by investing completely for your beloved, and by sacrificing and forgetting what you have given.
In the beginning, God practiced true love. Before God created human beings, He established the standard of absolute faith, absolute love and absolute obedience and then invested Himself one hundred percent. These are absolute values of love. Thus, God established the principle that we create true relationships by practicing absolute values with true love.
You cannot become an owner of true love by yourself. You have to be in relationship with a counterpart. Thus, a man and woman can never become parents without having children, and it is in the parent-child relationship that we naturally practice absolute values and become owners of parental love.
This principle also applies to God. In order for God to stand as the owner of absolute love, He needs human beings as His true children. He practices the values of absolute love as He relates with us as His object partners of love. Ultimately, the relationship between God as the subject partner and human beings as object partners becomes absolute and creates a realm of unity and perfection.
This principle applies throughout the universe, although we have not understood it. Mistakenly, we have been taught that the strong always devour and exploit the weak. The theory of the survival of the fittest, the so-called law of the jungle, is rooted in the Hellenistic worldview. It is fundamentally wrong! Its proponents overlook absolute values. These values lead to the completion of every creature. They allow each to be the owner of love by living for the greater good.
The owner of love lives for the sake of his or her object partner. They invest true love and forget ever having invested. The object partner responds to that investment of love with complete giving in return. If true love were excluded from this equation, only the concept of struggle would remain. However existence and development come not from exploitation, they come from God’s Principle of Creation. He creates through a participatory process of giving and receiving rooted in love’s absolute values, in which complementary partners unite to create an environment of a greater harmony.
Of course, entities sacrifice for the sake of a greater good, but we must not interpret this as moral evil. It is an investment for the sake of mutual development. Is it evil for an individual to sacrifice for his or her family? Is it evil for a family to sacrifice for the nation, or a nation for the world? No, these noble acts display love’s absolute values. They constitute the path to fully realize true love. An owner of true love strives, first of all, to lilt up his or her object partner also as an owner of true love.
Satan’s self-centeredness and final struggle
Therefore, we have to rid ourselves completely of an individualistic mindset and the self-centered behavior that flows from it. This is the root of fallen nature and the cause of evil. This applies to individual selfish behavior of men and women and to collective selfish behavior of communities and nations.
Selfish individualism stands in direct contradiction to the spirit which blossoms when we live by true love’s absolute values. Instead of sacrificing and giving for the sake of others, self-centeredness makes demands upon others to sacrifice for me. It leads us to be concerned first with our own interests.
Through the Fall, Satan diabolically injected self-centeredness into the mind-body relationship. He planted this poison mushroom in the human heart. Although the embrace of self-centeredness may lead to a beautiful appearance, worldly fame and earthly comfort, it is a trap. To enter it is reckless, for it becomes an addiction and leads to hidden suffering that is difficult to escape.
Consider your physical body. Its design was present in your parents’ sperm and ovum. You were born from the love of your parents. On the physical level, your father’s sperm provided 0.001 percent of you and 99.999 percent came from your mother’s bone, blood and flesh. Your entire body is an extension of your mother. No one is an exception to this. In this respect, there is nothing that we can call our own and no way to justify self-centered individualism.
Everything exists in relation to its complement. When we say “front,” it presupposes a “back.” Above is meaningful only in relation to below. Left is a precondition for right. By the same logic, masculinity presupposes the existence of femininity. The moral lesson is that men are born for the sake of women, and women are born for the sake of men. Without men, there is no need for women. In the same way, without women, men cannot claim their existence has any value. In the end, nothing is born for its own sake. All beings exist and act for the sake of a partner. This means that God created all things to move toward the ideal of His kingdom through mutual relationships.
Consider a human being’s five senses. Do our eyes exist to gaze at themselves? No. Our eyes, nose, ears, mouth and hands were created to sense others. What force energizes our five senses to sustain our life and maintain our activities? It is the force that exalts the values of true love. Our five senses are tools essential for the practice of true love. Nothing comes into being for its own sake. A life for the sake of others, giving and sacrificing through love and perfecting the ownership of love through willing submission, is a life aligned with God’s ideal of creation.
Today I ask you to recognize that each of you was created for the sake of your partner. The law of nature calls you to live for the sake of your partner. Practice this way of life and you will come to embody absolute values. By this, you will become an owner of true love.
When God created the first human ancestors, Adam and Eve, in the Garden of Eden, He gave them reproductive organs. Why did He do that? It was so that they could grow to maturity, marry, beget children without sin, and establish the kingdom of heaven on earth. Thus they were to perfect God’s ideal of creation. Adam and Eve were to have accomplished this within their lifetime.
The problem was that Adam and Eve fell. They became people of false love, false life and false lineage. Instead of embodying and multiplying God’s love, God’s life and God’s lineage, Adam and Eve received Satan’s lineage.
They fell into disgrace and, what is worse, transmitted Satan’s lineage to their children. They lost love’s absolute values and became beings devoid of value. Hence, God had to watch them leave the Garden of Eden.
Adam was supposed to have become God’s body on earth. Eve was supposed to have become Adam’s bride and God’s bride as well. However their minds and bodies were corrupted. They lost their ideals and turned into enemies. How grieved God’s heart was as He viewed that tragic reality! The Fall was Adam and Eve’s grave. It robbed God of what belonged to Him. The Fall is the root of free sex and the origin of self-centered individualism.
The Fall is the root of free sex
Take a look around you. We see self-centered individualism of the worst kind. Over-consumption is nothing but rampant greed. Free sex is out of control among the young. In the East and West, people are throwing overboard the dignity and value of the family and pursuing physical pleasure. Millions fall into drug addiction, contract deadly diseases and meet tragic ends.
Our conscience abhors a decadent and meaningless life, so even as we pursue paths of extreme individualism and bodily pleasure, our conscience raises an alarm. Every person has a God-given original mind that longs to live in a universe, nation, neighborhood and family wrapped in the loving embrace of parents and siblings.
Still, we continue to walk contrary to the original mind’s desire, and eventually the conscience burns out. Faced with the inescapable conflict between the body’s selfish desires and the conscience, we deaden the pain with escapist drugs and, when driven to the edge, resort to suicide. Our lives testify to the truth of the proverb, “you shall reap what you sow.” What seed did Adam and Eve sow in the Garden of Eden? They planted the seed of free sex through an illicit sexual relationship. That is why it is written that after they fell, they hid their lower parts. It was certain that in the Last Days, the time of harvest, rampant free sex among young people would manifest throughout the world.
Through promiscuity, Satan is carrying out his last campaign to deter anyone from returning to God. Satan’s goal is to destroy human beings and perpetuate hell on earth.
When children are caught stealing cookies, their natural reaction is to hide their hands or mouth. If Adam and Eve had eaten literal fruit from a literal tree, they too would have hidden their hands and covered their mouths. So, I ask you, why did they hide their lower parts? We cannot deny that the human Fall was caused by an illicit sexual relationship between the first human ancestors. God could not do anything in the face of the tragedy of the Fall, because the creation of lineage was in the sphere of Adam and Eve’s responsibility.
Dear guests, do you know the dividing line between heaven and hell? Is it in the air? Is it in a church sanctuary? Is it in a national government? No, the dividing line between heaven and hell is found in your reproductive organs. This is where the greatest tragedy in human history occurred, which turned heaven and earth upside-down. If you use your reproductive organ recklessly and blindly, you will surely go to hell. On the other hand, if you use it in accordance with the standard of God’s absolute love, you will go to Heaven. Who can deny this? If you doubt it, I ask you to carefully read the Divine Principle, which contains the laws of Heaven that were revealed to me. If that does not satisfy your doubts, please pray about it sincerely. I am sure that God will answer your prayer.
Hundreds of thousands of young people throughout the world stopped indulging in free sex after accepting the teachings of the Rev. Moon. The message of the pure love movement, which advocates absolute sex, is now spreading like wildfire. While free sex is based upon false love and motivated by selfish desires that come from Satan, absolute sex is the expression of absolute love centered on God. Literature, films and the media have been highlighting and fanning the flames of free sex. Now, leaders of all spheres of life, including politicians, business people, writers, journalists and religious leaders, must stand as one to rid the culture of its obsession with free sex. This disease cripples individuals, families and nations.
We must bear in mind the importance of Adam’s family, the ancestors of humanity. It was Adam’s family that destroyed the path to true love and world peace. Yet Adam’s family also had the potential to establish the absolute values of true love and lay the cornerstone of world peace. They only had to maintain pure love and receive God’s Holy Marriage Blessing.
Ten years ago I brought to an end the Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity and raised the banner of the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification because the time had come to call people of all faiths to receive the Holy Blessing. How can we transform this world of conflict and war into a world of harmony and unity? The only way is by practicing true love and establishing love’s absolute values as a global ethic. These eternal, unchanging, unique and absolute values are the attributes of God, the owner of true love. We must inherit them as our own and live accordingly.
The preciousness of the family and true love
Dear guests, why is the family a good thing? A good family, overflowing with the parents’ love, is the place where we can express our original freedom. It doesn’t matter whether a family is rich or poor; if true love is at the core, their bond of heart is liberating. That family can liberate humankind and even liberate God.
Freedom cannot exist without true love. If you visit someone as a guest, you feel reserved and inhibited. This is because initially you may lack a deep bond of true love with that household. In other words, because your love cannot spread in all directions, you feel awkward. However, after you visit that home many times and your bond of love with that family grows, you lose your inhibitions and begin to relate freely.
In God’s blueprint for the family, the parents embody the highest and greatest value. Parents are the initiators and the center of eternal true love. No bond is closer than the life-long relationship between parent and child. When a child is born, the first person they relate to is their mother. Mother and baby share indescribable joy. When the child is happy, the parents share that happiness. When the child is sorrowful, the parents are the first to shed tears of sorrow. Thus God intends parents to be the beginning and the end of their children’s joy. For this reason, we feel sympathetic and compassionate toward children who lose their parents.
A loving couple, a husband and wife, is the second most valuable existence in the family. A true husband and wife give and receive unconditional love. As newly-weds, their love does not begin as absolute, eternal love. However as their relationship matures, their love becomes an absolute bond, resembling God’s attributes of absoluteness and eternity. Then their true love will bring happiness and joy to the family.
Nonetheless, even when a husband and wife enjoy the most ideal relationship, if it goes no further than the couple, it will not bring forth the absolute value of eternal happiness and joy. Couples need to have children. Imagine what would happen if all couples decided not to have children, saying that they would rather just enjoy their own happiness? Humankind would be extinct in one hundred years or less.
When a husband and wife receive love from their children, they rise to the position of parents. Only then can they be called a true couple. Therefore, in God’s blueprint for the family, the third most important value is the true love of children for their parents. Children are to love and serve their parents with a bright and positive attitude, even as they seek to fulfill their goals and create a hopeful future for themselves. Their true love for their parents is original love. It adds pure and genuine value and expands the family’s field of happiness. This is God’s design for the family. It extends for three generations, completely endowed with love: the sacrificial love of parents for their children, the mutual love between husband and wife, and the filial love of children for their parents. Anywhere in the world, families that manifest this pattern will become the paramount, ideal, true families.
Who does the world consider to be a happy person? What is the basis of happiness? Do power and authority bring happiness? Does having tremendous wealth bring happiness? Does happiness come from possessing a unique talent? Does happiness come by becoming a world-renowned scholar or gaining a coveted position? None of these guarantee happiness. Nothing external can be the basis of eternal happiness. Sooner or later, the happiness it brings will fade and the person will renew their search for happiness. In the end, a person finds genuine happiness in a family that has loving parents, a couple bonded in true love, and children who are devoted and faithful to their parents.
Dear guests, what kind of place is heaven? According to the principle by which God created the universe, heaven is completed first on earth. Men and women are created to live in heaven while on earth in their physical bodies. Then, when they naturally discard the flesh, they will make the transition to heaven in the spirit world where they will live for eternity. Our task, then, is to build the kingdom of heaven on earth.
Then what would the kingdom of heaven on earth look like? The answer is near at hand. The kingdom of heaven has the same form as God’s design for the family. In an original family there are parents of the original standard, husband and wife of the original standard, children of the original standard, and siblings of the original standard.
If the members of a family unite in true love, they automatically create harmony and unity. In this way, true love, true life and true lineage are passed on through the generations. The grandparents convey the tradition of true love to the parents. The parents bequeath the same life of true love to their children. In their sibling relationships, the children take after their grandparents and parents by living for the sake of others and forming original relationships of true love.
When this happens, that family becomes a heavenly family. Such a family may be called an original family or a true family. It is a family that fulfills God’s purpose and ideal. Unfortunately, if even one of these components is missing, it is impossible to create an original family that can be a unit of the heavenly kingdom.
In an original family, love for one’s parents would be stronger than the love between husband and wife, and love for one’s grandparents would be stronger than the love for one’s parents. This sets up the tradition and ethics of true love.
The original family is the model of the kingdom of heaven. The parents are analogous to the leader of a nation; the children correspond to the citizens of a nation, and the family’s house and property correspond to the land of that nation. When a nation’s governance and social life reflect the values of true love in the original family, that nation takes the form of the kingdom of heaven.
Individual perfection begins with unity of mind and body
Thus, the starting point of the kingdom of heaven lies not in the individual or in the nation, but in the family. Once we enter heaven and are surrounded by our beloved family, we will not want to leave. We can see each other hundreds and thousands of times and we will still want to see each other again and again. This is our original homeland, for which everyone longs.
Yet, heaven is not created in an instant. Just because the age has changed and heavenly fortune is with us does not mean that heaven will fall from the sky and appear before our eyes. We first must become people of character who can create heavenly families. In other words, we have to begin with individual maturity.
The path to becoming people of character, to achieving individual maturity, lies in perfecting the harmony and oneness between mind and body. Originally, God created us to live without any inner conflict. The mind is supposed to guide the body and the body act in absolute obedience to the mind. Mind and body were created to function with this perfect harmony. However, as a result of the Fall of the first ancestors, Adam and Eve, all human beings inherited fallen nature. Humankind has lived in suffering because of the unavoidable conflict between mind and body that has its roots in the Fall.
No one in history has ever achieved mind-body unity during his or her life on earth. Despite the steady progress of God’s providence of restoration and His determination to save us, not a single person has been liberated from the struggle between the mind and body and achieved individual maturity. Although countless monks and hermits have followed the arduous path of asceticism, living in caves deep in the mountains and devoting their entire lives to meditation and prayer, not one has ever triumphed in that struggle. No one has known the method to win this unrelenting, internal war. The reason that even enlightened sages have been unable to end the mind-body struggle is simple. Self-discipline by itself is not enough. One needs to connect with the providence of Heaven, receive the call, complete the providence of restoration that God has guided for thousands of years, and gain victory in a position publicly recognized by heaven and earth.
Two thousand years ago, Jesus came to the earth as Savior, Messiah and True Parent. As God’s only begotten Son, Jesus had the mission to complete the providence of Heaven and end forever the struggle between the mind and body. Nonetheless, when Jesus died on the cross due to the inability of crucial religious and political leaders to recognize him, he lost the position from which he could bring an end to the struggle between mind and body. Jesus took every opportunity to call people to love their enemies, yet his teachings could not bring an end to the struggle between mind and body.
Rev. Moon has revealed the truth of Heaven
Heaven can wait no longer. On the foundation of my victory, Heaven is now revealing the truth. I have completed the mission of the Lord of the Second Advent, Savior and True Parent. Now I am revealing this truth, bringing to a conclusion the final stage of the providence for humankind’s salvation. The absolute values of true love that I am teaching you today will bring a revolution of character for all people. Those who follow my teachings will achieve individual maturity and participate in the construction of the ideal of Heaven on earth.
Dear guests, the only way to bring harmony and unity between mind and body is to live by the absolute values of true love. Live for the sake of others. Invest yourself with true love and forget what you have invested. Practice this, and you will reach maturity as the owner of love. You will gain the authority of a subject partner in relating to others, and they will happily respond to you. Unity of mind and body is impossible unless you practice love’s absolute values, where you give yourself for the sake of others completely. Please discard self-centeredness. It is the root of fallen nature.
Ultimately, the realization of the kingdom of heaven on earth depends upon the presence of original, true families. Individuals who have achieved harmony and unity between the mind and body create such families. They will form a society, nation and world characterized by interdependence, mutual prosperity and universally shared values, in which people live in harmony focused on the greater good.
Unity between mind and body means to live in absolute obedience to the voice of the conscience. The conscience is the root of the mind. You must listen to your conscience that arises from within your mind, and be able to modify your course of action at anytime, anywhere, while remaining as clear as crystal. This is a necessary condition for becoming a true parent, a true teacher and a true leader.
Your conscience tells you to live for others according to the Principle. No matter how strong your body’s desire is, if you intentionally increase the force of your conscience beyond the force of your body, your body will follow it. If you cannot, you had better decrease your body’s force through fasting and asceticism. If clear water continually flows into a muddy pond, eventually the pond will become clear.
Dear guests, don’t give your conscience any more grief. Don’t disobey its call. Disobeying the voice of your conscience only brings sorrow to your heart. It brings sorrow to your parents, to your teachers, and even to God.
Instead, cultivate a joyful mind. Although you may be lonely, and appear miserable in the eyes of the world, create an unbreakable bond with your mind and try to be your mind’s best friend. Within the harmony and unity of your mind and body, you will discover a world where all of heaven and earth are spread out before your eyes. In the state of mind-body unity, your conscience and body enter a realm of resonance. Referring to this dimension of the mind, the Buddha said, “Throughout heaven and earth, I am my own lord.” Ask yourself if God is dwelling in you, and you will hear the answer. You will reach a state in harmony with nature, able to communicate freely with animals and plants. You will be able to converse freely with the beings of the spirit world. This will thoroughly prepare you for eternal life.
By attaining this unity of mind and body, and establishing the absolute values of true love in relating with your reciprocal partners, you will participate in establishing the peace kingdom on the levels of the individual, family, nation and world. This is God’s most earnest desire.
Absolute faith, absolute love and absolute obedience
Nonetheless, in order to attain this state of perfection, as descendants of the Fall, we first need to shed our fallen nature. How can we do this?
First, resemble God. When God created all the creatures in the universe, He practiced absolute faith, absolute love and absolute obedience. Didn’t He believe and act in accordance with the absolute standard of the Principle according to the order of creation that He had established? He also planted within each of us the absolute standard of love.
In your life, too, if you adhere to and practice these three major principles: absolute faith, absolute love and absolute obedience, your happiness is guaranteed. Your good ancestors, and even the great religious leaders in the heavenly world, will assemble to guide your way. See what happens when you practice an absolute standard of faith, love and obedience for the sake of your parents, your spouse, and your brothers and sisters. Heaven will protect you to the same absolute degree. You will feel no attraction to selfish individualism or unprincipled gratification.
The second part of shedding the fallen nature comes from the fact that, by no fault of our own, we are descendants of the Fall and have inherited fallen nature from birth. Therefore, it is the urgent task of each of us to bring about three great revolutions in our individual lives. I refer to the revolution of atonement, the revolution of conscience, and the revolution of heart.
The revolution of atonement means that you offer up everything. By this offering you regain your rights of internal and external ownership and establish a standard that transcends the realm where Satan lays claim. You start with a revolution in your own life by boldly shaking off all the old habits and ways of thinking that you acquired during the age when we lived under Satan’s rule, called the age before the coming of Heaven. You make that foundation in order to practice the absolute standard of true love, which is the standard for life in the age after the coming of Heaven, and live eternally as God’s true children.
In addition, you go through a revolutionary course and offer to Heaven all your property, which means your right of external ownership. Then, once you have separated from Satan by cutting off all ties to Satan’s world, you will inherit Heaven’s blessings. Your assets now are Heaven’s sanctified assets, over which Satan can never again claim ownership.
Next is the revolution of conscience. It is an internal revolution that we carry out by practicing absolute obedience to the voice of our conscience. I am sure you cannot deny that you still harbor the unending struggle between the commands of your conscience, which pursues what is good, and the inclinations of your physical mind, which follows the desires of your physical body. To bring this shameful internal conflict to an end, we need to understand the function of the conscience. The conscience knows everything about you, your every move and your every thought. It knows them before your teacher does. It knows them before your parents do. It knows them before God does.
What happens when you go against the commands of your conscience? You will be attacked by pangs of conscience. Dust will gather, decay set in, and wounds appear on your soul. You can never erase these wounds. They are fearful baggage that you carry with you when you go to the spirit world. Therefore, work in a revolutionary way to suppress your physical mind and accept the guidance of your conscience. Then you will become a clear, unblemished and clean soul that is ready for the day you make your way into the presence of God.
Finally, there comes the revolution of heart. I have said that God created human beings as His children. What, then, is the connection that binds each of us to God? It is the love and heart between parent and child. If there is no communication of heart between parent and child, how can they maintain a relationship of love and respect? Yet human beings, having lived for thousands of years under the influence of the fallen realm, are still slaves in our hearts to false love rooted in false lineage received through false parents. To escape from this yoke, constantly pursue a life of true love, practicing forgiveness and always giving to others. Through this process, we return to the realm of God’s ownership based on heart.
If your heartstrings are tied to selfish, individualistic inclinations, or are in pursuit of vanity in Satan’s world, you will end up on a path of hopelessness and grief. On the other hand, if you live for the sake of others, always constructive, always seeking to be the first to yield and the first to give, your heart will be tied to the heart of God eternally.
In sum, you have to completely cut your ties with the false parent, receive the Holy Marriage Blessing from the True Parents, who have appeared in this world as the substantiations of the invisible God, and secure Heavens true lineage.
The third part of shedding fallen nature is to scrutinize your life every moment of every day. I am sure you all had experiences in school, looking at a problem on a test and not knowing whether a particular answer was right or wrong. The same is true with your overall life. I am asking you to analyze and scrutinize the innumerable different situations in daily life each moment, and determine whether you are right or wrong. In the same way Korean teachers grade tests, give yourself an O if you are right, or an X if you are wrong.
When you meet a situation and act in an affirmative and hopeful way, you get an O. By this action you set a vertical axis up to heaven and you lived as at “high-noon,” without casting a shadow. Your life undoubtedly had such depth and breadth that you forgave and embraced an enemy in the spirit of true love.
When you act shamefully, however, give yourself an X. Most likely your heart was filled with negative emotions such as insecurity, irritation, bitterness or envy. Your mind and thoughts were narrow and intolerant, and you were selfish and individualistic to the point that you did not see what was happening to others around you.
I believe that your choice could not be clearer. Every moment of your lives deserves an O. You must be like an O, perfectly round and not distorted in any way. You must come to have the form of an O, in balance with the center no matter where you are. Please pursue the true O, so that you can stand in the brightly burning sunlight and not be ashamed, face the vast and infinite universe with honor, and stand before all of creation having nothing to hide.
An O symbolizes harmony, unity and peace. An X symbolizes death, while an O symbolizes love and life. When your mind and body become completely one, you will take the shape of an O. However when your mind and body are in chaos as a result of conflict, your appearance will take the shape of an X.
Live a life without regret
Ladies and gentlemen, today humanity has entered the Era after the Coming of Heaven. The realm of true liberation and complete freedom stands before us. This is an event both unprecedented and unrepeatable. Shall we return gratitude and glory to God and True Parents for making this day possible?
The time has come for humanity to boldly break out of the fallen realm, covered as it is with falsehood and blood as a result of Adam and Eve’s transgression. Let us rise up with extraordinary determination in response to Heaven’s call!
Please give careful thought to the reasons you are here today. Is it simply because you received an invitation from the sponsors and thought you would like to attend a banquet? Whether you desired it or not, you have been called by Heaven. This is the same as it was for me when I suddenly received Heaven’s call. As a young man of sixteen, I began an eighty-year course of blood, sweat and tears for the sake of bringing true liberation and complete freedom to God. For the sake of releasing humanity from Satan’s yoke, you also must go forward and offer your life to accomplish God’s exalted will for the liberation and complete establishment of a world transcending religions and nations.
Ladies and gentlemen, heavenly fortune is now shining upon this world. It is the sun that rises powerfully in the eastern sky. The darkness that covered this earth for tens of thousands of years is dispelled. The heavenly decree has already taken root in your heart. It is the path and a destiny that you cannot avoid. Be strong and rise up. The time has come to truly experience the meaning of Jesus’ teaching that whoever wants to find their life will lose it, yet whoever is willing to lose their life for his sake will find it. All of us without exception, including myself, are bound to go to the spirit world someday. I sincerely ask you to engrave tonight’s message on your heart, so that from this time forth you will live a life that will not leave you with any regrets.
This message from Heaven that I have given you tonight is my last message to God’s chosen nation, America. I pray that God’s blessings be upon you, your family and this nation of America for all of eternity.
Thank you.