Sun Myung Moon
January 29, 2001
Banquet to celebrate True Parents' Birthday and the closing of the World Culture and Sports Festival 2001
The New York Hilton, New York, USA
Photo date and location unknown
Honorable former and present heads of state, distinguished religious leaders and representatives of world leaders:
I applaud the hard work you have invested to make this Fifth World Culture and Sports Festival shine more brightly than any of its predecessors. I am also grateful that you have shown appreciation for my work and vision, and that you have promised to give constant support for it in the coming days. In return, this evening I would like to give you a precious gift of words.
I will speak from the truth I have found through immense suffering on a journey that began in my youth. This journey has brought me to the boundless world of heaven. Tonight I will speak about the principles of the spirit world that we enter after death, a world no one can ignore. I would also like to introduce some aspects of life in the kingdom of heaven, the realm everyone yearns to enter.
As a result of the Fall, our first ancestors could not marry with God's Blessing. While they were still growing up, they fell by disobeying God and committing adultery with Satan. Thus, our problem lies in the fact that our original ancestors inherited Satan's bloodline.
According to the Principle of Creation, we are to enter the kingdom of heaven after living our life in the kingdom of God on earth. We are to live the kingdom life on earth by establishing the unity of mind and body, the unity of husband and wife, and the unity of parents and children. By inheriting God's lineage, we were supposed to connect this directly to the spirit world. How does this happen?
The very moment a true bridegroom makes love with his true bride for the first time is the moment they achieve completion as husband and wife. The palace of love on earth, that is, the center of heaven and earth, is opened in that first moment of making love. Through this love, the original palace of love is created for the first time. The life and lineage of humanity begin from that point of love. From the same point, a nation is born. The veritable kingdom of God in heaven and on earth also begins with the opening of that door of first love.
When a man and a woman become one through love and create children, they substantiate the invisible God in visible form. Love is the power that can combine and commingle lineages. Then what is the axis for this mixing of lineages? It is the reproductive organs of the husband and wife, which meet when the two of them make love for the first time. That is a power station, the very dynamo that generates the power of true love, the power of true life, the power of true lineage, the power for the kingdom of God on earth which comes through true families, and the power for the kingdom of God in heaven. Thus, the wedding of Adam and Eve, who were in the position of God's substantial object partners, was to have been God's wedding. They would have brought God's liberation and freedom, and God Himself would have sung and danced.
Knowing this will fill us with awe over the holiness of first love. If first love is corrupted, we destroy the palace of love, the palace of life, the palace of lineage and everything that was to have blossomed forth from them. That is the dreadful reality of the Fall. Through it, we lost the kingdom of God in heaven and on earth. Heaven and earth turned into hell. Throughout history, people have referred to the sexual organs with the worst profanities and curses, because it was they that corrupted heaven and earth. God's ideal of love was to have settled perfectly among His children on earth, beginning at the place of first love, at the joining of the man's sexual organ and the woman's sexual organ. That point, centering on conjugal love, establishes them as God's perfected object partner. That point is the nucleus of the universe. So if the axis connecting God with the sexual organs of man and woman is broken, the entire universe shatters.
The act of love between a man and woman is the original fountainhead of love. It is the original palace of love, the original palace of life and the original palace of lineage. Our longing for freedom and happiness springs from there. What's more, all individuals, families, tribes and peoples originate from there. The foundation for peace and the kingdom of God in heaven and on earth is rooted in love. Man and woman blend completely through the union of their sexual organs. However, this love relationship can produce the fruit of either good or evil. We need to recognize the infinite value of our sexual organs. The way of Heaven teaches us that whether we are a man or a woman, we must never misuse them.
Incited by Satan's false love, Adam and Eve committed adultery, the gravest and most self-centered misuse of love, and became a false couple. As false parents, they formed a false family and transmitted sin to their children. The providence of salvation is a providence of restoration. We have to root out Adam and Eve's very mistake of misusing love and replace false love with true love. Through God's true love, the re-created Adam and Eve will take the True Parents' position and engraft humanity to themselves. A man and woman perfected through true love shall establish a true family with God's Blessing.
We were created to build an ideal family and perfect our spirit while living on earth, and then enter heaven in the spirit world. Our original hometown is the kingdom of God in heaven, where our spirit lives in God's love for eternity. The Fall, however, closed our spiritual senses. This is why we do not know clearly about our spirit self or about heaven, the spirit world. Unlike animals, we possess a spirit self. We should know about the world of heaven that we inevitably will enter.
The key to entering the heavenly world is the family, which is the school or the training center in which we can perfect our heart. Family life guides us to master ourselves for the sake of sharing love with others. Thus, the family is the base upon which we can build the kingdom of God. The kingdom of heaven is where we are intoxicated in the service of God, our King and Lord. We can enter there only as families.
The ultimate ideal of all people is to become object partners of God's true love and live with God. To ascend to a higher place in heaven, you need to live as God lives, investing your life for the sake of others. People who put their family ahead of themselves, their tribe ahead of their family, their nation ahead of their tribe, the world ahead of their nation, and heaven and earth ahead of the world, all for the sake of God, are the closest to God. They will stand as the object partners of God's true love.
God, the Creator of the universe, has been sacrificing Himself for the sake of the universe more than anyone. Thus, to encounter Him and live with Him, we need training through a life of true love, a life lived for the sake of others. Although God is the king of knowledge, the king of power and the king of wealth, He does not ask us to bring Him these things. God is waiting for the ones who live for the sake of others in the spirit of true love here on earth.
Distinguished world leaders, many people rattle off words about God. They call Him absolute, omnipotent and glorious. Nonetheless, through my lifelong search for truth, I have found all this to be far off the mark. God lost His loving children to Satan's prison as a result of the Fall of the first ancestors. If your children are imprisoned, can you live in glory? Actually, God's heart is in the deepest pain. What's more, God had to give Satan the beautiful creation that He had reserved for His children.
From the moment He lost His object partners of love, the God of true love became the God of loneliness. He was never in the position to fully exercise His power as the Lord of the universe. He never had the chance to fully display His authority as the Creator of all things. Meanwhile, fallen people often boasted over nothing. Even though God is the owner of all that has breath, He was never able to reveal His pride. Being the author of the principles that guide the universe, how can God move freely in the fallen world, the world outside His principles? Human beings, living with all degrees of distrust and disobedience, even ignore God and mock Him as nonexistent and dead. God has endured this long history with a heart of agony. His wait has truly seemed endless.
This tragedy transpired because while Adam and Eve were still growing up they fell, and so became false parents. Out of profound respect for their freedom and responsibility, God did not intervene directly to rectify their mistake. For that reason, we find in history that Christ appeared as the second Adam, and returned as the third Adam, in order to indemnify the mistake of the first Adam and perfect the ideal of True Parents. In this way, everything will be restored. Until then, God waits anxiously. This is the real story behind history: it is the providence of restoration to liberate God's aching heart.
I have done my absolute best to fulfill the mission of True Parents. I paid no attention whatever to my own welfare or status. My goal was never to build a church. I had only one goal: to walk all the way to liberate God's heart from pain and help Him realize His deepest desire. In other words, I invested myself totally to set God free from His agony, to establish Him as truly the Lord of the universe, and to set the foundation for humanity to serve Him as the King of the cosmos.
Do you think this task has been easy? I had to bring Satan to surrender both in heaven and on earth. I had to tear down all the walls of division and even bring hell to an end. We cannot liberate God's heart through true love unless we prepare all people on earth and in the spirit world to receive God's Blessing in freedom. Satan had to recognize this work officially, and it had to accord with the laws of the universe. Satan was enjoying his powerful rule over the nations of the world. Therefore we were challenged to set conditions that achieved victories transcending nations and the world itself.
Dear world leaders, this is a day to rejoice. I have set these conditions. On the thirteenth day of January of this year, in Korea, I held the Coronation Ceremony for the Kingship of God. This was the greatest day of celebration in all human history. We liberated God's heart for the first time. He could start His new history based on the power of true love. This is the dawn of the new age in which humanity in heaven and on earth can gratefully attend the liberated God. From now on, we will easily witness the living God and often notice helping hands from the spirit world.
I urge you to study about the spirit world with greater attentiveness and to receive the Blessing from God so you can build a true family. I also encourage you to prepare for your eternal life by living altruistically. The time has come when people who work hard for goodness will feel the hand of heavenly fortune, to which the limited power of human beings cannot compare. Those who live the life of a dutiful child, a patriot, a saint and a divine son or daughter before the living God, with a humble and self-effacing attitude, will be the most fortunate. At this advent of the era of God's kingship, I pray that you will promote His kingship. May we work in partnership to build the world of heart and culture that will transcend all nations.
May God's blessing be with you always!