Sun Myung Moon
February 25, 2001
“We Will Stand!” fifty-state speaking tour in the United States
Garden of Prayer Cathedral, New York, USA
Photo date and location unknown
Respected and distinguished guests from home and abroad:
I would like to express my gratitude to you, the members of the clergy and leaders from all walks of life, who, despite your busy schedules, have convened here today to hear my message. I would like to first return all glory and thanks to God for His constant presence and protection.
Now is the time to complete Heaven’s providence
During the course of my life, I have totally committed myself to the salvation of humankind centered on God’s Will. As a result, I came to realize that God is not sitting on a throne of glory and honor but is a God of agony, grief and lamentation, endeavoring to save His children, who are suffering in hell as a result of the human Fall. Ever since I understood the Will of God and His heart, I have lived my life with single-minded devotion to accomplish His Will, paying no heed to time or space and forgetting everything else.
When I reflect upon the eighty years of my life filled with misunderstanding and persecution, it is just amazing that I can be with you today. I believe it is entirely thanks to God. On this day of such great significance, in order to understand human history and the world from the perspective of God’s providence, I would like to speak on the topic, “The Path for America and Humanity in the New Millennium.”
When viewing human history as God’s providence of salvation, the Last Days is a turning point when the evil history of Satan concludes and God’s good sovereignty begins. Accordingly, the Last Days is the time when everything is brought to fulfillment. Thus, in the Last Days individual perfection is to be realized, family perfection is to be realized, and the perfection of a people, of a nation, of the world and finally the complete perfection of the cosmos are to be realized.
In past ages, whenever the time of the Last Days was heralded in God’s providence, God led humanity to a God-centered ideology. However, we failed to fulfill our responsibility to stand in the position of goodness and eradicate evil history. Nevertheless, God is eternal, unchanging, absolute and unique, and God’s Will is also eternal, unchanging and absolute. Therefore, through the true individual, true family, true society, true nation, true world and true sovereignty, God will surely build the world in which He can live, freely traveling and acting both in heaven and on earth.
Then what is the original world for which God is seeking? It is a world that is centered on the True Parents. However, from the very beginning, due to the Fall of humankind, we lost the True Parents of humanity and the true world. Therefore, nothing in the world, not the land where we are living, human ideology or anything else, can connect us directly to the True Parents.
Who will take responsibility for this world?
We ourselves must first be restored to trueness. By so doing, when true parents, true husband and wife, true children, true people, the true creation, the true sovereignty and the true cosmos are born and can communicate with God in heart, the evil world will eventually come to an end. The Last Days are the time when this ideal will be realized. It is the time when the Second Advent will occur. Accordingly, in the Last Days there will be no catastrophic physical phenomena such as a judgment by fire, the destruction of the earth or people levitating into the air. Instead, it is a time when the history of evil that has been entangled with countless tragedies will be untangled.
Thus, it is the time when all these levels that have lost their vertical connection with God will be restored. We have been longing for such a day, and that is the final destination at which we all must arrive.
However, the individual, the family and the nation are estranged. Moreover, all kinds of problems such as air pollution, food shortage, religious struggles and racial conflicts are constantly arising throughout the world, causing disputes and even wars. Who then is going to take responsibility for this world? This is a serious question. Communist countries in the past could not transcend nationalism. Nor can today’s superpower nation, America, transcend the idea of Americanizing the world. When a nation places its self-interest first, it will not be able to lead the world. Therefore, we need a people or a nation willing to sacrifice for a higher purpose and to strive to build or become an ideal nation that embraces the entire world.
With this in mind, I came to this country, the United States of America, in response to the call of God. I have been investing my utmost effort to revive America, by educating the youth of a country faced with a moral crisis and declining Christianity.
The core teachings of True Parents
You might be curious about what I am teaching young people. It is actually simple. First, it is to live for the sake of others. More specifically, my teaching is that the individual is to live for the family, the family for the society, the society for a people, a people for a nation, a nation for the world and the world for God. If we do this, God will be with us.
In the family, parents need to live for their children, children for their parents, the husband for his wife and the wife for her husband. Anyone who lives for others more than for his or her own self will become a central person on the side of goodness.
Second, I am teaching people to “love your enemy.” God Himself sacrificed Jesus, His only begotten Son, for our salvation. Since God did this in order to save the children of His enemy Satan, the devil had no power to exercise any authority before God. Even Satan has no choice but to surrender voluntarily before the God who loves Satan’s children more than His own. Satan’s pattern has always been to strike first, only to lose in the end, and God’s strategy has been to win in the end by taking the first blow and initial loss. Living with faith in such a heavenly law is the very secret explaining how I could lay my foundation, dispatching missionaries to 185 nations throughout the world despite fierce persecution and misunderstanding.
Even when studying the history of Christian missionary activities, we discover that theirs was a path of persecution and martyrdom, beset by enemies. On such a way, during the course of a two-thousand-year history, this trail of blood became the fertilizer of the soil in which a powerful democracy could develop. Today, however, Christianity, which once was the source of power and strength for democracy, is facing a crisis. Christian nations have lost the right direction; they deny God, Jesus and God’s providence. Now we even hear voices asserting, “God is dead” or “God does not exist.” Hearing them, how do you think God feels? His heart has been searching for His children, sacrificing everything He has, with hope that He could see a great day, and hoping it would be today.
God’s providence of salvation and Messianism
Ladies and gentlemen, for whom has God been sacrificing Himself? It is not for America, nor is it for Christianity. It is for each of us -- in other words, for you and me as individuals. Likewise, the reason Jesus was crucified was not to save the Messiah, himself; it was to save each one of us, you and me. Since the Fall began on the individual level, salvation must also begin on the individual level.
Accordingly, a representative of all human beings has to come and proclaim, “I will take full responsibility as a representative of all people. I will pay off the debt that humanity has incurred during the entire course of history and I will even become a person to whom God feels indebted.” Without such a determination, restoration is impossible. Our approach to salvation cannot be conceptual or theoretical. Unless we are willing to experience miseries on behalf of God more than anyone who is undergoing suffering in the world, we cannot reach God’s heart.
Have you ever prayed in desperation for the six billion people of the world, with a feeling that your own children are dying? How much of your heart have you invested to save a family, a tribe, a people, a nation and the world, with a willingness to sacrifice yourself for them? Few people are confident to say they’ve prayed and invested like this. However, the Lord of the Second Advent comes to the world to live according to this absolute standard of investment as the representative of all humanity.
God, who has been leading the providence of salvation, found Abraham two thousand years after the Fall of the first human ancestors. God anointed his descendants as the chosen people, Israel, and multiplied them on every level, as a new family, a new tribe and a new people. Based on Abraham’s victorious foundation, the Israelites were called as the chosen people to receive the Messiah. They became the central people to receive the substantial Messiah who was to come in the future.
If you examine the core of God’s providence of salvation, you can understand that the standard and ideology that the first human ancestors Adam and Eve were to have reached and fulfilled needs to be restored. From this comes the philosophy of the Messiah. In it, the believers stand in the position of the bride.
Therefore, the ultimate purpose of Christianity is not to build the kingdom of Christianity or the world of Christianity. Its most important mission is to prepare to become a bride qualified to receive the bridegroom. The people of Israel, because of Jesus’ Crucifixion, could not carry out and pass on this tradition. Although called by God as the First Israel, they fled their responsibility. Christianity, called as the Second Israel, arose to carry out the mission instead. God has led the six-thousand-year providence centered on this one purpose, so Christianity became the bride prepared to receive the bridegroom. We are now in the final stage of the providence.
Messianism is the restoration of True Parents for world salvation
Then what is the core of the messianic teaching? It is a teaching to save the world; it is a teaching that can unify the world and build ideal families, and its main purpose is to restore the position of the True Parents that was lost by the Fall of the first human ancestors.
By examining the teaching of the Old and New Testaments, one can understand that the Messiah comes with the authority of the Father, meets a substantial bride who represents the power of the Holy Spirit, and then restores the position of the True Parents. The appearance of the bride and bridegroom at the marriage supper of the Lamb prophesied in the Book of Revelation refers to the process of becoming the True Parents by first becoming a true husband and wife.
Due to the false parents who were influenced by Satan, God lost the ideal family of Adam. God wanted a true family, a true tribe and a true nation, but all these were lost. This is why today He has again sent the Messiah to the earth in order to regain what had been lost. This is God’s providence.
Jesus came with this same mission. However, when he lost his people and nation due to their faithlessness, he offered his life for the sake of the world and the kingdom God wished to build. The path of Jesus suffering on the cross was the same path of tribulation that God Himself walked. In such a situation of trial and tribulation, Jesus desperately prayed, “Father, forgive them for they do not know what they are doing.” Even at the threshold of death, he forgave Rome and the group of people who opposed him, waiting for victory in the future. Therefore, the life of Jesus did not end at the age of thirtythree. With God’s help, Christianity inherited his spirit and became one of the four great worldwide religions in human history.
The development of human civilization and where it bears fruit
Ladies and gentlemen, although America is recognized as the sole world superpower, if it does not stand straight on the providential line of God, it will not continue to prosper. Let us look at the history of civilization.
Ancient civilizations were born mainly in the tropics and subtropics. Examples include the civilizations of the Mayas, Incas, Egypt, Mesopotamia, India and China. Had we not fallen, civilization would have begun in the warm zone, corresponding to spring, and then moved to the cool zone, corresponding to autumn. The cool-zone civilization is centered today on the free world and Western civilization. In general, the developed countries of the West, nations such as the United States, England, Germany and others, are above the twenty-third parallel north.
With the end of the cool-zone civilization corresponding to autumn, the cold-zone civilization analogous to winter comes for a short time. This is the appearance of communism. Many intellectuals may think that the Cold War system disappeared after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, but materialism and atheism still prevail throughout the world. They manifest in two major ideologies, democracy and communism, both of which are gradually losing power.
God’s ideal of creation was to have begun in the warm zone akin to spring, but due to the Fall of the original human ancestors, human civilization started in the tropical zone. Now, however, the civilization of the true spring that we have been seeking from time immemorial will appear, overcoming the crisis of tropical-zone civilization and the threats of cold-zone civilization.
Who will be able to melt the block of ice frozen in the heart of God? And how will it be melted? It will not be by power, money, science or knowledge. As we can see from the movement of civilizations to different parts of the globe, centering on rivers and coastlines, the center of civilization is not fixed. Human civilization began to develop around the Tigris, Euphrates and Nile Rivers. The center of human civilization then shifted to the Mediterranean, especially focusing upon Greece, Rome, Spain and Portugal. Then it moved to the Atlantic sphere, focusing upon Britain and the United States. Ultimately it has borne fruit in the Pacific civilization of the United States, Japan and Korea.
Thus, viewed from the perspective of the history of cultures, the Korean Peninsula occupies a most important position. To the north of Korea lie points that link it with the cold-region civilization of Russia and China. To the south and east He points that link Korea with the cool-region civilization of the United States and Japan.
Thus, it is consistent with the providential viewpoint that Korea would give rise to a warm-region civilization representing the spring season of world history and having the capability to encompass the cold- and cool-region civilizations. From this perspective, solving the North-South problem and the East- West problem can only be described as the culmination of God’s providence. Rev. Moon has come from Korea to dedicate his life to this purpose. In fact, throughout my life I have transcended race, ideology and national boundaries to pursue a movement for one world under God. It is because of God’s providence that I have traveled this path. This is the principle of providential history, not a theory that I artificially devised.
The mission and responsibility of religious leaders
I was enlightened regarding the Will of Heaven, and rather than letting this remain only in my heart, I have worked to bring God’s vision to reality. There is nowhere in the world I have not been active. I have inspired evangelical and oceanic enterprises in Alaska, the countries of the former Soviet Union, the thirty-three countries of Latin America, and throughout Asia and Africa. We are making preparations to solve problems that humanity will face in the coming millennium, especially in the areas of environmental pollution, hunger and disease. In recent years, I have worked in the Pantanal and Amazon regions of Brazil to lay a substantive foundation to protect the environment.
Addressing internal problems, I have worked through the international holy Blessing and the Pure Love movement. Some 430 million couples around the world have participated in these, adding further impetus to the building of the kingdom of God on earth that God has longed for ages to see.
Ladies and gentlemen, up to now countries possessing superior power politically, militarily and economically have controlled the world. However, no country can exist eternally unless it is in line with God’s providence. The fall of the once-glorious Greek and Roman civilizations are good examples of this.
The United States, which today stands tall as a superpower, is in the same position as Rome in the past. The fall of Rome came more from internal moral corruption than from any external pressures. Its moral corruption cut Rome off from heavenly fortune.
In recent history, political forces favoring dialectical materialism and the materialistic view of history went so far as to take control of one-third of the world’s population and two-thirds of its land area, including the former Soviet Union and China. That hegemony, however, could not long remain.
The time will soon come when religious leaders who speak for the Will of God will rise to prominence. Religious leaders are prophets. They are called to stand in the place God wills, declare His Will, and point the way that humanity needs to go. Tragically, the splintering of denominations and the struggles among religious groups that we see today serve no purpose other than to hinder God’s providence.
True Parents embody humanity’s hopes and history's victories
This is why I have for years devoted 90 percent of our church’s budget to activities that reach out to other denominations and religions for the sake of resolving interreligious conflicts. I founded the Inter- Religious Federation for World Peace for three purposes: to facilitate harmony and unity within and between religions, to resolve regional conflicts in many areas, and to help bring about world peace. Most recently, I founded the Interreligious and International Federation for World Peace, which has held seven international Hoon Dok Hae conferences.
All people need to go beyond racial and religious differences, understand God’s providence to bring His ideal world of creation into reality, and ultimately unite with His heart. In the end, heart is what will realize the faith, hope and love we have been pursuing. We must recover the relationship of heart with God that we lost as a result of the Fall, and we have to recover the positions of parent and child as God originally envisioned them to be.
Thus, the Last Days that God has promised us is the time when True Parents come. In other words, it is the time when the multitudes of people in the world, who lost their Parent as a result of the Fall, will again meet their original Parent. Thus, the True Parents are the final fruit of the desires and hopes of all humanity. They are the final fruit of the victories wrought throughout human history.
The Unification Church has disseminated this tradition throughout the world through the international holy Blessing ceremony. The fact that black, white and yellow people are able to come together as brothers and sisters -- beyond their differences of ethnicity, race or nationality -- and form loving married couples is among the most significant steps in accomplishing God’s Will. Today, through realizing the blessed family tradition, humanity is beginning to recover the relationships of brother and sister, husband and wife, and parent and child as originally envisioned by God. Ultimately, we need to go even so far as to liberate God, who has been in the depths of sorrow ever since He lost His children. It is only then that the path to true happiness will be opened.
Until now, democracy has called for human freedom and human liberation. But we must also call for God’s freedom and God’s liberation. When we succeed in relieving God’s sorrow, human liberation and the recovery of human freedom will follow naturally. Each of us has to realize that we were born to liberate God and the world.
The United States was built upon the strict Puritan faith
Ladies and gentlemen, there is profound significance to my discussing God’s providence across the United States. In many ways, the United States is a country prepared with God’s blessing. The forebears who built this nation were the Pilgrim fathers and mothers, who risked their lives to practice their religion and who came to America seeking freedom.
For the sake of their search for true religious freedom, these people left behind their parents, brothers and sisters, and homeland. They relinquished their ties to their home country as they crossed the Atlantic Ocean at the risk of life and limb.
When the Mayflower arrived in New England in 1620, it was late autumn. That winter, more than half of the 102 Pilgrims died of cold and hunger.
What was particularly remarkable was that they died refusing to eat the precious seeds reserved for planting the next spring.
The Puritans strongly believed in serving the Will of God in every aspect of life. After taking in their first harvest, they offered thanks to God. They first built a fort housing the church and school, and it was only afterward that they set about to build houses for themselves.
In their pioneering course, the Pilgrims began every activity with prayer. This was true whether it was plowing a field or governing the community. When George Washington was at Valley Forge during the War of Independence, he prayed with great desperation. In that battle fought for the sake of God-given rights, God sided with America. In England, the king and his government were fighting the war, but in America it was fought by God and His sons and daughters. Isn’t this how the United States came into existence as a country advocating freedom of faith?
Even now, the United States Congress opens with prayer. The president, when being sworn into office, places his or her hand on the Bible, takes the oath of office, and receives the blessing of a pastor. America even prints the words “In God We Trust” on its currency. The level of importance the United States attaches to God is unique in the world. This is how the United States, as a Protestant country, came to occupy its position of worldwide influence.
But what about America today? Prayer in public schools is officially banned. Teachers teach the theory of evolution and ignore other viewpoints. The divorce rate of around 50 percent is badly undermining the integrity of the family.
In 1971, I left my family and homeland to come to America, because I heard the voice of God sharing His concern about the current state of affairs here. Upon arriving here, I cried out that I had come as a firefighter to a burning house and as a physician to a sick person. I discovered that God was leaving America even then. It ought to have been possible to find God everywhere in America, yet God was departing from the hearts of the people, from the families and from the schools. It seems like only yesterday that I stood on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue and wept openly as I held on to God to keep Him from leaving America. Unfortunately, America has persisted in going the way of moral deterioration, despite my warnings.
Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to ask you this: Why do you suppose I continue to cry out to Americans in the face of all the opposition and suffering I endure? It is because I know better than anyone the blood, sweat and tears that God shed in the course of establishing this country. During the past thirty years in America, I have not spent so much as a single day in comfort.
America should fulfill its responsibility to build God’s kingdom
Who is the master of America? It is neither white Americans nor black Americans. The true master of America is the person who loves America as God does.
I continue to plead with Americans because God has chosen this country as the first son, the nation representing the eldest-son realm in building the kingdom of God on earth. Even now, Jesus is spiritually present mainly in America and is offering earnest prayers that his purpose will be accomplished in this country.
In 1982, in accordance with the Will of God, I founded The Washington Times in Washington, DC Since then, this newspaper has led American public opinion as a conservative news outlet, showing the path that America must follow. Also, I have made strong efforts for national and world salvation through the True Family Values movement and the Pure Love movement for young people. I have invested in America with the expectation that it would stand upright before God’s providence.
When I visited America in 1965, I consecrated an area near the White House as a holy ground, and even today many people gather there and pray for America through the night. I hope each of you will open your heart and that you will be able to hear the earnest voices of the Pilgrim fathers and the many patriots who shaped America’s history.
Ladies and gentlemen, the new millennium that has just begun is the time period in which God’s sixthousand- year salvation providence is to be brought to an end and in which God’s ideal of creation is to be realized throughout the cosmos. This is also the time when the lamentation of creation, which lost its true masters as a result of the Fall, will finally end. This is the time when the long-separated Parent and children will meet again. God, together with us, will establish the new heaven and new earth, where there are no tears. It is an age when there will be free communication between the spirit world and the physical world, and when God’s kingdom will be established in heaven and on earth.
The transition to a new millennium marks the completion of the New Testament Age, the point at which the promises of the Old Testament and New Testament are fulfilled. The future will be a time when God’s realm of direct dominion, including His omnipresence and omnipotence, will become apparent. Centering on the Parents of Heaven and Earth, it is an age when the East and West will come together as “one cosmos under God” so that a great family of humankind is formed on earth. This is the fulfillment of promises of the Old Testament and New Testament and the perfection of the Completed Testament Age.
The Completed Testament Age will fulfill the promises of the Old and New Testaments
The time has come. The time has come when America must awaken again. It is time for the country as a whole to create a new movement to establish true parents, true families, a true country and a true world centered on God. In this way, America has to keep God from leaving. You have to again be a society that attends Him. God worked a thousand years to establish America. If He leaves America, where can He go?
If America attends God properly, all America’s problems -- the family problems, moral problems, youth problems and racial problems -- will be solved naturally. When America becomes a place where people of all races can live together in harmony, it will be a model for the kingdom of heaven on earth.
It is time for us to unite together and open the path for all human beings to travel. It is time for America, as the eldest-son nation, to take the lead in attending God and to complete its mission as the helmsman that can bring the nations of the world to God. I ask you to stand with me in accomplishing this historic task.
Again, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to you distinguished guests for your presence here. I would like to conclude by expressing my hope for the beginning of a new millennial kingdom overflowing with peace, freedom and justice in heaven and on earth.