Sun Myung Moon
July 26, 2004
Address at the Congratulatory Banquet of the World Culture and Sports Festival 2004
Little Angels Performing Arts Center, Seoul, Korea
Photo date and location unknown
Distinguished present and former heads of state, ladies and gentlemen:
Please join me with grateful hearts to return the glory of the accomplishments and success of the World Culture and Sports Festival 2004 to God.
When we look at the world today, we see it is lost in chaos and despair. The sight of people lost and directionless truly pains our hearts. No in the world has come up with a solution that has gained any sort of consensus for resolving this present state of affairs. The world, with its more than six billion people is on the verge of a shipwreck.
In the Bible it is written, "For whoever wishes to save his life shall lose it; but whoever loses his life for my sake shall find it." (Matt. 16:25) As I mentioned at the opening ceremony of our festival a few days ago, it is impossible to establish a world of peace for all human beings on the basis of human effort alone. It can only be done with heavenly fortune.
Tomorrow you will depart for your homes. The gift that I wish to give you tonight is the gift of heavenly fortune in the form of the Word of God. This is a great blessing, yet it is also a warning from Heaven. It is a blessing for us as we enter the new millennium in this era of the kingdom of heaven. Heaven will give new life to whoever loses their life because they live by these words. Whoever ignores these words will inevitably perish. I ask you to please give your full attention to what I am about to say. Please do not forget that God is calling each of you at this extraordinary time.
Dear guests, when we look at the present time from the viewpoint of history and from the viewpoint of God's providence over the ages, it is evident that we live in an era of tremendous significance. God has brought the Era before the Coming of Heaven to a close and has ushered in the Era after the Coming of Heaven. God is busily guiding the dispensation with the heart to give each day the value of a thousand years. To awaken you to the heart of God, and to help you clearly understand your position today from the providential point of view, I would like to speak on "The True Revolution of Heart and the Opening of the Era of True Liberation and Complete Freedom."
The dream of fallen human beings is to meet the Messiah
To fallen human beings, God stands in the position of the Teacher of all teachers, the Parent of all parents, and the King of all kings. God is an omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent being. God is the origin and root of true love and is absolute, unique, unchanging and eternal.
Today the hope of fallen people is to meet the True Son of God. This means the True Son on the individual level, the family level, the tribal level, the level of the people, and the level of the nation. To make this possible, humanity had to go through a course of hardships and difficulties. Once they established the foundation of a nation, God sent the Messiah, who is God's True Son.
The day of the Messiah's advent is the very day the Messiah is found, because the Messiah is in the position of having restored the Son on all levels, individual, family, tribe, race and nation. As descendants of the Fall, we need to free ourselves from the realm of Satan's accusation enough to meet the Son of God. When we meet him, we find the family that has formed around the Parents whom God loves. This family is the foundation for us to find God's love for the first time and ultimately to meet God directly.
Accordingly, only the perfected Adam, the True Father, can create a relationship centering on God's love. However, a father alone cannot become a parent. He needs to find his true partner. That partner is to be a true woman, a woman with an absolute standard. Christianity ministered in the capacity of the bride, representing womanhood on the world level. The central mission of Christianity was that of the bride that receives the Lord of the Second Advent and Messiah.
However, the True Parents consist of just one man and one woman. There can be only one man and only one woman. This is absolute. There cannot be two. Accordingly, one man and one woman meet to become the True Parents. The True Parents are a genuine ideal couple centered on God's ideal of creation.
Consequently, the True Parents are the unifying center from the individual to the world and cosmos; they can be engrafted onto all levels, from the individual, to the family, tribe, race, nation and world. I have been preparing for this task throughout my entire life.
The essential condition for human beings to go in the direction of heaven, after determining the goal of restoration, is to pass through the gate of the True Parents. Unless we pass through the gate of True Parents, we cannot connect to God's heart.
The world today has become one in which tribes are unable to connect in heart with one another, religions are challenged to connect in heart with one another, and families find it difficult to connect in heart with one another. To break down the prison walls that enclose us on all four sides, we need to connect with God's heart. Who indeed will take on this task? Only the True Parents, who come as the true mediators of Heaven, can do so. It has been God's hope and humankind's dream to find the True Parents that were lost in the beginning.
Ladies and gentlemen, the first ancestors, Adam and Eve, were supposed to have become the true ancestors of humanity. They were to have been the True Parents of humankind, whom God had sincerely longed to see. The human race was meant to descend from the lineage of those True Parents. The True Parents of humankind were supposed to have appeared at the beginning of history as the glorious incarnations of God, eternally victorious in front of all human beings to come.
It is precisely here that we discover the essence of Adam and Eve's loss. We know very well that it has been the cause of our sad history and its bitter pain. Due to the Fall, human beings fell away from the laws of Heaven, lost their original selves, and were degraded to an evil race that trampled on the heart of God. Consequently, all people ever since have needed to rediscover their original selves through the word of God and struggle through the course of restoration in search of the true world of the heart.
Due to the Fall, people fell to a position below that of the things of creation. God could not freely relate to people in that sad position. Since they could not restore themselves from that position on their own, God had to awaken people and work to re-create them. God's work to restore people has taken them from the position of a servant of servant, to a servant, from there to the position of an adopted child and an illegitimate child to a true child, and from there to the position of a true couple and finally to the position of true parents who have victorious dominion. This is the tremendous secret that has been hidden behind God's providence through the six thousand years of biblical history.
All humankind must engraft onto God's heart through the True Parents
From God's point of view, this is a fallen world. In relation to God, there were no sons and daughters of filial piety, no patriots, saints or divine sons and daughters. God desires to save humankind, yet people lived below the realm of the Fall and God could not have anything to do with the Fall and its realm. Thus, God waited for the day the Messiah, as the perfected Adam and perfected Eve, who stand in a position above that of fallen Adam and Eve, could establish their family and become the True Parents. Only on the foundation of that family can true children appear. In a nation based on that family, true patriots can emerge. When their foundation expands to the world level, true saints will come forth one after another. When expanded to the cosmic level, divine sons and daughters will appear. The representatives of Heaven, Heaven's heirs, will appear only on the basis of the True Family.
Originally the words "parents and children" denoted the first parents and their sons and daughters. They were meant to create a family and a nation. Although they could not do so, still all people yearn for a world of peace. Yet, a world of peace could not be realized, even though the advanced secular institutions and the high level of culture in todays developed nations. The only way is through the culture of true love that is taught by the True Parents. Even if the True Parents appear with a straw mat carrying a bag of tattered rags, wearing discolored clothing and in total exhaustion after emerging from a bottomless pit, fallen people have no other choice except to engraft to the heart of God through those True Parents.
How deeply should fallen human beings be engrafted to God's heart? They need to be born again through the womb of True Mother after first establishing the condition of engrafting to True Father's body. Once we are reborn, we have to live with the absolute standard of attendance to True Parents. However, it does not end there. Fallen people need to expand the condition by building relationships with their close relatives and with members of their clans and communities. Further they have to set the condition of building relationships of heart with their people and nation, the world, the cosmos and ultimately God. Then God will say, "You are my son!" or "You are my daughter!'*Those who establish relationships based primarily on self-interest have nothing to do with God.
Ladies and gentlemen, God conceived the term "true parents" in His mind before the creation. All the ideals connected to God's creation began from the ideal of true love, which originates from true parents. Thus, even before the creation the term "true parents" inspired hope, hope that God treasured. Countless people throughout the course of God's providence lost their lives before God could send the True Parents.
God established and worked through various religions at appropriate times in the course of this providence. Thus among religions there are different levels and types: religions on the level of angels, Cain-type, Abel-type, adopted son-type, illegitimate son-type, foster parents-type, on the level of True Mother and on the level of True Father.
When we look at the history of Christianity, we see that if Abel-type Protestantism and Cain-type Catholicism had cooperated, they could have brought together all religious spheres that were independently working for the sake of the salvation of humanity. Once they had spread throughout the various cultural spheres and areas of the world, they would have brought about a unity that would have been in accordance with God's overall Will. Christianity was supposed to have then established one nation and one world, that is, a world of peace. That is because Christianity was supposed to be the mainstream, which would have brought all religions together.
Vertical and horizontal True Parents
God is the vertical True Parent. How wonderful it would be if God, the vertical Parent, could produce children in the spirit world. However, having children in the spiritual realm is impossible. That is why God created Adam and Eve horizontally in the position of the True Parents of human beings. He created them as a "production line" to generate the citizens of the heavenly kingdom. A vertical line has only one focal point. Consequently, it cannot engage in reproduction, which requires three dimensions. The area needed for reproduction is created only when the vertical line meets horizontal lines, thus creating the dimension of space.
God does not give birth to babies, parents do. Accordingly, God is the vertical True Parent of humankind and Reverend and Mrs. Moon stand in the position of the horizontal True Parents of humankind with a ninety-degree angle to the vertical. The True Parents together represent the long-awaited Savior, Messiah and Lord of the Second Advent. Their teachings fulfill the purpose of religion. When we find and attend the vertical True Parent and horizontal True Parents, and have children of true love, what else could there be?
"True Parents" denote the Savior, Messiah and Lord of the Second Advent. That is why in the spirit world, the representatives of the five great religions, the saints and sages, and even the people considered the most evil in history such as Stalin and Hitler, have now proclaimed that Reverend Moon is the Savior of humankind, the Messiah, the Lord of the Second Advent and the True Parent. They have been sending a series of resolutions from the spirit world declaring their resolve to devote their lives to the practice of my teachings.
The love of these two parents is absolutely necessary for creating new life. One parent is our Heavenly Father, the Lord of Creation, who is the vertical and invisible True Parent. The second parent is the horizontal True Parents, who have appeared on earth in substantial bodies to establish God's ideal of creation. God stands as the True Parent in the position of the mind, and the horizontal True Parents stand in the position of the body.
Although human beings are descended from the Fall, we were created originally with a dual structure, so that we can resemble the Original Parents and freely convey and enjoy vertical and horizontal love. Our mind, or heart, is our vertical self. To this day people live in distress because they do not have a correct understanding of the mind. Buddhism and Confucianism have struggled to clarify the identity of the mind and heart, however it is impossible to understand the heart without correctly understanding the identity of God.
My teachings clearly explain the identity of the mind and heart. In God's ideal of creation, a person's mind and heart resides on the vertical true love axis and can position itself by relating with true love on the horizontal plane.
God's true love connects the front and back, increasing in intensity to establish the spherical and threedimensional ideal. In this way, the mind and heart is never exhausted no matter what direction it moves. It is always ready to activate its force. Also, that which it dislikes, or which is wrong, has no room to enter.
There is no contradiction whatsoever. The vertical self and the horizontal self become one centering on God's true love. The reason your heart even now is in a state of conflict and contradiction is because, due to the Fall, the vertical and horizontal lines do not intersect at the ninety-degree angle necessary for true love to take root. Put simply, without God's true love, the complete unity of the mind and body can never come about.
Regarding the issue of ownership, all things originally belonged to human beings. Mind-body unity creates a realm of original ownership that is centered on God's love. This is totally opposed to the sphere of Satan's accusation from the Fall. Heaven will allow you to take ownership again only after God advances to the position where He can declare ownership based on the absolute standard. In other words, you have to completely offer all that you own to God and receive His affirmation. Then you can receive ownership from heaven through the True Parents on earth. Because of this heavenly law, I have refrained from selling anything that I bought, even though it often meant financial hardship. Without the proper procedures for disposal through the True Parents, nothing is to be sold.
Ladies and gentlemen, you are not just isolated individuals. Live with the conviction that you are the central point representing the entire world. If you do, you can realize that ideal. Actually, everyone should live with that kind of conviction. The children represent the parents and the parents represent the family. Further, because you stand on the solid foundation of my victory on the world level, it is only logical that all of you should inherit my heart and become my representatives.
Loving nature as your friend
Your efforts and endeavors are acts of creation. Live your life with love, and you can work all your life with joy and feel no fatigue. Live your life with love, and you will seek a way to experience the world of God's true love and give comfort to God.
Try to live with the mindset that the things created by God are souvenirs from heaven. Then everything becomes a hobby. If you do, then all directions: north, south, east and west, front and back, left and right, will open up to you. Because I have this mindset, I love nature. I have spent time in nature throughout my life and made nature my friend. I have travelled all the five oceans and the six continents.
All of you should go to every river and mountain and live there. All of you ought to be like me and seek out nature with God's love and make it your friend. All of you should live with the heart that you will liberate nature, which still dwells in the realm of lamentation without an owner. Thus we see the necessity for the Unification movement's Sansuwon mountain-hiking program. It is a wise way is to escape from the patterns of urban life that render us captive to its corrupt culture and enslave us to an individualistic, self-centered life. The urban life style pollutes the environment in many ways and even obstructs the emotional development of our children.
Becoming the sons and daughters of God and True Parents
Unfortunately, due to the Fall, the first ancestors, Adam and Eve, did not establish the true family that had been God's aim for the creation. In the Garden of Eden, Eve fell to the temptation of the archangel, whose action was like that of a snake, and Adam did not overcome Eve's temptation either. Thus self-centered, false love was implanted in this world. The sin and misfortune of human beings is a result of the first human ancestors' illicit love, which originated from Satan.
God's providence of restoration has aimed to remove the walls of conflict that divide people's mind and body, to restore the true family, and to enlarge the global domain of true love and goodness. Early in my life, I delved into this truth and learned the secrets of heaven. Since then, for more than half a century, I have continually revealed this truth to Christians, to people of all religions, and to all of humankind. Without this truth there is no way to unite the hundreds of different Christian denominations, other religions, and humanity as a whole.
What has been God's anguish? God has not only been weeping for the people who suffer in this world. God's deepest anguish is that He has not been able to shed tears of joy from the depths of His heart for His victorious Son. God has longed for that day. God's anguish had persisted throughout history because there was no one whom God could affirm as His victorious Son. God could find no one who wept uncontrollably for Him, knowing that He has been wandering through the back streets of history in search of His lost sons and daughters.
Humankind has now entered a new era, the era of the kingdom of heaven. We must allow God to perfect Himself centering on true love. This does not mean there is an imperfect part of God. It means that human beings must embody absolute values and become perfect object partners to God, who is the perfect Subject Partner. Our responsibility is to emulate the True Parents, who already stand in that position, and become the owners of true love in ideal families. Then God, in the absolute position, can establish us as His absolute partners. This is how we can liberate God. Centering on God as the subject partner, I made myself into a minus and attained complete unity with God. In the same way, when the relationship between True Parents and you is that of a substantial plus and minus, you can freely reach the point of unity with God.
Thus, you are not just the sons and daughters of your natural parents. You have to first proclaim that you are the sons and daughters of God. Even though you may be unworthy now to call yourself God's son or daughter, you need to have confidence in conditionally having become the sons and daughters of True Parents after receiving the marriage Blessing from them. You were born from the wrong root, so you need to sever your connection to that root, cut away the branches, engraft to the true lineage of True Parents and sprout new buds. That is the shortcut for you to liberate God.
Even if you say you have become a family of loyal patriots, without a true nation it is of no use. Without a true nation, a patriot has no basis upon which to establish him or herself in history. It is through becoming true families that you can restore your nation, and through making true nations that you can restore the world, and through a making a true world that you can restore the cosmos. When you accomplish this, you and your family will have the value of owners of the cosmos.
The meaning of Ahn Shi Il and the Era after the Coming of Heaven
Ladies and gentlemen, as we enter the Era after the Coming of Heaven, we are establishing a new, true culture based on heavenly tradition. For example, I designated and declared Ahn Shi Il on April 18, 2004, in accordance with Heaven's decree. We have already observed this day eleven times, and
July 16 was the eightieth day since the first observance of Ahn Shi Il on April 27. The number eighty comes from the numbers eight, the number of a new beginning, and the number ten, which is the number of returning and the number of perfection. This day has profound providential significance. Originally, God's victory and the Era of after the Coming of Heaven would have been declared and borne fruit when I was eighty years of age. Yet, it was completed and declared after a prolongation of five years.
You have become the owners of Cheon Il Guk, have participated in this providential event and have inherited God's heart. You have come here to receive new wine, and you should keep it in a new wineskin. You have come a long distance to get to this place, to directly observe the unfolding of the providence of the True Parents, who have walked this lonely path day and night for some eighty years, and to become the soldiers who will advance the establishment of the peace kingdom.
You came here to receive Heavens decree, and now you have it; you must find and establish Cheon Il Guk within your families by offering your entire being to Heaven. Do not dwell on past customs and habits from the Era before the Coming of Heaven. This destiny is Heaven's decree, and it must be obeyed. You must carry it out, regarding it as absolute, by offering yourself as a living sacrifice to God before you die.
Dear guests, the time has come to be free from the Fall and stand firmly resolved to obey Heaven's call. As at the Exodus, humankind has now entered an unprecedented age of true liberation and complete freedom, the Era after the Coming of Heaven. I am sure you all know about how human history has been stained with the false and evil love that came from the original sin of Adam and Eve. A twenty-first century exodus is now unfolding through all of you. The time has come to free yourselves, as the Israelites did, from all ties to the corrupt and foul world of today.
I have accepted my destiny to be the True Parent of humankind, and in this year, the fourth year of Cheon Il Guk, I have been working with firm resolution to fulfill the providence of Heaven with victory and glory. On March 23 of this year, at a United States Senate building on Capitol Hill, I was honored as the "King of World Peace" in a ceremony attended by United States legislators and distinguished world religious leaders. Heaven has decreed that a world of peace for all six billion people on earth is possible only when all religions and ideologies are united in harmony within the realm of true love, with True Parents as the axis. I have invested all of my energy to uphold this solemn decree and realize it.
With the designation and declaration of Ahn Shi Il, God no longer rests only on Sunday, which comes once every seven days. I have put aside the seven-day period and designated the eighth day as Ahn Shi Il. Having become the heavenly True Parent, God now stands in a position of glory, where He can rejoice and be attended at all times, from the spirit world and also from all people and things of creation in the physical world. Now the path has opened up for the entire spirit world to mobilize and cooperate with the physical world.
On the second Ahn Shi Il, May 5, 2004, I designated and declared the historic day of the Day of the Victory of the Number Ten Combining Two Halves (Ssang Hab Shib Seung Il). The providence of God ushered in the number ten, the number of returning and the number of perfection, and opened the global gate to the realm of the victory of the number ten, that brings the providence to a conclusion. Yet my declaration and celebration of the perfection of the realm of "the victory of the number ten combining two halves," which brings in the Era after the Coming of Heaven, does not mean that it was automatically established. The realm of the victory of the number ten combining two halves signifies the perfection of the true realm of heart. It calls you to enter into the realm of unity with God's heart, which is now possible, and advance to the position to receive Heaven's authorization, so that God can declare, "You are my son!" or "You are my daughter!"
This led to my declaration, "The harmony and unity of true love is the absolute value of a true, ideal family" on the third Ahn Shi Il, May 21, 2004. When the practice of true love becomes our lifestyle, we can achieve harmony and unity in the individual, family, nation and world, and from there we can create the absolute value of a true ideal family.
When we observe God's creation of human beings, we can see that when He was creating them, God, who is the absolute Subject Partner, was asking human beings to become His absolute partners. However, due to the Fall, this decree of Heaven was not carried out. People descended into blindness, holding on to relative values and even unable to conceive of absolute values.
Now the 85-year life of the True Parent is vividly manifested before you; it serves to guide you. I am clearly showing what a life of true love is like. Who can say otherwise when they see the model lives of the True Parents, who have given and given, forgiven and forgiven, and loved their enemies? You must realize that it is your destiny to walk this path of absolute faith, absolute love and absolute obedience. If you are resolved to practice and complete the three great revolutions, the revolution through indemnity, the revolution of conscience and the revolution of heart, in your daily life and become heavenly soldiers, you can open the gates that lead to the era of true liberation and freedom from sin.
When you leave today, I hope that you make good use of the gift of the heavenly fortune that I have given you. This will become the eternal tradition and family heirloom that your family will treasure for generations to come.
May God's blessings be with every one of you. I pray that you will return home safely.
Thank you.