Sun Myung Moon
July 26, 2004
Excerpt
Concluding banquet World Culture and Sports Festival 2004
Little Angels Performing Arts Center in Seoul
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.
Precisely here 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 God’s heart. Consequently, all people ever since have needed to rediscover their original selves through God’s word 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 servants, 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 hidden behind God’s providence through the six thousand years of biblical history.
Engraft onto God’s heart
From God’s point of view, this is a fallen world. In relation to God, there were no sons or daughters of filial piety, no patriots, saints or divine sons or 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 that, all people still yearn for a world of peace. Yet, a world of peace could not be realized, despite the advanced secular institutions and the high level of culture in modern developed nations.
The only way is through the culture of true love, about which the True Parents teach. 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 than to engraft to God’s heart through those True Parents.
How deeply should fallen human beings be engrafted to God’s heart? They need to be born again through True Mother’s womb 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 the 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 or 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.
God does not give birth to babies, parents do. Accordingly, God is the vertical True Parent of humankind and Rev. Moon and Mrs. Moon are the horizontal True Parents of humankind at a ninety-degree angle to the vertical. The True Parents together represent the long-awaited Savior, Messiah and returning Lord. Their teachings fulfill the purpose of religion.
When we find and attend the vertical True Parent and horizontal True Parents and have children through true love, what else could there be?