Reverend Sun Myung Moon
15th Commencement Address of the Unification Theological Seminary
Barrytown, NY USA
June 30, 1991
On this happy and joyous occasion of the Unification Theological Seminary's 15th graduation exercise, I extend my heartfelt congratulations to 50 new graduates. At the same time, the administration, faculty and staff of the Seminary, who have helped these graduates complete their academic program, deserve to be congratulated.
Taking the opportunity of this special occasion, I would like to offer to you a message regarding your future and the fundamental problems and issues in the world. Your mission is concerning the restoration of not only this United States of America and other free nations, but the entire world according to God's ideal.
Our whole purpose of life here on earth is to learn to love. Therefore, in order to fulfill true love you have to totally unite your mind and body. The world has been divided into ten thousand different directions because the human body seeks after carnal desire. When the mind and body are not united your love cannot be one beautiful pure love, nor can your life be one pure single-minded effort. Your mind is eternal but your body is temporal, so your body must be one hundred percent obedient to your mind.
The fall of humankind destroyed the God-centered family, that God had originally planned to build on earth, and which would have subdued and had dominion over the creation through love. Therefore, in the final stages of restoration our work must begin at home. A country or nation consists of families, so when the family has been restored then everything else will be automatic. The important thing is to be motivated by God's will and purpose so that you will serve and love your spouse, parents, children, country and God. Your membership in the kingdom of heaven will be as a tribal messiah in your hometown.
The grandparents of a family represent the past ancestors, your parents represent the contemporary world, and you yourself represent the future. Thus by serving your family you are serving all of human history: past, present and future. Connecting those three levels means connecting all history through love. It is for that reason that grandparents, parents, and children want to live together.
Without true love you cannot unify mind and body, husband and wife, nor all people. You have to take the concept of "living for the sake of others" completely into your whole self. Only then can you make the ideal society. Absolutely the most valuable thing is living for the sake of others. Now you can clearly understand what Jesus meant when he said, "The kingdom of heaven is in the midst of you." When you become the possessor of true love, you become the palace of true love and God wants to dwell there. Then the kingdom of heaven is within you.
So I have given you this title of "tribal messiah." It is an incredible title. You should make you hometown into a God-centered place and create God-centered parents, brothers and sisters, and relatives. After all of your hometown work is completed then a "home-nation" is created. After "home-nations" get together, they can be created into a "home-world" that means the original world of God's ideal.
There are so many complex situations in the world today so you must know in what direction human history is moving. In reality, nobody truly believes that the evil world of our present society will end and that a good history will begin. Many people say "Oh, that's too idealistic!" but I want you to know that God is absolutely determined that in fact evil will end and that good history on earth will begin.
Today, both the right-wing and left-wing, conservative and liberal camps, are fighting against each other and are in chaos and conflict, even after the ideology of communism has collapsed on the worldwide level. Seventy years ago communism appeared, promising to be the salvation of humanity. But after killing more than 170 million people, finally at this time they have raised the white flag of surrender. The atmosphere in the world has completely changed. God Himself has been working through almost 250 million years of human history and a great price has been paid for everything to come together at this momentous time of history.
I want you to consider deeply what God has done. But especially today I want you to think how God made this brand new Christian nation of America and let it prosper for two hundred years. But now America is weakening and declining in morality and needs lots of help. There is a lot of terrible decadence going on in this modern society, but the most terrible crime is that a satanic way of life is spiritually killing so many people, young and old, by destroying true love, true life, and true lineage. There is no greater sin or crime than to destroy true and pure love.
In this nation and world we want to lead people to the highest level and standard of morality. In order to save future generations we want to leave a good example of a great tradition here on earth. You are going to be the "doctors" to those who commit adultery, incest and other immoralities. You will be doctors with a "special field." Adultery is the worst disease in this country. Families have broken down, and all society is breaking down.
Immorality continues to spread where will the future generations go except into total collapse and destruction? No matter how much technology we have, technology will never help to solve this ethical problem. Unless you can do that, America will perish.
In one word, the true tradition of the family is "parentship." You must invest and invest, giving everything to create the foundation upon which your own relatives, neighbors and your tribe can be restored. When God created the world He invested literally everything, giving one thousand percent of Himself, not reserving one drop of "blood, sweat or energy."
The quality of your eternal life will be determined by the quality and quantity of your efforts to establish heavenly tradition on the earth. If you are determined to do this you could have the power to explode a spiritual atomic bomb. Christianity began when 120 of Jesus' remnant disciples got together and prayed. An incredible holy spirit came down, and with that power those 120 disciples went out into the world and created Christianity!
If the fall of humankind had not taken place in the Garden of Eden, an ideal civilization would have begun and would have continued to prosper. The perfected Adam would have had "eldership." that is the elder son's birthright, he would have formed a perfected family, and the developing civilization would have reigned and automatically connected itself to the kingdom of Adam himself.
First of all, Adam would have made the foundation of eldership (sonship) and second, perfected Adam and Eve could have made the foundation of true parentship, and finally the foundation of true kingship would have come about. This is what God wanted to create, but because of the fall God lost all this. Your mission is to lay the tribal messiah foundation; moving toward the restoration of kingship. In your hometown plus in your small tribe or kingdom you are like a "king and queen."
Truth will give you "guts" or strength to do it. What kind of truth? You must know that you are the restored elder sons, you are the tribal messiahs and you mission is to also restore heavenly parentship and kingship. These positions were never fulfilled in the Garden of Eden; after the fall Satan claimed them. But today the elder son position is restored. By the merit and works of "blood, sweat and tears" and after paying untold indemnity for several decades, "True Parentship" has been established and fulfilled by me. Your tradition is to sacrificially go out and restore other families and your relatives. In other words, practice heavenly tradition in your own home and expand it to your relatives and neighbors.
This is your messianic responsibility. So far, you have been serving and giving unconditionally just paying indemnity; but no more. You can now harvest and gather and elevate others to create a heavenly tribe and nation. You must not only be restored to God's side, but now you must go and help the people. When you push forward with conviction and strong determination you reach people at every level of society, from the laborers to the president, and all obstacles will crumble.
Here in America the prevailing idea is one of brotherhood and democracy. Yet in this society there are still factions of brothers fighting each other. "Parentship" has to be "one," never divided. When we are born can we vote for who our parents will be? No. But in the democratic society the leaders are elected by the people, so in the free world we can see the elder's position being voted into the system by divided brothers.
The major world religions of Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Confucianism have never been harmonious nor unified. They set their own boundaries saying, "this is my domain and that is yours." We must work together to digest their various cultures, their way of life and way of thinking; bringing in a unifying power, creating an interdenominational and interfaith spirit among them, broadening them, and lifting them up to a higher level.
We also have to bring together, internally and externally, the atheistic countries and the theistic free nations. As you know the Unification Movement has been bringing unity on the external level peacefully through the international and Inter-Religious Federations for World Peace. With religions, not only peace but unity are essential; so this way the world and religions both are coming into unity.
The earth is simply the stage on which we practice for our eternal life. The best preparation for living in the life beyond this physical realm is through creating the heavenly kingdom on earth. Originally, people should have been unified on earth and then gone to the spiritual world. But due to evil's dominance of the earth, various battles emerged. In the spiritual world people continue to live within boundaries.
Everything I needed to do as my mission of True Parentism, on the worldwide level, here on earth has been done. I have already told you that restoration to the elder son's position is done. Restoration of the parents' position is done, and the restoration of the kingship position has been fulfilled. The spiritual world must now listen and be obedient to you here on earth.
The textbook of the family, and tribal messiahship, lies in uniting three levels of grandparents, parents and you and your spouse, by serving with true love and by uniting your own mind and body. This is the central model that only has to be expanded to other families, relatives, and community people. This is the key to connecting all generations to come with true love, and in making the atmosphere for the kingdom of heaven on earth.
I am passing this inheritance to you 50 new graduates by giving you these three great restorations: the birthright of eldership, true parentship, and heavenly kingship. With these you can successfully fulfill your mission as tribal messiah in your hometown, n your home church ministry, or in your country, taking care of 360 households wherever you go.
May God and True Parents' blessing be upon your future mission of successfully solving the fundamental problems in this troubled world by restoring everything to God's side and to God's ruling kingdom on earth.
Again, my heartfelt congratulations to all of you, and may God bless you. Thank you very much.