Advance without Ceasing

Hak Ja Han
September 17, 2012
Cheongshim Peace World Center, Korea
Special Unification Church World Leaders Assembly for Victory on Foundation Day

Photo date and location unknown

Photo date and location unknown

Distinguished guests from home and abroad, and blessed families around the world:

Today, we come to an exceedingly important turning point in God’s governance of His providence. It is unprecedented, historic and revolutionary.

My husband, the Reverend Dr. Sun Myung Moon, the returning Lord, Messiah, Savior and True Parent, who came as the root of the lineage of original goodness, has departed for the spirit world. Consequently, we now stand at a providential renewal point at which we have to inherit True Parents’ realm of victory and build the ideal kingdom of peace, one family under God.

Manifestation of True Parents

After being with True Father my whole life, his ascension from our midst brings me indescribable pain and sorrow. I know it is the same for all of you. Moreover, we cannot begin to fathom how sorrowful the heart of God is over the passing of True Father, who is the original substance of eternal love and the True Parent of humankind.

From another perspective, however, this is a time of hope. True Father worked in accordance with the heavenly laws, which God established at the time of the creation of heaven and earth, to conclude, complete and perfect the providential tasks on earth that no one in history had been able to fulfill. He is now transitioning to the spirit world to exercise dominion over both the spiritual and physical worlds and to initiate a new dimension of God’s providence. No spoken or written language known to human beings can possibly express the flood of emotion we experience as we stand at this juncture in the providence.

As you are well aware, Heaven led me to meet True Father in the pure and pristine years of my adolescence. By the providence Heaven had prepared, in the flower of my youth at the age of seventeen, I received the grace of the True Parents’ Holy Wedding, which holds historic significance throughout heaven and earth. I became True Father’s companion on the providential path, attended him throughout my life, and worked with him as we walked the way of the providence, which is governed by heavenly law. Although I was young when I set out on this path of the providence, I invested my entire being in fulfilling two primary missions. The first was to bring an end to God’s providence of restoration through indemnity, which was rife with bitter sorrow, within my lifetime. The second was to attend Father throughout his life in order to complete the realization of the ideal world of God’s Will.

God’s providential history of salvation has progressed continuously since the Fall of Adam and Eve, the first human ancestors. No one, however, could complete the providential course of restoration through indemnity, and humankind could only wait for the True Parents to come.

True Parents’ course began under desperate circumstances in God’s providence at a time when Satan reigned with full authority, exercising his sovereignty over the spirit world and physical world. What Satan, the progenitor of evil who had maintained dominion for six thousand years, feared most was the emergence of the True Parents, who would become the progenitors of goodness. You can imagine how Satan would fiercely and desperately oppose this and employ all manner of brutality in an effort to prevent it. Prior to establishing his position as a True Parent through our Holy Wedding in 1960, True Father passed through a providential course of immeasurable indemnity. True Parents were to come to humankind only once in history. Once they assumed their position through the Holy Wedding, they became the True Parents for all eternity.

True Father began his providential public life course at the conclusion of the Second World War in 1945. Heaven had prepared Christianity, especially Korean Christian spiritualist movements, on a foundation of two thousand years of conditions that Christians had made. Christianity should have fulfilled the mission of the providential bride by attending and upholding the returning Messiah, whom Heaven sent as the bridegroom, and then should have opened the providence of attending the substantial Bride. However, Christianity was unable to complete this providential responsibility. As a result, Father lost the entire providential foundation, both the spiritual foundation, the two thousand year history of Christianity, and the substantial foundation, the victory of the Allied nations in World War II.

Under these providential circumstances, fraught with immense difficulties and challenges, True Father had to act alone to once again carry out the providential course of restoration through indemnity, starting from the bottom of hell in the Hungnam Special Labor Camp. He endured and finally overcame Satan’s vicious attacks to establish a foundation of victory by separating from Satan. On that basis, True Father established the Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity as the providential bride, in place of Christianity, and on that foundation, he received me as the substantial bride and conducted the historic Holy Wedding. As a result, in 1960 True Parents’ course could finally commence.

True Parents’ providential course

Distinguished guests, beloved blessed families, how can we describe God, our Heavenly Father, as True Father has revealed Him? God is not an aloof monarch sitting on His throne of glory and honor. Rather He is a True Parent of true love and heart who has traversed millions of miles in search of His prodigal children who fell into a state of death due to sin.

In his speech, “The Settlement of the True Parents of Heaven, Earth and Humankind, who, as God’s Embodiment, Proclaim the Word,” which he so treasured during his time on earth, True Father explained God’s plight:

Ladies and gentlemen, do you have any idea how much pain God suffered the moment human beings, whom He created as His children and into whom He had invested His complete and unreserved devotion since time immemorial, fell and disappeared into darkness, becoming part of Satan’s lineage? Are you even remotely aware that our Heavenly Father, who endured tens of thousands of years of excruciating heartache so great that His bones shed tears and His flesh quivered, had to go through the long, dark tunnel of indemnifying the Fall in order to save His lost children? Have you shed any tears even for a moment, yearning to comfort our Father in heaven?

That is how God is. True Father was the person who experienced God’s suffering with his entire being. With blood, sweat and tears, he triumphantly completed True Parents’ forty-year course, and finally in 2001 he offered to Heaven the Enthronement Ceremony for the Kingship of God.

Distinguished guests from home and abroad, True Parents’ forty-year providential course up to the offering of the Enthronement Ceremony for the Kingship of God was a path that crossed peaks of unimaginable misery. We were in a continuous life-and-death struggle against the Satanic forces of the evil sovereignty. We were repeatedly struck down and had to gather ourselves up each time to continue the battle. It was a course requiring our ultimate resolve, a course for which we had to invest every moment. No words can describe how many times True Father voluntarily chose to go to the bottom of hell. In order to bring the wilderness era to a close, he followed a treacherous course of indemnity that led him to suffer hardship in prison at Danbury. But that is what it took to conclude the six thousand year history of the providence for the salvation of humankind.

Despite being the long-awaited Savior of humanity, True Father led a life of constant indemnity. He endured imprisonment under the Japanese oppressors, North Korean communist authorities and the South Korean Liberal Party administration. What he said to me as he headed off to prison once more, this time in the United States, is still vivid in my memory. “Don’t worry’’ he encouraged me, “a new world of hope will be waiting on the other side of prison.” Despite True Father’s optimism, these incidents brought me overwhelming sorrow. I directly witnessed his noble life up close and walked alongside him. So when he went to prison my whole world seemed to collapse around me. I could only think of his dire circumstances, imprisoned in Satan’s den with his life targeted by communists. I fervently beseeched Heaven to protect his safety and health. Only Heaven fully knows these circumstances in the providence of restoration through indemnity.

The wilderness era finally ended in August 1985 on the foundation of victory established through True Father’s suffering in Danbury prison and the loss of Heung-jin, our second son who represented the True Children. With the Day of Total Victory as a turning point, a new providence began. True Father later met Mikhail Gorbachev and Kim Il Sung, communist leaders who were central figures in Satan’s realm, and won their hearts with Heaven’s love.

On that foundation, True Father established the Women’s Federation for World Peace in the position of the providential bride and placed me in the position of the first and only substantial bride in human history to attend the returning Messiah. I began to proclaim to all of heaven and earth the Second Advent of the Lord, the Messiah, the Savior and the True Parents. Based on this, I undertook the providence of mother-son cooperation for seven years while attending True Father, the center of the providence, and offered the successful conclusion to Heaven. Thus began the era of Cheon Il Guk, the nation of cosmic peace and unity.

On May 1, 1999, during the Day of All True Things, True Father bestowed a great blessing on me. As he presented me with an award for being victorious in the era of mother-son cooperation, never to be repeated in history, he firmly embraced me and whispered in my ear, “Mother, thank you for your hard work. You have scaled the summit of a great providential mountain.” I was immediately overwhelmed with emotion and began to weep. Memories of critical moments during those seven years, such as having to embrace Cain and Abel while contending with the opposition of leftist students on Korean university campuses, and of enduring all manner of dangers and concerns during hundreds of speaking engagements in one hundred eighty-five nations, flashed through my mind like a kaleidoscope as I received True Father’s consolation and blessing.

Respected peace-loving leaders and family members, I am so proud of you. Looking back, it has truly been an arduous course of restoration through indemnity. True Parents, however, brought a clean end to all of it. They have been victorious and have opened the gates to the era of Cheon Il Guk, when the era of God’s kingship, the era of God’s direct dominion, takes root. True Parents moved up from My Pledge to the Family Pledge and brought us from the era of praying in True Parents’ names to that of directly reporting to God in the name of our own blessed central family. They opened the Cheon Il Guk era, a new era of the providence, amid changes that previously could not have even been imagined.

On the basis of the substantiation of the culture of heart, we also vertically and horizontally expanded the True Parents-centered system of the absolutely good sovereignty under God’s kingship. Through the Holy Marriage Blessing Ceremony Opening the Gates of Cheon Il Guk and the Coronation of the

King of the Blessed Families on the occasion of my sixtieth birthday in 2003, the heavenly sovereignty put down vertical roots. Since then, True Parents firmly established it throughout the world through the coronation of the King of Peace in 120 clans and 120 nations. With the inauguration of the Abel UN through the Universal Peace Federation (UPF), we offered to Heaven the Cheon Jeong Gung Entrance Ceremony and Coronation of the True Parents of Heaven, Earth and Humankind. For the first time in human history, we firmly established the foundation for the substantiation of the ideal envisaged at the time of the creation. With the victory of True Parents’ fifty-year course, we ushered in a providential jubilee year and proclaimed the era of the heavenly calendar, marking 2010 as the first year of Cheon-gi (the Heavenly Foundation).

True Parents’ realm of victory

During the past three years, True Father did not let go of for a single moment the script of his speech, “The Settlement of the True Parents of Heaven, Earth and Humankind, who, as God’s Embodiment, Proclaim the Word,” He treasured this text and would explain it during Hoon Dok Hae whenever the opportunity arose. The following is an excerpt found under the subheading “My final words for humankind”:

These are textbooks you will have to read and study even after you go to the spirit world. They are not just teachings that come from the mind of one person; they are textbooks and materials that teach the heavenly way that God has bestowed upon His suffering children for their salvation.

Ladies and gentlemen, I have already mentioned that a life of vertical “high noon” alignment casts no shadow. If our lives are shining, there will be no chance for the shadow of sin to be cast. Those who receive the light will be indebted to the light. I pray that we can now wipe away the tears of people in misery and poverty and lead an illuminated life of eternal true love that dissipates all darkness. The True Parents have achieved ultimate unity, and offered and proclaimed the era of God’s full transcendence, full immanence, full authority and omnipotence upon the standard of their conclusion, completion and perfection.

Who is True Father?

Respected leaders of peace and beloved blessed families: At the dawn of this new providential turning point and new age, my greatest hope is that True Father’s providential stature will solidify. Throughout his life, True Father treasured every second and every minute as he invested his entire being completely for the sake of God’s Will. He relentlessly traveled to every part of the globe and even to the spirit world. It is my hope that his cosmic and providential achievements, the victories he accumulated with his own blood, sweat and tears, will become the eternal standard and example for all humankind.

First, True Father is humankind’s ancestor of original goodness, the True Parent. Adam and Eve, the first ancestors of humankind, fell and became our evil ancestors. As Jesus testified, they are the false ancestors. With the Fall of Adam and Eve, God lost the first created human beings. In other words, He lost His external form.

God carried out the providence of restoration and sent True Father as the ultimate, returning Messiah. Through exercising his own portion of responsibility, True Father illuminated the truth, God’s Word, and completed the providence of restoration through indemnity. Through the Blessing ceremony and the Seonghwa ceremony, he opened the paths of rebirth, resurrection and eternal life, establishing them for fallen people to walk in the physical and spiritual worlds. This enables people to inherit the original true love, true life and true lineage as they were at the time of creation. This inheritance can only come from the True Parents, the ancestors of goodness. Blessed marriage is the gateway for this inheritance.

Second, True Father is the owner of the eternal truth, or the Word. God formed the whole of creation through the Word. The Word is the truth and the substantiation of God. God’s love and heart are manifested in form through the Word. Adam and Eve, humankind’s false ancestors, transgressed God’s Word and committed the Fall. Hence, they were unable to substantiate the Word. Consequently, the Messiah had to search for the Word, the truth from Heaven, as part of his providence for the start of his mission.

In response to such demands of the providence, True Father discovered the fullness of the Word through setting many intense conditions, gaining victory in separating from Satan, and through receiving God’s approval.

Throughout his life, True Father led and directed the providence with the Word. Through the Word, he suffused the world with vitality and life. He lovingly nurtured with the Word while completing the providence of re-creation. As a result, during the jubilee years in True Parents’ course, he completed the eight great textbooks and teaching materials and established the tradition of Hoon Dok Hae. This, in turn, allowed the pathway to open up to firmly establish Cheon Il Guk through the Word and through the love within our worldwide families.

The authority of the teachings in the eight great textbooks and teaching materials is solely True Parents’, and this must be preserved as the eternal tradition, which is absolute for all future generations.

Third, True Father is the one who completed God’s providence of salvation. As stated in Exposition of the Divine Principle, history is the providence of salvation, which is the providence of restoration. Due to the Fall of the first ancestors Adam and Eve, a world emerged under an evil sovereignty with the false ancestors as the center. Humankind’s misfortunes, anguish, sin, alienation and war, caused by all manner of conflict and hostility, arose from the Fall of those first ancestors. God immediately began the dispensation to restore the world from one of sin and evil to the ideal world envisioned at the time of creation, in other words, a world of peace overflowing with happiness, altruism, service to others and love. This dispensation has continued throughout the course of history without ceasing even for a moment.

Nonetheless, God had to repeatedly prolong the providence of salvation, which continued amid the recurring need for indemnity and restoration, because of the failure of central figures and groups of people to complete their portions of responsibility. Two thousand years ago, God’s only begotten Son Jesus came as the Messiah. He was crucified because of people’s faithlessness. He subsequently ascended, though not before promising that Christ would return.

Two thousand years later, as Jesus intended and promised, True Father came as the returning Messiah and achieved victory in the providential course, paying all the historical indemnity during his lifetime. It is no exaggeration to characterize True Father’s life as a state of ceaseless tension and suffering. He endlessly battled Satan in life-and-death confrontations throughout the providence of restoration through indemnity.

In this way True Father concluded, completed and perfected the providence through a forty-year course as the Messiah, a forty-year course as the True Parent, and a ten-year course as the Peace King, the King of kings.

Fourth, True Father is the Peace King, the King of kings. God’s Will is the perfection of a peaceful, ideal world, a world where all people live as one great family under God. This refers on an individual level to personal perfection through mind-body unity and then the perfection of the family through the oneness of husband and wife, parents and children, and siblings. Expanding this concept, we are meant to create a world overflowing with love and peace, where our societies, our nations and the entire world come together as one.

Since the Fall of humankind, conflict between good and evil has been unending, replicating itself from the level of the individual to the whole of creation. In the end, the divisions between races, nations and religions have brought unfathomable suffering to humankind.

True Parents set as their lives’ providential goals the liberation of God, the salvation of humankind, and the realization of a peaceful, ideal world. They completely invested their lives in order to achieve these goals. Along with religious activities aimed centrally at a revival of spirituality, True Father initiated a peace movement for all humankind spanning the fields of politics, economics, society, culture, the arts, education, the media and sports. He indicated that a true family is the smallest unit of the kingdom of heaven, and he opened the gates to the true family Blessing and to even bless marriages between enemies. He made the ideal of one great human family a reality through the cross-cultural and international blessed marriages, which aim to resolve all conflicts. As a result, we could hold a coronation ceremony in which 120 clans and 120 nations crowned True Father as the King of Peace and the King of kings. Humanity’s dream is now becoming a reality.

Fifth, as the True Parents of Heaven, Earth and Humankind, True Parents perfected God’s position, so that for the first time God could achieve on earth the perfection that He had envisioned at the time of the creation. True Father had begun the providence of restoration through indemnity from the position of a servant of servants. Each victory gradually eroded Satan’s sovereignty while increasingly elevating God’s stature toward its level at the time of the creation.

Two thousand years ago, Jesus revealed that God was our Father and that he was God’s true Son. You are aware that because of this Jesus was accused of blaspheming God, and he suffered the ordeal of the cross. On the foundation of Jesus’ sacrifice, True Parents substantially fulfilled restoration through indemnity on earth and restored honor and glory to God as the original Creator, in other words, as the True Parent who governs heaven, earth, and humankind.

In the course of accomplishing this, True Parents’ providential stature evolved according to the standard of the providence, and on that basis they achieved God’s liberation and complete freedom. On the foundation of the successive levels of the Messiah; True Parents; the Parents of Heaven and Earth; the Parents of Heaven, Earth and Humankind; the King of the Blessed Families; the King of Peace; and the King of kings, True Father proclaimed in 2010 the settlement of the True Parents of Heaven, Earth and Humankind. That is, since God is the incorporeal True Parent of heaven, earth and humankind, True Father established True Parents as the corporeal True Parents of heaven, earth and humankind, who complete and manifest God’s true and essential nature in substance.

Beloved members, Heaven could assist True Father and I as we trod the providential course of restoration through indemnity, and the suffering we experienced on that course is beyond imagination. We even lost four children of the True Family, who became sacrificial offerings for the providence. Who indeed would dare to say they comprehend this painful course of restoration through indemnity? I have dedicated my very being to this work, sharing the joys and pains of life with True Father as his companion, overcoming innumerable trials and difficulties. On that victorious foundation, we, the True Parents, gained the right of equality in a providential dimension, the right to live together and the right to hold the same position, which Heaven bestowed upon us.

Our future path

Respected guests from home and abroad, beloved blessed families throughout the world, according to heavenly law, True Father will now make the spirit world his base and carry out the providence to expand Cheon Il Guk while freely traveling between the spiritual and physical worlds. True Father will come down to the physical world as the substantial being of the God of Night and shall preside over the providence in a state of oneness of heart, body, harmony and mind with True Mother, who shall continue to preside over the providence on earth as the substantial being of the God of Day. Through the victory of Foundation Day, Father will be with you in building the original Garden of Eden on earth. There is no stopping Heaven’s providence.

At this new transition point in this historic providence, I want to make clear that I have inherited True Father’s victorious foundation and shall stand in the forefront to lead the providence on earth. In doing so, I would like to convey the following to everyone:

First, we must absolutely value the tradition established by True Parents as much as we value our own lives, and we need to pass this down to our descendants in future generations. True Parents established the tradition of love and heart, the Word and principles, the rules and regulations of our tradition, and the tradition of the culture of heart. The Hoon Dok Hae tradition of reading the Word, which is the crystallization of True Parents’ course in the providence of restoration through indemnity, has to become the central practice in each family as well as in the churches and any gathering centered on Heaven.

At the same time, we must go forward in building a new order on earth. Please always remember that the order and tradition of organizations also have to form a perfect solidarity centering on the True Family as Abel, who are in turn centered on True Parents.

Second, we must realize the ideal of a blessed family, which Heaven has blessed us to be. The family is the cradle of true love, true life and true lineage and the basis for realizing the purpose God envisaged at the time of the creation. Based on the eight verses of the Family Pledge, you need to uphold through absolute faith the tradition of maintaining the lineage of absolute goodness.

Our vision for peace revolves around pure love, happy families and a peaceful world. Children must be raised and nurtured with love and through the Word within a tradition of conjugal oneness, through parents who attend Heaven with absolute love. Through Hoon Dok Hae, you need to foster the firm establishment of the Cheon Il Guk order in your families and fulfill the ideal of the Blessing in which the tradition of heart can take root both vertically and horizontally under the standard of high noon settlement.

Third, you have all received the benefit of being tribal messiahs. You need to work to fulfill that mission and responsibility until the time Cheon Il Guk is completed on earth. Tribal messiahship is the greatest of all blessings given to you by True Parents. Fallen people could not be blessed and appointed tribal messiahs were it not for True Parents’ foundation of victory in the providence of restoration through indemnity. That is why True Parents have consistently emphasized the tribal messiah mission during their lifelong governance of the providence.

The physical and spiritual completion of Cheon Il Guk on earth becomes possible when tribal messiahs fulfill their mission: conveying the Word to each of their clans, officiating in the Blessing of their clans, all the while practicing living for the sake of others. Your clans will thereby establish the sovereignty of goodness and realize a world of peace, one great human family. A victorious foundation established in each clan will automatically bring about the establishment of the Abel UN, and complete the sovereignty of goodness.

Fourth, all of us need to create a community based on the culture of heart and characterized by harmony and unity, centered on True Parents and the True Family. Each of you without exception found the path of God’s Will because you were chosen by Heaven, based on the merits of your ancestors and because of your own character. You faced immeasurable persecution in order to follow True Parents until entering this realm of victory today. That makes us all a part of a single family, a community of heart centered on the one True Parents. Division and conflict continue to afflict the world, yet because we are one with True Parents, the Unification family can be brothers and sisters who can easily transcend race, national borders and any other barrier.

If you can live an exemplary life of giving and living for the sake of others, this dream will surely come true. Especially as we are in this time of great transition in the providence, I ask that you bear this in mind and engrave in your hearts that we must become one with True Parents.

Our resolution for the victory of Foundation Day

Respected peace-loving leaders and beloved members of the Unification family, True Father in the spirit world is always with us. Existing without corporeal form, he is at our side, and will never leave us even for a moment. What do you think he desires from us at this time? It is to march forward without pausing. God’s providence will continue until all people are centered on True Parents and a culture of heart takes root overflowing with love and peace, thereby establishing a new order. Let us advance further based on the victory of Foundation Day. The hope it brings is so great that it will continue far into the future, so let us instill this great hope in the world and offer great glory to Heaven and True Parents.

Beloved members, I shall be faithful to True Father’s life and tradition. He set the example for us and led by example his entire life, doing his absolute best to achieve victory in the providence. The requests I have conveyed to you today are True Father’s last words as he was departing for the spirit world. I sincerely pray that you will engrave them deeply in your heart and that you will all become victorious.

I pray that God’s blessings and love will be forever with you, your families and your nations.

Thank you very much.