Hak Ja Han
January 7, 2014
Las Vegas
After hearing the New Year’s Motto, have you committed yourself to become a True Owner of Cheon Il Guk (God’s Heavenly Kingdom)? Rather, not only to become the True Owner, but to actually be the True Owner now?
If you think about it, in today’s world, no one would say or believe that our current world is a happy one. There are so many problems from the level of the individual, the family, the society, and the nation. This is not God’s ideal world; the world God planned before creating the universe and human beings. The fall of humankind changed everything. Humanity is fallen, and that has affected everything, including the creation. Let’s take a moment to reflect on America.
Unificationists believe this is God’s chosen nation, but we lost God’s presence here and the sense of God’s providence of restoring humanity to God’s original blueprint. Think about the founding fathers who came to this country to create a God-centered nation and what they must think about this country now. Instead of seeking peace, America is engaged in wars. It has failed to seek—and find—the Second Coming of the Messiah.
In my speech on December 15th in Korea, I said that the time had come to turn towards peace, to fulfill the prophecy of Isaiah 2:4 of turning our swords into plowshares. We all need to give up our weapons and our armament for the sake of God’s original ideal.
Almost every nation in the world is spending a big portion of its budget on weapons, including tanks and planes. What if that money were to be invested for the sake of humanity’s future, and for the sake of restoring the environment? We need to create a nation and a world where the Heavenly Parent and True Parents can make their home.
How fortunate you are to meet the True Parents! You are the first people on earth to do so, the first ancestors. This time never came before in history. We are so chosen, so blessed. Yet, even though we are Blessed Central Families, how well do we really know True Parents? We must continue to study them and their words every day.
According to Biblical history alone, the history of fallen humanity is over 6,000 years old. How many bad things have been done in history and how much of that is still in us? We must wake up and understand the will of God and the will of True Parents, by working harder and harder in our daily activities towards world peace.
In God’s eyes and in True Parents’ eyes we are not yet perfected—or restored to God’s original blueprint for creation. We don’t understand well enough yet, but compared to the other seven billion people on earth, we are so fortunate.
I have always emphasized the importance of creating a new environment. To do that, we have to witness—or outreach. We have to let all people know the True Parents as their own parents. Again, we have to re-awaken, teach the Divine Principle and bear witness to True Parents. This is our primary mission. We may not be young physically, but we have to make an effort to give new spiritual life to ourselves and everyone in the world.
We have a big blessing and a big responsibility because you met True Parents; we’re educated and have been blessed. We have to share that blessing.
How do we become a True Owner? Can we just tell people “I am the owner, so you must respect me!” No, we have to earn respect and we do that by becoming true representatives of True Parents. We become true sons and daughters of filial piety even by risking our life to fulfill our responsibility. True Parents laid all the foundation for a world of peace, and on that we have to fulfill our responsibility. We must think about this every day of our life.
Think about the life of True Parents; they shed so much blood, sweat and tears for their public mission over the last 60 years. Think about the heavy burden now on my shoulders for the sake of our Heavenly Parent and all humanity. Think about how precious every second must be. Consider ,also, how much Heavenly Parent has done already for the sake of humankind, yet, no matter how much Heavenly Parent and True Parents do, without all of us also fulfilling our portion of responsibility, True Parent’s life course will become heavier and heavier. Still, as True Mother, I lay down the foundation for all future generations.
This involves making some tough decisions. I’m sure you all know about the Seongnam Ilhwa soccer team, how much True Father (Rev. Sun Myung Moon) loved soccer and how much he gave to establish that team. When Father founded the company Seongnam Ilhwa, it was among the first multibillion dollar companies (chaebol’s in Korean) with a professional soccer team in Korea. These days, other chaebol’s like Samsung and Hyundai have their own teams, but Seongnam was the first. They were champions of Korean soccer seven times and became famous all over Asia. Father ’s commitment to soccer and sports was an important foundation for the 1988 Seoul Olympic games. With all that history, I still decided to dismiss that investment, and donated the team to the city of Seongnam.
I am sharing these things because I want you to know how deep my commitment is to support missionary work. I am devoting all my resources to that. Even though we may have to end several important projects, I did it to focus on witnessing and outreach activities. It is more important to bring every life to God.
I’m sure you have heard how witnessing efforts in Asia have exploded in countries such as the Philippines, Malaysia and Thailand. Sadly, America is still far behind. Let’s wake up!
One of the important projects True Parents began here in Las Vegas is the Wongu School of Oriental Medicine. From today, Dr. Tony Guerra will step down from his responsibilities as Senior Pastor here, to focus on his responsibilities as the President of the Wongu School. True Parents have already invested much guidance into this school and it is time for you to fulfill our responsibility. Dr. Guerra will work with the local government and other partners, increase recruitment and develop the school.
Wongu’s mission is to serve America and the world as a resource for missionaries and taking care of human health, which is very important.
I will continue to focus more on education and on publishing the Cheon Seong Gyeong (Holy Scriptures) the Pyeong Hwa Gyeong (Messages of Peace) , and the Cham Bumo Gyeong.
Think about it. God himself created the universe out of nothing! True Parents laid the foundation, but the development of this project is now your responsibility.
From today, Rev. Ken Doo will be the Senior Pastor of Las Vegas Family Church in unity with Kwon Jin Moon and his wife, Hwa Yeon Chun Moon. You have to be determined to make the Las Vegas Family Church the greatest in the world.
I urge you to bring many new young people. Our American Family Church is already “mature” enough. We need new young people now.
We need to raise up a new “Top Gun” generation here in the USA. The 40 years+ “Top Guns” need to pass on their mission to younger people. But we haven’t raised up the Next Generation Top Guns yet, have we?
The President of the Korean Family Church is a Unificationist-born member. Before he assumed this role, I called together about 40 Unificationist-born youth for a new “Top Gun” workshop in Korea. They studied together for 21 days at the Cheongpyeong Heaven and Earth Training Center in Korea and their focus was on reading the entire Cheong seong Gyeong during that period. It was from among this group that the new president was chosen.
I already directed all the Korean and Japanese family church members to read the entire Cheong seong Gyeong by the end of last year, but the English translation is not ready. Still, that is not really an excuse. How many times did Father urge you to learn Korean? If you know your own parents’ language, you can understand their heart. You can then freely enter the Kingdom of Heaven. How serious have we been about that?
I am very proud of the Korean Top Guns and the 21 day workshop they completed. I read their reflections afterward and found them very moving. They really understood True Parents’ heart very well. They also shared their experiences with a group of Ambassadors for Peace in a weekend seminar and it moved them very much. I am suggesting to Rev. Doo that he should lead the Las Vegas members in studying these reflections during Hoon Dok Hwe (study of scripture at home). Let us all totally invest ourselves in educating the next generation in this way. They are our future.
You have all heard about how I created the Wonmo Education Foundation. Another project is the Universal Peace Academy (UPA). There are about 40 students in the first class. 16 of those students are currently here in the United States on a pilgrimage to visit all of True Parents’ foundations here. They have been to New York, to East Garden and Belvedere, historical places for this church. Then they visited the Washington Times, heard about the Universal Peace Federation and the American Clergy Leadership Conference. All these are part of True Parents’ enormous foundation in the United States, and it moved them very much. You must all have UPA candidates from among your own children.
Let us make a new commitment to Victory in 2020 here in Las Vegas and in the United States and the world. Without our actual results and good outcomes, we cannot truly say “I am here today” in front of our Heavenly Parent and True Parents.