The Proclamation of the Complete Testament Age - View of the Principle of the Providential History of Salvation
Reverend Sun Myung Moon
President, Federation for World Peace
This address was given April 16, 1996 at the inaugural banquet of the Washington Times Foundation.
Distinguished Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen,
Today, I sincerely thank God that you and I can meet as we face this era of great historical change. God is the absolute One, the only, unchanging and eternal One. His will is the same. If the human beings Adam and Eve had become one body under the love of God, everything would have been complete and perfect. God's origin, purpose and process of creation, as well as cause, effect and direction are all absolute.
The human ancestors Adam and Eve entered into chaos after they fell through their ignorance. This ignorance and chaos expanded from the individual level to the levels of family, nation and world. It has been the task of religion and the Providence of Salvation to liberate us from this sphere of the Fall.
In the Last Days, the Messiah comes and teaches clearly the absolute, the only, unchanging and eternal cause, direction and effect, from God's viewpoint. He will cleanse the world of ignorance and chaos and return it to the original bosom of God. This is the completion of the will of God. If this does not happen, then in the Last Days all religions, "isms," systems of thought, and nations will pass away
To bring about completion and perfection between God and humankind, centering on True Love, God required that man accomplish a condition of responsibility in order to reach unity with Him. Therefore, God needed to give the Commandment to the first ancestors. In other words, God knew that they were in the growth period, on the way to reaching perfection, so He established the Commandment as the condition for His children to inherit the most precious thing, True Love.
Originally True Love was to be gained through life experience and understood through internal realization. True Love is not something that can be learned through words, a written text or schooling. It is experienced completely only in life. Created as newborn infants, Adam and Eve were to grow and perfect themselves gradually through experiences of the heart of True Children, True Brother and Sister, True Husband and Wife, and True Parents encompassing their whole lives. Only after experiencing the True Love of God in its entirety can one perfect the Purpose of Creation and become an ideal human being.
Every person desires that his object of love be ten million times more valuable than himself, or even infinitely more valuable. In the same way God desires that humankind, His object of love, become infinitely valuable. If a human being perfects himself then that person obtains God-like value by attaining God's divinity and perfection.
God's Ideal of True Love
God is absolute, but His ideal of True Love cannot be realized by himself. That is because love always requires an object -- a beloved. At this point, we should understand the relationship between God's True Love and humankind's True Love, and how they begin and are perfected. What would have happened if God had not chosen human beings as His absolute objects of True Love, and instead had sought to begin and perfect True Love in some other way? In that case, God and man would have pursued the ideal of True Love with different motivations, directions and purposes. God would have had to achieve His ideal of love through an object higher than humankind; and by the same token, humankind's ideal of love would have had no direct relationship with God.
But God, as the subject of True Love, did establish humankind as the object of His True Love. Accordingly, God can fulfill His ideal of True Love only through humankind. The fulfillment of God's Purpose of Creation is the ideal world where God and mankind are united through absolute love. Human beings were created as the greatest object of God's love. They alone in all Creation embody the nature of God. They are born the visible bodies of the invisible God. If a person perfects himself, he becomes the temple of God, a visible, substantial body in which God can freely and peacefully dwell. God's overall ideal of absolute True Love is realized and perfected through humankind in a vertical parent-child relationship.
God created Adam first. He was to be the son of God and at the same time the substantial body of God Himself. Later, God created Eve as the object of Adam so that Adam and Eve could perfect the ideal of horizontal love, which is conjugal love. Eve was to be the daughter of God, and also, as a bride she was to perfect substantially the ideal of the horizontal love of God.
The place in which Adam and Eve are perfected, consummating their first love by marrying under the blessing of God, is precisely the place where God meets His substantial bride. This is because God's ideal of absolute love descends vertically and joins where the ideal of conjugal love between Adam and Eve is realized horizontally. The True Love of God and the True Love of humankind join and perfect themselves at the same point, although they came from different directions, one vertical and the other horizontal.
Why God Needs Humankind
God's act of creation was inevitable. And we cannot imagine Creation without a purpose. There was only one reason God needed the Creation: to realize the ideal of True Love. God developed life from the simplest and lowest levels up to the human level in pairs, subject and object and positive and negative, to form reciprocal relationships under the ideal of love. The Creation's ideal of love and God's ideal of ultimate love are not separate or different. This Principle of Creation is at work to perfect the absolute love of God through the perfection of the love of man and woman in the human world. This is the reason why in the beginning God created one man and one woman, Adam and Eve.
God's Purpose of Creation called for Adam and Eve to obey the Commandment of God, who is the subject of True Love, and perfect themselves as True Man and True Woman. Furthermore, they were to become a True Couple united in the True Love of God. Then, by having sons and daughters through that True Love, they would have become True Parents and lived in happiness. Had Adam and Eve perfected themselves in True Love, they would have fulfilled God's desire to have a substantial body. And when they perfected themselves as a True Couple, the ideal of God's absolute love would have been fulfilled.
By Adam and Eve having children of goodness and becoming True Parents, God would have established Himself substantially as the Eternal Parent and achieved His ideal. Citizenship in the Kingdom of Heaven would expand infinitely in the afterlife of the spirit world based on myriad generations of descendants in the physical world.
But Adam and Eve, the human ancestors, fell away from God. When they were expelled from Eden, they had not yet had children. Having driven them out, God had no basis to follow behind them to bless their marriage. The entire human race has thus descended from our failed ancestors. Humanity has multiplied without any direct relationship whatsoever to the love of God.
Could the Fall of Man have been the result of eating the fruit of a tree? The fall of Adam and Eve was an immoral sin against the ideal of the True Love of God. The fact that Adam and Eve needed to obey the Commandment shows that they fell in a stage of imperfection, that is to say, during their period of growth. The Archangel, who is symbolized by a serpent, tempted Eve to eat of the fruit of good and evil, and she fell spiritually. She later tempted Adam (who was also too immature to eat of the fruit), and they then fell physically.
The only possible sin that could have been fatal in the Garden of Eden, where Adam and Eve were in communication with God and living in joy, was the sin of illicit love. The first consummated love of the human ancestors, because it was supposed to have been the perfection of the love of God Himself, should have marked the beginning of a celebration that would continue throughout history, filled with the never-ending intoxication of joy and blessing for God, Adam and Eve, and the universe. It should have been a joyous occasion in which the love, life and lineage of God would have been established within humankind. To the contrary, however, Adam and Eve covered their lower parts and hid themselves among the trees, trembling in fear. By disobeying heavenly law, they established an immoral relationship as the basis for false love, false life and false lineage. As descendants of Adam and Eve, all human beings are born with Original Sin. The Fall gave rise to conflict of mind and body within every person and caused our societies to be filled with tainted love, and people to do things that contradict the desire of their original minds.
Taking Responsibility for Love
According to the ideal of love, all love relationships in the animal and plant kingdoms are for reproduction only Human beings are the sole exception. Humankind enjoys freedom in the conjugal relationship of love. This is humanity's special privilege as the lord of all creation. God gave the blessing and infinite joy of love to His sons and daughters. However, the True Freedom that God allowed requires human responsibility If an individual were to insist upon and practice freedom of love without responsibility, how much confusion and destruction would take place! Achieving the highest ideal of human love is possible only when one takes responsibility for love.
We can think of this responsibility in three ways. The first responsibility is for one to become the master of True Love -- truly free and thanking God for the freedom of love and knowing how to cultivate and control oneself. This responsibility for a love relationship should not be taken merely because of law or social convention. Instead, a person should establish responsibility through his own self-control and self-determination within the life-committing vertical relationship with God.
Second is one's responsibility toward the object of love. By nature, people do not want their spouse's love to be shared with others. Horizontal conjugal love, which differs from the vertical love between parents and children, loses its potential for perfection the moment it is divided. This is because the Principle of Creation requires husband and wife to become one in absolute love. Each spouse has the responsibility given by love to live absolutely for the sake of the other.
The third responsibility of love is toward children. The love of parents is the basis for children's pride and happiness. They would wish to be born through the total and harmonious unity of their parents in True Love, and they would wish to be raised in that kind of love. The most precious responsibility of parents is not only to rear their children externally, but also to offer them life elements of True Love that can perfect their spirituality. This is why the family is so valuable. The daily experience of the heart of True Children, True Brothers and Sisters, True Spouses and True Parents cannot be acquired in any place other than the True Family.
If Adam and Eve had become a couple of True Love centered upon God, God could have dwelt in Adam as His substantial body and thus loved Eve. What is more, Adam and Eve could have become True Parents who substantially embodied God, and become the origin of the love of goodness, a life of goodness, and a lineage of goodness.
Due to the Fall, however, Adam and Eve became the substantial body of Satan and ended up becoming the original evil couple, evil parents and evil ancestors. Their union became the root of evil love, evil life and evil blood lineage. Because human beings originated from this root, they descended from the adulterous Satan, who is the enemy of God, and inherited this lineage of evil parents.
How great must have been the pain of God when, by the Fall, our human ancestors destroyed His ideal of True Love! Humankind should have been the sons and daughters of God, but they do not know God Himself as their Original Parent. Yet even though His sons and daughters serve Satan, God has worked for the Providence of Salvation. Because He is an absolute being, and His ideal of creation is also absolute, He has carried out the Providence of Salvation even amid great sadness. God's Providence of Salvation is the Providence of Restoration, which means to recover the lost Purpose of Creation, centered on True Love. The Providence of Salvation is also the Providence of Re-creation.
The Essence of God's Providence
Based on this point, the root of the Providence of Salvation is the re-creation of the seed of the original child, the human being who will fulfill the ideal of creation. That which God abhors -- the life and blood lineage that began with the false love of the adulterer Satan must be cleansed. The essence of the Providence is the task of setting up the birth of the True Parent, the Savior united with the True Love, Life and Lineage of God.
Since the ancestors of humankind failed to fulfill their responsibility, inherited the immoral lineage of Satan, and came under the dominion of Satan, God Himself could not directly intervene and return human beings to their original position. Furthermore, God can neither unconditionally accept humankind, who chose to go to the side of the evil Archangel, nor punish them. So God uses the strategy of placing a central figure on the side of the good Archangel; by being struck first, that figure establishes the indemnity condition to recover what was lost. Satan strikes first but as a result, he must take the losing position. The First, Second and Third (Cold War) World Wars are good examples of this. The side that struck first, lost.
From the overall perspective of the Providence of Restoration, the foundation of cooperation between mother and son is very important. This was so at the time of Jacob, Moses and Jesus. God was working His Providence to separate people from satanic life and lineage by establishing the foundation of cooperation between a mother-who had to fulfill the responsibility of Eve, the originator of the Fall-and the second son of the family.
God cannot directly relate to the first son because he is in the position of having a direct blood relationship with Satan, who through the Fall was the first to dominate humankind. God has been restoring the blood lineage of goodness by having the second son, who represents the side of goodness, establish a condition. Then God has had the first son, representing the side of evil, take a position subordinate to the second son.
In the family of Adam, God carried out the providence of establishing the second son, Abel, and having him subordinate the first son, Cain. Even though Eve had fallen, as a mother she could have made an effort to create unity between the two brothers. In the end, however, Cain murdered Abel (Genesis 4:8), and the Providence of Salvation, not being fulfilled, was prolonged.
There was also a required formula of cooperation between mother and son at the time of Noah. But that formula of meaningful cooperation was not realized until the time of Rebecca and Jacob.
The human Fall was committed by three beings: Adam, Eve and the Archangel. The Archangel seduced Eve, causing the spiritual fall, and later fallen Eve seduced Adam, causing the physical fall. As a result, they turned their backs on God, and the fallen Archangel became Satan. Since the Providence of Salvation is the Providence of Restoration, the Principle of Restoration can be carried out only by going in a direction 180 degrees opposite of the Fall.
God lost Adam, who had the seed of True Love and True Life. Thus, God had to find a son with the new seed free from satanic accusation. Just as God created Adam first at the time of the creation, God must prepare a son first who has no relationship to the Fall, according to the Providence of Restoration, which is the Providence of Re-creation. This is the basis for the idea of the coming of the Messiah. The Messiah rejects the sinful lives of those with a fallen lineage under the dominion of Satan. He comes as a True Person who engrafts fallen humanity into the seed of new life. The Messiah has his roots in God, and comes as the Second Adam, who wipes away all that was committed by the first Adam. This is the reason God cannot send a superman Messiah who will work only through miracles.
For a son to be born on earth with this seed of God's love and life there first must exist a mother. And the mother cannot give birth to this child in a conventional way. Conception must happen through the formula of restoration. All the cooperation between mothers and sons in the Providence of Restoration is a preparation and a condition for the Son of God to be born with the seed of new life, free from satanic accusation. By making conditions to avoid Satan's attacks, and by subordinating the firstborn son who represents evil, mother and son restore the love, life and lineage that were taken over by Satan.
The Meaning of Jacob's Victory
The Bible, which records the providential work of God, contains many stories that are difficult to understand. For example, Rebecca deceived her husband Isaac and her first son Esau, and helped her second son Jacob receive the blessing. (Genesis 27) God took the side of that mother and son, and although they used methods that at first glance seem unjust, God still blessed them for their actions.
In Adam's family Cain and Abel fought outside the womb. Their struggle resulted in the death of Abel, the second son. Then came Jacob. On the merits of many godly people who paid indemnity and sacrificed after the time of Abel, Jacob at last caught up to the level at which Satan first dominated humankind. Then Jacob dealt with his twin brother, Esau. At the ford of Jabbok, Jacob set up the condition of spiritual victory over the angel. (Genesis 32:28) And through winning over Esau (Genesis 33), who was in the position of the substantial body of the Archangel, Jacob consequently was blessed as the first victor in history and was given the name "Israel." But by then he was already in his fortieth year.
Satan sowed the seed of false love within the womb of Eve, which gave birth to evil life. Therefore, God needed to purify a mother's womb from which the heavenly Son could be born. That purification period of separation from Satan had to begin at the time of conception and continue to age forty, so even though Jacob was victorious he did not meet that criteria. The great mother who assumed the responsibility to meet this condition was Tamar.
Tamar's Providential Role
Tamar had married Er, the eldest son of Judah. (Genesis 38) But Er displeased God and he died. According to the custom of that time, Judah gave Tamar his second son, Onan, that they might bear a child for Er. But Onan, knowing that Tamar's child would not be his own, spilled his semen on the ground. This was a sin in the eyes of God, for which Onan died.
Then Tamar wanted Shelah, the third son of Judah, for a husband, but Judah did not give him to her. Judah thought that his two sons had died because of Tamar, so he was afraid that Shelah would die and end the family lineage.
But Tamar had the conviction that she was to carry on the lineage of the chosen people. To do that, she disguised herself as a prostitute and slept with her father-in-law, Judah, and became pregnant with twins. At the time of birth, one of the twin sons, Zerah, stretched out his hand from the womb to be born first. But he was pulled back into the womb, and the second son, Perez, was born first, taking the position of the elder brother. Thus, within the womb of Tamar, the first and second sons fought, and their reversal of position separated them from Satan. That became the condition for restoration in the womb. Upon this condition, the Messiah could be conceived within the blood lineage of the chosen people, on the base of the nation of Israel which could stand up to the Roman Empire two thousand years later. The victorious foundation on the national level could then be formed in the womb of a mother free of satanic accusation, prepared for the seed of the Son of God. On this foundation, the Holy Mother Mary emerged in the mainstream of God's Providence.
Mary Receives God's Will
Mary, when she was engaged to Joseph, received from the Archangel Gabriel the surprising message that the Messiah would be born through her. (Luke 1:31) In those days, if an unmarried woman became pregnant, she would be killed. But Mary accepted the will of God with absolute faith, saying, "Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word." (Luke 1:38)
Mary consulted with the priest Zechariah, who was her relative and was highly respected. Zechariah's wife Elizabeth, with the help of God, was pregnant with John the Baptist. She said to Mary "Blessed are you among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb. Why is this granted to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me?" (Luke 1:42-43) With these words she testified to the coming birth of Jesus. In this way God let Mary, Zechariah, and Elizabeth know about the birth of the Messiah before anyone else. All of them had the absolutely crucial mission of following the will of God and serving Jesus. Zechariah's family let Mary stay in their house. Jesus was conceived in the house of Zechariah.
Elizabeth and Mary were cousins on their mothers' side. But according to God's Providence, they were considered sisters, with Elizabeth as the elder (Cain) and Mary as the younger (Abel). Mary received Elizabeth's help in the presence of Zechariah. Through this cooperation, Zechariah's family, on the national level, indemnified the lack of unity between mother and son with Leah and Rachel in Jacob's family (Genesis 29-30) This allowed Jesus to be conceived. For the first time in history, there could be born on earth, free of satanic accusation and through a prepared womb, the seed of the Son of God-the seed of the True Father. In this way, the only begotten Son of God, the owner of the first love of God, was born for the first time in history Mary had to achieve something that could not be understood by common sense, nor easily tolerated under the law of those times. Mary, Elizabeth and Zechariah had been spiritually moved. They followed the revelation that came from God and unconditionally believed that it was the will and desire of God.
Although the Son of God could be born on earth, he needed a wall of protection to grow up safely in the satanic world and fulfill the will of God. God had hoped that these three people in the family of Zechariah would establish that protective foundation. There are many points to consider with regard to how seriously the three had to dedicate themselves to protecting and serving the Son of God, and how long they should have been united with each other.
In the Bible it is recorded, "And Mary remained with her [Elizabeth] about three months, and returned to her home." (Luke 1:56) After that, there is no biblical record of any further communication between Mary and Elizabeth and Zechariah. From the time Mary left Zechariah's house, difficulties began for Mary and Jesus. The family of Zechariah should have been the wall of protection for Jesus until the very end.
A short time later, Joseph discovered that Mary was pregnant. How great must have been his shock at that moment! Mary, his beloved fiancée, without having had any relationship with him, had become pregnant after a three-month stay in another place. It was natural for Joseph to question Mary about who the baby in her womb belonged to. What would have happened if at that time Mary had explained everything candidly? If she had exposed everything, it could have been the end of a clan. So Mary simply responded that she was pregnant by the Holy Spirit.
Mary's pregnancy began to show, and the people of the surrounding area became aware of it. What would have happened if Joseph had declared that he didn't know anything about it? But Joseph was a righteous man. He believed in the revelation of God and defended Mary, saying the pregnancy was his responsibility Mary may have been ridiculed for becoming pregnant during her engagement, but she had avoided death by stoning. Joseph, who loved Mary, protected her this way in the beginning. However, there was a great deal of anguish deep in his heart. Once Jesus was born, Joseph's suspicions about the father of Jesus only increased and his heart ached. As Jesus grew older, the two became more and more distant in heart. And because of this, family problems frequently arose. Jesus was viewed as an illegitimate son, and lacking the protection of Zechariah's family and the love of Joseph, he grew up with an indescribable loneliness in his heart.
No Bride for Jesus
Jesus was aware of his path as the Messiah, and he lamented by himself these lonely circumstances and the serious obstacle they presented to fulfilling the will of God. The Messiah is the True Parent, and to fulfill that mission he needed to receive his substantial bride. Jesus had to reverse, at the very root, the false love by which the Archangel had caused the fall of Eve, who was growing up as the sister of Adam. Consequently, Jesus, in the place of Adam as the Son of God, should have received as his bride the younger sister of someone in an archangelic position. That bride was to have been none other than Zechariah's daughter, the younger sister of John the Baptist. To fulfill this in a world where Satan plays the role of owner and lord, Jesus needed a foundation of protection formed by absolute faith. Tragically, the entire foundation ended up collapsing around him.
This would not have happened if Zechariah and Elizabeth, who had received the revelation and spiritual support from God, had maintained absolute faith. If they had fulfilled their responsibility Mary would have been in contact with them continually, even after her three-month stay at their house. God chose Zechariah's family as the foremost representatives of the entire world, so that even after the birth of Jesus they would protect, serve and witness to him as the Messiah. They not only should have served Jesus as the Son of God and Messiah with utter devotion, but they should have learned the will of God through Jesus and followed him absolutely. Also, John the Baptist was born to serve Jesus and should have fulfilled his responsibility to guide everyone he led to repentance, to believe in Jesus and receive salvation. But unfortunately, although Zechariah, Elizabeth and John the Baptist testified at first to Jesus as the Son of God, there is no evidence that they served him as such. The respected priest Zechariah was simply a spectator. John the Baptist stood separate from Jesus. These circumstances blocked the people from following Jesus and made his path very difficult. And once this family lost faith in Jesus, looking at him through human eyes, there was no room for them to help him receive his bride.
We should also consider the influence that Joseph and Mary's relationship had on Jesus. Mary had to restore the position of Eve and Tamar through indemnity, so she should have remained as only the fiancée of Joseph. Providentially, they could not be husband and wife. It was God's desire that they not have sexual relations either before or after Jesus' birth. Joseph still loved Mary after Jesus was born, but Mary should have wanted to separate from Joseph to raise Jesus as the Son of God.
But the real circumstances did not make this easy to do. Even though Mary's original mind told her that she should not do so, she had sexual relations with Joseph. They had children, which was a repetition of Eve's mistake. With this condition, Satan invaded them. With the exception of Jesus, everyone who should have protected Jesus came under the dominion of Satan: his father, his mother, his Abel-type brothers (John the Baptist and his brothers) and his Cain-type brothers (the children of Joseph).
Jesus Seen through Human Eyes
When someone is invaded by Satan, he loses all spiritual support and inspiration. Trust in God, as well as a sense of gratitude to Him, is lost. One begins to see everything through human eyes. Mary did not help Jesus with the wedding he desired. She even opposed it. This was the direct reason that Jesus could not receive his bride and could not become the True Parent; and this forced him to go the way of the cross.
Jesus' words to Mary during the wedding at Cana, "Oh woman, what have you to do with me?" (John 2:4), reveal a reproachful heart to a mother who helped in the weddings of others but neglected to help Jesus receive his bride, the most important requirement of the Providence. With this perspective, now we can understand why Jesus asked, "Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?" (Matthew 12:48)
Faced with the opposition of Mary Zechariah, Elizabeth, and finally John the Baptist, Jesus gave up hope for their protection as he sought to fulfill his mission. Therefore, Jesus left his home in search of a new spiritual foundation to restart the Providence of Salvation.
Now without a family and household, Jesus lamented, "Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man has nowhere to lay his head." (Matthew 8:20) With his family-level foundation lost, Jesus sought to replace it. That was his three-year course.
In the end, as people disbelieved and the disciples lost faith, Jesus endured Satan's attack. And as his foundation crumbled, he went the way of the cross. Originally, Jesus came to the earth as the Messiah to give blessings to his disciples and all humankind. He was to build the sinless Kingdom of Heaven. But because of the lack of faith in him, he could not receive his bride, he could not become the True Parent, and he could not accomplish his mission. This is why he promised to return.
Completing the Ideal of True Parents
The Lord of the Second Advent comes to perfect the foundation of God's Providence of Restoration left uncompleted by Jesus. That is to say, he comes as the seed of the original True Child to complete the ideal of creation. He comes to complete the ideal of True Parents, who are the origin of the True Love, True Life and the True Lineage of God. He comes on the victorious foundation of the fundamental providence of God's side up to the time of Jesus. He also stands upon the victorious foundation of Jesus' life and finds the bride that Jesus could not find. Together they become the True Parents to save all humankind.
Through the blessing of new marriages that pass on God's original blood lineage, the True Parents will be able to give salvation to all humanity. People will become True Persons engrafting into the True Love, True Life and True Lineage of God. Furthermore, the Messiah will establish a True Family, creating the Kingdom of Heaven on earth. Thus, it is the International Holy Weddings that establish this new blood lineage when the Lord of the Second Advent comes in the flesh.
On the level of the great worldwide family, the Lord indemnifies that which was lost in the family of Adam and restores the True Elder Sonship, True Parentship and True Kingship that should have been perfected in Adam's family. He will transform this world into the Kingdom of Heaven on earth under the dominion of God, opening the Kingdom of Heaven in the spirit world for registration. Humanity will enter into the era of kingship both spiritually and physically, centered on God; establish a world of victory, freedom, happiness and unity; and create the Heavenly Kingdom on earth and in the spirit world, which is God's ideal of creation. This is the View of the Principle of the Providential History of Salvation. I hope that in the future all of you can also receive this joyous new marriage blessing.
Distinguished writers and honored guests, I want to again express my appreciation that you have taken time from your busy lives to come together from so many nations to attend this important conference.
I have the highest hopes that your achievements from this gathering can be the beginning of the guidelines from which we can build an eternal future for our descendants.
May God bless you and your families.
Thank you.
-
In Search of the Origin of the Universe
Reverend Sun Myung Moon
President, Family Federation for World Peace
This address was given on August 1, 1996, at the Farewell Banquet of the Family Federation for World Peace Convocation, Washington D.C.
Distinguished Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen:
With the end of the Cold War, new hope for peace and justice has spread rapidly across the globe. Leaders unable or unwilling to acknowledge the new international realities are being swept away by the tidal wave of change.
As we stand at the threshold of the new millennium, I believe it is time to review our traditional patterns of thinking and boldly seize these new opportunities. Thus it is my great honor to share with you my life-long advocacy for world peace and true family values.
In this world there are two kinds of human beings: men and women. Can they decide to exchange positions? Was your birth as male or female based upon your personal desire? Or were you born that way irrespective of your personal preference? The sex that we are given is an absolute and is not a matter of choice. We did not think it nor did we want it, but without knowing the cause, result or process of our birth, we were born a certain way
Thus it is undeniable that no matter how great a person may be, he or she is not a causal being, but is a resultant being. Therefore, there must exist the first causal being. Who is that causal being? Is it male? Is it female? You can call that first causal being God or any other name, but this causal being must exist.
Here today are gathered some of the most distinguished writers of the world. You might say, "Where is God? Show me and then I will believe." But I warn you not to deny the existence of that causal being.
The topic of today's speech is "In Search of the Origin of the Universe." If we go deeper and deeper in our search for the origin of the universe, we arrive at God. We come to know that God possesses dual characteristics of male and female. How did the universe begin? Let us put aside our discussion of God for the moment and consider humankind. It is clear that humankind is comprised of man and woman, or subject and object. In the mineral kingdom, molecules are composed of anion and canon. Plants reproduce through stamen and pistil. Animals live as male and female, and human beings as man and woman. If we examine creation, whether the mineral kingdom, plant kingdom or animal kingdom, we observe that plus and minus on a higher level exist and develop by absorbing plus and minus from the lower level. Why does this phenomenon take place? It is because the existing world is responsible to perfect human beings, who are Lords of all creation.
In the mineral kingdom, plus and minus, that is, subject and object, unite centering on the ideal of love and thus exist. In the same way, in the plant kingdom, stamen and pistil, that is, subject and object, unite centering on love and thus also exist. Medical science today points out that even bacteria exist as plus and minus.
How do subject and object, or plus and minus, unite? By kissing? Love is a substantial reality, not merely a concept. What is the reality upon which love can settle? President Ford and President Bush, who attended the Inaugural World Convention of the Family Federation for World Peace, and all of you distinguished writers are famous, but there is something that you do not know. You do not know what makes man man, and woman woman. The answer is: the sexual organs. Is there anyone here who dislikes the sexual organs? If you like them, how much do you like them? Until now you may not have thought it virtuous to value the sexual organs, but from now you must value them.
What will the world be like in the future? If it is a world that values the sexual organs absolutely, will that world be good or bad? Will it prosper or perish? This is not a joke. When God was creating human beings, into which part did He invest the greatest creative effort? The eyes? The nose? The heart? The brain? All of these organs eventually die, do they not?
True Owners
What is the purpose of the Family Federation for World Peace? If humanity were to go beyond the traditional categories of virtue, religion and any other human norms, but was absolutely in harmony with the sexual organs, earning the welcoming applause of God, what kind of world would it be? When we are born as a man or woman, who is the owner of our sexual organ? Actually the owner of man's sexual organ is woman, and the owner of woman's sexual organ is man. We did not know that the sexual organ is owned by the opposite sex. This is a simple truth. We cannot deny this truth. Even after history progresses for thousands of years, this truth will not change.
Every man thinks his sexual organ belongs to himself, and each woman thinks her sexual organ is her own. That is why the world is perishing. Everyone is mistaken concerning ownership of the sexual organs. We all think that love is absolute, eternal and dreamlike, but when we come to clearly understand that the ownership of eternal love lies with the opposite sex, the world will not remain in its present condition. There are numerous scholars and Ph.D.s, but none of them have thought about this.
Can any of you deny this? If you ask your parents, your grandparents, your great-grandparents, the original ancestors, and even God, who is the origin of the universe, they all will agree with this. This is a universal law. This truth will remain even after the universe continues to exist for billions of years. The natural conclusion is that when you stand before God, He will judge you as righteous or unrighteous according to this immutable law.
Even the fall of Adam and Eve originated in the violation of this law. Adam and Eve both erred by thinking their sexual organ was their own possession. Think about it. Would God chase Adam and Eve away because they ate a literal fruit? God is not such a senseless being. God chased them out because they did not meet the most basic criterion by which the universe functions. Because of their mistake with the original point of love, they could not be acknowledged anywhere in the universe. In the mineral kingdom, plant kingdom and animal kingdom, the positivity and negativity, that is, the sexual organ, is reserved for the sake of the complementary partner of love. Adam and Eve did not know this.
Then why do the sexual organs exist? For love. Male and female exist in order to find love. What are characteristics of God? God is absolute, unique, eternal and unchanging. Then who is the owner of love? The owner of love is not man or woman. The owner of love is God. Centering on love and through love, God and humankind become one. This is because both God and human beings absolutely need love.
God is the Standard
Then, what kind of love does God need? God needs absolute love. What about you? It is the same for you and for me. Just as God needs absolute, unique, unchanging and eternal love, we also need absolute, unique, unchanging and eternal love. It seems that we all resemble God.
God himself has characteristics of masculinity and femininity, or positivity and negativity Human beings, who were created as the substantial object of God, were created as man and woman. When man and woman marry, they become substantial plus and minus representing God. It is God's will that when we marry, we completely unite horizontally centering on God's vertical love.
The human body is horizontal, representing the earth. On the other hand, the conscience always loves the vertical and seeks the higher perspective. Thus human beings irresistibly seek the point at which they become one with the vertical standard of God. That point must be the center, and man and woman must meet each other at that point.
Thus when every person, who is born from that center, grows up through experiencing the love of a child, the love among brothers and sisters, and conjugal love, the mature body represents the earth, and the mature mind centers on God. At this ultimate point, body and mind become one vertically and horizontally, thus establishing a base for happiness. Only at that place will God, who is the Absolute Being, rejoice centering on absolute love. In that place, husband and wife, who are love partners, also will rejoice.
When the relationships of parent and child, husband and wife, and brother and sister, which represent respectively north and south, east and west, and front and back, unite perfectly centering on that one point, an ideal, global shape is created.
Thus in the East, there is a saying that parents and children form one body. Further, they see husband and wife, and brother and sister, forming one body. What is the basis for that traditional wisdom? It all is made possible when the three relationships form a sphere, extending in all directions centering on true love. Those relationships must form a sphere with one center. There should be only one center. Unification is possible because those relationships in reality have the same center. The relationship between God and human beings is a parent-child relationship. Thus, God and man must become one, centering on true love.
Which is More Important?
Distinguished ladies and gentlemen, how lofty is human desire? Your mind wants to reach higher than God. No matter how lowly a person is, he or she can desire a world even greater than that of God's desire. As a beloved son or daughter of God, if you say to God, "Father, please come!" won't He come? No matter how ugly a man's wife is, if he really loves her, he naturally will follow her when she calls. With unity centering on true love, the husband will respond to his wife's beckoning, the elder will follow the younger's call, and the younger will follow the elder's call. None of them will ever want to separate from the other.
If God is alone, does He feel lonely or not? How can we know that He feels lonely? Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen, do you have love? Do you have life? Do you have sperm and eggs? Do you have a conscience? You affirm all these things, but have you seen love? Have you seen life? Have you seen lineage? Have you seen the conscience? Have you ever touched these things? You know their existence, but you cannot touch or see them. You know them only through your mind's intuition. By the same token, even though you have not seen or touched God, you cannot say that He does not exist.
Absolute Balance
What is more important, that which is visible or that which is invisible? I am sure you realize that the invisible is more important than the visible. You can see and touch money, position and honor, but you cannot see or touch love, life, lineage and conscience. We all have them, so why can we not see them? It is because they are one with us. When mind and body maintain absolute balance, you do not feel them.
Do you feel your eyes blinking? Try counting your blinks for three hours. Do you count the number of breaths you take every day? Touch the left side of your chest with your right hand. Do you feel something beating? You can feel the beating of your heart. How many times a day do you hear the sound of your heart beating? Through a stethoscope your heartbeat sounds like the explosion of a bomb. But when we are busy, we go for weeks and months without feeling that. Think about it! We immediately feel a small fly sitting on our head, but cannot feel our heart beating even when the sound of it is a hundred times greater than the lighting of a fly it is because we are one with our own body.
You may think it rude if I share this with you, but I would like to give you an example. You use the bathroom each morning. When you defecate, do you wear a gas mask? This is not a laughing matter but a serious one. If you are near someone else defecating, you will quickly move a good distance away. But when you smell your own feces, you do not even notice it. This is because that fecal matter is one with your body Therefore, you do not feel that it is dirty.
When you were young, did you ever taste the dried mucus from your nose? Does it taste sweet or salty? It's salty, right? Since you can answer, you must have tasted it! Why did you not feel that it was dirty? It is because it was part of your body Reverend Moon has figured out something that no one in the world knew
When you cough up phlegm, you sometimes swallow it, right? What about you who are here today? How you ever had that experience? Be honest. Why do you not feel it is dirty? Because the phlegm was one with your body. We all eat three meals a day, breakfast, lunch, and dinner. If you go about twelve inches down from your mouth, there is a fertilizer factory. By eating three meals a day, we are providing raw materials for fertilizer factories. After knowing that, can you still take food into your mouth with a fork and spoon? We know that there is a fertilizer factory in our stomach, but we live on without feeling its presence. Why do we not feel it? It is because we are one with it. In the same way, we have love, life, lineage and conscience, but because they are one with us in balance, we do not feel them.
Just like us, God has love, life, lineage and conscience, but He cannot feel them by Himself. Because they are completely in balance, God cannot feel them. That is why God also needs an object partner. We understand the necessity of an object partner from this perspective. When one is alone, one cannot feel oneself. But when a man appears to a woman and a woman appears to a man, the stimulation of love and lineage will erupt like lightning and thunder. You must be fuJy awakened about this. We have lived without knowing this truth. Man has not understood that God absolutely needs His love partner.
Then who is God's love partner? Is it a monkey? If human beings are resultant, can monkeys be the being that caused us? Can monkeys be our progenitors? Don't even talk such nonsense. In order for life to have begun from an amoebae and reach the human form, it must pass through the gates of love on thousands of levels. Does life progress automatically? Absolutely not. It is the same with all animals. The division of species is very strict. Nobody can trespass the separation of species.
If materialists who believe that monkeys are our ancestors crossbreed a human being and a monkey, do you think a new life form will emerge? It will fail no matter how many thousands of years they attempt it. Why will it not work? You must think about this.
Then what would God need? What part of your body would God need most? Your eyes? Hands? Your five senses? Within Him, God has both masculinity and femininity, but to exist as Father, His being is that of a male, subject. With this in mind, would we say that God needs a love partner?
Then who or what within His creation could be His love partner? Is it man by himself? Or can woman by herself become God's love partner? What kind of partner does God want? Does God need a partner with great wealth? Does He need a partner of knowledge, or one of great authority? No, none of these things matters. God wants a love partner. Thus, centering on the place where husband and wife become one through their sexual organs, God wants to appear and meet us.
Love is Absolute
Why is that the place where man and woman become one centering on God? It is because love is absolute, and that place is where man and woman have the absolute desire to become one. Looking horizontally, man, who is plus, approaches that center, and woman, who is minus, also approaches that center. In God also, the masculine characteristic and the feminine characteristic become one as plus and minus. That union in God, as a bigger plus, becomes one with a bigger minus, namely, the union of man and woman. The question turns to the conditions by which that union can come about.
What is marriage? Why is marriage important? Marriage is important because it is the road to finding love. It is the road to creating life. It is the road where the life of a man and a woman unite into one. It is the place where a man's lineage combines with a woman's lineage. History emerges through marriage, and from marriage nations appear and an ideal world begins. Without marriage there is no meaning to the existence of individuals, nations, and an ideal world. This is the formula Man and woman must become absolutely one. Parents and children must become absolutely one with God, love God, and live and die with God. And when they die and go to the spirit world, that is the place called Heaven. But there has been no individual, family or nation that has fulfilled that ideal; the world and humankind have not established that ideal, and for that reason the Kingdom of Heaven that God desires is empty. All people who died until now fell into Hell. No one entered the Kingdom of Heaven. From this perspective, we can see that Jesus came as Savior of humankind but could not enter the Kingdom of Heaven. He instead went to Paradise. In order to enter the Kingdom of Heaven, Jesus would have had to form a family That is why Jesus wants to come again. Jesus was to marry form a family, serve and live with God in that family, and then enter the Kingdom of Heaven with that family. He could not enter the Kingdom of Heaven by himself alone. Thus it is said in the Bible, "What is bound on earth is bound in Heaven, and what is loosed on earth is loosed in Heaven." We must solve the problems on earth. Since the disease was contracted on earth, it must be cured on earth.
Traversing the Road of Death
Humankind descended from the fall. Therefore, we dwell in the realm of the fall and cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven without making a foundation to rise above that realm. Man in the realm of the fall must destroy that realm no matter how difficult it is. Thus Jesus said, "Whoever seeks his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it." In order to traverse this road of death, we must penetrate it and rise above by risking our entire lives.
Your families are in the realm of the fall. Your tribes and nations are the same. You must struggle and win. The fall occurred in Adam's family. Did Adam and Eve have children before or after they were chased out of the Garden? They had children after they were chased out; they created their family without any relationship to God. How can you go to the Kingdom of Heaven without knowing this? It is not conceivable; you cannot achieve the perfect ideal through ignorance. This is my warning to you.
Pray to find out whether Reverend Moon's words are true. No one knows how much hardship I endured in order to find this path. Even though I committed no crime, I suffered through six different prisons to find this path. Through this truth, I am able to straighten out and educate precious young people in the matter of an hour. Some people say that I am brainwashing youth, but in fact I am enlightening them with logical truth. Atheists have been silenced since they failed to prove scientifically and logically that God does not exist. On the other side, Christians entrap us, crying heresy because our doctrines differ, and they try to destroy us. But in this case, this so-called heretical cult is on the side of truth.
Satan hates whatever is on God's side, and God hates whatever is on Satan's side. Has anyone in the world liked Reverend Moon? You came here only on the basis of learning what Reverend Moon is doing. You did not come without knowing that.
Youth in the former Soviet Union, living in an ideological vacuum, are equipping themselves intellectually with a unification perspective through comprehensive ethics texts in middle schools, high schools, universities, and even in prisons. Thousands of schools in the former Soviet Union are using such texts. They believe that my teachings provide the only way to overcome the corrupting influence of the decadent Western culture of homosexuality and free sex. They are proclaiming, "We must surpass America, which opposes Reverend Moon!" They want to move ahead of America in attending Reverend Moon.
Ladies and gentlemen do you like God? Would God enjoy watching Reverend Moon doing these works? Can the teaching of the Vatican harmonize with the teaching of Reverend Robert Schuller, who also attended the inaugural Convention of the Family Federation for World Peace? Their teachings are different. Then ask God whose teaching is true. What is the benefit of my telling you that your understanding of Jesus and Mother Mary is wrong? But you must understand one fact very clearly: Without being loosed on Earth, it will not be loosed in Heaven. Reverend Moon, who knew this at an early age, has devoted his life to walking this path.
Should Jesus have married? Jesus should have married. Is Jesus a woman or a man? If there is a woman saint, would Jesus not desire to marry her? During the creation of Adam and Eve, God granted them their own sexual organs. Why would He have done that? Would God have married them when they reached maturity, or not?
The problem lies in their fall. Due to the fall, their blood lineage switched from God to Satan. Therefore, God chased them out of the Garden of Eden. Originally, Adam and Eve were to have become God's body, in the position of God's bride. The fall, in a sense, introduced a disease into God's body and ideal, as Adam and Eve acted like God's enemies. Can you imagine how much God's heart suffered as He watched this taking place? The human fall is the grave in which you bury yourself. It was an act of expropriation. It was the root of free sex as well as the origin of individualism.
What kind of nation is America today? It has become a nation of extreme individualism, a nation whose people are pursuing private interests, over-indulging themselves, gluttonous, practicing free sex. Does God favor these things? What is the goal of such extreme individualists? They abandon Heaven and Earth, the world, the nation, society, their extended family, and even their grandparents. Beyond that, they lose their parents and brothers and sisters. Therefore, they live as gypsies and wander around as hippies, having no place to go when it rains and snows. So they are driven to end their lives by suicide. That is the result of individualism.
Reaping What Is Sown
The original mind does not want to protect this extreme individualism and ridiculous exaltation of privacy. The original mind wants to live receiving love from the universe, the nation, our village and our parents. But because people walk the opposite path, their consciences become dysfunctional and they feel a contradiction with their own original mind. Thus more and more people would rather die than live, and commit virtual suicide by taking drugs. We are witnessing the truth, "You will reap what you have sown," being proven.
What seed did Adam and Eve plant in the Garden of Eden? It was the seed of free sex. Can that be denied? That is the reason they covered their lower parts. Is it not true that even children know they must cover up, for example, after having eaten the cookies hidden by their parents. This is a function of human nature. If the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil were a literal fruit, then Adam and Eve should have covered their mouths or their hands. So, why did they hide their lower parts?
Reverend Moon is an intelligent man. I am not doing what I am doing because I am inferior to you. It cannot be denied that the fall was caused by fornication. To restore the fall of Adam and Eve, it is very logical to say that we must take a path 180 degrees different from that of the fall. We inherited a lineage on the path to Hell, due to the fall. That is why the Messiah must come.
The Messiah comes as the owner who should form the family, in the Garden of Eden as originally intended by God. We must understand this clearly. It must be logical. The Messiah first should create a family that serves God. Through this family, he should establish a nation. Therefore, the family is the key Centering on the Messiah's family, there should be an engrafting process. The problem is "who can save me from this world of death?" That is why the opposite path is taken.
Look at the Old Testament era. The indemnification took place centering on the principle of "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth." Look at Rebecca, the wife of Isaac. Isn't she the one who stole the blessing for Jacob by cheating her eldest son, Esau, and her own husband, Isaac? Why would God love such a woman? How can we have faith in such a God? No one until now has answered these questions. Reverend Moon is the first person to provide the answers, because Reverend Moon is the only one who knows all the secrets of God.
The Serious Problem Facing Us Today
Now, let us discover the dividing line between Heaven and Hell. Is it up in the air? Where is it? It is your sexual organ. This is a serious matter. This has turned Heaven and Earth upside down. Who can deny this? This is explained in the chapter on the human fall in the Divine Principle, the teaching of Reverend Moon. If you doubt this, ask God. You cannot reject Reverend Moon's Divine Principle, which contains content beyond your wildest dreams presented through logical explanations and in a well-ordered structure.
If you wonder whether Reverend Moon will go to heaven or hell, please die and go to spirit world. There you will find out. If you feel upset by my talk tonight, you could go ahead and commit suicide, and you will really find out. You have to realize that Reverend Moon overcame death hundreds of times in order to find this path. Reverend Moon is the person who brought God to tears hundreds of times. No one in history has loved God more than the Reverend Moon has. That is why even if the world tries to destroy me, the Reverend Moon will never perish. It is because God protects me. If you step into the realm of the truth Reverend Moon teaches, you also will gain God's protection.
When a sexual organ is used in the same way a blind person wanders aimlessly and without direction, it will, undoubtedly, lead you as its owner to hell. By the same token, one will be led high up into Heaven when he or she uses the sexual organ according to the standard of God's absolute love. This is a clear conclusion.
Today, we face a serious youth problem, because in the Garden of Eden Adam and Eve planted the seed of free sex in the shade through their fall during their youth. In the Last Days, harvest time, there must be the worldwide phenomenon of rampant free sex among the youth.
Satan knew that the Lord of the Second Advent would come in the Last Days with the strategy to save humankind, who are in the realm of the fall, by lifting them up to the realm of absolute love, centered on God's true love. Satan cannot find any other standard of love other than free sex, as the archangel introduced in the Garden of Eden. Therefore, we see that the entire world is stripped naked and being pushed in the direction of death by free sex. All humanity is being forced to walk this path in the Last Days as the archangel's descendants. Because today's humankind descended from Adam and Eve, who fell under Satan's dominion in the Garden of Eden, Satan can boldly claim in front of God that he has a right to do whatever he will with all men and women in this world.
God knows what Satan wants. Through free sex, Satan wants to stop every last person from returning to God. In other words, Satan wants to destroy all humanity and create Hell on Earth. Is not the world in which we live today Hell on Earth? Therefore, we will find the road to Heaven by going 180 degrees opposite the direction of this Hell on Earth. When the Lord of the Second Advent comes, he will show us the 180 degrees opposite path, as a means to save the world and lead us to Heaven.
Opening the Path to Heaven
Then what is the road that is 180 degrees opposite the way of free sex? The path of free sex was laid because of the false parents. Therefore, True Parents have to come to straighten the wrong path. God cannot intervene. No authority or any military, economic or political power can do it. It was caused by false parents. Therefore, it takes True Parents to cut it open with a scalpel. True Parents should operate with their scalpel; that is the only way humanity can be saved.
The one who sinned has to indemnify the sin. It was in the family that a false marriage took place, which corrupted the lineage 180 degrees. Therefore, True Parents must come and bestow marriage that is in a direction 180 degrees opposite, in order to open the path to Heaven.
Then, what did God expect from Adam and Eve? God expected absolute sex from them. You eminent writers gathered here tonight, please learn this truth and take it back to your countries. If you start a campaign to secure absolute sex in your country, your families and your nation will go straight to Heaven. When there is absolute sex, an absolute couple will emerge automatically. Words such as free sex, homosexual and lesbian will naturally disappear.
Reverend Moon has lived an entire life overcoming a suffering path in order to initiate this kind of movement worldwide. Now the time has come for Reverend Moon to trumpet the fanfare of victory and move the entire world. Therefore, I am grateful to God.
The family sets the cornerstone on the road to world peace. The family also can destroy that road. It was Adam's family in which the destruction of the foundation of human hope and happiness took place. Therefore, when we establish the Family Federation for World Peace, the road going 180 degrees opposite the direction of the satanic world will be open, and for this we cannot help but give thanks to God. Without following this road, there is no freedom, happiness or ideal!
I wish that you would center on the absolute sexual organ, unique sexual organ, unchanging sexual organ, and eternal sexual organ, and use this as your foundation to pursue God. You should realize that this foundation should become the foundation of love, life, lineage and conscience. We also have to realize that the Kingdom of God on Earth and in Heaven will begin on this foundation.
If all men and women admit that their sexual organ belongs to their spouse, we all would bow our heads and become humble when we receive our spouse's love. Love comes to you only from your partner. There is no love other than love for the sake of others. We must remember that we can find absolute love where we absolutely live for the sake of others. When you return home, you should expect to wage a war against the satanic world.
Wherever you may go, please try to spread Reverend Moon's message through television or other media. You will never perish. What force can turn around this world of Hell? It is impossible to achieve this unless our sexual organ is used in accordance with an absolute, unique, unchanging and eternal standard centering on God's true love, which is absolute, unique, unchanging and eternal love. God is the original owner of the sexual organs.
Let us go forward all together for this common cause. Let us become the vanguard that will carry out God's true love. This is the very mission of the Family Federation for World Peace. Now, please go back to your homes and affirm with your spouses that your sexual organs are absolute, unique, unchanging and eternal. Proclaim that yours is truly your spouse's and what your spouse has protected so well until now is truly yours. And please pledge that you will live your life with gratitude and in eternal service to your spouse. In such families, God will dwell eternally and, centering upon them, the world-level family will begin to multiply I sincerely hope that each of you will participate in the next marriage blessing of three million six hundred thousand couples. By doing so you will form a true family that can register in the Kingdom of God on Earth.
Thank you very much.
-
True Family and True Universe Centering on True Love
Reverend Sun Myung Moon
President, Family Federation for World Peace
This address was given on July 18, 1997, at the Washington Times 15th Anniversary Banquet, Washington D.C.
Respected guests from Washington D.C. and abroad, dear staff of The Washington Times, eminent world literary leaders, ladies and gentlemen.
I deeply appreciate your taking time from your busy schedules to attend this meeting.
Today, as we celebrate The Washington Times' 15th anniversary, I cannot help but feel deep emotion. Fifteen years ago, when the world was adrift on the stormy waves of the Cold War, I established The Washington Times to fulfill God's desperate desire to save this world. Since that time, I have devoted myself to raising up The Washington Times, hoping that this blessed land of America would fulfill its world-wide mission to build a Heavenly nation. Meanwhile, I waged a lonely struggle, facing enormous obstacles and scorn as I dedicated my whole heart and energy to enable The Washington Times to grow as a righteous and responsible journalistic institution.
Today The Washington Times Corporation can be proud of its development into a world-class global media enterprise. Since the end of the Cold War, the world began to realize that the direction taken by The Washington Times was correct. History will not forget our contribution. The efforts of The Times to revitalize the moral and spiritual values of the United States and the world are being recognized as absolutely urgent and necessary at this time.
I want to convey my warmest appreciation to all The Washington Times staff who have worked so hard together with me to develop The Times. I would also like to express my deepest gratitude to the American and world leaders who have offered their unwavering support.
The most precious thing that I can offer from the bottom of my heart as a token of my appreciation on this special day is to introduce you to what I consider to be the two most significant lectures that I gave during my most recent world tour.
I refer to "View of the Principle of the Providential History of Salvation" and "In Search of the Origin of the Universe." Today, we need a complete solution for the problems of sexual immorality, family breakdown and alienation among our young people. These two speeches provide fundamental solutions for these problems. When each one of you goes back to your home, I hope you will take some time for self-reflection. Whenever you want to bring more love into your family, read these speeches together with your family and think deeply I believe this can help you and your family to achieve harmony and real happiness.
I suggest that you read these two speeches as many times as the number of your age.
If your age is over 80, then read them more than 80 times. The more you read these speeches, the more heavenly blessing and fortune will be with you. The more you read them, the more peace will flow in your family naturally and automatically. I invite you to read more!
The title of the first speech is "View of the Principle of the Providential History of Salvation." To summarize: Because of the failure and Fall in the family of the First Adam, Jesus came as the Second Adam to restore the failure of the first family at the national level. The First Adam had become fallen Adam. Thus, the Messiah, Jesus, came as the Second Adam. However, since Jesus was not able to realize a family based on being True Parents, the Messiah needs to come back as the Third Adam and restore the mission of True Parents on the world level. This is the mission of the Second Advent, who is coming as the Third Adam. This speech also introduces the fact that the fundamental issue of salvation is the restoration of the original lineage.
The title of the second speech is "In Search of the Origin of the Universe." Since the human Fall originated in the misuse of love, humankind lost True Love. Thus the problem arises: How can we recover True Love? The loss of True Love means falling through adultery. In other words, True Love became degraded by misusing the sexual organs, and in order to restore it, we need to use these organs in the right way Just as the seed of fallen love was planted in the Garden of Eden during the first ancestors' youth, so in these final days, mankind will harvest the fruit of the Fall among our young people. That is the reason why today we find so much chaos and confusion, centering on the issue of sex. This problem can only be solved with what I call "Absolute Sex." Only the concept and practice of Absolute Sex can prevent the destruction of the family and reverse the corruption of our youth.
Becoming True Parents
This evening, because time is limited, I would like to share a speech with a new title: "True Family and True Universe Centering on True Love."
Everyone here has parents and teachers, and you also have the leader of your nation. Correct? These are things everyone undeniably needs. However, when compared to the true standard, there are many different levels of parents. What do you think? To what extent have you, yourself, become True Parents? In the same way, if a person is a professor at an Ivy League university such as Harvard, Yale or Columbia in the United States, or Oxford or Cambridge in England, does this mean that he or she can be called a True Teacher? Similarly, there are different types of leadership in a nation compared to the true standard of leadership. Even if someone is the president of a superpower such as the United States, does this mean he or she is a True President?
In fact, today in the family, children do not trust parents. Between spouses, there is no complete trust. Brothers and sisters also don't trust each other fully Furthermore, students do not trust the teachers in the schools, and the people do not trust the leaders of their nation.
So the problem is, how can we attain the true standard of even one of these three most important positions of parents, teacher and leader?
When I say you should become True Parents, True Teacher or True Leader, what do you think is the highest standard or central model for those three positions? That is God. God is the True Parent among parents, True Teacher among teachers, and True King among kings. God is the Eternal True Parent, Eternal True Teacher, Eternal True Leader and King.
If we are children of God, we need to become True Parents first, just like God. We should also follow the way of the True Teacher, just like God. And we need to follow the way of the True Leader, just like God. This is the idea of the three primary positions. The ultimate model is God.
The Messianic Concept
Who is the Messiah sent to the people of Israel, as promised in the Old Testament? The Messiah is the one who comes as True Parents, True Teacher and True King. However, because Jesus was prevented from establishing the True Family and uniting his people, he needs to come again. In other words, because he did not accomplish the national-level foundation, the Messiah of the Second Coming will come as the Third Adam and teach the way of the True Parents, True Teacher and True King at the world level. This is the messianic concept. Wherever the family, nation, world and Heaven exist, the idea of the three primary positions of parents, teacher and leader should always be established.
To exist in the spatial dimension, human beings need to stand in relation to what is above and below, right and left, front and back. In this way, one's position is determined. One's shape and situation depend upon where one stands relative to above and below, right and left, and front and back.
This same formula that applies in the relation of above and below, right and left, and front and back also applies to the family, the nation and the world. Just as there are above and below, right and left, and front and back centering on the individual, in the family there are parents and children, husband and wife, and brothers and sisters. Similarly, in the nation, centering on the leader, families should embrace all the civilizations of East and West and all the civilizations of North and South. Then they can embrace all people of the world as brothers and sisters. Ultimately every level will form a family pattern. All these models have the same pattern and the individual self is the central model. In the same manner, one's existence expands to the level of the family, nation, world, Heaven and Earth, and eventually reaches God. Each person has the desire to live as the center of the cosmos and the potential to make this a reality.
Thus, the core concept of the universe is the concept of the family Heaven represents parents. Earth represents children. In the concept of East and West, East symbolizes man, West symbolizes woman. When a woman gets married, she usually follows wherever the husband goes, but they have equal value. When the West side reflects the sunlight, it has the same value as the East side. The relationship of brothers is the same. When the older brother works, the younger brothers naturally help him.
Therefore, people should exist in the relation of parents and children, husband and wife, and elder and younger siblings. And these three relations meet at one central point. There can be only one center. Above and below, right and left, and front and back should not have different centers. If the central point is different, then the balance of the relationships between above and below, right and left, and front and back will be broken. Eventually above, below, right, left, front, back and the central point all together comprise seven positions. Thus, the number seven represents all elements uniting to become one centering on God, with perfect True Love. Together, these seven elements form a complete sphere and eventually a family structure of harmony and unification. So, as you can see, seven is truly a lucky number.
When this sphere completes itself and revolves, it becomes a new entity based on the number eight. As long as True Love remains unchanging, the central point can revolve without change. But because of the human Fall, God was expelled from the central position. Since God's True Love was expelled, the True Family ideal collapsed.
There are many differences in lifestyle between East and West. In many ways, they are totally opposite. For example, when Koreans call someone to come to them, we motion with the palm down, like this. But if we do this in the West, people go the other way. We often misunderstand and wonder if people don't like us, because they go away from us when we are actually asking them to come closer. Also Western writing has a horizontal structure, proceeding from left to right. Oriental writing originally is vertically structured, starting from top to bottom and proceeding from right to left. So Western books open from left to right. But in the Orient we open a book from right to left. Thus Western civilization is more horizontally-based, while Oriental civilization is more vertical. As another example, shaking hands is a horizontal greeting, while bowing is vertical. In the Orient, there is a tradition that the ancestors are the core of the family system. But in the West there is no strong concept that considers the ancestors as the core. There is mostly a concept centered on the self.
All Are One In the Family
Because everything is connected through the core, without the movement of the core, the whole entity does not move. Therefore, all the positions of one, two, three, four, five, six and seven, the central core, have equal value. Once they are divided, they comprise twelve segments. These twelve will fit wherever they are placed. Whatever the grandfather wants, the grandchild is not against. The children of the grandfather also want whatever their parents want. Ultimately all three generations become united in one desire. All of the elements -- grandfather and grandmother, father and mother, husband and wife, son and daughter -- resonate with the center. Let us look at the family, centering on love. Since the relationship between parents and children is one of unity, they are said to be one body. The relation between husband and wife is also said to be one body, as is the relation between brother and sister. In the family, all are one body. Centered on what are these relations called one body? They are one body centered on God's True Love, which is the center of all love. Centered on True Love, parents and children become one, husband and wife become one, and brothers and sisters become one. Through this process, the value of each element becomes equal.
Then what did God want for His children? To become billionaires? To have more power than anyone else? What God wanted for His children, Adam and Eve, was for them to grow to become children of filial piety, loyal citizens, saints, and a Holy Son and Daughter. Did you ever consider that, in accordance with God's desire, we should become children of filial piety in the family, loyal citizens of the nation, saints in the world, and Holy Sons and Daughters before Heaven and Earth? In history the saints and sages have taught that we should become children of filial piety, loyal citizens, saints, and Holy Sons and Daughters.
This evening do you think you have mastered the way of filial piety, loyalty, sainthood, and Holy Sonship which is needed to become an ideal human being and to complete the human personality? Without knowing this, you cannot perform the function of True Parents in the family. True Parents need to teach their children progressively to complete the way of the filial child, loyal citizen, saint, Holy Son or Daughter, and eventually even to reach God.
If there is someone who truly teaches and exemplifies these things, then God will see that person as the ultimate True Parent, True Teacher and True Leader.
Following the True Way
When you are qualified as True Parents and True Teacher, you also will be qualified as a True Leader; and furthermore you will be qualified to become a True King or Queen. Fallen man lacks this concept of filial piety, loyal citizenship, sainthood, and of becoming Holy Sons and Daughters. That is why this world is perishing. Who wants Holy Sons? God does. Who wants saints? The world does. Who wants loyal citizens? The nation does. Who wants children of filial piety? The family does. This is the way of truth.
The truth centering on love continues eternally in one direction. We did not know this, and that is why we could not be True Parents, True Citizens, True Saints, and Holy Sons and Daughters. When Jesus came to this world, there were no True Parents in the family, no True Leader in the nation and the world, and ultimately there was no True King in all of Heaven and Earth. People did not know how to follow the True Way. However, now you should know.
True Parents do not tell their children, "Once you become children of true filial piety, do not become loyal citizens." True Parents should teach children of filial piety to sacrifice their family by following the way of a loyal citizen in service to the nation, and to sacrifice the nation to fulfill the way of saints in service to the world. And then parents should teach their children to sacrifice the world in service to Heaven and Earth, and to sacrifice Heaven and Earth to come to God.
To achieve this, individuals should sacrifice for the sake of the family By sacrificing for the family, a person becomes a child of filial piety To become a patriot, a person will sacrifice even their entire family to save the nation. That is the way to become patriots. To be a saint, you will sacrifice even the nation in service to the world. The Holy Son should establish the Heavenly Kingdom on Earth and in Heaven, even sacrificing the world. Therefore, among all parents, those who live more for the sake of their children are True Parents. Teachers who do more for the sake of their students are True Teachers, and the president who sacrifices more for the nation will be the True President. We did not know this concept of investing and sacrifice. But without it, we will never have one eternally peaceful and unified world.
Nothing is Alone in Nature
What is the basis of individualism? One cannot claim anything as "mine alone." When the child, through the love of its parents, grows from an egg in the mother's womb and is born, 99.999 percent of its existence is from the mother's bone, blood and flesh, which was combined with the 0.001 percentage from the father's sperm. There is no concept of "myself alone" in nature. Nobody had a concept of "myself' when they were born.
Anyone who considers that they are the best cannot say they became so by themselves, including Reverend Moon. Bone, blood and flesh are all received in the mother's womb. We should recognize that the important parts of our body are the extension of our mother's body All the essential elements of our body were included in the egg and sperm. There is no exception. Therefore, there is no basis for self-centered individualism.
When we say the word "above," that word automatically recognizes "below" Can individualism stand only with the concept of "above" by itself? There is no way that a being can be only individual. Talking about the "right" side presupposes the existence of "left." In the relation between front and back, "front" presupposes "back." The word "man" also cannot exist by itself. It presupposes "woman." This is not just the claim of any one person, but a cosmic fact.
Why was man created? Usually, men say that they can live by themselves alone, so they don't care why they were created. But man was born for the sake of woman. Without woman, there is absolutely no need for man. Actually, nothing was created for man by himself or for woman by herself alone.
Look at our five senses. Were my eyes created to look at my eyes? Nose, ears, mouth, hands -- all of them were created for the sake of the object. The force that mobilizes and focuses all five senses is True Love. Eyes, nose, ears, mouth and hands were created for True Love as a tool for the use of True Love.
Nothing is created only for myself. On the contrary, a person who says that what belongs to others is "mine" is called a thief. When someone takes the things of others and uses them as his own, isn't he a thief? Therefore, any man who uses his five senses and his body as he wants for himself alone is a thief, since these exist for the sake of woman.
What is the difference between man and woman? Their bodies, including the sexual organs. Then to whom is man's sexual organ absolutely necessary? Man's sexual organ exists for the sake of woman. The human sexual organs are shaped as concave and convex. Why are they shaped that way? Both of them could be pointed or both could be flat. Why are they shaped differently? Each is for the sake of the other. Woman absolutely wants what is man's. And man absolutely wants what is woman's. Until now, we did not know the fact that, absolutely, woman's sexual organ is man's and man's sexual organ is woman's. By owning each other's sexual organs, man and woman come to know True Love.
Only through the experience of two becoming one can we know the highest level of love. No one can absolutely deny these facts. Everyone should recognize this. At the place where husband and wife become completely one, the ideal couple will be created. In that very place, absolute love exists. That place of love, which is absolutely unchanging, is the dwelling place of God.
Absolute Sex and True Love
Absolute Sex is centered on God, and free sex is centered on Satan. Historically, world literature and the media have often stimulated free sex. But from now on, you literary figures and journalists should lead the way to prevent free sex. Free sex should completely disappear.
Now that you have heard Reverend Moon's speech, you can change your current position 180 degrees and become a new person, new nation and new world. Definitely you are being changed. It is an absolute necessity to change this evil world. This world must be transformed.
People in the evil world, including Satan, don't like people on God's side. Therefore, everyone in the world has opposed Reverend Moon; even at the level of the nation and the world they opposed me. But because Reverend Moon belongs to God, God has protected me. Satan doesn't like Reverend Moon; but God likes me. No matter how many times the world pushed Reverend Moon down or ignored me, I did not care. Reverend Moon never went down. Rather, he came up to the highest position. Therefore, now nobody can oppose me.
How could I establish this worldwide foundation even under all kinds of persecution? With what kind of power could Reverend Moon create these foundations to teach eminent world scholars and leaders? That was possible because God gave Reverend Moon a special kind of power. God has protected me and directed me, and even now God continuously protects and teaches me, so I am moving toward the way of success all the time.
Throughout history, there have been numerous religious leaders who could communicate with the spiritual world. You should know there is only one, Reverend Moon, who fully understood and unified the spiritual world and commenced work in this world. Since unifying the spiritual world, I received the heavenly seal of recognition from God. Otherwise unification on the Earth cannot be done. You should know that in the same way that God has trained me and raised me in the spiritual world, He continuously leads me on the Earth.
For more than 20 years, since I came to the United States, I received enormous persecution. But I knew that God's plan for Christianity has endured through bloody sacrifice for 2,000 years, ultimately settling in the United States. Therefore, I could not give up on this country Please consider, if America had accepted Reverend Moon even 40 years ago, how would this country be today?
Sacrificing and Giving Again
Then from where does True Love begin? This is True Love: After you sacrifice your own life and are resurrected, you try to invest again, more than three times. Since we have inherited fallen lineage, even at the cost of our own lives we have to persevere and overcome. Therefore, "whoever seeks to gain his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life will preserve it." (Luke 17:33) Jesus followed this way when he came to this world. That is why he could lead the world, not by selfish individualism, but by altruism. Therefore, although I have created great wealth during my life, none of it, not even one penny, is mine. I invested everything for the world and then I forgot what I had done for others, and then I sacrificed and invested again. I repeated this process again and again.
Which do you prefer, "One Nation under God" or "One World under God?" Among Americans, some people do not like the concept of One World under God. Some white people do not like black people. White Anglo-Saxon Protestants occupy dominant positions in the United States. America, led by this group, should have the idea that this country exists for the sake of the world. If America lives only for its own sake, America will ultimately perish.
Now the times are changing. The coming time is the age of One World under God. God is working for this kind of world and will always help those people who also are working for that kind of providence. But there is a problem with many people wanting to lead the world but not wanting to participate in that providence.
In order to make one peaceful world, I have poured myself into various efforts. Let me give a few examples. We need to establish an ideal, worldwide academic institution like a UN University, transcending the barriers of race, religion and language, in order to complete the foundation for the future world. Also, to exchange knowledge globally, we need a university system for distance learning. We also need to develop a unified medical science. We need not only to cure the diseases of the body caused by the Fall, but also to end the conflict between Orient and Occident through harmonizing Eastern and Western culture. By unifying Eastern and Western medicine we can cure formerly incurable diseases, such as AIDS. In Korea, among the people of the countryside who never had formal medical education, there are many gifted healers who can cure serious diseases that are incurable through modern medicine. These healers have received teaching from the spiritual world about special treatments. Without recognizing certain realities of the spiritual world, problems will continue to grow.
Already these projects are being implemented at the University of Bridgeport and Sun Moon University I have also created The Washington Times and other newspapers to cover the entire hemisphere, and I am expanding this media foundation into 185 countries to help all the people of the world learn from each other and cooperate as one. Since I came to America, I never had any debt to the American people. Rather, America should feel indebted to me. 1 shared the blessing I received from Heaven with America. I didn't receive any blessing from America, but my entire blessing was given to her.
Regardless of the degree of opposition, the person who loves the most will become the owner. Those who love more, invest more, who give more and forget what they have given, will become central figures. This is cosmic law.
In the future, please follow the way that in the family you offer filial piety to your parents, become a loyal citizen before the nation, become a saint before the world, and become a Holy Son or Daughter before God. Whoever can stand without shame before the family, nation, world, and Heaven and Earth, will be protected in the center of the cosmos and can then realize a family that receives God's highest love.
Such a person shall transform this world into the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth, being registered in the Kingdom of Heaven in the spiritual world and entering into an era of kingship both spiritually and physically centered on God. Such a person shall receive the International Ceremony of Holy Blessing, which is to establish a world of victory, freedom, happiness and unity. I invite each of you to participate in this year's 3.6 million couple Blessing Ceremony, and so become a person welcomed by Heaven and Earth and find the way of eternal life.
Today literary leaders from all over the world are gathered together here. I hope the staff of The Washington Times and all the world literary leaders will become major figures to create a True Family and True World (cosmic) culture centered on God's True Love, ushering in a world of peace and unification in the forthcoming 21st Century.
May God bless you, your family and all your endeavors.
Thank you.
-
True Family and I
Reverend Sun Myung Moon
President, Family Federation for World Peace
This address was given November through December 1995 on a world speaking tour:
Ladies and Gentlemen:
1 am truly grateful that you have granted me the opportunity to speak to you today I am Reverend Moon. No doubt you have already heard about me through many rumors and stories. I have stirred up a good deal of controversy around the world. At the same time, I have initiated a number of events and accomplishments with worldwide impact. I must add that these things have resulted from the historical reality of my having served God to this day.
Today in this brief encounter I would like to speak to you for a time on the subject "The True Family and I," because the world's problems stem from the family. Let us ask what we mean by a "true family"
Why Are Mind and Body in Conflict?
Today, if we ask whether the world in which we live is good or evil, we must answer that it is evil. Why, then, is it evil? It is because whether we consider world history, American history, or the history of any country, there has been constant conflict. Conflict and struggle means that the parties involved will not develop, but will necessarily decline. To say that the world is evil implies that America is evil, that Americans are evil, and that we, ourselves, are evil. If we study ourselves, we cannot deny that within ourselves there is a struggle between mind and body The origin and cause of this struggle remains a mystery which must be solved.
If an individual does not possess a foundation for peace within himself, then he will not be happy, no matter how peaceful his family, his nation or the world might be. This is because the individual is the true battlefield. As you know, World War I, World War II and the Cold War have already ended. In the midst of any other future conflicts, it will be possible to have a truce. However, the struggle between mind and body has existed from the beginning, without a moment's truce. It has continued throughout history and, of course, it continues today. We do not know how much longer it will continue in the future.
When we think of this and at the same time consider that God exists, the fact that God would permit the historical struggle between mind and body to continue is a major problem. But if we agree that human beings committed sin, we can understand that it is the human responsibility to indemnify it. God cannot take that responsibility upon Himself nor can He interfere with it.
Where does the struggle between mind and body originate? We inherit life from our parents and from the parents of their parents. If we continue going back in this manner, we eventually arrive at the first generation, that is, the first human ancestors. It is a fact that the struggle between mind and body originated through a problem in the conjugal love of Adam and Eve. Our life originates in our parents' love. Since this struggle began before any of us were born, we have to conclude that the problem relates to the circumstances in which our first parents entered into a love relationship with each other.
The love of Adam and Eve was not a love of true happiness. Instead, it was conflict-ridden love. Because the roots of our life are in this love, we must conclude that the conflicts in our inner self originate there. The Bible teaches that because Adam and Eve sinned, they were expelled from the Garden of Eden. After they were driven out of the Garden, they began to multiply children. God could not follow them and bless them in marriage, because it was He who had driven them from the Garden. Thus we must ask, under whose guidance did they marry? We must concur that, because of having fallen into sin, they married in the hands of Satan.
God Is Working to Recreate Love
The fall consisted of Eve being tempted by Satan and her later temptation of Adam. Therefore, when our ancestors, Adam and Eve, established a relationship of conjugal love, that relationship was not a happy one. Instead, it was conflict-ridden. Humanity, because of its roots in that relationship, cannot separate itself from that struggle between mind and body. This reality is very clear and my explanation is logical. The fall began with immoral love. Due to a love relationship which God did not desire, Adam and Eve united with Satan. They did not become the ancestors of goodness, but rather the ancestors of evil, planting the roots of evil love, evil life and evil blood lineage.
If this is true, then what began with one fallen family grew into tribes, nations and a world of five billion people who are descendants of Satan, incapable of denying that we inherited the lineage of evil parents. Satan betrayed God and stole Eve away from God. No one knew that the blood of this adulterer, Satan, is present within our bodies, or that this is so displeasing to God.
How are we going to eliminate those roots within us? Satan dug his roots into our physical body, our flesh. God cannot avoid working to separate good from evil and thus to reverse this situation. God is public-minded and continues on the path of living for the whole, going toward the goal of love and peace. On the other hand, Satan is selfish and individualistic. Satan is always trying to destroy the good side through hatred, evil and war. He intends to prevent the earth from ever returning to God's side.
God, who represents goodness, cannot severely punish humanity for having gone with Satan. God's strategy to regain humanity on His side is to allow evil to attack Him. He can then, later, claim indemnity for damage and abuse. Satan's strategy is to strike first, but in the end he loses everything. Satan has marched through history, wishing to ruin God's plan through hatred, evil and war. On the other side, God has been working to recreate humankind through love and peace.
When the Last Days come, Satan has to give over to God's side his spiritual power as a ruler over humanity and the respect which he once enjoyed. Satan retaliated by coming up with atheism, the ideology of no God, which supported the appearance of humanism, materialism and communism. After World War II, the struggle between God's side, the right-wing, and Satan's side, the left wing, moved to the world level. Further, after World War II, because of the victory of God's side, the world entered a transitional period in which to welcome victory and peace based upon the realm of Christian culture.
The present era is the era of the realm of individualism: the era of free sex, the era of children denying parents, the era of parents denying children, the era of denying the couple. Through homosexuality, an attempt is being made to destroy completely the family ideal. It is this ideal that the Messiah, at his second coming, intends to establish in order to change this hell into the Kingdom of Heaven on earth. The Messiah, as the True Father, desires the unity of mind and body, the unity of husband and wife, and the unity of children.
The Relationship of Spirit and Matter
Problems must still be solved on a worldwide level. They include: (1) Which came first, matter or spirit? (2) Is the materialist theory or the idealist theory correct? (3) Which comes first, reality or concept? (4) Is evolution or creationism correct?
Let us attempt to answer these by way of an example. When we observe the animal kingdom, we discover that the first thing formed in a newborn animal is the eyes. The eyes are made of matter. Would those eyes know prior to birth that the sun existed? Being purely material, the eyes do not know, but something or someone prior to the material knew that the eyes were created to see sunlight. Someone knew.
Being purely matter, the eyes did not know that the atmosphere existed, but the eyes were formed with eyelids to assure that dust in the air does not damage the eye. The eyes, being purely material, did not know that steam and other heat radiations could dry the eyes and damage them, but someone knew and, for that reason, we blink so that our eyes can stay moist.
The conclusion is that through the simple example of the eye, we can solve the great debate over whether thought precedes existence, whether spirit precedes matter, and whether concept precedes reality We can answer the debate of spirit versus matter, of creationism versus evolution. Given this, we cannot deny that everything was created by God. Therefore, we must return to the original world of creation, and realize the kind of self, the kind of family, and the kind of world God desires.
The Purpose of Religion
Thus, I would like to explain the complicated relationships that came to surround each one of us after the fall. It is logical that if Adam and Eve had not fallen, it would have been normal for their minds and bodies to have been one, just as God is one. Due to the fall, the body emerged as another positive, which was opposed to the positive of the conscience which relates to God. The repulsion between these two positives led to a history of struggle. We must be aware of this.
The body became the base of operation for hell, and the conscience became the base of operation for heaven. Man did not know that he contained, within himself, the division of two worlds.
From this perspective, we all should ask ourselves if our body leads our mind or our mind leads our body. In reality, throughout history the body has had complete license to lead the mind. If the conscience were strengthened, we would automatically return to God and bring the world to be with God. The fact that the physical body leads the conscience, instead of the conscience leading the body, originated at the time that our ancestors established a relationship with Satan. This resulted in the power of false love.
The problem is that this power of false love, which tied the first ancestors to Satan, was stronger than the force of the conscience. God, who knows the situation of human beings very well, cannot abandon fallen humanity Instead, He must establish a strategy to weaken the body-centered force that dominates our conscience. The historical system for salvation which was created and driven by God is religion. Religion was necessary in the past and it is still necessary today. God has established many religions. According to their different circumstances and antecedents, the world's cultural spheres formed. Until now, religious people did not know that the purpose of religion is to prevent the body from continuing to lead the mind. If there had been no fall, religion would not have been necessary.
Something bad happened, and religion became necessary to correct it. What does God intend to do through religion? He intends to discipline the body You probably think that by believing in religion you will be saved, that by believing in Christianity you will go to heaven, or that by believing in Buddhism you will go to paradise. But it is those who are united with God's love who will enter heaven. To enter heaven, Adam's family should have been a family whose center was the love of God, a family that had a blood relationship with God. Until now, no one knew that the place where such families dwell is the Kingdom of Heaven. Therefore, to strengthen the power of the conscience, we must dominate the body. We must liberate our conscience, so that it can lead our body by our will. We can then return to the bosom of God's love as original beings, free from sin.
If we ask what religion should do, the answer is that it should motivate our body to do everything it hates to do. What does the body hate most? To fast! To serve! To sacrifice! Furthermore, religion asks us to be an offering. The offering is destined to shed blood; it must be capable of sacrificing its life. Therefore, the Bible tells us that he who is willing to lose his life shall gain it, and he who wishes to save his life shall lose it. This paradox teaches us that if we live according to the flesh, we are going to hell. If we win over the flesh and liberate our conscience, we will go to heaven. If we completely subjugate the body, and our conscience stands in a totally subjective position, our conscience will open us to unlimited desire and infinite hope.
The Nature of the Conscience
In the course of history, there have been many religions and religious leaders. Yet those who believed in those religions and in those leaders could not totally control their bodies and deny themselves. They could not liberate the conscience and position it to relate with God on the original basis. We sinful people did not become true olive trees. Instead, we became wild olive trees, with our roots in false love. Man should have had his roots in God's true love, yet we established roots in Satan's love. How are we going to solve the problem of being wild olive trees, instead of true ones? This remains an inescapable, extremely crucial task, which we must fulfill.
If you study yourself, you will notice that your conscience knows everything about you. Your conscience is closer to you than are your own parents. It desires to possess eternal love and to be embraced eternally in God's bosom. When we marry, we separate from our earthly parents, but not from our conscience. The conscience exists with us prior to our birth on earth. It loves us, and its mission is to transform us into eternal sons and daughters of God. In this sense, the conscience does not need a teacher.
Have you ever heard of a Secretary of Education announcing a plan to educate the conscience? If the conscience had gone the original way, we would have known clearly the course we should follow in life. It would have taught us and guided us to return to God's bosom. On the basis of our conscience, which knows everything about our life, there is a computer in the spirit world that registers everything we do on earth. When you go to the spirit world, you will discover this.
Until today, we did not know that the mission of the conscience is to convert us into unblemished, true sons and daughters of God. Is there anyone here who is convinced that he or she will never die? We all will go to the spirit world someday. When you enter the spirit world, they will immediately know you by your name. They will know about your entire life. They will also know about your ancestors, because the spirit world transcends time and space. We should not bring anything into that world that would stain our conscience. For that reason, know that the conscience is above all other teachers.
There are many distinguished personalities gathered here today Some of you are professors. I can honestly say that there has never been a professor who possessed a teaching superior to that of the conscience. The role of the conscience for a man is the same as that of a compass for a ship.
God Is the Root of the Conscience
I would like to ask those of you who are married, "When you married, did you want your spouse to be inferior to yourself?" The answer is "No." If I asked you whether you wanted a spouse ten times or one hundred times better than you, no doubt you would reply that, if it were possible, you would prefer that he or she be one thousand, ten thousand or one million times better than you.
The conscience's ambition demands the maximum amount of love. It wishes to possess the Absolute Being. The same was true for our ancestors. The same will be true for our descendants. If we were to ask God, He would respond that it is true for Him. Is it not impossible for all of our desires to be fulfilled? A mayor will want to be governor. Later, he will want to become president. Ultimately, he will want to ascend to the highest position in the world. That is how far the ambition of the conscience extends. From the beginning of history, people have generally thought that the conscience's ambition cannot be satisfied completely But Reverend Moon, the person who is standing here, has arrived at the conclusion that it is possible to satisfy even the highest ambition of the conscience.
How big is the conscience? How can we measure the conscience? Do you think that the day will come when the conscience possesses God? Do you think that if something bigger than God exists, the conscience will desire to possess it? What is it that the conscience's ambition is seeking? The conscience desires to possess whatever has the maximum value in the cosmos.
Then how big would God's conscience be? Which is bigger, the human conscience or God's conscience? If God's conscience is bigger than a man's, what would He do with it? The conclusion is that we, in our immense ambition, desire the same thing that God desires: true love.
The Conscience Desires True Love
What do you think? We know that God is absolute, but does He not feel lonely? Do you think that He feels happy? Ladies and gentlemen, even if a person becomes the president of the nation, if he lives alone, without a spouse, that person will feel neglected. If we do not have an object of love, we are unhappy. Doesn't God need someone? How would you feel in that situation? Even if God is God, He feels very lonely
Human beings feel empty when they lack money, knowledge or authority, but God does not need money, knowledge or power. We must ask ourselves what God needs most. We call God "the King of Love"! God is the Creator of Love! If it is the case that God is the King of Love, then He is like a bridegroom. This means that He needs His object of love, whose position is that of a Queen of Love. This is an absolute principle. Who, then, can be the absolute object of God's love? My answer is: a true human being!
Ladies and gentlemen, you need money You need knowledge. You need power. But if you do not have a spouse, all of that will be useless. A husband needs his wife and children. A wife needs her husband and children. The family is the place where we find these partners of love.
The individual serves God, the subject of love, in the position of an object of love who completely satisfies the ambition of God's conscience. The family in which a man and woman unite as objects of God's love, and where children live happily, should be the initial foundation of the Kingdom of Heaven on earth, centered on the true love of God.
Just as a man wants his object of love to be infinitely more valuable than he, God also wants man, His object of love, to have infinite value. A person of that value is a true person. We did not know that Adam and Eve were meant to be that kind of man and woman. No one has known that we were created with such value. If we were given such a high aspiration in our conscience, it is because God is the subject partner and He wants man to be in the position of His object partner. He did not want man and woman simply to be a part of Him, but rather to be completely different personalities. God allowed us to have such an elevated power of conscience because He hoped that we would be one thousand or ten thousand times more valuable than Himself. You must understand this very well.
True Love of God and Man
If, at the beginning of creation, God and man had united in a relationship of true love within a family, we would not have to worry about hell or heaven today, because we automatically would have entered the Kingdom of God. The problem here is that God's true love and man's love did not begin at a common point, united as a subjective and objective love. From the first family God's love and man's love moved in two different directions with two different goals. Therefore, it has been impossible to realize the ideal world for which God and man are longing.
God's ideal of a common point of beginning was completely frustrated. False parents arose centered on Satan's love. As their descendants, we inherited that false love, false life and false lineage, and are thus destined for hell. We have nothing to do with the Kingdom of Heaven. A person may have money, knowledge and power, but if she loses the love of her life, none of those things have any meaning. We did not know that, by being people whose spirit dominates our body through willpower, we were supposed to conquer God's love through our conscience.
What does the conscience do to win the true love of God? If you unburden and liberate your mind completely, your conscience will automatically connect with the true love of God. If we compare the size of the conscience to that of love, we will see that the size of love is greater. We can know this from the fact that the conscience begins from love.
The Kingdom of Heaven is the place where we go to live in unity with God, in true love and with a free conscience. It is the place we go after having lived centered on love and after preparing ourselves to be in the lineage of God's love. Without winning this love, we cannot enter the Kingdom of God for thousands of years. Due to the fall, there will be no connection with the Kingdom of Heaven until humankind is illuminated by God's true thought and sustained by God's true love.
The person who lives in unity, with a true conscience and true love, will enter the Kingdom of Heaven automatically No matter how much a person believes in Jesus, he cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven if he is not linked to the love of God. The struggle of our mind and body prevents us from entering the kingdom. The person who remains in Satan's lineage cannot enter the kingdom. The religions which have the mission of opening the way are struggling among themselves. They will meet a sad end in the Last Days.
God cannot be found where there is conflict. Catholicism and Protestantism must become one. Religion is not a key to open the doors to salvation; rather, it is a movement to subjugate the body and liberate the conscience. We have to know that we cannot receive the key that opens that door if we fail to inherit the love, the life and the true lineage of God. We will not receive salvation just by believing in religion. In reality, religion only exists to discipline the body
When our conscience is liberated, its ambition for love can be raised to encompass God. How does this seem to you? Reflect first about what you are doing with your life. Will you try to find out more about this? Who is the first to know what someone is doing? Who knows first, the conscience or God? The conscience knows first. Man is distinct from God because he occupies the object position. In the same sense, husband and wife are distinct. The characteristics of each are clearly different. If we were to conclude that God knows everything prior to its happening, we could say that we are a part of God, as if we and God were a single entity But if such were the case, we could not be the object partners of God's love.
A person who stands alone cannot realize the ideal. After Adam and Eve sinned, they hid themselves among the trees. God asked, "Adam, where are you?" and Adam answered, "I am here." God understood, and said, "You hid yourself because you have sinned." Since man began from God, he should return to the position of object partner to God. We must return to God.
Friends of God
Ladies and gentlemen, your sons and daughters grow up. When you reach the age of one hundred and your children reach the age of eighty, the relationship of father and son also becomes a relationship of friends. Friends! We cannot compare the physical strength of a woman with that of a man. Women can never defeat men physically; but, through love, wife and husband are attracted to one another and they come to resemble each other. If Adam and
Eve had become the objects of God's love, would that have been pleasing to Him? Absolutely, yes! God created the universe before Adam and Eve perfected themselves as the objects of His love. God had the ambitious hope that in the future they would be His ideal objects. If, after having perfected themselves as the objects of God's love, they had asked God to create something greater than what He had already created, do you think He could have done so?
Given the infinite ambition of our consciences, we should know that God can create everything we desire. God created us with the value of true love object partners. Because this absolute value was lost, it must be restored. This restoration is the purpose of human life and history God established religions and promised that someday each of the founders of those religions would return.
Christianity has taught that Jesus will return. In Buddhism, they speak of the return of Buddha. Confucianism alludes to a new Confucius. Likewise, in Islam, believers await the return of Mohammed. What could be the reason God established the different religions? We need to understand that the Will of God is accomplished centered on His beloved children, children who are like God's flesh and blood. With that type of son and daughter, God wants to form families, tribes, races and nations.
We need to understand, then, what the Messiah is. The Lord in his second coming is the person who completes the ideal for which all religions have longed, descending to the earth with the root of true love from the eternal God. He will become a True Father. Through the restoration of that lost true love, he will work to establish a true family on earth, on the foundation of true life and true lineage.
That is the purpose of the providence of salvation. Due to the fall, God lost the true mother as well as the children of Adam's family. This means that God could not have true children. There was no family connected to the blood lineage which was to come from God's love. Through fallen parents, blood ties originated from false love and false life, and the struggle between mind and body began. Adam and Eve became enemies to each other. There was a fight to the death between Adam's sons.
The providence of salvation is the providence of restoration, which God has been leading in order to restore his lost sons and daughters, restore the absolute unity of mind and body, restore the absolute unity of husband and wife, and restore the absolute unity of parents and children in the true love of God. This true family, which is qualified to live eternally with God, should be connected to Christianity, which is in the position of the bride to the Lord. By establishing such a blood relationship with God, we can realize united families, united tribes, united races and united nations, which thus will bring about the united world, the culmination of the providence of salvation.
The Necessity of True Parents
Distinguished people of America, is it not true that America would like to receive God's Blessing? To do so, you must become a people whose minds and bodies are united in God's true love. You must also unite as absolute husbands and wives. When the number of families that unite as absolute children of God grows, then God will come to live in this nation. If this happens, then automatically this nation will be the central nation of the world.
Man has this nature. If his beloved lives in poverty in the countryside, he wants to live there with her. In the same way, wherever God's beloved sons and daughters dwell is the Kingdom of Heaven, even if it is a place of poverty If it is prosperous, it will be the Kingdom of Heaven as well.
Today, the founder of the Unification Church is here speaking to you. If you ask me, "What is the mission of the Unification Church?," I will say that it is a place where God's true love is present. It is the place where we want our mind and body to unite in true love. It is the place where we want to form ideal marriages with absolute unity between husband and wife. We are carrying out the mission that God has given us, by means of an ideology that can make all people into inseparable brothers and sisters.
Centering on the love of the True God, my wife and I are cleansing all the polluted elements that originated in the false family formed through false marriage. This false marriage was caused by false love, false life and false lineage, which stemmed from the false, fallen parents. My wife and 1 established Headwing Ideology, an external ideology through which we can overcome and defeat both left-wing ideology and right-wing ideology. We also introduced the internal ideology of Godism. In other words, through True Love, we have purified the world of conscience and the spirit world. By doing so, we have achieved True Parents' position. Thus we are able to sow the seed of True Love, the seed of True Life, and the seed of True Lineage, which signifies the unity between God and human beings, to the couples participating in the International Holy Wedding, the ceremony of resurrection bequeathing this great Blessing.
This is the ceremony, then, that opens the path by which mankind will reach the new and true family. By having families from around the world participate in these marriage ceremonies, we want to connect the world to God's great Blessing. It is my fervent desire that all the world's people receive this great Blessing and become families and peoples that can establish the Kingdom of Heaven on earth.
The purpose of the Unification Church is to establish relationships of brotherhood that transcend nations through this means. Through this means, we want to realize the ideal of one great universal family centered on God, and thus proclaim the ideal of True Parents, true spouses, and true brothers and sisters. In this way, we will begin the world culture of heart. From earth to heaven, we will be liberated to fulfill the Kingdom of Heaven on earth.
Since the end of World War II, for the past fifty years, the entire world has persecuted and criticized Reverend Moon. The time has come for you to know that such persecution was not the result of my committing a crime. Instead, it was to save you. And now, unlike in the past, people realize that I am a man of goodness.
I was instrumental in bringing about the collapse of communism. It was Reverend Moon who reached out to Mikhail Gorbachev and Kim Il Sung. To save the United States, which is going toward collapse, I built a foundation for the sake of creating hope. There are difficult political circumstances between North and South Korea which Reverend Moon is resolving. The same is true for the Middle East.
What I have proclaimed has come to pass. The entire world did everything it could to put an end to me, yet I did not die, and today I am firmly standing on top of the world. If I can boldly proclaim the truth to you today, it is because of God's love. You need to know that if I survived, it was because God absolutely protected me. For this reason, I believe that you should study the Unification Church with this same seriousness.
We have met together today and this is a day of deep significance. I have shared a very important message with you and I have placed my trust in you. I kindly ask that you not forget this. I also ask that, based on this new awakening, you determine to follow the path to bring God's Blessing to your families and your nation. In that way, ideal families will begin to appear on this earth.
As you probably know, Reverend Moon and his spouse are known throughout the world as the True Parents. If it is true that as the True Parents, we are connected to God in true love, true life and true lineage, I would like you to remember one thing. Beginning from a true family and you, a realm of liberation, liberty, unification and happiness will begin. This will allow the hope of peace to sprout upon the earth.
Thank you very much.
-
True Parents and True Family
Mrs. Hak Ja Han Moon
President, Women's Federation for World Peace
This address was given at the inauguration of the Family Federation for World Peace in 185 nations, Sao Paolo, Brazil, and on her Autumn, 1996 world speaking tour.
Respected guests, members of the Family Federation for World Peace, ladies and gentlemen:
It is my great pleasure today to be able to share with you distinguished leaders a message about the True Family. As you know, the family is the cradle of human life and the cornerstone for a peaceful world.
It is my hope that at this gathering we will begin to find the way to build true families that are healthy and vibrant in the love of God.
God is the absolute One, the only, unchanging, and eternal One. His will is the same. If the human beings Adam and Eve had become one body under the love of God, everything would have been complete and perfect. God's origin, purpose and process of creation, as well as cause, effect and direction, are all absolute.
The human ancestors Adam and Eve entered into chaos after they fell through their ignorance. This ignorance and chaos expanded from the individual level to the levels of family, nation and world. It has been the task of religion and the Providence of Salvation to liberate us from this sphere of the Fall.
In the Last Days, the Messiah comes and teaches clearly the absolute, the only, unchanging, and eternal cause, direction and effect, from God's viewpoint. He will cleanse the world of ignorance and chaos and return it to the original bosom of God. This is the completion of the will of God.
If this does not happen, then in the Last Days all religions, "isms," systems of thought, and nations will pass away Now humankind is facing the twenty-first century, entering the new historical era of the Third Millennium in just a few years. At this important moment, I would like to deliver this speech on the "View of the Principle of the Providential History of Salvation," so that we can resolve to prepare ourselves for the new era.
To bring about completion and perfection between God and humankind, centering on True Love, God required that man accomplish a condition of responsibility in order to reach unity with Him. Therefore, God needed to give the Commandment to the first ancestors. In other words, God knew that they were in the growth period, on the way to reaching perfection, so He established the Commandment as the condition for His children to inherit the most precious thing, True Love.
Originally, True Love was to be gained through life experience and understood through internal realization. True Love is not something that can be learned through words, a written text or schooling. It is experienced completely only in life. Created as newborn infants, Adam and Eve were to grow and perfect themselves gradually through experiences of the heart of True Children, True Brother and Sister, True Husband and Wife, and True Parents encompassing their whole lives. Only after experiencing the True Love of God in its entirety can one perfect the Purpose of Creation and become an ideal human being.
Every person desires that his object of love be ten million times more valuable than himself, or even infinitely more valuable. In the same way God desires that humankind, His object of love, become infinitely valuable. If a human being perfects himself, then that person obtains God-like value by attaining God's divinity and perfection.
God's Ideal of True Love
God is absolute, but His ideal of True Love cannot be realized by Himself. That is because love always requires an object, a beloved. At this point, we should understand the relationship between God's True Love and humankind's True Love, and how they begin and are perfected. What would have happened if God had not chosen human beings as His absolute objects of True Love, and instead had sought to begin and perfect True Love in some other way? In that case, God and man would have pursued the ideal of True Love with different motivations, directions and purposes. God would have had to achieve His ideal of love through an object higher than humankind; and by the same token, humankind's ideal of love would have had no direct relationship with God.
But God, as the subject of True Love, did establish humankind as the object of His True Love. Accordingly God can fulfill His ideal of True Love only through humankind. The fulfillment of God's Purpose of Creation is the ideal world where God and mankind are united through absolute love. Human beings were created as the greatest object of God's love. They alone, in all Creation, embody the nature of God. They are born the visible bodies of the invisible God. If a person perfects himself, he becomes the temple of God, a visible, substantial body in which God can freely and peacefully dwell.
God's overall ideal of absolute True Love is realized and perfected through humankind in a vertical parent-child relationship.
God created Adam first. He was to be the son of God and at the same time the substantial body of God Himself. Later, God created Eve as the object of Adam so that Adam and Eve could perfect the ideal of horizontal love, which is conjugal love. Eve was to be the daughter of God, and also, as a bride she was to perfect substantially the ideal of the horizontal love of God.
The place in which Adam and Eve are perfected, consummating their first love by marrying under the blessing of God, is precisely the place where God meets His substantial bride. This is because God's ideal of absolute love descends vertically and joins where the ideal of conjugal love between Adam and Eve is realized horizontally The True Love of God and the True Love of humankind join and perfect themselves at the same point, although they come from different directions, one vertical and the other horizontal.
Why God Needs Humankind
God's act of creation was inevitable. And we cannot imagine Creation without a purpose. There was only one reason God needed the Creation: to realize the ideal of True Love. God developed life from the simplest and lowest levels up to the human level in pairs, subject and object and positive and negative, to form reciprocal relationships under the ideal of love. The Creation's ideal of love and God's ideal of ultimate love are not separate or different. This Principle of Creation is at work to perfect the absolute love of God through the perfection of the love of man and woman in the human world. This is the reason why, in the beginning, God created one man and one woman, Adam and Eve.
God's Purpose of Creation called for Adam and Eve to obey the Commandment of God, who is the subject of True Love, and perfect themselves as True Man and True Woman. Furthermore, they were to become a True Couple united in the True Love of God. Then, by having sons and daughters through that True Love, they would have become True Parents and lived in happiness. Had Adam and Eve perfected themselves in True Love, they would have fulfilled God's desire to wear a substantial body. And when they perfected themselves as a True Couple, the ideal of God's absolute love would have been fulfilled.
By Adam and Eve having children of goodness and becoming True Parents, God would have established Himself substantially as the Eternal Parent and achieved His ideal: Citizenship in the Kingdom of Heaven would expand infinitely in the afterlife of the spirit world based on myriad generations of descendants in the physical world.
But Adam and Eve, the human ancestors, fell away from God. When they were expelled from Eden, they had not yet had children. Having driven them out, God had no basis to follow behind them to bless their marriage. The entire human race has thus descended from our failed ancestors. Humanity has multiplied without any direct relationship whatsoever to the love of God.
Distinguished Leaders: Could the Fall of Man have been the result of eating the fruit of a tree? The fall of Adam and Eve was immoral conduct against the ideal of the True Love of God. The fact that Adam and Eve needed to obey the Commandment shows that they fell in a stage of imperfection, that is to say, during their period of growth. The Archangel, who is symbolized by a serpent, tempted Eve to eat of the fruit of good and evil, and she fell spiritually She later tempted Adam (who was also too immature to eat of the fruit), and they then fell physically
The only possible sin that could have been fatal in the Garden of Eden, where Adam and Eve were in communication with God and living in joy, was the sin of illicit love. The first consummated love of the human ancestors, because it was supposed to have been the perfection of the love of God Himself, should have marked the beginning of a celebration that would continue throughout history, filled with the never-ending intoxication of joy and blessing for God, Adam and Eve, and the universe. It should have been a joyous occasion in which the love, life and lineage of God would have been established within humankind. To the contrary, however, Adam and Eve covered their lower parts and hid themselves among the trees, trembling in fear. By disobeying heavenly law, they established an immoral relationship as the basis for false love, false life and false lineage.
As descendants of Adam and Eve, all human beings are born with Original Sin. The Fall gave rise to conflict of mind and body within every person and caused our societies to be filled with tainted love, and people do things that contradict the desire of their original minds.
Taking Responsibility for Love
According to the ideal of love, all love relationships in the animal and plant kingdoms are for reproduction only Human beings are the sole exception. Humankind enjoys freedom in the conjugal relationship of love. This is humanity's special privilege as the lord of all creation. God gave the blessing and infinite joy of love to His sons and daughters. However, the True Freedom that God allowed requires human responsibility If an individual were to insist upon and practice freedom of love without responsibility, how much confusion and destruction would take place! Achieving the highest ideal of human love is possible only when one takes responsibility for love.
We can think of this responsibility in three ways. The first responsibility is for one to become the master of True Love, truly free and thanking God for the freedom of love and knowing how to cultivate and control oneself. This responsibility for a love relationship should not be taken merely because of law or social convention. Instead, a person should establish responsibility through his own self-control and self-determination within the life-committing vertical relationship with God.
Second is one's responsibility toward the object of love. By nature, people do not want their spouse's love to be shared with others. Horizontal conjugal love, which differs from the vertical love between parents and children, loses its potential for perfection the moment it is divided. This is because the Principle of Creation requires husband and wife to become one in absolute love. Each spouse has the responsibility given by love to live absolutely for the sake of the other.
The third responsibility of love is toward children. The love of parents is the basis for children's pride and happiness. They would wish to be born through the total and harmonious unity of their parents in True Love, and they would wish to be raised in that kind of love. The most precious responsibility of parents is not only to rear their children externally, but also to offer them life elements of True Love that can perfect their spirituality This is why the family is so valuable. The daily experience of the heart of True Children, True Brothers and Sisters, True Spouses, and True Parents cannot be acquired in any place other than the True Family.
If Adam and Eve had become a couple of True Love centered upon God, God could have dwelt in Adam as His substantial body and thus loved Eve. What is more, Adam and Eve could have become True Parents who substantially embodied God, and become the origin of the love of goodness, a life of goodness, and a lineage of goodness.
Due to the Fall, however, Adam and Eve became the substantial body of Satan and ended up becoming the original evil couple, evil parents and evil ancestors. Their union became the root of evil love, evil life and evil blood lineage. Because human beings originated from this root, they descended from the adulterous Satan, who is the enemy of God, and inherited this lineage of evil parents.
Ladies and gentlemen: How great must have been the pain of God when, by the Fall, our human ancestors destroyed His ideal of True Love! Humankind should have been the sons and daughters of God, but they do not know God Himself as their Original Parent. Yet even though His sons and daughters serve Satan, God has worked for the Providence of Salvation. Because He is an absolute being, and His ideal of creation is also absolute, He has carried out the Providence of Salvation even amid great sadness. God's Providence of Salvation is the Providence of Restoration, which means to recover the lost Purpose of Creation, centered on True Love. The Providence of Salvation is also the Providence of Re-creation.
The Essence of God's Providence
Based on this point, the root of the Providence of Salvation is the re-creation of the seed of the original child, the human being who will fulfill the ideal of creation. That which God abhors, the life and blood lineage that began with the false love of the adulterer Satan, must be cleansed. The essence of the Providence is the task of setting up the birth of the True Parent, the Savior united with the True Love, Life and Lineage of God.
Since the ancestors of humankind failed to fulfill their responsibility, inherited the immoral lineage of Satan, and came under the dominion of Satan, God Himself could not directly intervene and return human beings to their original position. Furthermore, God can neither unconditionally accept humankind, who chose to go to the side of the evil Archangel, nor punish them. So God uses the strategy of placing a central figure on the side of the good Archangel; by being struck first, that figure establishes the indemnity condition to recover what was lost. Satan strikes first but as a result must take the losing position. The First, Second, and Third (Cold War) World Wars are good examples of this. The side that struck first, lost.
From the overall perspective of the Providence of Restoration, the foundation of cooperation between mother and son is very important. This was so at the time of Jacob, Moses, and Jesus. God was working His Providence to separate people from satanic life and lineage by establishing the foundation of cooperation between a mother who had to fulfill the responsibility of Eve, the originator of the Fall and the second son of the family.
God cannot directly relate to the first son because he is in the position of having a direct blood relationship with Satan, who through the Fall was the first to dominate humankind. God has been restoring the blood lineage of goodness by having the second son, who represents the side of goodness, establish a condition. Then God has had the first son, representing the side of evil, take a position subordinate to the second son.
In the family of Adam, God carried out the providence of establishing the second son, Abel, and having him subordinate the first son, Cain. Even though Eve had fallen, as a mother she could have made an effort to create unity between the two brothers. In the end, however, Cain murdered Abel (Genesis 4:8) and the Providence of Salvation, not being fulfilled, was prolonged.
There was also a required formula of cooperation between mother and son at the time of Noah. But that formula of meaningful cooperation was not realized until the time of Rebecca and Jacob.
The human Fall was committed by three beings: Adam, Eve and the Archangel. The Archangel seduced Eve, causing the spiritual fall, and later fallen Eve seduced Adam, causing the physical fall. As a result, they turned their backs on God, and the fallen Archangel became Satan. Since the Providence of Salvation is the Providence of Restoration, the Principle of Restoration can be carried out only by going in a direction 180 degrees opposite of the Fall.
God lost Adam, who had the seed of True Love and True Life. Thus, God had to find a son with the new seed free from satanic accusation. Just as God created Adam first at the time of the creation, God must prepare a son first who has no relationship to the Fall, according to the Providence of Restoration, which is the Providence of Re-creation. This is the basis for the idea of the coming of the Messiah. The Messiah rejects the sinful lives of those with a fallen lineage under the dominion of Satan. He comes as a True Person who engrafts fallen humanity into the seed of new life. The Messiah has his roots in God, and comes as the Second Adam, who wipes away all that was committed by the first Adam. This is the reason God cannot send a superman Messiah who will work only through miracles.
For a son to be born on earth with this seed of God's love and life, there first must exist a mother. And the mother cannot give birth to this child in a conventional way. Conception must happen through the formula of restoration. All the cooperation between mothers and sons in the Providence of Restoration is a preparation and a condition for the Son of God to be born with the seed of new life, free from satanic accusation. By making conditions to avoid Satan's attacks, and by subordinating the firstborn son who represents evil, mother and son restore the love, life and lineage that were taken over by Satan.
The Meaning of Jacob's Victory
The Bible, which records the providential work of God, contains many stories that are difficult to understand. For example, Rebecca deceived her husband Isaac and her first son Esau, and helped her second son Jacob receive the blessing (Genesis 27). God took the side of that mother and son, and although they used methods that at first glance seem unjust, God still blessed them for their actions.
In Adam's family, Cain and Abel fought outside the womb. Their struggle resulted in the death of Abel, the second son.
Then came Jacob. On the merits of many godly people who paid indemnity and sacrificed after the time of Abel, Jacob at last caught up to the level at which Satan first dominated humankind. Then Jacob dealt with his twin brother, Esau. At the Ford of Jabbok, Jacob set up the condition of spiritual victory over the angel (Genesis 32:28). And through winning over Esau (Genesis 33), who was in the position of the substantial body of the Archangel, Jacob consequently was blessed as the first victor in history, and was given the name "Israel." But by then he was already in his fortieth year.
Satan sowed the seed of false love within the womb of Eve, which gave birth to evil life. Therefore, God needed to purify a mother's womb from which the heavenly Son could be born. That purification period of separation from Satan had to begin at the time of conception and continue to age forty, so even though Jacob was victorious he did not meet that criteria. The great mother who assumed the responsibility to meet this condition was Tamar.
Tamar's Providential Role
Tamar had married Er, the eldest son of Judah (Genesis 38). But Er displeased God and he died. According to the custom of that time, Judah gave Tamar his second son, Onan, that they might bear a child for Er. But Onan, knowing that Tamar's child would not be his own, spilled his semen on the ground. This was a sin in the eyes of God, for which Onan died.
Then Tamar wanted Shelah, the third son of Judah, for a husband, but Judah did not give him to her. Judah thought that his two sons had died because of Tamar, so he was afraid that Shelah would die and end the family lineage.
But Tamar had the conviction that she was to carry on the lineage of the chosen people. To do that, she disguised herself as a prostitute and slept with her father-in-law, Judah, and became pregnant with twins. At the time of birth, one of the twin sons, Zerah, stretched out his hand from the womb to be born first. But he was pulled back into the womb, and the second son, Perez, was born first, taking the position of the elder brother. Thus, within the womb of Tamar, the first and second sons fought, and their reversal of position separated them from Satan. That became the condition for restoration in the womb. Upon this condition, the Messiah could be conceived within the blood lineage of the chosen people, on the base of the nation of Israel that could stand up to the Roman Empire two thousand years later. The victorious foundation on the national level could then be formed in the womb of a mother free of satanic accusation, prepared for the seed of the Son of God. On this foundation, the Holy Mother Mary emerged in the mainstream of God's Providence.
Mary Receives God's Will
Mary, when she was engaged to Joseph, received from the Archangel Gabriel the surprising message that the Messiah would be born through her (Luke 1:31). In those days, if an unmarried woman became pregnant, she would be killed. But Mary accepted the will of God with absolute faith, saying, "Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word." (Luke 1:38)
Mary consulted with the priest Zechariah, who was her relative and was highly respected. Zechariah's wife Elizabeth, with the help of God, was pregnant with John the Baptist. She said to Mary, "Blessed are you among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb. Why is this granted to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me?" (Luke 1:42-43) With these words she testified to the coming birth of Jesus.
In this way, God let Mary, Zechariah and Elizabeth know about the birth of the Messiah before anyone else. All of them had the absolutely crucial mission of following the will of God and serving Jesus. Zechariah's family let Mary stay in their house. Jesus was conceived in the house of Zechariah.
Elizabeth and Mary were cousins on their mothers' side. But according to God's Providence, they were considered sisters, with Elizabeth as the elder (Cain) and Mary as the younger (Abel). Mary received Elizabeth's help in the presence of Zechariah. Through this cooperation, Zechariah's family, on the national level, indemnified the lack of unity between mother and son with Leah and Rachel in Jacob's family (Genesis 29-30). This allowed Jesus to be conceived. For the first time in history, there could be born on earth, free of satanic accusation and through a prepared womb, the seed of the Son of God-the seed of the True Father. In this way, the only begotten Son of God, the owner of the first love of God, was born for the first time in history.
Mary had to achieve something that could not be understood by common sense, nor easily tolerated under the law of those times. Mary, Elizabeth and Zechariah had been spiritually moved. They followed the revelation that came from God, and unconditionally believed that it was the will and desire of God.
Although the Son of God could be born on earth, he needed a wall of protection to grow up safely in the satanic world and fulfill the will of God. God had hoped that these three people in the family of Zechariah would establish that protective foundation. There are many points to consider with regard to how seriously the three had to dedicate themselves to protecting and serving the Son of God, and how long they should have been united with each other.
In the Bible it is recorded, "And Mary remained with her [Elizabeth] about three months, and returned to her home." (Luke 1:56) After that, there is no biblical record of any further communication between Mary Elizabeth and Zechariah. From the time Mary left Zechariah's house, difficulties began for Mary and Jesus. The family of Zechariah should have been the wall of protection for Jesus until the very end.
A short time later, Joseph discovered that Mary was pregnant. How great must have been his shock at that moment! Mary, his beloved fiancée, without having had any relationship with him, had become pregnant after a three-month stay in another place. It was natural for Joseph to question Mary about who the baby in her womb belonged to. What would have happened if at that time Mary had explained everything candidly? If she had exposed everything, it could have been the end of a clan. So Mary simply responded that she was pregnant by the Holy Spirit.
Mary's pregnancy began to show, and the people of the surrounding area became aware of it. What would have happened if Joseph had declared that he didn't know anything about it? But Joseph was a righteous man. He believed in the revelation of God and defended Mary, saying the pregnancy was his responsibility Mary may have been ridiculed for becoming pregnant during her engagement, but she had avoided death by stoning.
Joseph, who loved Mary, protected her this way in the beginning. However, there was a great deal of anguish deep in his heart. Once Jesus was born, Joseph's suspicions about the father of Jesus only increased and his heart ached. As Jesus grew older, the two became more and more distant in heart. And because of this, family problems frequently arose. Jesus was viewed as an illegitimate son, and lacking the protection of Zechariah's family and the love of Joseph, he grew up with an indescribable loneliness in his heart.
No Bride for Jesus
Jesus was aware of his path as the Messiah, and he lamented by himself these lonely circumstances and the serious obstacle they presented to fulfilling the will of God. The Messiah is the True Parent, and to fulfill that mission he needed to receive his substantial bride. Jesus had to reverse, at the very root, the false love by which the Archangel had caused the fall of Eve, who was growing up as the sister of Adam. Consequently, Jesus, in the place of Adam as the Son of God, should have received as his bride the younger sister of someone in an archangelic position. That bride was to have been none other than Zechariah's daughter, the younger sister of John the Baptist. To fulfill this in a world where Satan plays the role of owner and lord, Jesus needed a foundation of protection formed by absolute faith. Tragically, the entire foundation ended up collapsing around him.
This would not have happened if Zechariah and Elizabeth, who had received the revelation and spiritual support from God, had maintained absolute faith. If they had fulfilled their responsibility Mary would have been in contact with them continually, even after her three-month stay at their house. God chose Zechariah's family as the foremost representatives of the entire world, so that even after the birth of Jesus they would protect, serve and witness to him as the Messiah. They not only should have served Jesus as the Son of God and Messiah with utter devotion, but they should have learned the will of God through Jesus and followed him absolutely. Also, John the Baptist was born to serve Jesus and should have fulfilled his responsibility to guide everyone he led to repentance, to believe in Jesus and receive salvation.
But unfortunately, although Zechariah, Elizabeth and John the Baptist testified at first to Jesus as the Son of God, there is no evidence that they served him as such. The respected priest Zechariah was simply a spectator. John the Baptist stood separate from Jesus. These circumstances blocked the people from following Jesus and made his path very difficult. And once this family lost faith in Jesus, looking at him through human eyes, there was no room for them to help him receive his bride.
We should also consider the influence that Joseph and Mary's relationship had on Jesus. Mary had to restore the position of Eve and Tamar through indemnity, so she should have remained as only the fiancée of Joseph. Providentially, they could not be husband and wife. It was God's desire that they not have sexual relations either before or after Jesus' birth. Joseph still loved Mary after Jesus was born, but Mary should have wanted to separate from Joseph to raise Jesus as the Son of God.
But the real circumstances did not make this easy to do. Even though Mary's original mind told her that she should not do so, she had sexual relations with Joseph. They had children, which was a repetition of Eve's mistake. With this condition, Satan invaded them. With the exception of Jesus, everyone who should have protected Jesus came under the dominion of Satan: his father, his mother, his Abel-type brothers (John the Baptist and his brothers) and his Cain-type brothers (the children of Joseph).
Jesus Seen through human Eyes
When someone is invaded by Satan he loses all spiritual support and inspiration. Trust in God, as well as a sense of gratitude to Him, is lost. One begins to see everything through human eyes. Mary did not help Jesus with the wedding he desired. She even opposed it. This was the direct reason that Jesus could not receive his bride, and could not become the True Parent; and this forced him to go the way of the cross.
Jesus' words to Mary during the wedding at Cana, "Oh woman, what have you to do with me?" (John 2:4), reveal a reproachful heart to a mother who helped in the weddings of others but neglected to help Jesus receive his bride, the most important requirement of the Providence. With this perspective, now we can understand why Jesus asked, "Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?" (Matthew 12:48)
Faced with the opposition of Mary, Zechariah, Elizabeth, and finally John the Baptist, Jesus gave up hope for their protection as he sought to fulfill his mission. Therefore, Jesus left his home in search of a new spiritual foundation to restart the Providence of Salvation.
Now without a family and household, Jesus lamented, "foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man has nowhere to lay his head." (Matthew 8:20) With his family-level foundation lost, Jesus sought to replace it. That was his three-year course.
In the end, as people disbelieved and the disciples lost faith, Jesus took Satan's attack.
And as his foundation crumbled, he went the way of the cross. Originally, Jesus came to the earth as the Messiah to give blessings to his disciples and all humankind. He was to build the sinless Kingdom of Heaven. But because of the lack of faith in him, he could not receive his bride, he could not become the True Parent, and he could not accomplish his mission. This is why he promised to return.
According to the Bible, "Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven." Today, therefore, I clearly reveal this truth about Jesus and Mary in order to liberate them despite opposition from established churches such as the Catholic Church and Protestant churches.
Completing the Ideal of True Parents
The Lord of the Second Advent comes to perfect the foundation of God's Providence of Restoration left uncompleted by Jesus. That is to say, he comes as the seed of the original True Child to complete the ideal of creation. He comes to complete the ideal of True Parents, who are the origin of the True Love, True Life and the True Lineage of God. He comes on the victorious foundation of the fundamental providence of God's side up to the time of Jesus. He also stands upon the victorious foundation of Jesus' life and finds the bride that Jesus could not find. Together they become the True Parents to save all humankind.
Through the blessing of new marriages that pass on God's original blood lineage, the True Parents will be able to give salvation to all humanity. People will become True Persons engrafting into the True Love, True Life and True Lineage of God. Furthermore, the Messiah will establish a True Family, creating the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth. Thus, it is the International Holy Weddings that establish this new blood lineage when the Lord of the Second Advent comes in the flesh.
On the level of the great worldwide family, the Lord indemnifies that which was lost in the family of Adam and restores the True Elder Sonship, True Parentship and True Kingship that should have been perfected in Adam's family. He will transform this world into the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth under the dominion of God, opening the Kingdom of Heaven in the spirit world for registration. Humanity will enter into the era of kingship both spiritually and physically centered on God; establish a world of victory, freedom, happiness and unity; and create the Heavenly Kingdom on Earth and in the spirit world, which is God's ideal of creation. This is the View of the Principle of the Providential History of Salvation. I hope that in the future all of you can also receive this joyous new marriage blessing.
My dear Leaders and Distinguished Guests, I want to again express my appreciation that you have taken time from your busy lives to attend this important meeting. I hope you are able to have a clear understanding of the direction of providential history so that you can become true leaders in establishing a peaceful world. May God bless you and your families. Thank you.