Category: Speeches of Rev Sun Myung Moon 2003

Reverend Sun Myung Moon

Jamsil Gymnasium, Seoul Korea
February 6, 2003

Respected current and former heads of state, leaders from the religious, political and academic worlds, representatives from 189 different countries, representatives from each family, ladies and gentlemen!

I would like to truly thank all of you who have gathered here to congratulate me on my 83rd birthday and my wife, President Han Hak-ja, on her 60th birthday.

But above all else, I would like to return all this glory to God, who has protected and looked after me until this day.

My life is such that you cannot explain it without God, and in this truly meaningful place, I would like to speak to all of you today with thanks in my heart. The title of my talk today is, “God’s True Love and the Liberation of the Relationship of Heaven and Earth and Humankind.”

Throughout human history, all people have talked a lot about God, or the Absolute Being. They have praised and worshipped Him in many different ways, and in other ways they have felt free to evaluate Him. There have even been some people declaring that there is no God, or that God is dead. However, there has not been one instance in which God Himself appeared directly saying, “This is how I have lived.” There have been many people who have prophesied that, with the development of science, the people who believe in God would disappear. However, the number of people who believe in God in modern society is not diminishing. God is the living origin of all things, the Creator, the True Parent of humankind.

The God that I have been teaching about is not just some vague or obscure God. From the time I first experienced God at the age of 16, when I was worrying about the meaning of life and the universe, I have lived my whole life in communication with God. The driving force which has preserved my life of suffering, during which I have touched the boundary between life and death, is the living God’s promise and my absolute faith.

I searched every corner of the spiritual world. I met the five great holy men and many other saints and sages, and I received their official recognition of my mission. Ladies and Gentlemen! God is the most decent and modest being, and He is the True Parent of humankind. He is the origin of all our lives, and He is the being with whom all people must establish a relationship. Also, the one thing that you all must know clearly is that the spiritual world, the world that we must all someday go to, does exist. You must not doubt the existence of the spiritual world or have some vague belief in God.

I have set a record in sponsoring many “God Conferences,” something which has no parallel in history. The first three conferences I held in the 1980’s, attended by representatives from each religion and each denomination, as well as by outstanding theologians and religious scholars, caused a great sensation.

There were three main points that I wanted to teach through these conferences: Firstly, that although each religion has its own special and unique character, there are actually many more points in common between religions. Secondly, the conflict and disharmony that exist between religions is due to the narrow-mindedness of the believers themselves, and it is absolutely not the will of the absolute being. Thirdly, God desires the realization of true love rather than any emphasis on belief or ceremony.

The papers and discussions that were presented at these conferences are still being used today as a textbook in the top theological seminaries of each denomination. From that time forward, the spirit of sincere dialogue and cooperation between each denomination was begun. Such dialogue and cooperation had hitherto been blocked by the high walls that had been erected between them. Since then I have invested a great amount of money each year to expand the Religious Federation and the Supra-religious Peace Association in each country and throughout the world.

For three days, beginning on December 26 last year in Washington D.C., I held a different level of “God Conference.” During that time, under the theme “God and a World of Peace”, 312 participants, including not only religious leaders from all corners of the world, but also representatives from politics, academia, the media, business, culture and the arts, and from various NGOs, gathered together.

God is not just the God of believers. He is the God of all people. Especially at this time, we are living in an age in which God stands before the world, not just as some vague and abstract God, but as a God with a definite purpose and will. It is an age of great change in which all people must awaken to this God. It is a time in which all people must awaken to the fact that modern people are buried within the whirlpool of individual, family, national and world-level problems, which will never be solved if God is ignored.

At this conference, the 312 participants adopted a resolution that declared the following:

Firstly, that they would recognize and establish the God who is the True Parent, True Teacher and True Owner, and the substantial True Parents, as the vertical axis of absolute value for the individual, the family, the nation and the world.

Secondly, that they would cooperate with and follow the resolution of the five Saints and all the sages in the spiritual world to join together and help people on Earth to bring about the completion of God’s will.

Thirdly, that they would actively support and join together with the movement to realize true love, with the movement for the reform of the United Nations, as well as with the other plans of True Parents in order to realize the ideal of a peaceful world.

The ultimate purpose of religion is to recover the original father and the original country. The word “religion” does not have humankind as its prime object. Rather, religion is the teaching in which God, the parent, is established as the head. There is a certain course through which we establish a relationship with God and mature in a life of following God. Therefore, holy men and women have to support the will of Heaven and they have to declare what has been preordained by Heaven.

A true religion must teach people about God. A true religion should not have some vague ideas about God; a true religion must be able to give a clear picture of God so that people can understand Him. A religion which makes compromises concerning the relationship between God and man cannot be called a religion of a higher order. That kind of religion will finally decline.

A true religion must teach people how to know God clearly, how to become one with God, and how to return to the original world of creation. The purpose of religion is to make a world without sin, the ideal world where we establish the original relationship with God.

God is not seeking a religious world, but His ideal world of creation. The purpose of religion is not for the religion itself, but to realize the world of God’s ideal. So we have to think about the purpose and ideal of creation. God created the world, so it is necessary to explain this ideal of creation.

What do you think God’s will is? It is to complete His ideal of creation. What do you think that God wanted to achieve through creating our human ancestors, Adam and Eve, in the Garden of Eden? God, who is the essence of love, created humankind because He needed a partner of love.

Humans were created as the true sons and daughters of God so that God’s ideal of true love could be realized. They were to grow as a true man and a true woman, then become husband and wife, create an ideal family, and then make an ideal country and world. To repeat once again, centering on the true love of God, they should have perfected the ideal family, expanding this to make the ideal world. But because of the Fall of our human ancestors, God’s ideal of creation was destroyed at that time.

Accordingly, the purpose of religion is to find a true person, a true family, a true nation, and a true world, where all people can live together in peace. This is the purpose of God’s Providence for this world.

Religion is seeking a “good” world. However, a good world cannot be realized before a good country is first established. And for a good country to appear, there must be first a good race, and before there is a good race, there must first be a good tribe, and before there is a good tribe, there must first be a good family. And before there is a good family, there must first be a good man and a good woman.

What was the purpose of the 4,000 years of the history of Israel after the fall of Adam? Externally, it was a time in which the world developed, but internally, the sole purpose of this time period was to find one true child, to find the true Adam. The fact that, due to the Fall, there was not one son or daughter who could inherit the life and blood lineage centering on God’s love, was God’s deepest grief and resentment. Thus, the person who God made again as the owner of true love, life and the blood lineage and sent him to this world is the Savior.

According to different points of view, this person has been called the Savior, the Messiah, and the Lord of the Second Advent. He comes as the Savior to rescue all people in this world from poverty, from suffering, from war and from evil, and, centering on the Absolute Being, God’s will for salvation. He is the mediator who will connect all religious people to the way of life. He has been called the Messiah in the first and second Israel, and has been called the Lord of the Second Advent in God’s Providence of Restoration. The names Savior, Messiah, or Lord of the Second Advent have all been used centering on the course of salvation and restoration.

Restoring fallen men and women, who have been born and have lived in conflict and in sin through their connection to false parents and false ancestors, to the position they were in before the Fall, does not mean that everything has been accomplished. The will of God and the original hope of humankind is to become the ideal person of the original world of creation and to complete the ideal world of creation. This means that after becoming an individual who has achieved God’s ideal of love, he or she should then become a husband and wife of true love and then become true parents.

In order for this to happen, God absolutely needs the True Parents as the source of God’s true love, true life and true lineage. So, in order to complete God’s Providence of Salvation, it is not one man, the Savior, the Messiah, or the Lord of the Second Advent, who must appear, but it is the True Parents, husband and wife, who resemble God completely and who have completely realized His true love, who must appear. In the same way that God first created Adam and made Adam’s eternal partner by taking a rib from him, God’s son, the restored Adam, must first appear, and then restore Eve, and then, by recreating her, realize the ideal of true love, completing the role of True Parents. The source of humankind’s true love and true life begins from the True Parents and in them is the true model of the ideal of true husband and wife and true parents.

Humankind’s sin and suffering originated in the false love of the fallen ancestors, who were born as the fruit of false parents and false ancestors. Accordingly, the only way to complete the ideal and be liberated from the connection to the Fall is through the coming of True Parents. The original ideal of humankind, which has been sought through religion, and that the world has been waiting so eagerly for, are the True Parents, who will fulfill God’s ideal of love.

We can say that religion is the place where humans are remodeled. If there had been no Fall, then religion would have been unnecessary. Religion is the way to remodel humans, whose mind and body are in conflict due to the Fall, into becoming peaceful people who will not fight for eternity, but who will become God’s substantial objects. It is where people are changed into original people of true character, resembling God.

When we look at our mind and body, the body is the base of the evil spirit Satan and the conscience is the base of God. Generally speaking, the body directs the mind. Religion is the way to attack the body which is controlling our mind, trying to weaken it. Religion teaches that the body is the thing that is to be most disliked. Religion commands us to fast, to serve, to sacrifice ourselves, to go the way of suffering and even to offer our lives for the sake of righteousness. The logic behind the seemingly paradoxical teaching of the Bible, “Those who seek to die will live, and those who seek to live will die”, is that if you live according to the desires of your body, you will go the way of death into hell, but if you kill your body and enter the realm where your conscience is liberated, you will have eternal life and go to the Kingdom of Heaven.

The person who is unable to unify his or her mind and body and allows this struggle to continue, will not be able to become accustomed to God’s unified ideal world of love. Usually, people say that if you believe in a particular religion, you will go to Heaven or Paradise. However, Heaven is the place only for God’s children, whose mind and body have become one, centered on God’s love.

The love of the fallen world is usually a love centered on oneself, and this is centered not on the mind, but on the body. The body is the devil’s dancing hall. The original mind should take the subject position in place of God, but the body becomes another subject and plays with the original mind as with a puppet. This is what we have to change. Religion is the repair shop which God made to fix this. It is the repair shop which remodels humans into perfect people of true character, whose mind and body are one for eternity.

Religion teaches us not to rest, but to pray unceasingly. The devil doesn’t rest and uses the body as its horizontal stage all 24 hours. As God is in the vertical position, He can only perform His works through the vertical mind. In order for the body not to be controlled by the horizontal body, the mind itself has to stand in the vertical position through prayer and devotion and by doing this it can receive three or four times a greater power from God.

If you live a life of sincere prayer and devotion for between three to five years, the mind can be liberated from the body’s horizontal and habitual influence.

Respected leaders, ladies and gentlemen!

Leading a religious life is not something that you can choose to do or not to do. Because fallen men and women were born with a connection to the fallen love and fallen parents centered on Satan, then without exception all people must absolutely pass through the repair shop of religion, meet the True Parents, and establish a connection of True Love and True Life with them.

There is one important point you have to know. You should not go to the repair shop and stay there forever, you must emerge reborn. The religious life is the required course for all humankind; however, the religious life itself is not the basic purpose or the whole purpose of life. The ultimate purpose of human life is to complete the religious life, graduating from living a model life to then living a life as a man and woman of the original world of creation.

Religion came about only because of the Fall, so is it reasonable to say that the sole purpose of life is to live buried within that religion? If there had been no Fall, then how would men and women originally have lived? Humans are originally the children of God. And we should live with true love, realize a true family, and one world of freedom, peace, unity, and happiness. We are supposed to live a life in the Kingdom of Heaven.

God did not create men and women to repair them into becoming His reborn children through religion. Where is there a parent who would want to see his children suffer in conflict while repenting of their sins? Do you think that it was the original will of God the Father, who is the Lord of Creation, omniscient and omnipotent, that He would want to let His children live while suffering in sin?

The fallen world was not the world that God originally planned. The human ancestors’ disobedience to God caused God to be unable to realize the world that He had originally planned. God is absolute and His will is also absolute. And God will realize His will again. The will is for complete recovery to the original state. This is why God’s Providence of Salvation is the Providence of Restoration, the Providence of Re-creation. Religion is the tool of the Providence of Restoration. People are not just supposed to meet True Parents and go through the course of a religious life; they are supposed to become God’s children and establish the connection of parent and child in their life, and attend God and build a world of a faith, which is shown through their daily life.

There has been no one in history who has revealed this precious truth, namely, that humans must graduate from living religious lives. I, who knew God’s truth from an early age, did not want to create another sect or denomination. Christianity, which was the central religion of God’s Providence, did not accept my teaching of Heaven’s way and that is why I had to make the organization, “The Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity.”

It was an association, not another sect or denomination. But even though the Christian world continued to deny, to persecute, to label it as heretical, to turn its face away from us, when our movement started to become bigger, the world began to call us the Unification Church, instead of the long official title. That is how we became the Unification Church. However, from many, many years ago, I have lived in hope of seeing the day when we could take down the church sign, and I even prophesied about that day. Finally, in 1996, we took down the signs and started as “The Family Federation for World Peace.”

This was a very important event in the history of humankind. This event was the beginning of a new world which changed the old world, where people lived with the burden of sin inherited from false parents, in suffering and conflict, living a life of faith, in which the only way to find God was through a life of prayer and repentance. It became a world where people could be reborn by receiving the Blessing from the True Parents and by living their lives by just reporting their actions to God.

There is no one who can know the course I have had to take in order to follow the command of Heaven and fulfill my mission as the True Parent, breaking down the walls, not just in this world, but also in the spiritual world, giving the grace of the Blessing freely on earth and in Heaven. Do you think it was an easy task to bring Satan, who throughout history has been acting as the false master, controlling people and disobeying God, to surrender?

You cannot set up the position of True Parents without first gaining official recognition from Satan. According to the direction of the True Parents, the privilege of the Blessing could reach all the people who were in Satan’s realm of death, and all the people in the spiritual world, and the people on earth could cross over into true love’s realm of life. This kind of miraculous age has begun.

Ladies and gentlemen, Together with Heaven’s blessing that has come upon us, humankind must complete the religious life, receive the Blessing of true love, establish a true family, and live life keeping the standard of being true children. Only those who receive the Blessing on this earth and live a life of true love can enter the eternal homeland of the ideal world, namely, God’s country, the Kingdom of Heaven.

What do you take with you when you go to the spiritual world? Is it money? Or power? Do you take knowledge or honor with you? These things belong to this world, and you must leave all these things when you enter the higher realm. These things have absolutely no value in the eternal, original world and you cannot take them with you.

The spiritual world is the world of love, and the true love that you experience on the earth, especially your life of true love, having received permission through the Blessing from the Parents of Heaven and Earth is the most precious thing and is the only thing that counts in the spiritual world. Please study more deeply about the spiritual world, and, through your life as a blessed couple, become children of God who perfect true love.

What I teach is not based on any teachings of man. And I do not educate people by giving them a moral lesson or in any conventional way. I am instructing you by speaking frankly, with words of life, based on God and the Heavenly Way. If God has given the mission of True Parents to me, you should understand that the relationship you have established with me today is most precious and meaningful. Please keep my words today deep within your hearts.

I would like to end by asking that God’s blessing be with you and your families, that He remain with you in your public lives.

Thank you very much.

Reverend Sun Myung Moon

February 5, 2003
World Summit on Leadership and Governance
Lotte Hotel, Seoul, Korea

Respected current and former heads of state, leaders of religion, politics, and academia from around the world, ladies and gentlemen:

We are gathered today with the fervent desire for an eternal and unchanging world of peace, which is the ideal heavenly world. On this profoundly significant occasion, as the Founder of the Interreligious and International Federation for World Peace, I would like to convey a message regarding God’s original ideal. The title is, “God’s Fatherland and the Age of Kingship in Cheon-il Guk.”

Why We Must Establish God’s Kingdom

God has spoken of “God’s ideal Kingdom and His ideal righteousness,” but people living on the earth today have not been able to find it. It is important to know that humanity today, just as it has for many thousands of years of human history, fervently desires the establishment of God’s ideal Kingdom and His ideal righteousness.

How is it, then, that this transcendent and fervent desire for His Kingdom and His righteousness remain unfulfilled goals for all beings in heaven and earth? The reason is that human beings committed the fall. As a result of the human fall, God and humanity, who originally could have formed the center of God’s ideal Kingdom and His ideal righteousness, found themselves in circumstances that prevented their forming a relationship with each other. Human beings did not know much about God our Father, the center of God’s ideal Kingdom or His ideal righteousness, or about His family and nation. Hence, God has labored throughout the course of history to enlighten these ignorant people and teach us about Himself, His family and His nation. In this context, establishing God’s ideal Kingdom and His ideal righteousness remains our fervent desire and goal.

There exist many nations in today’s world. Yet, not even one can truly receive love from God. For this reason, God wants to negate this fallen world and recreate His new Kingdom. God has conducted His providence to establish a nation. God cannot accomplish His will for human restoration without cooperation from a nation that is in keeping with God’s desire. There must be a true state that is centered on a true religion that is in keeping with God’s desire. Hence, in the fullness of time, God established a particular nation and religion, the chosen people of Israel and Judaism.

What is the character of the nation that fulfills our fervent desire for the Kingdom of God? It is not like the nations in which you now are living. These nations are destined to disappear someday.

We do not yet have God’s Kingdom. A person without a nation does not have a permanent domicile, a nationality, or the possibility to register as a citizen. For this reason, we must accomplish in the present world the establishment of an ideal nation that is in keeping with God’s desire. We must form the heavenly kingdom with one mind, one body and one thought, so as to constitute one nation centering on the religion and state of the chosen people of the third Israel.

We must live on the earth as citizens of this nation. In that nation we lead our own families and kin, and inherit the lineage of the true and good parents who love their country and their nation as victorious sons and daughters. Only in that way will we enter the Kingdom of Heaven in the spiritual world. This is God’s Principle of Creation.

Only when there is a nation that is in keeping with God’s desire will we be able to bequeath a tradition that remains with our descendants into eternity. Only when there is a nation will the blood and sweat we shed live on. Only when there is such a nation will men and women build a monument praising Heaven for God’s work on this earth, and only then will every trace of glory remain. If there is no nation, it all will have been for nothing. This is why we must understand that the establishment of God’s Kingdom is the most important task in all heaven and earth.

We must live with the constant conviction that “Our blessed family is protecting the heavenly nation that is qualified to receive the love of the True Parents. So I must be a filial child of the True Parents and fulfill the way of the patriot for the nation.” It means that we must receive the love of God and True Parents. We cannot receive God’s love unless we have a nation. This is because only after we have been victorious over nations under Satan’s kingship can God’s Kingdom be established.

God’s Kingdom is the Cherished Desire of All People

We cherish God’s Kingdom. Why is this? It is because it is the place where there is true love and the place where True Parents reside. It is the place that will become the ideal nation where we can find a love that is not transitory but lives eternally, transcending time. Also, it is the place where we can be lifted up, and where our value is recognized to the fullest extent. It is the place where we can be happy eternally. These are the reasons that fallen people yearn for the Heavenly Kingdom and long to see it.

We must travel the path that we truly want to travel, and we must build the nation in which we want to live for all eternity. If we possess riches, they must be only those that can be guaranteed as belonging to the cosmos at the same time that they belong to us, and belonging to the past and future at the same time that they belong to the present. We must also possess the authority and knowledge such that when we weep, heaven and earth will weep with us, and when we are joyful, heaven and earth can share our joy. This is the highest desire and cherished hope that fallen humanity must establish in the present age.

All true persons should be able to live in his or her original nation. This is an absolute right and requirement bestowed on human beings. Everyone without exception must live a life filled with a cherished desire for God’s ideal Kingdom and His ideal righteousness. This means that we must create an image of the ideal world in our thoughts, and in our daily life follow the path of living for the sake of God’s ideal Kingdom and His ideal righteousness.

Do you have such a nation? Because you do not, you must now establish such a nation. What kind of nation did I say this would be? It will be an ideal nation of God our Father and a nation of unity. It will be a nation where all people can live in attendance to the Parents. In the work to establish this nation, no fallen person can be excluded. The family, clan, nation, and world all will cooperate. This is how each individual can become unified internally, and can establish unity within families, clans, societies, nations, and the world.

The omniscient and omnipotent God must accomplish the purpose of His providence on the earth without fail. What, then, will be the result? It will be that God will be able to save all people and exercise His dominion over the world. The purpose of the providence cannot be anything other than the hope for this to come to pass.

If you do not complete the task of restoring a nation on earth within your lifetime, then in the spirit world you will not possess the value of a person of the Kingdom of Heaven. You must take with you to the next life the achievements and qualifications established in the realm of a nation ruled under God’s dominion on earth. This is the original standard of God’s creation.

I envy nothing of this world. I have no interest in the things of the fallen world. My lifelong cherished desire has been this: “Shouldn’t I be able to die in God’s ideal nation where God can protect me? If I do not bring this about during my lifetime, then will not mine have been a miserable life? I must establish this nation before I die and live there, even if only for a single day.”

For the sake of that single day, I am willing to offer the sacrifices made over thousands of days. You might rest, because you do not understand these things, but I keep going. Even if you cannot do it, I still must do it, even if it requires mobilizing people from other countries. If one nation cannot do it, I must work through other countries to carry out an indirect strategy.

What is the purpose of our faith? It is that we become citizens of God’s Kingdom. If we are not citizens of His Kingdom, we are not free to relate with pride to all people and the creation. We are not free to receive their love. A person without a nation is always vulnerable. He stands in a pitiful position. He may suffer unjustly for any number of reasons. This is why we need to know where to find the nation of God’s desire; that is, the nation that will serve as God’s foothold in the world. This is the essential issue.

Ultimately, we shed blood and sweat for the sake of this nation and its people for the sake of building the eternal heavenly kingdom, and for the sake of building a prosperous society about which our descendants will sing praise through all eternity.

Without a doubt, the children of God’s direct lineage will exercise kingly authority in this nation, based on their mandate from Heaven carrying God’s full authority. This nation will have neither democracy nor Communism. Once formed, it will endure forever.

When you consider this, aren’t you distressed about not being citizens of such a nation? I believe we should be lamenting the fact that we are not able to live in such an ideal country. We must repent that we have not acquired this unique and unchanging kingship.

In attempting to establish such a kingship, nation, and territory, God has established in history nations in the realm of the chosen people where goodness reigned. We know that during this process, many people have died, many ordinary people were sacrificed, many countries were destroyed, and royal authority changed hands many times. Among the people who were sacrificed, there can be no doubt that those standing on Heaven’s side, the sorrowful souls who were sacrificed for this purpose, still long for the establishment of such a Kingdom and such a world.

God’s Providence to Establish the Ideal Kingdom

We have come to know that after the human fall, Satan, not God, exercised dominion over history. God, however, was originally supposed to be the master of this world. If clans and states formed by families of God’s direct children who related to God in a relationship of love had built the world, God would have been able to exercise His dominion over the world, over every nation, over every family, and over every individual. Because of the human fall, however, all individuals, families, clans, societies, nations, and the world now stand in opposition to God. This is the history and world brought about by the fall.

The created world, centering on the Creator, is mired in deep sorrow. If we leave the world as it is, the world of eternal love expressing God’s ideal of creation will not come about. But because God, as the Absolute Being, cannot establish His original authority unless He accomplishes His original will, He has used His position as the standard to bring the world of evil under control and lead it to become the world of His original ideal. This has been the history of God’s providence with respect to the fallen world.

There are many nations on the earth today that belong to the fallen sovereignty, but there is not even one that is aligned with God’s fervent desire. In order to establish a nation through which He can accomplish His will, God has been working throughout history to guide people without their awareness. God created Adam and raised him toward perfection with the desire to have one being through whom He could exercise dominion over all families, societies and the world. As a result of the fall of Adam and Eve, however, the history in which a unified world was to have begun in one family was broken into innumerable pieces as the history of struggle between good and evil. The historical view of the providence of salvation is that all the broken pieces are being arranged and connected.

Since Adam was the ancestor of all human beings, losing Adam as a single individual was the same as losing the entire whole. So God needs to call and establish Adam again. The person who is established must be someone who is able to deny, forsake, and forget his clan and nation of the satanic world and live exclusively for God’s will. He must be an absolute true person who goes forward only for the sake of God’s will.

All religions share a common purpose ultimately to accomplish God’s will. Let us examine this in the context of the origin of the history of Christianity in the realm of the Providence. Noah was situated in the context of a particular people, but he did not wish to be affiliated with that. He belonged to a particular nation, but he refused to be confined by that nation and set out to establish a nation of his own desire. In order to establish such a nation, he had to pass through all manner of trials and adversities.

Noah had relatives and his own people, but he was more concerned with seeking the nation of God’s will. God’s fervent desire for Noah was that he would seek God’s ideal Kingdom and His ideal righteousness and overcome the individual environment.

Can you imagine the extent of Noah’s suffering during the trials that continued day after day for 120 years? Even his family forsook him, but Noah accepted all the arrows of opposition and endured for 120 years. He was well aware of the principle that if he ate and drank before seeking God’s Kingdom and His righteousness, he and his descendants would have to pay indemnity.

God established Abraham and Sarah and brought them out of Ur of the Chaldeans. They did not know that they were to live in Haran, but they headed for this place with faithful hearts obeying unconditionally. God wanted absolute faith, absolute love and absolute obedience. Even when Sarah was taken away by the Pharaoh, she never begrudged Abraham. Their hearts as they headed for the nation of their desires were such they did not waver even in the face of the most severe persecution.

Jacob had the conviction that the blessing given to him included the nation and people of his fervent desire, and no one could shake him from this conviction. In this way, the will of God expanded from the individual to the family and tribe as our forbears gradually developed a desire that would encompass the world.

Jesus, because of Israel’s disbelief and persecution, was forced into a life of wandering. He was unable to fulfill the hope that speaks both to the spirit and the flesh. But the Messiah comes with the mission to break down all barriers in heaven and earth and bring about a single unified whole. God’s unchanging will is that we establish without fail the principled state required by heavenly law, and that states structured by principles of the fallen world pass away. God’s fervent hope in Adam was not confined to Adam as an individual, but extended to bringing about a family, clan, society and nation from Adam.

When the Messiah’s efforts to build a true nation were shattered, Israel suffered enormously. So the Lord who comes again is responsible to perfect and restore the family of Adam and the family of Jesus and fulfill the mission of the Messiah for restoration on a worldwide level in the Completed Testament Age which is the mission of the Third Adam. This person is responsible to advance the Completed Testament Age, the age of the restoration of Adam on a worldwide level, on the foundation of the Old Testament Age, when restoration of the ideal of the first Adam’s family was attempted, and the national foundation of the New Testament Age for establishing the restored realm of the ideal of Jesus’ family and perfecting the nation. He must also perfect the family, clan, people, nation, and world of God’s will centered on the ideal of Adam’s realm.

God sent His beloved sons and daughters to the earth to push history forward, toward establishing the nation that is absolutely one. But at the present moment there is no prepared foundation on which the one nation can be restored. Because of repeated failures by fallen human beings, God has sent heavenly persons to the earth to carry out, push forward, and accomplish this task. This is the historical view of the providence of restoration.

We must be grateful, even if God sacrifices us fallen humans as individuals. Even if He sacrifices our families, clans, societies and nations, we must be grateful. Only when such a true individual and a true nation are created can order be brought to the world. If God’s Kingdom cannot be built on the foundation of sacrifices made by an individual, then the sacrifice must extend past the individual to the family, clan, and society.

As He carried out the providence to establish His Kingdom, even God has been governed by this principle. Thus, His strategy is that, if an individual were to appear who could live for the sake of the Kingdom, then the family that inherited this person’s individual tradition would make the next sacrifice for the sake of the nation, and then a clan and a people would inherit the tradition of this family and sacrifice themselves for the sake of the world. This is how God has carried out the providence to establish His Kingdom. We need to realize for a certainty that this individual is the true father of our true selves, and that he has been working hard to establish each of us as true sons and daughters and establish our families and nations. This realization brings with it the responsibility to recompense.

For what purpose were we born on this earth? We were born to love God’s Kingdom. Also, God’s love for that Kingdom has motivated Him in carrying out His providence.

Jesus and God’s Kingdom

Citizens of a nation that has no sovereignty are in a pitiful situation. This concerned Jesus, and so he told us: “Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the Gentiles seek all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first God’s Kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things shall be yours as well.” (Matthew 6:31-33) This is the responsibility that must be accomplished by the religious realm. Did he say we should seek after having a son first? Did he say we should seek after our own nations first? Jesus told us to seek after the Kingdom that God seeks.

God’s fervent desire to establish His Kingdom and His righteousness cannot be accomplished apart from human beings and the creation. In fact, it is only through human beings that it can be accomplished. This is the principle of God’s creation. God desires to be harmonized with the creation through true human beings. That is why God sent Jesus to this earth as a substantial being, a man who could represent the Lord before fallen humanity and bring forth Heaven’s lineage. Jesus was the first person who had the purpose of accomplishing God’s fervent historical desire on earth.

Jesus was God’s son, the first established in this position after 4,000 years of preparation. He was the son of God living on the earth in the midst of a nation centering on Judaism with the seed of the family of Joseph. The satanic side already had established nations and was attacking the side of Heaven, so Heaven’s side also needed a nation standing on a complete foundation. This was Jesus’ responsibility.

That is why God labored for 4,000 years to form that single nation. The fruit of God’s labor was to have come about by the people of Israel accepting Jesus and forming a worldwide foundation. This was to have led to the establishment of a world centered completely on God and Jesus on the earth. Because Jesus died prematurely, however, this world was established only spiritually.

Centering on his three year public life, Jesus attempted to indemnify everything that had been lost centering on Judaism. Jesus was crucified, however, and Israel, which had been established as a substantial body on the earth, as God’s national foundation in both spirit and flesh, also perished. Because Jesus died on the cross, Israel perished as a physical nation. The Israelites became a people without a nation, forced to wander the earth as an object of the satanic world’s derision. After Jesus’ resurrection, the Holy Spirit descended to assume the position of the spiritual parent and on that basis, Christianity could achieve only the spiritual foundation of a nation. This is why we cannot find a nation that is truly Christian in spirit and flesh. So the Lord who comes again must restore the 4,000 year providence by which God created the nation of Israel, and restore all that was lost through the disbelief of the Israelites that resulted from their ignorance.

Jesus came to establish a nation, one nation. He was not able to establish this nation both in spirit and flesh; he established it only in spirit. That is why Christianity today does not have a substantial nation on the earth. This means that God cannot turn to any nation or any people on earth and say, “My beloved nation, my beloved people.” This tells us that the foundation for God’s Kingdom has not yet been built on this earth. If at the time of Jesus, the nation of Israel had become one centering on Jesus, then that nation would have been God’s Kingdom centering on His son, Jesus, and God would have restored the world centering on that nation. As a result of Jesus’ death, that is, as a result of the loss of the substantial body, the foundation to connect spirit and flesh on the earth could bear fruit only spiritually.

Until now Christians have been like a people without a country, so they have suffered death everywhere they have gone. Christianity grew through the blood of martyrs. Because of the manner in which Christianity was planted in the world, it could not grow except by the blood of martyrs. Now the time of shedding blood and receiving persecution is over. Instead of dying away and disappearing, however, there has appeared a way of thinking that yearns for God’s Kingdom and eagerly awaits the coming Lord in order to establish the lost substantial nation on the basis of Christianity’s spiritual foundation. This is the expectation of the Second Coming. Christianity has a heavy responsibility as the bride religion.

Even Jesus is waiting in Paradise. We need to know that he has not yet been able to go before Heaven’s throne. Jesus needed to establish national sovereignty before God, rule over a nation, and build a nation that would possess the authority to go directly from earth to Heaven. Because he was not able to build such a nation, Jesus cannot stand before God. So Paradise became the “waiting room” on the way to Heaven. Heaven is a place where no one can enter alone. If the fall had not occurred, we would have gone to Heaven as blessed families, centering on Adam and Eve. We must go there along with our sons and daughters.

In order to restore everything that went wrong beginning with the false parents. The returning Lord repeatedly holds Holy Blessing Ceremonies on the standard of cosmic indemnity, engrafting us to God’s true love, true life, and true lineage. Everyone in the world must pass through this gate in order to enter the Kingdom of Heaven, so it is necessary to hold the Blessing ceremonies so often.

In order to restore this through indemnity, God has been fighting for 2,000 years to build a foundation that can connect to the world. Where there is no national standard, though, who will inherit the foundation of the nation? Because the religious realm does not unite, God is working through a new movement for religious unity centering on Christianity to find such spiritual people and make the necessary preparations,

Respected religious leaders: As humanity enters the third millennium, it is receiving heavenly fortune anew. This is because have entered the age of Great Holy Blessings centered on True Parents, and the age of the world of the realm of heaven and earth ideal has begun.

I hope that all religious people will join their hearts together and follow through on my proposal to establish a council within the United Nations composed of representatives from various religions, parallel with the General Assembly. The reason is that the Kingdom of Heaven and on Earth can be brought about in a very short time, if only the United Nations will join in the effort. If there is one lofty task that the United Nations can perform for the sake of humankind, it would be to contribute to humanity’s spiritual recovery on the foundation of God’s true love.

For this purpose, I have chosen leaders of good conscience from not only the religious field but also from government, philosophy, business, culture and other fields, and provided true love marriage education that teaches “the life lived for the sake of others.” On this foundation, I have already appointed tens of thousands of Ambassadors for Peace. All around the world, they carry the banner of the Interreligious and International Federation for World Peace that I founded. They are devoting their full efforts to bringing about the world of peace that will represent the opening of the heavens and is the fervent desire of God and humankind. It will not be long before the will of the almighty, omniscient, and absolute God is accomplished.

I would like to conclude my remarks by asking that the leaders assembled here also become active participants in recreating your families and nations in true love and in bringing about an everlasting world of peace where there are no national boundaries, and take the lead in bringing about nations in accordance with God’s Will and accomplishing the blessing ideal of Cheon-il Guk of a world of peace.

I pray that Heaven’s blessing may overflow in abundance upon you and your families.

Thank you.

Rev. Sun Myung Moon

Wednesday 1 January 2003
Cheongpyeong Heaven and Earth Training Center

Heavenly Father, we have newly ushered in the third year of the Cheon Il Guk (Nation of Cosmic Peace and Unity). Last year, we concluded a busy schedule under the motto ¡°Mansei for the Completed Settlement of the Cheon Il Guk of Freedom, Peace and Happiness, which is the Ideal of the Parents of Heaven and Earth¡± under your aegis.

Today, in welcoming the new year, we have announced this year’s motto: “Through true love, let our family perfect the true family of filial children, loyal subjects, saints and holy children of the Cheon Il Guk.¡± We shall begin this new year, in which all families on earth and in heaven are to take root by perfecting themselves, centering on the True Parent, True Teacher, True Owner and True King, and go on to inherit the True Parents’ tradition of uniting heaven and earth.

You, Father, the source of all blessings, sent us, the True Parents, to the earth, and had us indemnify numerous peaks of resentment, and now heaven and earth can publicly stand on the same horizontal line, following the completion of the Rallies for the Harmony and Unity of Heaven and Earth, and the Holy Burning Ceremony of Peace, Unity and Liberation of the Parents of Heaven and Earth, and as we herald the Age of the Peace, Unity and Equalization of the Parents of Heaven and Earth, heaven and earth can publicly be on the same level standard centering upon the ideal of oneness, from the individual all the way up to the cosmos, advancing toward one purpose.

Adam and Eve were created by the objective standard that was absolutely necessary to perfect the ideal of reciprocity and the ideal of love desired by Heaven, as the incarnation of harmony which is able to catalyze mind-body unity centering upon individual perfection based on one heart, one body and one mindset. Without the ideal partner of love, centering upon the unifying standard of harmony of the one heart, one body and one mindset of the parents of the incorporeal heavenly kingdom and the corporeal substantial parents, the purpose of the mainstream ideal of God’s attributes, namely absolute love, unique love, unchanging love and eternal love, cannot be perfected.

Therefore, You utterly and unreservedly invested Yourself over and over again entirely from the smallest to the greatest, all the while forgetting the fact of having done so, in order to fulfill that lofty and cherished hope of true love, namely Your absolute wish, absolute hope, and absolute desire for absolute faith from Your object of love, whom You esteem as precious above all else, in order to leave behind for posterity the sublime and vast realm of the ideal of love.

In the midst of that, the ideal of creation consisted of Your hope for the third generation, the sons and daughters issuing out of the conjugal bond of Adam and Eve within the substantial realm of Sung Sang and Hyung Sang, after having formed Eve in Adam’s image following his creation into which You poured everything, so as to realize the visible substantiation of Yourself, the invisible substantial God, namely Adam and Eve as the partners of love representing the objective realm.

Yet the fall of the progenitors of the human race left no room for Your Will to be realized, and they ended up being bound in blood ties to Satan in opposition to You, centered upon false parents, false love, false life and false lineage, leaving You in solitary isolation without a foothold in this world through eternal aeons until You eventually realize Your Will through re-creation and emerge as the long and eagerly awaited Heavenly Parent of whose existence humankind has hitherto been ignorant.

You revealed the secrets of the spiritual and physical worlds through us, the True Parents, who uncovered the origin of Satan and his identity as Your enemy of love, the adulterer, thereby checkmating and defeating him, in order to restore the original standard for which You had invested Yourself totally, that we might create the oneness of mind and body, the oneness of mindset, and the oneness of harmony, You having made the foundation on behalf of Adam for the substantial parents on earth, by originally creating Adam and Eve as Your partners of love, centering on Sung Sang and Hyung Sang, and minus and plus, and wanting everything perfected in four directions, aiming to have the family based upon the father-son relationship, the ideal destination of the substantial world, which however was nowhere to be found upon the earth prior to the Coming of the True Parents, who revealed everything and checkmated Satan from the individual level, through the familial, tribal, racial, national, global, all the way up to the cosmic level, thus freeing and restoring the realm of power that had once opposed Heaven, consequently succeeding in bringing forth the new historic epoch.

With the establishment of God’s Kingship, together with the Realm of Life of the Completed Settlement of the Parents of Heaven and Earth, and the Holy Burning Ceremony of the Peace, Unity and Liberation of the Parents of Heaven and Earth, we have set the standard in the Age of the Peace, Unity and Equalization of the Parents of Heaven and Earth. Please accept the foundations made by the ancestors born from those hamlets, and by the loyal subjects, virtuous women, filial children, saints and holy sons and daughters born from the local villages of this land as well.

Centering on the founders of great religions, we have called out those who dedicated themselves to heaven with their loyalty, filial piety and chastity in the spirit world. We had all of our good ancestors resurrected on earth to restore the realm of failures of the Cain side through indemnity so that we could all stand on the foundation of the restored realm of the elder son, centering upon the Abel realm. The heavenly kingship is realized in the age of equalization in which we can establish a reign of peace on earth, from every individual level to the level of the entire cosmos, and all unite in the realm of liberation without any satanic interference. We are truly grateful for Your grace allowing us to welcome this world of freedom and unity.

Heavenly Father!

Standing on such foundations of true love, our family should realize the family of filial children, the family of loyal subjects, the family of saints, and the family of holy sons and daughters together with the Parents of Heaven and Earth, who are True Parents, True Teachers, and True Masters, in making the new start to establish the true kingship. We are truly grateful today to be able to begin the third year of Cheon Il Guk, in 2003, and to proclaim the motto for the new year. May all nations eternally praise and glorify Your unified victory of having united the spiritual and physical worlds. With Your ever increasing victories and accomplishments, we pray for the realization of Your glory in heaven and Your prosperity on the earth. We are truly grateful that we can pledge before You to advance again and again to liberate the heavenly nation of the unified victory on earth and in heaven. Please reign over us as the King of eternal peace, and allow the Kingdom of God on earth and in heaven to be realized.

All blessed families must be loyal subjects who can take responsibility for everything and be the owners who can serve the nobility of kingship.

Through the appearance of the original family on earth, You have enabled us to reach the age when we can offer before You the mansei of victory of liberation in all of heaven and earth. In all Your comings and Your goings and abiding, may Your victory be bountiful and Your glory eternal. Be the King reigning peacefully over all kings eternally. We pray with all of our hearts for the tradition of the victorious heavenly kingdom to begin at this hour as we, the True Parents, put all our heart and mind together. We hereby proclaim our motto to heaven and earth. Amen. Amen. Amen.