305. The United Nations Is an Organization That Should Realize God’s Ideal

Book 3: Cheon Il Guk and Our Mission
Part 1: The Road to a World of Peace
Chapter 5 & 6: The United Nations Is an Organization That Should Realize God’s Ideal + Let Us Open a New Era of Civilization


Chapter 5: The United Nations Is an Organization That Should Realize God’s Ideal

This speech was given at the general assembly of the lnterreligious and International Federation for World Peace, on August 18, 2002, at the United Nations Headquarters in New York.

Distinguished guests, leaders from around the world, ladies and gentlemen! It's an honor to have the opportunity to give you today's second speech here in this dignified hall filled with your sincere devotion for the ideal of world peace.

All people are God's children

On April 10, 1992, my husband and I founded the Women's Federation for World Peace, a UN non-profit organization, at the Seoul Olympic Main Stadium in Korea. At the time, 150,000 women from 72 nations gathered in Seoul for the event, enhancing the significance of its founding.

Since its founding, the Women's Federation for World Peace (WFWP) has been active in 185 countries worldwide and cooperated enthusiastically with the UN's course of action aiming for a culture of peace and dialogue between civilizations. The Women's Federation has supported a variety of programs to help all women realize that they have original value as daughters of God. We have provided opportunities for education and scholarships to women of underdeveloped countries and pursued harmony between race and religion through international sisterhood events. Through AIDS-prevention activities, we also have emphasized the importance of exercising abstinence before marriage and maintaining fidelity between husband and wife.

As a founder of WFWP and FFWPU, I have toured to most of the UN member states and had the opportunity to personally speak and interact with their citizens. Moreover, as the president of International Relief Friendship Foundation, for decades I have supported and directed volunteer relief work around the world. Through my experiences in various corners of the world, I can feel the increasing severity of issues that trouble this world, such as moral breakdown, war, famine, poverty, poor learning conditions, and disease. Out of all the problems with which the world is burdened, the most critical issues are the collapse of the family and spiritual ignorance which leads to denial of God. After creating the world, God did not abandon it and go elsewhere. Just like any parent, God also feels despair when His children are in pain. God's greatest misery is from the loss of humankind's ability to feel His heart. Because of this, we are unaware that God is our Parent, that all people are God's children, and that we are all brothers and sisters.

We cannot fulfill a true ideal of brothers and sisters unless we have God and the universal ideal of True Parents. I am committed to a movement that builds true families centered on the unwavering axis of true love between husband and wife. Only in such a family can we establish models for true parents, true couples and true children. World peace and prosperous nations are possible only on the foundation of true families. I am always grateful for my husband, the Reverend Sun Myung Moon, for his ideological leadership and for wholeheartedly supporting me so I can achieve these goals for the sake of goodness.

A single-minded focus on realizing the ideal world of peace

Reverend Sun Myung Moon has devoted his entire life to realizing God's Will and world peace. From a very young age, he has had a special relationship with God and conversed in deep prayer to receive answers to fundamental problems in life, such as the purpose of life and the origin of evil. Anyone who knows my husband will sense how immensely serious and grave he is. He has worshipped God through investing everything he has and has changed the lives of countless people, including young people, in 185 countries around the world with the truth he discovered.

My husband's life has not followed a smooth path. He has had to endure all sorts of misunderstandings and hardships. He had to withstand betrayal and torture, prison life, and several terror threats. However, no obstacle could bar his determination to fulfill the promise he made to God and Jesus over 60 years ago on top of a mountain in Korea.

As his wife, I have witnessed up close my husband's devoted life, which disregards food, clothes, shelter and personal comfort. Reverend Moon comforted God's heart, even if it meant making it a priority over his own family and sacrificing his connection to his people and his country. I testify that my husband has lived a life solely focused on realizing God's hope, the ideal world of peace on earth.

I want to thank all of you who have attended this assembly. I believe that the UN is a representative organization in realizing the ideal that lives deep in God's heart. I hope that providential organizations such as this will fulfill their responsibility bestowed by God and be blessed as a group that will lead in an era of peace. May God bless you and this assembly.

Thank you.



Chapter 6: Let Us Open a New Era of Civilization

This speech was given at a Korean general assembly of the Youth Federation for World Peace on August 20, 1995, at Jangchung Arena, Seoul. 

My dear members of the Youth Federation for World Peace (YFWP), representatives from nations across the world, and guests from home and abroad. I would like to take this opportunity to express my heartfelt gratitude for your support and encouragement.

Reverend Sun Myung Moon proposed the establishment of YFWP in October 1993, and it set out on its great quest on July 26, 1994, at an assembly in Washington, D.C. In Korea it began with the organization of the South Jeolla Province branch on December 15. By February 1995, the organization of 37 branches in cities and provinces across the nation was completed, and by the end of June there were 273 branches in cities, counties and districts. To my knowledge, at present there are more than 3,700 branches at the level of town, township and neighborhood. This rapid development in such a short time is the result of the passionate support and interest you have shown in YFWP. Once again, I would like to offer a hearty round of applause for your hard work and the steadily mounting reputation of YFWP.

My beloved YFWP members, we need to show at least as much, if not greater, interest in our internal improvement and practice as in our external achievements. No longer can we repeat the past generations’ conflicts and indiscretions, caused by confusion and chaos. This is because we are the conscience of this generation of young people, and we need to take central leadership in the world.

Proper ethics and moral values disappeared from today's youth a long time ago. Young people cannot even distinguish whether their current values or degenerate actions are right or wrong. The prevailing hedonistic culture and distorted views of life have led to evils that have paralyzed the judgment of young people in finding the right direction for their lives. Unless they go out of their way to seek a life of value, such things as true love, headwing thought and the concept of God will be beyond their reach.

Beloved YFWP members, do you know your own value? Can you feel the preciousness and value of the ideals that you hold in your heart and your determination to realize them? You need to know that when those ideals are accompanied by practical actions, they can become the source of energy that can even move mountains. It would be natural not to act when you do not know what to do. However, the people who are meant to lead this world and become its central figures have to be people who can look squarely at the world without wavering and know how to put their faith into action.

What kind of people do you want to be? Would you become the courageous center, or would you rather be insignificant people who are driven and dragged around from here to there? It is said that long ago our wise Korean ancestors sent their youths to the training grounds of such schools as Hwarang-Do, Gookseon-Do and Gyeong-Dang for years or even decades. Prominent figures in Korean history, such as Admiral Lee Soon-shin and General Kim Yoo-shin, are among the well-respected graduates of such schools.

Through seminars, workshops and youth education, the Youth Federation for World Peace is developing a movement for the establishment of true values in a world where traditional values are increasingly forgotten, while ethics and morality have become more and more confused. Through this movement, we will awaken young people to the preciousness of true love and true life and head toward the original form of humanity. Then they can begin to build the societal structures for the coming ideal world, a world based on the unchanging, absolute values of God and of the young people who embody them. These values will form the center of the youth movement of this era. Throughout history, regardless of place or time, God valued young people and made them stand at the center of history. When they march forward, training and cultivating themselves by leading the right kind of life, God will manifest Himself vividly in their daily lives.

Although cultivating your body and mind is something you need to do throughout your life, its importance is truly incalculable during your youth. This is because adolescence was the period during which the Fall occurred, and also because adolescence signifies the beginning of the awakening of your mind, marking the second stage of your life.

As young people going through such an important period, you need to become the pioneers who have exceptional courage and vigor to open the gates of a new era. To translate this important task into action, the Youth Federation for World Peace will work, under the principle of mutual benefits, in reciprocal solidarity with all organizations that are in philosophical agreement These include the Federation for World Peace, the Interreligious Federation for World Peace, the Women's Federation for World Peace, and the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification. Presently countless young people in nations around the world, including those in Central and South America, are participating in our movement. In particular, the YFWP is actively taking part in efforts to foster collaboration between Protestantism and Catholicism and North and South America. I believe that these efforts will play constructive roles in bringing about the reunification of our homeland on the Korean Peninsula.

In addition, through the Unification movement and fraternal exchanges and cooperation with international youths and students, the YFWP will fulfill the mission of a Youth UN to realize a world of peace and true unity. It will organize and prepare for the era of a new civilization in the twenty-first century. YFWP will engage in a movement that builds the ideal world of interdependence, mutual prosperity and universally shared values, where everyone can live in affluence through the democratization of societies and nations and equitable distribution of wealth. In such a world, all people will be able to enjoy freedom and equality based on the true love of God and will lead lives befitting humankind. Even as we speak, countless people in many developing nations are in miserable circumstances and are dying of starvation and disease. This is not just the business of others, for it concerns us all. Rather than viewing with pity the tragedy of our dying brothers and sisters in the global village, we must carry out the ultimate, global salvation movement to help them substantially.

At present, Reverend Sun Myung Moon, the founder of YFWP, is continuing to educate many young people in Africa and bring them to participate in the Unification movement in order to liberate those in their countries who are suffering from starvation and poverty. Moreover, to take care of the nations in Central and South America, whose development is stagnant and which are second only to African nations in terms of underdevelopment, he is promoting various projects in conjunction with the Association for the Unity of Latin America. To successfully realize these plans, we visited many of the nations in Central and South America and met with their heads of state. He promised to work with them for the bright future of Latin America before his return.

Now the Unification movement, centered on YFWP, is taking root in more than 160 nations around the world. In particular, it is brightening the future of the youths and intellectuals of Russia and Eastern European nations, who lost their ideological bearings with the downfall of communism. At 5:00 in the morning, April 3 of 1995, in the presence of leaders representing 160 nations around the world, my husband and I announced the New Hope Farm Declaration. Prior to that, on March 31 of this year, we announced the Sao Paulo Declaration. We then set out on our long, historic march to establish an ideal society and an ideal, model nation. The current crises of humanity and environmental pollution, resulting from problems such as the spread of sexual immorality, greed, starvation and poverty, and misguided applications of science, have reached a stage where we no longer can turn a blind eye toward them. As a means of overcoming such crises, we are cultivating vast areas of land under the name New Hope Farm, to create a model of an ideal society and ideal nation. This land, totaling more than a million acres, lies in South America, including parts of Brazil and Argentina.

We then can expand this model of an ideal society to the rest of the world. In my opinion, this movement is the most important enterprise that our YFWP members need to promote as they stand in the central position. It is also the hope of God and the dream of the founder and the substantial, ideal society that YFWP is aiming for. Modeling yourselves after this pioneering spirit of the founder, you too need to show your revolutionary spirit in your own way.

Just as many of our conscientious forebears fought against the crises of humanity and the chaos of the Last Days in every period of transition throughout the ages, likewise, you members of YFWP have to fulfill your mission with your own clear conviction and effort. This mission is the task you are to accomplish, at all costs, in order to build a peaceful global community in the coming twenty-first century, and we need to do all we can to encourage united efforts on a worldwide scale.

Members of the Youth Federation for World Peace, you need to sow the substantial, ripe seed of God's Will and ideal in your hearts. By doing so, you are to resemble Him more than anyone else, and you are to become young people who can set down deep roots in the new era and the coming future. Now is the time to act with passion, based on a culture of heart. We have to develop cultural programs that can reform this chaotic world and create art that all can enjoy.

In accordance with the founder's teachings, let us make YFWP an organization with a noble spirit that can establish new values aligned with God. Let us help this fallen world, which denies God, to understand the providence of God. Let us lead the way in a human revolution through which God and humankind can become one. When we achieve individual perfection—that is, maturity of our own character—guided by God, followed by restoring the family and the tribe to God, and lead the nation and people to Him, at the same time the world and cosmos will come naturally to the presence of God. Only when we place God at the center of all our thoughts and actions, can the results stemming from them be good and we can become leading figures in the establishment of a new history.

My dear YFWP members, national representatives and guests from home and abroad, let us all become organizers who can lead the new, moral world with burning desire. Let us become youths who can find and establish the right values and morality in the lost conscience of humanity and march forward as the vanguard. Let us all become organizers who can work with burning desire to lead a new, moral world.

You have the infinite energy and conviction of God and the undaunted spirit that makes you get up again in the face of any difficulty. It is said that Heaven helps those who help themselves. Your spirit is stronger and brighter than the morning sun. Whenever I see you filled with aspiration and hope, I can only think of my husband, the founder of YFWP, Reverend Sun Myung Moon. In his youth, my husband received the mission from God to save humanity, and since then he has dedicated his entire life, investing his efforts ceaselessly, to resolve the sorrows of God's providential history. The world has misunderstood and persecuted him in all kinds of ways, and yet he has clung to the heart of God, prayed in tears and fought against the forces of evil. Ultimately he was able to proclaim the coming of True Parents and the Completed Testament Age and thus win a historic victory.

In his long course of life, he has undergone many hardships. They include his suffering in prison under communist rule in North Korea, where he hovered on the brink of death; imprisonment under the authoritarian regime of Syngman Rhee in South Korea; and suffering in Danbury prison in the United States, where he was incarcerated due to racial and religious bigotry. Nonetheless, he did not forsake the Will of God and won by his own efforts with his indomitable fighting spirit. Today he has established a worldwide foundation that he can be proud of before God and all peoples of the world.

Standing by his side, I see my husband living his life solely to resolve the sorrows of God's providence of salvation, unable to rest in comfort even for a minute. I can feel how his whole being is filled with the Will of God. Despite the fact that he is an older man, approaching his eighties, he continues to promote the work for world peace and the salvation of humanity with passion and efforts that exceed those of young people. As people in your youth, you need to inherit this spirit of the founder and take part in the heavenly march toward building the ideal world.

Dear YFWP members who will lead the future of humanity, the hand of salvation headed toward the new world of the twenty-first century is waiting for us. You need to establish God as the unchanging center of your hearts and inherit the shining tradition of the life course of True Parents. You have to become the leading figures in constructing a united world of peace, where the world is one family and all people live as brothers and sisters, transcending ethnicity, nationality and race, which is God's ideal of creation. I welcome all of you, who have rolled up your sleeves to lead the way in working to achieve prosperity and happiness for humankind. Let us all participate in the movement that practices true love for the reunification of the homeland and world peace, guided by the philosophy of Godism. Let us become the axis of the youth of this age, going beyond mere thinking and translating our thoughts into actions, and light the flame of the culture of the heart. Attending God and True Parents, let us become the center of the true youth movement as the proud young people who can expand our energies from the individual level to the levels of the family, tribe, people, nation and world, thereby building the ideal world.

Young people who will open the new century: The twenty-first century is yours. Let us become the enlightened young people who can pioneer the age of the new civilization, open a twenty-first century filled with love and peace, and brighten the future of humanity. Once again, I thank you all for your hard work and warm support. I also would like to express my deep gratitude to the guests from home and abroad and the representatives of nations who have graced us with their presence. As the head of the Youth Federation for World Peace, I love you all from the bottom of my heart.

Finally, I pray that the abundant blessings and grace of God will be with you, the YFWP members and guests from Korea and abroad. Thank you.