320. The Settlement of the True Parents of Heaven, Earth and Humankind, Part 1

Book 3: Cheon Il Guk and Our Mission
Part 2: True Parents, the Hope of God and Humankind
Chapter 7: The Settlement of the True Parents of Heaven, Earth and Humankind Who, as God's Embodiment, Proclaim the Word

This speech was given by Reverend Sun Myung Moon at The Cosmic Assembly for the Settlement of the True Parents of Heaven, Earth and Humankind Who, as God's Embodiment, Proclaim the Word and then by Dr. Hak Ja Han Moon at the Houses of Parliament in London on May 11, 2011. 

What I am about to proclaim to you today at this "Cosmic Assembly for the Settlement of the True Parents of Heaven, Earth and Humankind Who, as God's Embodiment, Proclaim the Word" is part of the course of True Parents' tour to proclaim the ultimate conclusion and fulfillment of all aspects of the providence of restoration during the lifetime of the True Parents. The path taken by the True Parents shall serve as a tradition and a historic example; thus, I am proclaiming that all of you should model your life course on this path, become families that pledge to inherit and fulfill the Will of God that True Parents have already accomplished, and be true to this pledge.

Fulfilling the mission of True Parents

On April 18, my husband, the Reverend Sun Myung Moon and I celebrated our 52nd year of marriage. On that occasion, he proclaimed the close of the Era Before the Coming of Heaven, which was marked by sin and indemnity, or atonement, and proclaimed the Era After the Coming of Heaven, through which a new heaven and new earth will be realized by returning to true love. All the blessed children in the heavenly and earthly worlds, who through the Blessing were born into the lineage of the True Parents, should keep this comprehensive and final proclamation in mind. This proclamation is being given in order to fully establish the ideal nation that comes from the incorporeal and the corporeal God, the God of Night and the God of Day, and from the ancestors of Jesus and of the True Parents.

The details of True Parents' life course have already been disclosed and conveyed to you through my husband's autobiography. I pray that you will all become the representatives and heirs of True Parents before the conclusion of the cosmic assemblies being held worldwide proclaiming the Cosmic Assembly for the Settlement of the True Parents of Heaven, Earth and Humankind, Who, as God's Embodiment, Proclaim the Word. Please take note of Reverend Moon's autobiography, which is a record of his life's work to enable the True Parents to succeed in their mission during their time on earth, and please build upon his achievements. Please also inherit the teachings he has bestowed upon this world. In doing so, I pray that you will surely be triumphant in your course of life. As True Parents have done, you too should become heavenly bridges for all your relatives and the members of your clan who are around you, and also a God-centered leader who can guide your clan to God's Kingdom.

Respected leaders from around the world, distinguished guests from home and abroad, ladies and gentlemen! On behalf of True Parents, True Family, and Unification Church members in both the spirit world and physical world (the cosmos) who received the Blessing, I sincerely welcome you and express my deepest appreciation to you for coming to participate in this "Cosmic Assembly for the Settlement of the True Parents of Heaven, Earth and Humankind Who, as God's Embodiment, Proclaim the Word.” During 2010, thousands of representatives and top leaders from 120 nations of the world have honored us with their presence on several occasions, including our golden wedding anniversary and coronation and the Legacy of Peace Memorial Celebrations held at the United Nations headquarters building.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is a very eventful time in God's providence. Last year my husband celebrated his 90th birthday, moving closer to the 100th year of his life. He has been blessed with a long life, beyond the average human lifespan. Last year my husband and I were also able to commemorate our 50th wedding anniversary. From a providential point of view, last year was not simply the year of our golden anniversary; it was also a jubilee year.

God has blessed us with 14 children. Five have graduated from Harvard University, and among our more than 40 grandchildren several are already studying there. Moreover, a great number of good men and women from 194 nations have come to recognize and follow us as the king and queen of peace and the True Parents. Throughout our lives, we have established many international organizations and institutions to promote world peace. We have invested unreservedly in many fields including inter-religious cooperation, humanitarian projects to benefit society, intercultural activities, sports, education and the media. We founded all these initiatives with the aim of promoting peace and bringing salvation to humanity. After our work to bring success in all these things, some people have commended us and said that we deserve to look back and comfortably enjoy the rest of our lives. They encourage us to forget about the world situation and relax and enjoy the successes achieved during the past 90 years!

However, my husband and I cannot look at the lives we have led in such a worldly way. We have had to complete the mission of the substantial True Parents given to us by God, who is Himself the vertical True Parent of all humankind. Now, with less than two years remaining in this mission to make God's kingdom, Cheon II Guk, a reality, we are leading each day of our lives with more seriousness than ever before.

Throughout his life, my husband has offered himself for the liberation of God, the one and only True Parent of Heaven and Earth, to restore to Him His rightful position as Parent, to save all human beings who suffer in the realm of death, and to return them to God's bosom. For that purpose, he has persevered and triumphed over countless tribulations while leading the people of the world, who are living like orphans searching for their Heavenly Parent, toward the goal of global salvation. Due to the Fall brought about by our first ancestors, people are born into the false lineage. Everyone without exception wanders in darkness even now, unable to break free of Satan's bondage. Under such circumstances, how could we be anything less than completely serious in our lives as we guide the 6.5 billion people of the world along the path toward the building of God's kingdom on earth?

The three stages of life

Ladies and gentlemen, God created us as His children. As the original, absolute, unique, unchanging and eternal being, God created human beings by breathing His love into them to endow them with souls. If not for the Fall, we would have been able to make ourselves, including our spiritual selves, perfect, as God is perfect, fulfill the way of absolute faith, absolute love and absolute obedience, and attain eternal life; but unfortunately, human beings are living as descendants of the Fall. In order to live a perfect life, all people without exception must receive new life through the marriage Blessing from True Parents and pass through the three stages of rebirth, resurrection and eternal life. Rebirth, in this context, refers to an individual attaining new life. Resurrection is when a family and nation attain new life, and eternal life refers to all of humankind attaining perfection and living forever in God's homeland after establishing the Kingdom of Heaven on earth and in the spirit world by attending True Parents, the king and queen of peace.

Your ancestors who are in the spirit world shall now return to earth at this time of the True Parents, who directly govern all life and all things as the substantial entity of God, who exists without form. They will go through the three-stage blessings of rebirth, resurrection and eternal life and complete the Original Divine Principle education—the education on absolute marital fidelity—organized by True Parents. Only then can they take part in the original authority granted by the Seonghwa ascension and liberation, and attain the qualifications to become citizens of Cheon Il Guk while on earth.

We can see clearly that each person's life goes through three stages. Everyone is conceived as a new being through the grace of God and the love of True Parents through a blessed family. The first stage of life is the nine months spent in the mother's womb. Whether or not we are conscious of it at the time, all of us without exception do spend nine months in our mother's womb. Even though a woman's womb is smaller than some rice cookers, from the perspective of a fetus, it is larger than the entire universe.

What about our birth into the second stage of our lives, which occurs on earth? How could we find words adequate to describe the struggle of a newborn baby as it is faced with a completely unfamiliar, new world? The first lonely cry of a newborn as it experiences the large and wide world that it finds upon exiting the womb also represents the promise of a 100-year future and the blessing and celebration of entering a new time and space.

We have all received the blessing of birth that enabled us to live in the second stage of our lives. Although 100 years is much longer than the nine months we spend in the womb, please do not forget that there is still a course we must follow to a higher end. Although we have all forgotten the standard of consciousness that we possessed in our mother's womb, and though you may think that we are now enjoying our lives fully in this big, wide world with a higher standard of consciousness, there is yet one final stage of our lives, which is the way toward eternal life.

This third stage occurs in the world of eternal life, the spirit world, which we enter upon ending our life on earth. We were originally meant to enter the spirit world having first perfected our spirits during our life on earth. It is a world that cannot be imagined by people descended from the Fall. It is a world in which we transcend time and space. Just as the baby in his or her mother's womb cannot imagine life on earth, we, as people living and breathing air in this earthly world, cannot easily understand the spirit world, where we will be reborn in our spiritual bodies, living and breathing true love.

Death is a sacred word

Ladies and gentlemen, as people face death, they may tremble in fear and terror if they do not understand the true meaning of passing on. Although the history of God’s providence has continued for more than 6,000 biblical years, no one, unfortunately, has clearly taught the truth regarding death. Now, in the Last Days of history, my husband and I, as the True Parents of humankind, have been able to reveal this truth, this heavenly secret.

Ladies and gentlemen, the word death is sacred. It is not a noun of sadness and suffering. True Parents have created the term Seonghwa, meaning “ascension,” to explain the true significance of death. The moment we enter the spirit world should be a time that we enter a world of joy and victory as a result of the fruits born of our lives on earth. It is a time for those of us remaining on earth to send off the departed with joy. It should be a time for great celebration. That is the way of the sacred and noble Seonghwa ceremony, the first step the spirit of the departed takes toward enjoying eternal life in attendance to God, within His embrace. At the moment of death, our spirits should feel more excited and thrilled than a newlywed bride feels when she goes to her groom's home for the first time.

In order to open the door for all people to experience this kind of precious eternal life, my husband and I held a Seonghwa ceremony at the United Nations headquarters in New York on March 18 last year in honor of world leaders who had recently passed into the next world.

The following are the names of those commemorated on that occasion: General Alexander Haig, a former U.S. secretary of state, who with the UN forces saved my husband's life through the bombing that liberated the North Korean Heungnam Special Labor Camp where he was imprisoned during the Korean War; Mr. Kim Dae-jung, our former South Korean president, who won the Nobel Peace Prize; Mr. Hedi Annabi, a Tunisian diplomat and head of the UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti who died in the 2010 Haitian earthquake; the 100 UN workers who died alongside Mr. Annabi; Mr. Rodrigo Carazo Odio, a former president of Costa Rica, who is known internationally as "the Peace President;" Mr. Abdurrahman Wahid, a former president of Indonesia, who gave his entire life for the sake of his great nation of 200 million people; Mr. Steingrimur Hermannsson, a former prime minister of Iceland, who helped host the meeting of Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev and U.S. President Ronald Reagan, which accelerated the end of the Cold War; Shaykh Hassan Cisse of Senegal, who is respected as a great scholar of Islamic authority; and Mr. Laxmi Mall Singhvi of lndia, who is remembered as the ‘'Ambassador of Reconciliation and Peace'' by India's 1.1 billion people.

There are others whom we also remembered through this ceremony and sent to the spirit world with the Seonghwa Blessing. I'm sure you have heard about the sinking of the ship Cheonan in Korea where 46 sailors suddenly lost their lives in the course of duty. During my four-city speaking tour in Korea in April last year, my husband and I bestowed the grace of the Seonghwa Blessing on those unfortunate seamen.

Later, during another event in Las Vegas, I, representing True Parents, bestowed the Seonghwa Blessing on Dr. Reiko Kawasaki, a 17th-generation descendant of Tokugawa Ieyasu, the last shogun in Japanese history, who united the Japanese archipelago in the 17th Century. She was a medical doctor from Las Vegas, and recently passed away after living a life of continuous service to others. Before her passing, she played an important role contributing to the realization of world peace by setting a foundation for the future resolution of various issues in Korea, Japan
, and the United States, including political and economic issues. Thus, I included her among those who received this sacred Seonghwa Blessing.

Praising True Parents' names

Ladies and gentlemen! However altruistic and philanthropic a person’s life may be, no one can be guaranteed entry into the world of eternal life without receiving the marriage Blessing and the Seonghwa Blessing of the True Parents. This is because the parent-child relationship between God and humankind was severed due to the Fall of the first ancestors. Please take this point seriously.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is a serious era, in which God has introduced the heavenly calendar. It is the time in which all 6.5 billion of the world's people must come to understand the teachings my husband received from Heaven and which he has bequeathed to the world as the True Parent who is responsible to give eternal life to all humankind. Now is the time when you can share the good news of the coming of the True Parents throughout the entire world. The time has come to honor and inherit the tradition and spirit of the Korean people from which the True
Parents emerged, establish the heavenly tradition, and bring about world peace by uniting all 6.5 billion people of the world with the United Nations. With the start of the heavenly calendar, please do not forget that the Seonghwa Blessing Ceremony is a sacred rite through which anyone who receives it can inherit the worldview of a holy citizen of the Kingdom of Heaven and celebrate God's liberation and all humankind's liberation.

In this way, the ideal of a family based on true love can be completed, and God and all people, the heavenly spirit world and the earthly physical world, can be completely united to usher in a reign of peace over the world. Please take this time to express your gratitude to God and True Parents for giving the keys of the Marriage Blessing and the Seonghwa Blessing to all the world's nations, allowing for the establishment of the traditions of God's Kingdom, Cheon Il Guk, through True Parents. Please join me in giving a round of applause to our Heavenly Father and to True Parents for their benevolence, through which we can receive the grace of precious life, without being asked for anything in return.

Ladies and gentlemen, what is the path that humankind should take today? Even now tens of millions of innocent lives are being lost each year to war, disease, starvation and natural disasters that arise in all parts of the world. In every field you observe from the individual to the collective level—whether religion, politics, education, culture or ideology—people are deeply mired in the swamp of self-centered egoism, raising walls around themselves. We now live in a world brought to ruin, where genuine communication has broken down.

Ultimately, the problems afflicting humanity can only be resolved through the worldview of one family under God; in other words, the ideology based on true love, which my husband and I, the True Parents, have learned from Heaven and have championed and taught throughout our lives. This is the only way for humankind to find the path toward peace and happiness.

Ladies and gentlemen, we are living in a historic time of great cosmic transition. It is a time for a great cosmic revolution to change history, to unite the spiritual and physical worlds and to create the ideal Kingdom of Heaven that God has longed for since the beginning of time. We can no longer postpone or prolong the fulfillment of His wish. Heaven has already proclaimed that January 13, 2013, will be Foundation Day. That day will be the substantial beginning of God's kingdom of Cheon Il Guk. That day will be the origin. We now have less than two years remaining until then.

Therefore, it is time for all people to be humbly obedient to Heaven's decree. An unavoidable time is upon us today when we must invest ourselves completely with a life or death commitment for these remaining two years under the guidance of the True Parents who carry out the providence on earth as the substantial representatives of God, the King of kings. All the good spirits in the spirit world are mobilized and are already moving forward a step ahead of you.

The mission of the Korean people

Ladies and gentlemen, do you have any idea how much pain God suffered the moment our first ancestors, into whom He had invested His complete and unreserved devotion since time immemorial, fell and disappeared into darkness, becoming part of Satan's lineage? Have you had even the slightest awareness that our Heavenly Father who endured tens of thousands of years of excruciating heartache so great that His bones shed tears and His flesh quivered, had to go through the long, dark tunnel of indemnifying the human Fall in order to save His lost children? How many of you have spent days and nights in tears, yearning to comfort our Father in heaven?

Ladies and gentlemen, God quietly raised and prepared the Korean people over a period of thousands of years. All people of the Christian faith recognize that God sent His true son, Jesus Christ to earth 2,000 years ago to save humankind. However, Jesus suffered a miserable fate. The leaders of Judaism and the people of Israel were supposed to receive Jesus as the Messiah and follow him with absolute faith, absolute love and absolute obedience. They should never have allowed Jesus' crucifixion to take place. He suddenly left this world, leaving behind the words, "It is finished.” Yet these words apply to spiritual salvation only, and he promised to return. After 2,000 years of preparation, His labor has finally borne fruit with the Second Coming of Christ on the far distant Korean peninsula.

The Korean people have, from long ago, served God with the sense that He is their original ancestor and that they are descended from Heaven. They have referred to Him as "The Honored One,” that is, Hananim, and attended Him as the Lord, Creator of night and day.” Thus the origin of all numbers lies in the number one. Because Koreans attend such a God as their original ancestor, the spirit of interdependence, mutual prosperity and universally shared values is alive in the soul and tradition of the Korean people. They have maintained themselves over 5,000 years of history, yet not once have they invaded or plundered another nation or people. The spirit of benefiting all humankind still flows in the veins of the Korean people. The practice of filial piety, fidelity and loyalty—fundamental virtues of human life that have characterized the spirit of the Korean people throughout their history—is a way of life that is still alive and breathing in Korea today.

We have inherited such traditional values as the true filial piety exemplified in the folk tale Shim Cheong, about a devoted daughter who offered her life so that her blind father could see; the profound love and fidelity displayed by Chun Hyang, who overcame the fear of death in order to keep the promise she had made to her husband; and the unbreakable loyalty exhibited by Admiral Yi Soon-shin, who gave his life to save his nation and people despite being abandoned by his king and other leaders.

These lofty Korean values and traditions are not just matters of historical chance. Based on these values, Heaven has prepared these people; this was all part of the providence of creating a foundation to send the returning Messiah. On the foundation of such preparation, and riding on the energy of this peninsula, Reverend Moon finally came, having received Heaven's seal as the True Parent of humankind and the king of kings.