As A Peace-Loving Global Citizen: Episode 16
As A Peace-Loving Global Citizen: An Autobiography by Rev. Sun Myung Moon
Chapter 2: My Heart Flows With a River of Tears
The Calm Sea of the Heart, pg 56-58
The Calm Sea of the Heart
Japan’s situation in the war became increasingly desperate. In the urgent need to replenish the shrinking ranks of its military, it began giving early graduation to students and sending them to the war front. For this reason, I, too, graduated six months early.
Once my graduation date was set for September 30, 1943, I sent a telegram to my family saying, “Will return on Konron Maru,” giving the name of the ship I was scheduled to board in Shimonoseki for Busan. However, on the day I was to leave Tokyo for the trip back to Korea, I had a strange experience in which my feet stuck to the ground, preventing me from moving. As hard as I tried, I could not pick my feet up off the ground to go to the train at Tokyo station.
I told myself, “It must be that Heaven doesn’t want me to board that ship.” So I decided to stay in Japan a while longer and went with my friends to climb Mount Fuji. When I returned to Tokyo a few days later, I found the country in an uproar over news that the Konron Maru, the ship I was supposed to be on, had been sunk on its way to Busan. I was told that more than five hundred people, including many university students, had been killed. Konron Maru was a large ship in which Japan took great pride, but it had been sunk by an American torpedo.
When my mother heard the news that the ship her son was scheduled to board had been sunk, she immediately ran out of the house without even thinking to put on her shoes. She ran barefoot eight kilometers to the train station and went directly to Busan. When she arrived at the Maritime Police Station in Busan, she discovered my name was not on the passenger manifest. The boarding house in Tokyo, however, told her that I had packed my bags and left. This put her in total confusion and agony. She just kept calling my name, not even realizing that she had large splinters in her bare feet.
I can easily imagine how she must have been beside herself with worry that something might have happened to her son. I can understand my mother’s heart, but from the day I chose to follow God’s path I became a terrible son to her. I couldn’t afford to let myself be tied down by personal emotions. So I had not sent word that I had not boarded the ship that had been sunk, even though I knew she would be deeply concerned for my safety.
Upon finally returning to Korea, I found nothing had changed. Japan’s tyrannical rule was becoming worse by the day. The entire land was soaked in blood and tears. I returned to Heuksok-Dong in Seoul and attended the Myungsudae Church. I kept detailed diaries of all the new realizations that I had each day. On days when I had a great number of such realizations, I would fill an entire diary. I was receiving answers to many of the questions that I had struggled with over the years. It was as if my years of prayers and search for truth were being answered. It happened in a short time, as if a ball of fire were passing through me.
During this time I had the realization, “The relationship between God and mankind is that of a father and his children, and God is deeply saddened to see their suffering.” In this moment all the secrets of the universe were resolved in my mind. Suddenly, it was as if someone had turned on a movie projector. Everything that had happened since the time humankind broke God’s commandment played out clearly before my eyes. Hot tears flowed continuously from my eyes. I fell to my knees and bowed my head to the floor. For the longest time I couldn’t get up. Just as when my father carried me home on his back when I was a child, I laid my body down in God’s lap and let the tears flow. Nine years after my encounter with Jesus, my eyes had finally been opened to the true love of God.
God created Adam and Eve and sent them into this world to be fruitful, to multiply, and to bring about a world of peace where they would live. But they could not follow God’s timetable. They committed fornication and bore two sons, Cain and Abel. The children who were born from the Fall did not trust each other and brought about an incident where one brother murdered the other. The peace of this world was shattered, sin covered the world, and God’s sorrow began. Then humankind committed another terrible sin by killing Jesus, the Messiah. So the suffering that humanity experiences today is a process of atonement that it must pass through as God’s sorrow continues.
Jesus appeared to me when I was a boy of sixteen because he wanted me to know the root of the original sin that humankind had committed and to bring about a world of peace where sin and the Fall would no longer exist. I received God’s serious instructions to atone for the sins of humanity and bring about the world of peace that God had originally created. The world of peace that is God’s desire is not someplace we go to after death. God wants this world, where we live now, to be the completely peaceful and happy world that He created in the beginning. God certainly did not send Adam and Eve into the world for them to suffer. I had to let the world know this incredible truth.
Having discovered the secrets of the creation of the universe, I felt my heart become like a calm ocean. My heart was filled with the word of God. It felt as though it might explode, and my face was always shining with joy.
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