Cham Bumo Gyeong: Episode 202

Cham Bumo Gyeong
Book 7: True Parents’ Course of Suffering and Victory
Chapter 3: Suffering In Danbury Prison And True Parents' Victory
Section 6: Learning from Suffering, Paragraph 02-12

2  Ever since the Fall, the levels of the individual, family, tribe, people, nation and world have been Satan's kingdom. So how do we restore this world? Each individual has to be planted in a place where he or she is separated from the world. The path that each of us must go is opposite to the world, and we need to pull ourselves through it in order to separate from the fallen world. This is why in high-level religions like Buddhism, believers leave their homes and renounce the world. It is why Christianity teaches that we must love Jesus more than we love even our mother and father, or our older brother or sister; as is written in the Bible, "Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me." (Matt. 10:37) It sounds paradoxical, but it actually embodies a logical principle that leads us along the path to heaven. 

I came to understand that this law of indemnity has to be extended to the cosmic level. That is why I have been focused on perfecting love from the individual level to the levels of the family, tribe, people, nation to all levels. As I proceeded on each level, Satan used all his strength to destroy me. So we can see why the path of faith entails persecution.

You simply must not walk the path that the world says is good. You must proceed on a path where you are willing to shed tears and blood. Do not strive to reach the top of the world, but rather remain in the shadow of suffering. That is the safety zone. Since Satan is arrogant, he despises difficult places. So our safety zone is found in the most miserable places.

3  From the time I turned 20 until the time I passed 40, I had to endure a period of tearful struggle. You really do not know what it was like. I went to prison as if it were just another stage on life's way; I decided that undergoing torture was something ordinary, and I accepted it as necessary in order to go through the course of indemnity, to pay the price. That was my whole life during that time. The nation of Korea and the religious world in Korea opposed me. The 30 million people of Korea banded together to oppose me. They drove me out into sorrowful circumstances. I come from that kind of personal history.

4  When God created, He invested His whole heart into all things of creation and into human beings. Therefore, we should be willing to offer ourselves and all our material possessions to God. This is why the motto of the Unification Church emerged, "Shedding tears for humanity, sweat for earth, and blood for heaven." 

Are you all living this way? You should be. If you do not, it is a serious problem. To live like this involves treading a complex and complicated indemnity course. In order to pass through the individual challenges of this course, you have to bring yourself to the zero point and tear down the walls within yourself. I myself do that continually, which is why during the most crucial times of my life I willingly went to prison.

5  Looking back on my life, I recall going to prison and being severely tortured many times. During those times, I would tell myself, "If I die here in prison under this torture, it would be an utter catastrophe for God's providence." If I had died with my body covered with scars from torture, despairing and groaning in pain, it would have been a serious problem for God. Who else did He have who would take responsibility for this path of restoration through indemnity? 

In these circumstances, when I shed tears transcending my own death, moving God's heart and even shocking Him, God resolved everything for me. I had many such experiences. In my mind, the pain of the torture was not the real issue. What was most fearful to me was dying with my mission unfulfilled.

6  Never in my entire life have I insisted on my own way. My life has been like living in prison, or even more difficult. Prisoners have to endure hunger with barely enough food to survive, but my life is not that simple. I am intensely aware that on this earth thousands upon thousands of people are dying in pain every day, at every moment. To me, this is as painful as having my own hand cut off. That is what you should feel too. 

We should not be able to look at the world we are living in without tears. When we have this mind-set, we cannot face God without tears. That is why, when I prayed in wintertime, I shed tears and sweat to the point where my cotton pants were completely soaked.

7  I pioneered the course of indemnity, conquered Satan's realm and laid the foundation for our victory. This is easy to say, but the reality was—and is—not easy at all. Unimaginable complications arose during my course. As I walked the path, the way I could overcome all obstacles was by leading a life of extreme intensity in which I felt I could not let my guard down even for a second. Without such seriousness, there would be no way to ever turn Satan's world around.

8  Because I came in Adam's place, I had to walk the course of indemnity on the world level. Settling the accounts with Satan is not just a symbolic matter. I had to face him man-to-man. Now it is easy to make conditions; you are now in circumstances where you can even be welcomed by the world. You have just no idea what I went through. 

My hope is that your family will become a family that is filial to heaven, that your nation will become a nation that is loyal to heaven's nation, that the world will become the realm of global citizens, and that heaven and earth will become the realm of divine, holy men and women. Yet, no place on earth other than the Unification Church provides the training for you to grow into people of such greatness. Therefore you must do this work, to create that which the whole world longs to see. By establishing the realm of liberation and securing it on earth, you should be able to say that we have gone beyond the age of indemnity.

9  Parents can never sit idly by as their child edges toward death. Until their last breath they invest all their strength to revive their child, and if they do, they raise a heartfelt cheer. Unless you have experienced a state like that, you cannot understand me. I am fighting, risking my life to the edge of death, to save even one person. I have devoted my entire life to battling for the lives of all humankind. The spirit world knows this. That is why a person like me can never be overcome by bad fortune. 

Even in prison I would always examine myself and think that my imprisonment occurred because I still needed to invest more. Because I was determined to do more to save humankind, I had no regrets whatsoever. Since I had no regrets, I could embrace my incarceration, even forgetting that I was in prison. When parents look at their son who has such a heart, they have to hold back their tears and bless him for eternity. Such is the heart of God.

10  Throughout my entire life, I have had to climb over many hills of restoration through indemnity. I climbed over the hills of eight stages, from the individual to the family, tribe, people, nation, world, cosmos and God. On my individual course, the entire world opposed me. On the family level, the parents of our members were against me. After I went over that family-level hill, the tribe opposed me, then the Korean people opposed me, the nation of Korea opposed me, and the entire world opposed me. All the Christian denominations stood against me. However, they could not succeed in eliminating me. On the contrary, those who attacked me have since suffered misfortune. God formally recognizes this. 

Although they struck me with all of their might, since they could not eliminate me, they are now being won over. Yet I never fought with them. God's strategy is to be struck first and take back what is lost. In God's ideal of creation, there is no such thing as striking.

11  In order to pay the indemnity to restore Satan's world, the shortest path is the one beset by the most persecution. It is the path that takes you to the rock bottom of prison. The path that can reach the vertical is the path of suffering. It is the path of prison, which intersects with death. That path is like a bridge that makes a straight line. This is why I did not mind going to prison. That is why God even led me to prison. In fact, Jesus also was imprisoned before he died on the cross. 

When the ruler of your nation sends you to the dungeons of your nation's foulest prison, you form an adversarial relationship with that ruler. That is why if you want to reach the topmost position in your nation, the shortcut is to go to prison and overcome that experience, and then you can stand even above that ruler. When a righteous person is cast into prison, the ruler who imprisoned him or her is considered evil. Then when that righteous person is released, he or she can stand above that ruler. When a good person is forced to go to prison, the people in his or her surroundings will support and protect him or her. That is why on all levels, the path of imprisonment is the shortcut by which to ascend.

The ultimate victor

Although innocent of any crime, True Father underwent imprisonment six times: once by Japan, three times by communist North Korea, once by South Korea and once by the United States. He endured and persevered because he understood the fundamental rule of restoration, that progress in God's providence comes about through setting indemnity conditions, by being unjustly struck, and then claiming back what was taken. With this conviction, he overcame every kind of suffering in prison. Boldly standing up against Satan's powers that occupied the positions of authority, he took on the role of a beacon that guides the world shrouded in darkness into the light. In the end, True Father was victorious over every form of opposition and persecution.

12  You have no idea how deplorable it is that during my life on earth I had to go to prison. How will this affect the dignity and honor of both you and your ancestors? All of your necks are on the line. You do not know the fearful consequences that could ensue. 

Why do you think I risked my life during six terms of imprisonment? Society brands a person who has gone to prison even once with a scarlet letter, but six times? If a normal person were to go to prison six times, he would carry so much shame that he could not walk the earth with his head held high. However, I am not the least bit ashamed. The ones that should feel ashamed are those nations that did this to me. 

Each time I survived. Why? I had a job to finish, and I could not afford to die until I got the job done. That is why each time I went to prison I survived.