Pyeong Hwa Gyeong: Episode 155
Pyeong Hwa Gyeong: A Selection of True Parents’ Speeches
Book 4: The True Family Movement
Speech 4: The True Family Movement to Save Humankind, pg 543-546
The True Family Movement to Save Humankind
November 25, 1997
Washington Hilton Hotel, Washington, DC, USA Inter-Religious Federation for World Peace Conference
Respected religious leaders and distinguished scholars representing the world’s religions:
Thank you for participating in the World Culture and Sports Festival and this most important international congress of the Interreligious Federation for World Peace. I would like to reveal today the fundamental significance behind the true family movement, which I have spearheaded for all to see.
This Saturday, you will observe the marriage Blessing ceremony for 39.6 million couples, which will be the amazing fruition of true love and the true family movement.
I have trod a lonely path, working single-mindedly toward the accomplishment of God’s Will, paying no heed to the misunderstanding and criticism I have received from this world. Ever since I began with the Blessing of three couples in 1960, the numbers have increased dramatically year by year until the Blessing of thirty thousand couples in 1992 and a worldwide Blessing for 360,000 couples in 1995. All the participants pledged in front of God to become husband and wife with eternal love and trust for each other and to raise their children based on a high moral standard of sexual purity. Despite the short preparation period for the marriage Blessing ceremony this Saturday, the initial goal of 3.6 million couples was surpassed by 36 million. A total of 39.6 million couples, transcending race and religion and dedicated to the creation of true families, will be participating.
Considering the purpose and size of this event, it cannot be attributed to the motivation of a single human being. It is a dispensational accomplishment in complete accord with the Will of God. I would like to express my sincere gratitude to numerous leaders from every major religion who stand arm-in-arm with us, as well as the concerned leaders from many nations who have actively cooperated with and supported the true family movement in various ways, viewing our work to revive the family as a fundamental solution to the moral degradation of our youth and an absolutely essential step toward reviving their nations.
Adam is God in substantial form
God, as the subject partner of true love, created humankind as His object partner of true love. Accordingly, God can fulfill His ideal of true love only through us. The fulfillment of God’s purpose of creation is the ideal world where God and humankind are united through absolute love. Human beings were created as the greatest object partner of God’s love. We alone in all creation embody the nature of God. We are born as the visible bodies of the invisible God. When a person grows to reach perfection, or spiritual maturity, he or she becomes a temple of God, a visible, substantial body in which God can freely and peacefully dwell. God’s overall ideal of absolute true love is realized and perfected through this vertical parent-child relationship.
God created Adam first. He was to be the son of God and at the same time God’s substantial body. Later God created Eve as the object partner of Adam, so that Adam and Eve could perfect the ideal of horizontal, conjugal love. Eve was to be the daughter of God, and also, as a bride, she was to perfect substantially the ideal of the horizontal love of God.
The place in which Adam and Eve are perfected, consummating their first love by marrying under God’s Blessing, is precisely the place where God meets His substantial bride. This is because God’s ideal of absolute love descends vertically and connects with Adam and Eve at the point where they experience the ideal of conjugal love horizontally. The true love of God and the true love of humankind join and are perfected at the same point, although they come from different directions, one vertical and the other horizontal.
God’s purpose of creation called for Adam and Eve to obey the commandment of God, who is the subject partner of true love, and perfect themselves as a true man and a true woman. Furthermore, they were to become a true couple united in the true love of God. Then, by having sons and daughters through that love, they would have become the True Parents and lived in happiness. Had Adam and Eve perfected themselves in true love, they would have fulfilled God’s desire to wear a substantial body.
By Adam and Eve having children of goodness and becoming True Parents, God would have established Himself substantially as the eternal Parent and would have achieved His ideal. Furthermore, citizenship in the kingdom of heaven would have expanded infinitely in the afterlife of the spirit world, based on myriad generations of descendants in the physical world.
Instead, Adam and Eve, our first ancestors, fell away from God. They were expelled from Eden before they had children, and God had no basis to follow behind and bless their marriage. The entire human race thus descended from our fallen ancestors.
The Fall was an immoral sin against God’s ideal of true love. The fact that Adam and Eve needed to obey a commandment shows that they fell in a stage of imperfection, that is to say, during their growth period.
The first consummated love of the human ancestors, because it was supposed to have been the perfection of the love of God, would have marked the beginning of a celebration that would have continued throughout history, filled with the never-ending intoxication of joy and blessing for God, Adam and Eve, and the universe. It ought to have been a joyous occasion in which the love, life and lineage of God would have been established within the human family.
On the contrary, however, Adam and Eve covered their lower parts and hid themselves among the trees, trembling in fear. By disobeying the loving warning of their Heavenly Parent, the children God had wanted to call His own established an immoral relationship as the basis for false love, false life and false lineage. As a result, all of us descendants of Adam and Eve are born with original sin. The Fall gave rise to the conflict of mind and body within every person, and caused our societies to be filled with tainted love and with people who do things that contradict the desire of their original mind.
If Adam and Eve had become a couple centered on the true love of God, God would have dwelt in Adam as His substantial body and loved Eve. What is more, Adam and Eve would have become True Parents who substantially embodied God, thus becoming the origin of true love, true life and a lineage of goodness.
However, due to the Fall they became the substantial body of Satan and established themselves as the original evil couple, evil parents who gave rise to evil descendants. Their union became the root of evil love, evil life and evil lineage. Humanity originated from this root descending from the adulterous Satan, the enemy of God, and inherited the lineage of evil parents.
God is an absolute being, and the ideal of creation is also absolute. He has carried out the providence of salvation even amid great sadness. God’s providence of salvation is the providence of restoration, by which He intends to recover the lost purpose of creation, centered on true love. The providence of salvation is also the providence of re-creation.
Based on this point, the root of the providence of salvation is the re-creation of the seed of the original child who can fulfill the ideal of creation.
That which God abhors, the life and lineage that began with the false love of the adulterer Satan, must be cleansed. The essence of the providence is the task of setting up the birth of the True Parents, who come as the Savior and Messiah who will restore the true love, life and lineage of God.
Since the first ancestors of humankind did not fulfill their responsibility, and thus inherited the immoral lineage of Satan and came under his dominion, God could not directly intervene and restore human beings to their original position. Furthermore, God can neither unconditionally accept nor punish humankind, who chose to go to the side of the evil archangel. So God uses the strategy of placing a central figure on the side of the good archangel. By being struck first, that figure establishes the indemnity condition to recover what was lost. Satan strikes first and as a result must take the losing position.
FFWPU, USA