Pyeong Hwa Gyeong: Episode 158
Pyeong Hwa Gyeong: A Selection of True Parents’ Speeches
Book 4: The True Family Movement
Speech 5: Realization of a Peaceful World through the Ideal of True Families, pg 552-555
Realization of a Peaceful World through the Ideal of True Families
November 27, 1997
Washington Hilton Hotel, Washington, D.C., USA Fourth World Peace Conference
I welcome you and extend my heartfelt thanks for your participation in this Fourth World Peace Conference of the Federation for World Peace to address the theme “A World Vision for the Twenty-first Century.”
I would like to personally invite you to a very special event at RFK Stadium on Saturday morning. Along with representative leaders of the world’s religions, my wife and I will officiate the Blessing of 39.6 million couples in one hundred eighty-five countries around the world. The goal for this ceremony was 3.6 million couples, yet we went far beyond that, by more than thirty-six million couples. Many couples from your countries will be participating. More than thirty thousand couples will be at the stadium and ceremonies worldwide will be connected by video via satellite.
These couples are dedicating their marriages to God, promising to remain eternally faithful to their spouse and to raise their children with commitment, fidelity and strong moral values. They are of different religious backgrounds, languages, races and national origins. What draws all of them together is their love of God and a belief that world peace begins with stable, healthy, God-centered families.
I would like all of you to observe this history-making ceremony, and more than that, I strongly encourage all of you gathered here to participate and renew your own wedding vows before God.
A common vision for humankind
Today I would like to share with you regarding the course I have traveled over the past fifty years in search of a common vision for humankind. After the devastating experience of World War II, all nations were searching for peace. God directed me to build a global movement and help establish His Kingdom on the foundation of two thousand years of Christianity. The central message of this revelation was to find the formula course for “True Parents” and “True Family,” those who live for the sake of others.
It was a great disappointment to God when the Korean Christians did not receive this message. As a result, I had to go through a suffering course of rejection and humiliation, which led to my being imprisoned unjustly many times. This providential mistake by the established religions provided the spiritual foundation for evil to run rampant in Korea, beginning with the division of that nation and for the other calamities that have plagued the world this past half-century.
To understand why all this happened, we must understand the mission to bring a message to Christian leaders that God gave me fifty years ago.
That message is essentially the same today, although today the message is also for Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus and all religions and denominations. The message is that the ideal of the God-centered, true family is the basis for true relationships and peace among individuals, societies and nations.
As a young man, I desperately searched for the answers to the mysteries of human sin and suffering. I shed many tears and spent many years in lonely prayer fighting spiritual battles that most will never comprehend. After many years of searching through the Bible and the vast spirit world, God revealed the true purpose of human life and the root cause of human suffering that originated in the garden of Eden with the first human ancestors.
The ideals of true love and true family
Esteemed leaders! You have to know that God created all things for the sake of true love and true people. All creation is structured in pairs. Animals, plants and minerals are arranged in subject-object partner relationships and the harmonious giving and receiving between them forms the foundation for all existence, for all energy for productivity, and for love and goodness. Human beings were also created with this polarity between the mind and body within the individual and between man and woman. God’s ideal was for an individual’s mind and body to be united with His love at the center and then for a mature man and woman to unite in the family unit.
In this way, Adam and Eve could have become a true reflection of God’s divine nature and an object partner of His love. Then they could have bequeathed to their descendants true love, true life and true lineage emanating from God. Adam’s family was to have been a family of true love, in accordance with God’s ideal. The first two human beings, Adam and Eve, were created with the expectation that they would transfer God’s Will and love to the world and all creation. They and their children were to establish a pattern that would have been the fundamental principle for all humanity to follow. Adam and Eve’s descendants were to have become one with God, accomplishing the unity of mind and body and man and woman, creating a stable foundation for peace, freedom, happiness and hope to fill the world. It is God’s ideal that this model be expanded to the levels of the nation and the world, and to the entire cosmos. Thus, it is possible for a country to become patterned after the family unit. That unit would expand God’s family-level ideal to the national-level ideal and the national-level ideal to the world-level, all with God at the center.
The fundamental character and personality of an individual is formed in the family. The family is the starting point and foundation of love, character and life. The Principle of Creation teaches us that we are born in the cradle of our family through the love of our parents. We come to perfect ourselves as beings of love beginning as children who gradually grow to positions of spouse, parent and grandparent. Ultimately, we pass to the spirit world in the loving embrace of our descendants.
The family, therefore, is the most precious hearth of human love and life. It is more important than all value systems and ideologies as well as all policies and social systems. Through the family, history and nations come into being and the ideal world begins. If there is no family, then there is no meaning in individual existence and there will be no passing on of love through the generations. Therefore, the family takes precedence over all values, philosophies, systems and structures. The family is the most precious and fundamental base for the love and life of men and women.
The origin of humankind’s sin and restoration of the ideal of true family
Tragically, God’s ideal of the true family was never realized. The serpent tempted Eve in the garden of Eden, and then Eve tempted Adam. Instead of God’s true love, selfish false love was planted in the human race. Human history became a history of sin and misery because our ancestors, Adam and Eve, entered into an illicit relationship with Satan. Because of the Fall, the progenitors of the human race did not become good ancestors, rather, evil ancestors corrupted by the root of evil life and evil blood lineage. The first family started with false love and did not establish the perfected true love character of true individuals, a true couple and true parents. The fruit of false love, fallen human selfishness, destroys the true order, beginning with the discord of mind and body and expanding into division and struggle in the family, nation and world.
The solution and cure for humankind’s affliction, therefore, is to return to God through the principle of restoration by indemnity. Through true love for others, you can stop the struggle between your mind and body and be restored into your original character of true love. Human beings need to receive the marriage Blessing and create ideal families from true parents who are the model of true love. We need to restore the individual and the true family and expand true love and goodness to the world level.
Fifty years ago, I tried to bring this revelation to my fellow Christians, believing that this truth would unite the conflicting denominations and bring about the kingdom of heaven on earth. I never intended to form a separate church. However, God’s message was met with denial and persecution by the established churches and I was left with no choice except to make a new foundation that has taken me forty-three years to build.
Starting in Korea with the Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity in 1954, I sent missionaries to Japan, the United States, Europe and throughout the world. On that foundation, we have built many organizations to expand the principles of the true family in the media, arts, academia, economy and industry and to create examples and models through which sin can be indemnified and the world can be restored.
FFWPU, USA