Pyeong Hwa Gyeong: Episode 310
Pyeong Hwa Gyeong: A Selection of True Parents’ Speeches
Book 8: The Reunification of Korea and World Peace
Speech 02: May Our Homeland Shine Forth, pg 1147-1151
May Our Homeland Shine Forth
October 19, 1978
Chosun Hotel, Seoul, Korea
Breakfast presentation for the Korea District Development Research Center
Respected leaders from every field of endeavor, I am sincerely grateful to have received your invitation to this meaningful meeting, and I am much honored to address you as leaders who are the backbone of our nation’s development.
God has chosen Korea
I have been overseas devoting myself to proclaiming the realization of God’s kingdom, even while encountering many difficulties. Now at last, after two and a half years, I can finally walk again in my homeland. I have longed to do so, and I would have often returned here under ordinary circumstances. However, because I needed to conclude my intense confrontation with the Fraser Committee, I had to postpone the return to my homeland for two and a half years. Mr. Fraser’s committee sank its teeth into our movement and refused to let go, but last September 12, 1978, Congressman Fraser was defeated in his Democratic Party primary. Seen even through human eyes, he is truly an unfortunate person. Therefore, I said to our church members, “Let us pray for him, because we should love even our foes.”
Congressman Fraser was defeated in a battle that seemed impossible to lose. What is the reason for this? He was defeated because he was going against God’s Will. According to a holy man’s words, “People who are for Heaven remain, and people who are against Heaven disappear.” It seems that Congressman Fraser received God’s judgment during that election.
Mr. Fraser’s efforts to turn Korea into a second Vietnam were exactly opposite the Will of God, who has chosen Korea to accomplish Heaven’s great providence. Once we know God’s providence, we can understand that Korea is an important nation. Korea is a nation that can play a decisive role in stopping communism from taking over the world. God can never permit communism to dominate the world, for that would mean nothing less than the destruction of God.
In this final historic battle between the ideologies of theism and atheism, God has chosen Korea as His champion. Therefore, before Heaven, Congressman Fraser’s plot to destroy Korea was unforgivable. I could clearly foresee that God’s judgment would come upon Mr. Fraser. Since he stood in the position against Heaven, I knew that no matter how great his power was, in the end he would be miserable. No one who opposes the principles of Heaven can survive and remain. Therefore, we can only say that Congressman Fraser’s defeat was the judgment of God.
On my return to Korea this time, I felt God’s special love for Korea to the marrow of my bones. As I looked down on Gimpo Airport, which I have seen so many times before, it seemed to be welcoming me in a special way. The warm welcome of my fellow countrymen has moved my spirit very much.
As soon as I returned, I traveled the 350 kilometers from the north to the south. I wanted to see again our mountains and rivers, which are as beautiful as silk embroidered paintings. The greens and blues of our mountains and rivers, and their grace, have no equal.
In addition, the many aspects of our national development please me to no end. Brothers and sisters of my homeland, you have truly done mighty works. But as we catch up with the developed nations, we should not be self-satisfied like they are. Our homeland, the Republic of Korea, is destined to accomplish a great task for God.
Two thousand years ago in the little village of Bethlehem in Judea, unknown to anyone, a great thought appeared. That was the thought and the teaching of Jesus. Centering on that thought concerning the salvation of the world, God has carried out His work for the past two thousand years. Now once more history has changed. Today God is looking at Korea, a small nation of the Far East, as the birthplace of a new teaching for world salvation. This teaching will establish the kingdom of heaven on earth and deliver the world from communism’s evil hand. We should joyfully take on this task that God is giving us. This is precisely the way to eternal prosperity for our homeland, the Republic of Korea; it is the eternal and shining way.
The world has become the antithesis of the ideal of creation
Today I wish to frankly share a part of my faith with you.
All religions of the world start by recognizing the ultimate cause of the cosmos, the first cause, as God the Creator. If God exists, then God is good and God is eternal, unchanging, unique and absolute.
God’s purpose of creation is joy. It was to experience joy that God created the world and human beings. In order to feel joy, however, one should definitely have an object partner. When a subject partner and an object partner form a relationship and engage in give and take action, they can feel joy.
The greatest joy can be felt when love is being given and received. Therefore, God created human beings to be His object partners, and through an infinite give and take of love for eternity, God wanted to experience joy eternally with human beings. This was God’s purpose of creation.
In order to accomplish this purpose of creation, God created one man and one woman as the first ancestors of humanity. In the Bible they are called Adam and Eve. If Adam and Eve had become the perfect object partners of God’s joy, then their give and receive of love would have multiplied descendants of goodness. As that family multiplied into a society, the society into a nation, the nation into a world, the whole earth would have been filled with this one tribe of Adam and Eve. This would have been a world of joy that completed God’s goodness and love. That world, called the kingdom of heaven, would have been established on this earth in the beginning.
The kingdom of heaven on earth is one extended family centering on God, where all people are brothers and sisters. It would have one culture and one tradition, and it would clearly be a united world. There would be no racial problems; there would be no differences of language, divisions among the nations, confrontations of ideologies, no murder or war.
If we imagine this world of God’s ideal and then look at the world in which we are living today, we feel strongly that this world is the exact opposite of God’s ideal. First of all, today we can see that even as individuals we are divided between mind and body. Our world today is a world of division: divisions among nations, divisions among cultures and traditions, divisions between the races, divisions between ideologies and divisions of love. Because of these divisions, history has been a succession of wars, of battles, of killing one another. No matter how we look at it, we cannot call this world the kingdom of heaven.
Truly we live in hell on earth. This result came about because the first ancestors of humanity, Adam and Eve, fell. To say they fell means that they disobeyed God and separated from God. Therefore, history began where God could not dwell with them directly. History has consisted of acts of disobedience to God, one after another, to this day.
Jesus was sent for the salvation of the world
I mentioned that the Will of God is eternal, unchanging, absolute and unique. Therefore, even though the fallen world came about through the first human ancestors’ betrayal, the original ideal and purpose of God have not changed. God will accomplish the original ideal of creation by all means.
Therefore, after the human Fall God could not just stand by. His Will from that point drove the history of salvation to save fallen humanity.
What is salvation? Salvation is to restore an ill person back to his or her original state of health. Pertaining to our fallen world, salvation is to restore our world back to its original state before the Fall. God has worked to bring an end to this fallen world and restore the original ideal world He had planned before the Fall.
Two thousand years ago God sent the Savior, Jesus Christ, to the world. The purpose for sending him was the salvation of fallen people, and salvation can be said to be restoration. That the Messiah saves the world means that he restores the kingdom of heaven on earth.
Even though the Messiah definitely came to the earth two thousand years ago, the kingdom of heaven has not yet been established. This is a major problem. Jesus proclaimed the coming of the kingdom of heaven, saying, “The kingdom of heaven is at hand.” (Matt. 4:17) But there was no sign that the kingdom of heaven really was at hand. Rather, Jesus was judged as a criminal and nailed to the cross. He suffered a miserable fate. This is a testimony to the fact that God’s Will in sending the Messiah was not completely realized two thousand years ago.
What could have been the reason for this? The reason was ignorance and disbelief on the part of the chosen people. God nurtured and led the chosen people, the Israelites, for four thousand years before sending the Messiah because He intended that they accomplish His Will by receiving the Messiah when he came. But when the Messiah came, the chosen people of Israel did not know God’s Will.
They dreamed that when the Messiah came, they, who were suffering under their Roman conquerors, would avenge themselves and conquer Rome by force in one fell swoop. Some among the chosen people thought that Israel would reign over the whole world with imperial power. The Messiah who some wanted was a Messiah of power, one who would use the force of arms. But the Messiah’s ideal of the kingdom of heaven cannot be realized by force of arms. God’s ideal of the kingdom of heaven can be realized only by truth and love.
The chosen people rejected the Messiah whom they should have served. Moreover, they did not realize that the Messiah came to save the whole world, even at the cost of sacrificing the chosen people. Rather, they believed that he would give freedom to their nation and would give them royal authority. Jesus’ appearance—barefoot, shabby and powerless—was a sign of failure in the eyes of a people who dreamed of attaining self-centered power and political victory through militant means.
It can be said that there was no greater tragedy than this and no greater misfortune for humankind. The sad outcome was that God’s kingdom could not be realized at that time and it became necessary for God to send the Messiah again in the future.
We call the day when God will again send the Messiah as Savior, the day of the Second Advent. God’s Will, which was not fully accomplished at the time of Jesus, has been extended to the Second Advent. From the very day Jesus was nailed to the cross, God devoted Himself lovingly to prepare for the day of the Second Advent. Two thousand years of history have passed since that time. Nowadays, voices are growing louder and louder proclaiming that these are the Last Days. We can understand that people all over the world are waiting for the Messiah.
FFWPU, USA