Pyeong Hwa Gyeong: Episode 339
Pyeong Hwa Gyeong: A Selection of True Parents’ Speeches
Book 8: The Reunification of Korea and World Peace
Speech 14: The Course of Life for the Princes and Princesses of God, pg 1260-1264
The Course of Life for the Princes and Princesses of God
March 8, 2000
Mokpo Indoor Stadium, Mokpo, Korea
True Parents’ Eightieth Birthday Celebration and North-South Unification Rallies
Distinguished international guests, my fellow citizens gathered here for the sake of the reunification of North and South, ladies and gentlemen:
We have just begun the new millennium. It is the time for us to wipe away the residue of division and struggle left over from the previous century. It is time to realize the ideal of one worldwide family, one global village of peace and unity. I pray that the blessings of the new millennium will be with each and every family represented here today.
First, allow me to thank you for coming from around the world to congratulate me on my eightieth birthday. However, more than anything, I would like to offer the glory to God. He has been my constant companion and protector, and it is He who has made this day possible.
Looking back on my life, things have never been calm and quiet. I have walked a path of suffering side by side with the people of this nation, a nation whose history has seen inordinate strife and tribulation, nestled as it is here at the junction of great world powers. Ever since I unexpectedly came into contact with the Will of Heaven while in prayer at the age of sixteen, I have devoted my life and given all my thought and effort to bringing about the fulfillment of the Will of God.
I discovered that the root cause of human suffering is that the human ancestors fell into a state of spiritual ignorance due to the corruption of their love, and this severed their relationship with God. As a result of the Fall, humanity became ignorant of basic issues relating to God, life and the universe.
Throughout my life, I have spoken in public more than ten thousand times, presenting the truth about the world, human life and history, based on the principles of Godism. This content in its entirety has been translated into twelve languages and published in some three hundred volumes. I did not discover my teaching by researching ancient documents or academic study. It is based upon the fundamental and essential answers I found by traveling back and forth between the visible and the invisible realms.
Today I am grateful to have this opportunity to talk about a solution to the problem of the unification of the Korean Peninsula, which is my country’s most cherished desire and the last unresolved issue of the Cold War. My talk is entitled, “The Course of Life for the Princes and Princesses of God.”
What is behind the history of all the world’s nations?
Distinguished guests, what nation are you a citizen of? Many of you are citizens of Korea. For you, Korea is your homeland, your homeland, isn’t it?
Then, where is God’s homeland? At present, God has no homeland. Where do all the nations of the world originate? Do they have their origin in God, or is their origin somewhere else? The question of the historical origin of the world’s nations is an important one.
All the nations of this world were formed as a result of conflict. In many instances, where a border divides two nations, that border is an emblem of intensely painful resentment. We all know the historical reality that the fiercest fights where the most blood was shed were waged at borders between neighboring nations, not between nations at great distance from each other. The walls between two adjacent nations and the walls between two neighboring ethnic groups are the highest walls. Wars are not usually fought between nations and ethnic groups thousands of miles away from each other. From ancient times, wars were fought over the border between neighboring countries.
By the same token, even you probably get into fights with neighbors and those people closest to you. Why? It is because human beings fell away from God. As a result of the human Fall, fights tend to start with one’s neighbors. What is the meaning of the Fall? It means that there is discord between God and human beings, that conflict has erupted between God and Satan, and that there is conflict between humanity and Satan. It means that there are numerous conflicts between nations, as attested by the large number of nations in the history of this small planet.
This is the history out of which the nations of the world were formed, so where will they go? All nations seek a world of peace, yet are they capable of finding it? This question points to the one common task that remains in front of all humanity today.
Nevertheless, if we harbor enmity toward a neighboring nation, with the justification that it is our historical enemy, we will never achieve a world of peace. If we harbor enmity, we will never reach the ideal, no matter how much we long for it and how open we say we are marching toward it. In order to neutralize the motivation for international conflict and wipe away our malformed, dysfunctional history, we need a movement that will lead the way by substantiating those characteristics that are the opposite of enmity and conflict.
The homeland we should seek
Distinguished guests, even though we live in a nation, in truth we are like people without a nation. Has there ever been a nation that could be considered a true nation? No, there has not. Is it for lack of trying to build a true nation? No. The reason we have never had a true nation is that the people of history were never in a position to build one. They could not build one, because the age in which they lived did not possess a fully developed standard upon which to build a true nation.
The homeland we need to build should not have a history and tradition like those found in the world today. It should be of a dimension essentially different from the nations of this world. If we want to build this different kind of nation, we have to be a people who possess the ideological consciousness to make it possible. There is an absolute Creator; therefore, our ideology and teaching will need to be one with the Creator’s ideology and teaching. What kind of nation does the Absolute Being want? He would want a nation with a sovereignty that would unite its people completely with Him. Its national character and its system would have to be of such quality. A nation is constituted by sovereignty, people and land. In God’s nation, parents represent the sovereignty, sons and daughters represent the people, and the household represents the land. This is an unbreakable rule; a nation cannot omit any of these elements.
What should be that nation’s highest value? It is living for the greater good, which extends to the nation and the world. The nation should guarantee that people who live that way cannot fall into ruin. In today’s nations people who live for the greater good often end up suffering, but the ultimate nation is a nation where such people can only prosper. If a person dies while working for the sake of that nation, he or she will be honored as a patriot. He or she will be honored as long as the nation exists.
For a nation to be formed, it requires a land, a people and sovereignty. What is sovereignty? Sovereignty is the connection and link with God, who is the root and origin. The people who govern the nation have to first establish their connection with God; only then can they govern. In this way, the rulers will be one with the people. They need to become one with the people and know that whatever they own is not for their own sake; it exists for the sake of the nation. If they do so, the nation will prosper.
From this point of view, when you consider the issue of realizing the kingdom of heaven on earth, who is its owner? Who is the ruler? Without a doubt, God is the Ruler. Who are the people? The people are all the people of the world. And what is the land? The land is the planet Earth.
What does the kingdom of heaven on earth resemble? It resembles “me.” As I said, a nation consists of sovereignty, people and land. This is the same as a single human being. Who did I say that the kingdom of heaven on earth resembles? “Me.” It resembles “me.” Individuals such as “me” gather together, and that forms the nation. Just as I have my own mind, the nation has sovereignty. Just as I have a personal identity, there is a national population. And just as I interact with the created universe, so a nation interacts with the land.
Within this basic principle, the people enable the land to bear fruit, and the sovereignty enables the people to bear fruit. This is how things are. Land, people, and sovereignty are the three essential elements that comprise a nation. Looking at human beings, the basic principle is that our mind is subject partner to our body, and our body is subject partner to the natural world. On the basis of this principle, the definitive outcome of the entire world is “a human being who encompasses heaven and earth.” What would you say heaven is? It is the same as the human mind, so it is also the same as the sovereignty. Human beings are the nation’s population and the earth is the created world. In the end, what does the nation resemble? It resembles an individual person.
No matter how big the society, no matter how great the nation, it resembles a human being. This is because God likes that which resembles Him, which is in His image. Then, what things do human beings like most? They also like what resembles them, what is in their image. So what does an ideal nation need to resemble? It needs to resemble a human being in the form of “a human being who encompasses heaven and earth.”
In Unification Church terminology, “homeland” does not refer to a single nation, such as the Republic of Korea. It refers to a global nation. Actually, this corrupted, fallen world uses the word “global” incorrectly. The “ism” or teaching that describes this homeland is called “cosmos-ism.”
Our homeland is not the Republic of Korea. God does not want the Republic of Korea or the United States or the communist nations as His homeland. God wants an original homeland. We have to create the culture and the history of that new, original homeland. We have to define a new standard of behavior upon which to establish a new and ideal homeland. We have to change our way of life, because the ideal world is completely different from the world of today.
The words and language are different as well. Do the people of today's world understand the meaning of such important phrases“the realm of dominion of the Principle,” “give-and-receive action,” “common base” and ”foundation for the providence of restoration”? No, the vocabulary of God’s homeland is different.