Pyeong Hwa Gyeong: Episode 363
Pyeong Hwa Gyeong: A Selection of True Parents’ Speeches
Book 9: The Role of Nations in Realizing World Peace
Speech 10: The Role of Peninsular Nations in the Twenty-first Century, pg 1358-1362
The Role of Peninsular Nations in the Twenty-first Century
August 20, 1996
Sheraton Walker Hill Hotel, Seoul, Korea
Inaugural Assembly of the Federation of Peninsular Nations for World Peace
Respected chairman, distinguished guests from around the world, representatives of all walks of life in Korea, ladies and gentlemen:
I truly appreciate your hard work for the welfare of humanity and the realization of a world of peace. I welcome you to my homeland, the land of Korea. It is my hope that a conference held at this time, with the twenty-first century just four years away, will provide an environment for profitable discussions that can give hope for a world of peace. I would like to express my thoughts on the ultimate ideal of humanity and the realization of world peace.
I grew up on the Korean Peninsula and saw how it suffered in agony as the major powers of the world waged a war on its soil over ideology and resources. From a young age, I endeavored to find answers to the fundamental questions about life and the universe. I came to know the living God by experiencing Him, and I also learned that this God is the owner of true love who has continued to be with humanity throughout history. I could not believe that God had planned and intentionally created the world’s sin, contradiction and struggle.
I don’t have the time to talk about the experiences of my adolescence. I will say only that my youth was spent in dedication and struggle to find the truth. Through my struggles and searching I discovered the Divine Principle, which is the thought system of the Unification Church. The Divine Principle was not developed by ordinary means. I found its basis through conversations with Jesus and the sages in the spirit world, through prayer and, most important, by communicating deeply with God Himself. It is the fruit of victory reaped after waging a fierce battle with an obstructionist Satan. By teaching and practicing this Divine Principle, I am devoting every moment of my life, straining myself relentlessly, to guide humanity. The Divine Principle is being taught in 184 nations across the world, and it is changing the lives of people by forming within them life-giving relationships with the living God.
God is a Parent who yearns for love
God created us, so we were born with dreams related to Him and an eager desire for the ideal world. Even in the most wretched of environments, we do not abandon the hope that directs us toward the ideal world of peace. When we talk of the ideal world, the word “ideal” originates from God, the causal Being. God did not create the world for power, glory or wealth—for which He has absolutely no desire. This is because God, who is absolute, unique, unchanging and eternal, and who is the causal Being of all things everywhere, already possesses every such thing.
Nonetheless, it is not right to think that God has no desires. Though He exists as the original Being of true love, in order for Him to actually experience love, He needs—and, therefore, urgently desires—an object partner.
This is because love is an experience and a joy that is made possible only by forming a relationship with an object partner, that is, by forming a relationship between subject and object partners. No being can feel love if he or she is isolated and all alone, and God is no exception. His motive for creation is true love and His object partners are true people. God created human beings as persons who could give and receive love freely with Him. In short, human beings were created to become perfect object partners of God’s love. Human beings are God’s sons and daughters. God the Creator is the True Parent of humankind.
God wished for Adam and Eve to grow up in innocence, centering on true love, and become true people. He created the world and everything in it as a beautifully and delicately prepared environment that would be the foothold for their external, biological growth. In such an environment, human beings would grow to maturity and flourish physically. However, God had the deepest interest of all in the internal nature and loving character of human beings. By experiencing true love, they were to resemble God’s true love and perfect it. He created the power of love to be the strongest of all internal, non-material powers. That we experience the power of love within the love of God and according to the laws of God signifies that we take after God, our Parent.
People can embody the true love of God
For people to become the owners of infinite true love, they need to cherish their sense of responsibility. Human beings can possess flawless character, that is, become the perfected beings of love, only when they have become one with God through true love and come to resemble Him. Herein lies the reason God’s love is the happiness, life, and the ideal of human beings. Adam and Eve were meant to become a true man and a true woman within the true love of God, after which they were to become a true couple, by sharing true love with each other. Then they were to have children and become true parents.
Human beings learn the true love of God by experience, through stages. As they go through their lives, people are meant to feel and learn the heart of children by receiving the love of their parents, to feel and learn the heart of siblings by exchanging the love of brothers and sisters, to feel and learn the heart of a couple through the love of husband or wife, and to feel and learn through experience the heart of parents through raising children. The family is the dwelling place of these four kinds of heart and love.
Thus, the family is the base for the love, happiness, life, and lineage of human beings. In no place other than the family can human beings learn these four kinds of love and heart. Love is something that can be felt and learned only through experience. The perfection of individual human beings, families, societies, nations and or any other human community is based on the manifestation of true love within the family.
However, what is the reality of the world? In spite of the development of technology and practical conveniences, human beings are now facing a serious crisis leading to the degradation of human nature. Evils such as war, social conflict, violence, crime and drug abuse are arousing apprehension everywhere. What is yet more serious is that the sexual morality of young people is rapidly deteriorating, the divorce rate is dramatically rising, and family breakdown, leaving all too many fatherless children in its wake, is destroying human society.
The quest for peace and why it has been fruitless
People have sought peace and happiness in so many ways, yet they have not achieved satisfying results. After the First and Second World Wars, the League of Nations and the United Nations were created to prevent the reappearance of international conflict. Yet the global activities carried out by these organizations could not bring about a world of peace.
Even the efforts of religious organizations have not realized a world of happiness. And of course the ideal of international communism and the dream of fascism have also failed to realize an ideal world. Highly developed technology and political efforts have failed to bring peace and happiness to humanity. This is all because humankind’s misery and anguish stemmed from disobeying God and thus falling away from Him, and this problem has not been solved at the fundamental level.
By engaging in a premature, selfish sexual relationship, Adam and Eve deviated from the Principle of God, and they had children before they themselves had grown up within true love. Adam and Eve distrusted God and consequently obeyed Satan, thus becoming a false couple, and so human history began with false parents. This resulted in their descendants living in sin, war and agony. Such life has nothing to do with God’s ideal of creation. How sorrowful, therefore, must be the heart of God!
At all costs, God needs to realize the true love and ideal of peace that He originally planned. His providence of salvation is the providence to achieve the original state, that is, it is the providence of re-creation. For this, He established religions and has continually expanded the domain of goodness. The Messiah sent by God is the one who comes with the full responsibility to complete this providence of re-creation. Therefore, the Messiah needs to come as the True Parent and carry out the work of re-creation at the fundamental level.
Jesus, who came as the Messiah, came with the mission of the True Parent. He came to give rebirth to humanity on earth through true love, and to redeem them to be true people and true couples so they could become true parents. Unfortunately, due to the distrust he faced on earth, he died before he could fulfill his will, but he promised to come again. His words suggest that he needs to come once again as the True Parent and completely actualize God’s ideal of creation.
Though Jesus was born in the land of Judea, he did not exist solely for Judea. The will of Jesus, who came in the position of the Messiah and the True Parent, was to realize the ideal of God on earth, which is a world of peace and true love. At the time, Judea was a province of the Roman Empire. Therefore, God carried out His providence hoping that, when the will of Jesus was achieved in Judea, His Will would expand to Rome and be fulfilled across the world.
FFWPU, USA