Pyeong Hwa Gyeong: Episode 385
Pyeong Hwa Gyeong: A Selection of True Parents’ Speeches
Book 9: The Role of Nations in Realizing World Peace
Speech 18: The Path of Humanity and the United States in the Era of the Peace Kingdom, pg 1436-1440
The Path of Humanity and the United States in the Era of the Peace Kingdom
April 19, 2004
New Yorker Hotel, New York, USA
Forty-fourth anniversary of True Parents’ Day
Most respected guests from home and abroad:
First of all, I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to you for coming. You are leaders from every field and sphere of life and from all parts of the world, attending today’s celebration and offering your congratulations on this forty-fourth anniversary of True Parents’ Day. In particular, at this time I would like to return all glory to God, who has always been with me and has protected me to this day, and I thank Him from the bottom of my heart.
Now is the age of liberation and freedom
Throughout my life, I have made strenuous efforts to resolve the world’s difficult problems, while maintaining single-minded devotion to realizing God’s ideal of creation. I came to learn that God is not a Being sitting on a throne of glory and honor. Rather, He is a God of sadness, lamentation and anguish, endeavoring to save His children who fell and plunged into hell.
After I came to know about this heart and Will of God, my life has been, in a nutshell, a devotion of all my energies solely to fulfill the Will of God, transcending night, day, season and environment. Now the providence has progressed to the fourth year since the declaration of Cheon Il Guk. In accordance with the providence, on May 4 of last year, I made the declaration of the Day of the Great Transition to the Realm of Dominion under the Ideal of Creation. Then on July 13 of the same year, I ended the providence of restoration through indemnity. These activities have lit the beacons of the revolution of indemnity, the revolution of conscience and the revolution of heart.
The efforts to substantiate the nation of the Fourth Israel, proclaimed on August 20, 2003, took shape in the devoted efforts made for peace in the Middle East, which is the realm of the First Israel. They culminated with the Coronation Ceremony of the Kingship of Jesus, which took place in Jerusalem on December 22, 2003. On this victorious foundation, we held the Coronation Ceremony of the Kingship of Peace on March 23, 2004, at the Capitol of the United States, which is the Second Israel. Through this ceremony, the age of true liberation and freedom drew closer to humanity, and we began to actualize the proclamation of God’s Fatherland and the Era of the Peace Kingdom, made at the beginning of this year.
I came to the United States in 1971, in accordance with the command of Heaven. Although I have been subjected to persecution and oppression for more than thirty years, I believe that God has been with me, and that is the reason I can be here with you today.
On this meaningful day, I would like to share with you a speech entitled, “The Path of Humanity and the United States in the Era of the Peace Kingdom,” so that you can understand history and today’s world from God’s providential viewpoint.
From the historical standpoint of God’s providence of salvation, the end of history is actually the end of evil history, the history of Satan’s dominion. At the same time, it is the starting point of good history, the history of God’s dominion. Therefore, the end of the world is the time when we need to complete the entire providence of God. In other words, the end of the world is the Last Days, when we need to complete our individual perfection, as well as the perfection of families, peoples, nations, the world and the cosmos.
The need for an interracial and interreligious teaching
Whenever God ushered in the end times in the course of His providence, He led humanity through His ideological realms. However, people never completely fulfilled their portion of responsibility. Thus, they could not stand in the position of goodness and repair evil history.
Nonetheless, God is an absolute, unique, unchanging and eternal Being and the plan based on His Will is also absolute. Therefore, God will find and establish the world that He can govern both in heaven and on earth, through the restoration of true individuals, families, societies, nations, the world and the true sovereignty, all of which we lost through the Fall. What is this original world for which God is searching? That world is a true world, with the True Parents in the central position.
However, through the Fall, we lost the True Parents of humankind and the true world. The loss was not during the course of human history but at the beginning of human history. As a result, not a single thing can connect us in a direct relationship with the True Parents, be it the lands we live in or the teachings we possess. Therefore, we first need to find out what is true.
On the day we can do so—thus making it possible for true parents, true husbands and wives, true children, true citizens, true things, a true sovereignty and a true universe to communicate with the heart of the true God and be moved by Him and surrender to Him—that day will become the Last Day of the evil world. The moment this ideal is realized corresponds to the Last Days, that is, the time of the Second Advent.
That being the case, at the time of the Second Advent, extraordinary phenomena—such as judgment by fire, the destruction of the earth by fire, or believers rising into the air—will not take place. Rather, it will be a time when we will indemnify the sorrowful history of tangled circumstances and, starting with the individual and going through the family, society, nation and finally the world, everything will be righted, restored and settled.
In other words, it is a time when the individual, family, society, peoples, nations and world, which were lost vertically, are restored and connected horizontally. This takes place by means of substantial, historic individuals, families, societies, peoples, nations and the world. Humanity has lived in hope for this day’s arrival, for it is the final destination that human history needs to reach. However, individuals, families and nations have all lost the way they were meant to go.
Rev. Moon’s life course to save a world in crisis
Global environmental pollution problems, food shortages, conflicts between religions and troubles between races are breaking out everywhere. They turn into major issues that multiply and enlarge all sorts of disputes. Who will take responsibility for this world? It is a serious problem.
The communist nations of the past could not overcome their nationalism. Even the United States, which is a powerful nation today, has been unable to go beyond the concept of Pan-Americanism. When you prioritize the interests of your own nation, you cannot lead the world. This is a time when we need a certain religion or group of people that is united based on the thought of embracing the world and advancing a higher ideal for nations, even at the cost of sacrificing their own interests.
In this respect, after I came to the United States upon receiving God’s command, I have devoted all my efforts to educating its young people. I have been issuing strong warnings that the United States has a moral crisis and is on the way to its downfall, and I have been attempting to revive a Christianity that has hit rock bottom. You may wonder what the essence of Rev. Moon’s teachings is. The answer is simple.
First, it is to live a life of sacrifice for the greater good. The individual lives for the family, the family for the tribe, the tribe for the people, the people for the nation, the nation for the world, and the world for God.
It is in this way that God will eventually come to the individual. Even in the family, the parents must live for the children’s sake, the children need to live for the parents, the husband needs to live for his wife, and the wife needs to live for her husband. The person who lives most for the sake of others becomes the central figure of goodness.
Second, you must love your enemies. To save human beings, who had become children of Satan, the devil, through the Fall, God sent His only-begotten Son, Jesus, and made him walk the path of sacrifice. When people love their enemy more than their own children, Satan submits voluntarily. Satan’s strategy always involves striking first, but he loses in the end. Heaven’s strategy is the opposite: to be struck first and then to take back what was lost. The reason I have been able to establish a foundation of mission work in 185 nations, despite the fact that I have been subjected to constant persecution and suffering, is that I have lived in accordance with this heavenly way.
Distinguished guests, for whom has God invested and sacrificed all that He has? It was not for the United States, nor for Christianity itself. You need to know that, in the long run, it was to save each person who was lost through the Fall.
Since the Fall began with an individual, salvation must also begin with an individual. Therefore, there is no way to carry out restoration unless a representative person comes forward with the realization, “I will fulfill the responsibility of this age; I will become a person who can settle all the debts that humankind owes God and confidently return what is good to Him.”
Restoration through indemnity can never be carried out in an ambiguous manner. It is not conceptual. One cannot reach the heart of God unless one has a heart that goes beyond the wretchedness of one’s circumstances, no matter how painful, and endures it on behalf of God.
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