Pyeong Hwa Gyeong: Episode 394
Pyeong Hwa Gyeong: A Selection of True Parents’ Speeches
Book 10: True Parents, the Hope of God and Humankind
Speech 02: True Parents and the Completed Testament Age, pg 1471-1475
True Parents and the Completed Testament Age
July 28, 1993
United States Capitol Building, Washington, D.C., USA
Invitational address to US lawmakers (True Mother’s speech)
Dear House and Senate members, and respected ladies and gentlemen:
I express my deepest, sincere gratitude to all of you who have honored us with your attendance. As leaders in this great nation, you all have a responsibility in guiding the United States of America, and even the world, into the upcoming new millennium. The promise of a peaceful and prosperous future depends on how we act today.
As we all know, our world today is not filled with happiness or peace; rather it is rife with conflict and despair. We are confronted with broken families and decaying social mores, among other issues. We have debated these matters numerous times, but we have yet to find a solution. Why is that? The true solution to these problems has to come from God, and not only must we deal with the phenomenal aspects of the problems, but we have to reveal the original root in order to bring a solution. To reveal this root, we need to understand deeply God’s purpose of creation and realize that we are at a turning point in God’s providence.
God’s ideal of creation
God created this world for the sake of the experience of true love. God’s ideal in creating the first human ancestors, Adam and Eve, was that they perfect themselves through true love so that they could then create a good family of true love, true life and true lineage. A good family like this would have been formed on the basis of united heart and mind among family members in front of God.
If God’s original ideal had been realized, there would have been no need for a Messiah or for God’s providence to save humanity. Adam’s family, though it was merely a single family, would have been the center of the clan, the nation and the world. It would have been the blueprint for all families in the future. It would have been the model for the realization of God’s ideal world. However, this present world is far from the good world of God’s ideal.
If you read the Bible carefully, you will see that the Fall of human beings involved the loss of Adam’s entire family. First, the position of parents was lost through the Fall of Adam and Eve. Second, the position of children was lost as Cain murdered Abel. Because the first family practiced self-centered love, they came to multiply evil rather than goodness, and they bequeathed false life and lineage to their descendants and thus came to form a false world. Thereupon, the history of God’s providence of salvation was begun. In order to restore True Parents centered on true love, God needed a man and a woman who could stand in the stead of Adam and Eve. Only then could a true family be formed in accordance with God’s original plan. To restore the original family, God needed to unite Cain and Abel so that the position of true children could be reclaimed, and then He needed to reclaim the positions of True Mother and, finally, True Father. To do so, He worked in reverse of the way by which human beings fell.
This pattern of reconciliation of Cain and Abel is the foundation and consistent formula for restoring the True Parents. The separation of Cain and Abel occurs again and again in Judeo-Christian history. God separated fallen human beings as siblings into two sides, that of Cain, symbolizing Satan, and Abel, symbolizing God, to work out the hatreds resulting from the Fall. God established the pattern of having Abel be struck first and sacrificed. As a result, Abel gained a foundation from which to stand and embrace Cain and recover the blessing given to the eldest son.
By virtue of this principle, the religion that most advances the purpose of salvation always receives Satan’s most severe persecution. It walks the path of receiving constant opposition, yet continues its sacrificial effort to save the sinful world. Likewise, good people always stand in the position of being struck first and sacrificed.
The violation of the first family and the course of restoration
Ladies and gentlemen, because illicit, self-centered love invaded the first family, selfishness and greed have continued to dominate human history from the individual to the family, society, nation and world. For this reason, God’s work of restoration has to begin at the individual level. Since Satan knows this, he also focuses his efforts on the individual level.
It is not by chance that self-centered individualism has become the dominant way of life in these Last Days. People feel increasingly alienated from those around them, and bear little sense of responsibility for the well-being of their country, society, or even their own family. Rising divorce rates indicate that husbands and wives feel little responsibility for their marriages. Parents do not take responsibility for their children. Individuals, devoid of any sense of human dignity, do not even take responsibility for themselves.
America has seen such phenomena at work, expanding with the youth movement of the 1960s. Idealistic youth rejected the materialism around them in order to seek peace and love. Yet in the process they also abandoned morality and responsibility. Unable to find the true love that they sought, many disillusioned young people ended their lives through drug abuse and free sex, and the suicide rate rose dramatically.
Among all violations, the one that pains God most is free sex. A world of free sex is absolutely contrary to the Will of God. Love needs to come from the stimulation of unblemished emotion. However, free sex is totally devoid of purity or true emotion. How many of us have been touched by the cruelty of infidelity and divorce? Where is God in a one-night stand? What about the nightmares where children are sexually abused by a parent or relative? Is free sex worth the price of a broken child? Where there are homosexuality, free sex, drugs and alcoholism, the world of true love is far away. In this world, Satan openly tells people, “Drink! Smoke! Take drugs! Have sex!” The lifestyle of those who do God’s Will, on the other hand, is one hundred eighty degrees different from this.
Throughout history, those who chose to walk a spiritual path of self-sacrifice have been bitterly opposed and persecuted by the rest of the world. It is only God’s love and blessing which have allowed the Unification Church, despite worldwide opposition, to prosper. The fact that our church has risen from obscurity in war-torn Korea to become a world-level religious movement in only thirty-eight years testifies to God’s continued guidance and support.
Ladies and gentlemen, religion teaches that what has gone wrong can be corrected through a process of restoration. In the Divine Principle, we refer to making restitution for a wrong as “indemnity.” To make restitution for her wrong actions, fallen Eve needed to take the entire responsibility. What this signifies is that Eve must first unite Cain and Abel, her children, so that they can be the foundation on which the True Parents can be restored.
Through Abel’s love, Cain was supposed to recognize Abel as God’s chosen person and unite with him. However, Cain murdered Abel and thus the opportunity of restoring Adam’s family was lost. This was why God had to wait for a woman who could reclaim the position of Eve.
In the Bible, one of God’s great heroines is Rebekah, the spouse of Isaac. As the mother of Jacob and Esau, Rebekah held the same position in Isaac’s family that Eve held in Adam’s family. Unlike Eve, however, Rebekah understood God’s providence and helped her second son Jacob, who occupied Abel’s position, gain the blessing destined for the eldest son.
When Jacob received the birthright and then Isaac’s blessing, the eldest brother, Esau, just like Cain, wanted to kill him. However with Rebekah’s help, these brothers ultimately did not resort to violence, but reconciled in a warm embrace. This reconciliation was a major victory for God.
This victory, nevertheless, was not complete, since the reconciliation represented only a symbolic change of blood lineage. The substantial change of blood lineage needed to be accomplished in the womb. This is the context for the enigmatic story of Tamar. By understanding that Tamar, like Rebekah, was in the position of Eve, we can see why Jesus was born of the tribe of Judah, which was her lineage.
I am sure that many of you have read the story about the birth of Tamar’s twins. (Gen. 38) Tamar conceived with Judah, her father-in-law, the twins Perez and Zerah. The Bible tells us that the two sons struggled even in the womb for the position of firstborn. During Tamar’s labor, Zerah’s hand emerged and the midwife tied a red string around his wrist. Then, Zerah’s hand disappeared back into the womb and Perez, the younger, was born as the elder. Thus, the second son reclaimed the position of the firstborn son in the womb before they were born.
In terms of conventional morality, the stories of Rebekah and Tamar are questionable at best. However, we now can see why God blessed them, and how they played the role of reclaiming His lineage from Satan, to make it possible for Jesus to be born.
From this same lineage, Mary was born in Israel two thousand years later. Mary had the responsibility of restoring eldest sonship on the family, clan and national levels through paying the indemnity necessary to unite Cain and Abel figures. At that time, the law was to stone to death any woman who became pregnant out of wedlock. Mary responded to God’s call and conceived Jesus at the risk of her life.
Because of Mary’s faith, and the providential victories of Rebekah and Tamar, Satan could not claim sovereignty over Jesus in Mary’s womb. Jesus was born in the position of a true Son under God’s perfect, direct lineage. He is the first true Son of God based on the change of the fallen blood lineage. That is why Jesus is the saint of all saints and the ancestor of the true blood lineage. His birth represented the conclusion of the Old Testament Age, the national dispensation, and the dawn of the New Testament Age, the worldwide dispensation.
Mary, in the position to restore the original Eve, needed to build unity between Jesus, who was in the position of Abel, and his elder cousin, John the Baptist, who was in the position of Cain. John had a large following and was widely respected. Their unity was crucial if the people of Israel were to identify Jesus as the Messiah. If they had become one, this would have laid the foundation for the feast of the Lamb. Jesus would have stood as the True Father of humanity, and his bride would have stood as the True Mother of humanity. Eventually, the kingdom of heaven would have been established on earth.
Even though he had received a clear revelation at the time of Jesus’ baptism, John the Baptist did not become one with Jesus. Without seeing John’s public support for Jesus, it was impossible for the Jewish people to believe in and follow Jesus. Alone, Jesus then undertook the difficult path of self-proclamation.
Confronted by the faithlessness in Israel, Jesus determined to give his life to bring spiritual salvation to all who believe. Nonetheless, he said that he would come again in order to bring salvation on earth, which is physical salvation, on the foundation of spiritual salvation.
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