Father gave the following speech at the Hilton Hotel in Seoul, Korea on February 1st, 1990.
Respected guests from overseas and distinguished leaders of Korean society:
I would like to express my sincere gratitude to you for taking time from your busy public and private schedules to attend this banquet in celebration of my seventieth birthday. Your presence makes this a truly festive occasion.
The mere fact a man lives to be seventy does not make him successful. Age by itself is not a goal worth striving for.
Never during my life did I even dream that someday when I lived to be seventy, there would be such a large banquet and so many distinguished guests would gather to congratulate me.
I was 16 when I first met God. Ever since, I have just done my best to hold on to God as tightly as I could and stay close to Him. As a result of that, I find myself standing here this evening.
God alone has made this evening possible. It is a miracle that He has brought about, and for that reason I must offer to Him my most humble gratitude. The encouragement you have given Mrs. Moon and myself and the praises that you make of my work expressed through messages of congratulations, medals, academic degrees and all other forms are rightfully offered back up to God. The glory does not belong to me but to God, and so I offer all of these to Heaven.
Looking back, my life of seventy years has been an indescribably thorny path. It has been a path of constant struggle and adversity.
I understood the strategy of Heaven, whereby Heaven allows itself to be struck and then uses this condition to take that which rightfully belongs to Heaven. The truth of the universe is that God prospers by being struck, and that Evil creates its own downfall by striking at Good. For example, in both the First and Second World Wars, the side that struck first finally lost the war. We may consider the confrontation with communism to be the Third World War; and here, too, it is aggressive communism that is now collapsing. Knowing this truth, I found the energy to persevere even in the most difficult situations.
After meeting the living God my Father, I have not had so much as one minute, or even one second, for extraneous thoughts. I have lived my entire life with the singular determination to accomplish the Will of my Father in Heaven; that is, to bring salvation to the world and to establish true peace among all men.
God has been burning with the desire to establish the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth so that all people of this world can live in happiness. The essence of God has been true love and His relationship to humanity has been that of a father to his children. Through history, however, mankind has not only been ignorant of God but has repeatedly pierced His heart with the nails of betrayal. I discovered that God in Heaven, the Father of all humanity, lives with a deep resentment caused by the heart wrenching sorrow of a Parent who has lost His children.
My goal in life has been to resolve this resentment of God. My purpose for living has been to liberate the God of sorrow from His sorrow, loneliness and anguish. This has been the fundamental motivation for all that I have done through these seventy years, whether it be related to religious activity, the media, business and finance or politics. Out of the sole desire to liberate God from His sorrow and suffering, I have shed blood, sweat and tears in an attempt to bring about the true peace of mankind. I have taught: “As God lives for us and the world, so should we live for the world and God.”
I am well known around the world as a leader in the anticommunist and victory over communism movements. The purpose I conduct a movement for victory over communism is not to kill communists but to liberate them with truth and true love so that they may live. This is the reason I am working to help the communist world today and rescue it from its current distress. For that reason, I have been welcomed even in the Soviet Union and China. Even Kim II Sung in North Korea cannot be my enemy.
Recently, a distinguished group of Soviet journalists visited Korea for the first time at my invitation. On their return trip, I asked them to visit North Korea. They were at first reluctant, but finally they accepted my earnest request to go to Pyongyang and relay my message to Kim Il Sung.
This message contained the following three points: “First, I am not your enemy. Second, you must give up your wild ambition to communize South Korea. Third, stop trying to swim against the tide of world events. Throw out that which is false, and return to the truth. When you open your doors and reach out, you and I will become brothers, and we will be able to live together in prosperity and happiness.”
Kim Il Sung will have no choice but to respond to my proposal. Failure to do so will only precipitate his own downfall.
We have made an initial investment in the project to build industrial city in China. The purpose of this investment is not so that I can establish a foothold in China as a way of making a fortune for myself. It is my principle that not so much as a penny of the profits from the China project will be taken out of
China. These profits will be reinvested in China to construct the International Highway of Peace and to bring China up to international standards in other areas of high technology. Thus, the motivation of the investment is to help the 1.3 billion Chinese people achieve a satisfactory standard of living.
I have reached an agreement with the government of the Soviet Union to hold the World Media Conference and the International Summit for World Peace in Moscow this April. At these conferences, I will announce a draft proposal on how the 270 million citizens of the Soviet Union can achieve a satisfactory standard of living.
I am determined now that I will do my best to improve the economic situation and wellbeing not only of the Chinese but of the Soviet people as well.
Ten years from now, we will reach the year 2000. The task I have before me now is to see whether I can achieve world peace before that time. When we gather in the year 2000 in the same way we are gathered here tonight, it should be for the purpose of holding a banquet to celebrate the establishment of world peace.
We are all brothers and sisters before the one Creator, God. As we live together through the next decade, let us transcend racial and national boundaries, break down the walls between religions and denominations, and climb over the barriers of culture and language. Let those of us who have plenty help those who have less, so that we may be the laborers to build a peace that will be remembered in history.
If the world leaders who are gathered here tonight will combine your strengths together, we will be more than equal to this task. During the next decade, we will see the fulfillment of mankind’s earnest desires for a true reconciliation between East and West and for an economic reconciliation between the richer and poorer nations of the world. Also, our long cherished desire to see the unification of North and South Korea will be realized.
Let me end my message at this holy banquet that we offer to God by inviting you all to do away with selfishness, practice a life of living for others and be leaders in the vanguard for building a new century of world peace.
Thank you very much.