Father’s Speech On July 24, 1994 At Belvedere International Training Center, Tarrytown, New York
All humankind longs for peace and world unification, but where do they begin? Simply speaking, the unity between God and humankind is the key to peace and world unification. The center of peace and unification is God Himself. If humankind had taken the same direction and purpose as God, the world of unification and peace would have been automatically established.
What is God’s will? Theologians and scholars consider this a difficult question. Because humankind fell, the road back to God had to be re-cultivated and re-pioneered. This re-pioneering was undertaken centered on religion. By asking questions such as what God wants from humankind and what is wrong with humankind, theologians and religious people seek to establish the road for returning to God. Still, the world seems distant from God.
The Unification Church has a clear explanation of the will of God. First, the will of God is to accomplish the original purpose and ideal of creation, which is the establishment of the four position foundation. The four position foundation means the ideal family. The ultimate question, thus, is whether our family is the ideal family.
The building block of this wonderful, gigantic, great country of America is none other than the family. Do you think that among the many millions of families there are even a few ideal, perfect families? If the answer is no, the problem becomes very serious, because it means that no matter how great this country is, it does not meet God’s standard. God cannot rely on a country whose families are not perfect.
PEACE BEGINS FROM MYSELF
Where then does the peace, that everyone in the world covets, begin? Even though many countries coexist, that does not mean there is peace among them. Because the center of peace, the master of peace, is God, the content of peace must be inherited from God.
Peace has to begin from “myself.” All people want to be proud of something. No one can disagree with the conclusion that this is an evil world. Can you take pride in it? If the world is not good, is America a good country? It is evil and its citizens are evil, too.
The whole history of humankind is a continuous stream of wars, fighting and killing. Conflict has been part of the daily life of all people, regardless of age or generation. If someone strong arose, someone stronger arose later; they fought and one overthrew the other. This pattern repeats endlessly. When there is fighting and discord, God has to leave.
Even though we are bad, when someone comes and reminds us that we are bad, we are upset, of course. Why? Because our mind and body are fighting. These mind-body struggles have been happening throughout human history, ever since Adam and Eve’s time.
What then is your biggest problem as an individual? You experience constant world scale wars within yourself. If it was an actual war, there could be peace talks and ceasefires, at least temporarily; but has a truce ever been declared between your mind and body? (No.) Actually, no one even thought about a ceasefire. How ironic it is to have continuous battles and no thought about a truce or cease-fire! Everyone wants peace and unification, but can you achieve unification and peace under these circumstances?
When God looks at such desires for peace, do you think He sighs in relief? Peace and unification might be on the way, but if God cannot find any internal foundation for peace and unification, can He settle among us? He will curse us and leave at once!
Now you realize that the biggest event in the world is the terrible struggle inside ourselves. The most terrible fire is the great fire raging in the structure of our mind and body, and we do not know how to extinguish it. We are in a critical position, aren’t we? The wise person, who understands the problem, will not just blame other people, but will also look inside himself.
Satan keeps trying to drive out God, so he can be the master. God’s ideal and Satan’s ideal are completely opposite. God wants peace and He will do everything to make peace, while Satan promotes war.
If a person prays hard enough for world peace and unification, will that guarantee that peace and unification will come? No. Nations are less of a problem than individuals. Evil eats out our roots, our trunk, our branches and even small twigs. When your mind and body are fighting, there is nothing which you can call good within yourself. You wish that everything would go your way. You want to snap your fingers and have peace.
WHERE DID EVIL COME FROM?
Where do we come from? We know that we come from God. We take after our father and mother who gave us birth, but our ancestor of ancestors is God. God experiences no mind-body conflict. If God experienced such conflict, He could not be an absolute being. Absolute means unique, unchangeable, undivided.
The biggest historical dilemma is how human beings born from the Absolute, Holy God, came to be like this. Some people may say that although God is perfect, He created imperfect persons. If that were so, God would not be perfect.
Something must have happened between God and humanity that ruptured their relationship. The Bible gives us the greatest clue about what separated us from God. Christians say that the fall resulted from the human ancestors eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. That answer is not good enough. It does not help us very much.
Did mind and body separate before or after eating the fruit? Life begins from intercourse between man and woman, and that is the root of the problem. If the father and the mother are exactly like God, the child’s mind and body would never have been separated. Therefore, life must not have been perfect in the beginning.
Love must not have been perfect in the beginning. The blood must not have been perfect when conception took place. This imperfection has been handed down from generation to generation. There was love, of course, but our ancestors’ love was different from God’s love. Therefore, it gave us different properties. Eating the fruit is a symbolic expression of what occurred. We have to face the reality of wrong love, wrong life and wrong blood lineage. Our love, life and lineage did not stem from God, but from someone else. There is no way we can deny that the division between mind and body originated with false love.
God is perfect. If the human ancestors had inherited that perfection from God, nothing foreign would have entered. We then would be like God. However, that did not take place. Satan came in. We cannot deny that we received the wrong lineage; the opposite of what God originally intended took place. We cannot deny that the fall stemmed from illicit, false love. The motivation of the fall must be traced to the root of life itself.
Jesus declared, “Whoever seeks to gain his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life will preserve it.” (Luke 17:33) This is a paradox. What does it mean that those who are willing to die will live? To die means to suppress all of one’s satanic attributes; therefore, we need to nurture even the smallest godly qualities. Whoever wants unification, peace and godly qualities must let the satanic part of the self die. We can connect with God’s life only by doing that.
CHRISTIANITY NEEDS TO EVOLVE
Can Christians bring about mind-body unity by believing in Jesus and doing a great deal of penance? By just believing in Jesus, will your mind and body automatically be united? (No.) If Christianity does not evolve, it will serve no purpose.
God wants to save the whole world. We know that, and Christians know that, too. This is why God sent the Lord of the Second Advent. If Jesus returns and teaches the same things he did years ago, do you think salvation can be accomplished? The Old and New Testaments are not enough. Those of you who have studied the teachings of Christianity, or other religions, have not been successful in bringing your mind and body into unity, no matter how hard you tried. You have to stamp our your satanic attributes and kill your satanic qualities to get close to God.
Can you say that your mind is connected to God and your conscience is always in line with God? Our mind always tells us to do good deeds, to make peace and not to fight. Our mind urges us to sacrifice ourselves rather than fight others, to serve others even if they do not serve us. Our body is completely different. You know, without my going into detail, that we must suppress the body.
YOUR MIND MUST LEAD YOUR BODY
From your experience, is it easier to climb high or go down low? (Go down.) Descending is very easy; climbing is difficult. You do not need a teacher to go down. This shows how easy it is for evil to propagate more evil.
Our mind is always closer to God and our body is always closer to Satan. Further, our mind belongs to God and our body belongs to Satan. When our mind and body reach bottom, God and Satan confront each other and Satan says to us, “Oh, you belong to me; you have to let your body lead your mind so that you can belong to me.” However, God says to us, “No; trample your body down further and follow Me; become like Me.”
How can we conduct ourselves in order to become like God, taking on His attributes bit by bit? The answer is not complicated: We must bring our body under our mind’s dominion and keep our mind connected to God. Are you going to be a champion in bringing your mind and body together, or will you give up? In your fight against evil, try for a knock-down or knock-out.
Here at Belvedere, you promise everything; but you forget it by the time you leave. You say, “Yes, Father,” out of habit-even good things should not be habitual. You should be newly determined and act in new ways.
Americans love hamburgers and cheese. One American, who spent two years on the International One World Crusade (IOWC) in Japan, confessed to me that when his plane landed at John F. Kennedy Airport, he had to run to McDonald’s and eat a hamburger. For two years he had been dreaming about a ham-burger. How fearful that is!
That example concerns only a hamburger; but what about the age-old war between mind and body? How can you sup-press the longing when it is something even your cells crave! Religion has been helping people to strengthen the spirit and knock out the bad tendencies of the body: We have to eliminate hell within ourselves. Unless you subjugate these desires absolutely, even a small amount of evil living in you will keep trying to pull you down. You must never underestimate the difficulty of the war between mind and body. I cannot give you a secret to win easily. You have to use all your might to fight the war. To win, you have to go through all the miserable points throughout history.
Is it easier to climb Mount Everest and cross to the other side or to climb the obstacle of your body and come out the other side to God? Dozens, maybe hundreds of people, have conquered Mount Everest, but not a single person has been successful in surmounting bodily temptations. I have been struggling so hard to pave the road. How serious have you been ab9ut overcoming the Mount Everest of your body? When you fail, do you cry and determine to try again? Have you been trying to do this throughout your life? The war within your body and mind is as real as the external misery in the world; you must find a real solution. Peace between your mind and body will not happen by wishful thinking. You must keep trying hard and listening to me seriously. To make a promise is not good enough. You have to do it. You have to accomplish this unity while living here on earth, because we seek out the best things and only those who are successful on earth can go to heaven.
God sent you to Father to help you understand clearly what is wrong and what to do about it. True Parents are here to strengthen your morale and see to it that you gain the victory. Who else will bring out the fighting element within you? Who else can put the injection to anesthetize evil into your body? Who else can doctor you?
In the early times our ancestors gave us false love, false life, false lineage and a blurred conscience. We have to pull out that which Satan implanted in our flesh.
Have you seen life? Have you seen love? Have you touched it? Nevertheless, you know clearly that they exist. You know them better than you do things you can see, right?
We seek things that our five senses want to experience. We long to touch the best things, taste the finest food, look at the most beautiful scenery and smell the nicest fragrance. How often do we think about strengthening our conscience and glorifying our love? Our body says, “Let’s go to the park,” and our mind goes to the park. However, more often than not, our body drags our mind and makes our conscience cry out in misery. God cares more about our spirit than our body. Our spirit lives forever. It does not vanish in eighty years, like our body.
Do you really understand this? My mouth and tongue covet good food, but my conscience springs up and says, “If you want good food, I will push humble food into your mouth and force you to eat it.” As I eat that humble food, I rejoice at winning over temptation. Satan then says, “Oh, it is no fun to live in that body. I do not get anything from it.”
The hint is to believe in religion. There are many religions. We have to choose the religion that pesters and tortures the body, the religion that never lets us become complacent. We will poke our conscience through our body and roast it over a fire like a barbecue. Every perceptive organ-including your eyes, ears, nose, mouth and even your sexual organs-is on the body’s side, not on the mind’s side.
If you think you can dominate your body easily, you are underestimating the difficulty. You may think that the root of evil is shallow, but it is thousands and thousands of years deep. We have to pull out the root. If we cut off just the visible part, it will soon grow back. Therefore, the only solution is to pull it out. It is not easy to pull out a 6,000-year-old root. Pull out the false love, the false life and the false lineage; replace them with the true life, true love and true lineage engrafted from True Parents. We have to implant our true love deeper than the depth of false, fallen love.
EVIL NEEDS TO BE UPROOTED
Where can Satan stay if evil is uprooted from everyone? Religion is needed, because it encourages and even forces us to do penance through hard work and suffering. The Native Americans tortured themselves, practicing a kind of penance that religion considers a virtue. Like a torture master, your mind has to take quick action, using many instruments of torture, but without killing the body. The body needs to be tortured until it surrenders. Our eyes must undergo a tremendous revolution, spinning through 360 degrees and turning right side up again. Your ears and noses also have to make radical changes. Do not keep your old noses and old ears; turn them into new ears and noses! When your sense organs revolve 360 degrees and return to their original position, you will be welcome to look at anything, because you are seeing with original eyes, with God’s eyes. You will be able to smell everything from God’s side, not Satan’s side. Many people, no doubt, make sporadic attempts to change, but it is never enough. With the knowledge I am giving you, you can change with confidence.
The most formidable of all organs is the sexual organ, because the sex drive is the most compelling human drive. Religions are concerned less with overeating than with making sexual mistakes, which are almost irreparable. Ever since society took the direction of humanism, sexual promiscuity has been rampant. The last stage of hell’s expansion is free sex. Hell has become visible on earth. We, on the other hand, are working to create an earthly heaven out of this earthly hell. We have to uproot the false lineage and implant the new lineage. When you go to the spirit world, you will have no more doubts.
Religion teaches us to put ourselves on the altar as a sacrifice. It encourages fasting and promotes humility. All these are things the body hates. You have to follow this way one hundred percent to uproot Satan. I am giving a simple explanation, but I had to study it and make sure it is correct. I have tested it over and over. I had to develop a prototype which millions of people could follow. I had to pave the road for everyone on earth. I want to bring everyone to heaven. I invested my whole life to find this formula and make it work.
Can you forget something in the past that tasted great? When you are hungry or bored, you think about it. Can you forget how elated you felt when you received a great compliment? You always go back to such memories, don’t you? The satanic root is so many thou-sands of years old that you have become numbed to it. Because I do not take it for granted, I keep pushing you to lead a miserable life. To you it is misery, but to me it is not.
If there was a big tank roller that could squash evil but not kill a person, I would want to put everyone under it. If someone’s body still wiggled after being rolled, I would want to toss it under a bigger roller. Those who would be willing to be thrown through such a roller, if there was one, raise your hands. Is that true? (Yes.) You are so greedy!
I went to many jails. Prison in America is a resort compared to Oriental jails. North Korean jails are hell. Here you can sleep almost all you want, you can eat whatever you wish to eat, and you have plenty of time. I only slept three hours a day in jail, although people urged me to sleep seven or eight hours. We have to deny our body. We have to subjugate our body and bring the spirit to the top. If we do not do this, it will never be possible to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. I know what difficulty I went through in my life to accomplish this. It was like traveling uncharted paths through the Himalayas. I tried each possibility to find the most feasible route. It took many years of agonizing effort, and I almost died before accomplishing it.
ARE YOU HERE JUST FOR THE RIDE?
Heaven is like an almost inaccessible peak which human beings would have attained, had they not fallen. I have laid a cable line to the peak, and Unification Church members are riding cable cars. The journey seems very easy and you feel like happy sightseers. However, you will have to pass a check-point. Are you enjoying a carefree ride high above the tortuous slopes or are you thinking about how much suffering True Parents endured to lay the cable route to heaven and shedding tears of gratitude at every point? Realizing that the masters of the cable car are True Parents, are you resolved to become our sons and daughters and never separate from us? In other words, are you sightseers or grateful children inseparably bound to True Parents?
In reality, among the members of the Unification Church, those who want to become true sons and daughters are few. Eighty percent or more of you are just along for the ride. If that is so, you will not pass the checkpoint. At the checkpoint, those who seek to save their lives will lose them and those who are willing to lose their lives will gain them.
The base of trouble is none other than yourself. If you are attached to your parents, your children or your family, you cannot go. If you have a great position in your nation, it may be too difficult to go through this course. Through religion, God has always taught people to give up everything and go through this difficult course by themselves. Religion teaches -us to cast everything aside and follow God’s way.
We have to rediscover and correct ourselves. After that, we can re-discover our loved ones and correct the family, the clan and the nation, expanding God’s territory. There is no other way. No matter what you may have, you cannot be proud of it. If the foundation you have today does not have anything to do with God, you have to give up and build anew. You can then connect that foundation with your family, clan, nation and expand upon it. Only then are you free from Satan. We live like this to chase Satan away. Satan’s base is not the base for peace and unification.
Instead of chasing Satan away from themselves, which is too difficult, people try to chase me away. Maybe they thought that was the solution. Can that be a solution? No.
The Unification Church was persecuted harshly, but I always consoled you. Therefore, do not think persecution is all bad. When Satan persecutes us, in a way he is helping us accomplish these things. When we are not doing our task correctly, God allows Satan to persecute us. Thus, Satan’s persecution actually encourages us. If Satan tortures you to the point that you must quit the Unification Church or die, still you should think, “How can I leave this? I do not want to live in hell. I want to live in the Kingdom of Heaven.” If you hold onto this course, even willing to give up your life, God will give you the blessing after the persecution is over. Satan cannot take your life away. No matter how much Satan tortures you and persecutes you, it will end. Believe that. After he has done his best and you still do not yield, Satan retreats. God can accept this good condition and He moves in.
Those who are Japanese members, raise your hands. Is America heaven or is America hell? This is the kingdom of individualism. Can individualists go to heaven? (No.) No. Individualism is not congruent with God’s direction. Self-centeredness is the core of individualism and that is Satan’s property. God’s concept is public-centeredness, which is not individualism. Our conscience is always on the public side, while our body is always on the side of the individual. Individualism is Satan’s anchor rope holding us. Which anchor line should you pull out-the one to your conscience or the one to your body? (Body.) You have the correct understanding, but to accomplish it is very hard.
SHARE YOUR RESOURCES
This coming August 1 (1994) is the twentieth anniversary of the ocean providence, which I initiated to feed the starving people of Africa. For twenty years, I worked very hard to pave this road. I made my own nets, built my own boats, developed my own method of fishing and set the goal of fishing. There is abundant wildlife in the waters of Africa, and African house-wives did not know what to do with it. How can you starve when there are fish everywhere? There are many land animals, so hunting should be no problem. There is farmland that can be tilled. People have not been doing anything, because they have never been taught. In Africa, mostly, 60,000 people are starving to death every day. Ask your conscience about this. People are starving because of a lack of food. Here in America you eat so much that you become round balls, then you do something to reduce the fat. If you were God, should such people be praised or punished?
Political leaders are urging the reduction of tariffs, so that the excess farm products can be sold in any country at market prices. Poor countries with subsistence agriculture should not be flooded with farm products. In contrast, I am suggesting that immigration barriers be relaxed and people be allowed to go anywhere they wish in the world. If Africans come here, fine. If Americans want to go to Africa, fine. Open the borders to people, not goods. The world’s resources are God’s property.
The only way for Americans to prosper and live peacefully in the future is to sell their property and bring their resources to Africa. If Americans serve people of other cultures, America will continue to prosper. However, Americans do not like that.
Unification Church members are different, because you know God. I want you Unification Church members to do that. Those who do not know cannot understand this direction. However, those who know this truth must put it into action. We must ensure the prosperity of America forever and ever.
LIVE FRUGALLY
This is my everyday necessity: I must have a piece of handkerchief. My bath towel is about twice as big as that, to absorb the water. Mother always tells me to use a bigger towel. When Mother uses a bath towel, then I use it. Mother puts it into the laundry basket, but I take it out and use it again. I have been doing this, not just for a few days but for my whole life. I never flush the toilet every time I use it, I wait until the third time-otherwise, what a waste of water and paper! I do not use rolls of waste paper. No one, not even you, dreams that the head of the Unification Church, Reverend Moon, lives that way.
I exemplify my teaching. If 200 people can live this frugally, they can support five million people. People do not have to starve. Christians worked for 2,000 years and could not quite make one billion converts. However, when I let people know what I have been doing and they agree with me, three to five billion will instantly follow my direction. I went this way, not in affluent circumstances but even under very difficult circumstances. Even when I could afford it, I still followed the difficult way. When conscientious people learn about this, they will instantly under-stand, and they will follow me without even listening to any other teaching.
When I wanted to get young Americans to work on boats, they fled. I was the only one in the boat. Our boats can travel not only on the ocean, but also on lakes, rivers and canals. People always live beside the water and my boat can go anywhere there is water. Unless True Parents truly regard all people as relatives, we cannot make a road for all humankind. Unification Church members must put two-thirds of everything they have into the public purpose, to save humankind.
I have even borrowed money to live this way, that means I have done more than a hundred percent. Am I a bad person or a good person? (Good.) No matter how much opposition Satan has instigated, Americans have no reason to blame or condemn me.
THE WALLS ARE BROKEN DOWN
We truly need the ideal family and a teaching about the ideal family. Historically, two people had the potential to make the foundation. God wanted Adam and Eve’s family to serve as a base, but it failed. God then wanted Jesus’ family as a base. Adam’s family, of course, was the family base, while Jesus worked on the national base. God is trying again to establish this base at the time of the Second Advent. Christianity has been working in the bride’s position. When the groom comes, the bride should surrender herself to him. That is how salvation is to be achieved.
Now, at the Second Advent, I am working on the world-wide base, creating one huge horizontal base that can expand to any distance. If Adam and Eve had not fallen, there would be no national barriers today, just one world under God. I am now making a prototype of the perfect family, accomplishing what Jesus could not do.
There are no longer any walls between the individual and the family, or between the family and the nation. Therefore, we can travel freely anywhere and stay anywhere.
It is my desire and God’s ideal to eliminate the boundaries of nation, race, custom and even religion. This intention is manifested by the group weddings in the Unification Church. When this is successful, Unification Church members can travel back and forth anywhere, from the family to the national to the worldwide levels. By inheriting my tradition, these blessed members welcomed their spouses, all other blessed couples and myself as well. This is the world God desires.
When I give you the blessing, would you thank me and then close your door to me unless I call beforehand? In the American tradition, the daughter-in-law is upset if her husband’s parents come without advance notice. What kind of life is that? Should I call every time and get your permission before I visit your home? If I visit you at four in the morning, will you and your spouse offer me your bed or will you ask me to go to a motel? Better yet, I may decide to stay with you for three years! However, since I cannot go to every house, suppose I send my representative?
Instead of me staying with you for three years, and you having to earn the money to support me, will you donate the equivalent amount of money for me to use to save for the starving people of the world? God lifts both hands and says, “Mansei! The children are just like their parents!” Can you do it? (Yes, Father.) You had better start training along those lines.
I have been thinking about this ever since I undertook the providence. In 1980, I proclaimed the equalization of technology. The so called advanced nations must not exploit developing nations. I am sharing technological advances freely, because such knowledge belongs to the public. We must expand the concept of one nation under God to one world under God. Immigration policies must become less restrictive. If this country is prepared to sell all it has and dedicate its resources to the miserable, starving and dying people of the world, America will be doubly and triply blessed and establish one world under God. How great it will be to establish one world under God! Human beings are natural travelers; such a mass emigration will create one cosmos under God. True unification will then be achieved on earth and in heaven. If God wants us to do that, can we do it?
LIVE A PUBLIC LIFE
What painful waste we see around us all the time. People drink soda constantly. Furthermore, the urine they pass is not even recycled for irrigation, it just pollutes the water. Therefore, let’s just drink water, rather than soda. That will help the environment. Moreover, you do not have to use fire to cook. You can eat raw food and live long, healthy lives. No animals cook their food.
Deer have to run so fast to survive. Tigers or other predators are always after them, so they must be alert and ready to run. Do animals put on shoes or ride an automobile? Automobiles are a big source of pollution. If Americans started walking, the whole world would start walking. Of all the challenges facing us in the coming 200 years, the greatest need is to cut pollution.
The Japanese are legendary for living so long, because they eat raw fish. Now I practice that too. When I catch a fish, I make fresh sashimi. The health of America is greatly endangered. For example, cattle know that they are going to die and do not want to die. People kill them anyway and that meat, dripping with blood, has a harmful effect on a person’s stomach.
It is a guaranteed formula that if Americans give everything up for the sake of the needy people, America will prosper in unimaginable ways, even 10,000 times as much as before; then America will never fade. Do you think this is just a hoax or will America really receive God’s blessing if you carry this out? God is already moving in that direction through me. I know better than anyone else-for forty years I have experienced this daily, minute by minute.
When I stay at a hotel, there are always rows of towels in the rooms. One towel is enough. Why do they hang up ten towels? It looks like a towel store. Twenty years ago, when I first came here I wondered about this strange custom, and it has not changed.
You may think, “Well, Father, starting today I will do the same as you.” I appreciate that, but you cannot change right away. It takes at least seven years of painful practice to make frugality a habit. You have to make it a habit. True Children do not even understand why I do some things, because I never explained it to them; but now I am explaining, why I do what I do, to you in detail. I keep statistics on how much I have saved over the last forty years. Now I am asking all Unification Church members to do the same.
When you go fishing, do not catch the fish, sell it and forget it. Keep a record of how many pounds of fish you catch each day and keep such records for forty years. If you live this way for forty years, I know each of you will have saved many hundreds of thousands of dollars. This will become a testimony that you have lived for the sake of humankind. Twenty years of records will be a good condition in front of God and Satan.
What are we going to leave behind? You must understand that we have to leave proof that we lived for the sake of all humankind for twenty, thirty or forty years before going to the spirit world. Other people can then live the same as you. If everyone thought like me, do you think the unification of the world would eventually come? (Yes.)
CREATE THE FAMILY IDEAL
Where do peace and unification come from? They come from the ideal individual and ideal family, you and your family, my family and me. This has been the pattern in history. History is very simple, once you understand the principle.
God sent the Savior twice. This is the second and last time. The Savior came as a bridegroom, and everyone under God’s religion at the time was in the position of a bride. They would have been instantly saved by becoming one with the bridegroom. Now we are at the worldwide level, rather than the national level. I worked so hard, never knowing what the future held, ready to die ten times a day–even so I accomplished the settlement of True Family on earth.
My purpose is to establish as many ideal families as possible. Every family should resemble that seed family. Your family inherited the seed from me, and all the elements necessary for the ideal family are in that seed. From that seed blossom many trees and many fruits. It is small, but nevertheless it is the same.
If the blessed couples become ideal families, as God and I expect, will your family bear the same value as Adam’s family? (Yes.) Are you sure? That means your family is the palace in which the individual, the country and even God can rest. Adam’s family was one small family, but it was the seed for billions and billions of families to come. The potential of one family is limitless.
All women want to become queens, literally, not just conceptually, and all men want to be kings, nothing less. Adam and Eve were king and queen, representing their family, their clan, the nation and the world to come. They were the seed, and you are the fruit. The fruit contains the seed; having the same content, it has the same value as the seed. Among the individuals born from that perfect family, I can pick any son or daughter, bless them and they will produce fruit bearing the same seed. If the Unification Church blessed couples do not bear this intrinsic, original value, they are worthy of punishment, because every family should have the same value as Adam’s family.
This representative family, representing the vertical position of God, should be implanted on earth and become the vertical center. This family is the center of all nations and the whole cos-mos. When I give you the blessing, you should be proud heirs of the original family. In God’s ideal, you are the royal family, directly and eternally linked to the family of the king himself.
God experienced a relationship only with His children, Adam and Eve. He never experienced a relationship with grandchildren. When Adam and Eve fell, the true seed could not be passed to the next generation. The model family was lost. God has been working for thousands of years, through religion, to recover this lost family. As representatives of the past, present and future, your family is the royal center of the whole world. The grandparents represent the past, the parents represent the present and the children represent the future. Those three generations combine into a four position foundation. The foundation is completed when the vertical and horizontal worlds connect at the center. God, Adam, Eve and their children are equidistant from the center of true love, where everything is completed.
This pattern becomes the model for all families of human kind. Your family, too, must form this four position foundation. You, thus, are in the position of king and queen, representing all the families of the world. To be married in these circumstances is the highest glory and honor; through it, you can attain family kingship and become the center of the world.
The grandfather’s position represents the past and, therefore, the spirit world. We should revere grandfathers as God Himself. Do Americans serve grandfathers like God Himself? They sit forgotten in senior citizen’s homes. You are going to be grandparents, too, someday. If your family moves around haphazardly and without any direction, your position is unstable and unpredictable. Adam and Eve are royalty representing all human families. You must serve your father and mother as representatives and kings of the entire world. Those who do so are children of filial piety, royal citizens and saints. Because they reflect God’s nature, they can live with God. Children are the kings and queens of the future.
The grandparents’ position connects to the past Kingdom of Heaven, the children connect to the future Kingdom of Heaven, and parents connect to the current Kingdom of Heaven. Our family ideal encompasses the three Kingdoms of Heaven (past, present and future). God could love Adam and Eve, but He could not love their children as His own grandchildren. Is this too difficult to imagine? Therefore, today God must love three generations: the formation, growth and perfection stages.
Children need love not only from their parents, but from their grandparents as well. All parents’ hope and desire is to become grandparents and love their grandsons and grand-daughters; this is how love is perfected. When you become old, you become like a child, correct? Elderly people tend to forget things and behave like children. In this way, they are being prepared for a good transition into the spirit world. Eventually they will go to a good world.
Individualism is bad enough, but “couple-ism” is even worse. When husband and wife think only of themselves, forgetting children, parents and grandparents, they are a nuisance. Some daughters-in-law even prevent the grandparents from coming to see the grandchildren. They are a bad influence. Heaven has no place for “couple-ism.” Now we know clearly that the families in this great country are the product of Satan; they are following a pattern conjured up by Satan, not God.
Peace begins with the family ideal. All positions are distinctly different, yet they are interchangeable. From the central point, which is equidistant from all positions, true unification, happiness and peace begin.
The base for peace and unification is clearly the ideal family This reestablishes the ideal family lost in the Garden of Eden. Now God is propagating that seed to all families, enabling them to realize the original ideal of God’s creation, which is mind-body unity, husband-wife unity and parent-child unity.
QUALIFICATIONS TO RECITE THE FAMILY PLEDGE
After forty years of intense, grueling work to perfect this model, I am giving the right to recite the Family Pledge. The result of my work is this new pledge.
To be qualified to recite the seven points of the family pledge, first, your mind and body must become one. Second, husband and wife must come into complete accord. Third, you must do your best and bring your family into unity As much as eighty percent of the influence on children’s growth comes from the mother. There is no good example for American mothers. Among the millions of American families, who has achieved this qualification? TI1e difference between our families and other families is like that between heaven and earth.
Every day we fight against evil to improve our family. When husband and wife fight, each one has a conscience, so they know who is right and who is wrong. You know who is right, but you fight anyway, because your body has its own view.
Whatever you do becomes an example for your children. Husband and wife are in the position of visible God, second creators. Your giving birth to children has the same meaning as God creating Adam and Eve. You are second creators. The third creators are Adam’s children. As God’s children, you are the replacement of God. You are in God’s position.
The seven clauses of the Family Pledge contain all that is necessary to achieve the ideal family. By the time you carry out the whole pledge, you will have achieved the ideal world too. You can do it even without the Old and New Testaments. You do not need them anymore. This pledge is the yardstick. Every day you recite it, check how much of each point you have accomplished. We have to measure our achievements according to those seven criteria.
When you accomplish the three kingdoms for the first time, you are qualified to recite the Family Pledge. That will be God’s direct dominion. The responsibility to accomplish the ideal family is not God’s; it is your responsibility. You are the pioneers who will accomplish what Adam’s family failed to do. You will fulfill Jesus’ family. We will propagate this message to the rest of the world-that is the meaning of our life, that is our mission.
Those blessed family members who have fought, raise your hands. When you raise your hands, you have a chance to be forgiven. Blessed families have been all mixed up. Now you have seven criteria by which to train yourselves. Let us forget the past. You will be forgiven. Now that you know more completely what your family should be, make a brand new start. Declare this a holy day and begin anew. Shall we do that? (YES!) Raise both hands and make a pledge to God. From this point on, do not make any mistake. Make a new start. Now this is a proclamation to the world. God Bless you.