Father’s prayer and speech on January 1, 2000 at the Hammerstein Ballroom, Manhattan Center, New York
Midnight Prayer
Beloved Heavenly Father, Centering on the motto of 1999 “The Cosmic Expansion of the True Blessing and the Rooting out of the Satanic Blood Lineage,” and greeting a new two thousand year period, we could establish the realm of the fourth Adam on earth, on a victorious foundation. With the victorious history of the providence that can be declared on the foundation of the several hundred million blessed couples in the spirit world and physical world, and the six thousand years of history through which the providence of salvation could be brought to its conclusion—the closing of four thousand years of the history of the Jewish people and the ensuing two thousand years—we are now welcoming a new millennium.
From now the Unification Church will be able to stand before heaven and earth without shame and, centering on the blood relationship of the True Parents with all the people of the world, I earnestly thank You for the heavenly grace that has allowed all those in the spirit and physical world who created the foundation of the blessing in the name of heavenly lineage to attend this ceremony opening this new millennium before the entire cosmos and without shame centered on the Parents of Heaven and Earth.
Heavenly Father, I am grateful for Your grace that has allowed us to meet the historic new era of the millennium in which you are able to grant a new heaven and earth based on your ideal, by settling the sorrowful providence of salvation and welcoming the dawn of a history of heaven and earth full of hope. And I thank you for your grace that allowed the establishment of the liberated realm of victory for heaven and earth through declaring Ku Ku Jeol (Day of Nine Nines) and Sam Ship Jeol (Day of Three Tens). Through this, we were able to root out the blood lineage of Satan and subjugate the archangel Lucifer in the name of True Parents so that we could lead the evil Satan and his followers with God’s victorious authority.
Now I wish to open a new millennium at the beginning of this new year with the motto, “The Cosmic Expansion of True Love is the Perfection of the New Millennial Kingdom of God.” Father, I earnestly pray for Your blessing on this.
We know the cosmos symbolizes a house in which God’s love dwells in all created beings. I thank you, Heavenly Father, for the grace by which we can welcome a new era when we can begin to move toward the completion of a peaceful base of a sabbath for the Kingdom of Heaven on earth, from the tiniest lower animal to the spirits of the heavenly realm, centered on God’s true love.
I earnestly hope and pray that all the blessed families in the spirit world and physical world can unite with True Parents and our Heavenly Parent in heaven creating one family, and can make the foundation for the sabbath-like liberation of the individual, family, tribe, nation and cosmos, and finally establish the independent nation of love where God can have dominion with His independent authority, freedom, hope and will.
All blessed families have gathered here. Wherever in the world the members of our church are watching this place, please, Heavenly Father, may Your work of love and grace together with the grace of the spiritual and physical realms become a strong iron-like foundation in each family centering on relationships of true love. Please allow them to become blessed families who could offer a victorious cheer of Mansei for liberation based on this. I also thank You for letting us welcome the era that allows ancestors and their descendants to become one and to be able to bring together the people of the Kingdom of Heaven. I cannot help but thank You that the liberated Kingdom of Heaven in heaven and on earth has been declared through everyone’s cooperation centering on God’s joy and glory. I earnestly hope and ask that in this new millennium this world will have an independent form as Your nation and that You will become the Lord of love and of all nations, King of Kings and the Supreme Monarch.
Please allow us to have, through unity, dominion over Your world of love, which from the smallest things to the entire created world can respond to Your love, Heavenly Father. With the victorious supremacy of the realm of liberation of all people, allow us to welcome a free, victorious heaven and earth in which all nations can become the Kingdom of Heaven. I earnestly ask and pray for this.
I earnestly pray and hope with countless cheers of Mansei that all the blessed families in heaven and on earth and even the descendants scattered all over the world can become united as one and settle as one heart and body before heaven. I bless and pray all these things in the names of the True Parents. Amen. Amen. Amen.
Father’s Words
May God’s blessings be upon you in the new year! Today’s title is “The Cosmic Expansion of True Love is the Perfection of the New Millennial Kingdom of God.” What is the meaning of this motto? The cosmic expansion of true love means that heaven and earth should be the house of true love. The cosmos is the house of God, the house of the Heavenly Kingdom. The title has the meaning that the perfection of the Kingdom of God comes through all the homes where God can dwell throughout the entire world during this new millennium. The perfection of the Kingdom of God in the new millennium will begin in the family wherever God can eternally dwell. Amen.
“True love” has a different meaning in the Unification faith. It has a deeper meaning than the secular one. All creation—minerals, plants and animals—exists in relationships of pairs. That is, they come into existence through the relationship of male and female, plus and minus, and subject and object. When both entities become one centering on true love, this becomes a house of love in which both subject and object, plus and minus or man and woman want to live.
Without exception, all beings from humans as the highest, to the lowest, exist in pairs. They are originally created to exist, relate and multiply based on relationships of love.
Let us think about human beings. A person possesses mind and body. Where do mind and body come from? They originate from the blood lineage of the parents, based on the love between the father and the mother. They represent the life of the mind and the life of the body respectively. A person is like a house in which both aspects enter and become one centered on true love.
Families are created in the same fashion. When a man and a woman as subject and object enter the house of love and become one, they are called husband and wife. The wife is the house of her husband’s love. The husband is also the house of his wife’s love. When the couple is united horizontally, God is able to dwell in this family, uniting vertically with them. You should know that the house of true love in the family is the house of the husband and the wife, and is consequently one with God’s love.
When God enters such a family, the house of love, and dwells there, that family can become one with God. Then God becomes the vertical and spiritual parents for both of them, and the husband and the wife become physical parents horizontally. Each of them can unite his or her mind and body as subject and object, based on the 90-degree concept of love.
Who is God? He is like a house of love that a husband and wife can enter. The family in the Kingdom of Heaven appears in this form. Originally, when the family had realized the form of the Heavenly Kingdom, children would have appeared. In a family there is the vertical parent-child relationship and the horizontal conjugal and brother-sister relationships. God and Adam and Eve are like the house of love where children can enter and live. The children are like the house of love where God and Adam and Eve can enter and dwell.
The model of a family as a house of love expands to a tribe, nation and to the world. When the people of the Kingdom of God spread everywhere like fruits originating from one seed, and become one in heaven and on earth, this will be the Kingdom of God in heaven and on earth that God desires. Amen!
What is a family? It is a model of God’s love, where original love is realized and shaped. Then what is God’s love? It can be described as the love of parents in the relationship of parents and children, as the love of husband and wife, and as the love of brothers and sisters. When these three great loves become harmonized and become the center of life, the family can enter directly into the blessed Heavenly Kingdom.
Such a family cannot exist alone. It needs a tribe around it like a fence. It means the family is protected by the tribe. Therefore, the tribe is the house of love for the family: a higher-level house. Next is the nation. The nation is the house of the nation’s leader and the people. And in such a nation, the house of the people is also the house of the nation where the nation’s leader can dwell. Next is the world. The world is the house of love where the nation can enter and live. It must also become the house of the world where any family from any nation can be welcomed. When we think about the cosmos, this principle works the same way. The cosmos must become the house of love where the world can enter and all the world’s families can unite. Consequently, when all people throughout the past, present and even the future, including all things, build the house of love and invite God to live together with them, such a united world is the Kingdom of God on earth and in heaven. Amen!
You should know how different true love is from secular love, and the difference between the ideal true love world of the Kingdom of Heaven and the secular world. This original world in which there is no fall is the world of public life, which everyone desires. On the other hand, the fallen world is the self-centered world. No matter how big it is, it will eventually perish if it exists based on self-centeredness. Although God expected to succeed in building His ideal through the combination of love and life dedicated for the public purpose, the self-centered blood lineage appeared as the consequence of the fall. The world turned out 180 degrees different from the original plan and the current fallen world emerged.
In this fallen world, there are good people and evil people. Good people are more public-minded. They do not ignore even the small people and they treat them well. In a good world such people would cooperate for the sake of others; however, in an evil world the opposite is true. Evil people follow their own selfish desires, and consequently conflict occurs everywhere.
What is self-centered individualism? It is the evil among all evils. The pursuit of individualism can lead one to become a champion of dictators, occupy the evil palace and eventually drop to the bottom of hell.
What about Jesus? He completely forgave even the Roman soldiers who had speared him in the side. This is an amazing thing. Even though Rome tried to put Jesus into hell, Jesus went to the opposite world, the Kingdom of Heaven.
You do not fully know how to distinguish between good and evil. You should clearly know that within you there is a boundary between mind and body and that good and evil are fighting inside you.
Centered on this boundary, if you live self-centeredly, the result will be hell. But if you live centered on the public purpose, the result will be the Kingdom of Heaven. When you think of mind and body, you can understand that the mind is closer to the public way. Therefore, if you absolutely follow the mind’s directions, you will enter the Kingdom of Heaven. But if you deny your mind and follow your body, you will absolutely fall to the bottom of hell. Can you understand?
The relationships of parents and children, husband and wife, and brothers and sisters exist in the family. The family is the foundation these unified relationships create. But self-centered individualism has no such foundation. In individualism, grandparents, parents, brothers and sisters, society and even the nation are considered unnecessary. If such a man and a woman lived together in a house, no one would desire to enter that house. Such people would be shunned and all things of creation, which move in accordance with heavenly fortune, would avoid them. Then eventually they would decline.
Reverend Moon, however, has shown the ideal of the Kingdom of God. No matter how much grandparents and parents have come against him, their children and grandchildren should welcome this ideal and love Reverend Moon.
The cosmic expansion of true love is the foundation of the Sabbatical realm that God and all beings, from the smallest to the largest, desire to enter. This perfects the Kingdom of Heaven on earth and in heaven. Amen! [Amen!]
Did the people of America love Reverend Moon or hate him? [They loved him.] No, they were against me! But I have invested myself for more than thirty years and have even forgotten how I much I gave for the sake of saving America. Therefore, no matter how much the first generation of America opposed me, the second and third generations will respect Reverend Moon as a righteous man and savior. They will create a movement to carry Reverend Moon’s photograph and even organize demonstrations in his honor. Amen! [Amen.] If they do this, will America perish or prosper? [Prosper!]
How can we define the Kingdom of God? The Kingdom of God has eternal freedom. It has eternal hope and happiness. Eternal true love and eternal life exist in this Kingdom. Why? It is because God dwells in the home so that everyone becomes one with God’s love. The members of the Unification faith should stand for the ideology that family, brothers and sisters and relatives are most important, because the family is at the center in the realm of the Sabbath. That means we must stand on the principle of true families connected to the true lineage and centered on true love. When the blood lineage of Adam and Eve, the blood lineage of their children and of their children’s children are all vertically connected through God, and families are established, that world and cosmos must be the Kingdom of God.
What is the role of the Unification faith in this process? When enemies join the church, according to its teachings they stop fighting, unite as brothers and sisters and form one big family. That is, the Unification Church creates one family. That is such a wonderful thing! God created this ideal of the family. If you embrace God like your children, love Him like your husband or wife, and respect Him like a representative of your nation, you will be a true prince or princess and receive the qualification of ownership.
Once you join the Unification Church, you try to live here, suffering together with Reverend Moon, even though you may have to live in difficult circumstances. Why is that? It is because this is the house of love. No matter how strongly I admonish you and call you ’rascals,’ you keep returning!
At this moment, everywhere in the world people are able to listen to Reverend Moon’s word through the Internet and satellite relay. There are about 3,000 people gathered here to listen directly to Father’s words.
Father has passed through his teenage years, his twenties and thirties, and is now eighty years old. Then, if you Unificationists have lived according to Father’s word, would you expect to be better than Father or worse than Father? Would you expect to still follow this eighty year-old man or to run in front of him? Raise your hand if you will run in front of me. Are those people good or bad? [Good.]
So, I can rest from now on, can’t I? If I ask you to fish, hunt, and cook for me, and so forth, while I rest at home, and if I ask you to prepare the food I could not eat, the clothing I could not wear, and the things I have been unable to do, will you do these things or not? You have come to know the will of God and where to go. You are convinced that you can surely become the beloved sons and daughters of God in heaven and on earth. Who helped you to know this? Do you appreciate Father for this? Do you feel like doing something in return?
How many countries have you gathered here from? You are from 180 nations, aren’t you? Even if God and True Parents are not with you, if you determine to love and live for the sake of the people of your nation more than for God and your own siblings, then, of course, God and True Parents will say “Okay!” Do you understand? Please promise me that you will love the people in your own nation and in the world, even more than Father does. Our families are families of true love! Absolute love relationships make one family! Absolute love in the past, present and future. True love, true lineage, and true family!
Let us now stand and pledge to heaven to absolutely go forward to build the Kingdom of God centered on true love, true lineage and true family, and eventually to liberate our True God in this new millennium.