True Father’s Speech at the True Parents’ Birthday Celebration held on February 6, 2003, at Jamshil Indoor Stadium, Seoul
Respected present and former heads of state, leaders from the religious, political and academic worlds, representatives from 189 countries, representatives from the Korean clans, ladies and gentlemen:
I would like to truly thank all of you who have gathered here to congratulate me on my 83rd birthday and my wife, WFWP President Han Hak-ja, on her 60th birthday. Above all else, I would like to return all this glory to God, who has protected and looked after me until this day.
My life is such that you cannot explain it without God, and on this meaningful occasion, I would like to speak to all of you today with thanks in my heart. The title of my talk today is “God’s Love and the Recovery of the Relationship between God and Humankind.”
Throughout history, all people have talked a lot about God or the Absolute Being. Some have praised and worshipped Him in various ways, while others have felt free to evaluate Him. There have even been some people who have declared that there is no God or that He is dead. However, there has not been one instance in which God Himself has appeared directly and said, “This is how I have lived.”
There have been many people who have prophesied that with the development of science, the people who believe in God would disappear. However, the number of people who believe in God in modern society is not diminishing. God is the living origin of all things, the Creator and the True Parent of mankind.
The God whom I have revealed and have been teaching about is not just some vague or obscure God. From the time I first experienced God at the young age of 15, when I was worrying about the meaning of life and the universe, I have lived my life in communication with Him. The driving forces that have preserved my life, which has been one of suffering during which I have touched the boundary between life and death, are the living God’s promise and my absolute faith. I have searched every corner of the spiritual world; I have met the five great holy men and many other saints and sages, and I have received their official recognition of my mission. Ladies and gentlemen, God is the most decent and modest being, and He is the True Parent of mankind. He is the origin of all our lives, and He is the being with whom all people must establish a relationship. Additionally, one thing that you all must know clearly is that the spiritual world, the world that we must all someday go to, does exist. You must not doubt the existence of the spiritual world or have some vague belief in God.
I have sponsored numerous conferences about God–events the like of which have not been seen before. Three conferences I held in the 1980’s, attended by representatives from all religions and denominations, as well as by outstanding theologians and religious scholars, caused a great sensation. There were three main points that I wanted to teach through these conferences:
Firstly, although each religion has its own special and unique character, there are actually many more points in common than differences between religions. Secondly, the conflict and disharmony that exist between religions is due to the narrow-mindedness of the believers themselves, and it is absolutely not the will of the Absolute Being. Thirdly, rather than wishing to emphasize any belief or ceremony, God desires the realization of true love.
The papers and discussions that were presented at these conferences are still being used today as study materials at the theological seminaries of each denomination. From that time forward, the spirit of sincere dialogue and cooperation between denominations began. Such dialogue and cooperation had hitherto been blocked by the high walls that had been erected between them. Since that time, I have invested a great amount of money each year to expand the movement for peace through interreligious cooperation in all nations of the world.
For three days, beginning on December 26 last year in Washington D.C., I held a different level of “God Conference.” During that time, under the theme God and World Peace, 312 participants, including not only religious leaders from all corners of the world but also representatives from the world of politics, academia, the media, business, culture and the arts, and various NGOs gathered together. God is not just the God of believers. He is the God of all people. Especially at this time, we are living in an age in which God stands before the world, not as some vague and abstract being, but as a God with a definite purpose and will. It is an age of great change in which all people must awaken to this God. It is a time in which all people must awaken to the fact that modern people are drowning within the whirlpool of individual-, family-, national- and world-level problems, which will never be solved if God is ignored. At this conference, the 312 participants adopted a resolution that declared the following:
Firstly, they would acknowledge God, who is the True Parent, True Teacher and True Owner–together with the substantial True Parents–as the vertical axis of absolute value for the individual, the family, the nation and the world. Secondly, they would cooperate with and follow the resolution of the five saints and all the sages in the spiritual world to join together and help people on earth to bring about the fulfillment of God’s will.
Thirdly, they would actively support and join together with the movement to realize true love, with the movement for the reform of the United Nations and with the other plans of True Parents in order to realize the ideal of a peaceful world.
The ultimate purpose of religion is to recover the original father and the original country. Humankind is not the primary object of religion. Rather, religious teaching seeks to establish God, the parent, as the head. There is a certain course through which we establish a relationship with God and mature in a life of following God. Therefore, holy men and women have to support the will of Heaven, and they have to declare that which has been preordained by Heaven. A true religion must teach people about God. A true religion should not have some vague ideas about God; a true religion must be able to give a clear picture of God so that people can understand Him. A religion that makes compromises concerning the relationship between God and man cannot be called a higher religion. Such a religion will ultimately decline.
A true religion must teach people how to understand God clearly, how to become one with God, and how to return to the original world of creation. The purpose of religion is to make a world without sin, the ideal world where we establish the original relationship with God.
God is not seeking a religious world, but His ideal world of creation. The purpose of religion is not to establish a world for the religion itself, but to realize the world of God’s ideal. So we have to think about the purpose and ideal of creation. As God created the world, we must explain this ideal of creation.
What do you think God’s will is? It is to complete His ideal of creation. What do you think God wanted to achieve through creating our human ancestors, Adam and Eve, in the garden of Eden? God, who is the essence of love, created humankind because He needed a partner of love. We were created as the true sons and daughters of God, so that God’s ideal of true love could be realized. The beginning of the human race was to see the growth of a true man and woman, who were to become husband and wife and create an ideal family. This was to expand to become an ideal nation and world. In other words, centering on the true love of God, the original ancestors should have perfected an ideal family, expanding this to make an ideal world, but because of their fall, God’s ideal of creation was destroyed at that time.
Accordingly, the purpose of religion is to find a true person, a true family, a true nation and a true world, where all people can live together in peace. This is the purpose of God’s providence for this world.
Religion is seeking a good world. However, a good world cannot be realized before a good country is first established. For a good country to appear, there must first be a good race; before there is a good race, there must first be a good tribe. Before there is a good tribe, there must first be a good family, and before there is a good family, there must first be a good man and a good woman.
What was the purpose of the four thousand years of the history of Israel after the fall of Adam? Externally, it was a time in which the world developed, but internally, the sole purpose of this time period was to find one true child, to find the true Adam. The fact that due to the fall there was not one son or daughter who could inherit the life and blood lineage that are based on God’s love caused God’s deepest grief and resentment. Thus, the owner of true love, life and the blood lineage, whom God made and sent to this world, is the Savior.
According to different points of view, this person has been called the Savior, the Messiah and the Lord of the Second Advent. He comes as the Savior to rescue all people in this world from poverty, from suffering, from war and from evil. Centering on the Absolute Being’s will for salvation, he is the mediator who will connect all religious people to the true way of life. He was called the Messiah by the first and second Israel, and has been called the Lord of the Second Advent in God’s providence of restoration. The names “Savior,” “Messiah,” or “Lord of the Second Advent” have all been used based on the course of salvation and restoration.
Restoring fallen men and women, who have been born and have lived in conflict and in sin through their connection to false parents and false ancestors, to the position they were in before the fall does not mean that everything has been accomplished. The will of God and the original hope of humankind is to become ideal people of the original world of creation and to complete the ideal world of creation. This means that after becoming an individual who has achieved God’s ideal of love, a man or woman should become a husband or wife of true love and then become true parents.
In order for this to happen, God absolutely needs the True Parents as the fountain of His true love, true life and true lineage. In order to complete God’s providence of salvation, not just one man–the Savior, the Messiah, the Lord of the Second Advent–but True Parents–a husband and wife who resemble God completely and have completely realized His true love–must appear.
In the same way that God first created Adam and made Adam’s eternal partner by taking a rib from him, the restored Adam, God’s son, must first appear and then restore Eve. Then, by recreating her, he must realize the ideal of true love, completing the role of True Parents. For mankind, the source of true love and true life is the True Parents, and in them is the model of the ideal of a true husband and wife and true parents.
Mankind’s sin and suffering originated in the false love of the fallen ancestors, who became the false parents. Accordingly, the only way to complete the ideal and be liberated from the connection to the fall is through the coming of True Parents. The original ideal for humankind, sought through religion and awaited by the world, is the True Parents, who will fulfill God’s ideal of love.
We can say that people are remodeled through religion. If the fall had not occurred, religion would not have been necessary. Religion is the way to take men and women, whose minds and bodies are in conflict due to the fall, and remodel them into people who are peaceful, who for all eternity will never fight and who will become God’s substantial objects. Through religion, people are changed into people of true character that resemble God, as was originally intended.
When we look at our mind and body, the body provides the base for the evil spirit, Satan, and the conscience is the base for God. Generally speaking, the body directs the mind. Religion is the way to attack the body, which is controlling our mind, to attempt to weaken it. Religion teaches that the body is the thing that is to be most disliked. Religious traditions promote fasting, serving and sacrificing oneself–to go the way of suffering and even to offer one’s life for the sake of righteousness. The logic behind the seemingly paradoxical teaching of the Bible that “whoever seeks to gain his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life will preserve it” is that if you live according to the desires of your body, you will go the way of death into hell, but if you deny your body and enter the realm where your conscience is liberated, you will have eternal life and go to the Kingdom of Heaven.
The person who is unable to unify his or her mind and body and allows this struggle to continue will not be able to become accustomed to God’s unified ideal world of love. Usually, people say that if you believe in a particular religion, you will go to heaven or paradise. However, heaven is only for God’s children, those whose minds and bodies have become one, centered on God’s love.
The love of the fallen world is usually a self-centered love, and this is not mind-centered but body-centered. The body is the devil’s ballroom. The original mind should take the subject position in place of God, but the body becomes another subject and toys with the original mind as if it were a puppet. This is what we have to change. Religion is the repair shop God made to fix this. It is the repair shop that remodels us into perfect people of true character, whose minds and bodies are one for eternity.
Religion teaches us not to rest, but to pray unceasingly. The devil doesn’t rest; he uses the body, which is horizontal, as a stage twenty-four hours a day. As God is in the vertical position, He can only perform His work through the vertical mind. In order for the body not to be controlled by the horizontal body, the mind itself has to be vertical through prayer and devotion; by doing so, the amount of power we can receive from God will increase three or four times. If you live a life of sincere prayer and devotion for between three and five years, the mind can be liberated from the body’s horizontal influence based on habit.
Respected leaders, ladies and gentlemen, leading a religious life is not something that you can choose to do or not to do. Because fallen men and women were born with a connection to fallen love and fallen parents centered on Satan, without exception, all people must absolutely pass through the repair shop of religion, meet the True Parents, and establish a connection of true love and true life with them.
There is one important point you have to know. You should not go to the repair shop and stay there forever; you must emerge reborn. A religious life is the required course for all humankind; however, a religious life itself is not the basic purpose or the whole purpose of life. The ultimate purpose of life is to complete the religious life, graduate from living a model life to living life as a man or woman of the original world of creation. Religion came about only because of the fall, so is it reasonable to say that the sole purpose of life is to live while buried within a religion? If there had been no fall, how would men and women originally have lived? We are originally the children of God, and we should live with true love, realize a true family and one world of freedom, peace, unity, and happiness. We are supposed to live a life in the Kingdom of Heaven.
God did not create men and women with the purpose of using religion to repair them so they become His reborn children. Where is there a parent who would want to see his children suffer in conflict while repenting of their sins? Do you think that it was the original will of God the Father, who is the Lord of Creation, omniscient and omnipotent, to make His children live lives filled with suffering from sin? The fallen world is not the world that God originally planned. The first ancestors’ disobedience to God caused Him to be unable to realize the world that He had originally planned. God is absolute and His will is also absolute. God will realize His will. He wills complete recovery to the original state. This is why God’s providence of salvation is the providence of restoration, the providence of re-creation. Religion is the tool of a providence of restoration. People are not just supposed to meet True Parents and go through the course of a religious life; they are supposed to become God’s children, establish that parent—child connection in their life, attend God and build a world of faith that is expressed through their daily life.
No one in history has revealed this precious truth, namely, that we must graduate from living religious lives. I, who have understood God’s truth from an early age, did not want to create another sect or denomination. Christianity, which was the central religion of God’s providence, did not accept my teaching of Heaven’s way; that is why I had to make the organization, the Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity. It was an association, not another sect or denomination. Yet, the Christian world continuously rejected it, targeted it for persecution, labeled it heretical and turned away from it–and when our movement continued to grow, called us the Unification Church instead of using the longer, proper title. That is how we became the Unification Church. However, from many, many years ago, I have lived in hope of seeing the day when we could take down the church signs. I even predicted that day would come. Finally, in 1996, we took down the church signs and started the Family Federation for World Peace. This was a very important, historic event. It was the beginning of a new world. The old world, where people lived with the burden of sin inherited from false parents, where they lived in suffering and conflict, and where they required a life of faith, in which the only way to find God was through prayer and repentance was forever changed. It became a world where people could be reborn by receiving the blessing from the True Parents and by living their lives by simply reporting to God about what they do.
There is no one who knows the course I have had to take in order to follow the command of Heaven and fulfill my mission as the True Parent, breaking down the walls, not just in this world but also in the spiritual world, giving the grace of the blessing freely on earth and in heaven. Do you think it was an easy task to bring Satan, who throughout history has been acting as the false master, controlling people and disobeying God, to surrender? You cannot set up the position of True Parents without first gaining official recognition from Satan. The True Parents have instructed that the blessing can reach all the people who have been in Satan’s realm of death; all people in the spiritual world and all those on earth can cross over into true love’s realm of life. Such a miraculous age has begun.
Ladies and gentlemen! With Heaven’s blessing that has come upon us, we must complete the religious life, receive the blessing of true love, establish a true family, and live a life of keeping the standard of being true children. Only those who receive the blessing on this earth and live a life of true love can enter the eternal homeland of the ideal world, namely, God’s country, the Kingdom of Heaven. What do you take with you when you go to the spiritual world? Is it money? Or power? Do you take knowledge or honor with you? These things belong to this world, and you must leave all these things when you enter the higher realm. These things have absolutely no value in the eternal, original world and you cannot take them with you. The spiritual world is the world of love, and the true love that you experience on the earth–specifically, the life of true love made possible once you have received permission through the blessing from the Parents of Heaven and Earth–is the most precious thing and is the only thing that counts in the spiritual world. Please study about the spiritual world more deeply, and, through your life as a blessed couple, become children of God who perfect true love.
What I teach is not based on any teachings of man. I do not educate people by giving moral lessons or in any other conventional way. I am instructing you by speaking frankly, with words of life, based on God and the heavenly way. If God has given the mission of True Parents to me, you should understand that the relationship you have established with me today is both precious and meaningful. Please keep the things I’ve said today deep within your hearts.
I would like to conclude by asking that God’s blessing be with you and your families. I pray that He will remain with you in your public lives.
Thank you very much.