Based on extracts from his speeches throughout his life
Earlier installments are available for reading.
True Father’s Life at the Cheongpa-dong Headquarters
True Father’s recollections of the mid-1950s are testimony to the intensity of his efforts in those early days—both in terms of the physical challenges overcome and depth of heart invested—to personally care for members and to teach those coming to the church to hear the Principle.
Part 62
The former Headquarters Church, where history was made
The place in the midst of heaven and earth where the base for the salvation of the fallen world first emerged centering on the heart of the Father is this miserable and shabby Unification Church in Cheongpa-dong [Seoul’s Cheongpa District]. How much pity we feel for God, who has come forward to dissolve all His sorrows, accumulated over six thousand years, when He looks at this place! When I look within myself in such circumstances, tears come to my eyes.
When you are entering this historic altar, you should start shedding tears as you cross the threshold. To me, this building is more precious than the most luxurious and glamorous house. Though there are cracks in it, those very cracks are the historical traces of the hardships of history. Looking at the scars on this house, you should think in your hearts, “Your injuries have not yet healed.”
As you shed tears on this wooden floor, and offered prayers kneeling on this floor, did you ever feel that this was the very place of the fulfillment of God’s desire that He has looked forward to for thousands of years? This is the very place that saw the joining together of the True Parents; an unprecedented event, the Holy Wedding ceremony, took place in this house. It was also from here that all kinds of rumors began or passed through, because we did things never before seen in history. It was here that God’s Day, Parents’ Day, Children’s Day, and the Day of All Things were established. Here the thirty-six couples and the seventy-two couples were blessed. It is historic.
History was wrought here. Even if the prince of the world is born, he is still born from a womb like anyone else. Regardless of what this house looks like, history was begun here. I am even thinking of making a model of this house and building one just like it in Cheongpyeong, or leaving it here as it is.
The more important the topic of your prayer is, and the more important the solution, the more your heart in prayer needs to be as if you were offering devotions from the Headquarters Church. You need to have a heart full of tears as you trace back the historical connection and background of the Headquarters Church from its onset until now. God will be with you when you do that. If there is someone praying in the Headquarters Church centering on the will of God, you should have the heart to pray from a position of greater loyalty than that person.
A historic holy ground
The Headquarters Church is an important holy ground[1] connected to the one hundred and twenty holy grounds in forty nations. What are the holy grounds in Jerusalem, Busan and Cheongpa-dong? The first is the holy ground of the son, and this is the holy ground of the mother and the father.
Cheongpa-dong will not end as it is right now. In the future, wherever Unification churches are built, innumerable members will love Korea as their original homeland and their fatherland and come to visit it. They will come here yearning for this very place, Cheongpa-dong.
You completely renovated the Headquarters Church while I was not here. I felt sorry about that. I was doing a tour, but I even sent a telegram instructing you to stop right away. This place is a historical relic. It’s a historic memento. Anyone who knows the providence will find his way here, knowing it encompasses history.
An intense period of pioneering
For seven years from 1957 to 1964, I didn’t sleep for even two hours a night. I usually slept for an hour. I trained myself so that I would not feel tired. I did not know how to be tired During those seven years, I seldom took off my clothes to sleep. I wore clothes like these. I prepared and trained myself for seven years, so that when I set out for a new world in the 1960s, I was able to succeed in a twenty-year-course that I have no reason to feel ashamed of in front of Heaven. For seven years, I was working until three or four in the morning, hunched over in a chair.
I told myself, “Give your whole heart. Pour out your whole heart until you get tired. Pour it out even though you may feel hungry. Pour it out even in sleepiness, until Heaven accepts it!”
Since I planted seeds in that way, those seeds will go all over the world through the heart of God, even though members of the Unification Church today cannot accept what was planted. I thought that they would certainly be harvested one day, if not in Korea, elsewhere in the world.
In our pioneer stage, it was not unusual for me to stay up all night. I would even be dozing in the bathroom. I was so exhausted. Sometimes when I sat down, I would lean against something and begin snoring.
Until the 1960s had passed, I ate squatting down because I was so busy. My meals didn’t include more than three side dishes.[2] I did that for three years. I didn’t eat at a table. I ate with the plates on the floor, on a small board, because I was working to save everybody and everything. If I had not been able to do that, I would have been a sinner.
For seven years, I fasted on my birthday. How brazenly arrogant I would have felt if I had eaten well and celebrated my birthday with my responsibility still uncompleted and heavenly law not yet established.
This was a serious problem. Though I lived in a nation, the nation was not mine. The world was not my world and no matter what I had, I could not assert that it was.
The power of prayer for each member
When I started this church, the wooden floor in my room, wet from tears, wouldn’t dry out. I didn’t sleep. I prayed even when I had a nosebleed….
In about 1957, I was praying for about four hundred members every day. Once I prayed, I could sense their spiritual situation. That kind of thing does happen. God is the supreme being. God is the trunk and church member are connected to Him as branches. So, if you act together with this subject, don’t you know He will teach you about other members? Of course He does. Just offer your jeongseong. If you pour out your heart for church members, God will show you in various ways if there’s something wrong with their spiritual state.
I prayed while calling out the name of each member. Even before I called a name, the person’s face appeared. Just to say the names took about forty minutes. Some were smiling; others appeared worried. I instantly knew how a person was doing. Prayer showed me who was sick, so I called those members and said what prayer had revealed. I asked them whether it was true, and without fail, it was. Then the person would go to a doctor for a diagnosis and treatment.
Only in this way could I fulfill my duties. As I did, people could align themselves and follow me without going astray.
Also, when looking at the names, I might think, “This lady should come today.” Without fail, she would come. One lady was actually on her way to a market and ended up coming to the church without even realizing it. She asked, “Oh, did I come to the church?” When this kind of thing occurs, can you say that God doesn’t exist? Can you deny that the spirit world is helping us?
A lifestyle of investing in others
In 1957, I was doing one-to-one witnessing. I would give a lecture to a person as if I were speaking to a hundred or a thousand people. I took the viewpoint that several thousand people depended on that person. In order to transform a person into someone who could follow whatever instructions I might give, I should exert effort equal to the extent of the transformation so that the person could develop strong enough motivation to make the necessary changes.
I felt upset that church members were unable to love Korea the way they should, so I would sometimes speak all night. Isn’t it right that at some point I be involved in raising you? You can send a child to elementary school only after you have devoted yourself to bringing up the child to about the age of six, isn’t that so? That’s a basic principle, which is why I’ve told you that you must go through a seven-year course. It takes seven years to educate a person in Cain’s position.
Even if the church had not existed, I had to train people by myself. That’s why I’ve been doing this work for fifty years, forgetting to eat, sleep and rest. You don’t understand the reality. You think, “Oh, he freely does whatever he wants. He has no backbone.” But that is by no means the case. I do have that backbone. Despite that, I still began my work holding people and crying over them. Holding one person, I would weep while trying to work out the nation’s misfortune through him and the bitter feeling of the nation’s people through his family.
Heaven was present, and a strong “electricity” was flowing. You feel strength as if hundreds of millions of volts are moving through you, as if the world is at your command. How exciting! At a time like that, your eyes won’t close even though you may try to close them. Even when you are asleep, your eyes open all of a sudden.
To be continued….
[1] The Headquarters Church was designated a Holy Ground on January 1, 1966
[2] In Korean cuisine, rice is traditionally considered the staple food, and side dishes might be vegetables, small fish, beans etc.