Based on extracts from his speeches throughout his life
Earlier installments are available for reading.
Part 70
The Momentous Year of 1960
Loving my children in accordance with God’s will
I could not love Sung-jin[1] in a proper way. Before the Holy Wedding in 1960, I could not pay his school expenses. I could not even buy him a book. You know this well, because you have seen it. If I could not love my spiritual children more than my own children, I would not have been able to advance the providence of restoration.
On the other hand, I devoted all my sweat, tears and blood for the sake of Unification Church members. Even when I was tortured in prison, I prayed for them, allowing my own children to be sacrificial offerings. I devoted all my heart and sincere effort in this way. This is the Unification Church’s philosophical outlook.
The three years before the first seven-year course began
In 1960, too, I sent out members to their posts, telling them to live servants’ lives in the same way that I had to live a prison life for three years. I had to establish the condition of having achieved victory in restoration through indemnity by undergoing life in prison. Do you know what kind of time that three years was? It was a time of looking for the lost children in Satan’s world and restoring them by shedding sweat, tears and blood.
In those days, members could not go to school. They gave up their schooling and jobs. They gave up everything. If they had three sets of clothing, I instructed them to live with only one. I lived that way as well.
I began fasting on my birthdays. I did not eat on my birthday for three years. And when I did eat, I had no more than three different side dishes at a meal. Therefore, our Unification Church members must fast on their birthday for three years. In order to pay total indemnity, go to the world of perfect love and achieve happiness, you must be willing to follow a paradoxical path, one that seems abnormal to people in the secular world.
Though my body was in the headquarters church on a comfortable bed, my heart was in torment. On a blustery night, with a cold northern wind howling and cold snow drifting down outside, my young sons and daughters were shedding tears on the brink of death, and I had driven them to it. I have prayed until now that I, a teacher of others, will never become a false man.
Third forty-day workshop for witnessing leaders
December 21, 1959 to January 30, 1960 (those who attended just in the evenings continued for seventy days, until March 16); 164 members completed the course
What is important is that we invest our whole mind, to give everything for the will, to dedicate ourselves fully. You must do this whether you are asleep or awake. God wants to uphold those who do this in front of Satan and to say proudly, My sons and daughters did this.
Until now we have been fighting to defend ourselves. However, from this year on we cannot take that position. So far we could not help taking a defensive position, because there was no one who could stand as Heavenly Father’s representative and fight on His behalf. Now the times are changing and I must give the order to charge forward. In giving this order, matters of the heart are important. You must feel in your heart that even if Heaven and Earth disappear, your relationship with Heavenly Father cannot be changed. With that kind of heart, you finish the battle and become glorious sons and daughters of the Father. You must receive what belongs to Heavenly Father and fight against Satan. All you workshop participants must inherit Heavenly Father’s great achievements of heart. You must go out, inheriting all that belongs to the Heavenly Father and also his great accomplishment. You must fight as his representatives.
Because He had no one He could give this task to, He has been accused by Satan. Now this is our time, we must think that we cannot tolerate Satan any longer. If we go out with such an attitude, we will be able to conquer any mountain with ease. Only if we do so will we be able to establish our honor in front of Heaven.
Forty-day enlightenment witnessing, 1960
This enlightenment campaign aims to awaken the external intellect, and the Divine Principle is needed to develop the internal intellect. Therefore, it is necessary to carry out an educational campaign based on both.
The 30 million Korean people are in constant struggle, not knowing which way to go. You need to become leaders of this forlorn people. You need to step forward in front of the Korean people, who are shedding blood and sweat in the world of death and begging for mercy, and break the wire netting of death off them with your iron rod of life and shout, “Friends, brothers and sisters, I am here!”
And on the day when you can uphold the parent–child relationship and establish the relationship of brotherhood, and thus form a tribe and a race and appear in front of God as His citizens, Heaven’s sovereignty will be restored and the sorrow and grief tearing at God’s heart will be lifted.
Everyone, are the clothes you are wearing precious to you? Discard them! Do you have wealth? Cast it away! You need to know that those very things can become the bait by which Satan will try to lead you away from the path toward God. If you can become a people that loses sleep during their work to provide even an inch of land or of clothing to those who stand for the sake of goodness, regardless of the tears and blood this people has to shed in the process, you will govern the world.
Until now, you have worked for yourselves as individuals, but from now on, you need to work for your people and the world. To do so, you need to shed more sweat, tears and blood. Let us make a new resolution and a new pledge. Let our hearts overflow with love for God. Let us shed our sweat for the land, tears for the people and humanity and blood for God. Since our bodies and minds are not ours but our Heavenly Father’s, let us dedicate our bodies and minds for the Korean people and for all people on earth, who have nowhere to turn to and no one to trust.
If we don’t begin now, we will never get another opportunity. You need to go forward now, while you still have me to drive you on from behind. You need to begin while I’m here and set the condition of having done something. I am telling you to do this because I know what should be done now. We will make history in three years, and if you have your name included in it, innumerable people will come to pay their respects to you, and they will make barefoot pilgrimages to places associated with our work.
Speech just before forty-day summer witnessing condition
July 17, 1960
When I hear members who have gone out witnessing say upon their return that they were insulted by others, on one hand I feel mortified but on the other hand I feel happy and offer a prayer. Why? It is because the member who was insulted has formed a strong relationship in his heart, not with the heart of a person, but with the sorrowful heart of God. There will come a time when those members will feel proud of that.
Today, with new resolve in our hearts, we are meant to pour out every passion we have as representatives of all the world’s people. With heavenly sorrow harbored in our bodies, we need to explode in hell, shedding our blood. I believe that when we do this, the tower of victory will be erected at that very place.
Prayer: I hope that at the end of the forty-day course You have entrusted to us, we will meet again and hold hands with one another and share our experiences and talk about how much we were persecuted by the people, and how much we have wept for them. If members have cause for sorrow and lamentation, I pray that they will cry out “Father!” and wish nothing but blessings for the people, and then return with living proof in their hearts that they have done nothing but love the people. Heavenly Father, I beseech You to help us feel this way.
Father visits members during the enlightenment witnessing campaign
July 30–August 19, 1960 (twenty-one days)
I can still vividly recall the time I toured Korea in 1960, after I sent you all out to witness. Nowadays, when I go to visit a place, quite a number of people line up to greet me. However, I remember how members looked at that time, fretful, standing in the midst of a lonely, blustery place, looking like one person guarding the world of the dead, or holding the flag of Heaven promising life, and who still bowed their heads to me in greeting and prayed with all their hearts. God makes a heaven-and-earth relationship with such a person. When you think about it, you can see that you form a stronger bond of heart with God when you are in a difficult situation.
When I toured Korea for twenty-one days, I thought that though the roads I traveled were rough country roads then, a time would come when they would become highways for cars carrying numerous people.
Though innumerable people after me need to follow the path I am on, even when I traveled back and forth over a distance of seven hundred miles, I didn’t think I was doing it just once but that I was destined to do it constantly. Therefore, you too need to be resolved to shed more sweat than others, to travel more than others, to work harder than others and to continue to do so constantly.
[1] Father’s son (1946– ) through his first marriage. Sung-jin nim was born the year Father was called by God to go to North Korea, leaving his family behind. They did not meet again for another six years.