Based on extracts from his speeches throughout his life
Earlier installments are available for reading.
Part 50
Father a War Refugee in Busan
Father was a war refugee in Busan in the early 1950s, yet his focus was quite different from the usual focus on personal survival that characterized refugee life. His extraordinary vision for the world despite his circumstances at that time attracted some scorn, but it also attracted new members among the pure hearted and the prepared.
When I started on the road of the will in Busan, I looked the same as other people. Even so, there was a big difference internally. Though my clothes were shabby and I was missing meals, my thinking was such that I stated loudly that I would win over the world and establish the kingdom of heaven.
We were still in the midst of the Korean War. In that situation, the world was like an iceberg, so cold and harsh. Families were separated; love for parents, spouses or even children could hardly be found. I prayed, looking out over the sea beyond Busan. God answered me, “Look — in the future the world will be like this” and He showed me a vision.
During those days in Busan as a refugee, I built a house in Beomil-dong, and 3 of us gathered there to pray and witness. When I spoke to the other 2, I imagined that I was not doing so for just those 2 people. I thought of us as not just 3 people, but 30 million people. At the time I was speaking to only a few people, but I imagined that I was giving a speech to millions of Christians and all of humanity. I spoke wholeheartedly, shedding sweat, as if the whole town were listening to me. On Sundays, the neighbors would say, “Ah, that young man is doing it again.” Even sitting with them knee to knee and whispering they would be able to hear me. However, I spoke so loudly that women at the well 150 meters away could hear me.
One lady who attended the village church happened to hear me when she was passing by. She began coming to my house every Sunday, where she stood outside and listened to me. She felt uncomfortable coming into a room filled with young men. Finally, one day she came inside and noticed how pitiful the room looked. The words I was speaking were big enough to shake up the world, but our reality was miserable. Nevertheless, I talked about uniting the world and said, “God is our Father and we are God’s sons and daughters. The kingdom of heaven will be realized and hell will be destroyed.”
Attracting attention
At the time I lived in the mud-walled hut in Beomnaetgol, there was a rumor circulating about me: “Satan’s ringleader lives at the top of Beomil-dong. Christians, do not go there!” Even when we held our own worship services, everyone in the village church already knew about it and spread rumors, warning people not to go. But I was never discouraged. When I went to pray on the mountain, I would often catch Satan spiritually by the collar and fight him. I fought him saying, “You can’t defeat me in this battle. Someday you will surrender to me.” That was how I began.
When I was in Beomnaetgol in Busan, there was only one other church in Beomil-dong. That church had heard that we were good people, that we knew the Bible well and that we had attended church in the past. So they tried to witness to us. I listened to what they had to say. When they spoke, I listened to them very carefully. They thought that I would surely become a new member of their church and on the first day they were happy and simply left.
Predictably, the next day they returned. I said, “Let me ask you a question.” But they could not answer it. So I commented, “Is Jesus that ignorant? It seems the Bible does not teach you well enough; it makes you seem uneducated.” I did not speak this way because I thought I was better than them, but because they did not know the Bible accurately. I told them, “No one should say there is a problem with the Bible itself; the problem is that you don’t know it well. If you don’t know the Bible, how are you going to witness?” I continued, “I do not go to any church. But would you listen to what I know about the Bible?” And I began talking.
At first, I did not say anything that they could not digest. Usually, I would look at the situation and if they were argumentative people, I would take a totally different approach rather than confront them. After speaking like this for several hours, they began to listen to what I had to say.
On one occasion, a student from a theological seminary came to visit me and said, “In history, people even greater than you have also dreamed of uniting the world, but they couldn’t accomplish it. How can you, in this place, think that you will bring unity?” While I was talking with him, I thought about how I looked and realized that I must surely look pitiful. Who would believe the big things I was speaking about in a house built so poorly that people could hear water running beneath the floor through its little drain? Those great people had all been more influential than I, living in better conditions, and surely had a better appearance.
When that seminarian heard the contents of what I was saying, my words sparked a hot debate in the area. People who talked with the seminarian said, “That man up on the hill seems so naive. He doesn’t look like the kind of person who would say such things, yet his words are incredible. He speaks of turning the whole world inside out, and heaven and earth upside down.” They said, “His place is so shabby and miserable that it is a place fit only for spirits to live. Yet he speaks of formidable things such as moving the whole world in his hand, unifying Korea and uniting the world.” These were the rumors going around. Even people in neighboring villages heard about me and said, “At the village well we heard people say that there is a remarkable person living on the mountain, although he is a young man of few words.” As the rumors spread, more and more people came.
A vision and heart with which God could work
At that time, I was yearning to find the people who would connect to God in Busan. I waited for them while investing my utmost sincere effort. Looking spiritually, I could see they were coming. In real life, however, they were not coming closer. I had to wait for the time to come. Once a crack appears in whatever is blocking the way, the road will open up. For this to happen there was a certain indemnity period. For example, there is a period of one’s own individual indemnity and a period of indemnity for a community.
There was just the white paper door separating us. I could hear voices shouting, “Teacher! Teacher! Father! Father!” I could hear a great mass of people calling out to me. It felt as if they would flood in if I so much as made a small hole, but this thin paper was blocking them. The flood continued to draw nearer with each passing year. At such times, how much must God have been yearning to see His beloved sons and daughters? I would wake up in the morning and look at the distant mountains, and then see visions of people, a great throng of people coming in procession.
I would go up to the mountain and sit and wait until evening, forgetting even to have lunch. How long did I wait? I needed to experience the heart of God as he waited six thousand years for all the lost, fallen people.
When the sun set, I would say, “Aren’t they coming?” and in the morning I would wake up with the break of dawn, even before the cock crowed, and wonder, “Aren’t they coming?” Thus, I would wait with a heart that never forgot.
How much sympathy must God have felt toward the man who endured and worked like that with this dream in his heart? So He summoned people to visit me: “Go and look for Rev. Moon!” Recognizing this, I can say that God likes me. God sends people by instructing them in that way. People who endure difficulties in the here and now and maintain a dream for the future, living in the present time as if it’s the future, become Heaven’s people. We have to understand that they become the ones God remembers.
The first members to join
Some of the people who were my followers in North Korea had moved to the South. They couldn’t forget me, so when they heard that I was in Busan, they came looking for me. We held Sunday services in that small hut. The hut may have been small, but it became well-known.
It is human nature to visit one’s wife and children first, but I visited my friends first. It took me two years to find people connected to me—from close friends to acquaintances and members who had followed me in North Korea. Grandma Seung-do, who is sitting here, knows about that. Only after I had found and met them all did I go home. This is how Heaven works.
Those that remained are Won-pil, Grandma Ji Seung-do and Ok Se-hyun.[1] People like Ms. Lee Gi-hwan I had known already from the past when I was in the South.[2] I started the church in the Beom-il District with these people.
At that time, I had just a few followers. While I lived by myself in Beomil-dong, the people who became members were those who were urged by the spirit world to come looking for me. I recall this as though it happened just yesterday.
In the beginning, everyone had opposed me. Even so, I laid the foundation upon which I, coming from North Korea to South Korea and establishing indemnity conditions, was able to pay indemnity even on the global level.
To be continued….
[1] These three were among those who had joined Father in Pyongyang in 1946-47 and later came to the South.
[2] Lee Gi-hwan was the daughter of a follower of prepared Christian leader Kim Baek-moon, who joined Father in Busan