urgent need to replenish the shrinking ranks of its military, it
began giving early graduation to students and sending them to
the war front. For this reason, I, too, was graduated six months early.
Once my graduation date was set for September 30, 1943, I sent a telegram
to my family saying, “Will return on Konron Maru,” giving the
name of the ship I was scheduled to board in Shimonoseki for Busan.
However, on the day I was to leave Tokyo for the trip back to Korea, I
had a strange experience in which my feet stuck to the ground, preventing
me from moving. As hard as I tried, I could not pick my feet up off
the ground to go to the train at the Tokyo station.
I told myself, “It must be that Heaven doesn’t want me to board that
ship.” So I decided to stay in Japan a while longer and went with my friends
to climb Mount Fuji. When I returned to Tokyo a few days later, I found
the country in an uproar over news that the Konron Maru, the ship I was
supposed to be on, had been sunk on its way to Busan. I was told that more
than five hundred university students had been killed. Konron Maru was
a large ship in which Japan took great pride, but it had been sunk by an
American torpedo.
When my mother heard the news that the ship her son was scheduled
to board had been sunk, she immediately ran out of the house
without even thinking to put on her shoes. She ran barefoot five miles
to the train station and went directly to Busan. When she arrived at the
Maritime Police Station in Busan, she discovered my name was not on
the passenger manifest. The boarding house in Tokyo, however, told her
that I had packed my bags and left. This put her in total confusion and
agony. She just kept calling my name, not even realizing that she had
large splinters in her bare feet.
I can easily imagine how she must have been beside herself with
worry that something might have happened to her son. I can understand
my mother’s heart, but from the day I chose to follow God’s path I
became a terrible son to her. I couldn’t afford to let myself be tied down
by personal emotions. So I had not sent word that I had not boarded
the ship that had been sunk, even though I knew she would be deeply
concerned for my safety.
Upon finally returning to Korea, I found nothing had changed. Japan’s
tyrannical rule was becoming worse by the day. The entire land
was soaked in blood and tears. I returned to Heuksok Dong in Seoul
and attended the Myungsudae Church. I kept detailed diaries of all the
new realizations that I had each day. On days when I had a great number
of such realizations, I would fill an entire diary. I was receiving answers
to many of the questions that I had struggled with over the years. It was
as if my years of prayers and search for truth were being answered. It
happened in a short time, as if a ball of fire were passing through me.
During this time I had the realization, “The relationship between
God and mankind is that of a father and his children, and God is deeply
saddened to see their suffering.” In this moment all the secrets of the
universe were resolved in my mind. Suddenly, it was as if someone had
turned on a movie projector. Everything that had happened since the time
humankind broke God’s commandment played out clearly before my eyes.
Hot tears flowed continuously from my eyes. I fell to my knees and bowed
my head to the floor. For the longest time I couldn’t get up. Just as when my
father had carried me home on his back as a child, I laid my body down in
God’s lap and let the tears flow. Nine years after my encounter with Jesus,
my eyes had finally been opened to the true love of God.
God created Adam and Eve and sent them into this world to be fruitful,
to multiply, and to bring about a world of peace where they would
live. But they could not wait for God’s time. They committed fornication
and bore two sons, Cain and Abel. The children who were born from
the Fall did not trust each other and brought about an incident where
one brother murdered the other. The peace of this world was shattered,
sin covered the world, and God’s sorrow began. Then humankind committed
another terrible sin by killing Jesus, the Messiah. So the suffering
that humanity experiences today is a process of atonement that it must
pass through as God’s sorrow continues.
Jesus had appeared to me as a boy of sixteen because he wanted me
to know the root of the Original Sin that humankind had committed
and to bring about a world of peace where sin and the Fall would no
longer exist. I had received God’s serious word to atone for the sins of
humanity and bring about the world of peace that God had originally
created. The world of peace that is God’s desire is not someplace we
go to after death. God wants this world, where we live now, to be the
completely peaceful and happy world that He created in the beginning.
God certainly did not send Adam and Eve into the world for them to
suffer. I had to let the world know this incredible truth.
Having discovered the secrets of the creation of the universe, I felt
my heart become like a calm ocean. My heart was filled with the word
of God. It felt as though it might explode, and my face was always shining
with joy.
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