July 24, 2010
Manhattan Center
New York, NY
Respected leaders from around the world, distinguished guests from home and abroad, ladies and gentlemen,
On behalf of True Parents, True Family, the Republic of Korea, the United States of America, and Unification Church members worldwide, I sincerely welcome and express my deepest appreciation to you for coming to participate in this providential World Assembly to Proclaim the Embodiment of God's Word and the Era of the Parents of Heaven, Earth and Humankind despite your busy schedules.
In this year alone, thousands of representatives and top leaders from 120 nations of the world honored us with their presence on several occasions, including our Golden Anniversary, Coronation, and various Legacy-of-Peace Memorial Festivals held at the UN building and in cities around the United States and the world -- making for many wonderful events. Once again, I would like to express my appreciation on behalf of all the people of the Republic of Korea and all of humankind.
Ladies and gentlemen, this is a very eventful time in God's providence. A few months ago I celebrated my ninetieth birthday and took my first steps toward the hundredth year of my life. I have been blessed with a long life, beyond the average human lifespan. My wife and I arranged for today's world-level celebration to commemorate our fiftieth wedding anniversary. From a providential point of view, this year is not simply the year of our Golden Anniversary; it is also a Jubilee year.
We have fourteen children, of whom five have graduated from Harvard University. Among our forty-plus grandchildren, several are already studying there. Moreover, a great number of good men and women from 194 nations have come to recognize and follow us as the King and Queen of Peace and the True Parents.
Throughout our lives, we have established many international organizations and institutions to promote world peace. We have invested unreservedly in many fields including inter-religious cooperation, projects to benefit society, intercultural activities, sports, education and the media, and we have successfully led these initiatives with the aim of promoting peace and bringing salvation to humanity.
After working to succeed in all these things, people would probably commend us, saying that we deserve to look back and pleasantly enjoy the rest of our lives with the good wishes of all people. They would probably encourage us to forget about everything and sit back and enjoy the successes achieved during the past ninety years!
However, my wife and I cannot look at the lives we have led in such a worldly way. We have had to complete the mission of the actual True Parents, given to us by God, Who is Himself the vertical True Parent of all humankind. Now, with three years remaining in this mission to make God's kingdom, Cheon Il Guk, a reality, we are leading each day of our lives with more seriousness than ever before.
Throughout my life, I have offered myself for the liberation of God, the one and only True Parent of heaven and earth, to restore to Him His rightful position as parent, to save all of human beings who suffer in the realm of death, and to return them to God's bosom. For this purpose I have persevered and triumphed, alone, over countless tribulations while leading the people of the world, who are like lost and unaware orphans searching for their parents, toward the goal of global salvation. Due to the Fall, brought about by our first ancestors, people are born into the false lineage. Every one without exception wanders in darkness even now, unable to break free of Satan's bondage. Under such circumstances, how could my wife and I be anything less than completely serious in our lives as we show the 6.5 billion people of the world the way along the path toward the building of God's kingdom on earth?
Three Stages of Creation
Ladies and gentlemen, God created human beings as his children. As the original absolute, unique, unchanging and eternal being, God created people by breathing His love into them to endow them with a soul. If not for the Fall, we would have been able to perfect ourselves as God is perfect, to fulfill the way of absolute faith, absolute love and absolute obedience, and to attain eternal life.
But unfortunately, human beings are living as descendants of the Fall. In order to live a perfect life, all people without exception must receive life through the blessing from True Parents in the three stages of rebirth, resurrection and eternal life. Rebirth, in this context, refers to an individual attaining new life. Resurrection is when a family and nation attains new life, and eternal life refers to all of humankind attaining perfection and living forever in God's homeland after establishing the kingdom of heaven on earth and in the spirit world by attending True Parents, the King and Queen of Peace.
Your ancestors who are in the spirit world shall now return to this earth according to the time of the True Parents who directly govern all life and all things as the substantial entity of God who exists without form. They will go through the three-stage blessings of rebirth, resurrection and eternal life and complete the Original Divine Principle education -- the education on absolute marital fidelity -- organized by True Parents. Only then can they take part in the original authority of Seunghwa -- ascension and liberation -- and attain the qualifications to become citizens of Cheon Il Guk.
We can easily see that each person's life goes through three stages. Everyone is conceived through the grace of God and the love of his or her parents. The first stage of life is the long (yet short) nine months spent in the mother's womb. No one is exempt from this! Whether we are conscious of it or not at the time, all of us without exception spend nine months in our mother's womb. Even though a woman's womb is smaller than some rice cookers, from the perspective of a fetus, it is larger than the entire universe.
What about our birth into the second stage of our lives, which occurs on earth? How could we find words adequate to describe the struggle of a newborn baby as it is faced with a completely unfamiliar, new world? The first lonely cry of a newborn as it experiences the large and wide world that it finds upon exiting the womb represents the promise of a one-hundred-year future, the blessing and celebration of entering a new time and space.
We have all received the blessing of birth that enabled us to live in the second stage of our lives. Although a hundred years is much longer than the nine months we spend in the womb, please do not forget that there is still a course we must follow to a higher end. Although we have all forgotten the standard of consciousness that we possessed in our mother's womb, and though you may think that we are now enjoying our lives fully in this big, wide world with a higher standard of consciousness, there is yet one final stage of our lives, which is the way toward eternal life.
That third stage occurs in the world of eternal life, the spirit world, which we enter upon ending our life on this earth. We were originally meant to enter the spirit world having first perfected our spirits during our life on earth. It is a world that cannot be imagined by people descended from the Fall, a world in which we transcend time and space. Just as the fetus in his or her mother's womb cannot imagine life on earth, we, as people living and breathing air in this earthly world, cannot easily understand the spirit world, where we will be reborn in our spiritual bodies, living and breathing true love.
Ladies and gentlemen, as people face death, they may tremble in fear and terror if they do not understand the true meaning of passing on. Although human history has continued for more than six thousand years, no one, unfortunately, has clearly taught the truth regarding death. Now, in the Last Days of history, I have been able to reveal this truth, this heavenly secret, as the True Parent of humankind.
Ladies and gentlemen, the word "death" is sacred. It is not a synonym for "sadness and suffering." True Parents have created the term Seunghwa [ascension] to explain the true significance of death. The moment we enter the spirit world should be a time that we enter a world of joy and victory with the fruits born of our lives on earth. It is a time for those of us remaining on earth to send off the departed with joy. It should be a time for great celebration. We should be shedding tears of joy instead of tears of sadness. That is the way of the sacred and noble Seunghwa Ceremony. The Seunghwa Ceremony is the first step the spirit of the departed takes toward enjoying eternal life in attendance of God, within His embrace. At the moment of death, our spirits should feel more excited and thrilled than a newlywed bride feels when she goes to her groom's home for the first time.
In order to open the door for all people to experience this kind of precious eternal life, I held a Seunghwa Ceremony at the United Nations headquarters in New York on March 18 in honor of world leaders who had recently passed into the next world. The following are the names of those commemorated on that occasion:
General Alexander Haig, a former U.S. secretary of state, who with the UN forces saved my life by leading the bombing of the North Korean Hungnam Special Labor Camp where I was imprisoned during the Korean War;
Mr. Kim Dae-jung, a former South Korean president, who won the Nobel Peace Prize;
Mr. Hédi Annabi, a Tunisian diplomat and head of the UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti, who died in the 2010 Haitian earthquake; the one hundred UN workers who died alongside Mr. Annabi;
Mr. Rodrigo Carazo Odio, a former president of Costa Rica, who is known internationally as "the Peace President";
Mr. Abdurrahman Wahid, a former president of Indonesia, who gave his entire life for the sake of his great nation;
Mr. Steingrimur Hermannsson, a former prime minister of Iceland, who helped host the meeting of then Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev and United States President Ronald Reagan, which accelerated the end of the Cold War;
Shaykh Hassan Cissé of Senegal, who is respected as a great scholar of Islamic authority; and
Mr. Laxmi Mall Singhvi of India, who is praised as the "Ambassador of Reconciliation and Peace" by India's 1.1 billion people.
There are other people whom we would especially like to remember through this ceremony and send to the spirit world with the Seunghwa Blessing. I'm sure you have already heard about the recent sinking of the ship Cheonan in Korea where 46 sailors suddenly lost their lives in the course of duty. During my four-city speaking tour in Korea in April, my wife and I bestowed the grace of the Seunghwa Blessing on these unfortunate seamen who died.
Later, during another event at Las Vegas, USA, I bestowed the Seunghwa Blessing on one Dr. Reiko Kawasaki, a 17th-generation descendant of Tokugawa Ieyasu, the last shogun in Japanese history, who united the Japanese archipelago in the 17th century. She was a medical doctor from Las Vegas, and recently passed away after living a life of continuous service to others. Before her passing, she played an important role for the sake of the realization of world peace by setting a foundation for the future resolution of various issues in Korea, Japan and the United States, including political and economic issues. Thus, I have included her in the list of those who will receive this sacred Seunghwa Blessing.
Distinguished leaders, although the lives of the people whose names I mentioned were altruistic and philanthropic, none of them can be guaranteed entry into the world of eternal life without receiving the marriage blessing and the Seunghwa Blessing of the True Parent [Rev. Moon] in this world today, in which the parent-child relationship between God and humankind was severed due to the Fall of the first ancestors. Please take this point seriously.
Ladies and gentlemen, this era, when God has introduced the heavenly calendar, is a serious one. It is now the time in which all 6.5 billion of the world's people must understand my teachings, which I bequeath as the True Parent who is responsible to give eternal life to all of humankind. Now is a time that you can share the good news of the coming of the True Parents throughout the entire world. The time has come to honor and inherit the tradition and spirit of the Korean people, from which the True Parents emerged, establish the heavenly tradition, and bring about world peace by uniting all 6.5 billion people of the world with the United Nations. With the start of the heavenly calendar, please do not forget that the Seunghwa Blessing Ceremony is a sacred rite in which anyone can inherit the worldview of a holy citizen of the kingdom of heaven and celebrate God's liberation and all humankind's liberation.
In this way, the ideal of a family based on true love can be completed, and God and all people, the heavenly spirit world and the earthly physical world, can be completely united to usher in a reign of peace over the world. Please take this time to express your gratitude to God and True Parents for giving the keys of the Blessing Ceremony and Seunghwa Ceremony to all the worlds' nations, allowing for the establishment of the traditions of God's kingdom, Cheon Il Guk, through True Parents.
Please join me in giving a round of applause to our Heavenly Father for His benevolence, through which we can receive the grace of precious life without Him asking for anything in return.
One Family Under God
Ladies and gentlemen, what is the path that humankind should take today? Even now tens of millions of innocent lives are being lost each year to war, disease, starvation and natural disasters that arise in all parts of the world. In every field you observe, from the individual to the collective level -- whether religion, politics, education, culture or ideology -- people are deeply mired in the swamp of self-centered egoism, raising walls around themselves. We now live in a world brought to ruin, where genuine communication has broken down.
Ultimately, the problems afflicting humanity can only be resolved through the worldview of One Family under God, in other words, the ideology based on true love, which my wife and I, the True Parents, have learned from Heaven and have championed and taught throughout our lives. This is the only way for humankind to find the path toward peace and happiness.
Ladies and gentlemen, we are living in a historic time of great cosmic transition. It is a time for a great cosmic revolution to change history, to unite the spiritual and physical worlds and to create the ideal kingdom of heaven that God has longed for since the beginning of time.
We can no longer postpone or prolong the fulfillment of His wish. I have already proclaimed that January 13, 2013 will be "Foundation Day." That day will be the actual beginning of God's Kingdom of Cheon Il Guk. That day will be the origin. Yet, less than three years remain until then.
Therefore, it is time for all people to be humbly obedient to Heaven's decree. An unavoidable time is upon us today when we must invest ourselves completely with a life or death commitment for these remaining three years under the guidance of the True Parents who carry out the providence on earth as the substantial representatives of God, the king of kings. All the good spirits in the spirit world are mobilized and are already moving forward, a step ahead of you.
Ladies and gentlemen, do you have any idea how much pain God suffered the moment our first ancestors, into whom God had invested His complete and unreserved devotion since time immemorial, fell and disappeared into darkness, becoming part of Satan's lineage? Are you even remotely aware that our Heavenly Father -- who endured tens of thousands of years of excruciating heartache so great that His bones shed tears and His flesh quivered -- had to go through the long, dark tunnel of indemnifying the human Fall in order to save His lost children? How many of you have spent days and nights in tears, yearning to comfort our Father in Heaven?
The Mission of the Korean People
Ladies and gentlemen, God raised and prepared the Korean people over a period of thousands of years. All people of the Christian faith recognize that God sent His true son Jesus Christ to earth two thousand years ago to save humankind. However, Jesus suffered a miserable fate.
The leaders of Judaism and the people of Israel were supposed to receive Jesus as the Messiah and follow him with absolute faith, absolute love and absolute obedience. They should never have allowed Jesus' crucifixion to take place.
He suddenly left this world, leaving behind the words, "It is finished." Yet these words apply to salvation in the spiritual reality only. After two thousand years of preparation, his Second Coming, on the Korean Peninsula, has finally borne the fruits of his labor.
From the past, the Korean people have worshiped God as the highest and primal ancestor of their forefathers. They called that single being and progenitor of all people the "One" -- in other words, God. They served Him as the lord (who created night and day). Thus, all numbers begin from one and two. With the sense that He is their original ancestor, the Korean people have served God and thus the spirit of interdependence, mutual prosperity and universally shared values is alive in the soul and tradition of the race. They have maintained themselves over five thousand years of history, yet not once have they invaded or plundered another nation or people. The spirit of benefiting all mankind still flows in the veins of the Korean people.
The spirit of filial piety, fidelity, and loyalty, which are the fundamental virtues of human life, are still alive and breathing in Korean history. These values can be found in the men and women of Korea and reflect the pride and spirit of the Korean people.
I have inherited such traditional values as the true filial piety exemplified in the folk tale Shimcheong, about a devoted daughter who offered her life so that her blind father could see; the profound love and fidelity displayed by Choonhyang, who overcame the fear of death in order to keep the promise she had made to her husband; and the unbreakable loyalty exhibited by Admiral Yi Soon-shin, who gave his life to save his nation and people despite being abandoned by his king and other leaders. These lofty Korean values and traditions are not just matters of historical chance. Based on these values, Heaven has prepared this people; this was all part of the providence of creating a foundation to send the returning Messiah. On the foundation of such preparation, and riding on the energy of this peninsula, I finally came, having received Heaven's seal as the True Parent of humankind and the king of kings.
The Path Humankind Should Take
Distinguished Guests, your Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen:
The path that humanity must now take is clear. What would give you cause to hesitate in the face of the D-day that Heaven has revealed through us, the True Parents? There are now only 903 days remaining. Heaven's blessings will be with you on your ambitious and busy course.
If you view the flow of history through eyes that focus on God's providence, you can see that the changes of the times can be broadly classified into three stages. First is the "era of worldly matters," in other words, a time when materialism took precedence. Next came the "era of human affairs," a humanistic era when peoples' knowledge and emotions took precedence in and dominated the world.
However, these eras were transitional. They were courses of preparation necessary in order to enter the era in which people could rid themselves of their fallen nature, return to their original selves and live as one united family where they attend God as their father.
The "era of heavenly affairs" is the final stage, in which human beings should follow the path of living for the sake of others. They should do this through establishing an absolute standard on the foundation of purifying themselves, both inside and out, through the holy Blessing Ceremony. This is the time of opening up the era of God's kingdom, Cheon Il Guk, a time in which we can return to the heart of the one true God. Please engrave this point on your hearts.
Once the actual era of Cheon Il Guk begins, the spiritual and earthly worlds will be connected and brought into oneness, and all things will be governed under the Union of the Spiritual and Physical Worlds, which will be established on earth for the first time. Moreover, the providence will be carried out according to the heavenly law and the heavenly way. Elections conducted in a purely secular fashion will disappear from the face of the earth. All people will become one family through cross-cultural marriage and the World Peace Marriage Blessing, and we will enjoy tranquility and happiness in the sacred reign of peace. Let me say it again: this day is drawing near.
As part of preparing for that time, a few months ago, on February 14, I proclaimed to all of heaven and earth the start of the new heavenly calendar. The Gregorian calendar and lunar calendar shall now stand in the positions of Cain and Abel and serve the role of supporting the heavenly calendar, by which we will record and indicate the progress of God's providence.
You must all now engrave True Parents' teachings onto your bones and practice them in your life. We have no choice. If we do not prepare now, we will surely be left behind. We should learn from the courage and fortitude of the white-necked cranes that fly across the Himalayas -- which are more than seven thousand meters high -- in preparation for winter.
My Final Words for Humankind
True Parents have already prepared the last words I will give to humankind. These have been prepared based on my triumphs over six or seven life-or-death situations, including six periods of unjust imprisonment. I am leaving behind eight textbooks and teaching materials for humankind to use for all eternity. Altogether, these are published in almost a thousand volumes.
They are:
The Sermons of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon,
Exposition of the Divine Principle,
Cheon Seong Gyeong [Heavenly Scripture],
The Family Pledge,
Pyung Hwa Shin Gyeong [Messages of Peace],
True Families -- Gateway to Heaven,
Owner of Peace and Owner of Lineage and
World Scripture.
Exposition of the Divine Principle,
Cheon Seong Gyeong [Heavenly Scripture],
The Family Pledge,
Pyung Hwa Shin Gyeong [Messages of Peace],
True Families -- Gateway to Heaven,
Owner of Peace and Owner of Lineage and
World Scripture.
These are textbooks you will have to read and study even after you go to the spirit world. They are not just teachings that come from the mind of one person; they are textbooks and teaching materials that teach the heavenly way that God has granted to His suffering children for their salvation.
You should now set up the Hoon Dok Hae study tradition in your families using the books I have mentioned. That is the tradition where three generations of a family start each day by reading Heaven's word, and lead a life of practicing what they read, with a new heart. Let's create a world where people in the spirit world and the earthly world can both attend True Parents at the same time, and read the word on the heavenly path together.
Once this happens, no matter how hard Satan may try to worm his way in to infest your lineage, once he encounters the Hoon Dok Hae tradition he will find no room to move. If a family is aligned with God as at high noon, where no shadow is cast, and still does not receive God's blessings, who then could be deserving of them? When such heavenly families fill the earth, the world will automatically become the heavenly kingdom on earth and in the eternal spirit world, fulfilling the vision of one family under God.
Ladies and gentlemen, last year, my memoirs, As a Peace-Loving Global Citizen, an honest and candid account of my life, were published. Through this book I share how I discovered God's will for humankind and the path that we, as God's children, should follow. My life has been a typical model of the saying, "If at first you don't succeed, try, try, try again." I have as much faith in this book as in the Hoon Dok textbooks and teaching materials I have mentioned. For this reason, I recommend it to you, believing that it will show you how to lead your lives according to true principles. It does not subtract or add anything to the ninety years of my life, which I have led under Heaven's decree. I pray you will carefully read this articulation of true love and find great inspiration.
I have already mentioned that a life of vertical "noon-time" alignment casts no shadow. If we can all shine as we live such glowing lives, there will be no chance for the shadow of sin to be cast. Those who receive the light will be indebted to the light. I pray that we can now wipe away the tears of people in misery and poverty, and lead an illuminated life of eternal true love that dissipates all darkness.
Proclamation of the Era of the Parents of Heaven, Earth and Humankind
Ladies and gentlemen, a month ago in Las Vegas, there was a special proclamation centered on God that was given by the True Parents of Heaven, Earth and Humankind on two separate days -- one part at 2:20 am on the 8th day of the 5th month of the Heavenly Calendar (June 19, 2010) and the other at 3:25 am, on the 15th day of the 5th month of the Heavenly Calendar (June 26, 2010).
The number 3 from 3:25 am represents the three eras from the saying "Success comes at the third attempt." It also symbolizes the Old, New and Completed Testament ages. Twenty-five minutes, or the number 25, is a quarter of one hundred. The True Parents have achieved ultimate unity and offered and proclaimed the era of [God's] full transcendence, full immanence, full authority and omnipotence upon the standard of perfection, completion and conclusion.
Furthermore, with the Seunghwa Ceremony for former United States secretary of state General Alexander Haig, I proclaimed that the ceremony for the victory of the first, second, and third Israels, which completed the ceremonies for rebirth, resurrection and Seunghwa during my lifetime, was transferred to Korea.
Thus, Korea will now become God's homeland and hometown. By proclaiming that Korea is God's homeland, the Convention to Proclaim the Word that Firmly Establishes the True Parents of Heaven, Earth and Humankind could be completed in Korea on July 8, 2010.
Through this proclamation ceremony, all the borderlines in the entire cosmos have been abolished. Consequently, centering on the autonomous God, heaven and earth shall exist eternally, night and day, under God's reign and with the support of the True Parents of Heaven, Earth and Humankind.
Distinguished guests, at this serious and important time, a revolutionary and cosmic change must now take place in your lives. Let us summarize the message Heaven has given to us today in light of this.
First, all blessed families should first attend God at the center of their families and every day carry out Hoon Dok education, which can completely unite parents and children. In other words, you should thoroughly teach the Divine Principle, the textbooks and teaching materials True Parents have bequeathed, True Father's autobiography, and absolute marital fidelity taught through the Original Divine Principle.
Second, Heaven has permitted the grace of the authority of Seunghwa for rebirth and resurrection to be bestowed on the family unit. Here, a requisite condition is the complete unity between parents and children. In other words, you must establish the standard for absolute parents and absolute children, and establish an absolute family.
Third, humankind has moved out of the authority of the era of restoration through indemnity, thanks to the grace of True Parents who have suffered hardships through which they sweat blood. Therefore, do not forget the fact that during True Parents' lifetimes we all have the responsibility to liberate families, tribes, peoples, nations and the world from the authority of hell. Now that the era of restoration through indemnity has ended, what kind of era is dawning? The reign of tranquility and prosperity in the victorious authority centered on God and True Parents shall be eternal.
Fourth, we are now entering the era of the authority of God's direct dominion. Ladies and gentlemen, I have said that less than three years remain until the D-day proclaimed by Heaven. I beg that you inscribe in your hearts the fact that we have entered the era of the authority of the cosmic Sabbath in which your family members in the spirit world shall return to the earth to receive the Original Divine Principle education, and where eight generations will live together in a single family. Aju!
Once again, I offer you my heartfelt thanks for your gracing this occasion with your presence and celebrating this providential event. I pray that you will live in good health and in the abundance of God's love. It is my hope that we can offer greater glory and honor to God the next time we meet.
I pray that the blessings of God, the king of kings, will be upon you, your family and your nation.
Thank you very much.
