Do you think that when the Lord comes upon this earth, he will utilize the people’s ideology and ideal as suggested by the system of government of each nation? It is in God’s plan that you are either in the camp of democracy or of Communism. It doesn’t make any difference. Each one of you has to be born again in a new consciousness, in a new universe — a new universal understanding and a new universal consciousness.
History seems to be running arbitrarily, without any cause, but we must solemnly realize there is a definite cause of history. The destiny of history will ultimately end in one world, if you know God. Today, we frequently speak about two worlds, and two is the nearest number to one. Today, we have in a way, a stalemate, a hopeless situation. Democracy cannot eradicate Communism. Communism cannot subjugate the entire free world. We have a stalemate. As this situation of stalemate is prolonged, there will be a moment of crisis for the free world. Communism is claiming totalitarianism. Its benefit and welfare is based on the total. On the other hand, democracy is based on the rights of the individual. The question before the free world today is how this individual centered concept of the universe can be developed or reestablished or reborn into the concept of heaven. If today’s conventional Christianity has to decline, then this must be the situation here in America. The time certainly has come when we have to start the new step — go beyond the conventional step. The new way is an absolutely new ideology that can disregard the situation of the present and go beyond it by revolutionizing. We have to get out of the dead end.
There are many Christians who anxiously desire to see the day of the coming of the Lord. If the Lord comes on the clouds of heaven, I know there will be no problem for this present world to accept him. But it is also possible that even after the Lord has come through the clouds of heaven and even after people meet him and realize that he is not their concept of the Messiah, some may not accept him at once. As I mentioned already, it is of vital importance that we must live with him, live with the Messiah, with the Lord, with the One. It is not only important to see him and meet him but it is important to stay with him. This is of ultimate importance. Therefore, America today has to develop a new way of life in which there is room for him.
You might some time meditate upon the situation we would have if history repeated itself. Think that your founding fathers’ time was repeated now. The pilgrim fathers came upon this land in a life or death effort to settle it. Are you willing and ready to join them in that circumstance? You know that the situation of the world today is difficult and confused. Many people have the erroneous idea that when the Lord comes, he will employ supernatural power to eliminate every single bit of evil at once and that in the very short period of one lifetime the world will be completely restored by him. If that is God’s way, He would not have had to wait until today. How could God have abandoned man 6,000 years ago?
A nation has laws which prevent the pronouncement of death sentences without a logical way of holding a trial and reasonable and logical proof of the crime. By the same token, universal order cannot be conducted arbitrarily. There are stern rules and principles of God involved. The law of God is the law of justice. It cannot be avoided or compromised. Then, when God sends His Ultimate One to earth, do you think that the Ultimate One will change everything to good in a second? No! The answer is No! The Lord will not appear to you initially as the lord of glory. No, he will come with his divine creative work and genius which he will put into effect slowly but surely, and with his sweat and blood he will construct his kingdom, not just bring it down with him. And all the people of the world will know that their Lord has come. He will exercise his power and judge the world. Judgment means the judgment of Satan.
Do you know the real identity of Satan? Satan has been aggravating God for the last 6,000 years and has been aggravating Jesus and the Holy Spirit for the last 2,000 years. Do you think such an enemy will just give up everything and fall quickly in front of you? No. In order to subjugate Satan, we must be greater and stronger and deeper in every respect. We must be qualified and confident. We must be greater than Satan in every qualification. All right. You will receive the command from the Lord to go out to fight against Satan and exterminate him. Suppose you have that command. How well equipped are you at the present time? What strength do you have? If you have a command from the Lord, you should have appropriate weapons and ability to comply. Are your weapons and abilities good enough?
As a symbolic example, we know that Jesus had to take the cross because something was lacking, and today no one seems to have the ability to destroy Satan. Do you know how Jesus Christ subjugated Satan? There was a sharp contrast between the desires of Jesus and those of Satan. Satan wanted to have the center position of the world. He wanted to be the Lord. He wanted everyone to focus upon him, but Jesus would not. Jesus offered an alternative. Jesus focused upon God and taught others to do the same. This difference gave Jesus the weapon to subjugate Satan. Jesus’ battle was tough and rugged, a suffering one, leading him up the hill of Calvary bearing the cross. So in order to return we have to come by the same road. Jesus nailed himself upon the cross as a sacrifice. Therefore, ultimate victory will be won when we nail our enemy, Satan, to the cross. Therefore, the Lord has to gather strength by sustaining and encouraging his disciples. With the same view of the cross upon the hill of Calvary, they must expand the size of the dispensation to the tribe, the nation, and the world. If the Lord comes and calls you, will you join in this trip for the final glory of God? Now, initially you must suffer. You must go this way. Does your conscience tell you to go with him? The Divine Principle movement does not call for glory but calls for the cross.
You have an erroneous idea if you think the Lord will come, take up your problems and help you while you take it easy. No. The Lord comes to give you the awakening, the brand-new awakening, in which you will be called to drink the bitter cup, because this is the way God has been working. In other words, the Lord is not coming to give you big baskets of fruit. No, he is coming to invite you to take the road of sacrifice — the road of servant to the nation and to the world. And I humbly, as the Leader of the Divine Principle movement, have already trodden this rugged road. After knowing the will of God and His heart so deeply, I am amazed at how far away from the true will of God the present world seems to be. After knowing, let us look at two individual examples.
There is that person who wants just the Lord of Glory. He wants a religious purpose focused upon simply thinking that he is already in heaven. By contrast, there is the person who understands the agony of the heart of God, and, knowing that His dispensation is not finished and His will is not done, he asks to take the burden of the cross upon his shoulder — to carry it over the hill of Calvary by way of the thorny path. From the viewpoint of God, which person would you choose? Which type would you need as your comrade? We do not need the one who just hopes and desires. John the Baptist, his mother, Elizabeth, the wise men, and Anna were of this type. By contrast, those we do need are those who, after discovering the Lord, stayed with him to do his work and live with him. If those people who, in their way, betrayed Jesus had remained with him, had truly known him, had helped with his manual work, had worked, sweated, eaten, and slept with him, they would have been given great blessing and the crown of glory. In other words, if they had suffered alongside the Lord in the physical life, God would have bestowed great blessings upon them. If all the prophets who knew of the coming of the Messiah and who knew the identity of Jesus had, through adequate determination and decision, stayed with Jesus, lived the physical life, suffered together, laughed and rejoiced together, then the history of Christianity would have been far different. In fact, Jesus would not have been crucified.
So, I give the implication, and the general outline, of the direction in which the Divine Principle movement is heading. Whether you like it or not, whether you are awake or asleep, the time is coming when according to God’s plan, God will meet men and men will meet God, and they will unite together. This time will come in the course of history. And there is One who is promised for this purpose, with this mission, the One for whom humanity has been agonizingly and tearfully waiting for 6,000 years. He is the One whose mission is to fulfill God’s hope and desire by physically establishing God’s home here on earth so that God can dwell with us, as Revelation says.
History will start anew from that time, and that will be God’s victory. And from the new beginning, the Promised One will become the ultimate forefather, the Father of mankind. He will be the mediator. Through him you can be united with God. Through him God is united with you. The will of the Father was exactly parallel to the will of Jesus Christ. This true will, by the same token, will be parallel to the will of all men. God wants so much to have His Son on earth with mankind. God wants to have you and all men eagerly hope and search for His True Son. Then God wants to meet both His True Son and mankind as they are united together. God has wanted, with all His heart, to see the Leader, the Son of God, physically dwelling here on earth. And we must realize how much God wanted Jesus to fulfill his mission so that God’s home on earth could be established.
God has many, many plans, even extending into eternity. His renewed plan of the ideal of creation was focused upon Jesus. As God was desirous of Jesus’ success, so your heart must be crying out to meet that Ultimate One who is coming. Your heart must be burning, rededicating and recommitting you by saying, “Wherever he leads me, I shall go. I am ready!” You must have that fervent view and desire that you will never depart from him, that you will stay with him through eternity. Therefore, your searching, your desire, your hope for him should be many times greater than any desire you can have for worldly things. In other words, you have many desires and many hopes which unfold in your life, but your desire for him must be much, much greater.
The old world was not up to his expectation. Consequently, in your desire and longing for God’s Son, you should be searching beyond this present world. When God looked upon His entire universe, He loved it with infinite love, so it is with infinite love that God loves the people of the world today. God has endured 6,000 biblical years and still loves you this way. How much do you think God loves Christianity today? God’s love toward all these things is infinite, limitless. God has been longing and searching too. Father has been searching for His lost children. That is the very ideology that Jesus brought to this world. God’s people long to see the Christ and long for his world and his love. Since this universe is God’s, it belongs to Christ, and when you belong to Christ, this world belongs to you.
I am fully capable of carrying out such a mission. Can you face it? Although, God and Jesus love America dearly, they love the rest of the world as well. In view of this, should you focus on American alone? If you love beyond this limitation, if you love every corner of this entire world, will you be criticized? No. When you love God’s whole world, His entire creation, God loves you more than ever.
If you have a desire to see God, meet God, and live with God, do you know the first thing you have to do? You do His will. You go out to the place where other people hesitate to go and you say, “Oh, Father, since I love this world, I’m willing to go anywhere under any circumstances, and love your people. Just let me go.” And if you have this attitude, commit your wholehearted love toward Him, then you are the one. You are the closest one to the heavenly Father. Through such people, the ideal of God, and His hope and His desire will become the reality upon this earth. In the Divine Principle movement, we long to serve the Lord and we also long for the restoration of all people in the world. Yes, our love is full for this world.
Use your very longing, very desire, very love for the Lord in the salvation of all humanity, including even the most miserable people. You must go to the miserable and love them as much as you love the Lord. You must love your fellow humans with the same intensity that you love the Lord. Love both with a single love.
After the resurrection, Jesus asked Simon Peter, “Do you love me more than these?” and Peter answered, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.” Do you know the next command of Jesus? Jesus repeated three times the same question and when Peter replied, “Yes, Lord,” then Jesus commanded, “Feed my sheep.” Jesus wanted his undying love. Jesus wanted the disciple, not as a follower, but to be as Jesus himself. Jesus wanted his disciple to be another Jesus. Jesus wanted his disciple to be not merely a follower but to become as perfect, and as great as he was himself. In my own experience, after a long life of prayer, I discovered that this is the real way to serve God. Be not just a follower, not just a receiver of the command, but be one with God, be one with Christ. So, do not hope to go into an already prepared heaven. There is no such heaven. You must create, construct, and reconstruct a heaven of your own. Then heaven is automatically yours. You are within the limit of the Divine Principle movement now. We have no nationality, we have no boundary because there is no boundary in your heart. In the background of the history of civilization we see revolutionary plans of action. Does any good come of this? Although we desire to see the Christ, we also long for the world to be restored. As much as you desire to live with the Lord and have him accept your soul, you likewise desire to have the world transformed by restoration. You associate your own interest with the interest of the world. Your intensive compassion goes to the world, bringing God’s kingdom here on earth to humanity.
Wherever you go, you will find God. He is wherever you are doing your work. Likewise, Jesus and the Holy Spirit are found at the battleground, not at the rest camp. The keys to the Kingdom of Heaven are not be found where you sit to relax, but they are to be found in the battle. Thus, the longing to see, the longing to go, and the longing to live with are desires which, before being made known to God, should be cried out to the world. I want you to know that as much as you love me, please love the world even more. If you have the desire to see me and meet me, please first concern yourself with the 180 million of your brothers and sisters in America. Before you rejoice with me, please rejoice with your brothers and sisters. If you do this, you will find that I am always there.
God is seeking that kind of person. Are you desiring to be the one to fulfill this mission? Do you think you can take up this responsibility? If you do this, if you take up this responsibility, you seem to be leaving everything, losing everything, destroying yourself. You seem to be losing everything, but you are the one who is really gaining. Even though you cry to God with compassionate love for the world, for your people and the world, your mission could fail for some reason. Even if your mission were to become a fiasco, this would not be the final outcome. God would send a greater one to fulfill the responsibility of the mission in your name. When you hear my personal life story, you will know that the greater part of it is nothing but tears, nothing but crying, nothing but thorny paths. Many times I had to boost myself up and rededicate myself, and in my heart recommitment came.
May I say, then: I am a visitor to the United States, and this is my first trip to this country. Yet, I am the one who loves you and loves America most. I am not concerned with the present America, what you earn and what you own, but I am concerned with the America of tomorrow, for the future America. There is no one who has shed more tears. There is no one who has knelt down in prayer more than I have. I have done this because I have absolute command and authority from Him, and I have absolute compassion and I beseech you from my own heart. I know what I am doing.
God is using the youth of America today, and God will continue to use them. But the youth of America today are not good enough to serve His purpose. Revolution! There must be a revolution of the person. The heart of each American youth must burn so that a new concept of the universe and new awakening awareness will come to the individual in order to be used by God. I know that if you really follow the Divine Principle movement you will love this country most, this nation most, this people most and you will really be ready to give yourselves up for the welfare of the entire notion. And I know from reports about some Divine Principle members that they are so poor that they cannot afford even one meal a day, and that they sell their blood in order to buy food. Many in the Divine Principle movement are living in such circumstances now.
If you have faith in God, don’t you see that God is with them? The Korean youth who are in the Divine Principle movement currently live lives of hardship, but they see that perhaps within a few years, perhaps within a decade, the world must surrender to this ideology. I have asked the Korean youth if they are ready and willing to bear an even heavier cross than the one that was borne by Jesus. Compare your standard with the standard that I enforce upon the Korean youth in the initial movement of the Divine Principle. Even though you are within the scope of the Divine Principle movement in what you have accomplished and in what you are struggling for, there is much further to go. I may give you the entire world as a gift, but if the value of the gift doesn’t last more than a year or two, I don’t know why I should have the desire to give you such a gift. I do not want to give you any lesser gift, so I bring you the gift which is the desire, the longing after God, the desire for Christ. With that desire you can willingly make any sacrifice, endure any hardship that might be required of you.
If you have this commitment and this determination, and if I give it to you as a gift, you are the recipient of the greatest gift ever known and one which will not desert you within a year or two but will go on eternally. Do not be discouraged. Even though sometimes you feel that there is no God, know that He is always present. With that feeling you must remember that God is with you. When you feel, “Oh, there is no God. I’m hopeless, I’m discouraged. Nobody talks to me, even God doesn’t look at me,” you must feel God is close to you, closely watching you. In that hour when you would think that you are apart from God, say, “My heart is full and rich. I have God. I am full of grace.”
When I was in the most critical emergency of being tortured in prison, I did not want to pray to God about this miserable situation. While the situation was unnatural, I knew that God was near. I knew His presence even without praying. In that circumstance of being close to death it was not difficult to feel that God wasn’t looking at me or looking after me. But I definitely knew that God was there and was preparing to deliver me in an unexpected way. When I was in tears, unexpectedly God sent me comfort. I was in prison under the Communist regime. The hard, inhuman way in which they treated me is beyond your imagination. Under that circumstance, even, I felt that God was always there and was comforting me. One time I wondered if I died in this manner who would take over my mission. But today I’m showing you the miracle that I’m here to carry out the mission which at that time seemed to be impossible.
Many times I knew that I was dying. As I was dying I thought that the mission was terminated, but a miracle brought me through. Who did this? Father! God!
Under such circumstances we really discover God. We want to know God as Father, not as Master. When we go through a crisis or some other miserable circumstance, you call God “Father” and He calls you “Son.” And there is a promise. Oh, this promise can never be broken. This is real. Only then can God claim you as His true Son, My Son, Son of God. That recognition can be earned only in such a situation. And Satan cannot say anything. You are as free of Satan’s accusation as if he were not there. Satan has nothing to do with it.
During my torture in prison, arrogant Satan said to God, “Oh, God, he is really your Son. I have no power whatsoever over him. He is yours. ”
Oh, what a profoundly significant experience that I embrace the Father and the Father embraces me in this circumstance. I wish that I could more fully share this experience.
I thank you.