Rev. Sun Myung Moon

Interreligious and International Federation for World Peace
Governance and the Role of Religion in Peace and Security:
Toward an Interreligious Council at the United Nations

September 21, 2002
New York, New York
Founder's Address

God's Fatherland and the One World

Respected current and former heads of state, leaders of religion, politics, and academia from around the world, renowned diplomats and leaders of the United Nations:

In addition to the IIFWP Convocation, another reason for your gathering here today, with your hearts yearning for world peace, is to commemorate the International Day of Peace. On this profoundly significant occasion, as the Founder of the Interreligious and International Federation for World Peace, I would like to convey a message regarding God's original ideal. The title is, "God's Fatherland and the One World."

Why We Must Establish God's Kingdom

God has spoken of "His Kingdom and His righteousness," but people living on the earth today have not been able to find it. It is important to know that humanity today, just as it has for many thousands of years of human history, fervently desires the establishment of God's Kingdom and His righteousness.

How is it, then, that the Kingdom and the righteousness that we have fervently desired remain unfulfilled goals? The reason is that human beings committed the fall. As a result of the human fall, God and humanity, who originally could have formed the center of His Kingdom and His righteousness, found themselves in circumstances that prevented their forming a relationship with each other. Human beings did not know much about our Father, the center of His Kingdom or His righteousness. Hence, God has labored throughout the course of history to enlighten these ignorant people and to teach us about Himself. In this context, establishing His Kingdom and His righteousness remains our fervent desire and goal.

There exist many nations in today's world. Yet, not even one can truly receive love from God. For this reason, God wants to negate this fallen world and recreate His new Kingdom. God has conducted His providence to establish a nation. God cannot accomplish His will for human restoration without cooperation from a nation. There must be a true state that is centered on true religion. Hence, in the fullness of time, God established a particular nation and religion, the chosen people of Israel and Judaism.

What is the character of the nation that fulfills our fervent desire for the Kingdom of God? It is not like the nations in which you now are living. Someday, we will have to leave these nations.

We do not yet have God's Kingdom. A person without a nation does not have a permanent domicile, a nationality, or the possibility to register as a citizen. For this reason, we must accomplish the establishment of God's Kingdom in the present world. We must construct the heavenly kingdom on the earth. We must live on the earth as citizens of this nation. In that nation we lead our own families and kin, and inherit the lineage of the true and good parents who love their country and their nation as victorious sons and daughters. Only in that way will we enter the Kingdom of Heaven in the spiritual world. This is God's Principle.

Only when there is a nation will we be able to bequeath a tradition that remains with our descendants into eternity. Only when there is a nation will the blood and sweat we shed live on. Only when there is a nation will men and women build a monument praising Heaven for God's work on this earth, and only then will every trace of glory remain. If there is no nation, it all will have been for nothing. This is why we must understand that the establishment of God's Kingdom is our most important task.

We must live with the constant conviction that "Our family is protecting the nation that is qualified to receive the love of the True Parents. So I must be a filial child of the True Parents and fulfill the way of the patriot for the nation." It means that we must receive the love of God and True Parents. We cannot receive God's love unless we have a nation. This is because only after we have been victorious over Satan's rule over the nation can God's Kingdom be established.

God's Kingdom is the Cherished Desire of All People

We cherish God's Kingdom. Why is this? It is because it is the place where there is love. It is the place where we can find a love that is not transitory but lives eternally, transcending time. Also, it is the place where we can be lifted up, and where our value is recognized to the fullest extent. It is the place where we can be happy eternally. These are the reasons that people yearn for the Heavenly Kingdom and long to see it.

We must travel the path that we truly want to travel, and we must build the nation in which we want to live for all eternity. If we possess riches, they must be only those that are guaranteed to belong to the cosmos at the same time that they belong to us, and to belong to the past and future at the same time that they belong to the present. We must also possess the authority and knowledge such that when we weep, heaven and earth will weep with us, and when we are joyful, heaven and earth can share our joy. This is the highest desire and cherished hope that fallen humanity must establish in the present age.

Everyone should be able to live in his or her own nation. This is an absolute right and requirement bestowed on human beings. Everyone without exception must live a life filled with a cherished desire for God's Kingdom and His righteousness. This means that we must paint a picture of the ideal world with our thoughts, and in our daily life follow the path of living for the sake of His Kingdom and His righteousness.

Do you have such a nation? Because you do not, you must now establish such a nation. What kind of nation did I say this would be? It will be a nation of ideals, a nation of unity. It will be a nation that all people can enter. In the work to establish this nation, no one is excluded. The family, clan, nation, and world all will cooperate. This is how each individual can become unified internally, and can establish unity within families, clans, societies, nations, and the world.

God must accomplish the purpose of His providence on the earth without fail. What, then, will be the result? It will be that God will be able to save all people and exercise His dominion over the world. The purpose of the providence cannot be anything other than the hope for this to come to pass.

If you are unable to complete the task of restoring a nation on the earth, then in the spirit world you will not possess the value of a person of the Kingdom of Heaven. You must take with you to the next life the achievement and qualification of having been ruled under God's dominion on earth. This is the original standard of God's creation.

I envy nothing of this world. I have no interest in the things of this world. My lifelong cherished desire has been this: "Shouldn't I be able to die in a nation where God can protect me? If I do not bring this about during my lifetime, then will not mine have been a miserable life? I must establish this nation before I die and live there, even if only for a single day."

For the sake of that single day, I am willing to offer the sacrifices made over thousands of days. You might rest, because you do not understand these things, but I keep going. Even if you cannot do it, I still must do it, even if it requires mobilizing people from other countries. If one nation cannot do it, I must work through other countries to carry out an indirect strategy.

What is the purpose of our faith? It is that we become citizens of God's Kingdom. If we are not citizens of His Kingdom, we are not free to relate with pride to all people and the creation. We are not free to receive their love. A person without a nation is always vulnerable. He stands in a pitiful position. He may suffer unjustly for any number of reasons. This is why we need to know where to find the nation of God's desire; that is, the nation that will serve as God's foothold in the world. This is the essential issue.

Ultimately, we should be able to shed blood and sweat for the sake of the people of this nation, for the sake of building the eternal heavenly kingdom, and for the sake of building a prosperous society about which our descendants will sing praise through all eternity.

Without a doubt, the children of God's direct lineage will exercise kingly authority in this nation, based on their mandate from Heaven that carry God's full authority. This Kingdom will recognize democracy and communism as failed systems. Once formed, this Kingdom will endure forever.

When you consider this, aren't you distressed about not being citizens of this Kingdom? I believe we should be lamenting the fact that we are not able to live in such a nation. We must repent that we have not acquired this unique and unchanging kingship.

In attempting to establish such a kingship, nation, and territory, human beings have established numerous kingdoms. We know that during this process, many people have died, many common people were sacrificed, many countries were destroyed, and royal authority changed hands many times. Among the people who were sacrificed, there can be no doubt that those on Heaven's side, the sorrowful souls who were sacrificed for this purpose, still long for the establishment of such a Kingdom and such a world.

God's Providence to Establish His Kingdom

We have come to know that after the human fall, Satan, not God, exercised dominion over history. God, however, was originally supposed to be the master of this world. If clans and states formed by families of God's direct children had built the world, and if they had maintained the relationship of love with God, then God would have been able to exercise His dominion over the world, over every nation, over every family, and over every individual. Because of the human fall, however, all individuals, families, clans, societies, nations, and the world now stand in opposition to God. This is the history and world brought about by the fall.

If we leave the world as it is, the world of eternal love expressing God's ideal of creation will not come about. But because God, as the Absolute Being, cannot establish His original authority unless He accomplishes His original will, He has used His position as the standard to bring the world of evil under control and lead it to become the world of His original ideal. This has been God's providence with respect to the fallen world.

There are many nations on the earth today that belong to the fallen sovereignty, but there is not even one that is aligned with God's fervent desire. In order to establish a nation through which He can accomplish His will, God has been working throughout history to guide people without their awareness. God created Adam and raised him toward perfection with the desire to have one being through whom He could exercise dominion over all families, societies, and the world. As a result of Adam's fall, however, the history that began in oneness was broken into innumerable pieces. The history of salvation has been a process of arranging and connecting all the pieces.

Since Adam was the ancestor of all human beings, losing Adam as a single individual was the same as losing the entire whole. So God needs to call and establish Adam again. The person who is established must be someone who is able to forsake and forget his clan and nation and live exclusively for God's will.

Let us examine this in the context of the origin of the history of Christianity. Jesus, because of Israel's disbelief and persecution, was forced into a life of wandering. He was unable to fulfill the hope that speaks both to the spirit and the flesh. But the Messiah comes with the mission to break down all barriers in heaven and earth and bring about a single unified whole. God wills absolutely that we establish the principled state required by heavenly law, and that states structured by principles of the fallen world pass away. God's fervent hope in Adam was not confined to Adam as an individual, but extended to bringing about a family, clan, society and nation from Adam.

When the Messiah's efforts to build a true nation were shattered, Israel suffered enormously. So the Lord who comes again is responsible to perfect Adam and fulfill the mission of the Messiah. This person is responsible to perfect the family, clan, society, nation, and world rooted in Adam.

God sent His beloved sons and daughters to the earth to push history forward, toward establishing the nation that is absolutely one. But at the present moment there is no prepared foundation on which the one nation can be restored. Because of repeated failures, God has sent heavenly persons to the earth to carry out, push forward, and accomplish this task. This has been the history of the providence of restoration.

We must be grateful, even if God sacrifices us as individuals. Even if He sacrifices our families, clans, societies and nations, we must be grateful. Only when such a true individual and a true nation are created can order be brought to the world. If God's Kingdom cannot be built on the foundation of sacrifices made by an individual, then the sacrifice must extend past the individual to the family, clan, and society.

As He carried out the providence to establish His Kingdom, even God has been governed by this principle. Thus, His strategy is that, if an individual were to appear who could live for the sake of the Kingdom, then the family that inherited this person's individual tradition would make the next sacrifice for the sake of the Kingdom, and then a clan and a people would inherit the tradition of this family and sacrifice themselves for the sake of the Kingdom. This is how God has carried out the providence to establish His Kingdom.

For what purpose were we born on this earth? We were born to love God's Kingdom. Also, God's love for that Kingdom has motivated Him in carrying out His providence.

Jesus and God's Kingdom

Citizens of a nation that has no sovereignty are in a pitiful situation. This concerned Jesus, and so he told us: "Therefore do not be anxious, saying, `What shall we eat?' or `What shall we drink?' or `What shall we wear?' For the Gentiles seek all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things shall be yours as well." (Matthew 6: 31-33) Did he say we should seek after having a son first? Or was it God's Kingdom? Jesus told us to seek after the Kingdom that God seeks.

God's fervent desire to establish His Kingdom and His righteousness cannot be accomplished apart from human beings and the creation. In fact, it is only through human beings that it can be accomplished. God desires to be harmonized with the creation through true human beings. That is why God sent Jesus to this earth as a substantial being who could represent the Lord before fallen humanity and bring forth Heaven's lineage. Jesus was the first person who had the purpose of accomplishing God's fervent historical desire on earth.

Jesus was God's son, the first established in this position after 4,000 years of preparation. He was the son of God living on the earth in the midst of a nation centering on Judaism with the seed of the family of Joseph. The satanic side already had established nations and was attacking the side of Heaven, so Heaven's side also needed a nation standing on a complete foundation. That is why God labored for 4,000 years to form that single nation. The fruit of God's labor was to have come about by the people of Israel accepting Jesus and forming a worldwide foundation. This was to have led to the establishment of a world centered completely on God and Jesus on earth. Because Jesus died prematurely, however, this world was established only spiritually.

Centering on his three-year public life, Jesus attempted to indemnify everything that had been lost centering on Judaism. Jesus was crucified, however, and Israel, which had been established as a substantial body on the earth, as God's national foundation in both spirit and flesh, also perished. Because Jesus was killed, Christianity could achieve only the spiritual foundation of a nation, and the Israelites became a people without a nation, forced to wander the world as an object of the satanic world's derision. This is why we cannot find a nation that is truly Christian in spirit and flesh. So the Lord who comes again must restore the 4,000-year providence by which God created the nation of Israel, and restore all that was lost through the disbelief of the Israelites that resulted from their ignorance.

Jesus came to establish a nation, one nation. He was not able to establish this nation both in spirit and flesh; he established it only in spirit. That is why Christianity today does not have a substantial nation on the earth. This means that God cannot turn to any nation or any people on earth and say, "My beloved nation, my beloved people." This tells us that the foundation for God's Kingdom has not yet been built on this earth. If at the time of Jesus, the nation of Israel had become one centering on Jesus, then that nation would have been God's Kingdom centering on His son, Jesus, and God would have restored the world centering on that nation. As a result of Jesus' death, that is, as a result of the loss of the substantial body, the foundation to connect spirit and flesh on the earth could bear fruit only spiritually.

Until now Christians have been like a people without a country, so they have suffered death everywhere they have gone. Christianity grew through the blood of martyrs. Because of the manner in which Christianity was planted in the world, it could not grow except by the blood of martyrs. Now the time of shedding blood and receiving persecution is over. Instead of dying away and disappearing, however, there has appeared a way of thinking that yearns for God's Kingdom and eagerly awaits the coming Lord in order to establish the lost substantial nation on the basis of Christianity's spiritual foundation. This is the expectation of the Second Coming.

Even Jesus is waiting in Paradise. We need to know that he has not yet gone before Heaven's throne. Jesus needed to establish national sovereignty before God, rule over a nation, and build a nation that would possess the authority to go directly from earth to Heaven. Because he was not able to build such a nation, Jesus cannot stand before God. So Paradise became the "waiting room" on the way to Heaven. Heaven is a place where no one can enter alone. If the fall had not occurred, we would have gone to Heaven as blessed families, centering on Adam and Eve. We must go there along with our sons and daughters.

In order to restore this through indemnity, God has been fighting for 2,000 years to build a foundation that can connect to the world. Where there is no national standard, though, who will inherit the foundation of the nation? To find such spiritual people and make the necessary preparations, God is working through a new religious movement centering on Christianity.

Respected religious leaders: As humanity enters the third millennium, it is receiving heavenly fortune anew. I hope that all religious people will join their hearts together and follow through on my proposal to establish a council within the United Nations composed of representatives from various religions, parallel with the General Assembly. If there is one lofty task that the United Nations can perform for the sake of humankind, it would be to contribute to humanity's spiritual recovery on the foundation of God's true love.

For this purpose, I have chosen leaders of good conscience from not only the religious field but also from government, philosophy, business, culture and other fields, and provided true love education that teaches "the life lived for the sake of others." On this foundation, I have already appointed tens of thousands of Ambassadors for Peace. All around the world, they carry the banner of the Interreligious and International Federation for World Peace that I founded. They are devoting their full efforts to bringing about the world of peace that is the fervent desire of God and humankind. It will not be long before the will of the almighty, omniscient and absolute God is accomplished.

I would like to conclude my remarks by asking that the leaders assembled here also become active participants in recreating your families and nations in true love and in bringing about an everlasting world of peace where there are no national boundaries.

I pray that Heaven's blessing may overflow in abundance upon you and your families.

Thank you.