The Origin of Peace is God

Dr. Hak Ja Han Moon

American Speaking Tour
September, 2002

Monday 16 September 2002
Washington DC

Respected peace loving American dignitaries, ladies and gentlemen, I extend my warm greetings and gratitude to all of you for coming here this evening. You are now joining more than seventy million people worldwide including seven million in Korea and seven hundred million blessed couples in the heavenly spirit world who have participated in these gatherings for peace.

We are living in a truly historic and providential moment. This is a time of great heavenly fortune, the time when we will build the ideal world of peace that Heaven and Earth have longed to see for six thousand years. It is time to build the Kingdom of God in Heaven and on earth.

Throughout providential history, God raised various religions to arise in accordance with different historical periods and regional cultures. Working among these diverse traditions, men and women of faith have made continuous efforts to achieve a world of peace.

Yet even today, human beings groan in travail, because we are still unable to free ourselves from all manner of unethical and immoral behavior. People everywhere are dismayed to face the truth that, having failed to stem the tide of immorality, it is now rushing in with the power of a surging storm, threatening to sweep us all away in its turbulent waves. This is the tragic self-portrait of the modern human being.

Does this mean there is no hope for us eternally? My husband, the Reverend Sun Myung Moon and I have dedicated our lives to conveying the Word of God. These prophetic messages have been proven to be a true witness that transcends the earthly limitations of this age and our environment.

Today, once again, I come before you with a message from Heaven. To believe or not to believe is for each of you to decide for yourself, but I stand here firmly resolved to act in God's stead to convey His message to the world in the time of the Last Days. The title of this message is, "God Is The Origin of Peace."

I sincerely hope that you will open the doors of your heart. I encourage you to humbly receive Heaven's warning to all of us living in the Last Days. In this age of ignorance and confusion, we must demonstrate wisdom.

In the beginning, human beings were created to live centered on God in the Garden of Eden, and to live in freedom and peace for eternity. However, as a result of the fall of our first ancestors Adam and Eve, the vision of this original world never became reality. Instead, from the day the fall occurred, a history of suffering and sorrow has unfolded on this earth.

God intended human beings to live with His true love and true ideals, but we were unable to grasp those ideals and did not even know what true love is. He wanted for us to sing songs of freedom and peace, and to possess the complete happiness of becoming one in heart in the presence of the Creator, and returning glory to Him. He intended us to live in an environment of perfect joy, but we lost the garden of happiness.

Tragically, we have not been able to become a holy people. Satan invaded the human family, defiling the relationships of true parents, true family and true brothers and sisters. Satan corrupted our true tribe, true society, true nation and true world.

That is not all. Satan is the one who has driven God Himself to spend the past six thousand years in a state of suffering and adversity. The fall marked the beginning of the history of death. From that day on, the earth became a world of suffering instead of a world of peace. No matter where in the world we live, we have been doomed to the way of conflict and struggle instead of peace.

Within the individual, there is continuous conflict between the mind and body. There has been conflict within families that has expanded into conflicts within nations and the whole world. Today we find there is no place on earth free of conflict. We need to come to terms with the fact that we are responsible for this history of sin. I repeat - all conflict is the result of the human fall.

If the whole world had originally grown from the good seed of a good tree and in a good environment, then without doubt, the world would today be a world of peace, a world of hope, and a world with a secure future. But this is not the case. We live in a world in which good and evil are tangled together. Even a good seed cannot bear good fruit when surrounded by an evil environment. The same is true for human beings. For humanity as a whole to be good, first it is necessary that each individual be good, but for them to bear fruit, we must create a good environment in the nation and world.

Just as creation passes through the four seasons, human history should continue eternally by revolving through cycles that are like the spring, summer, autumn and winter. Because of the fall, though, our world has never had that first moment of hope in which all humanity could take delight, the joyous springtime when we could greet the day of glory.

Cain and Abel, the children of our ancestors Adam and Eve, were not born out of God's love. Adam and Eve were to have created God's true lineage, but they created Satan's false lineage instead through the act of the fall. So the children they bore were not God's children but could only be children of the devil Satan.

Adam and Eve became the sinful ancestors of humanity, and the Bible records that they were chased out of the Garden of Eden. That is why in John 8:44, Jesus scolded the people, saying: "You are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father you will do."

Without the fall, Adam and Eve would have received God's words of blessing. He longed to tell them, "My beloved Adam and Eve, I created you in order to build a world fulfilling the purpose of creation, and to live in a garden of love. You are my children, and will be the masters, the parents, and the king and queen of peace and happiness." Adam and Eve, our ancestors, were destined to stand as the everlasting true owners, true parents, and true king and queen of both the earthly world and the heavenly world.

Then what was it that pushed human beings onto the path of the tragic fall? The fall took place when human beings took a self-centered view of themselves, instead of obeying God's Word. Today, the fruit of the fall is seen clearly in the extremes of selfish thinking and behavior that rage around us with impunity.

I am speaking of the reprehensible behavior of people routinely seeking their own benefit and convenience regardless of the position and situation of others. I refer to the shameless attitudes of people trying to save themselves without concern as to whether others live or die. These are examples of the type of behavior that brought about the fall.

This is certainly not the type of behavior planned by God at the time of creation. God did not desire to bring about such a world, and we did not want to be born into such a world.

Therefore, God has set His purpose to clear away this tragic, sorrowful and painful history and return to the world of peace, happiness, freedom, and goodness that He originally desired. He is working to set this fallen world right. This is the path of restoration and the path of the providence of salvation.

As the descendants of Adam and Eve, all humankind is fallen. But within each of us there still exists an original mind or conscience that is directed back toward the original world. This is why people throughout history have always desired and longed for the world God originally wanted to create. This long-cherished desire remains today as an ideal that cannot be extinguished or ignored.

God has carried out His providence again and again, in each historical period, so that He could inspire fallen human beings to return to His ideal with a new heart. Finally, we need a Savior, for if no central person capable of moving Heaven and Earth with these ideals appears, then true freedom, peace, and other ideals will never come about. Humanity will be fated to endure an endless path of sorrow and indemnity of celestial proportions.

In these circumstances, God cannot appear to us in glory, peace or freedom, and the path of restoration cannot be an easy one. God appears in the midst of difficulties, and to meet Him we must first make ourselves a sacrificial offering. This is because the path of restoration is the way of indemnity.

This means that until we are able to wipe away the sorrow in God's heart and dissolve all the grievances there, we cannot hope to accomplish peace among humanity, much less see God's ideal of creation bear fruit on earth. Since we caused God's pain through the fall, we are responsible to liberate Him from the burden of grief that weighs like a massive stone in His heart.

But who among us is truly thinking like that today? Even the most devout believers in Jesus are blind and deaf to this truth, thinking that they will simply be saved. However, as fallen human beings, we need to return to the state before the fall.

Having lost God, we must go back to the state of grace we would have been in had we never lost Him. Having lost the True Parents of humanity, we must return to the position we would have been had we not lost them. We must return to live in a garden of peace centered on God and True Parents as their children.

What strategy does the omniscient and almighty God use to change this hellish world into a world of peace? We need to be reminded that in order to accomplish this purpose, God has endured a history of sacrifice and bloodshed, and suffered through wearisome religious rituals and rules. This history is referred to as the providence of salvation, or the providence of restoration.

Originally, if human beings had not fallen, our mind and body, being centered on God's love, would not contradict each other. Because of the fall, however, the mind and body came to stand in opposing positions. Even if it were possible to somehow arrive at an ideal world, without each individual solving this problem and establishing a true standard of heart, even living in the ideal world of one's dreams would be meaningless.

The Absolute Being, who is the Lord of Creation, created the entire universe to love and to become one with Him. Human beings, the highest among created beings, are to stand in the position of lords of creation. To do this, we must be able to incarnate God's heart. Becoming one with God's heart does more than establish the parent-child relationship between God and ourselves. It is also the link connecting humanity with the rest of creation.

In restoring the ideal world of peace, the world of the original ideal of creation, it is first necessary to establish certain conditions. We must go through the process of restoration through indemnity.

What is meant by restoration through indemnity? Whenever something or someone loses its original position and state of being, it cannot be restored to its original position and status without first paying a certain price. The setting of such conditions is referred to as restoration through indemnity.

If there were only Heaven and Earth, God and us, we would not need the word "indemnity." It is there because of Satan, who caused our first ancestors to fall. If Satan did not exist, there would be no need for indemnity. There would also be no need for the phrase, "unity of religions," which we now proclaim with all our might, nor would we need expressions such as "the liberation of God," or "the liberation of humanity."

The fall brought about the destruction of human life and turned history into a record of anguish and failure, a chronicle of war. In order to wipe away this history and unravel all the fundamental problems, God needs to establish anew the original starting point. He does this through a person who can live a life of true love for the sake of God, humanity and all creation. This is the mission of the Messiah.

What did Jesus do when he was on this earth? Although he was persecuted and died on the cross, he truly loved humanity. Jesus left this world giving the supreme example of love on the cross. Throughout his life, Jesus never said he wanted to receive love. Rather, he said that he came to serve, and that he would love even his enemies. Without that kind of love, we cannot find the origin of peace; and without the origin of peace, we cannot establish a world of peace.

The world of peace can never come to exist as long as we focus only on receiving love. Our own parents are not our only parents, nor are our physical siblings our only brothers and sisters. Even our own children are not our only children. Once we become people of true character, we will come to feel every person is our parent, sibling or child, and we will want to treat them as such. We will not be able to look at all the people now wandering in the world of death without tears coming to our eyes.

When you see young people thrashing around in a quagmire of drugs and debauchery, you will feel compelled to devote your full heart and soul to saving them, as if they were your own children. This is a manifestation of the love that unconsciously and naturally seeks to give rather than receive.

Unity is another prerequisite of freedom and peace. Consider the life of a husband and wife. If the two have not become one, how can they enjoy the freedom of husband and wife in a true sense? If a husband and wife are not one, then there is no hope for harmony in the family. Peace in the family will be an impossible dream.

A person blasphemes God if he stands before the unchanging God and says he will become a changeable person. We blaspheme love if we stand in the presence of His unchanging love and practice a changing love. The foundation for peace begins in our own hearts when we share both sorrow and joy with God. From there, we can expand the base of freedom and happiness in the world.

For this reason, a religious movement must arise on this earth that teaches us to achieve complete mastery over the body, and is able to unify the people of the world. Jesus started such a movement.

Please bear in mind that these words are a warning from God proclaimed to humanity wading through the turbid waters of a corrupt world in the Last Days. We are all called to fulfill this task of restoration. It is our destiny. We can never escape our destiny which is Heaven's absolute command.

I think that everyone, at some point in life, searches for the origin of peace and happiness. From where do peace and happiness really come? They do not originate from America, or Korea, or the United Nations. The crucial issue is how we human beings, whose minds and bodies are in conflict, can come to embrace a true view of the universe and find peace and happiness in our own hearts.

In our own hearts, the remnants of a 6,000-year long war between good and evil continue to flare. The First World War was fierce, as was the Second World War. Such wars, though, were relatively small occurrences in a much larger conflict. Neither of them lasted more than five years.

Yet the struggle between mind and body that goes on within each of us is the worst kind of war. It is a war that knows no end and whose inevitable result speeds us on to ruin. Everyone feels the torment of this struggle in his or her own life. The confrontation between mind and body is a fierce battle of good versus evil representing the eternal struggle between God and Satan.

Because of this conflict, the true human image has been hidden away in a dense fog and trapped behind a high fence. We must generate a wind of truth and love that is strong enough to blow away the fog. We must tear down the mighty wall in ourselves that stands so high as to pierce the sky. The course of overcoming this struggle is our destiny.

To win this battle, we must overcome the desires of the body such as sleep, greed, and unprincipled sexual desire. When he set out on his course, my husband Reverend Moon declared his personal motto, "Before seeking dominion over the universe, first control your own self." And this is how he has lived throughout his life.

We must be honest about the state of the world and of our nation today. The Bible says that in the Last Days the hearts of men will grow cold, and that humanity will live like orphans. It also predicts that nations will flounder in confusion and despair. Have you ever experienced true peace in your heart, even for a moment? Does our nation have a true master?

Where are the true patriots who truly love this country and its people to the extent that they are willing to offer their lives to bring about peace? Who can put forward a philosophy or ideology with the power to save the young people of this country, who are sick and spiritually declining? Their plight is truly pitiful, and we cannot but feel intense grief over them.

All of this goes back to the fact that each of us has been unable to establish a standard of one heart, one body and one thought within ourselves. Without mind-body unity, how can we hope for harmony in the family or peace in the country or the world?

Throughout the ages, our original minds have longed for peace, happiness, and unification. The problem has always been our physical body, which is at war with the desire of the mind. Yet our flesh is the container that holds our mind, so we cannot just discard it whenever we want. The important thing is how we handle this physical body, whose impulses and directions change minute by minute.

After the fall, the body became Satan's dwelling place. As the apostle Paul laments in Romans 7:23-25, "I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind, making me captive to the law of sin which dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?

When we look honestly within ourselves, we can all see these elements of good and evil. Our mind or conscience is oriented toward good, but our body pulls in the opposite direction, toward evil. If we cannot resolve this conflict of mind and body, then sin will indeed torment us for eternity. This is true even for so great a saint as Paul.

Ladies and Gentlemen: What is the true way to world peace? War cannot be the answer. Wealth, power or knowledge are not the solution either. Nor can it be done with the political or diplomatic power of the United Nations. Nothing can be expected from the forum of the United Nations as long as its primary considerations are the desires of selfish individuals and the national interest of each member state.

As long as fallen nature remains within us, it does not matter how much we may sing of our ideals or call out for peace; history will always be riddled with struggle and turmoil. That is why we conclude that we will not find the path to peace until we have pulled out this fallen nature by the root.

The way to world peace does not lie far off at the ends of the earth, but rather will be found only in the place where each of us is able to unify our divided mind and body. The wider the gap between a person's mind and body, the greater the struggle and the resulting pain.

The mind is God's sentry post, while the body is Satan's frontline. We need to narrow the gap between the mind and body, and finally unify them as one.

To pull out our deeply rooted fallen nature that was inherited from our false parents, we need True Parents. They alone are able to remove Satan's false lineage. We must meet the True Parents, and achieve mind-body oneness and unity of thought by learning from them how to practice true love and to live a life for the sake of others.

Ladies and Gentlemen, look at the world. There are so many problems. They begin with struggles between mind and body, husband and wife, and go all the way to conflicts and wars among nations. They can be traced to countless causes. But if we dig down to the root cause we will always arrive at the problems between mind and body, and man and woman.

The history of human suffering itself began with a false relationship between a man and a woman. Disharmony within the family quickly develops into various problems in the society and then the world.

If we could just resolve the problems involving men and women in every family, every society and country, and on the worldwide level, and establish one model, then the world would be able to unite as a world of peace. It would be the ideal world of the original creation.

God originally wanted a world of true peace to take root on this earth centering on our first ancestors, Adam and Eve. If they had not fallen but had grown according to God's will and perfected their character, they would have received God's blessing, formed an ideal family, and built the ideal Kingdom of Heaven free of evil and pain.

That would have been an eternal world of peace. From generation to generation, humanity would have enjoyed a life of happiness. We would be able to communicate directly with God as His direct sons and daughters, and to commune freely with our ancestors in Heaven. It would have become a world in which good would have absolute dominion, and people would be incapable of sinning.

Human history began on the wrong foot, but our Heavenly Father did not forsake us. Instead, for six thousand years, God has devoted His heart and soul for the sake of finding His lost children. Not once has He regretted that He created human beings. He has never been discouraged in the face of Satan's ability to have his way. With single-minded devotion, God has worked with true love and forgiveness to carry out the providence of restoration.

It is not by mere circumstance that we are able to study and learn a little more deeply about God today than we could before. We need to be grateful for Heaven's grace, and to our ancestors who guided us to this truth.

Our utmost task is to perfect our character through the oneness of mind and body, to set right the families that have splintered under Satan's rule, and to establish restored true families.

God's hope is to dwell eternally with a family that is united through three generations. The greatness of true love is that it enables us to become God's object partners and also enables God to become one with us. The ideal family attends the grandparents as they would attend Heaven, shows absolute obedience to the parents, and creates children through the absolute relationship of a husband and wife who raise their children in purity and without sin. When we do this, our families will attain a unity of heart with God and become the birthplace of eternal happiness and peace.

Ladies and Gentlemen, human beings were originally created so that our mind and body would respond to God's true love and form oneness. Many people on the earth today, however, live in ignorance of the role of the mind. They do not know that the mind actually is the basis upon which we can develop the character that can find peace centering on God's love. There is enough room in every human mind to embrace God.

Any person who comes to have such a righteous mind will want to move all people at once into the palace of peace. Because human beings are God's children created in His image, we all possess the potential to be free of mind-body conflict and to establish the origin of true unification in ourselves.

There is no possibility of contradiction or conflict within God, the Absolute Being. His divine character is reflected throughout creation, and in the dual structure of mind and body and male and female in human beings. God exists in a state of having formed absolute and total unification within Himself. So it stands to reason that human beings, who were created to resemble God, the Great King of all creation, must also have the ability to achieve the full unification of mind and body.

Yet as a result of the fall, human beings lost the standard of harmony and unification between the mind and body and live instead in a quagmire of struggle and contradiction.

It is nearly impossible to live a life where the mind has total control over the body in a world in which the forces of evil are rampant. That is why God in His wisdom has permitted the necessary and appropriate religions to arise for the sake of saving fallen humanity, giving consideration to every age, culture, regional environment and circumstance.

Throughout history human beings have tried to follow the teachings of religion and to steadily pioneer the path of life centered on the mind. We have learned the path of self-denial, and how to place our hope in the eternal world and not be attached to the present reality.

In Christianity, for example, we are taught to focus on God's kingdom and His righteousness, not this world. The scriptures warn us not to be selfish or to seek to live lavishly in this world. Christianity has always emphasized peace that originates in the world of the mind and heart.

A good illustration of this is Jesus' teaching, "The Kingdom of Heaven is within you." This concept of the Kingdom of Heaven has nothing to do with worldly affluence or power, and is echoed in many other faiths. Buddha's declaration, "In all of Heaven and Earth, I alone am the most honored one," can also be understood in the same context.

Methods may differ from one religion to another, but the mission of all religions is to strengthen the internal hope and aspirations of human beings. They guide us to examine ourselves and to live a life where the mind subjugates the body. In this way, God has carried on His providence for human salvation through religion for six thousand long years.

But the fact is, until now no religious leader or sage has been able to show us how to completely overcome the conflict between mind and body and bring about eternal unification and lasting peace. No one could teach us how to conquer the body once and for all by centering on the mind.

No one could show us where we could find the true standard for peace. No one could bring us to that point of complete unity where parents become eternally one, and husbands and wives, brothers and sisters, parents and children and all one's relatives can all become eternally united as one.

Now, however, the time for peace has come! Heaven's long wait has ended. We are living in the final moment of the Last Days of human history. Heaven cannot extend or allow any further delay of the providence for human salvation.

This is because the True Parents, whom Heaven and Earth have hoped would come and have longed to see, are now on this earth. They are taking all responsibility upon themselves and are successfully completing the providence of restoration. In the world entangled in chaos and debauchery, they are establishing an order of true love.

Ladies and Gentlemen: It is said, that those who believe will be blessed. My husband, the Reverend Sun Myung Moon, and I, who are bringing this truth of Heaven to you, are standing as the True Parents.

The philosophy and thought of True Parents revealed to Reverend Moon is a truth that promises peace to humanity. Both communism and democracy have tried and failed to bring peace. The thought that will prevail is "Godism," the philosophy and tradition of "living for the sake of others". Only this sacrificial way of life based on Heavenly Parentism is capable of leading us to eternal life and peace.

In this way, we will come to the amazing realization that, as God's reciprocal partner of love, we will come to possess a value even greater than God's. We should praise God for this. This love is the only way that we can at last connect to the eternal world of peace. It is the starting point of eternal life in the Kingdom of God on earth and in Heaven.

In our capacity as the True Parents of humanity, my husband and I have already unified the entire spirit world. We are receiving messages of support and unity from the Founders of the four great religions centering on Jesus, including Buddha, Confucius and Muhammad, and from 120 major disciples of each of these leaders. They sent these messages after having studied our teachings in the Divine Principle and Unification Thought seminars in the spirit world. They are filled with hope, and feel immense gratitude toward the True Parents.

Even Communist leaders from around the world who have gone to the spirit world, beginning with Marx and Lenin, have completed the Divine Principle seminar in accordance with True Parents' command. They too are sending messages soaked with tears of repentance and deep lamentation.

All of these people in the spiritual world now have only one hope. This is that their believers and followers will accept the teachings of the True Parents as quickly as possible, work for peace, and prepare themselves for their eternal life.

Their messages implore us not to waste our precious, fleeting time on earth, but to prepare wisely for life in the spirit world, where all people will live together for eternity after casting off our physical body.

What does this mean for men and women now living on earth?

First, it means that all people - men and women, young and old, rich and poor alike - must believe in the unequivocal fact that God is actually alive and is working His Will. We must not think of Him only conceptually. God is watching our every step and every act with eyes of fire, bright with expectation.

God is waiting for the day when all human beings who left His bosom and went to Satan will repent and return to Him. Long ago, he painted a picture of what it will be like when the prodigal child, who once left Him, returns to the Father with tears of repentance. Now His urgent request is that we actually do this. God wants us to comfort and attend the True Parents, who still remain on earth and walk the path of blood, sweat and tears for the sake of human restoration.

God's desperate hope is that we will receive the warning that He gives in these Last Days with a serious heart, correct the errors of our lives, and live in a way that we will not regret later.

Second, we are being warned that we must accept as fact the existence of the spirit world, and live every aspect of our lives in accordance with heavenly law. God is sternly telling us to discover our higher selves, develop a more advanced spiritual nature, and establish a world of peace on this earth without delay.

God is watching us. Tens of thousands of wise men and women together with all of our ancestors are watching our daily life. When we realize this for a surety, how will you be able to go against heavenly law?

Soon, you too will begin having spiritual experiences. The time has come when your ancestors will be mobilized to directly observe and guide your life, and even your thoughts. The numerous Unification members, who believe in and follow the True Parents' teachings, are already experiencing this state of life.

Ladies and Gentlemen, thank you again for coming here this evening. You are truly blessed, because you are able to live in the historic and providential age when the Messiah, the True Parents of humankind, have returned to earth.

This is the time when North and South Korea and all other nations will be unified, not by guns and knives but by love and truth. This is the time when all the religions of the world will become one under the guidance of the True Parents, and when all the sages and ancestors in spirit world will come down to earth to live with us and communicate directly with us.

I would like to conclude this address by urging all humanity to fulfill the responsibility to which we have been called by uniting to build a world of peace that transcends race, ideology, and national boundaries.

I pray that God's boundless blessings will come upon your family and nation in abundance.

Thank you very much.