A mother of thirteen and grandmother of twenty, Mrs. Moon spoke out of deep love for our nation and our family life.
Honored Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen:
I want to express my heartfelt gratitude to you for coming here today. I am truly moved to see so many of you committed to building a peaceful world.
As we all know, our world today is not a world of peace and happiness but a world filled with conflict and despair. We are confronted with the breakdown of our families and the moral decline of our society.
We have become a nation of talk shows. We debate the issues over and over again and yet find no solutions. Why is this? This is because a true solution must include God and deal with the root of the problem and not just the symptoms. To find this root, we must first understand God's purpose of creation and realize that we, today, face the most important turning point in the history of God's providence.
At this crucial time, God asked my husband, the Reverend Sun Myung Moon, to bring a new revelation to the American people. My husband, accordingly, just delivered this new message of hope in 12 major cities across America. Now, I would like to give you this same message, entitled "True Parents and the Completed Testament Age."
When God created Adam and Eve, His first son and daughter, God wanted them to be better than Himself. Traditional thinking would say that this is absurd. But please take a moment to think about this. When we as parents look into the faces of our children, we wish upon them an infinite amount of love and hope. We want them to grow and achieve things we ourselves only dreamed of.
Similarly, God wants to give limitlessly to His children. God is not content in giving just 100 percent. God's desire is to give a thousand times more than what He has. The nature of God's Love is to give completely and then forget what He has given. Unlike some who calculate how much they have given and decide that it is enough, for God enough is never enough.
Moreover, God's purpose in creating the world was to have an object of love. His purpose in creating parents and children, husbands and wives, and all things in this world in complementary pairs was to substantiate true love throughout His creation. Likewise, parents are to live for their children, and children for their parents. Husbands are to live for their wives, and wives for their husbands. All beings in creation are to live for and give to others.
If God's ideal of true love had been realized through Adam's family, that family would have become the beginning of the heavenly kingdom. It would have expanded throughout all of history to the clan, to the nation, and to the world. This would have been the world of true love~the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth. Furthermore, there would have been a parallel expansion of the heavenly kingdom in the spiritual world.
Because of the fall of the original human ancestors, God's work of salvation had to begin. Salvation history had to be repeatedly extended through the complicated and suffering courses of the Old Testament Age and the New Testament Age, culminating in today's Completed Testament Age. God's ideal of the true family and the heavenly kingdom, which He wanted to realize through Adam's family, was destroyed because Adam and Eve fell away from God.
Due to the Fall, this present world is far from the good world of God's ideal. Today's world is, in fact, a "false" world, in that it is flooded with self-centered love. This came about because Adam and Eve became false parents based on false and self-centered love with Satan. They multiplied evil rather than goodness, creating a false family and passing on false life and a false lineage to their descendants. Thus, false clans, false nations, and a false world came into being.
My dear friends, have you ever wondered how a world filled with such evil and corruption could come from a God of love and goodness?
If you read the Bible carefully, you will see that the fall of man involves the loss of Adam's entire family. First, the position of parents was lost through the fall of Adam and Eve. Second, the position of children was lost as Cain murdered Abel. God's "blueprint" for an ideal family and world perfection was lost. Therefore, to restore the original family, God works in reverse to reclaim the positions of Cain and Abel, and then the positions of True Mother and True Father. This pattern of reconciliation of Cain and Abel as the foundation for restoring the True Parents has been God's consistent formula throughout the history of restoration.
The separation of fallen mankind into a Cain-Abel division occurs over and over again in Judeo-Christian history. God first of all separated fallen mankind into two "brotherly" sides of Cain, symbolizing Satan, and Abel, symbolizing God, to work out the hatreds resulting from the Fall. God used the method of having Abel be hit first and sacrificed. As a result, Abel could stand on that very foundation to embrace Cain and recover the blessing given to the elder son. For example, the religion that most advances the purpose of salvation always receives Satan's most severe persecution. It walks the path of constant opposition yet continues its sacrificial effort to save the sinful world. Likewise, good people always stand in the position of being struck first and sacrificed.
Looking almost anywhere in our fallen world, it is easy to notice struggles between good and evil, similar to the struggle between Cain and Abel. These struggles start in the conflict between each individual's mind and body. The mind, which represents the Abel side, struggles to overcome the body, which represents the Cain side. The struggle within individuals has expanded to the family, nation, and world. As a result, humankind has always been divided into two opposing camps, one good, or Abel-like, and the other evil, or Cain-like, locked in struggle at every level. It has always been God's intention, however, that both sides be restored, not that one triumph over and destroy the other.
Some examples of this division are: the thief on the right side of Jesus' cross, representing Abel, and the thief on the left, representing Cain, and South Korea versus North Korea, which represents the last conflict between right wing and left wing on the world level. Moreover, there is the Christian-Muslim conflict in the Middle East. So the key to God's work of salvation has always been to unify such divided sides, based on His ideal, in order to build a foundation on which to reclaim the True Mother and True Father.
Ladies and gentlemen, if a family is not centered on God's ideal of love, there will be conflict among the members of that family. Without God's love as an absolute center, such a family will ultimately break down. Moreover, a nation of such families will also decline. Because illicit, self-centered love invaded the first family, selfishness and greed have continued to dominate human history from the individual to the family, society, nation, and world. For this reason, God's work of restoration begins at the individual level. Since Satan knows this, he focuses his efforts also on the individual level.
It is not by chance that self-centered individualism has become the dominant way of life in these last days. People feel increasingly alienated from those around them, and bear little sense of responsibility for the well-being of their country, society, or even their own families. Rising divorce statistics indicate that husbands and wives feel little responsibility toward their marriages; parents do not take responsibility for their children; individuals, devoid of any sense of human dignity, fail even to take responsibility for themselves.
America has seen such phenomena at work beginning with the youth movement of the sixties. Idealistic youth rejected the materialism around them in order to seek love and peace, but in the process, they also abandoned morality and responsibility. Unable to attain the true love they sought, many disillusioned young people resorted to suicide, drug abuse, and free sex.
Equally alarming is the policy of giving school children condoms, teaching the illusion of safe sex, and surrendering to the assumption that premarital sex is inevitable. Indeed, where there is homosexuality, free sex, drugs, and alcoholism, the world of true love is far away.
In this world, Satan openly tells people, "Drink! Smoke! Take drugs! Have sex!" Those who do God's Will, on the other hand, live a lifestyle that is 180 degrees different from this. Throughout history, those who chose to walk a spiritual path of self-sacrifice have been bitterly opposed and persecuted by the rest of the world. It is only God's love and blessing which have allowed the Unification Church, despite worldwide opposition, to prosper. The fact that our church has risen from obscurity in war-torn Korea, to become a world-level religious movement in only 38 years, testifies to God's continued guidance and support.
There are those who continue to oppose the Unification Church, spreading wild rumors or trying to prevent our teachings from being heard. Again, Satan's way is always to attack that which is most precious to God. Yet those who go against the Will of God can never prosper. The principle holds true that those on God's side, who can endure unjust persecution, will win the right to take back the blessing. God's strategy is always to be hit first, and then take back what is rightfully His.
The Old Testament described a process of restitution according to the formula "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth." In the Divine Principle, we refer to making restitution for a wrong as "paying indemnity." To make restitution for her wrong actions, fallen Eve needed to take the entire responsibility upon herself. She should have reversed the actions of the Fall and made spiritual and physical restitution for each step of the Fall.
It was God's Will that Eve assist her younger son, Abel, to unite with the Will of God. We know from Genesis that Abel had his offering accepted by God. However, this was not all that was expected of Abel. Through Abel's love, Cain was supposed to recognize Abel as God's chosen person and unite with him.
If Cain and Abel had united, the second of the two problems of the Fall would have been solved. God would then have addressed the problem of Adam and Eve. Eve was meant to stand as the first mother of humanity. She should have united Cain and Abel and worked to establish a foundation for True Parents. Eve, however, did not fulfill this mission in her lifetime, and history had to wait for another woman who would pay fallen Eve's restitution.
Just as Cain killed Abel, Esau wanted to kill Jacob when the blessing went to his younger brother. But with Rebekah's help, these brothers eventually reconciled in a warm embrace, rather than resorting to violence.
This reconciliation was a major victory for God. This victory, nevertheless, was not complete, since the reconciliation represented only a symbolic purification of blood lineage. The substantial purification of blood lineage had to be accomplished in the womb. This is the reason for the paradoxical story of Tamar.
By understanding that Tamar, like Rebekah, was in the position of fallen Eve, it becomes possible to understand why Jesus was born of her lineage, the tribe of Judah.
I am sure that many of you have read the story about the birth of her twins. She conceived with Judah, her father-in-law, the twins Perez and Zerah. The Bible tells us that the two sons struggled even in the womb for the position of first-born. During Tamar's labor, Zerah's hand emerged and the midwife tied a red string around his wrist. Then, Zerah's hand disappeared back into the womb and Perez, the younger, was born as the elder! Thus, the positions of Cain and Abel were restored even before birth took place. It was from this point that the Israelite people became the nation chosen to receive the Messiah.
In terms of conventional morality, the stories of Rebekah and Tamar would be questionable at best. Why God blessed them was a theological mystery until today. As we now see, God needed to reclaim His lineage from Satan so that Jesus could be born. Purified, true-love blood lineage was the point from which the Israelite nation started expanding. The word Israel means victory. Their victory was the purification of blood lineage.
Mary had the responsibility to unite Cain and Abel figures on the family, clan, and national levels through paying appropriate indemnity and restoring elder sonship. Mary responded to God's call and conceived Jesus even though, in the eyes of others, she had betrayed her parents and Joseph, to whom she was engaged. At that time, it was customary to stone to death any woman who became pregnant out of wedlock. However, Joseph, standing in the position of Adam, courageously protected his fiancee and resisted abandoning her.
Because of Mary's faith, and the work of Rebekah and Tamar, Satan could not claim sovereignty over Jesus in Mary's womb. Jesus was born in the position of a true son under God's complete, direct lineage. He is the first true son of God after the purification of the fallen blood lineage. That is why Jesus, the first-begotten son of God, is the saint of all saints and the ancestor of God's true blood lineage. His birth represented the conclusion of the Old Testament Age at the national level and the dawn of the New Testament Age at the worldwide level.
Mary, in the position to restore fallen Eve, had to build a unity between Jesus, who was in the position of Abel, and his elder cousin, John the Baptist, who was in the position of Cain. This unity was essential for the people of Israel to identify Jesus as the Messiah.
John was the elder. He had a great following and was widely respected. As Jesus explained to his disciples, the ministry of John was the fulfillment of the Old Testament prophecy that Elijah the prophet would return to "make straight the way of the Lord."
But did John fulfill his role in God's providence? The Gospel of Luke tells us that John came "in the spirit and power of Elijah." John, however, denied that he was Elijah, and doubted the Messiahship of Jesus even after he had received a clear revelation at the Jordan River at the time of Jesus' baptism. John was a well-respected religious figure, while Jesus was seen as only the illegitimate son of a poor carpenter. Without the support of John, it was impossible for the Jewish people to believe in and follow Jesus. Alone, Jesus undertook the difficult path of proclaiming himself.
John the Baptist should have helped Jesus reach the religious leadership of Israel. If John had fulfilled his role, then Judaism, in the position of Abel, and the nation of Israel, in the position of Cain, could have united centered on Jesus.
This would have laid the foundation for the Marriage of the Lamb. Jesus would have stood as the True Father of humanity, and his bride would have stood as the True Mother of humanity.
In less than seven years, his teaching would have expanded rapidly to the worldwide level, winning Asia and Rome to his side before he was 40. Eventually, Jesus and his bride would have achieved the individual heavenly kingdom, family heavenly kingdom, clan heavenly kingdom, and national heavenly kingdom.
Confronted by the faithlessness in Israel, Jesus determined to give his life to achieve spiritual salvation for humankind. However, he would have to come again in order to bring physical or earthly salvation in addition to spiritual salvation.
This is why the mind can draw close to God through Jesus, but the body continues to be tempted by evil. Even Saint Paul anguished over the contradiction of the desires of the flesh and the desires of the spirit. Many great Christian evangelists have also suffered because of this contradiction. At the dawn of the Completed Testament Age, the crucial challenge is to accomplish both physical salvation and spiritual salvation.
Because of Jesus' death on the cross, the conflict between left wing and right wing appeared. This is like the separation into Cain and Abel necessitated by Adam's fall. Likewise, Islam and Christianity appeared and began struggling. Because such separation was caused by the crucifixion of Jesus, Christ will work for unity at the time of the Second Coming.
Immediately after the Allied victory, great strides were made toward creating a world of peace centered upon Christianity. With Britain in the world-level position of Eve, and America and France representing Abel and Cain respectively, these Allied nations stood in the position ready to receive the Lord of the Second Advent.
Despite all of this preparation, God's dispensation was not fulfilled at that time. God's representative came to bring His word and was met with tremendous persecution and almost universal misunderstanding. This paralleled Jesus' situation 2,000 years ago. Just as the Israelites of Jesus' time awaited the Second Coming of Elijah on a chariot descending from heaven, Christians awaited the Second Coming by expecting Jesus himself to descend on a cloud from the sky.
In Revelation, Jesus reveals to the Apostle John that he will come with a new name. This foreshadowed that Jesus would come again through another man, just as Elijah had done.
At this crucial time after World War II, then, God instructed my husband to bring a new message of truth to Christians in Korea. Korean Christian leaders, however, rejected the possibility that he, a humble young man, had been chosen to bring this new message. Because the New Testament Age is an extension of the Old Testament Age, they could not believe that the Second Coming would be born as a man on earth any more than the Jewish people could believe it at the time of Jesus.
If the Christian churches had become one with my husband, the heavenly kingdom would already have been established on earth as well as in heaven. During the seven-year period from 1945 to 1952, when the New Testament Age ended, the entire world could have united in accordance with the providence of God.
God had expanded Christianity and had raised up a mighty Christian nation like America for the purpose of preparing the way for the Second Coming. Whether they realized it or not, those ministers in Korea represented all of Christianity. Because America and worldwide Christianity failed to unite with my husband after World War II, they began to decline in their power and moral authority.
After World War II, the United States and Christianity stood on a victorious foundation of Cain-Abel unity. The time was ripe to receive the Second Coming. However, this opportunity failed to materialize and the whole world opposed my husband's work. He was expelled into the wilderness. He was forced to the bottom and has been climbing back up ever since.
Thus, the Cold War began. The world separated again into two worldwide spheres of Cain and Abel, just as it had during World War II. Denying God, just as the thief on the left denied Jesus, communism represented the Cain-type world. Christian democracies, which affirmed the existence of God, represented the thief on the right, and the Abel-type world.
It was God's Will that the Messiah of the Second Coming should unite the two hostile blocs. That is why we mobilized our church to help settle conflicts between the right wing, represented by the free world, and the left wing, represented by communism. We have also worked on behalf of Christianity and Judaism as a peacemaker with our Islamic brothers and sisters.
During the Cold War period, my husband fought to break down barriers on the individual, family, clan, national, worldwide, and cosmic levels in order to rebuild the lost foundation to receive the Messiah. Since my husband cannot live for 4,000 years or for 400 years, he knew that he would have to indemnify all of history in just 40 years. During this period of four decades, he restored the 4,000-year history before Jesus, and the 6,000-year biblical history since the Creation. After this indemnity was paid, the Cold War ended through the unity of Cain and Abel countries. This was consummated by the Unification Church at the 1988 Seoul Olympics, where 160 nations of the world came to Korea.
For decades, my husband has been completely misunderstood. For three years, he was imprisoned in a North Korean communist concentration camp. Altogether, he has been wrongly imprisoned six times for doing God's work. Moreover, the media have mocked him as a monster who brainwashes the young for self-benefit. Can anyone disagree when I say that Reverend Moon is the most persecuted religious leader in the world? My heart is broken when I think of how my husband has suffered. But he always comforts me reassuring me that God has deep compassion for those persecuted for doing His work.
My husband and I have walked a path of indemnity, or restitution, in order to restore the failures of the past, including those of the Old and New Testament eras. Korea can be compared to the Old Testament Age, while America, a mostly Christian civilization, can be compared to the New Testament Age. For the first 20 years, my husband walked the road of indemnity of the Old Testament Age, centering on the Korean nation and the Unification Church, representing the positions of the Israelite nation and Judaism, respectively. On the foundation of this work, we established in 1960 the Holy Wedding of True Parents on the national level. Then, in 1971, my husband and I came to America. Over the next 20 years in the U.S., we walked the path of indemnity to fulfill the New Testament Age and to begin the Completed Testament Age. Thus, we established the True Parents' family, the origin of true love, true life, and true blood lineage, based on God.
The reason why America is essential in the providential dispensation is because of her close ties with the Christian churches, Judaism, and Israel.
Even though America has dismissed and opposed my husband's work, we continue to pray for America to realize her providential responsibility. It is our sincere desire that America avoids repeating her failure. A failure to unite with God's Will would create the need for further indemnity and would deprive America of the blessing that God wishes to bestow upon this great nation. Indeed, without the help of our Unification movement, America would have waned long ago.
Rome thought that the world existed only for the sake of Rome. She did not realize that God had raised her up for the purpose of uniting with the Messiah and serving the world.
America faces a similar situation today. People must realize that God blessed America not for herself but for the sake of the world. America's Pilgrim Fathers did not come here for wealth. They came here to attend God. If America fails to remember the purpose for which she is blessed, then her blessing will cease and she will perish. My husband and I desperately want to prevent this. We must save America.
For 20 years, we have struggled in this country, trying to bring God's message to the American people. American leaders, prominent Christians and other leading figures of the world have only a faint idea of the forces that shape the future. They can offer little insight, hope, or guidance to their people. In these chaotic times, humankind is longing for a true direction and purpose, yet America and Christianity have no confident answer. God, however, has granted my husband and me an understanding of the forces involved in His providential history. We know the direction that humankind must go, and with the help of God, we will lead the world there.
There are countless other testimonies to the power of the Divine Principle to give hope and new life to young people. Last year, in Korea, we held a wedding celebration for 30,000 couples, all dedicating their lives to one another, to God, and to the world. In most families today, parents cannot effectively guide their children, especially on such intimate matters as love and marriage. Yet, my husband and I brought together young people from 131 different nations and realized their most cherished dreams of love in a historic way. This was indeed a great miracle of the modern world. In the future, as people come to understand the value and quality of these precious families, millions will seek such marriages. Through them, God can restore the family that Satan has destroyed. Such restored, God-centered families are the very building blocks of an ideal nation and world.
My dear friends, when Jesus taught about the coming of the Messiah, he told the parable of the virgins who were awaiting the arrival of the bridegroom. According to the book of Revelation, Christianity is portrayed as a bride. America, representing Christianity, can also be seen as a bride nation.
When Christianity failed to meet her bridegroom the first time, God's dispensation had to be delayed 40 years until 1992. During this time, my husband and I have worked and prayed to bring about the unity of Korea, Britain, America, France, Japan, Germany, and Italy.
That is why, in April 1992, my husband and I founded the Women's Federation for World Peace. Last year, I, with the heart of a True Mother, visited these seven countries, as well as Russia and Oceania. I gathered together the women of these countries to form chapters of the Women's Federation for World Peace. With these events, the nations that had been the worldwide Cain and Abel countries since World War II united together to receive the True Mother and prepare again the foundation to meet the True Father.
Based upon this foundation, my husband and I can now stand on a worldwide level as the first True Parents. As True Parents, we are ushering in the Completed Testament Age.
At this historical turning point, we have to practice on the worldwide level the principle that an individual's mind and body must be united centered on God. To facilitate this, we have founded two organizations working for world peace. The Inter- Religious Federation for World Peace represents the world mind, and carries out the internal mission of uniting all the world's religions on the basis of God's love. The Federation for World Peace, on the other hand, represents the world body, and pursues the external mission of building up ideal societies with leaders in the fields of politics, economics, media, academia, and science.
Therefore, Adam and Eve should have originally gone through the four spheres of the heart, centering on God's true love, as completed children, completed brother and sister, loving couple, and perfected parents. They would have, thus, achieved the completed family.
Adam and Eve should have become the role models for all in their family. Their children would have looked to their parents as ideal role models. They would have become brothers and sisters who loved each other as their parents loved them. They would have become married couples resembling the husband-wife relationship of their parents. Finally, with the birth of children, they would have established their own completed families, identical to that of their parents.
By setting up ideal, unbreakable families that fulfill the vertical and horizontal unity between parents and children, brothers and sisters, and husband and wife, we can finally build the eternal basis for God's kingdom on earth as well as in heaven. Thus, all the families in the world originating from the same God-centered ancestors, Adam and Eve, would have equal, divine value.
In every completed family, grandparents will be in the position of kings and queens representing God and good ancestors. Parents will be in the position of kings and queens representing present humanity, and children will be in the position of princes and princesses representing all future descendants. When all three generations are united, past, present, and future will live together in harmony.
Ladies and gentlemen, it is my great privilege to announce to you the establishment of the first True Family. My husband and I, together with our 13 children and 20 grandchildren are absolutely dedicated to serving God and humanity. With three generations in one family, we have achieved, on the family level, the central root, the central trunk, and the central bud of the "Tree of Life" mentioned in the Bible. It is our sincere hope that you will symbolically graft into this lineage by joining us in our efforts to create an ideal nation and world. This marks the beginning of the Completed Testament Age.
As the world enters the Completed Testament era, we will live with God again. Realizing this, we must accomplish the unity of our mind and body, parents and children, and husband and wife. Then we can establish ideal families centered upon God's love.
With such families, the symptoms of our decaying society will vanish. As confident children of God, we will no longer be enslaved by the temptations of alcohol and drug abuse. Moreover, by understanding the holiness of love between a husband and a wife, we will possess the moral strength to stand strong against infidelity and promiscuity. Finally, we will work as a whole to eliminate war, racial prejudices, and world hunger.
Based upon this foundation, we can realize a world of true happiness, freedom, and peace. God is very much alive, and His original ideal for humankind is unchanging and absolute. It is our destiny to fulfill this ideal and liberate God's heart.
My dear friends, the Women's Federation for World Peace is called to this task. Let us work together to bring about its successful completion.
It is my hope that all Christians, and people of all faiths, will understand this message with a deep heart and an open mind. I sincerely pray that, by upholding the Will of God, we can all reach the place of God's blessing.
May God bless you and your families.
Thank you very much.