Belvedere
Translator: Sang Kil Han
Everything happens according to the law of cause and effect, including whatever we say and do. Some things are temporary while others are permanent. People normally start something with good motivations in order to bring forth a good result. We have to be serious about the word "good" - where does it begin? We need a standard by which we can say what is good.
If someone is said to be a good American, it means he keeps the standard of the law and doesn't break it. Indeed, his standard is even higher than that of the law. God has to have a standard in His mind before He can decide whether or not someone is good. This applies to Unification Church members. If we live higher than the laws, which God expects us to keep, then He can say that we are good church members.
As founder of the Unification Church, I have set certain requirements and if the members keep them, then I can say they are good members. You fundraise, witness, and pioneer even in the heat of summer when everyone else is on vacation. Some members may not like that, but when God chooses one person as the best on earth, do you think He will pick one who has the easiest life, or one who observes the most difficult standard?
Are you good people now, or are you trying hard all the time to be good? How long will you take to get to this goal? Will you finish before you get married, or before you have children? Or will you prolong the time so that you finish this course before you have grandchildren? This is a very serious question for each individual.
Even if a Harvard student flunks a course, he is still proud of being enrolled in that prestigious school. We are proud of being Unification Church members, aren't we, even though we are criticized frequently and just barely make it through each day? The handsome boy or girl who talks well and smiles all the time is automatically thought of as a good member, right? On the contrary, even if a person is homely and doesn't speak well, if he observes the important church laws then you can say he is a good member. Strangely enough, the less handsome a person is, the less he tends to think about himself Usually the least attractive person has the greatest depth. He tends to think that though he is inferior in looks, he will outdo others in seriousness and diligence.
Do you think God is very handsome? In order to be the best, would He have to be the best looking and highest living? What standard would all things and all people require of God in order to say He is the best? Imagine that He is handsome, but is content to wear rags and do the most difficult things without complaining. Then would all people say God was good? Would that be the right answer? If I give the most attractive Unification Church member the hardest and most difficult tasks, would this member be doing a good or bad thing if he went ahead and did what I directed?
This morning I talked to my children after Pledge Service. They are starting summer school and I told them I was going tuna fishing. They weren't happy about that. They also said their teachers were terrible and burdened them with too much work But I said, "If you think they are terrible, then they must be good." Even without seeing those teachers, I know they must be good if they make the children work hard.
Are you going to be good or bad people? Good is good all the time, not just part-time. Let me ask you again: are you trying hard to be good people, or are you good people already? Why do you answer no? If you are not good then you must be bad. It is easy to say you are not yet a good person, but it is hard to say that you are bad. Has it ever occurred to you that if you were not good then you must be bad?
Did you ever think as you went to breakfast, "Food, here comes the bad person to eat you"? Or when you reach for your clothes, "Here comes the bad person to wear you again"? Actually your food and clothes have definite feelings about this matter. If a husband and wife are walking toward each other, are they thinking inside, "I am a bad person walking toward my mate"? Perhaps you never thought seriously about whether you were bad or good, but just continued living in a matter-of-fact way. Such a person is actually swindling the world. Would such a person be qualified to go directly to Heaven?
There is no in-between for us. A person who wants to have Heaven but who shies away from doing difficult things would be a "convenient person.' Which category are you in -- one who is happy with an easy life, or a person who can do difficult work happily? Would you like to be on the good side? Which side do you find yourself on most of the time?
One person might work hard to get ahead and take care of his family, and might eventually be elected President. Another person might study and work hard so that he can make his family a good family, and his nation a good nation. He also might be elected President. These two people may do essentially the same things, but their motives are very different. There is a world of difference between them. If you were asked why the second person was good, what would you say? The first man has only one home to live in, but the second one would have 70 million homes because he is living for the nation.
I have been living a difficult life every day, and Mother and my children are sensitive to that. They sometimes ask, "Father, why do you insist on going the difficult way again?" I feel I have drawn the most miserable lot. I am faced with the most impossible tasks-solving moral problems, trying to guide young people in the right direction, and confronting communism. This is what some people would call dirty work. The President himself would rather do something easier. In this whole world there is no one else who has dug down to the bottom of these matters and determined to do something about them.
I receive no honor for doing these vital things. Instead even my own children sometimes think, "Why is he always making us do difficult things?" Members say that I don't understand American young people. Am I encouraging you to fulfill an easy task or a difficult one? Is that good or bad? Although you may suffer in the short run, the number of your real friends is increasing. Eventually there will be many of them, enough to form a clan and then a country, and they will keep increasing.
The world vaguely recognizes that they like Moonies, but they don't like the life we lead. That's good! If a man is bad, but he has a good name, that's not good. But if a man is good and his name is bad, that's all right. People may like you, but not the fact that you are a Moonie. They may even want to bring you into their families. You have often heard people say they don't like Reverend Moon but they like his followers. They are saying in effect, "We don't like the father but we like his children.' Could a bad father have a good son? That attitude does not discourage us, for half the battle is won then.
Each of you recognizes that I have lived a miserable life. You are proud of telling what I have accomplished, but actually the greatness of what I have done is derived from my suffering. When you think that I am great, you know it is because I have suffered I have survived the fiercest fight.
When people say the Unification Church is great, it is the same as saying the Unification Church had to go through tremendous misery.
Take a few moments now and think about what I am saying. Isn't it true that when people say you are great they are recognizing your suffering? So if you want to be great, what will it take? Are you great because you have nice manners? Does physical size make you great? No, greatness means you have survived miserable situations.
Is what I am saying always true or only sometimes true? Which path would I like you to go? We must bear in mind that God went ahead of everyone else on the suffering path and in order to be His true son I also had to go that way. Thus everyone else must go that same course. You should make sure this is really true. Do you welcome that lifestyle? Are you going to live like that?
It is easy to answer yes, but to carry it out is extremely difficult. Since it is so hard, how many will make it? This is a problem. What is the worst idea you've come across since joining the Unification Church? Indemnity! When you think carefully, you realize that it may be bad from a self-centered viewpoint, but for God and the world, it is the best. If you welcome the indemnity law, that is wonderful. Do you really know what indemnity is? It is the secret of success.
Seen from the perspective of indemnity, the hard way can actually be an easy way. Through indemnity you can do in one step what would ordinarily take 100 steps. You can do in one year what would take 100 years to achieve. You will become miserable in the process, and the more miserable the better! Is this a true condition? Is indemnity good too? Someone may be causing you much misery, making you work hard, and you may be eating only poor food and sleeping just a little. If your teacher makes you work hard so you can't sleep, but still he gives you low marks, you will probably think he is a bad teacher. But God remembers such things.
This is the first of July, a good day, so I am giving you good words-the gospel of indemnity. It is good because I have been anxious to see these first six months of 1980 pass quickly. Today you must apologize in your heart to the word "indemnity" for not liking it. Now you know it is your best friend.
Wherever I go in the world, there are families who would like to receive me. I have places to eat and sleep, and on top of that I have the heart to be friends with everyone. Am I a miserable or a happy man? Am I welcome everywhere I go? Though our numbers may be small now, they will grow because I have taught about indemnity, explaining and setting the example. Eventually, everyone will understand its meaning.
I am a ladder of indemnity for you to climb, and because of that everyone will come to welcome me. I am in the indemnity business. You say you like indemnity, but I will wait and see! To reach God in the highest place you need a ladder of indemnity. You can climb upon me as your ladder, but if you let go you will fall off and die. It is really a life-and death situation. You have to be serious enough that the criticism of other people won't divert you; you have to realize that if you fall off, you will perish.
Once you start up the ladder you should pay no attention to criticism, even if it comes from your family, people and nation and even if your old loves beg you not to leave them behind. It is not easy. Only individuals can climb, one at a time not two abreast. Your parents, fiancé and loved ones cannot go side-by-side with you.
I encourage you to think only about indemnity before you get married. After you become engaged you are separated and then even after you are married, you still have a three-year course to go. Maybe you ask what kind of Father I am to make you suffer like that. Is there any reason for you and me to be enemies? If I insist on this course, is it for your sake or mine?
If I made you do something, which I had not done, then you could question it, but if I have already done it and more, then you can accept it much easier. Since I have done everything, I am eligible to stand at the top, but instead I still go as low as possible.
You, however, are still climbing up the ladder. Sometimes Unification Church members take time off and go by themselves to movies or a restaurant, and I wonder how they can ever do that. Even today I never go to a restaurant alone, but only take other members with me.
I may have been clammy, but I did connect all the steps of indemnity into one ladder. It is an incredible, superb work. If you are on the individual indemnity ladder then everyone will jeer at you for going, shouting that you will never make it. They will say, "What a pity that such a handsome man will perish." When I started, God and I were the only ones who thought I would not fail. Even dogs barked at
When you climb up the family ladder, other families in the world, even your own relatives, will say you will fail. But if you do not succumb and reach the top, then you will have truly made it. If you continue even when every house closes its door to you, then you will succeed.
Until 1976 all nations -- the whole world opposed me. There was no country which did not "bark" at me, including Korea. Are those days over now, or do they still lie ahead? Even if nations plot to oppose me, they cannot because that time is over now for eternity. Because that time is past, the new age has begun. We have advanced from the days of persecution to the dawning of peace. Our war is coming to an end. I knew that once the days of controversy were concluded, the side of goodness would rise and the side of evil would decline.
Look at how America has slid downward in the years since President Nixon. If America had followed my advice to forgive, love, and unite during the Watergate crisis, it would not have declined as it has. Then I could have given clear direction and advice about how to survive and how to treat the communist countries. America had a chance at that time, but lost it.
I knew what would happen if America and the President did not listen. Should I have kept silent in the light of that knowledge? I really had to do something; it was at least my responsibility to tell this country and the rest was up to America. Nevertheless, I knew that the Unification Church would not be set back, even if America did not listen and started to decline.
If President Nixon had heeded my advice, this nation would not have had to endure its present troubles. The communism would have declined faster and America would have become stronger. Instead it has to bear a greater burden. It remains for America to repent and indemnify that failure. I decided at that time that the Unification Church and I would bear the cross which America should have picked up, that we would do what America was supposed to do.
Whose side did the media take? They unanimously criticized our movement. It looked as though we had no chance at all and everyone was confident we would disappear. But we have been supporting this country through our indemnity. Now they see the Unification Church steadily rising. Even the strongest man would have been knocked out by the opposition I have faced.
How have I survived? Many years ago in Korea before the world dispensation had begun, I stated that the whole world would know about me and oppose me. I told the members that when such turmoil began they could really know the end of the world was at hand. Is that time ended now or does it remain ahead? It is past.
This year's motto is "Home Church Is the Base of the Kingdom of Heaven." You know the words, but you don't know their meaning. To truly understand their meaning you must know how much indemnity had to be paid so they could be said. You must understand the tears and sighs of God that he behind those words. When I could finally speak them, I had real hope for the immediate future. All Unification Church members should be proud of these words; they are more precious than even your own family and children. Home church will become easier as the years go by, not harder.
I am thinking that I must help America elect the best President. This is most serious. I am more serious by nature than anyone else. You may think I haven't achieved what I tell you to do, but that is not true. I always get the result first and then give it to you. Certainly any parent would want to give his best to his children, so I am trying to give you the best things. Believe me when I say that the best thing I can give you is indemnity. Indemnity is really a blessed word, the gospel.
When I was tortured in prison and left for dead, it was God who came and helped me to rise up. If you are working for God's sake and He pays no attention when you collapse, then there is no meaning anywhere. But if you collapse then God must come and pick you up. This happened to me many times in the past. Someone would try to hurt me, but according to God's will it was not me but my attackers who died. God knows who is doing His work and who is opposing it.
If people know me and think I am great, that if because of the indemnity I have paid If I didn't really know the value of indemnity, I would have escaped a long time ago from the Unification Church! What holds me here? This word indemnity. If I didn't know about indemnity, I wouldn't have come to America. But because I knew about it, I also knew there was a great opportunity waiting here for me. When I decided to come, I envisioned prison in this country-not because I did anything wrong, but because the world is so wicked. I determined to come to pay indemnity so prison can actually have a good meaning.
If I go to prison I will certainly not perish. I already have many documents and evidence of how the American government has tried to comer me. If I were put in prison here, I could show the world what the American government did, until all those who opposed me turned around. This is the kind of war we find ourselves in. I am the only one who knows the whole content of that war.
I cannot speak out when I am in a difficult position, whereas you members can. I always feel that I have not taken enough responsibility; I never feel that I have done enough. Through indemnity I am making you into heavenly children. If this rule does not work, I am prepared to face the worst consequences, whether here or in the spirit world.
So far I have told you about indemnity, but not about the standard required. That will take longer. Shall we save the topic for later? No? The historical standard is rather simple once you understand it. It is the pure lineage of God as opposed to the impure lineage of the fall. Because of the fall, the pure lineage and tradition could not be passed on to mankind. Where are we going to find it? That pure lineage comes from true love. Without finding true love, we cannot find the true lineage.
Where can we find it then? God did not want to lose these two things-true love and true line age, so He is fighting with all His might to regain them. Which comes first-true love or true lineage? Without the fall, man would have been part of the true lineage first. A child is part of a lineage from the instant he is born. Then when he is older, he comes to understand love. So lineage must be first. As long as you have lineage, parental love must nurture you, and then when you are old enough, love comes automatically.
As a result of the fall, however, we have to reverse things. Does God have His lineage on earth now? In regaining that, God will establish true lineage through true love. Regular love means loving something you already like. Indemnity love means loving something you don't like. God has lived like that, and True Parents have lived like that, All people must also fulfill that. They cannot get away from it.
In indemnity love you not only have to love your enemy, but also his sons and daughters as if they were of your own lineage. If you can really fulfill this condition, then your love can qualify as true love. Even though it means sacrificing your own son to take in your enemy's son, that standard of love alone will be acceptable. If you can do that, you will become like God.
Jesus did this. He sacrificed himself in order to save the children of his enemies. The Crucifixion meant that God loved His enemy's sons and daughters more than His own son, allowing him to be killed for the sake of the enemy. Jesus set a great pattern, the content of the true family of God, which upset all the patterns of the false lineage. With that revolutionary standard, Heaven on earth can be built. This was the standard of victory, which Jesus set.
Once that was achieved, Satan could not accuse. If a man who finds himself in that situation can do what Jesus and God have done, then Satan will be chased away from him. Christians have known that Satan could not come near Jesus, but no one has known clearly why. In order to restore love, God had to set that right standard, and Jesus had to uphold it. Centering on this heart, parents readily sacrifice themselves for their children, and children are willing to sacrifice for the purpose the parents are pursuing.
Why did God allow Christians to shed so much blood? It was not for their own sake or for God but for the sake of their enemy. Until salvation is realized, bloodshed for the purpose of indemnity is bound to continue. Not only Jesus as an individual, but also Jesus' family was sacrificed, as well as his nation. Even today the democratic world, which is on God's side, must pay indemnity and make sacrifices. There is a reason why God cannot just strengthen America and have it wipe out communism. If Americans sacrifice themselves willingly for other people, centering on God, then America can survive and flourish. But if America only centers on its own purposes, it will not remain. So it is not enough for America to think only about itself.
What are we here for? We are sacrificing for America and the world centering on God. No American wants to stand on the front line, but the Unification Church is willing to do that for America. We are not fighting communism because we want to wipe it out; we are striving for victory over communism so that we can save the communists. We have to risk our lives to do that. Otherwise, it is not a powerful enough condition to save them.
A handful of Unification Church members are better equipped than hundreds of thousands of others for confronting the communist world. We do it in the name of God. We are not concerned about dying, but only about God and mankind. The peak
of our battle came in 1976. Communism crossed its peak in 1978 and is now going downhill. I have a clear picture of what America could do in the world, and also what Russia could do to fulfill its part of indemnity.
Soon it will be plain that those people in the spirit world who were massacred by the communists will be converting the communists' own children, as well as bothering them spiritually and giving them painful dream . Then they will be afraid to sleep at night and will know for sure that there is such a thing as spirit world. The communists will realize that spirits are affecting their own children, and they will know that there is a hereafter. This is going to happen.
The underground Christian churches in Russia will be fervently praying to know the truth. You can imagine what will happen when they meet the Unification Church. How much those people will do-they will just explode into activity! This is what I think about all the time because I know it will happen.
As I said at the beginning, the law of indemnity is not separate from the law of cause and effect. Sometimes you are confused about what is good. You don't understand why you see a good result from things you don't like to do. Now you know it is because of the indemnity law.
If you took a poll in the world and asked people what things are good, then you would know that according to the indemnity law, those activities would mostly bring a bad result. But the things people think are not useful or desirable will often bring good results. This is the knowledge that works for us. Indemnity will not continue forever but is part of the transition period when goodness must overtake evil.
Am I a clever man, or a man without principle? You think what I am saying is clever, but the world views it as very foolish. Either I am right or the world is right. Now you know the indemnity law and can apply it. The Unification Church is either good or bad. What proves that we are good? The indemnity law. We are grateful for that law because without it we would not know whether we are good or bad.
You know you should love your enemy, but you don't like to. Now you know why you should. Almighty God is hooked by such love, just like a fish. If God is that way, how can you be different? I have lived all my life according to the indemnity law, so can you think you don't have to do it? If you don't do as I did, then it is clear you will perish. You cannot avoid this law.
Are you going to love your enemy? Why? Because of indemnity. If you can love your enemy, then you can fly over obstacles. Jesus put it simply: "Love thy enemy." Who else in this world could explain the meaning behind what Jesus said? God and Jesus can be thankful because I am making it understood in a simple way. If you do not love your enemy, what will happen? Then you can not join the lineage of God and cannot go to Heaven. You have to know for sure why you must love your enemy. It is so you can become sons and daughters of God.
I am precisely following this direction; I have given up my own family and clan for this law. I forsook my own country to bring the dispensation to America. While doing this I am still sacrificing my family. My children must endure that, and eventually the world will come to love them. I won't have to tell people to love my family because they have suffered so much. The one who goes through indemnity will come to love my family more than anyone else. That's the way it should be.
Because of this love and lineage we are going to bring all races and cultures into unity. These are not my personal words but the secrets of the universe and of God, which have existed since the beginning. People were originally meant to be God's children, inheriting His lineage. You must know why you have been working hard and why I have been driving you in this direction. By doing so you are indemnifying the true lineage of God.
Marriage in the Unification Church has infinitely more meaning than in the secular world. Whether you are good-looking or not has little meaning. You can tell yourself, "I might have married my enemy; at least my fiancé is not my enemy." This is no exaggeration. Some people complain that they are well educated while their fiancé is not. What kind of attitude is that? If you didn't know about indemnity then perhaps you could say that. You might say, "Father, you have a beautiful wife so it's easy for you to talk that way, but what about me?" But the truth is that when I looked at how God had treated me for many years, I expected to be given the ugliest woman and I was ready to receive her. But then God gave Mother to me.
For Mother, I am not all sweetness and light. She had to go a bitter indemnity road. If Mother likes one way, sometimes I just go the other way. But she never decides to go her own way; she goes the way I go. Mother knows that no matter how undesirable it may be, she must follow me. She pays the indemnity of learning to like something she doesn't really like. She has to have better elements and internal qualities than any woman in the world, so in order to collect that material I am very strict with her. If I gave such orders to American women, they would rebel!
Indemnity has to be paid no matter how difficult it seems, but manifold blessings always come after difficulty. Are you going to go the road of indemnity? When I send you on that road, I have to provide support. Suppose I told you not to go. Then you would have to beg to go. The worst thing would be if you could not go the indemnity road. That is more fearful than prison or hanging.
I was the first one to test and live this indemnity law, so now if I have any right at all, it is the right to give the reward of indemnity to others. Now you know the standard-love your enemy. What will you gain by doing that? Through the Matching and Blessing, the Heavenly lineage is given to you, but if a person is unwilling to go the way of indemnity, there is no way he can be connected with God.
This is a good day, the first of July. The word "indemnity" was liberated this morning. Let us pray.
